Rules are great... for other people.

Snowden

I am not much of a news guy. I check the mainstream news every few days for a few minutes. The other day I saw something unique, however, and it captured my attention. All the more because my wife and I are going through the T.V. spy series Alias again. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and sometimes when you think you are suspending too much disbelief for a fictional story, real life outdoes fiction.
 Edward Snowden is the NSA spy who defected to China last week and is spilling the beans on some seriously problematic and tyranical behavior of the U.S. Government.
There it is. That sentence tells all you need to know. Yet if you look at the news, you will find many people denying one of those statements. But he did defect, and our government is behaving like a tyrant. I love my country. But with G.K. Chesterton I say- my country, right or wrong is the same as saying my mother, drunk or sober.

In an article for the Guardian, the same paper Snowden approached to go public, there is an article today which tries to tell us that it is just fine for our mother to be drunk, because hey... she is our mother, not the other guy's ugly drunk mother, but our beautiful drunk mother.

Here are some of his disturbing remarks-

The political implications are grave. Snowden has given Beijing something it couldn't achieve on its own: moral equivalence. Now, China can portray itself as a victim, besieged by America, and simply trying to defend itself.

 But has Snowden given moral equivalence, or has he merely revealed it? The answer is as sad as it is obvious. The U.S. has been berating (rightfully) China for cyber attacks for a long time. Yes, China is bad for doing these things. But the sticky thing about making moral judgements is that they apply universally. Rules aren't just good for other people, and optional for the moral people. On the contrary, following the rules is what makes one moral. The U.S. can't seem to understand this basic truth. Ever since Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, the rules which we want applied to other nations we feel should not apply to us.

But people are bad because they behave badly. Of course there is forgiveness and redemption, and of course in the inner man is often revealed a good heart that seems betrayed as if by a phantom hand by the actions of the outer man. Nevertheless, you are what you do. If you do evil, you are evil. If rules of morality don't apply to everyone, then they aren't rules, but merely norms.

The authors most disturbing statement-

But Beijing does not deserve moral equivalence, given the intensity of its cyber-attacks against America. The key point is that China struck first, developing a pronounced asymmetric advantage.

 Any parent recognizes this "he hit me first" mentality, and it makes as much sense in international relations as it does on the playground. Just because Johnny throws sand in your eye doesn't mean it's OK for you to throw it back. And in fact, throwing it back makes any claim to moral high ground laughable. All sympathy melts away as the other kids in the schoolyard slowly turn their back on your petty little squabble.

This is a great country, and many brave men have died for it. But they didn't die for government clowns to piss on the fourth amendment and then tell the world it's raining. That is not America. Between this current scandal and grievous offenses like the contraceptive/ abortifacient mandate which will take effect soon, it is getting harder to recognize where America is anymore among all B.S. it is pulling.