In the US, "socialist" means "requiring taxes" and labeling something as such is the fastest and easiest way to shoot down any suggested action by the government. You should usually be screaming when you use the word, though.
If I just took people's word for things, then I would believe Al Gore, the IPCC, and everyone else involved in the most screwed up group-think of our time.
That's my point. You keep throwing around numbers as if some guy on the Internet named E++99 is an authority on what percentage of climate scientists believe what. I only know a couple of climate scientists, so I don't qualify as an expert, but the impression I get from them is that your 13% / 14% (you still haven't decided which) number is nonsense. People are asking you to back up your claim because they think you're full of crap on the subject. You seem like a smart guy, but I've seen you throw out factually incorrect assertions based on vague claims without references before, so I'm not inclined to go with you on this one unless you can actually show me a credible source for your numbers.
Science isn't what scientists say. Science is what the evidence says.
I'll certainly agree with that if you include a major caveat that most Slashdotters seem to miss: If the only exposure you have to the evidence is a cursory surfing of the 'net or what you happened to see on your preferred 24-hour news channel, your best bet is to go with what the scientists say. The chances that you'll actually understand and evaluate the evidence well enough to see things that the experts miss are near zero.
The source is the latest peer reviewed review of all the peer-reviewed climatological papers published in the last 10 years. I'm sure you're capable of finding it yourself.
Actually, you're totally 100% wrong. And I'm sure that if you search the Internet on my behalf, you'll find plenty of evidence supporting my assertion. Until then, just take my word for it.
Actually no, you are. If a scientist creates (as in invent) a new cure, and a senator only helps by creating a law that allows people to use the cure, do you believe that the senator created the cure? Or was it the scientist. Hmm....
It's not possible to debate somebody who insists on using their own private definitions for commonly used words, especially when the topic is whether a common turn of phrase that has a well understood meaning was acceptable. I'll leave you to your version of the language.
No, you're just acting like an idiot. Take a poll of normal people and you'll find that phrasing like "Congress creates bridge over XYZ river" is not uncommon or at all confusing. Deliberately misunderstanding it to score political points can be funny (at least, it can be funny once and not tens of thousands of times), but please don't mistake it for being substantive.
in what way? you mean by having more of the American people vote for him than the other guy?
Well, for one thing, as the mainstream politician with by far the strongest environmental record in the race, Gore allowed Ralph Nader to pummel him as an anti-environmentalist. He just let it happen. Bush somehow managed to grab votes in the center while at the same time marginalizing the conservative fringe candidates (e.g. Buchannan). Gore just seemed to ignore Nader when what he should have done is shouted from the rooftops that Nader is full of crap and that if you care about the environment, Gore was by far the best bet. Gore lost Florida by a few hundred votes. Nader got 97,000+ votes in Florida. How hard would it have been to court Nader's supporters and snag even 1% of them?
If one scientist says the polar ice caps are melting and the polar bears are drowning and it's caused by global warming, then another scientist says that the Antarctic ice is getting thicker. It's getting hotter in some places and colder in others. Melting ice isn't causing the ocean waters to rise; it's forming new ice elsewhere. That is why I have made up my mind that I don't believe that global warming is manmade, and that these events are the natural cycles of nature.
Ahh, the "rejecting broad scientific consensus based on armchair thought experiments and data from the TV news" gambit. Always a safe bet.
It's important to note that not all scientific results are intuitive when one takes a cursory look at data from the Internet. Sometimes things do actually require deep detailed study and deep analysis. Like most branches of science, if climate science were easy enough to do by thought experiment while sitting on your couch watching CNN, there probably wouldn't be any paid climate scientists.
I'm afraid you confuse the word "create" with the term "help succeed".
So I'm assuming that you'd be equally hard on politicians who make ridiculous claims like "I took the initiative in creating the highway between Big City and Anytown." Clearly they weren't out there shoveling gravel or engineering foundations, so they must be full of crap, yes? Damn narcissistic politicians...
