Happy New Year, Glenn Greenwald. Thank you for firing back at “progressives” who rightly attack Ron Paul for some of his views but ignore the fact that Paul, not Barack Obama, “advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial.”

One of Greenwald’s points is that progressives who vote for Obama should at least admit their complicity in Obama’s betrayal of these crucial views, which wouldn’t even be addressed if Paul wasn’t a candidate:

…There are very few political priorities, if there are any, more imperative than having an actual debate on issues of America’s imperialism; the suffocating secrecy of its government; the destruction of civil liberties which uniquely targets Muslims, including American Muslims; the corrupt role of the Fed; corporate control of government institutions by the nation’s oligarchs; its destructive blind support for Israel, and its failed and sadistic Drug War. More than anything, it’s crucial that choice be given to the electorate by subverting the two parties’ full-scale embrace of these hideous programs…

Read the whole article. Greenwald isn’t saying vote for Paul. (Neither am I.) He’s expressing his well-reasoned disgust with Dems in denial about the fact that their party has largely disowned the principles that made it distinguishable from the GOP. Isn’t it high time the rest of us expressed our disgust by exploring alternatives to the dead-end two-party system?

Footnote: On Saturday Obama signed the NDAA, allowing for indefinite detention of people who are deemed enemies of the state. True to form, he all but apologized for signing the bill into law, but he signed it. Ron Paul opposed the NDAA.