WHAT'S A HERO ?

I am getting a little sick of people calling Mr. Snowden a "Hero".
What makes a Hero ? There are a number of definitions.
1.) A Hero is a Demigod, who has one mortal parent and one immortal 'God' parent.
(Zeus was quite active with good looking mortals)
2.) The Lead in a book or a play. 
3.) A person who fights for a cause, often from a position of weakness, putting his life at risk.

A person who throws a stone through a window, because he does not like the merchandise displayed behind this window, and then runs away is surely NOT a hero.

Edward Snowden is definitely NOT a hero.

Whether or not we agree with the indiscriminate gathering by a government of information about its and other people is truly not the question. The question is rather, whether the information entrusted to you by others, to whom you swore loyalty, should be laid bare for all to see. The second question of course is "why" this information is gathered. Is it gathered for evil purposes, or is it collected to protect something which should be dear to all of us?

This, of course, leads to a second dilemma: Are we, is a freely elected government, allowed to use seemingly undemocratic methods to protect its people and its ideals ?
Does the use of undemocratic methods challenge and damage the very ideal to be protected?
A corner post of a Democracy surely is the "Right to Privacy", which, by a far flung method of listening posts, is clearly broken.

The ancient example of the need to protect a fragile egg from an attack by a person with a sledge hammer comes to mind: If, in order to protect the egg, I encase it in a thick layer of concrete, have I not changed the nature of the egg? 

If I wish to fend off attacks by terrorists and to this end I engage in activities not normally compatible with Democratic Freedoms, have I not changed the very Nature of Democracy ? 
It seems to me that, in order to protect the Whole I must be willing to accept small incursions into my democratic rights. 

But let me return to the question of Edward, the Hero. What did he do that was so heroic?
He did not like that his Government gathered information, which it considered vital to the defence of his country, so he fled to China and told the world about his own country's "evil deeds". From there he fled to Russia and issued asylum requests to almost every European country.. Three decidedly anti USA South American countries, to whom he had not then applied, offered him Asylum. So far the Europeans  have not displayed great enthusiasm for this Hero. They praise his deed, but when it comes to offering him a stay, they are not as eager to have him in their mids.

To sum it up: Mr. Snowden is Not a Hero, certainly not under any of the above definitions.
(unless Zeus is his father:)

This is the considered opinion of

Bertstravels.