I assess it similarly to you in that I would be surprised if they actually find the signal that they're looking for, but I also don't see it as totally unlikely that the sheer quantities of raw data that they'll be producing will be useless for other research. Sure, I'd rather see it used on more directed data gathering that could be broadly useful in astronomy, but as I see it, as long as it's producing raw data for somebody to chew on and as long as it's not squeezing out some scarce resource, more power to them. My only real concern would be if they were consuming some sort of truly scarce resource (e.g. if the construction of the telescopes required making a huge dent in the world's supply of platinum or some other scarce resource that's useful to a host of important processes).
Perhaps the problem is that many of the "respected climate experts" you speak of got that way due to fear-mongering and political maneuvering and all the (previously) respected climate experts who spoke out skeptically against the Holy Church of Global Warming have been "discredited" through the aforementioned fear-mongering and political maneuvering.
Yeah, nothing says "We have good science" like claiming that the entire establishment is a vast conspiracy designed to keep you down.
As far as whether money spent on SETI is "wasted", the point is not whether any good thing (like feeding the builders kids) comes out of it. The point is whether *more* good things would come out of spending that money on some other thing. That same builder could get paid, and feed his kids, building something in support of some more worthy cause. Is there a more worthy cause? Well, I think so, but it isn't my money.
I think that your last point is the key. There's almost always a more "worthy" cause for any given dollar to go to. The $1 is just pumped into a vending machine for a snack could have been contributed to cancer research (although who is to say that it won't be, now that it's out of my hands?). The fact that a lot of people seem to be forgetting that even the billions of dollars spent on a project like this, amortized over the life of the project and compared to everything else we do with our cash, is chickenfeed. I hear arguments against the billions spent on space missions and then think that nationally, we probably spent a lot more money on irritating ring tones for our cell phones over the same amount of time. Sure, I think that SETI is probably one of the less useful ways to spend telescope money, but I don't think it's without value, and compared to how we spend the rest of our money, spending it on any moderately interesting research at all is probably a step up.
The sides don't agree or they wouldn't be there. Its an adversarial system by design.
They don't agree on the truth of some technical matter. That's what an expert is for. Having two experts who are examined beforehand to have predetermined opinions negates the whole point of settling the matter by asking an authority. I understand that it's an adversarial system, but the point of the adversarial system is to arrive at a conclusion on concrete matters of fact. Having paid shills for either side flatly contradict each other doesn't really give the jury much to work with in achieving those ends.
I understand the "idea behind it", but I'm talking about the reality. If defense attorney's were allowed to argue for it instead of having to argue the facts of the case, they'd just spend a lot of time trying to show how this particular law applied to this particular defendant is "unjust". And it will be a popularity contest.
Then you're really not talking about the concept of jury nullification as such. You're talking bout juries being arbitrary and capricious. I don't think that many people here are in favor of that.
That's because you're not supposed to interpret the facts based on your own skills. You're supposed to rely on the opposing expert witnesses for that.
For me, this raises the question of why each side has its own experts. If the point of an expert is that they're an authority on objective fact and reasonable interpretations thereof, wouldn't it make more sense for both sides to agree on a single expert to be held as an authority on the topic? Why is the jury, who is not supposed to bring any prior knowledge of the issue into the case, forced to decide which expert is more credible? It reduces any expert testimony to a "he said / she said" issue, which could just as easily be done without experts at all.
I would hope that Congress's current approval rating would help ground that flawed impression.
I wouldn't put too much stock in the approval rating of Congress as a whole. Congressmen aren't elected based on how much the whole country approves of the whole of Congress. They get elected based on how much their constituents approve of them. Given that the general philosophy seems to be, "They're all a bunch of crooks, except for my crook," they're probably pretty safe.
