My mother the communist

You may have seen the announcement earlier and elsewhere, but Geof Stone and the Pos are going at it in this week's Debate Club, over at Legal Affairs.  The ostensible topic of debate is the Patriot Act and it's relative vices and virtues.  But it's really about the larger topic of balancing civil liberties against security threats in our unsettled age of looming fear and terror. 

Here's one tasty exchange. Posner notes that his position of "more security, less liberty" should be taken in good faith because he knows the costs of civil liberties abuses.  He writes:

I believe I have a closer personal acquaintance with civil-liberties abuses than you. My mother was forced out of her job as a public school teacher, and later hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee, because of her communist sympathies. I consider her political views to have been idiotic, but I am quite sure that she was completely harmless.

Stone opens his response today with this retort:

I love that you've shared your upbringing, Dick. Of course, from our many dinners with Charlene and Nancy, I've known for years that you were a "Red diaper baby," but I'm sure this will fascinate many of our readers, who will now drag out their dog-eared copies of Freud to read up on the "reverse Oedipal complex." And, of course, you've inadvertently affirmed my insistence on the relevance of history! Let's see, how does it go: A liberal is a conservative who's been mugged; a conservative is a liberal who's been arrested; and an advocate of law-and-economics is a Red diaper baby whose mother's been hauled before HUAC.

Argh, I feel so predictable--I was fascinated by the fact of a red-diaper Posner, but alas, I'll spare all the Freud.  In any event, the exchange is very pointed and informative, especially for non-specialists interested in this important topic. (Hat tip: the pr people at Legal Affairs who tell me about these debates!)