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."

Comments

The organization has an obvious slant

[Henry V .009]

The ACLU believes that the first amendment protects the rights of child pornographers but that the second amendment has nothing to do with the right to bear arms.

Re:The organization has an obvious slant

[mcSey921]

And the Oscars are political? No shit?
Robin Williams

Of course the organization has an obvious slant, its stated goals are to protect what it views as the civil liberties of all Americans. When you're defending what you view as freedom you tend to get a little loony... see RMS for another example.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way they certainly did forget about the second amendment. I read an article by an ACLU member pointing out that a great number of members disagree with the organization on the second amendment. He also pointed out that, while the groups stated position is that "the right to bear arms" is a "group right" (you know to let people keep a well regulated militia), the ACLU is not nearly as active in second amendment law as it is in other areas.

I joined the organization a few years back at the same time I joined the NRA. I figure I'll pay the ACLU to take loony positions on amendments 1 and 3-10, and I'll pay the NRA to take loony positions on number 2. Those loony positions will be shot down in courts and legislatures, but perhaps we will still have some rights a few years down the road.

When the government wants to go right, pull hard from the left. When the government wants to go left (yeah that's gonna happen), pull hard from the right.

Re:The organization has an obvious slant

[Chasuk]

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.

They're rather

[tm2b]

OK, keep in mind while reading the following that I'm a member of the ACLU. I'm going to touch on some of their less popular positions, though.

The ACLU tends to be fanatical on matters of speech, even when most people would not necessarily be on their side. The case that Bill O'Reiley likes to rail against is where they have helped defend the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA)... they really do believe that everybody has the right to say anything, no matter what it is and what might be done with that information.

They have also been famous in defending (and winning) the right of groups like the Ku Klux Klan and fascist Nazi-praising groups to march. Again, for them it's a bright line: no matter how vile the speech, the speaker has the right to say it.

They have also been very active in challenging the Bush Administration's position that they are able to keep suspected terrorists incommunicado for as long as they like.

I wouldn't necessarily want to live in a world where the ACLU positions always ended up prevailaing. I do, however, believe that they are a very necessary counterbalance to those interests that would drag us back to the bad old days of McCarthyism (I would ask Ann Coulter, "Have you no shame, Madame?") and other reactionary movements.

On September 11th, I sent money to two groups: the Red Cross and the ACLU.

Re:ACLU Wacked out

[PeteyG]

I think the logic behind their NAMBLA argument isn't that pedophiles are okay... it's that writing about a crime is separate from actually comitting the crime. Like, they're getting legal shit beacuse they're writing HOWTOs on how to nail young boys.

Is it illegal to write HOWTOs on how to rob a bank, or crack DeCSS? No. But actually doing the deed is. The only thing that makes NAMBLA different is that they're pedophiles.

I mean, everyone hates pedophiles... but they haven't actually done anything besides write stuff.

Bullshit

[missing000]

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.

Re:Bullshit

[benjamindees]

It's become obvious to anyone who has studied the issue that those who deny and disparage the right to keep and bear arms do so under either extreme ignorance or outright dishonesty. I don't know which category you fall under, but you obviously haven't studied the issue.

nuclear weapons are not 'arms':

In Colonial times "arms" usually meant weapons that could be carried. This included knives, swords, rifles and pistols. Dictionaries of the time had a separate definition for "ordinance" (as it was spelled then) meaning cannon. Any hand held, non-ordnance type weapons, are theoretically constitutionally protected. Obviously nuclear weapons, tanks, rockets, fighter planes, and submarines are not.

It is an individual right:

The proposal finally passed the House in its present form: "A well regulated militia, being necessary for the preservation of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." In this form it was submitted into the Senate, which passed it the following day. The Senate in the process indicated its intent that the right be an individual one, for private purposes, by rejecting an amendment which would have limited the keeping and bearing of arms to bearing "For the common defense".

ACLU Acts on Principles, Not Popular Perception

[4of12]

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.

Re:ACLU Acts on Principles, Not Popular Perception

[PeteyG]

hy am I not allowed to pray in schools, whether it be to God, Eloheim, or to Allah? Why am I forced to pay tribute to the pagan gods of Mother Earth, Environmentalism, or Atheism?

