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Joining the ACLU?
X86Daddy writes "I'm currently a member of the EFF. I agree with everything they do. I'd like to further help protect liberty and freedom, and the ACLU advertises that they exist for that purpose. The ACLU is an organization well known for controversy. I've heard many opinions for and against it, and even a few citations of evidence. I've read their positions on their website, and although I strongly disagree with some of what they believe, I support the majority of their positions. I've also read some of their court filings, in search of more evidence of what they really do. I'm still undecided. I've even sent them an unanswered e-mail about the percentages of money spent on their main positions. So, I ask the Slashdot audience, what information do you have about the ACLU? I'm interested in facts about how they spend their efforts with regards to all of their efforts, electronic-related or not."
The ACLU says that the second amendment does not apply to individuals, but to state militia.
You could read it before you infer that it says something it does not say.
They're really an admirable organization in being dedicated to principles of civil liberties.
This often takes them into positions that are strictly correct in terms of principle, but extremely unpopular in terms of practice.
They will defend the rights of Nazis and pornographers to free speech, for example.
And they will sue to exclude any possible mention of God, Ten Commandments in official government documents.
And the right to refrain from saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
All of this makes great fodder on talk shows, where people can emotionally vent about how ridiculous this is.
Some people like that emotional venting more than they like the fundamental principles of liberty. That's fine for them.
Personally, I take those liberties very seriously. They are special conditions of being an American that make our country unlike most others.
As soon as you concede that any of those rights can be abridged for any reason under any circumstance, then you open up a potential Pandora's box.
If someone can decide Nazis and pornographers belong to a special class of people for whom civil liberties do not apply, then you have to admit that someone will have the power to put you into a similar classification some day and to silence your opinion. Your opinion could be "hate-speak" or "obscene" by John Ashcroft and you could be jailed.
If you say that mixing religion with government is OK, then you admit that it would be just fine if ever a hypothetical Muslim majority in the United States should decree that the Koran and sharia law would be posted in all schools and to which everyone must memorize and adhere, rigth after one of the 5 prayer sessions during the day.
[One very good reason our founding fathers tried to separate church and state was based on centuries of bloody evidence in Europe. Recall that Catholics and Protestants killed each other viciously for a long time. Many nations today Muslim fundamentalist are going down the same road today with wars between Shia, Sunni, Muslim and Hindu or Christian. How many centuries it will take for those conflicts to prove the point our foudning fathers recognized in the late 18th century I don't know.]
It's not popular or always expedient to be principled, but it's more enduring.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Some examples of my problems with them...
On the First Amendment, they will argue the "separation" part of freedom of religion till they are blue in the face, but completely ignore the "free exercise" part. I think the framers of the Constitution did a brilliant job of balancing these two concepts and to wildly expand on one by gutting the other detracts from what makes this amendment so great.
For a so-called civil liberties organization to actively pursue the anti-civil liberties side of the debate over the Second Amendment seriously undermines their credibility.
In too many stories I read in the news, they just seem to "get it wrong". For instance in the current debate over the California Recall, the ACLU wants a postponement until electronic voting machines are ready in all districts. Given that electronic voting really doesn't enhance the democratic process or voting security, this strikes me as an overly partisan move to buy embattled Mr. Davis more time. I would prefer an organization that raises issues for their own merit, not as some sort of political tactic.
In short, I would much rather there be a non-tech counterpart to the EFF... someone who doesn't just champion liberal civil liberties causes, or conservative civil liberties causes, or what have you, but consistently argues for freedom and liberty itself. While individual members no doublt have partisan leanings, keeping a pure message of "we support civil liberties, period" would better serve an organization than confounding the message with unrelated or contradictory positions for political sake.
They support the right to say anything, not bully people who disagree with them in front of private businesses.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
The government frequently passes laws to stop the bad guys from doing things, but these laws frequently can be used against regular joes as well. So when the ACLU sees a prosecution that's been done in a way that would work on a regular joe as well as a bad guy, it often goes to bat for the bad guy. The point isn't to defend what the bad guy is doing. It's to make the government use a method of stopping the bad guy that is discrimatory - that only works on bad guys, and not on regular joes.