I'm curious. Do you really want court rooms to be popularity contests? That's what jury nullification is. There's this whole noble and just argument made about it but at the end of the day, people being people, the hot chicks and celebrities will get off and the ugly and unknown won't. Do you want lawyers arguing over what a nice guy the defendant or arguing over the actual crime that took place?
Not that I'm a big proponent of jury nullification, but the idea behind it is not that the defendant is a great person but rather that the law is unjust regardless of the defendant's guilt.
But if you tell me that it's a good way to deliver the mail, then that's bullshit. If you took away their monopoly, they'd be out of business within a year.
I'd be interested in knowing why you'd say that, given that the USPS manages to compete fairly well with UPS and FedEx in areas where it doesn't have a monopoly.
The actual story is that the traditional source for engineering funding, DARPA, has been ordered to change to short term projects, as in "a widget for a soldier in 18 months."
That is not what academics do, it is what private sector contractors do.
It's even worse than that. I work for one of those private contractors, and we've been asked three times in the past three years by one of our government's fine agencies if we can produce X in 6 months. We tell them, "No, we can do it, but we'll need 12-16 months." Every time, they come back with the same proposal. Every time, they say, "We're in a hurry because we're up a creek because we didn't get this done earlier." Every time, we tell them we can do it in 12-16 months. Every time, I'm blown away by the fact that the same government that put us on the moon and has run projects from the atomic bomb to stealth bombers can't get its shit together long enough to realize that if they'd simply agreed to the delay, the project they're asking for would have been finished and deployed years ago.
These are the people who are "keeping us safe" from terrorists. God help us.
Um. I didn't mention the ACLU (or at least I don't think I did), but since you brought it up...
You didn't. The article you linked to was basically an uninformed nutbar rant against the ACLU, and I was pointing out a number of common mistakes it made.
I will agree that the ACLU is not an evil organization, but way too often, they stick their nose where it doesn't belong. Even more often, they gladly offend the majority in order to keep the minority from getting offended.
Well, I can sort of see where you're coming from, but I think that the majority needs to step back for a moment and think about something: They're offended that they're not being allowed to actively do something that offends the minority (usually with some of the minority's money). There's a difference between having the ACLU smack you around for just standing around and minding your own business and having the ACLU sue to prevent you from actively doing something with public land / money. As I said before, the ACLU comes down on the nutty extremist side of a lot of ridiculous cases (especially those involving private money), but on the balance, it's a very worthwhile organization that does a tremendous amount of good to offset its nuttiness.
Of course, there is also the idea that teaching grown men how to molest little boys is free speech.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to put that in the same category as the other hysterical nonsense from your first link. Then again, I suppose that if all you're doing is speaking, it probably is free speech. I'd have to see the actual case--preferably information that's reasonably close to the primary source as opposed to internet rumors.
Well, there is much, much more where the ACLU found out about something in some far away place and decided they had to change it. I understand that they think they are protecting the Constitution, but they are actually offending entire towns and taking away their rights to live as they see fit.
Agreed. Like most special interest groups, they engage in bizarre frivolities that aren't really of any consequence beyond annoying people. I could say that about any number of worthwhile activist organizations, though.
If someone in the town is offended by a cross to honor veterans on public land then friggin move to a town that won't do such a thing!
I don't think I'm going to follow you down that hole, though. I suppose it depends on the symbolism and the intent, but at some point there has to be a limit on how much of my tax money gets spent on other peoples' self-congratulatory promotion of their particular religion. The "like it or get out" attitude isn't one that I find particularly compatible with the idea of a democracy--especially one that prides itself on protecting its minority classes by limiting government power. I wouldn't raise a fuss over it, but I don't have strong religious convictions that would be offended by a cross. I'm not sure how people with serious religious beliefs would take it.
Hell, I'm offended by the BJ's given on the streets that were paid for by tax payer money in San Francisco in broad daylight, but I'm not going to sue over it!
