http://www.theacru.org/VadumACLU.pdfWHAT DOES
THE ‘A ’ REALLY
STAND FOR?
ACLU Exposed The ACLU has been pushing a radical liberal agenda for years, and
despite the rare occasion that they get something right, they of!en
take up anti-American causes.
by Matthew Vadum
Which major liberal advocacy group
zealously guards workers’ rights
but won’t lift a finger to help when
workers suffer government-sanctioned
discrimination as a result of affi rmative
action programs?
And which group protects the right
of Muslim women to wear religious
headscarves—even in jail—but erupts in
apoplectic rage when nativity scenes and
menorahs pop up on public property?
It’s the American Civil Liberties
Union, which has a rich and storied
tradition—of not making any sense.
Even before President George H.W.
Bush helped secure his 1988 election
victory by noting in a televised debate
that Democrat Mike Dukakis was a
“card-carrying member of the ACLU,”
conservatives have long been suspicious
of the Communist-founded ACLU—and
for good reason.
Founded by radicals during the
Progressive Era who simultaneously
professed admiration for American ideals
and for the totalitarian Soviet Union,
the morally preening group, which risks
the wrath of conservatives every year
by manning an exhibit hall booth at the
Conservative Political Action Conference
(CPAC) in the nation’s capital, is a
tangled mess of contradictions. This
fair-weather friend of liberty claims
to protect the U.S. Constitution and
individual rights, but often adopts statist,
Big Government positions on issues that
would alarm the nation’s founders. As a
self-described progressive “social justice”
organization, it believes in “welfare
rights,” which are figments of the
liberal imagination unmentioned in the
Constitution. It seldom defends private
property rights or economic freedoms
but creatively squeezes non-existent
rights and liberties out of supposed
emanations and penumbras in the
Constitution.
In legal terms, the ACLU is a
501(c)(4) legislative lobbying group. Its
litigation and outreach arm, the ACLU
Foundation, is a legally separate
501(c)(3) organization. The ACLU
claims to have more than 500,000
members and supporters, almost
200 staff attorneys and thousands of
volunteer attorneys, and staffed offi ces
in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the
District of Columbia.
The ACLU constantly applauds
the growing power of the judiciary at
the expense of elected lawmakers. It
does not object to government control
of education and is hostile to school
voucher programs. It invents new
so-called rights on a regular basis and
argues that the Constitution is a living,
breathing document whose meaning
changes with the seasons. It regards
itself as an avant-garde crusader for
unlimited abortion rights, polygamy
and same-sex marriage and brags
that it compelled the state of Alaska
to give equal employment benefi ts to
homosexual employees.
Regarding just about anything having
to do with sex, the ACLU refuses to
pass moral judgment. Columnist Deroy
Murdock notes that
the ACLU has
supported the extremely controversial
North American Man/Boy Love
Association (NAMBLA) which “openly
preach[es] pedophilia and arguably
encourage kidnapping, rape and
murder,” while being “energetically
hostile” to the Boy Scouts of America.The ACLU supported NAMBLA,
which an Ohio court previously found
complicit in a separate case of child rape
for producing a how-to manual, when
it was sued in federal court. Parents of
Jeffrey Curley, a 10-year-old boy raped
and murdered by a former NAMBLA
member in 1997, filed a wrongful death
suit against the group but dropped it
last year after a key witness was ruled
unfi t to testify. “There was never any
evidence that NAMBLA was connected
to the death of Jeffrey Curley,’’ ACLU
lawyer Sarah R. Wunsch told the Boston
Globe. “It’s been our view that for the
last eight years, it’s been the First
Amendment that’s been the defendant
in this case. In America, there’s freedom
to publish unpopular ideas, and that’s
what this case was about.”
Yet, Murdock writes, the ACLU
looked down upon the Boy Scouts,
“an organization that tries to turn
boys into men, with sex alien to the
process.” The ACLU could not abide
the fact that San Diego allowed the
group to lease and manage parkland,
because it considers the Boy Scouts to
be a religious organization and hostile
toward homosexuals. Although the
Scout Oath requires the scout to promise
to do his “duty to God,” and Scout Law
requires him to be “reverent,” the Boy
Scouts had not barred other groups from
using the park and had even allowed the
San Diego Gay Pride Festival to be held
there. The ACLU won in court, and the
Boy Scouts were forced to leave the park.
Conservatives are often galled,
and rightly so, by the ACLU’s moral
pretensions and lofty rhetoric. In its
2007 annual report, the group uses the
same kind of soaring, inappropriately
internationalist language one might
expect to hear from President Obama
or George Soros: “The battle to keep
America safe and free is, at its heart,
a battle to bring America back to
the vision and ideals embraced by
our Founders and enshrined in our
Constitution: separation of powers,
democratic actions and the honor of
fundamental rights. These are the things
that make us free, that show the world
that we are honorable and decent, that
bring the support of our allies and the
respect of those who might be tempted to
oppose us” [emphasis added].
The ACLU, a reliable booster of
international law, doesn’t seem to
understand that the Constitution
was not created primarily to impress
foreigners, allies, potential adversaries
and residents of Manhattan’s
ideologically homogeneous Upper
West Side. It was created to provide a
framework for the nation to be governed,
with specified limits on the exercise of
government power.
SCHIZOPHRENIC AGENDA
The group’s inconsistencies are the stuff
of legend.
For example, the ACLU claims a
special affection for the Bill of Rights,
but strangely has long rejected the
“individual rights” interpretation of the
Second Amendment. The group would
make the amendment effectively a dead
letter because it believes it protects a
so-called collective right to keep and
bear arms only in connection with a
state militia. After the Supreme Court
slapped down this implausible view last
year in the Heller case, the ACLU stuck
to its guns, saying it disagreed with
the court. The group added, somewhat
disingenuously, that it takes no position
on the issue of gun control. “In our view,
neither the possession of guns nor the
regulation of guns raises a civil liberties
issue,” the ACLU stated on its website.
Although conservatives have strongly
criticized the ACLU for decades, and the
group historically supported the Fairness
Doctrine, it generally does defend the
free expression of ideas.
Some conservatives don’t like that it
defends pornography, but occasionally
the ACLU pleasantly surprises
conservatives. Colorado state Sen. Greg
Brophy, a Republican, had jokingly
suggested he wanted an “ACLUSUX”
vanity license plate. He was taken aback
when the ACLU offered to defend his
right to express that sentiment on a
license plate. When state offi cials seized
the medical records of talk radio host
Rush Limbaugh in a drug investigation,
the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court
motion arguing the officials had
overreached. “For many people, it may
seem odd that the ACLU has come to the
defense of Rush Limbaugh,” said Howard
Simon, executive director of the Florida
ACLU. “But we have always said that the
ACLU’s real client is the Bill of Rights,
and we will continue to safeguard the
values of equality, fairness and privacy for
everyone, regardless of race, economic
status or political point of view.”
The group has also criticized
proposed tobacco control legislation
for curtailing advertisers’ right to
free speech and has attacked various
aspects of the freedom-limiting
McCain-Feingold campaign finance
law. However, it disdains public
prayer even though the attendees at
the Constitutional Convention prayed
together.
The ACLU adores terrorists. At
one point, Bernardine Dohrn, the
unrepentant Weather Underground
leader married to fellow terrorist Bill
Ayers, sat on its advisory board.Read it all.
