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ACLU Uses Data Mining to Profile Donors/Members
slutdot writes "This NYT story tells of the ACLU's use of data mining in order to collect a wide variety of information about its members and donors in a fund-raising effort. The ACLU's own website has a page dedicated to privacy and technology."
So Neo Nazis are a leftist group? The KKK? The people who claim that the ACLU are left-wingers are idiots. The ACLU fights to protect the first amendment. This is an ammendment that applies to ALL americans, not just those of one political stripe or another. If you have any unpopular opinion (and you want to voice them), then you should support them in their work, even if you aren't willing to do so financially.
True, the ACLU doesn't fight for the Second ammendment. The NRA does a good job of that. And since I don't see the NRA fighting to support the first ammendment (at least in a broad way), it seems to me that both organizations can happily coexist. Sure, they disagree on many issues, but taken together, they strive to protect your civil liberties. It's worth noting that most households in Hussein era Iraq owned guns. Clearly gun ownership without freedom of speech isn't the panacea that the right wing wants you to think it is.
Moreover, it is hard to imagine any serious resistance to the military without such arms.
This is a common way to pooh pooh the second amendment, but it doesn't hold water if you think about it.
It's certainly true that in a stand-up fight, rebels with deer rifles wouldn't have a prayer against a modern military force, but there are two fallacious assumptions here. First, that rebels would choose (or be forced to accept) a stand-up fight and second, that they would be facing a modern military force.
As to the first, guerrillas have proven time and time again that they can give any military force a very hard time. Granted, they usually obtain better arms than deer rifles, but the rifles provide an adequate starting point, allowing them to become a force that someone will arm or that is capable of stealing better arms from the military forces they face.
As to the second, if armed rebellion were to become needed in the US, it's likely that much of the standing military would sympathize with the rebels. They might just refuse to fight, or they might even join the rebels (perhaps taking some of their military weaponry with them). But I can't really see that happening until the stakes are raised by open violence, of the sort that requires some weaponry better than baseball bats and kitchen knives.
A high-powered rifle with a good scope in the hands of a dedicated and skilled sniper is a very effective guerrilla weapon and an extremely effective assassination tool. Don't discount what can be done by dangerous people with relatively low-tech weapons.
Now, opinions can, and will, differ over whether or not the benefits of an armed citizenry enabled by the second amendment are worth the cost of wide availability of deadly weapons. It's clear that if the government has escaped the control of the people, then an armed populace who is able and willing to overthrow that government and install one that does serve the people is a good thing. On the other hand, the misuse of deadly weapons by irresponsible, or just plain crazy, people is clearly a problem.
Weighing the balance, I'm in favor of guns (and own several). I can see how others can disagree, but the argument that an armed populace is unable to overthrow a bad government does not carry any weight whatsoever.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.