LIBERALS ADRIFT IN A SEA OF UNCERTAINTY
You would think that Washington's most dedicated liberals could come up with an interesting manifesto or ideological road map, a statement of what they want to do and how they plan to do it. Apparently, you'd be wrong.

The editors of The New Republic celebrated the magazine's 90th anniversary with a collection of essays on the future of liberalism. Judging from the article, it hasn't got one.

A liberal revival driven by an upheaval similar to that of the 1930's isn't likely, according to John B. Judis in his essay on the history and future of liberalism in America.

"What is more probable is a gradual move back toward the center, where older programs would be protected from assault (although not from refinement), where incremental change could be made, and where the stage could be set for a fuller revival if circumstances warranted," he wrote.

There's a real call to arms for you. To the barricades! Protect older programs! Make incremental change! Who is going to ring doorbells for that?

Jonathan Chait, defending liberal economic thinking, argues that it is more pragmatic, while conservatism is more principled. This is no doubt true. If it works, it's good, is an old liberal watchword. It also virtually guarantees that liberals will blow an uncertain trumpet: We don't know what we will do, but put us in there and we will find something!

E.J. Dionne Jr. makes a plea for more respect for religion within Democratic ranks. A worthy thought. Too bad so few Democrats actually agree.

Peter Beinart, last seen calling for a more muscular Democratic foreign policy, also a position shared by few Democrats, now says that Democratic rhetoric on foreign affairs should prominently include apologies for past American misdeeds. The Democrats had a president like that once: Jimmy Carter. He got booted out of office in a landslide.

Martin Peretz, owner of the magazine, in his own essay, mourns liberalism's lack of forward-looking ideas and its fatal attraction to such dysfunctional institutions as the United Nations. "Liberalism now needs to be liberated from many of its own illusions and delusions. Let's hope we still have the strangth," he writes, in evident despair.

Liberalism's contemporary frustration is neatly symbolized by the magazine's cover, which depicts Woodrow Wilson, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, all heroes of the magazine's 90 years of existence. Trouble is, these are all historical figures to millions of voters today. Martin Luther King is the most contemporary of the group, and he died in 1968. Has liberalism really had no heroes for thirty-seven years? And why is Lyndon B. Johnson not in this pantheon? He was the most consequential liberal since FDR.

In truth, liberalism has an extensive platform, consisting mainly of defense of ideas and institutions created in the New Deal or the Great Society. Its newer notions include outright secularism and mistrust of any religion as "judgmental;" free choice in abortion and lifestyle, including legally sanctioned homosexual unions; a distaste for projection of U.S. power in world affairs; and a preference for the courts, rather than Congress or legislatures, as a maker of fundamental decisions. These views are shared by a good, solid forty percent of the public. Getting to fifty percent is the hard part.

PADILLA CASE: CHARGE HIM OR LET HIM GO

Jose Padilla is a small-time thug from Chicago who allegedly plotted with Al Qaeda to blow up an apartment building. Fine. Arrest him and prosecute him. But don't hold him forever in a military brig as an "enemy combatant."

That's the word today from a federal judge in South Carolina, whose decision reminded the U.S. government that its power is limited even when it claims there is a national emergency. As long as the federal courts are open, a citizen has the right to be charged there, and not buried alive under military jurisdiction.

"The court finds that the president has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold Petitioner as an enemy combatant," Judge Henry Floyd ruled in Spartanburg.

The government said it would appeal. It will be going against a massive weight of history and precedent. The most notable is the the great case of Ex parte Milligan, decided in 1866, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a civilian in Indiana should not have been tried (and sentenced to hang) by a military tribunal intent on crushing Copperhead machinations.

"No graver question was ever considered by this court, nor one which more nearly concerns the rights of the whole people," wrote the Supreme Court in 1866, "for it is the birthright of every American citizen when charged with crime, to be tried and punished according to law." The law specifies that civilian crimes are to be tried in civilian courts as long as they are functioning, no matter how much of a crisis the government thinks is afoot, the Court ruled.

Padilla's case is different from that of the various Al Qaida suspects being held in Guantanamo Bay because Padilla is a U.S. citizen whose alleged crimes occurred on U.S. soil, where the courts are very much in business. Unless he can be charged with a crime, he should go free.

We all share his birthright of protection under the Constitution, a birthright being steadily chipped away by the demands of the modern national security state. It is well to remember that our country faced no greater threat than the Civil War, and while wartime demands dented and dinged the rights of the citizens, they eventually survived. We should not let the struggle with terrorism do more damage to our rights than did the struggle to save the Union.

WASHINGTON POST BACKS TAX REVENUE OVER JUSTICE

The Washington Post, which in the old days was a thundering voice for justice, has admitted that justice strongly supports the position of the lady in New London, Connecticut, who doesn't want to sell her house to a developer. Yet the Post says justice must give way to the "public goal" of building something fancier on her land, whether she likes it or not.

"Almost all the justice is arrayed on one side, yet the law must come down on the other," the Post said in an editorial.

"Fiat justitia, ruat coelum," ("Let justice be done, though the heavens fall"), as the Romans put it, is obviously not the maxim at the Post. Nor is the old saying, "A man's home is his castle." The rights of private property must give way, the Post says, to the "very public goal" of economic development in a "distressed city."

Washington, DC, actually provided the case (Berman v. Parker ) that turned the corner on private property rights in this country. The Supreme Court ruled fifty years ago that private property could be seized for redevelopment by private parties in an urban-renewal case that originated in the District. Since then, "public use" has been interpreted very broadly to permit all kinds of takings, a philosophy that culminated in the brazen assertion by New London's lawyer that property can be seized and put to a different use as long as the tax revenue is expected to be greater.

"Public use" means a use owned or directly controlled by the public, such as a school or highway. It does not occur whenever someone's property is taken away and given to the highest bidder. That is more akin to highway robbery than than highway development. How would the Post feel if its building was taken away and given to Donald Trump?