The current hysteria over the president's authorization of some domestic intercepts by the National Security Agency reminds me of similar reaction by liberals to the Cold War. Instead of recognizing communism as a clear and present danger to freedom and liberty here and abroad, many liberals decided the real threat to those values came from anti-communism itself. Anti-anti-communism became the defining characteristic of American liberals, who have never fully recovered their credibility with the American people when it comes to protecting the nation. The inheritors of that liberal tradition might today be defined as anti-anti-terrorists. Whatever the government does to...