I am so saddened to hear that the country I pledged allegiance to as a child is now being accused of human rights abuses by Amnesty International :(
How are they comparable?
The action still holds consequences. When a piece of information is kept confidential, the US Government makes that initial decision to do so. Just because it pisses the public off, that is no excuse for anyone to leak information at will, let alone be pardoned for it.
Don't get me wrong. Snowden is a hero, a far braver man than I might have been. But he is still a criminal.
I call bullshit. The government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. What is "legal" or "illegal" is bigger than just what Congress, the President or the Supreme Court think. As they say, "An unjust law is no law at all".[1]
Certainly an arguable point, but it's one I adhere to, and I think a lot of other HN'ers do as well. As well as a lot of Americans, and, for that matter, a lot of people period.
Also, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that the nature of the leak will factor into his trial, which is where it should be evaluated (right?).
And besides troop movements, names and locations of undercover operatives, and other specific information that could get people hurt or killed, why should the government keep secrets from its citizens for any reason? Or what does "consent of the governed" mean?
You've described the loop hole for a slippery slope. And I promise you, the first suggestions would seem so reasonable. After all, you didn't mention the descriptions of the operatives. Or the supplies needed to support the troop movements. Both of which are not specifically described by you, but could easily be used against the troops and agents. Both of which are reasonable to keep secret...
But it's still a slope. We think we are here overnight, but we are not. PRISM didn't just happens. It's been in the making for decades before you were born.
That's the part we need to realize. Obama didn't do this. Bush didn't do this. Hell, your parents didn't do this. We've all done this, one way or the other. We've all been apart of this.
What secret treason courts? Snowden is not charged with treason, and even if he were, he'd be tried in U.S. District Court.
I think you have to consider context. To flip it around, the law may or may not be inherently unjust, but breaking it may well be justified in some circumstances. Nominally, this is part of the reason we have juries, and why juries are able to make their determination on any basis they see fit... so they can allow for this kind of "fuzziness" to the law.
There's also a reason that prosecutors have discretion in choosing what charges to pursue, what sentence to seek, etc.
Now, you can argue that, given our system and all its checks and balances and protections, that Snowden should come home and face a trail in front of a jury of his peers. But you can also argue that, given all the publicity around the case, he's correct in saying that he won't get a fair trail. You could also argue that even a "fair trail" is unfair from the perspective of the individual being judged, if they don't consider themselves guilty of a crime.
At the end of the day, this whole idea of "justice" is not black and white, sadly.
The population overwhelmingly supported oppressing the black minority. But the legal system disregarded what the large majority thought and did the right thing anyways.
Sorry, not enough coffee.
And as a practical matter, the majority of Americans think Snowden should be prosecuted.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/163043/americans-disapprove-gover...
44% say Snowden did the right thing, 42% say it was wrong.
53% disapprove Government surveillance.
59% say it was right for the newspapers to publish the info.
Also: 31% say he's a patriot, 23% say he's a traitor:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-usa-security-po...
What "the law" is at any point in time is just a reflection of what men (well, "people") think is just. Except in this country, our political system has become so corrupt that a significant body of what passes for "law" here is total bullshit. People should feel empowered to violate unjust laws. Personally, I encourage everybody to break a few laws each and every day, simply as a matter of principle.
What you mean is that you and your friends think they are bullshit. As far as I can see, they are for the most part quite reflective of what American voters want (or is at least consistent with a compromise position of the wants of the various voting demographics).[1] Most Americans are afraid of terrorism and are okay with some level of government surveillance, though they might quibble about the details. They want the government to be very harsh on crime (and are scared of computer hackers), and want the drug war to continue.[2] They wanted their elected leaders to be Christians, etc. I don't see corruption, I see a reflection of the wants and fears of the people.
Now, I don't always agree with the voter consensus, but, frankly, I'd rather have the laws I disagree with than a system where we ask mindcrime and his friends what transcendent principles should govern the country.
I think somewhere along the way, some people got confused about the precise nature of our society. It is a republic with a strong democratic streak as a result of amendments in the 1800's. The purpose of the Constitution is to enshrine this system of majoritarian rule. "Rights" (i.e. principles by which the courts tell the democratically-elected branches what they can't do) are a part of the foundational principles, but we are not a libertarian society where the fundamental purpose of government is to protect rights.[3] Rights must be respected, but when it comes time to interpret the scope of a right, whether broadly or narrowly, in the face of a conflict with the laws promulgated by the elected branches, I think it's critical to keep in mind that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government" made it to the main body of the Constitution--search and seizure and the other rights were added after the fact.
