Talk:Rick Grimes vs Walter White/@comment-24396083-20140118001615/@comment-24396083-20140118004953

The reason why I believed from the beginning that Snowden was a traitor was not because of the information he had been leaking but the manner in which he had done it. In my view, a true whistleblower would have first pursued legal avenues for reining in the NSA, such as seeking out sympathetic members of Congress. The American people, after all, elect people to serve in Congress specifically for the purpose of representing their interests on important matters of state.

Additionally, in my view, a true patriotic whistleblower believes in his or her cause enough to be willing to accept the punishment their disclosures bring. If they truly believe in the righteousness of their cause, they’ll be confident enough that the American people will ultimately come to appreciate their actions and they’ll be pardoned. Snowden’s flight to Hong Kong and then Moscow showed he wasn’t willing to suffer the consequences for his actions, calling into question how much he believed in his cause.