Happy Memorial Day to You Too

The Brits dump on Obama:

Left, Right, and Center

Interesting times. You can wake up on Memorial Day and it is the continuing debate on torture burning up the wires. Instead of celebrating what is best in our history of defense of the nation, we are compelled to contend with the worst in that same defense. We are asked to see half the nation willing to sacrifice civil liberties for security regardless of cost, or to see half the nation willing to sacrifice security for civil liberties regardless of who might avail themselves of those privileges. That both groups are unhappy with Obama right now is if anything promising to me. It signals a capacity in him to recognize that both sides have got hold of a crucial bit of truth. And I want him to be able to take the time to find some way of amalgamating what is best in both positions. But his Brit critics are right in an important respect. If all he does is recognize the competing demands of two positions his response remains empty. To be credited with a middle way he will have to deliver a cogent middle way that somehow combines the realpolitik of the previously empowered right and the ideals of the previously disenfranchised left, instead of simply oscillating between liberal rhetoric and Bush-lite policy.