[1] I think it's a crucially important fact to understanding this country that while Americans hate Congress as a whole, they historically love their particular representatives: http://www.gallup.com/poll/162362/americans-down-congress-ow.... Americans don't hate what their representative is doing (at least historically). They hate what other peoples' representatives are doing.
[2] I think it might be the case now that a slim majority of people might now want to see at least some decriminalization. However, I think the majority of voters still want to wage the drug war. The suburban soccer mom/dad demographic that shrilly preached "Just Say No!" at every school function every American student attended in the 1980's and 1990's is more politically active than ever, and has a good 15+ years of voting left in it.
[3] I think a good example of this distinction is Hong Kong (or at least, the idealized depiction of Hong Kong that is common on HN). Hong Kong doesn't have any democracy to speak of, but it does have a strong history of protecting rights. Many people might find Hong Kong preferable to the U.S. because they care more about rights than democracy.
And?
As far as I can see, they are for the most part quite reflective of what American voters want (or is at least consistent with a compromise position of the wants of the various voting demographics).
Yeah, well, majority rule is bullshit too, so what's your point? The "system" we have in place tries to avoid the "tyranny of the majority" but no political system can ever really avoid some element of that. There's no point pretending that the system we have in place doesn't have flaws, and that individuals are not sometimes justified in stepping outside of that system.
Now, I don't always agree with the voter consensus, but, frankly, I'd rather have the laws I disagree with than a system where we ask mindcrime and his friends what transcendent principles should govern the country.
Then I suppose you should hope that I'm never on a jury. :-)
I don't see corruption
You must not be looking very hard. But, being part of "the system", I guess that should be expected. What we all see is influenced by our fundamental worldview, and you clearly have a fundamentally different worldview than I do. So we'll probably always disagree on this.
If there is an animating principle to the Constitution, I think it's the phrase "consent of the governed." When you tell a starving man he can't kill his neighbor and take his livestock, a freedom of action he was born with and retains in the state of nature, or else some government which has no stake in either his neighbor's property or his huger will punish him, I don't think it suffices to appeal to some supernatural "right to life" or "right to property." I think it is wrong to impose that system on people on any other basis than democratic consensus. And I think there is a reason the founders spent so much ink describing how the U.S. was based on "consent of the governed," a key distinction between the U.S. and Britain, while they were by and large happy to inherit the system of "rights" from common law English principles.
Just because the actions documented in the documents are unconstitutional and hence illegal is an excuse to leak documents that were trying to be hidden.
FTFY
A bad precedent to what, exactly? Other people revealing more potentially unconstitutional actions by the Government of the day?
Firstly, you're implying that Snowden revealed info about current military operations. If you read his comments (eg Guardian Q&A), he makes it clear that his issue is with the suspicionless surveillance and that he took steps to avoid revealing more. If he's shared info of the kind you're describing, please point to it. Otherwise there is no precedent set here.
Secondly, your approach basically boils down to "Don't get in the way of the Military or Governement. Ever." There are plenty of other countries in the world with similar doctrines, which I find ironic. Also, What d'you think about previous whistle-blower actions in US history, like the Pentagon Papers [1]?
The approach doesn't boil down to that hyperbole at all. There's a place for opposition, but I don't see it as among those people who choose to work on classified projects for the NSA and CIA. Compartmentalized security relies on trusted individuals not choosing to make unilateral security decisions. If he wants to resign and then generally oppose governmental surveillance, then he is welcome to do that.
I see the pentagon papers as along the same lines as this. The remnants of my teenage agents sympathize with the whistle blower spirit, but I see this as effectively the same as vigilante justice and blatant disregard of the importance of trust in security and while it may have had positive societal benefits, that doesn't mean there should be no consequences.
This is the same thing except on a more abstract level of illegality.
The actions from what we've seen so far are completely legal; what Snowden did is not. It's incredibly simple.
That's a completely unsupported assertion. Clearly what the NSA has been up to is compatible with a small secretive framework of laws and courts, but a large part of the outcry is due to the fact that this framework hasn't been publicly subjected to Supreme Court challenges, so the compatibility with the larger body of law and the constitution is fairly uncertain compared to things like normal law-enforcement procedures. (If PRISM et al had been thoroughly tested at the Supreme Court level, there would have to have been a decision as notorious as Dred Scott or Roe v Wade, and a corresponding movement to amend the constitution in order to overturn the Supreme Court. Neither has happened yet.)