Yeah, I'm going to dump that one in the BS bin as well. The link you posted is one about the Thomas More Law Center (which is basically what you'd get if you took the bitwise complement of the ACLU and populated it with lawyers who bribed the proctor in order to pass the bar) bringing a bizarre 1st Amendment suit to counter another bizarre 1st Amendment suit.
The point of the story is that Saul did not do what God commanded: to leave no trace of the Amelekites (the words used by Samuel, "Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation--men, women, children, babies, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and donkeys.", is a literary device at the point that the story is written). Saul and his men took what they wanted as bounty from the Amalekites, disregarding the instructions.
I'm not clear on this. God commanded something and Saul refused, so who was right? Was the right thing to do to slaughter the Amalekites? I can understand that the listing of cattle and sheep is arguably a figure of speech or literary device, but are you claiming that genocide wasn't really the gist of it?
...atheist socialist...
And for the second time in this thread, I'm forced to ask, What do these two words have to do with one another, and why do people insist on conflating them?
I think that you make a lot of very important points, and it's good to see somebody on Slashdot who recognizes more philosophical work than "If God doesn't exist, then there's no morality or reason to live!" I'd like to add something important to your statement that God is an axiom, though: I don't think that simply taking the existence of God as axiomatic is enough to produce a definitive moral code. I think that one also has to accept the axiom that whatever God says is moral is actually moral. It's perfectly reasonable to assume God exists and completely reject the idea that what he happens to claim is moral is actually objectively so. I haven't seen much in the way of arguments to the contrary that don't boil down to the cosmic equivalent of devotion to one's parents or simply a "might makes right" system of morality in which God has the ultimate might.
More bluntly, I find the argument that atheists lack an objective basis for morality uncompelling because the religious basis for morality often appears so thin. The idea that one can "solve" the problem of morality by introducing a set of rules by fiat doesn't strike me as a stunning philosophical achievement any more than idea that asserting a special exception to the "first cause" problem in the form of a "prime mover" actually solves the first cause problem.
If I had a time machine and could go back and fix one thing, I would go back in time and kick Huxley in the balls for coining the term "agnostic" and make him drop the whole thing. I know, I could probably make better use of it, but it's the first thing that springs to mind for the moment. The idea that atheists in general hold some sort of active and non-provisional belief that no gods exist is really out there to me. Every atheist I have known has been of the "There's no way of showing gods to exist, so I see no reason to believe in them" variety. Likewise, none of the agnostics I know of seriously give equal credence to all possible unprovable statements. The reality is that while it may make people who call themselves agnostic feel better about not being lumped in with the mean, crazy, dogmatic atheists, for most purposes it's a difference without a distinction. If you enumerate the list of all things that you believe to exist and no gods turn up, you can reasonably be called an atheist. Call it "soft atheism" or "agnosticism" if it plays better, but frankly, I don't see it as anything more than a combination of philosophical wanking and a way of marginalizing people who honestly just don't believe in gods.
The Rutherford Institute is currently involved in defending a 10 year old boy named Raymond Raines. The case is scheduled to be heard in a federal district court in St. Louis Missouri. What terrible crime did this young boy commit? Praying over his lunch!...
No offense, but I'm going to have to call shenanigans...repeatedly. First of all, the Rutherford Institute wasn't "defending" Raines as the Raines family appears to have filed the lawsuit. I also note that the only references I can find to it appear to be detail-free (and highly credulous) mentions of it in arguments that Christianity is somehow under attack in America. Oh, and this, which points out that the Superintendent claims that Raines "was disciplined for some matters that were totally independent of silent praying. We did a very thorough investigation. We talked to teachers, administrators, and also to some students, and we could not find any evidence of the allegations that the parent and the student made." I haven't gotten my hands on the original Washington Post article, but indications are that the specific claims of the plaintiff aren't exactly clear. I'm not inclined to believe that a school in the Bible Belt with a pastor on the school board has anything resembling a policy against private prayer. No, I think that we'll have to chalk this one up to the same gremlins who perpetuate the "You only use 10% of your brain" and "The World Trade Center fell faster than free-fall speed" myths.
