Posted by Nicholas at November 12, 2008 08:54 AMIf there’s one thing defenders of civil liberties know, it's that assaults on constitutional freedoms are bipartisan. Just as constitutional darkness didn't first fall with the arrival in the Oval Office of George W. Bush, the shroud will not lift with his departure and the entry of President Barack Obama.
As atrocious as the Bush record on civil liberties has been, there's no more eager and self-righteous hand reaching out to the Bill of Rights to drop it into the shredder than that of a liberal intent on legislating freedom. Witness the great liberal drive to criminalize expressions of hate and impose fierce punitive enhancements if the criminal has been imprudent enough to perpetrate verbal breaches of sexual or ethnic etiquette while bludgeoning his victim to death.
No doubt the conservatives who cheered Bush on as he abrogated ancient rights and stretched the powers of his office to unseen limits would have shrieked if a Democrat had taken such liberties. But now Obama will be entitled to the lordly prerogatives Bush established.
Alexander Cockburn, "A Long Train of Abuses", The American Conservative, 2008-11-17
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