Kerby Anderson

One of the questions many liberals are asking these days is, “What happened to Alan Dershowitz?” The emeritus Harvard Law professor has been critical of the Mueller investigation and talks about the criminalization of politics in his most recent book. But the real question should be reversed: “What happened to all the liberals who used to demand that our civil liberties be protected by government?” Victor Davis Hanson reminds us of how liberals were riding high after the Watergate scandal. Even before that, they were leading the charge in criticizing the overreach of presidents and their bureaucracies (FBI, CIA). They rightly criticized the intelligence agencies for spying on American citizens. Those days are but a distant memory now. Liberal politicians have “downplayed or excused Watergate-like abuses of power by the former Barack Obama administration. Liberal journalists apparently have few concerns that the FBI apparently used at least one secret informant to gather information about the 2016 Trump campaign.” And they didn’t seem too bothered that the national security team unmasked the names of US citizens. Civil libertarians seem indifferent that “Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign paid a foreign agent, Christopher Steele, to compile dirt on Republican candidate Donald Trump” and that the details of the dossier were leaked. They also seem unconcerned that “the Department of Justice sought to deceive the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, getting it to grant warrants to allow the surveillance of US citizens.” There is, of course, much more than this. But even this very short summary illustrates the remarkable change, not in Alan Dershowitz, but in the liberal establishment. They believe that President Trump is a danger and therefore turn a blind eye to abuses they used to criticize just a few years ago. That’s why they should really be asking, “What’s happened to us?”