:'} Point is, they're good folks. Their methods are a bit difficult to fathom if all you read about them is what CNN says, but there's truly a method to their madness, and they do good work.
Consider RICO. Its intent was to stop organized crime. Apparently it works pretty well at that. Unfortunately, it also works for corrupt police departments who just want to acquire stuff or fluff their budget. They go after someone who has something that they want, and looks dirty, but that they don't really know is dirty. They use a court order to confiscate things under the RICO statute. The person whose stuff has been confiscated has to sue to get it back, has to prove that they are not guilty. The cops don't have to prove anything.
Consider the Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act. CDA sounds like a great idea - protect kids from online porn. Unfortunately, it doesn't work - there's plenty of online porn that kids can access. Worse, it actually protects kids from information that they might need - if you're 15, and wondering if having sex with your boyfriend can get you pregnant the first time, now you can't get information about it. If you want to know what the risks are from AIDS and how to fight them, that information is not available to you. COPA has actually succeeded in bowdlerizing the internet as seen from public libraries (google "Thomas Bowdler" to find out where that word came from). Although this was supposedly intended to protect children, the result is that it's also "protecting" adults who access the Internet from public libraries.
So I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Hm, actually, I think I let it lapse. Hm.
There was a case back in 88 that demonstrates the role of the ACLU in all its irony. If you remember that year, you probably remember Bush the First packing as many Hot Button Keywords into his presidential campaign speeches as possible. One really nasty example is that he repeatedly referred to his opponent as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU", terminology obviously meant to evoke left wing associations.
Now somewhere in the midwest (I think it was Ohio) a woman tried to put "Elect Bush" signs on her front lawn, only to be told she was violating local zoning ordinances. She placed a call to the local ACLU chapter -- and got a callback from the state chairman, who informed her that she had raised a vital free speech issue, and the state ACLU would back her and her Bush signs with everything it had!
Of course, that's not the biggest irony connected with the ACLU -- it doesn't come close to all those Nazi and White Supremicist bozos who turn to the ACLU for legal representation, which often comes in the form of Jewish or African-American lawyers! But it's all part of the same idea: that for the Constitution to work, its protections have to be extended to everybody: pedophiles, Nazis, and even people who attack the ACLU itself.
Which makes association with the ACLU pretty difficult: you have to accept that your dues are going to go to protect the legal rights of a lot of people you happen to despise.
I actually have no problem with this: I'm a Jewish American who happens to think that everybody should read The Turner Diaries. The more appalling an idea is, the more you need to bring it out in the open. Anyway, freedom of thought (including stupid thought) is the most fundamental of rights.
I do have a major issue with the ACLU. Not their rabid defense of the rights of despised minorities, but rather their assumption that litigation is the only way to do it. Lawyers do play an important role in protecting the rights of their clients. But the courts aren't always the best protector of personal liberties. As Dred Scott learned, they often give a high priority to maintaining the status quo. And even when they don't, having a social change mandated by a federal judge is no guarantee of the change actually happening. Any African American trying to find a place to live will tell you that!
I won't tell you not to send money to the ACLU, or where to send your money instead, but it sounds like you have pretty mixed feelings about it. Why not find an organization that you really feel strongly about? There are so many people out there trying to help other people in different ways, you could not possibly support all the good causes. So find one that you passionately support.
Maybe partying will help...
Certain parts of the Constitution, yes. The First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment...
However, they are great about perverting the meanings of other parts, like the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I was listening to a radio report on the longstanding tradition in Texas of a prayer being read over the loudspeaker before a public high school football game. I was really trying hard to maintain some objectivity. There was a girl being interviewed who often read the prayer before the game, who was speaking very passionately about this being her religion, and that ACLU-spearheaded attempts to stop the prayer were interfering with her free exercize of it. Then the interviewer asked her: What if there was a Mormon or Buddhist student in her high school who wanted to read a prayer before a game?