Ah, innocent until proven guilty and all that!
I am not entirely convinced everything we have seen the US do in this case in legal in international terms. By pressuring countries to ignore the asylum process in order to carry out an illegal extradition is already crossing a line. If he was to be extradited it would be breaking international law.
And the US was one of the primary authors of these international laws, treaties and standards of human rights.
> If he was to be extradited it would be breaking international law.
What international law prevents a country from willingly deporting a foreigner?
In previous cases[2] where people are deported whilst seeking asylum the UNHCR has said:
> UNHCR denounced the move as a violation of the "non-refoulement" policy that prohibits the forced return of asylum seekers to areas where they could face danger – a cornerstone of international refugee protection.
> "We cannot accept that these asylum seekers were deported without a chance to explain their case,"
In my opinion, for the rule of law to stand, the asylum process must conclude before he gets deported.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-refoulement [2] http://www.unhcr.org/3fe98ef84.html
What? No, not at all. I appreciate his actions regardless of the legality, would appreciate them whether or not he chose to reveal his identity, and will appreciate them whether or not he is eventually punished by the US government for what he did.
Are we fighting a war with China?
From Wikipedia:
Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]." In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aiding or involved by such an endeavor.
The point is, if we can argue about it, then there should be a fair trial to determine whether or not it was treason. The president and other leaders saying it's treason doesn't lend itself to a fair trial in the future. The appropriate response is "He committed crimes, we will have a trial to determine the extent of those crimes and whether or not it is treason".
And who do you think will carry out these killings?
(Hopefully you have a credible source to back up your claims...)
He alerted the public to the fact that an arm of the state is flagrantly, knowingly violating the Constitution of the United States. That's not crime, that's patriotism. Why isn't James Clapper being charged for lying under oath to Congress about state surveillance?
By that logic, anyone who freed slaves in the South during the Civil War shouldn't have been pardoned by the states whose laws they broke and prosecuted to the fullest extent.
For that matter, it's probably a good warning against the whole idea of pledging allegiance to a nation-state at all.
Pleading allegiance is an ancient tradition inherited from Kingdoms and Lordships, where the individual was a mere subject of the crown or superior power. Why plead allegiance in our era ?
Discussion on the conditions of low-security prisons in the US should be secondary to discussions about why so many Americans are in prison in the first place, IMO.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison#Population_statistics
This doesn't happen in Europe, for example, because European countries are ethnically homogeneous. The reason is WWII, which was really just the rest of WWI, which started because of tensions over ethnic minorities -- officially in the Balkans but more so in Austria-Hungary, which was really just a club of little states pretending to be one big one.
As Tony Judt put it in his (fantastic) history of Europe after 1945, "The stability of postwar Europe is due in large part to the achievements of Hitler and Stalin."
As a European, I feel pretty sure you've never been to Europe. Your assertions are almost comically inaccurate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Europe#By_coun...
Reading down the list, most European nations have around 80% or more majority ethnicity. Even those with lower majorities tend to have closely related minorities, e.g. Belgium with its Flemings and Walloons.
By comparison the largest racial/ethnic group in the U.S., non-Latino whites, is under 65% and shrinking.
All that said, I personally think the high rate of imprisonment in the U.S. reflects a lot of latent to overt racism and can't be defended. I think that was the GP's point but I'm not sure.
But most of the crime is in the big cities, which attract people from all around Europe. Using the population statistics for countries as a whole could be seen as a little disingenuous with that in mind. Though, I'd be willing to bet that the Gini coefficient is more relevant a measure.
Tony one - of - our - most - dazzling - public - intellectuals Judt? Whose special expertise was modern European history?
This is taken from the introduction to POSTWAR, finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize:
""" p. 9
We should not idealize this [pre-1914] Europe. What the Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski called 'the incredible, almost comical melting pot of peoples and nationalities sizzling dangerously in the very heart of Europe' was perilously rent with riots, massacres, and pogroms -- but it was real, and it survived into living memory.
Between 1914 and 1945, however, THAT Europe was smashed into the dust. The tidier Europe that emerged, blinking into the second half of the 20th century had fewer loose ends. Thanks to war, occupation, boundary adjustments, expulsions and genocide, almost everybody now lived in their own country, among their own people. For forty years after WWII Europeans in both halves of Europe lived in hermetic national enclaves where surviving religious or ethnic minorities -- the Jews in France, for example -- represented a tiny fraction of the population at large and were thoroughly integrated into its cultural and political mainstream. Only Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union -- an empire, not a country, and anyway only part-European -- stood aside from this new, serially homogeneous Europe.
