Interesting debate going on between Chicago Law Professor Geof Stone and 7th Circuit Judge and Law & Economics Guru Richard Posner regarding the USA PATRIOT Act. It’s chock full of interesting informational tidbits. Take this argument by Posner on civil liberties:
I believe I have a closer personal acquaintance with civil-liberties abuses than you. My mother was forced out of her job as a public school teacher, and later hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee, because of her communist sympathies. I consider her political views to have been idiotic, but I am quite sure that she was completely harmless.
Posner, son of a communist. Who knew?
But Professor Stone’s response is just classic:
I love that you’ve shared your upbringing, Dick. Of course, from our many dinners with Charlene and Nancy, I’ve known for years that you were a “Red diaper baby,” but I’m sure this will fascinate many of our readers, who will now drag out their dog-eared copies of Freud to read up on the “reverse Oedipal complex.” And, of course, you’ve inadvertently affirmed my insistence on the relevance of history! Let’s see, how does it go: A liberal is a conservative who’s been mugged; a conservative is a liberal who’s been arrested; and an advocate of law-and-economics is a Red diaper baby whose mother’s been hauled before HUAC.
The great train of causality continues…
H/T: Dan Markel.
UPDATE: Now that I think of it, doesn’t Stone have it backwards? A liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested, and a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. Not the other way around.