I think the one thing that really needles liberals about Ben is that he is conservative, but one more educated in civil discourse. In other words, he has an agenda to defend the administration and reduce the threat of terrorism, not necessarily with maximal concern for individual rights, but he does recognize a need to accommodate the views of others who reasonably do value individual rights foremost and distrust the executive. Nonetheless, the tone makes all the difference.
Ben is, without doubt, a superb rhetoric-breaker. He masterfully calls out hypocrisy and shrillness, partisanship and chumminess. Yet he addresses his rhetoric-breaking to the scholarly crowd. And, at the end of the day, the scholars just blink and say, "Yes, we agree. We're not the ones spewing the rhetoric." Sure, they may use the slogans, but that's not actually what they think. And the only concrete reason (all aesthetics aside) to break rhetoric is to halt belief in it.
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