But since the 1980s, and above all since the fall of the Soviet Union and the enlargement of the EU, Europe is facing a multicultural future... voluntary and involuntary migrants from failed or repressive states at Europe's expanded margins have turned London, Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan, and a dozen other places into cosmopolitan world cities whether they like it or not.
This presence of Europe's living 'others' -- perhaps fifteen million Muslims in the EU as currently [2005] constituted, for example, with a further eighty million awaiting admission in Bulgaria and Turkey -- has thrown into relief not just Europe's current discomfort at the prospect of ever greater variety, but also the ease with which the dead 'others' of Europe's past were cast far out of mind. Since 1989 it has become clearer than it was before just how much the stability of post-war Europe rested upon the accomplishments of Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Between them, and assisted by wartime collaborators, the dictators blasted flat the demographic heath upon which the foundations of a new and less complicated continent were then laid.
"""
On my trips to Europe I have seen students in Prague (none in Plzen), Arabs in Paris, some British tourists in Ljubljana.
Overall I was not surprised to learn that when Poles gained the right to emigrate by acceding to the EU, the richer member nations were swept by waves of anxiety over the arrival of a slightly different kind of white person.
And it wasn't before 1980? That's news to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
"...and easy to vote for stiff penalties for criminals who don't look like you."
That's a reference to the Drug War. Which Reagan cranked into high gear in the 1980s, in response to the crack epidemic, by introducing mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession. Penalties for possessing crack were, infamously, 100 times those for an equivalent amount of powder cocaine. Congress revisited the issue in 2011 and reduced the ratio. Now it's just 20:1.
Most crack users are black, and so, as a result, are disproportionately many prison inmates. Only 13% of the population is black. The other 87% continue to vote enthusiastically for politicians who are "tough on crime".
You are right and the prison situation in the USA is not ok. But that said, just as this situation could be called f--ked up, also keep in mind that many parts of US society are also REALLY F--KED UP. There's a lot of injustice and racism throughout the criminal "justice" system, but there's also a sick amount of senseless, senseless violence.
Source: Friends and family who are prosecutors and public defenders. A relative of mine was once in the position of having to defend a group of teenagers who lynched and murdered a stranger on the street with golf clubs.
Maybe without agreeing, you can at least understand the motivation for [definitely short sighted] tough-on-crime programs.
It seems to me that one of the biggest questions on this issue that Americans need to face is: are you punishing or are you rehabilitating? I don't pretend to have a universally applicable and useful answer to that question, but societies should at least be very clear about which option is being chosen and what the consequences of that choice are.
It seems to me that there is a third option: isolating. Some people we cannot cure, but should not be "punished". Even so, they need to be kept away from the general population for the sake of the population.
I personally think that using imprisonment as a sort of "punishment" is barbaric and has no place in a civilized society. It should only be used to rehabilitate or, barring that possibility, isolate. You have someone who just won't stop killing people and your psychologists are at a loss as to how to turn him into a safe productive member of society? By all means, keep him locked up and off the streets, but trying to frame this detainment as a "punishment" is how we start down a very dark road.
I believe the privitisation of the penal system in the US has set the stage for all kinds of misdirected incentives. I wonder if some who benefit from the system as it stands are in fact quite happy to perpetuate the need for revenge/punishment.
I do none the less understand the impulse for revenge on an individual level. Anyone who says they don't must have had a charmed life indeed. I just think it's time we start consciously removing such instincts from our penal systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maricopa_County_Sheriff's_Offic...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_Stat...
>Examples of mistreatment claimed include prisoners left naked and exposed in harsh weather or cold air;[120] "routine" use of rubber bullets[121] and pepper spray;,[120][121][121] solitary confinement of violent prisoners in soundproofed cells for 23 or 24 hours a day;[120][122] and a range of injuries from serious injury to fatal gunshot wounds, with force at one California prison "often vastly disproportionate to the actual need or risk that prison staff faced."[121] Such behaviors are illegal, and, "Professional standards clearly limit staff use of force to that which is necessary to control prisoner disorder."[121]
>Human Rights Watch raised concerns with prisoner rape and medical care for inmates.[123] In a survey of 1,788 male inmates in Midwestern prisons by Prison Journal, about 21% claimed they had been coerced or pressured into sexual activity during their incarceration and 7% claimed that they had been raped in their current facility.[124] Tolerance of serious sexual abuse and rape in United States prisons are consistently reported as widespread.[citation needed] It has been fought against by organizations such as Stop Prisoner Rape.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confine...
