John Procida, LPQC Vice-Chair, Declares Edward Snowden A Patriot & A Hero

John Procida, Vice-Chair of the Libertarian Party of Queens County (New York), recently published an article declaring Edward Snowden A Patriot & A Hero. The unedited article is the following:

"The motivation of a traitor must be revenge or the promise of a better life by the enemy.

If we examine Snowden’s case you find none of the motivations mentioned above. Snowden shows only love for his country but distrust of his government. He recognized that what he was paid to do was unconstitutional and not permitted by the 4^th Amendment in particular. He, as a patriot, could not live in this contradiction of freedom so he told the American people what their government was doing and that is the secret he exposed. The press and the government keep screaming that he gave secrets to our enemies. That’s secrets plural. How many were there and if he did tell our enemies many secrets, what were they? Since they are no longer secrets, they, the government, should tell the American people what they were as they would not cause any further damage. But no, all you hear is an embarrassed government saying he told the enemy secrets.

Snowden, I have read had a high school diploma but somehow got a job with the government making $100,000.00 or more a year. Well how will a high school graduate make more then he was getting in another job? So by leaving his Government Job, he would probably not get a job paying as much as he was making (providing he was free to pursue another job). No he knew that he would destroy his life by doing what he did but he obviously yielded to his patriotism and told us the truth.

Now some people say that although what he was doing is unconstitutional it was good for our country. Benjamin Franklin once said that if you give up freedom for security you end up without freedom and without security. What is the Government doing? They are listening in to all phone calls and e-mails and searching for important key words that will allegedly help us avoid acts of terrorism. Short term it sounds good but long-term it is a road to slavery. What if they decide to use other key words like Catholic, Jew, Italian, Libertarian, Irishman, Democrat or Republican? How about charities, churches or race or any other group they want to persecute? Now can you see why we have the 4^th Amendment in our constitution? Our forefathers knew that there might be a down-side to what they wrote but the up side greatly out weighed the down-side."