When Is Privacy a Right? When It's Left.

When is Privacy a Right? When It's for the Left

Jonah Goldberg: Liberals twist privacy arguments

This very wide zone of privacy can be explained in part by the elitist conservatism of the media at the time. And part of it can be explained by the general awe the overwhelmingly liberal establishment held for Kennedy and other liberal presidents.

But the reason the zone eroded can be laid primarily at the feet of the left, particularly the feminist left. Senators John Tower, Robert Packwood and even Gary Hart, as well as Judges Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and Douglas Ginsburg, all had their private lives spilled out for public view, some deservedly, others not.

Leading the charge in most, if not all, of the cases were feminists and liberal activists who insisted that "the personal is political." The insistence that conservatives "just don't get it" when it comes such issues as sexual harassment and abortion were used as smokescreens to cover prying into what movies Judge Bork rented and what Packwood wrote in his diary.

But when conservatives joined the game -sometimes to everyone's detriment -liberals balked. Suddenly, when Bill Clinton violated all of the rules established by feminists in the wake of the Thomas hearings, the right to privacy suddenly became sacrosanct. Gloria Steinem was writing op-eds in the Times about how employers should be allowed to make passes at their employees, so long as it didn't get out of hand.

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