"Obama "offers liberal vision," and calls for "progressive values," the New York Times declares, confirming the left-of-center assessment of his second inaugural address. Democrats and progressives took heart from his empassioned commitment to civil rights and social welfare while Republicans fumed. Civil libertarians sighed, reminded that progressive values don't include individual liberty.

Of course Obama paid rhetorical tribute to liberty, as politicians always do, even as their policies assail it. But Kelly Clarkson's musical paean to liberty seemed more sincere. In the Bush/Obama homeland, when freedom rings, the security state picks up the phone, and not merely metaphorically.

Civil libertarians have been cataloguing and futilely litigating the gross abuses of post-9/11 era for years. They include, but are probably not limited to, summary detention and torture; the prosecution of whistleblowers; surveillance of peaceful protesters; the criminalization of journalism and peaceful human-rights activism; extensive blacklisting that would have been the envy of Joe McCarthy; and secrecy about a shadow legal system that makes the president's "we the people" trope seem less inspirational than sarcastic."

http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/theres-no-room-for-civil-liberties-in-obamas-inauguration-view-of-americ...