This is one that has sat, nearly finished, in my posts for a while, and it says things I think need to be said, so I'm polishing it off and sending it out the door. How long I've sat on it, you can determine by the age of the links at the bottom.
One of my pet peeves about conservatives in general and the tea party in particular is the inconsistency with which they fuss about the national deficit. President Bush inherited a government budget that was actually recording surpluses and proceeded to drive it straight into the ground, not only by cutting taxes on all and sundry but by starting two wars and making expensive changes to Medicare. Did conservatives utter a peep about deficit spending and passing our debt on to our children and all that jazz? Not so much. They may not have liked it all that much, but so long as their guy was in charge, they sucked it up and pretended not to notice, or that a little fiscal irresponsibility was a worthy price for all the other good stuff he was doing. It was only when President Obama took office, and started spending money on things that they weren't happy about, that the federal deficit became a big issue to conservatives.
The unfortunate thing, if we're operating under Keynsian economics here, is that right now - during and immediately after a crippling recession, when the economy is depressed and taxable revenues are low - is exactly when we should be using deficit spending to keep our heads above water. The flip side, of course, is that during times of prosperity - like, I don't know, the early 2000's - is when you're supposed to pay off your debts, balance your books and establish a position of strength so that you can go into debt during times of need. We, of course, bombed that, so now instead of spending the surpluses of plenty in our time of want, we're piling debt upon debt. And I definitely agree that this is bad. But the proper time to raise a ruckus about this was during the Bush years. And yet, because the people who worry about deficit spending tended to agree with him on most other things, they held their peace.
All of this is very sad and cranky-making, of course, but this isn't a blog post to rant about the failings of conservative punditry. That was just background and context. What I need to say is that I think I, and the rest of the confirmed liberals who make up Obama's base, are guilty of the same double standard when it comes to the handling of civil liberties in the war on terror.
Everyone should recall, of course, how deeply and loudly people decried the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft's warrantless wiretapping program and the Guantanamo Bay detainees. Rightfully so. In our knee-jerk reaction to 9/11, we allowed the government to set a number of precedents that may not be rolled back in my lifetime.
By the time Obama was running for the presidency, the worst of the furor was past, but there were still expectations that he was going to right some of these wrongs and dismantle some of the intrusive national security apparatus thrown together during the Bush years. At the very least, I think everyone figured that he couldn't be any worse than Bush was to civil liberties.
Except that as the articles linked to below indicate, he really is. (Protip: When John Yoo (yes, that John Yoo) thinks you're pushing the envelope on civil liberties, you have a problem.)
I first realized that something was amiss here a few weeks ago. While surfing the internet in search of god-knows-what, I found myself reading a conservative blogger ranting about the double standard of the liberal elite when it comes to civil liberties. I wish I'd saved the link. It is my policy generally to ignore anyone who uses terms like 'liberal elite' on the grounds that they are clearly conservative hacks. And this fellow definitely was. And yet, in this particular instance, he was correct. I remembered how much I had disliked the Bush intrusions into civil liberties (and I was in middle school at the time. There is a 0 percent chance that I arrived at this conclusion independently, with no prompting from the media). And I considered how long it had been since I had bothered to give a hoot about any of it.
And so, I found myself in agreement with a conservative hack blogger. And I hate that.
One of the primary roles for a political party, and especially for a party that makes up half of a two-party system, is to point out flaws and inconsistencies in the arguments of the other party. And one of the reasons our two parties of choice have become so contemptible is that they have overused and abused this role to the point that nothing a Democrat says about a Republican, or vice versa, can be regarded as anything close to sincere. Not only does this bespeak a sorry state of affairs in our political discourse, but it means that there effectively is nothing stopping either party from doing whatever it wants; even I, who happen to strongly agree with some of the bad things Democrats say about Republicans, am under no illusions that the Democrats would be saying otherwise were the Republicans to be united in a model of ideal citizenship.
So what can we do? We can self-police. We can hold our own side accountable, since the other side is no longer in a fit state to do it. If our response to criticism, even valid and sincere criticism, is to batten down hatches and man the guns to defend our fort, we are as bad as the conservatives who waited until their guy was shown the door before discovering that they didn't like deficits.
So. Mr. Obama. I voted for you in 2008. I even contributed a little money from my non-existent college-student budget to your campaign. And I will not kid myself or you by suggesting that I won't vote for you again. I will. But you need more than votes, don't you. You need supporters. You need fans. You need enthusiasm. You need MONEY! From SuperPACS and Hollywood stars and bankers, but also from the people on the ground who put up posters and knock on doors and answer telephones. Can you tell me why a president like you, who pulls the crap you're pulling in the confidence that the civil libertarians in your base will swallow their protest and bend over for another round, is deserving of my time and money?
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/29/opinion/la-oe-turley-civil-liberties-20110929
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noah-baron/obama-civil-liberties_b_1450897.html
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/john-yoo-obama-worse-on-civil-liberties-than-bush/
http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/23/former-justice-official-obama-worse-than-bush-on-civil-liberties-video/
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