Jeffrey Toobin’s “Edward Snowden is no Hero” has generated some very sprited debate in my Facebook circles. Most of my online interlocutors fall into the left civil-libertarian camp, so readers might imagine their consensus view of Snowden’s action. I’m much less sanguine. I take the ethical, moral, and legal obligations of holding a high-level security clearance very seriously. You better have a damn good reason for violating those obligations, and it isn’t at all clear to me that disclosing a legal intelligence-gathering program subject to active congressional oversight crosses that threshold. And if you are going to declare, in essence, “Here I stand. I can do no other,” then you don’t make your stand from a country that — regardless of its civil-liberties statutes — is under the jurisdiction of the PRC security services. That betrays a certain degree of reckless disregard for your own safety and that of the knowledge that you carry.
David Brooks, on the other hand, needs to take a very long holiday from the New York Time’s editorial pages. Here’s some other idiocy that, despite the reservations expressed above, I in no way condone.
Linking of Paul Campos, if you haven’t read his “The Lessons of the Megalomaniac University President,” then do so. Right now. One of the other big academia stories right now involves the philosophy of sexual harassment (PDF). Or, more accurately, the philosopher and sexual harassment? A number of people aren’t exactly covering themselves in glory on this one, but they are encouraging others to produce first-rate snark.
But back to the imminent panopticon. Daniel Little doesn’t like it. Not one bit. Nor does Tim Burke. Both have super-intelligent things to say on the subject.
Speaking of surveillance…. anyone following MERS? This is apparently a very worrisome time on the pandemic front. So I recommend dealing with anxiety through the ironic lens of playing the board game.
There’s plenty of other stuff worth your while. For example, Lane Kentworthy rejects the notion that the US can’t have nice (social democratic) things (via). SocProf discusses In the Flesh. But that’s enough for now.
Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.
He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.
He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
I think that you’re having an argument with yourself.
I would be embarrassed to link to Toobin’s idiot barstool psychologizing without appropriate levels of derision. And as if his New Yorker piece weren’t asinine enough, he added this gem on CNN last night:
“And I think Snowden’s bizarre ideology makes it even more bizarre. I mean here’s someone who’s supposedly concerned about free speech and transparency and goes to a place that’s under control of one of the most oppressive in the world. So I don’t think we’re looking at a coherent ideology here, where someone he’s upset, he doesn’t like government policy, but we don’t usually let 29 year old high school drop outs decide what our policy is.”
There’s an important distinction between saying that something has generated good discussion and saying that the piece is good.
But, wow, that’s a real gem… of something.
I just looked at the discussion on Facebook. So many issues. I’m trying to sort them out. What makes a whistleblower? Probably not a “pure” motive; consider Mark Felt/Deep Throat.
Is it the information revealed? If so, we really haven’t seen much from Edward Snowden so far.
And the classification issues complicate things. How do we know that the officials are telling us the truth if we don’t know what’s behind their assurances? Or how do we know that Snowden is telling the truth? Although he says he doesn’t want the discussion to be about him, we need to know if he’s reliable. And his story as told on the Guardian videos has internal contradictions and more seem to be turning up.
Yes, that’s a really, really important thing to flag. As I understand it, he’s claiming he had insta-tap authority for anyone, anywhere. If true, that makes metadata collection innocuous. But is it true? At the very least, we should be skeptical.
I knew that I’d be pissing off people blogging anything about this, but no love for the meme mashup?
I lol’d.
Yes! The internet should abandon it’s infatuation with cats in favour of our new rubber duck master.