From time to time in American life, the federal government’s overreach creates the circumstances for a populist libertarian critique that ends up taking the form of a campaign for the presidency. We have that now in the candidacy of Sen. Rand Paul.
When the Kentucky Republican is making the case against big-spending, high-taxing, overregulating government, he can be persuasive — not just because he’s right but because it’s clear he believes what he is saying.
But if you want to know why he’ll never be elected president, look no further than a recent libertarian conference in Washington.
Though Rand Paul will have his fans at any libertarian gathering, the senator was not the hero here. Nor was it one of the great thinkers whose writings have influenced libertarian thought, say, Milton Friedman or Friedrich Hayek.
The honor went to Edward Snowden.
The International Students for Liberty celebrated Snowden as their 2015 Alumnus of the Year because “there has been no individual in the past year who has done more for the cause of liberty than Mr. Snowden.”
Snowden’s subsequent remarks, delivered via telescreen from Moscow, were rewarded with “standing ovation after standing ovation,” according to a blog account at Reason.org, a libertarian Web site.
A few days later, Snowden answered questions online for Reddit. One of his answers — on how to make the National Security Agency’s spying an issue in the 2016 presidential election — provoked another celebratory headline at Reason.com: “Edward Snowden’s Libertarian Moment.”
To regard a man who’s wanted for espionage against the United States as a champion of liberty requires a curious mindset, especially when this same man is now living off the hospitality of Vladimir Putin. It’s a mindset and a choice, moreover, we might expect from excited college kids.
In this case, however, the idea of Ed Snowden as hero is not confined to tender young minds caught up in the afterglow of their first encounter with “Atlas Shrugged.” It also affects grown men who should know better.
Including some of the better known libertarians in American politics, all of whom were featured in some way by the conference.
Take Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan who has hailed Snowden as a “whistleblower.”
On Monday, he retweeted this from Glenn Greenwald, the man who helped Snowden get his stolen secrets published: “Edward Snowden in our [Reddit session], when asked if he’d done anything differently: ‘I’d have come forward sooner.’ ”
Or Ron Paul, the former congressman from Texas and Rand’s father.
On his Facebook page, he exonerates Snowden this way: “My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal (or confirm) that the US Government views you and me as the enemy.”
And then there is the libertarian who is actually running for president, Rand Paul himself.
Perhaps because he is running, the younger Paul has hedged more on Snowden, saying he doesn’t like breaking the law but that Snowden is mostly guilty of “civil disobedience.”
Never mind that the heroes of civil disobedience from Henry David Thoreau to Martin Luther King went to jail for their beliefs.
Let’s remember what Snowden did. He took a job at Booz Allen specifically to get access to NSA secrets so he could steal them.
While he may not have delivered these secrets to Russian handlers or drop sites the way those from Alger Hiss and Aldrich Ames to Robert Hanssen did, he had them published where all our enemies could read them. And we have only his word he’s not now working for Putin.
The libertarians who champion Snowden will claim that the secrets he published were embarrassing to the government but not damaging to our security. There’s two points to make about this addled thinking.
First, what Snowden released wasn’t about the NSA listening in on conversations about your private marijuana patch.
To the conrary, much of it is about how America goes about its intelligence work, including the Congressional Budget Justification Book that includes detailed information on our intelligence priorities and operations.
Second, say you oppose the NSA program and believe it a good thing it was exposed. Does that make Snowden is a hero?
If the answer is yes, ask yourself this: Was Sammy “The Bull” Gravano — a hitman with the Gambino family — also a “hero” because he coughed up secrets that helped take down John Gotti, the “Teflon Don”?
It’s an elementary distinction, between those who honorably serve our nation and those who betray her.
The libertarian inability to make it with Ed Snowden helps explain why libertarians have a long ways to go before the American people will ever elect one president.