Edward Snowden's Argument Analysis

If the United States government created a law that restricted or prohibited the practice of my religious faith, I would break that law without regret or shame. Why? Because my God is a higher authority to me than my government. To violate my conscience would be to break a law of even greater significance than anything that the government could craft. Humans are fallible, as history has shown time and time again. However, humans are gifted with a conscience, which instinctively makes moral judgments. Humans can choose to follow their conscience or to strive against its callings. It is too much to expect that the government will always create perfectly moral laws- there are too many other, louder urgings, the need for power, for gain, that can smother the small, quiet voice of the lawmaker’s conscience. As a result, laws will be put enacted that will be immoral. What, then, is the duty of the citizen when faced with a law that is, to put it simply, wrong? As I will show, it is the duty of every citizen to stand in defiance against that law- to commit

He took a job with the NSA, unaware of its devious practices. When he found out that the NSA was spying on American citizens, however, his conscience arose, glowered, and said: “No, that simply won’t do.” Snowden’s innate sense of morality informed him that the NSA had overstepped its boundaries and that its operations were unconstitutional, unscrupulous and tyrannical. So, he stole information and posted it online, becoming a traitor to his country but not to his conscience. Because of him, we understood the extremely serious invasions of our privacy that the NSA had perpetrated, and we took steps to stop it. The government, as seen from history, often needs the rebellion of its people in order to realize that a law is unjust. Perhaps primarily because of Snowden’s whistle-blowing, the NSA’s vague and shadowy powers were