"Oh, I wouldn't like that," she said. "I mean, we pray to God. I wouldn't want a prayer to a false god."
That's when I signed up for the ACLU. The thing that most pissed me off was the unthinkingness of it. I grew up in Buffalo, NY, which is overwhelmingly Catholic. If there were prayers in the public schools there, they would probably be Our Fathers and Hail Marys and calls for intercessions with saints -- all things that a good Southern Baptist like the girl being interviewed would find to be horrifying popery. The reason that governments (including school districts and their appointed representatives) shouldn't lead prayers is that by selecting certain prayers, they are declaring some gods to be false, just like our interviewee. And that is completely against the "no established religion" clause.
jf
I like the work that the ACLU does. I can even appreciate their stance on some issues where I disagree with them. After Sept. 11, I knew that Bad Shit (tm) would soon be coming from Washington, and they looked like the group that was most likely to do something.
I gave them $50 or so. In return, I started receiving weekly "Oh no! Those wacky republicans are at it again! Give us more money!" letters.
The info wouldn't have been bad: it's good to be informed. What bothered me was the hysterical "Be afraid!" tone, the constant pleading for money (with that sleazy "but wait, there's more!" tone that comes with offers for time-shares), and the regular deulge of thick envelopes (with a pre-paid business reply envelope in each). I suspect that the entirety of my donation was spent on the weekly pleas for more money. I felt like I was supporting the post office and the envelope industry, not civil liberties.
Now, I drop more money to the EFF, and I make a point of writing my congressmen when I think I can argue the issue intelligently. It's not the broad-based defense of liberty that I'd prefer, but it's less annoying that donating to the ACLU.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
What other group has that kind of history of being on the right side of an issue when it was very unpopular?
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> after birth it is living on its own. (Of course
> , in practice, the mom usually takes care of
> the baby after birth, too!)
His point exactly. A 2 day old baby won't survive if left on its own either, but that doesn't mean we should kill it.
> we need to make that distinction
> somewhere [...] Pre-conception is hopeless
Of course.
> we understand that moment well biologically
> and know it to be really just cells dividing
Hm. Doesn't "just cells dividing" apply to every other moment of life as well?
> post-conception the division sometimes
> results in twins
Why does this present a problem for the "life as conception" argument? Just because we don't know exactly how many babies are there doesn't mean we should kill them.
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My beef with the ACLU centers around the Second Amendment. Not because I'm a gun-toting psychopath, but because our civil liberties are protected only to the degree that all of them are protected--including the ones we might disagree with. Regardless of whether you're pro-gun or anti-gun, the Second Amendment is still part of the Bill of Rights and is thus a civil right under American law.
The only problem is, the ACLU doesn't see it that way. Ask the ACLU why they have not once, not ever, taken a pro-Second Amendment case and you'll get the same answer every time: "because we believe the Second Amendment is a guarantee of the state's right to equip a militia, not the individual's right to possess firearms."
It would be an admirable sentiment, were it not for one fact... not one reputable legal scholar in America takes that position. Alan Dershowitz, a very far-left liberal Democrat lawyer and legal professor, has given the best analysis of why no reputable law professor has embraced this position.
According to Dershowitz, the Second Amendment reads "the right of the people..." The very instant you say "the right of the people" actually means "the right of the state", then you've thrown the entire Bill of Rights out the window. If "the right of the people" actually means "the right of the state", then what does that mean for any of the rights we cherish? Suddenly, we no longer have any individual rights; they're all held collectively by the state, which becomes our guardian, able to exercise our liberties in our name while not permitting us those liberties for our own use.
It's really a very 1984 example of doublespeak.
