I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. "
The words of the Declaration [of Independence] apply not only to people in this country, but also to people all over the world. For it to be truly valid, everyone around the world would have the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When any government becomes so destructive to people's safety and self-determination, then it is patriotic to dissent and to criticize - to do what we always praise and call heroic when we look upon the dissenters and critics in totalitarian countries who dare to speak out.
Liberated from the narrow confinement of passà © national interests, people are uniting with common laws of dignity, liberty and basic rights by freely communicating with one another. All this has been triggered by ordinary people like Snowden. Snowden spoke to a South China Morning Post reporter: "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American."
What is emerging is a picture of a new kind of citizenship that is not defined by the narrow confines of national interests but is informed by a sense of responsibility for the whole world. People's awakening to this shared responsibility forms a new court of public opinion and diplomacy powered by grassroots peer-to-peer networks in common concern. Snowden's act of conscience interrupted the official narrative. It showed that not only can we challenge the most powerful governments on earth, but we must do so when this power becomes irrevocably corrupt.
History is in the making and we are the primary protagonists in the story. Snowden's story is our own. It is a history of ordinary people uniting to transcend national interests for shared universal human rights. His saga continues within each of us in our quest for a truly just society.
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