Ancient liberties are slipping through our finders like sand. Any more disquisitions here on the evil and reactionary nature of liberalism?
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I'm not 100 percent sure of your meaning here since the reactionary actions you ably dissected are coming from an organ of a liberal democracy.
Throughout their history, liberal democracies have shown an eagerness to declare states of exception during which "ancient liberties" slip away like sand between fingers or dreams upon awaking. Everyone here is familiar with the most famous examples: curtailment of press and other freedoms during WWI, internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War, etc.
I'd argue that the first two or three decades of the post WWII period was a not fully polished golden age of liberalism. During that time, radicals and principled liberals were able to demand and achieve the expansion of liberties beyond the usual beneficiaries...to an uneven extent.
But now we've entered an interesting and uniquely unnerving era which future historians may mark as the moment when liberal states broke legal and tradition enforced contracts with their citizenry. Throughout the West, throughout the endlessly praised home of liberal democracy, governments are announcing their need for expanded powers - powers largely made possible because of maturing and deepening information technology. Americans focus on the Bush team's love of secrecy and authoritarian maneuvers but a look across the globe reveals similar surveillance and suspicion based actions happening in other democracies.
Perhaps the most curious thing is the fact that the alleged emergency used to justify this growth of surveillance - the supposed threat to Western civilization from Islamic terrorism - doesn't exist in the form and to the degree our governments claim.
Yes of course there is terrorism and yes of course it's a problem and yes of course I don't want anyone to die while minding their own business because of a car bomb. It would take however, an oceans' worth of violence and organization more than what we've seen thus far from terrorist groups to topple Washington or London or Paris. And yet we're being told that this is an imminent possibility.
At least in the case of the Cold War there were actually existing thermonuclear ICBMs targeted at actually existing cities (did I write "were"? no doubt the missiles are still programmed to deliver their payloads to more or less the same spots - that problem hasn't really been solved has it?).
But now we're chasing phantoms, puffing up local gangs with RPGs and AKs into a planet-wide problem requiring cruise missiles and stealth bombers and, domestically, unlimited and unaudited surveillance systems lest one errant grain of sand slip through the Panopticon's grip.
The enthusiasm many liberals have shown and continue to show for this constriction requires reflection.
Has liberalism indeed failed, as Carrol asserts?
I don't have an answer to that but I am paying closer attention to what we might call the mass psychological problem - an attachment to fear - liberalism seems to face in the uncertain 21st century.
.d.