Snowden concluded: "When all of us band together against injustice and the defense of privacy and basic human rights, we can defend ourselves from even the most powerful systems."
The key questions raised by these fundamentally correct observations are: 1) Why does the US government continuously lie to and conspire against the American people, and the people of the entire planet? and 2) How can an effective defense of basic democratic rights be mounted?
The government in Washington operates as a permanent conspiracy because it represents social interests that are diametrically opposed to those of working people, the vast majority of the population. This government -- the Obama administration, the Congress, the courts and the vast military-intelligence complex -- functions as the political instrument of a financial oligarchy that has vastly enriched itself by criminal and parasitic means, looting the social wealth produced by the working class, while driving down the living standards of the population as a whole.
Within this ruling social layer and among those who represent its interests, there is no constituency for democracy, which is untenable in the face of unprecedented social inequality. It views the masses of working people as an enemy and a threat to be dealt with by means of repression, including not only unconstitutional surveillance, but also extra-judicial executions, carried out under Obama by means of drone missile strikes.
Within the working class, however, there are powerful democratic traditions -- the historical legacy of basic rights having been won through mass social struggles.
Neither the courts, nor any section of either big business party provide the means of defending the democratic rights of hundreds of millions -- or for that matter the life and freedom of Edward Snowden -- against a government of the corporate and financial elite. The fight for these rights is possible only through the development of an independent political movement of the American and international working class, guided by a socialist program and directed against the capitalist system, which is the source of the drive toward a police state.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
