More About Paul, Greenwald, and "Civil Liberties"

I posted on this last night; since then, Matt Osborne has posted an excellent piece on the dishonesty of Greenwald's Obama-bashing and Ron Paul praise (including a more in-depth look at the narrowness of Greenwald's notion of "civil liberties"). The whole thing is worth reading, but here's a key excerpt:

Remember, Greenwald says Citizens United is good for civil liberties. But what he means by those two words is very different from what most of us have in mind when we say them. The president has been consistently supportive of voting rights, for example, but that is elided from the Greenwald definition of “civil liberties;” he also elides the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Fair Sentencing Act, the overturn of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the president’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the US Commission on Civil Rights, etcetera.

Contrast that to Greenwald’s treatment of Ron Paul’s record. In his op-ed, Greenwald makes no mention of the congressman’s racist newsletters, his public stance on the Civil Rights Act, his attempt to strip Iranian students of federal financial aid, his evident homophobia, his numerous assaults on abortion rights, his desire to repeal the “Moter Voter” Act, his attacks on the 14th Amendment, etcetera. I regard his stance on the gold standard as a repeal of economic rights — one that William Jennings Bryan would abhor as a cross of gold.

In Greenwald’s story, not one of the issues in those previous two ‘graffs — not even the fight over voter ID bills that would disenfranchise millions of African Americans — count as civil liberties issues, but the supposed right of an American citizen to be free from harm while directing harm to other Americans does.

One point about the Fair Sentencing Act in particular illustrates Greenwald's dishonesty: he frequently cites the "racist Drug War" as a reason to oppose Obama...but doesn't mention that Obama pushed for, and signed, a bill to make the Drug War less racist than it had been before (by reducing the crack cocaine sentencing disparity).