Robert Scheer at Truthdig has penned a column lauding Ed Snowden and comparing him to John Peter Zenger.

The patriotic ideology that drives Snowden is a throwback to that innate American sense of personal liberty in the face of government excess for which Zenger stood. In every interview Snowden has relied on the simple notion that informed the founders of our nation regarding the primacy of truth in public discourse.

His commitment to that ideal cannot be comprehended by a mass media culture of careerism informed by public relations that trivializes all differences of truth and logic into incomprehensible mulch. His is instead the simple veracity of the once honored slogan that the truth shall set us free and that it is overwhelming government power that is most threatening to that freedom.

What is at issue in the information Snowden’s courageous actions have revealed is our government’s denial of the core principles of the enlightenment: rule by, and of, an informed and thoughtful citizenry that has come to be smothered by the omnipresent corporatized national security state.

Oh, brother.

Flowery prose aside, comparing Snowden to Zenger makes no damn sense. Zenger was a newspaper publisher who wrote articles criticizing the royal governor of the colony of New York. He was arrested on charges of seditious libel and imprisoned for eight months. His attorney, Alexander Hamilton, argued that the truth is not libelous, and Zenger was within his legal rights to print the truth, no matter how embarrassing it was to the governor. The jury found in favor of Zenger,

Zenger was a journalist. Snowden is not. Zenger stood his ground, and was arrested and tried. Snowden skipped the country. The Zenger case is a cornerstone of a free press in the USA. Snowden’s is … what? A legal precedent? Hardly.

Another big difference is the kind of information being shared. Zenger was reporting on the actions of the royal governor, which were not secret. Others knew about them. Snowden stole secrets from the NSA, and shared them with non-citizens of the USA, or at least non-residents, in the case of Glenn Greenwald.

How are these two guys at all similar? I don’t get it.