Edward Snowden Wins Oscar, Loses Country

Edward Snowden Wins Oscar, Loses Country

by Jake MacAulay

Director Laura Poitras accepts the award for best documentary for her film & Citizen four at the 2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica. Edward Snowden was recently recognized for his heroic Patriotism again as Citizenfour, the film chronicling the events surrounding his heroic and historic revelation of U.S. government wrongdoing, and received critical acclaim including an Oscar. As you may recall, Snowden made public the unconstitutional, unlawful, and criminal behavior of the National Security Agency.

 

 

Currently living under sanctuary in Russia, Snowden said,

"My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world."

 

The director of the documentary currently resides in Berlin and has said she does not feel she could continue her work living in the United States. She was apparently placed on the Homeland Security Department's terror watch list and was repeatedly detained at airports in the years following the September 11 attacks.

 

I’ve been in a lot of airports lately and I shudder every time I see the cattle lines superintended by the TSA. To quote my friend and mentor Michael Anthony Peroutka:

 

“Nowadays, airports seem to be places where we get to see a preview of the latest loss of American liberty and the purposeful degradation of a once vibrant and decent culture.”

 

I realize, as most common thinkers do, airports are a natural checkpoint through which people must pass to exercise their God-given and constitutionally protected right to travel. Unfortunately the police state has usurped these should-be bastions of protection and now uses them to try out various methodologies by which Americans can be herded, abused, controlled and, all the while, dehumanized.  To add insult to travelers’ injuries, we are told these violations are for the purpose of “safety.”

 

To aggrandize the power of the police state, lately I’ve seen signs and heard announcements seemingly designed to encourage us to spy on each other.

 

The announcements from the government agency they call the TSA says, “If you see something, say something.”

 

The message here is that you should be on the lookout for illegal or suspicious activity and, if you become aware of it, you have a duty to share it.

 

This of course brings me back to Citizenfour and the Oscars (which I did not nor have I ever watched).

 

Mr. Snowden worked as a system administrator for a company known as Booz Allen Hamilton, and in the course of his work he became aware of massive illegality on the part of his employer and the federal government.

 

Upon learning the details of deliberate government violations of the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy, he decided to divulge details of the criminal spying activity of the government.

 

As a result, he has found it necessary to flee the country.

 

The very government that he has charged with massive violations of its charter document, the Constitution, has charged him with, among other things, theft of government property.  Many in the press have vilified him as someone who violated his contract with his employer and the sentiment from the current White House is that he should be punished for failing to keep the government’s criminal activities secret.

 

But, in a sense, didn’t he just follow the advice of the government, itself?

 

Remember, “…if you see something, say something.”

 

Though many demonize him, I believe that Mr. Snowden is an American hero.

 

Mr. Snowden, and those for whom he worked, both in and out of government, whether they like it or not, are bound by God and the Supreme Law of the Land – the Constitution.

 

His allegiance to that document, to the American people, and to God obligates him to expose violations of the law.

 

And what about that government property he is accused of stealing?  Didn’t the government break the law by stealing that from us in the first place?

 

The Bible warns us,

“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”

 

I am grateful that Mr. Snowden obeyed this law, which is the Supreme Law of the Universe.