Okay, so here’s the deal. The Strangebedfellows coalition, which you have undoubtedly heard about if you’ve been reading Glenn Greenwald or AOTP or following the Barr campaign of late, is an extremely admirable left-right alliance centered around issues of civil liberties and the abuse of government power - issues which are, in case you needed reminding, at the very heart of what it means to have a free society with a limited government. But no merely written or spoken protections mean anything unless the citizens of that society take the initiative to stand up to governmental abuses - because heaven knows the state isn’t going to take care of itself. And as the terms of the recent FISA “compromise” make quite clear, politicians who think that they can put themselves forward as defenders of civil liberties without ever facing real political fallout from failing to do so will do just that - i.e., fail - until it becomes clear to them that this can an issue with consequences for them, too.