Actually, the ACLU has taken cases where school districts have prevented students from praying publicly. Rightly so, too, since the government has no place telling you when and how to pray.

My thoughts on them

[Experiment 626]

The ACLU are pretty aggressive organization about pursuing various causes, but they have a very obvious idealogical axe to grind that prevents me from personally supporting them. If you happen to like civil liberties with a severe leftward slant (and many Slashbots do) then by all means go for it.

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.

The ACLU is about mechanism, not policy.

[mellon]

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.

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. :'} 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.

So send them less money!

[oolon]

If you like some of their work but not all of it just send them a cheque for less than you would otherwise have. Say you like 50% of the work and you think a good donation is 100 bucks, so send them 50 bucks. Someone else will not like the 50% you support and can do likewise. If their views slip with time, year on year adjust the percentage. Include a covering letter of why your doing it, up or down, people listen most when their is money in the envelope. Some organisations have ways your can earmark for causes, if they do use it, and support people who give you the option, that way more will offer it in future. For example savefarscape.com has 2 different funds, one for risky stuff one for day to day stuff....

James

Why I think the ACLU is a good thing.

[Klaruz]

It all has to do with balance. We all know no citizen's liberty is safe while congress is in session. (Franklin I think) When it comes down to it, the main job of congress is to take away liberty by passing laws. Sometimes they get too caried away and somebody needs to be there to defend liberty. There are somethings I don't agree with (I won't enumerate those things here), but when it comes down to it, I support the majority of what they support. Otherwise, who's to stop congress from going overboard and taking it all away piece by piece?

What I'd like to know is why every American doesn't support the ACLU. The general feeling by many people is that they're bad. I can't think of a good reason why you would hate an orginization who's sole purpose is to defend freedom from those who would take it away from us. I once had an NCO (while I was in the military) bash me for supporting the ACLU. I reminded him that he said "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Of course the conversation went crazy from there (we were on a boring detail), but still... It's interesting to watch 'right wing' people bash the ACLU while calling the people who support them 'traitors' and whatnot. To me, not supporting the ACLU is treason against what our country stands for.

What's With the ACLU

[fm6]

People have a hard time understanding the ACLU, because they keep trying to put it into some kind of political pigeon hole. It just doesn't work. The ACLU isn't a political movement. It's a bunch of lawyers who litigate in defense of their interpretation of the Bill of Rights.

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!

Yes they do.

[MarkusQ]

I think you're missing a key distinction in their position: they supported both sides's right to voice their opinion; but they opposed ones side's use of extortion to try to silence the other. Specifically, when the leaders of one side "directed activists involved in that group...to use threats and acts of intimidation and extortion in their efforts to shut down" the other group, the ACLU said that this crossed the line from speach to action and thus was not protected.

Basically, someone is allowed to think my nose is too big, and even to say publically that they think it's too big, but they aren't allowed to wave a knife in my face to make their point.

-- MarkusQ

why i joined

[jfruhlinger]

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

Founding Fathers were Deists, not Christians

[tm2b]

The Founding Fathers were openly religious. The practice of praying to God, and not just any God, the Christian God embraced by the Christian religions, in government has continued even today

Uh... no.

The "Founding Fathers," were generally Deists, not Christians. Deist beliefs are incompatible with Christianity. Deism, and the entire philosophy of Natural Rights, is an outgrowth of the Age of Reason that embraced a Creator that did not reveal itself by revelation but through its creation itself.

Let's look at what some of the best-known "founding fathers" said about Christianity, society, and Law:

• Thomas Jefferson : Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
• Ben Franklin: "I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."
• Thomas Paine : The fable of Christ and his twelve apostles, which is a parody on the sun and the twelve signs of the zodiac, copied from the ancient religions of the eastern world, is the least hurtful part."
• James Madison: "Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
• John Adams: As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

Here are some other links on the whole "Founding Fathers were Christian" bogon:

• http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/founding-fathers-xtia nity.html
• http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/extra/foundin g-fathers.html
• http://www.barefootsworld.net/founding.html