Buying condoms?
Go right ahead. There's a right to privacy for that.
Murdering babies?
By all means. There's a right to privacy for that.
Keeping the IRS from leaking your tax returns or the NSA from data-mining your phone and internet records?
Absolutely not. There's no right to privacy for that.
Is this pretty much the sum of things?
I think you'll find that most liberals think the right to privacy does prohibit the NSA and IRS actions, and that they aren't happy about the Obama administration about these things. Philosophically, I doubt even Obama would disagree, though he acted, at least the NSA case, more as a member of the "presidential party," supporting executive power like most presidents do, rather than acting as a liberal.
ReplyDeleteIn American politics, I'm not sure there's much left "philosophically."
ReplyDeleteThat would require the use of reason and some measure of consistency. I see very little of that regardless of party label or the attempts to allocate participants into philosophical camps.
The "liberals" I see on morning talk shows or on the nightly news seem to have little problem with Benghazi/IRS/NSA/Fast & Furious because the president is such a swell guy. If Bush was president, it would be the same thing among "conservatives."