Liberals, Conservatives, and Individual Rights

David Bernstein: The Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, upholding the Second Amendment right of individuals to own firearms, should finally lay to rest the widespread myth that the defining difference between liberal and conservative justices is that the former support "individual rights" and "civil liberties," while the latter routinely defer to government assertions of authority. The Heller dissent presents the remarkable spectacle of four liberal Supreme Court justices tying themselves into an intellectual knot to narrow the protections the Bill of Rights provides.

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I don't find it at all remarkable that the liberal wing of the court often opposes individual liberty. As I said here, "the defining characteristic of both yesterday’s conservatives and today’s liberals is sacrifice of personal liberties for the greater good of society."