>He's right about that. After being apprehended on the Iran-Iraq border, Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal, and I were held in Evin Prison's isolation ward for political prisoners. Sarah remained there for 13 months, Josh and I for 26 months. We were held incommunicado. We never knew when, or if, we would get out. We didn't go to trial for two years. When we did we had no way to speak to a lawyer and no means of contesting the charges against us, which included espionage. The alleged evidence the court held was "confidential."
>What I want to tell Acosta is that no part of my experience—not the uncertainty of when I would be free again, not the tortured screams of other prisoners—was worse than the four months I spent in solitary confinement. What would he say if I told him I needed human contact so badly that I woke every morning hoping to be interrogated? Would he believe that I once yearned to be sat down in a padded, soundproof room, blindfolded, and questioned, just so I could talk to somebody?
>I want to answer his question—of course my experience was different from those of the men at California's Pelican Bay State Prison—but I'm not sure how to do it. How do you compare, when the difference between one person's stability and another's insanity is found in tiny details? Do I point out that I had a mattress, and they have thin pieces of foam; that the concrete open-air cell I exercised in was twice the size of the "dog run" at Pelican Bay, which is about 16 by 25 feet; that I got 15 minutes of phone calls in 26 months, and they get none; that I couldn't write letters, but they can; that we could only talk to nearby prisoners in secret, but they can shout to each other without being punished; that unlike where I was imprisoned, whoever lives here has to shit at the front of his cell, in view of the guards?
It is a crazy, awful, and unnecessary black mark on America's human rights record. There is no excuse for this sort of thing, and it happens every day. Other first-world countries get along fine without systematic mistreatment of nearly eight people in a thousand.
I find that odd though, since most children love being rebellious over frivolous things like that.
On the other hand, a friend of mine was nearly suspended for wearing a military jacket with an upside-down American flag patch on the shoulder.
I wonder though if these systems were implemented accidentally or in a cool calculating way. The religion one seems like something that could bootstrap itself from true belief (if you honestly think that you have life figure out, chances are you are going to tell your kids), but the pledge one seems more calculated to me. There just really is no reason to have young children pledging allegiance to a flag and its government.
If you think loyalty to government is a good idea, that is fine, but why not teach them why that is the case? I'm sure you have plenty of good reasons lined up, so give them those reason instead of making them recite a pledge...
So, no, I don't teach my children loyalty to "government", but rather their country, which, up until recently was pretty free from their government.
Also, the pledge is absolutely to a particular government; I don't know how that could be any more clear.
So if you are pleased with what you are teaching your children, as you claim, then why is the pledge important? Your lessons should carry sufficient strength. Brainwashing is the tool of people who are not confident in what they say; it is not a tool for you.
Do you think my 5 & 6 yr olds will understand my explanation of what Snowden did, and why?
And, yes, there was lots of condescension in your comment, just so you know for the future...
If you value the notion of a free society (and I am sure that you do) then you should be able to teach that appreciation (and I am sure that you could, if you tried).
Not to be a dick, but if you were one of my personal friends and said that to me at a bar, I'd slap you in the nuts to get your attention. Maybe midwestern Americans take that differently.
Furthermore, the pledge is not some sort of "teaching through rote repetition". If it were, then why is it not done in social studies or american government classes (you know, like rote memorization of arithmetic tables is done in mathematics classes), why the emphasis on ritual (you don't stand up, face the front of the room, and salute a multiplication table...), and why does it continue past school grades for toddlers? What place does "rote memorization of why freedom is rad" have any place in, say, high schools? Those children are surely capable of receiving a proper lesson. And they get those proper lessons... but for some reason the pledge continues.
I don't think your interpretation of what the pledge it is holds water in the slightest. You are trying to treat it as something that it simply is not.
> "Do you think my 5 & 6 yr olds will understand my explanation of what Snowden did, and why?"
I am suggesting nothing of the sort. Not sure why you would think I am suggesting that.
> "I'd slap you in the nuts to get your attention. Maybe midwestern Americans take that differently."
Yeah, on the coasts we don't take kindly to physical assault in retaliation for minor perceived slights. What the hell... I hope you are exaggerating.
I hope he doesn't treat his kid that way... holy hell.
Memorization != Understanding.
