No, it isn’t only libertarians who care about civil liberties
I’m in solidarity with Digby on this, for libertarians to try to claim they are the only ones who care about civil liberties or the steady militarization of our police the past decade or so is totally bogus. We’ve posted about it here at LGF, and I’ve seen article after article about the situation from all points of the political spectrum. It’s something that very few reasonable people like.
So I’m hearing some nonsense that only libertarians have been talking about the militarization of the police. I am not a libertarian. I’m a liberal and a civil libertarian which isn’t the same thing. And I’ve been talking about this for a very long time. So have a lot of other liberals.
The fact is that civil liberties are rarely a priority in either political party. The libertarians in America tend to gather in the GOP while the civil libertarians like me tend to vote Democratic. We’re a minority either way, but the civil libertarian liberals outnumber the libertarians substantially.
Here’s a story from prolific Daily Kos diarist Liberty Equality Fraternity and Trees dated June 20th of this year that illustrates the party differences in this regard:
During the amendment voting for “defense” appropriations last night, Alan Grayson (FL-09) introduced an amendment to prohibit the use of funds to transfer aircraft (including unmanned aerial vehicles), armored vehicles, grenade launchers, silencers, toxicological agents, launch vehicles, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, rockets, torpedoes, bombs, mines, or nuclear weapons through the DOD Excess Personal Property Program established pursuant to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997.
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