There is not one Supreme Court case which supports the collectivist interpretation of the Bill of Rights, either as a whole or for one specific amendment. In the most recent Supreme Court Second Amendment case, Miller v US, the Supreme Court explicitly recognized the Second Amendment as an individual--not a collective--right.
For the ACLU to claim that the Second Amendment is correctly read as a collective right is... I can't figure it out.
What I suspect is this: the ACLU has a lot of support from a lot of people who, while adamantly in favor of free speech and privacy and all manner of other things, are also staunchly in favor of the notion that nobody should have guns except the cops. And as a result of this, the ACLU has decided to cut the Second Amendment loose to fend for itself, on the theory that "it's better to lose one-tenth of the Bill of Rights than it is to piss off 95% of our contributors, and thus kill any good we can do for the nine-tenths that still remains."
The ACLU didn't forget about the second amendment. They just disagree with the populist interpretation of it.
To quote them:
"If indeed the Second Amendment provides an absolute, constitutional protection for the right to bear arms in order to preserve the power of the people to resist government tyranny, then it must allow individuals to possess bazookas, torpedoes, SCUD missiles and even nuclear warheads, for they, like handguns, rifles and M-16s, are arms. Moreover, it is hard to imagine any serious resistance to the military without such arms. Yet few, if any, would argue that the Second Amendment gives individuals the unlimited right to own any weapons they please. But as soon as we allow governmental regulation of any weapons, we have broken the dam of Constitutional protection. Once that dam is broken, we are not talking about whether the government can constitutionally restrict arms, but rather what constitutes a reasonable restriction."
For what it's worth, I happen to agree with them.
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It's been federal judicial dogma for a long time.
Technically correct, but not as right as you think you are. There's no doubt that it is centrally applicable to militias, but just because it's centrally applicable to militias does not mean that it's a collectively-held right. In all the reading on Second Amendment law that I've done, both pro- and con-, I have yet to find any respectable journal which has given the slightest shred of credibility to the collectivist interpretation.
Looking at Supreme Court jurisprudence in US v Miller, (1939, the most recent Second Amendment case) it's clear the Supreme Court considers the Second Amendment to be an individually-held right. Miller was convicted of possessing a sawn-off shotgun, not on the legal theory that the state has the exclusive right to control the possession of arms, but on the basis that a sawn-off shotgun possessed no military value the court could see. The Miller decision strongly indicates that if Miller had been carrying a Thompson submachinegun (a weapon with clear military value), he would've been acquitted on appeal.
For that matter, it's possible he would've won his case outright if he'd bothered to present a defense. The Miller appeal was done in absentia and ex parte, due to Miller not showing up for the appeal.
Anyway. The upshot of this is that neither the Supreme Court nor legal professors put a single shred of credit in the collectivist interpretation of the Second Amendment. The ACLU is ethically lacking in that it would rather hide behind a discredited interpretation of the Second Amendment rather than own up to the fact the Bill of Rights has things in it which are offensive to a large portion of the ACLU's supporters.
"If indeed the First Amendment provides an absolute, constitutional protection for the right to free speech, then it must allow individuals to possess child pornography and to shout 'fire' in a crowded theater, for they, like letters to the Editor, are speech. Yet few, if any, would argue that the First Amendment gives individuals the unlimited right to any speech they please. But as soon as we allow government regulation of any speech, we have broken the dam of Constitutional protection. Once that dam is broken, we are not talking about whether the government can constitutionally restrict speech, but rather what constitutes a reasonable restriction."
For that matter, of course, we can apply something similar to many of the other amendments; the Fourth Amendment even mentions the last concept itself, protecting only from "unreasonable" search and seizure... The ACLU applies a logical tool of "reducit ad absurdum" to the obvious interpretation of the Second Amendment, to make it seem unreasonable, without applying the same rigour to their own position on the First. I don't believe the Second guarantees the right to nuclear weapons - nor do I believe the First guarantees a right to child pornography or sending death threats. If they want to ignore the Second entirely, they can, but they should not attack it like that when their own position falls to the same logic: people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...