Undermining American Liberties At Home and Abroad
"I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal. --ACLU founder Roger Baldwin
Peggy Lamson, "Roger Baldwin: Founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, A portrait" Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1976, p.192
Now from The American President, the finest two-hour infomercial the ACLU could have ever received...
ANDREW SHEPHERD: For the record, Yes, I am a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U. But the more important question is why aren't you, Bob? This is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights. Why would a senator, his party's most powerful spokesman and a candidate for president, choose to reject upholding the Constitution?
This is the public perception of the American Civil Liberties Union. Hmmm... I see a slight disparity between the leader's own words and the Hollywood version of the ACLU. Let's tally the ACLU's track record in doing just what their founder proposed... how have they risen to James Baldwin's challenge?
The ACLU has sued our government numerous times on behalf of foreign nationals and terrorists while they were being held in prisons on foreign soil.
They have demanded that the government release and make public top secret security information regarding not only the activities of our military, but also that of any intelligence leads in investigating and prosecuting the War on Terror. They have initiated one lawsuit after another against the government to stop the searching of individuals for security purposes in mass transit situations (AKA profiling by race, sex and religion) and to prevent the government from detaining, questioning, or interrogating individuals who have actual ties or contact with established terrorist individuals and organizations.
The ACLU wants to kill the Patriot Act because they see the rights of an individual who may or may not be an American citizen as more important than the safety of the nation at large. They want the borders open because they see that as an infringement of the rights of non-Americans to become Americans however they can manage it. They want to have military and intelligence sources, activities, and planning revealed to the public in the name of "watchdog activism", thus ensuring freedoms of individuals and/or groups are not being compromised. By doing so, they enable those very individuals and/or groups the ability to avoid surveillance and possible capture, thereby making it easier to wreak destruction on American citizens at home and abroad.
The ACLU claims they are for a safe and free America. Yet their actions speak very loudly: they scream the opposite of the motto in the above banner. How free and safe are Americans who live under constant threat of a lawsuit by the ACLU for imagined transgressions by a small group of jaded individuals who think their rights are more important than citizenship in the communities in which they live or the country with which they find so much fault?
William Donohue stated, "In other words, the occasional defense of right-wing extremist opens up the courts, thereby making it easier for the ACLU to defend its ideological kinfolk on the left." --Donohue, Twilight of Liberty, xii.
American freedom is constantly overburdened by the debt incurred by people and organizations defending against lawsuits conceived by the ACLU. These frivolous lawsuits range from giving illegal aliens the same rights and privileges as the people whose land they have illegally entered to ensuring granite from a local quarry isn't used by a church for a place of worship. Can you name me one business, one school district, one community, one county, or one state that hasn't conformed to "politically correct" standards despite public outcry for fear of a lawsuit from the ACLU? For that matter, name a city, large or small, who hasn't conformed to the ACLU mindset by renaming one of their streets after Martin Luther King? How many minority deadbeats are sucking clock, because their bosses are afraid they'll be sued if they fire them, in a lawsuit based on discrimination by the ACLU? How many minorities were hired despite inferior qualifications out of fear of a similar lawsuit?
As Baldwin noted in 1934, "If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then; if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship; it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties."
--Donohue, "Twilight of Liberty", xi, citing Roger Baldwin, "Freedom in the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R." Soviet Russia Today (September 1934): 11.
What freedoms and safeties will we lose should the ACLU accomplish their goals of placing mouth puppets and asshats in the government who don't make a move without ACLU approval first?
Are they the defenders of human liberty? No, the ACLU is pursuing a more insidious agenda?