I will have to admit, I struggle with this question, because most of my American Heros are artists who challenged the 1st Amendment, in one way or another.
My favorite American artist is Andy Warhol because he challenged what art really is.
My favorite American songwriters are Hank Williams Senior and Tom Waits because they challenged the establishment.
My favorite founding father is Ben Franklin because he challenged public information.
Snowden has challenged our security and privacy, and I truly believe he will have his day in court. I have watched countless documentaries about this person, and the one thing I have gathered is he believes a Republic Democracy can work if we work those principles. Did he break rules and laws? Oh yeah, but I think he did it with a clear conscience.
If I could sit down in a Moscow pub and have 60 minutes with this guy, I would do it in a heartbeat. I sometimes feel doing the ‘right thing’ is not always popular, in fact it can destroy you.
While I don’t pray often to the higher power, I do pray for Snowden, because his darkest days are yet to come and I hope he gets a fair trial. It is imperative to our democracy that he gets a fair trial.
A current hero is the Whistleblower who exposed Trump’s sorcery using the Ukraine president to get dirt on Biden in order to influence the 2020 election.
trump didn’t do anything pth wouldn’t do.
What Mr. Snowden did, is that he broke a law, a law which prevented Americans from knowing its own government was blatantly violating the 4th Amendment.
Now, such an act is against the law, but this is a law that is unjust in the eyes of the one who broke it; and one who practices civil disobedience against such unjust laws by breaking them is right in breaking them as long as they are willing to be subjected to the jurisprudence surrounding such a breaking of a law by the given civil disobedient individual.
The true ethic behind any legitimate civil disobedience is the willingness to be arrested for your act and cooperative in that arrest so as to highlight what you have done, why, and how the law is unjust. But in Mr. Snowden’s case, the final act or duty of one who commits a civil disobedience has yet to have been exercised.