Julian Assange is not and never was a hero
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were justly executed in 1953 for stealing nuclear secrets and giving them to the Soviet Union. Assange is no different.
Julian Assange was not "persecuted" for engaging in "journalism." Assange exposed sensitive national security information, and shared data from illegally hacked computers, aided by traitor Bradley Manning. Assange a criminal and a danger to national security. The fact that Assange and WikiLeaks helped President Trump get elected in 2016 does not absolve him. Republicans understood why Assange is a foreign enemy before 2016, but hyper-partisanship turned many people's views upside down.
Let's deal with 2016 first. It is actually possible to argue that it was a public service for Assange to expose the corruption of the Democratic Party through WikiLeaks, while at the same time recognizing that he is a foreign enemy who endangered our national security and almost certainly got people killed. This "all or nothing" mentality is simple-minded and childish, because the world is not black and white. People are complicated and can do both good and evil things.
The "argument" that Assange "helped" us by exposing security vulnerabilities is especially stupid. According to that "logic," Nidal Hasan is an American hero for committing a mass shooting at a military base and helping expose security vulnerabilities. According to that "logic," the September 11 terrorists were also helping our nation become more secure by flying planes into buildings and provoking increased security of our transportation infrastructure. Do people who make these so-called "arguments" even listen to themselves?
Claiming Assange was good because of "transparency" is utter nonsense. Of course there are things that should be secret in the realm of national security. If these things are public to the American people, they are public to the Islamic State, Iran, Russia and China. No one has any "right" to information that will get our soldiers killed. Imagine someone making this "argument" in 1944, demanding that all war plans against Imperial Japan be public, because our government should not be keeping secrets. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were justly executed in 1953 for stealing nuclear secrets and giving them to the Soviet Union.
Part of the problem here is we live in a culture that hates authority. We think we are the ultimate arbiters of what should be done, and we demand to know everything. We refuse to accept that our President, our military or any other part of government can be trusted with secrets. At no time in all of human history until the last five minutes would this "argument" have been taken seriously. Yes, we absolutely should have a healthy skepticism for a lot of what our government does, but it does not follow that every single thing done by our military and national security apparatus should be public.
We have got to stop sorting ourselves into "tribes" and simply going along with whatever the partisan narrative of the day happens to be. We have to learn to think for ourselves, especially in a complicated world. We need to learn to respect and defer to the proper authorities when necessary, recognizing the teaching of Romans 13 that the civil authorities were established by God for our benefit. All of this used to be common sense, but we have lost that in our rebellion and contumacy. We need to repent.