Posted on 11/13/2001 4:04:01 AM PST by SJackson
HOWARD FINEMAN of Newsweek and liberal mind, confesses that employing torture against the al-Qaeda/ bin Laden crowd is not a bad idea. Alan Dershowitz, defender of the guilty, agrees, if probable cause and a judge are involved pre-torture.
When he isn't calling for torture with a warrant, Mr. Dershowitz demands national ID cards. He who damned sexual McCarthyism during l'affair Monica now favors human tracking.
Democrats are offering up unanimous consent for expanded FBI wiretapping. The Justice Department now listens to lawyers' conversations with clients in custody.
Those in the business of rights, privacy, and generic excuse-making for criminals have jumped ship. You can never find a liberal when you need one. When the going gets tough, the liberals run for cover.
During World War II, Bob Hope took himself and a bevy of beauties to the front lines. Betty Grable and her gambs visited the troops. Today, Hollywood liberals hire extra security and hide out on Malibu's cliffs. Jennifer Aniston flaked out on a charity event, fearful that radical Muslims' might succeed in their strategic goal of Hollywood brain trust annihilation.
Liberals were out in full force for Andrea Yates. NBC's Katie Couric did a little fundraising for Yates' defense fund on the Today Show for post-partum sufferers everywhere. But women drowning children are no threat to Berkeley or Ann Arbor. Terrorism hits home. Air travel, the media and Democrats' mail are targets. Nary a frightened liberal eyebrow rises to protest as their nemesis, John Ashcroft, asks for all but the funding for rubber hoses and hotter interrogation lights.
Liberal icon Thurgood Marshall wrote, "grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure." I urge my liberal friends to remember their principles and endure.
However, the difference between what have been their relatively benign but intellectually fashionable principles and the principles of conviction is that the latter apply even when it hurts. A conservative's fear is the loss of freedom, not the loss of life. Liberals have a non-believing sinner's fear of death. This Shermanesque march over the Bill of Rights is fueled by cowardice. Conservatives are of little help, having joined their comrades in totalitarianism without a peep as they flee from anthrax.
When terrorist networks are curbed, an inevitability despite media hand wringing, we will regret this infringement of rights. Conservatives only asked the Warren court for the right to use confessions spewed by the guilty before they realize Dershowitz is available. We never asked for jailhouse eavesdropping and ubiquitous wiretaps.
ID cards are an awful idea. Ronald Reagan's response to this ID idea during one of its many iterations was, "Maybe we should just brand all the babies."
An FBI with unchecked powers is an idea whose time should never come. Society would be a better place if we eavesdropped on all lawyers' conversations. Society would be perfect if we tortured lawyers. But both trample rights. Eavesdropping on jailhouse conversations is wrong, even between a lawyer and a client of Arab lineage who has taken crop dusting lessons and has a penchant for powdered donuts.
What is most irksome about these constitutional tramplings is that liberal convictions remain selectively active. The Fourth Amendment is fair game because the liberal mind won't touch immigration. Halting all Arab pedigree entries would put a big dent in terrorism here. Place a curb on all immigration and we might lick the welfare state issue too. Rather than face such an offense to diversity, liberals gut the constitution. Even Mr. Bush is too gracious in this regard.
A conservative's fear is the loss of freedom, not the loss of life. Liberals have a non-believing sinner's fear of death.
Exactly, and it explains their respective attitudes.
The writer is correct in that liberal's liberalism is selective. They support anything that would put the clamp on freedom for conservatives, but don't support anything that would put the clamp on the freedom of any of their constituency groups.
Conservatives had better be careful they don't fall into the same trap of selective conservatism--many conservative leaders are teetering on the edge or have fallen over it already.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.