In every age, there are threats to our safety that generate a call to compromise our civil liberties.

During my own lifetime, liberal president Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the detention of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans in camps far away from their homes. This compromise of civil liberties was approved by the most liberal justices in modern Supreme Court history.

Then came the threat of Communism during the 1950s. The response was another compromise in civil liberties demanded by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his followers. Free speech was restricted, the Communist party was outlawed, and the courts upheld many of these compromises on civil liberties.

Then came the civil rights movement, with violence on both sides and the accompanying call for compromises in our civil liberties. The Supreme... Read More