With Friends Like These… (Assange Edition)
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, December 19, 2010
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5 comments
Just in case Julian Assange wasn’t sufficiently controversial, we have the following:
Michael Moore: Why I’m Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange
Larry Flynt: Why I Am Donating $50,000 to WikiLeaks’ Defense Fund.
The Moore connection will send folks on the right in particular further over the edge and having the publisher of Hustler come to his defense won’t help with the general public, one would think.
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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The silence of the Right on issues of civil liberties has been deafening for the last decade. Besides, the usual suspects (Republicans and the NRO crowd) have already been calling for Assange to be murdered. How much worse can it really get?
Drawing and quartering? Flaying while still alive? Having cane toads shoved up his rectum?
There are lots of worse things out there.
I do suspect, however, that someone’s been napping of he thinks conservatives have been quiet about eroding civil rights. Not on this planet Earth, anyway.
Yes John, there’s been such resistance against the National Security State from leading conservatives; calling for closure of Guantanamo, an end to warrantless wiretapping, the right to due process . . . oh, wait.
By the way, your suggestion that Assange is getting off easily because no one is proposing death by torture speaks volumes about your commitment to liberty.
@John Burgess: “I do suspect, however, that someone’s been napping of he thinks conservatives have been quiet about eroding civil rights. Not on this planet Earth, anyway.”
I guess I was napping. Please let me know what I missed.
What is it with Conservatives and Michael Moore? They seem to go genuinely bonkers whenever his name is mentioned. He exposes people as frauds, like sixty minutes or John Stewart. Mostly, but not entirely, conservatives and establishment types. I don’t like his style, and have only watched one thing he ever did, but other than the fact that he goes after your political allies, why is he the anti-christ, exactly?