Kinsley on Privacy and Freedom

Today's Washington Post has a Michael Kinsley op-ed entitled Give Me Liberty Or Let Me Think About It.  It starts off centrist and then slides to the left, grounded in a "social contract" perspective (that I happen to share) -- individuals give up certain freedoms in order to establish government, so any further concessions of individual freedom should require notice and at least representative consent (e.g. congress-critters). 

Kinsley muddies the waters by trying to offer a general defense of the left, but I'll take a shot at redefining the main point -- unclear and indeterminate "ends" (how exactly does one wage a physical war against an abstract concept like "terror"?) certainly can't justify a set of "means" that involve trampling the fundamental compact between the people and their government.