By Doug Bandow<\/p>\n
It is commonly thought that liberal Democrats are defenders of civil liberties. But as advocates of big government, the Left is no principled defender of freedom. Barack Obama is the worst sort of status quo Big Government liberal–adopting George W. Bush’s wars and attacks on civil liberties as his own.<\/p>\n
Glenn Greenwald observes:<\/a><\/p>\n although they will try, it will be extremely difficult even for his most devoted loyalists to deny the fundamental cowardice of Barack Obama. Think about how many times this will have happened: <\/p>\n During the primary campaign, Obama unequivocally vowed<\/strong><\/a> to filibuster any<\/strong> FISA bill that contained telecom immunity, only to turn around — once the nomination was secure — and vote against a Democratic filibuster<\/strong> of such a bill, and then in favor of the underlying bill itself; in other words, he blatantly violated his own unequivocal vow in order to avoid being called Soft on Terror (but did so assuring his believing supporters<\/a> that, once in office, he’d fix the surveilllance excesses he helped enact; don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen). Then, last May, Obama announced that he would comply<\/a> with two court decisions by releasing photographs of detainee abuses in the Pentagon’s custody, only to turn around two weeks later<\/strong> and completely reverse himself<\/a> after Liz Cheney and friends accused him<\/a> of Endangering the Troops and Helping Terrorists. If, in the face of “GOP demands” that Mohamed be denied a civilian trial, he again reverses himself — this time on the highest-profile civil liberties decision of his administration — he will unmistakably reveal himself, even to his most enamored admirers, as someone so utterly devoid not only of principle but also of resolve: you just blow on him a little and he falls down and shatters into little pieces. <\/p>\n Even just as a political matter, is there any better way to ensure that Americans will view him as weak<\/strong> than by abandoning one key decision after the next as a result of the slightest pressure? What kind of person could possibly admire a “leader” who does this? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n There are few dedicated defenders of liberty in the political square these days. Barack Obama certainly is not one of them. In fact, we might as well talk about the Bush-Obama administration when it comes these issues.<\/p>\n Doug Bandow, American Conservative Defense Alliance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Doug Bandow It is commonly thought that liberal Democrats are defenders of civil liberties. But as advocates of big government, the Left is no principled defender of freedom. Barack Obama is the worst sort of status quo Big Government liberal–adopting George W. Bush’s wars and attacks on civil liberties as his own. Glenn Greenwald […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3999,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3999"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}