It's not left v. right, it's freedom v. tyranny

As usual, Glenn Greenwald gets right to the point and articulates it as clearly as anyone I know:

The British historian David Irving was sentenced yesterday by an Austrian criminal court to three years in prison for violations of an Austrian law which criminally punishes "whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media." In sum, Irving was convicted and imprisoned for expressing ideas which the Austrian Government has banned.

Every American blogger whom I found discussing this issue – from the left wing to the Far Right and everything in between – was in complete agreement regarding this event. They all unambiguously expressed the opinion that while those who deny or downplay the Holocaust are deplorable, nobody should be imprisoned or prosecuted by the State for expressing an idea, no matter how repugnant the idea might be. That sort of trans-ideological consensus is almost unheard of these days with regard to any issue, and it raises what I think are several extremely interesting and important points.

I have argued many times that a recognition of the dangers of the Bush Administration’s theories of lawlessness and its law-breaking behavior -- both as part of the NSA scandal and beyond -- is not based upon liberal or conservative political beliefs but, instead, is compelled by the most fundamental and defining American principles of government. That is not some "framing" ploy or effort to "triangulate" a partisan political controversy by elevating it above petty partisan disputes. Rather, objections to the Administration's theories of power are grounded in non-ideological premises because what is so offensive about the Administration’s conduct and theories of power is not that they are liberal or conservative -- they are manifestly neither. Instead, both the Administration's law-breaking and its justifications for that law-breaking constitute a profound assault on the core principles of government on which our country was founded and which has governed the country since its inception...

It is this same set of core political values on which opposition to George Bush's violations of the law is predicated, and that is what leads me to believe, vehemently, that Americans can be made to understand and appreciate the real danger and threat of the Administration’s behavior. Just as imprisoning people for their ideas is repellant to most Americans, it is (at least) equally repellent to these core values to hear the President claim that he has the power to break the law, that he can employ war powers against American citizens on U.S. soil even in the face of Congressional statutes making it a crime to exercise those powers, and that neither the Congress nor the courts can do anything to limit or restrict the President's conduct.

Read the whole post.