What This Blog Is All About

The following is taken from an editorial written by David MacGregor of Sovereign Life:

(quote) Galt's Gulch is a high-tech retreat in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" - a place where all the "disappearing" productive people can meet, relax and recharge. John Galt, the hero of "Atlas", is a brilliant engineer who has decided he will not support a corrupt system. He will not allow his mind, his talent, or his efforts to prop it up. He plans a strike like no other - a strike of all those who are the engine of civilization, the creative producers in every field. His mission is to persuade each and every one to disappear, to simply remove their support, and thereby bring about a collapse of the existing society.

Galt's Gulch is their private hideaway spot - an anarchic, free community hidden in the mountains. It's protected by a high-tech invisibility screen, which is designed to prevent the place from being found.

It's a "retreat for the rational", a place to re-energize and spend time with like-minded people. (end quote)

So, welcome to Galt's Gulch South blog.

Whistle Blower vs Leaker

The question is: what is the difference between “whistleblowing” and “leaking”?

The answer, not too surprisingly, depends on one’s political party affiliation. Those on the left, the Democrats, will most often be less prone to fault a leaker than a whistleblower, while those on the right, Republicans, will most often find both to be almost equally unacceptable – particularly if the case can be made that National Security has been seriously compromised.

The distinction is important, since the latter (leaking) is a violation of the law while the latter (whistleblowing) is regarded as a cornerstone of serious investigative journalism.

To date, whistleblowers have been charged under the Espionage Act—a 1917 law put on the books to prevent insubordination during World War I. According to ProPublica, as of 2013, the Espionage Act had been used to prosecute government workers who released classified documents to journalists ten times since 1971—and the Obama administration was behind seven of those prosecutions.

The answer to these two questions was written in a recent article on the Internet: “The government should just stop doing bad stuff. Stop torturing people, stop violating FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], stop holding people indefinitely without trial, stop gathering every single email in the country somewhere in Washington. I mean stop doing all the things that are contrary to our nation's values. If they won't stop doing it, then others have to work to get them to stop.”

Now, you might not agree with this, but that is precisely what the whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is presently living overseas in exile, has done.