Civil libertarians are slaves to notions of ‘rights’. They like rights because they are individualising claims and seem to give us a protective sphere. But rights of the absolute type which are spruiked by civil libertarians are nonsense.
The key to rights is identifying the circumstances in which they can be limited and extending them to all people equally, while maintaining a distinction between the innocent and wretched.
Civil libertarians dish out rights to the guilty and innocent alike and suffer from moral short-sightedness. They focus only on the immediate person, as opposed to wider consequences and the likely effect of policies on other individuals.
via 2012 – time for civil libertarians to grow up or fade out – On Line Opinion – 3/1/2012.