When I hear some conservative saying "where is the civil liberties left?" I think he's been hanging around in a different part of the bloggyverse than the one I inhabit.

I should have shrunk the statement: it is our *politicians in office* who are being more cowardly than I would wish...

Brad DeLong

C'mon Brad, let it all out ... when you say "it is our *politicians in office* who are being more cowardly than I would wish", you're storing up ulcers for the future. Just close your office door and shout at the top of your lungs "The Democrats are acting like cowards! The Democrats are selling us down the river! Nader would, in all likelihood, not have done this!". We won't tell anyone you did it and you'll feel much better.

Okay:

The Democrats in office are acting like cowards! The Democrats in office are selling us down the river! Nader would, in all likelihood, not have done this!

Brad DeLong

Somebody pointed out that 'only Nixon could go to China', because 'only Nixon could go to China without being called a communist by Richard Nixon'.

The right deserves every bit of blame for this. They've spent the last several decades lying through their teeth about the left. *Nobody* on the right has the moral high ground to complain about the left's alleged silence.

There are liberals opposing many of the encroachments on our liberties by this administration. They only seem invisible because our media pays more attention to the right and gives voices from the right access which voices from the left are denied.

Good point, RuthAlice. Which, IMHO, comes down to the conventional wisdom that, when a Democrat criticizes government policy, he/she is a traitor, but when a Republican does the same, he/she is a Patriot.

William Saletan at Slate also points out how liberals in Congress have changed their tune about crime and punishment and the rights of defendants since business executives have become the subject of discussion. http://slate.msn.com/?id=2068379

But I don't think any of this is shocking or disturbing, it's just that there's more politics in politics than most people like to think about.

If the Dems protested the TIPS program the Repubs would label them as soft on terrorism as the election approaches.

So, to the contrary, the Dem leadership seems to have intentionally decided to mimic the Repubs on all war issues -- they aren't protesting *anything* -- to eliminate this potential weakness, and instead make all the differences on election day center on domestic issues where they think they have the advantage on the Repubs.

It's straightforward political calculation, regardless of the merits of the war issues. The right-wing Repubs aren't so constrained so they are free to complain about TIPS and such.

It's the same for each party's varying concern with the civil rights of various classes of criminal defendants: working class, top executive, 50s communist, whatever. Who's the party's constituency? Who does the party profit by bashing? To a good degree of approximation, that's how much sympathy will be shown for the rights of that class of defendants by the party.

It's may sound cynical to say it, but politics is highly influenced by politics -- much more so than by concern for principles.

Though in an economics forum, where it's a familiar notion that most real-world actions are driven by self-interest rather than the pursuit of ideals -- and that things often work out for the best that way too -- it might seem less cynical.