Someone at The Economist, who didn't go to The Rally To Restore Sanity, uses it as a way to muse about how sucky the left (as he imagines it) is. And along the way, wonders:

It sometimes does seem as though the American left has more or less ceded the language of liberty to the right. My own slow evolution from a hardcore libertarian to a libertarian-leaning liberal is due in part to the kind of liberty-focused arguments Mr Beinart wishes were more often heard from the mouths of Democrats. The arguments are out there, but they are much likely to be encountered in the seminar room than on TV. Why is that?

I'll tell you why.

It's because the right treats "liberty" the way it treats "America" and "the troops" and "family values": as a religious incantation, a way to sound like the hallowed and perfect Founding Fathers, a partisan cudgel, and an all-purpose placeholder for whatever it is they're whining about that day. "Liberty" might mean "property, money, and guns", "the right to exclude based on race", "freedom from upholding the common good", "the right to be free of a democratically elected government", "conservative": basically the opposite of whatever thing they don't like that day. Or it's simply a shibboleth - a way for people to identify themselves as "conservative" (another word that has lost its meaning, in exactly the same way).

And "the left" ceded the "language of liberty" in exactly the same way they ceded the language of religion and patriotism: in slack-jawed amazement at the shameless and ignorant appropriation of the concept for partisan purposes. And "ceded" ? Who knew the words were even being contested? Shouldn't some things be a-political? Yet, the right has taken these words, and plenty of others, and turned them into tools of villainization and demagoguery, and perhaps worse: mindless slogans. These days, it's nearly impossible to use the word "liberty" in a political context without sounding like a fist shaking, Constitution-thumping, conservative demanding the end of the Socialist Tyranny of the Obamanation and his Kenyan Czars ! Take back our country! Restore our liberty! Down with the Muslim Obambi! Rule Of Law! Up Or Down Vote! Will Of The People! All his new taxation [of which there hasn't been any] is impinging upon my liberty! The terrorists [another word that's been worn smooth] hate us for our freedom [and another] !

And the left didn't have anything to do with this. The right went off screaming and sloganizing and when they were done, all these words were dead.

It's not that "the left' doesn't value liberty or "the troops" or religion or family or any of the other things the right thinks it owns, it's that the right has abused the words, worn them out, left them reeking of right-wing jingoism, ignorance and sloganeering. Leaving the rest of us, I suppose, with irony, humor and cries for the return of "sanity".