<story><title>Edward Snowden, The N.S.A. Leaker, Comes Forward</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/06/edward-snowden-the-nsa-leaker-comes-forward.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>miles</author><text>&lt;i&gt;He talked about living “comfortably” but “unfreely.” (The dystopia he seems to be obsessing about is less “1984” than “Brave New World.”)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Epictetus addressed this sentiment a few thousand years ago:&lt;p&gt;Men shut up tame lions in a cage, and bring them up, and feed them, and some take them around with them. And yet who will call such a lion free? Is it not true that the more softly the lion lives the more slavishly he lives? And what lion, were he to get sense and reason, would care to be one of these lions? Why, yes, and the birds yonder, when they are caught and brought up in cages, what do they suffer in their efforts to escape? And some of them starve to death rather than endure such a life, while even such as live, barely do so, and suffer and pine away, and if ever they find any opening, make their escape. Such is their desire for physical freedom, and a life of independence and freedom from restraint. And what is wrong with you here in your cage? &amp;quot;What a question! My nature is to fly where I please, to live in the open air, to sing when I please. You rob me of all this, and then ask, &amp;#x27;What is wrong with you?&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Edward Snowden, The N.S.A. Leaker, Comes Forward</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/06/edward-snowden-the-nsa-leaker-comes-forward.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mikejholly</author><text>&amp;gt; He is the cheeriest major leaker one is likely to see.&lt;p&gt;I didn&amp;#x27;t get that impression at all. He seems to fully comprehend his situation and it comes through clearly in his interview.</text></comment>