What do Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency, J. Edgar Hoover and the current crop of politicians have in common? Perhaps only in my mind are they related, but please indulge me as I attempt to convince you that there is a logical (and worrisome) relationship.

Edward Snowden was employed by or affiliated with an NSA contractor. With access to top-secret information about how the United States spies on its and the world's citizens, and ostensibly upset about the scope of that spying, he stole a large number of highly classified documents. He then disclosed some of that information to U.S. journalists. The result has been decisions by federal judges holding the spying activities to be unconstitutional, widespread criticism in the media, and various world leaders, such as Germany's Angela Merkel, expressing their outrage over the disclosure that their cellphones and private conversations were included in the U.S. spying efforts. Snowden now lives in Russia, where, ironically, he sought asylum from U.S. charges of espionage and theft. As things stand now, should he return to the United States, he would spend a substantial period of time in prison. Many U.S. citizens advocate for his execution on the grounds that he's a traitor, but many advocate for his exoneration because he revealed a level of espionage against U.S. citizens unprecedented, undisclosed and antithetical to the principles on which this country was founded. The issue of the government's intrusion into the lives of enormous numbers of U.S. citizens has been obscured somewhat by the debate over what should be done with Snowden should the United States get its hands on him. But the government's response has been mostly to invoke fears of bogey men, terrorists and Muslim extremists.

The New York Times, on Tuesday, published a video on its website titled "Stealing J. Edgar Hoover's Secrets." This video, a recent book by Tim Weiner titled "Enemies: A History of the FBI" and a recent book by Betty Medsger titled "The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI" all relate how a 1971 break-in/burglary of an FBI office in Media, Pa., revealed how the FBI systematically broke the law, engaged in extortionate and deceptive activities and, in short, was doing then what the NSA is doing now. The "burglars" in 1971 were political activists (professors, etc.) who then leaked the information to the media. A media firestorm followed. The FBI's justification was eerily similar to the NSA's justifications of 2013 after the Snowden heist. The FBI was accomplishing with illegal low-tech methods (phone wiretaps and break-ins of its own) the same invasions of privacy and violations of laws as the NSA's current-day high-tech invasions. The extensive laws Congress put into place after the 1971 revelations to prevent a repeat of the FBI abuses were systematically either ignored or circumvented by the NSA 40 years later. High NSA officials lied to Congress about the nature and scope of the NSA's activities over the years, with apparent impunity.

In short, the apparent lesson to be learned from this is we've learned nothing. However, that's a simplistic view of what has transpired. Instead, what we need to relearn is one of the guiding principles upon which this country was founded: Government is to be feared, and its activities should be restricted at all times and to the maximum extent possible.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution knew people in power will use the power entrusted to them for selfish ends: first, to preserve their bases of power and only secondarily to achieve some salutary end. The framers therefore designed a system of checks and balances to restrain the power of government in the United States. Over the course of our history, however, more power has been given to the executive branch (the president and the agencies under the president's control), and it has rationalized all sorts of abuses in the name of "national security."

J. Edgar Hoover had "secret files" he kept on politicians and others in power around the United States. For example, among his efforts to control those with whom he disagreed was an attempt to drive the Rev. Martin Luther King to suicide. The contents of his files were feared by virtually everyone in power in the nation's capital. Why? Because the people who gravitate toward those seats of power tend to be consummately ambitious and thus able to rationalize any behavior that keeps them in power and suits their selfish ends. An "average" person doesn't crave that power, but even normal people entrusted with it succumb to the temptation to abuse that power. When they do, they don't want those abuses revealed. And thus they become prey to people like J. Edgar Hoover, who know of those abuses but don't reveal them to the public. Instead, they use that knowledge to blackmail people in power to do their bidding.

That is the horrendous potential of the abuses by the NSA and others in government � that those abuses will be used not to protect the nation but rather to protect those in power from prosecution, censure or expulsion from power. Therefore, to protect the nation from a greater threat � the eventual imposition of a corrupt and dictatorial government � we must take the risk and curtail the spying and illegalities in which the government, unchecked, will inevitably engage.

Others before me have said it much better than I can. Benjamin Franklin said: "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." Lord Acton said: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Edward Snowden broke the law, but he did us a profound and valuable service. His punishment notwithstanding, it is up to all of us to relearn the principles on which our nation was founded. We can't allow the type of abuses the NSA committed and survive as a democracy.

This article was published in the Sunday, January 12, 2014 edition of the Columbia Daily Tribune with the headline "Refresher course:�Snowden broke the law but did a public service."