A message from George Carlin

Litbrit at Cogitamus posted this clip from one of the late George Carlin’s stand-up routines, and highlighted this particular line:

If you think you do have rights, one last assignment for you: next time you’re at the computer, get on the Internet…in the search field at Wikipedia, I want you to type in Japanese Americans 1942, and you’ll find out all about your precious fucking rights.

If this entire FISA debacle should remind us (by which I mean progressives) of anything, it’s that the Democratic Party is no less invested in the national-security state than the Republican Party is.  With few exceptions, the differences between the GOP and the Democratic Party has been one of degree and not of kind.  Now, that’s not to say those differences aren’t important – the last eight years have shown that they are – but it is to say that hoping meaningful change will come from the other entrenched elites is probably not a good idea, and will only lead to disappointment.

Update:  At Pushback, Matt Zeitlin offers a similar observation:

The British example shows just how vigilant citizens have to be about protecting their civil liberties. Remember that it’s Britain’s left-wing party that’s implementing all these policies, and that British Conservatives are probably only opposing Brown and Labour because of cheap political opportunism. One can imagine the Tories, after having been in power for 11 years, pushing similar encroachments on liberty. More worringly, one could very well imagine an Obama presidency, or a Democratic presidency afterwards, doing much the same thing. After all, it was Republicans who, throughout the nineties, professed to be very concerned about blown-up charges of executive overreach during the Clinton administration, and one can expect them to revert to their pseudo-libertarian ways if and when they’re faced with Obama in the White House and Democratic majorities in Congress.