The TSA flap as a cyclical concern
Nov. 28th, 2010 11:12 amSALAM: The conservative backlash against the TSA is just part of a bigger revival of civil liberties talk on the right. We’re going to see a lot more of it in the next year or two.
There is a some interesting things going on here. There is a standard "I'm for civil liberties when my party isn't in power" vibe, that frankly is pretty strong in both our dominant political parties. When in power they tend to be all for exective priviledge (Obama is a strong proponent of executive priviledge, he just wants to be more open about it except when its convient not to be). This easily strays into classic paranoia country. Which lead us to conspiracy thinking (and again, both sides are prone to this, I just think the right allows it to be more mainstream). We're going to see a continuance of this worry about dwindling human autonomy that leads to the right's best conspiracy thinking, and inevitably we'll see some masculinist outbursts of "regeneration through violence" that will probably make Oklahoma City seem like a warm up.