I am so weary of that gaggle of the intellectually and morally bankrupt who believes that they are uttering something profound when, in discussing Ed Snowden’s plight, recite the statist mantra: “just come home and face the music, Ed; don’t run away like a coward; come back to America and state your case.”  This is no more than a cowardly evasion on their part; an unwillingness to stand in defense of a courageous man who did what they are too fainthearted to ever think of doing: challenging the playground bully. At a time when the American state insists upon knowing every conceivable detail of everyone’s lives, men like Snowden, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and other whistle-blowers, are condemned by the statist grovelers for informing the public of the state’s secrets.

I wonder if these politicians and media babblers would have equally condemned the likes of Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Ludwig von Mises, Karl Popper, Max Born, Thomas Mann, et al., for leaving Nazi Germany and going to other countries. “Come on, Albert, just go back to Hitler and state your case; it’s all ‘relative’ anyway, isn’t it?”  Would they also have heaped praise on the neighbors who squealed to the Gestapo where Anne Frank’s family was hiding?

The Best of Butler Shaffer