"ACLU State of Civil Liberties: Scalia & Strossen." C-SPAN has posted online at this link (RealPlayer required) archived video of this evening's discussion.

C-SPAN's website is architected in such a way that it is almost impossible to easily link to individual videos on their site. Fortunately, this blog links the debate between Scalia and Strossen, which is worth a look.

I think Scalia comes off very well here. I agree that loose interpretation of the Constitution leads as often to the death of liberty as to it's defense. The problem is that I disagree with his conclusion that the American people are tolerant. Brown vs. Board, which he shows a lot of chutzpa in admitting may be in error under his conception of the law, is a perfect example of a large portion of this society being dragged kicking and screaming into a more tolerant world by judicial fiat, if you will. The right wing commentators blasting at me from nearly every station on the AM dial don't seem the epitome of tolerance, and they like Scalia not because he is defending freedom, but because he offers them hope that they might take freedoms away. I might feel a lot better if I need only convince them to change their policies, but the sort of open dialog among critically minded people that would be required simply does not exist.