Media critiques dept.—
The video on this page offers a textbook example of how far establishment liberals and especially Democratic party apparatchiks are likely to go to defend the status quo. The subject is a tete a tete between MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, one of the wiliest operators at MSNBC, and Glenn Greenwald on the question of NSA’s unwarranted surveillance powers. What makes this video different is that the exchange is analyzed, almost blow-by-blow, by a team of libertarians affiliated with the School Sucks Project, an initiative we are neither implicitly endorsing nor disavowing at this time, as we need more information to take an educated position. As our audience knows, we don’t often use libertarian materials on this site. Fact is, we have little patience with most libertarians’ ahistorical, knee-jerk defense of savage laissez-faire capitalism. But fairness at this extreme hour requires us to say this: while centrist liberals and Democrats have proved once more pathetically useless in standing up for the rights of the masses against the government’s creeping intrusions, and failed to criticize Obama’s escalation of the war in Syria (some, not content with standing silent, like abject Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) have actually joined the Snowden backlash), prominent libertarians like Ron Paul have held true to their antiwar stance, stepping up to denounce the sinister doings of the national security state. There’s a lesson here somewhere, but I’ll delay comment on that. Meantime, tell us what you think. —P. Greanville
