Charlie Pierce on Barack Obama

"He needs to give a speech in which he explains this all to a willfully amnesiac country that has grown illiterate of its Constitution, ignorant of its founding principles, and taught by three decades of conservative government and idiot popular culture that its fundamental rights are at best inconveniences and, at worst, loopholes through which criminals escape justice and terrorists infiltrate the country. They are not "their" rights. They are our rights, damn it. He has spoken gloriously about the promise of the country. He's got to bring that arsenal to bear on why the country was worth that rhetoric in the first place, to tell the country that there are some things that America cannot do and remain the same country. He has to tell the country what those things are, why we can't do them, and the inevitable consequences of doing them, not in the rest of the world, which presumes the paramount importance of projecting American power around the world, but here at home, in the existential threat of those measures to the idea of the country itself. We oppose these things because of who we are. If we do not, we are complicit. He needs to tell the country that."