Comment by xhevahir
4 hours ago
You're just thumping the table. It's illegal to discriminate against Jewish university students, too, but that doesn't mean that Trump's treatment of Columbia et al was justified. What do you think it means for an official to use the law as a weapon against his enemies?
Those of us that believe in preserving civil liberties argue that we should take away powers of the government so it is harder to bully people under the color of law --- the process is the punishment. I'm not sure why the left only cares about this topic now, and not when the left was in power. The Left had a lot of opportunities to take away government powers before Trump entered office.
> we should take away powers of the government so it is harder to bully people under the color of law
This coincidentally makes it much easier for private parties to get away with illegal discrimination
Trump is doing plenty of stuff that he has absolutely no legal authority to do, so I’m not sure why you think the law is some sort of roadblock.
Because "The Left" is not some unified body as you're making it out to be. Rather it consists of professional politicians who lean authoritarian, and the grassroots who lean libertarian. And the same basic dynamic exists on "The Right" as well. It is the professional authoritarians' main job to sell their respective grassroots tribes on justifications for the authoritarian actions of their administrations. Currently, it is "The Right" who is cheering on the authoritarianism (and quite voraciously!), so anybody earnestly interested in preserving civil liberties should be opposing "The Right". When the buntings change, "The Left" gets the power back, and is back to being the marketers for authoritarianism, then it will then become necessary to oppose "The Left".
But of course to actually make any positive progress for civil liberties, it is necessary for the grassroots to hold their own politicians accountable rather than merely cheering when it is their team's at bat. Meaning it is currently the responsibility of the grassroots right to be calling out these flagrant abuses of power. They were easily easily recognizing when it was being done to them, but now they mostly seem silent. Which is the same condemnation as your comment makes, but applied to the tribe who can actually act act the moment.