Nobody says that they need to understand the importance of the Constitution when they are 5 or 6 years old. Wait a bit longer until they actually can understand it, and then teach it to them.
The original: I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
This change was largely brought about by the realization that the pledge was dangerously close to the NAZI party's way of indoctrinating Nationalism (however Fascistic it was)[2] and that there should be some manner to differentiate between the good, moral, American version and the evil, unethical German version.
Nationalism (and Socialism) were ideologies of the 19th Century, and America does not have a great history of citizenship for all, with certain cultures not sharing in it until post WW1.[3]
So, I'm afraid: the pledge does, and always has had, a streak of Nationalism a mile wide to it. I find the modern American denial of this fascinating.
And, if you cannot see how it is used to indoctrinate children, then I am happy to provide non-wiki specific psychology papers proving that it does.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance#Addition_... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act_of_1924
(Also, the addition of the words "under god" and a reference to a particular government hardly make it more "liberal"?)
Louis A. Bowman [in 1948], an attorney from Illinois, was the first to initiate the addition of "under God" to the Pledge. The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution gave him an Award of Merit as the originator of this idea...
President Eisenhower had been baptized a Presbyterian very recently, just a year before. He responded enthusiastically to Docherty in a conversation following the service. Eisenhower acted on his suggestion the next day and on February 8, 1954, Rep. Charles Oakman (R-Mich.), introduced a bill to that effect
The "Daughters of the American Revolution"[1] were a political group that had considerable influence in American politics pre-WWII and their initial drives had nothing to do with fears of Communism (they were also against the revocation of the Bellamy salute until the declaration of war in 1941). So, your blase claim is not wholly correct ~ they're also a fascinating element of female power within the United States and the influences of matriarchal organization "behind the scenes of power" are little known, sadly. Well worth looking into.
However, yes, of course this period includes "the Red Scare", and this pledge was tied into this new strand of the American National Psyche. I apologize, I assumed this was a given at this level of debate.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughters_of_the_American_Revo...
I dislike the pledge because every time I hear it I'm reminded that Americans were once stupid enough to believe that modifying the words to it would be enough to thwart communist spies. It's like they forgot that athiests don't really acknowledge the concept of blasphemy.
Of course I know that opinion isn't exactly controversial around here.
There's no compelling societal interest in brainwashing kids to claim to support a government (since even making them recite the Pledge hardly makes them more reliable citizens).
It also doesn't teach anything close to critical thinking, problem solving, questioning fundamentals, or anything close to an exposure to career domains.
Also, the shots are at a parents discretion, even if peer pressure is applied. The choice to get a drivers license is inevitably on the child (you can't force them to take the test). Public education is compulsory by gunpoint (ie, imprisonment of parents who withhold their children from the public school system or homeschooled exams, though there are so many exceptions it is silly).
As for the Snowden extradition actually being a human-rights issue that's another story. I get that what he did was probably morally right but it was still illegal. I'm not sure why everyone is so shocked (SHOCKED, I say!) at the US wanting to prosecute him.
That said, the US would be smart to just forget about the whole thing. The damage has been done and this continued talk about prosecution for Snowden is making him a martyr.
Jews were legally killed as far as the Nazis were concerned.
Just become something is legal - in this case a wrong assertion because spying on citizens is against the constitution so it is illegal - does not mean that it complies with Human Rights.
The fact is that Snowden had the opportunity to quit when he found out what his work was going to entail or what his work was being applied to if he didn't approve. He continued to work and collect a paycheck. He knew he was breaking the law.
As much whining goes on here at HN about the lack of personal responsibility it's ironic that there's a ton of people so willing to not face the facts about the situation.
You can see a negative manifestation of the current Pledge when passing by an auto dealership, like this: http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/C...
In pledging allegiance to the constitution Snowdens' actions are only illegal in the sense that the current government has laws against what he did and justify those laws based on its constitutionally granted power. On the other hand every citizen has a responsibility to uphold the constitution, so his actions while illegal under the governments' laws are supported by the constitution and its founding principles.
Amnesty is coming from a different position where they are making their judgement based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which the United States is a signatory.
Articles 12 through 14 make for interesting reading. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a12
EDIT: grammar
This is not nearly the first time AI has accused the U.S. of human rights abuses. Just look at the history of the death penalty in this country for one example.
If they had just ignored him, "oh, that crazy guy", ...
"According to the United States Flag Code, the Pledge of Allegiance reads: I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
The "under God" part was added to distinguish us from 'godless communists'