&gt; <i>Young: Snowden says he gave them to the public; no, he didn’t. He gave them to a bunch of self-interested journalists who decided to run a certain story with it, i.e., to explain it to people. And their fucking explainers really have a problem.</i><p>&gt; <i>Natsios: It’s a serious conflict of interest. They’ve written themselves into the story as heroes, co-heroes of the story. It’s a conflict of interest. They’re not at a distance from their source. They’ve embedded themselves in the narrative, and therefore all decisions are highly suspect because they benefit from the outcome of the narrative in every sense.</i><p>As far as I&#x27;m concerned, &quot;We the People&quot; need heroes. The fact is that the vast majority of the public grows up looking up to them, whether via History class or movies. But The Left keeps tearing its own heroes up (usually for righteous reasons- they&#x27;re dangerous etc), while The Right is much more likely to prop theirs up.<p>So, without going into the rest of the piece, I do kinda like styling people like Snowden and Manning as heroes. I&#x27;m okay with some self-promotion and so on.