News from the Outside

A few minutes ago I "dugg" an article from the New York Times at Digg.com, and noted for not the first time the "blog it" link. Never having tried it before, I decided to go for broke. Clicked it. A few seconds later got back a notice telling me that my blog had reported it had been successfully posted. Rather anti-climactic. The results are viewable to you in the post that immediately precedes this one, "How to Put Civil Liberties in the White House" by Geoffrey R. Stone.

When I dugg the article, I added this comment:

Now THIS is an idea I can get behind. As the author indicates, having an advocate for civil liberties in the White House has historically been sheer happenstance. The way things have been these past eight years, it's high time to make sure somebody is charged with making sure this sweet land of liberty remains that way!

I always find it strange that so many right-wingnut types are simultaneously super-patriots and anti-liberty. Where I sit, you can't be both. If you're opposed to liberty--civil or otherwise--you're opposed to America, period. This is the "land of liberty," after all; the image of Liberty on our currency is as old as "in God we trust," which motto the right-wingnuts manage to twist into "proof," to their minds, that the US is a "Christian nation." Likewise the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," which the Declaration of Independence tells us are inalienable rights granted us by our Creator. Representations of Liberty grace who knows how many state capitol buildings. And we haven't even mentioned the Statue of Liberty.

So the question remains in my mind: How can you call yourself a patriot--how can you call yourself a Christian--and yet believe that curbs on liberty are a good thing? Ever?