I suppose I should have said leaking at all has some quantity of courage attached to it, since you're messing with a government entity that pretty much by definition is more powerful than the individual and whose members are just as self-preserving as any other humans. A lot of people sure regard Deep Throat as courageous. Do you just consider him a criminal? It takes more courage to not even try being anonymous about it, though I think the leaker is categorically more courageous than the publisher, so I wouldn't say Assange is more courageous than Manning.
My point about Manning is that he could form an idea about what would happen to him if he got caught doing what he considered the right thing. Similarly, Assange could form an idea of what harassment and possibly jail time he'd have to go through by controlling the first distribution channel. Typically people consider taking such known risks courageous, with foolishness often tagging along.
> Different strokes for different folks............
Well yes, I could argue that participating in the US military at all within the last decade is a display of complete cowardice--character cowardice, moral cowardice, and intellectual cowardice. I could argue that courage is just foolishness, that they're not separate things but the same thing, and that medals award stupidity. There are many ways to disagree on the nature of courage, what's your point with toting out your family? Just to display one of the ways? Fair enough.
My point about Manning is that he could form an idea about what would happen to him if he got caught doing what he considered the right thing. Similarly, Assange could form an idea of what harassment and possibly jail time he'd have to go through by controlling the first distribution channel. Typically people consider taking such known risks courageous, with foolishness often tagging along.
> Different strokes for different folks............
Well yes, I could argue that participating in the US military at all within the last decade is a display of complete cowardice--character cowardice, moral cowardice, and intellectual cowardice. I could argue that courage is just foolishness, that they're not separate things but the same thing, and that medals award stupidity. There are many ways to disagree on the nature of courage, what's your point with toting out your family? Just to display one of the ways? Fair enough.