Regarding Lawless...

First off, an explanation...

My last couple of posts were NOT penned in a single moment of inspiration and clarity, but instead were written over rather large tracks of time due to work/family/sleep/household demands that simply would not allow me to take the time I wanted to take.

Looking back, they are rather disjointed and (frankly) bitter-sounding... which I did not intend them to be.

I am rapidly becoming so numb to the constant stream of amoral (or worse, immoral) actions to come out of our government over the last 10 years, that any and all hope that I may have once held in the same government getting their "stuff" together and making good choices is almost dead entirely.  It can't just be me, either... did anyone look at our post count for 2013?  55 posts?  Barely one a week?  2010 had over 850 posts, but 2013 had 55?  Were we so busy?  Or were we so apathetic?

This country's "greatness" was built upon the premise that the individual needed government only for those things that they could not do for themselves.  Seems simplistic, I know... but it is true.  Even at a community level, if that community could do it for themselves, it was expected that they would do so without government input or regulation.  The Constitution is a limitation on government, and that is what it was always meant to be.

The people have allowed the government to grow the way it has, and it has never grown more than it has since the turn of the last century.  It was the Twentieth Century that saw the growth of government race to out-of-control proportions, and there is no turning back, it seems.

I'm forced by this post to look at 2013 and try to see what is different in my life and how I choose to conduct it.  I can say this:  this household has NOT recovered from the 2008 recession, and (in point of fact) we are still recovering from Katrina... 8 years ago.  I have spent a lot of effort, time and money to make sure that this household is as self-sufficient as it can be.  We do not need safety nets, we do not need assistance, we do not need aid, and should that need arise in the future, we will not need it nor will we ask for it from the government.  I'm looking for the opportunity to conduct my affairs and live my life without government control or intrusion.  Looking, mind you... but not succeeding.

Now, to the main point of responding to F Ryan's post...

Snowden broke the law.  No question about it, he broke the law.  Prima facia says he is guilty, by his own admissions.

His release of these documents (most evidence says they number more than 200,000) has brought to light what I feel is the single greatest intrusion into the private lives of American citizens by their own government in our history and without a single solitary bit of Constitutionality to back it up with.  This intrusion was later explained by the "need" to build ever greater and greater "security" for the nation.  In short, the people are safer as long as the government can take, store and use this private information where ever and when ever it likes.

The government has defended the info grab as fair, because everyone is monitored equally (since EVERYONE is monitored) and only the "bad" intel is used to further investigative measures against "terror" or whatever threat label they pick.

If the NSA has a mandate to spy on the Taliban, or any other "foreign" terror group... or even foreign governments... fine.  But if that legitimate mandate is threatened or hampered by the release of information that brings to light crimes against the American people, then the only one to blame is the NSA.  They made it impossible to "out" problems from within, they gather the domestic intel and private info with no oversight or public mandate, and they should fix the problem now that the problem has been brought to light.

When the government shows me hard, physical evidence that I am 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer in an accidental shooting than I am to be killed by a terrorist, and that police officer might be acting on information gathered in an un-Constitutional or illegal manner... then I am more than willing to risk the blow to anti-terrorist efforts by the release of this info than I am to allow the info grab to continue.

When does the "cure" become worse than the "disease"?  THAT is the point I am afraid we are rapidly approaching.  I know there are people, organizations and countries out there that want the American way of life erased from the face of the earth... but problems like the ones Snowden showed in his leaks are doing to same damage as anything 9/11 did to the fundamental freedoms this nation was founded on.  I'm not exaggerating here... that is how I feel.  I know the NSA didn't kill 3,000 people the way the 9/11 attacks did, but the 9/11 attacks didn't undercut the Constitutional freedoms of this country the way that the NSA info grab has, either.  Which did more to fundamentally change the way this nation views concepts like "freedom" and "liberty"?  I know how I'd answer...

You don't fix injustice with more injustice.  Two wrongs still don't make a right.