I support President Obama…

…because of some things and in spite of some others. Among the latter is the continued exploitation of American insecurity for a distressing assault on civil liberties and basic standards of Constitutional justice. While there are no death panels in the health care act, there apparently are death panels within the folds of the National Security Council.

We're a long way down a path that's been traveled before. Jason Kuznicki finds uncomfortable analogies to the present in the history of tyranny, but offers a glimmer of hope...

We already have our Bastille and our Inquisition. This is our Star Chamber. So they’re all quite small, you say? Almost inconsequential? Great. All the easier to get rid of them. Perhaps in our case it won’t take a revolution.

Perhaps.

It won't be easy though. The fact, I'm afraid, is that most people will trade most of their liberty, and all of yours, for a mere pittance of (mostly false) security, which means that a genuine commitment to liberty and justice for all is an almost certain electoral loser at this moment in American history. Neither party gives a damn about liberty. Hell, the Libertarians don't really give a damn about liberty.

They won't, either, until we recognize that the price of fear is too high.