The United States has cultivated a mythological culture of resistance to injustice as part of our origin story to justify the civil disobedience against the British and the War of Independence. This idea of resistance has since been exported around the world in numerous calls for democratic states, including India where they, too, engaged in open resistance against the British. Such resistance is justified in order to preserve lives and dignity of people. Individuals have a moral obligation to preserve the lives and dignity of others to the best of their ability. Likewise, it’s the role of government to preserve life and dignity within reason for “the end of law is not to abolish or retain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom” (Locke 32). While…show more content… He cites his experiencing of the chilling effect—a phenomenon in which people limit their own use of their freedom of speech out of fear of punishment or retribution—as his motivation for transgressing against the government since he felt that his own privacy was at stake. Taking Snowden at his best by assuming that most of the American population were already suspicious of surveillance activity, the possibility of a chilling effect is likely. However, in that case, it's not the surveillance but the effects of knowing about surveillance that Snowden takes issue with and, as a result of providing the concrete facts that prove what was once only suspicion, he might have actually exasperated the problem of the chilling effect. When asked why privacy matters he responded that "the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right" (Kleeman) and not upon himself. Here Snowden compels the American populace to agree with him purely on principle alone without really addressing the impact of violating that principle beside the chilling effect, which cannot be quantitatively proven one way or another. Regardless, by using nonviolent resistance against the government that appeals to a sort of universal morality in order to bring change, Snowden’s initial transgressions can be said to be consistent with Rawls’s theory of civil…show more content… For example, when Gandhi began to call for an independent India, he could not reasonably predict the violence that would result from Mr. Jinnah's desire to create a separate Pakistan since he didn't have evidence to suggest that a Muslim state would be developed. On the other hand, Gandhi could make an educated guess about the conditions of Indian citizens under independence and reasonably assumes that home rule would result in the liberation of Indians and grant them better rights. Regardless of his intended results, Gandhi can be judged for any potential collapse of India as a result of independence since he does reasonably consider the possibility that the government of an independent India would have corruption when Jinnah tells him that he'd "rather be ruled by an Indian terrorist than a British one" (Gandhi). Even if Indian home rule were to be worse than British imperialism, Gandhi's resistance was justified because to the point where the British were exploiting his people into
