Come home, Mr. Snowden

Whatever you might think of the actions of Edward Snowden in disclosing secrets activities of the U.S. government, it was clear that he believed his acts of civil disobedience were morally correct.  However, his decision to flee the country after those events indicates that he does not understand a key aspect of civil disobedience, facing the legal system of the jurisdiction in which the actions took place.  As a result, he has undermined his moral standing on the matter.

The late Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas explained in his 1968 book, Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience:

Let me first be clear about a fundamental proposition.  The motive of civil disobedience, whatever its type, does not confer immunity for law violation. . . . [I]t is the state's duty to arrest the dissident. If he is properly arrested, charged, and convicted he should be punished by fine or imprisonment, or both, in accordance with the provisions of the law, unless the law is invalid in general or as applied.

He may be motivated by the highest moral principles. He may be passionately inspired. He may, indeed, be right in the eyes of history or morality or philosophy.  These are not controlling.  It is the state's duty to arrest and punish those who violate the laws designed to protect private safety and public order.

As some great people have recognized, facing the establishment's punishment enhances the moral standing of the dissenter. It might even serve to persuade the body politic that the law should be changed.  Fortas noted:

Gandhi's concept insists upon peaceful, nonviolent refusal to comply with a law.  It assumes that the protester will be punished, and it requires peaceful submission to punishment.

Fortas reminds us that, in September of 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

set forth the guiding principles of his approach to effective protest by civil disobedience.  He said that many Negroes would disobey "unjust laws." He said that this must be done openly and peacefully, and that those who do it must accept the penalty imposed by law for their conduct.
 

Much earlier, in 1849, Henry David Thoreau addressed the moral power of accepting punishment in his essay, "Civil Disobedience:"

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.

In contrast, running from punishment, as Snowden has done, allows people to view the dissenter's motivation in a different way.  Indeed, the longer he seeks "kindred spirits" in other countries, the more Snowden is likely to viewed as a traitor than a hero.  In contrast, read this part of Thoreau's essay:

[T]he State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

Mr. Snowden's legacy resides in the United States, facing his accusers and thereby providing the potential to motivate people in the body politic to consider fully his beliefs about the unlawful actions of his government. Abroad, he is a man without a country and loses the moral authority to make the argument and forfeits the political influence to have it adopted.

It is not too late for him to come home.