{"id":12379,"date":"2020-05-19T11:12:39","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T18:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12379"},"modified":"2020-05-19T11:12:44","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T18:12:44","slug":"the-left-is-what-it-once-loathed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-left-is-what-it-once-loathed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Left Is What It Once Loathed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Compare the current progressive view about civil liberties against the old liberal positions of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surveillance and spying on U.S. citizens? Remember liberal Senator Frank Church of Idaho and his 1975 post-Watergate select Senate investigative committee? It found the CIA, FBI, and NSA improperly over three decades had tapped into the phones of Americans, opened their mail, and worked with telecommunications companies to monitor the data of supposedly suspect politicians, actors, celebrities, and political activists. \u201cCollusion\u201d with the communists and the Russians was often the pretense to surveil American citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Consider Church either a bastion of civil liberties protection or a dangerous firebrand who weakened the CIA and FBI. But the point is that the Left\u2019s position had once mostly been that the government\u2019s unelected deep-state intelligence officers simply had too much power to trust.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, the ACLU was outraged at what the committee revealed. Church was deified as a liberal hero uncovering government abuse. About the worst thing a government could do, liberals reminded us, was to spy on its own citizens.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then we were also warned that the scandal was the result of the government, for over 30 years, targeting mostly liberals on grounds of trumped-up suspicions that they were sympathetic to Communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular. Yet in addition, the Left argued that the state had no business spying on any American at all, unless it had a certified warrant and ample criminal cause\u2014or we found ourselves in a war with enemies at home among us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now?&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amgreatness.com\/2020\/05\/17\/the-left-is-what-it-once-loathed\/\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Compare the current progressive view about civil liberties against the old liberal positions of the past. Surveillance and spying on U.S. citizens? Remember liberal Senator Frank Church of Idaho and his 1975 post-Watergate select Senate investigative committee? It found the CIA, FBI, and NSA improperly over three decades had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3dF","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3588,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-real-threat-to-civil-liberties\/","url_meta":{"origin":12379,"position":0},"title":"The Real Threat to Civil Liberties","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Real Clear Politics A\u00a0common liberal complaint against the Bush administration is its supposed trampling of civil liberties. The Patriot Act, wiretaps, and Guantanamo supposedly have undermined our freedoms \u2014 or so we are warned\u00a0ad nauseam\u00a0by liberal watchdogs. True, we have not received any detailed analysis or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;July 2007&quot;","block_context":{"text":"July 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/july-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10948,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fisa-gate-is-scarier-than-watergate\/","url_meta":{"origin":12379,"position":1},"title":"FISA-Gate is Scarier than Watergate","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The Watergate scandal of 1972\u201374 was uncovered largely because of outraged Democratic politicians and a bulldog media. They both claimed that they had saved American democracy from the Nixon administration\u2019s attempt to warp the CIA and FBI to cover up an otherwise minor, though\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;FISA&quot;","block_context":{"text":"FISA","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/fisa\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11016,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rethinking-watergate\/","url_meta":{"origin":12379,"position":2},"title":"Rethinking Watergate","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Hoover Institution The Watergate break-in is now 45 years old. The scandal is as distant from our own time as it was once from 1928. The median age of Americans is about 38 years old. Half of all Americans were likely born after the break-in. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11713,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/learning-to-love-the-deep-state\/","url_meta":{"origin":12379,"position":3},"title":"Learning to Love the Deep State","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 9, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review In the 1970s, the military officer corps and the top ranks of the CIA, DOJ, and FBI were, in the eyes of the Left, synonymous with\u00a0Seven Days in May\u2014 and\u00a0Manchurian Candidate\u2013like conspiracies. Yet in 2016, these same institutions had been recalibrated by progressives as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5301,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/debating-the-patriot-act\/","url_meta":{"origin":12379,"position":4},"title":"Debating the Patriot Act","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 11, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The following was presented in October in Modesto, California as part of the American Heritage Series sponsored by the\u00a0Modesto Bee. The 9\/11 terrorist attacks shocked the nation in many ways. In addition to the horrific scale of the destruction and loss of life, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Bruce S. Thornton&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10941,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-ticking-memo\/","url_meta":{"origin":12379,"position":5},"title":"The Ticking Memo","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 5, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The House Intelligence Committee memo is pretty simple. It should not have been classified and thus far withheld from the public. In fact, far more information now needs to be released. Despite the outcry, as Chairman Devin Nunes clarified, the memo can easily be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;FBI&quot;","block_context":{"text":"FBI","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/fbi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12380,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379\/revisions\/12380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}