El Kilgore has a post about civil liberties, discussing the argument of false equivalency. Namely, that people flip-flop on whether intrusive federal policies are good or bad depending on whether their team is in charge. Kilgore says that this is not really true with the left. At least, that a fair amount of the left-leaning civil liberties folk have remained critical of Obama. This is obviously true, but is not really what interests me about this.
For me, the question is: why is it so unreasonable for people to flip-flop on these matters depending on who is in charge? Presumably, you have a fair amount of trust in the people that represent your political positions. You’d like them to have the power to accomplish what they want–because you think they will use that power wisely and judiciously.
Contrariwise, you do not trust the representatives of the other side. Because you disagree with their political priorities, you will not want them to be able to use extensive powers to accomplish them. You will not trust that if they violate civil liberties that they do so for a good reason. You may find them personally odious (as is often the case – political arguments get filtered through the lens of character judgments), but that’s not even necessary. You might believe, for example, that George Bush has all the best intentions in his intrusions but you think he is wrong in his judgment of what counts as a good reason. If that’s the case, it would be pretty reasonable to stop complaining about the same practice if conducted by an administration who principles you do trust.
I don’t personally hold to this logic, but I don’t think it’s crazy if people do reason this way.