Friday, June 05, 2015

Know hope


Who knew the most inspiring figure of the early '00s would be, not the skinny guy with the African name, but the skinny nerd?

At the turning of the millennium, few imagined that citizens of developed democracies would soon be required to defend the concept of an open society against their own leaders.

Yet the balance of power is beginning to shift. We are witnessing the emergence of a post-terror generation, one that rejects a worldview defined by a singular tragedy. For the first time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we see the outline of a politics that turns away from reaction and fear in favor of resilience and reason. With each court victory, with every change in the law, we demonstrate facts are more convincing than fear. As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects.

Edward Snowden, New York Times, June 5, 2015

2 comments:

Hattie said...

It is strange, isnt it.

janinsanfran said...

I was slow to come around to appreciating this guy -- I suspected him of being just another hip, quasi-libertarian, perhaps oblivious of too much I care about. We have so many of those around here. But he seems to have thought himself to a very sophisticated place. That, in itself, gives me hope.