I'm going to go a little further on this, though, because the article you linked to is a classic example of the type of content-free, outrage-laden pap that feeds the persecution complex of a group of people who essentially run the country in every measurable way. Point by point:
1) The thesis of the article is that the ACLU is a crazy left-wing organization that's out to destroy Christianity. I can find absolutely no evidence that the ACLU was involved in any of the specific cases the article mentions specifically enough to be fact-checked.
2) The Mike Ruestik incident (even more than the Raines incident) appears to be completely uncorroborated by anything other than a few anti-ACLU web sites claiming it's true. Given that the legal premise is ridiculous on its face, I'm led to conclude one of three things. Either this thing never happened, the lawyer involved has no involvement with the ACLU, or the ACLU's legal representatives are shockingly incompetent. Given the ACLU's history of legal successes and the fact that the right seems to regard it as the same type of omnipotent monster that Islamists regard the CIA as, I'm strongly leaning toward the first option with a limited chance at the second.
3) The Tanya Meyers case seems equally full of crap. Again, we have an example of the ACLU doing something evil with no actual evidence that the ACLU was involved. Even going back to the "source" (George Grant's "Trial and Error"), even Grant doesn't appear to claim that it was an ACLU action. I can't track the footnote back because I can't find any source for "The Journal of Non-Registered Churches and Charities" or even any hint that it actually exists.
4) The Layle French actually happened (and you can actually find court documents to boot!), but the lawsuit brought against them was brought by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, a government entity, not the ACLU. Why? Housing discrimination on the basis of marital status is illegal. French lost the case in summary judgment. I also hope that Mr. French isn't really facing "financial ruin" as the article claims given that he has an extra home to rent out and the judgment against him was $1048.
The rest of the article is just the typical attempt to smear the ACLU as an anarchist / communist organization by association, most of it cribbed from George Grant. I mean, "It should be evident to all that the ACLU is a formidable anti-family, anti-mor
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In the US, "socialist" means "requiring taxes" and labeling something as such is the fastest and easiest way to shoot down any suggested action by the government. You should usually be screaming when you use the word, though.
I'll certainly agree with that if you include a major caveat that most Slashdotters seem to miss: If the only exposure you have to the evidence is a cursory surfing of the 'net or what you happened to see on your preferred 24-hour news channel, your best bet is to go with what the scientists say. The chances that you'll actually understand and evaluate the evidence well enough to see things that the experts miss are near zero.
It's important to note that not all scientific results are intuitive when one takes a cursory look at data from the Internet. Sometimes things do actually require deep detailed study and deep analysis. Like most branches of science, if climate science were easy enough to do by thought experiment while sitting on your couch watching CNN, there probably wouldn't be any paid climate scientists.
I assess it similarly to you in that I would be surprised if they actually find the signal that they're looking for, but I also don't see it as totally unlikely that the sheer quantities of raw data that they'll be producing will be useless for other research. Sure, I'd rather see it used on more directed data gathering that could be broadly useful in astronomy, but as I see it, as long as it's producing raw data for somebody to chew on and as long as it's not squeezing out some scarce resource, more power to them. My only real concern would be if they were consuming some sort of truly scarce resource (e.g. if the construction of the telescopes required making a huge dent in the world's supply of platinum or some other scarce resource that's useful to a host of important processes).
These are the people who are "keeping us safe" from terrorists. God help us.
I believe that the formal definition of "activist judge" is "any judge who disagrees with me."
Well, I can sort of see where you're coming from, but I think that the majority needs to step back for a moment and think about something: They're offended that they're not being allowed to actively do something that offends the minority (usually with some of the minority's money). There's a difference between having the ACLU smack you around for just standing around and minding your own business and having the ACLU sue to prevent you from actively doing something with public land / money. As I said before, the ACLU comes down on the nutty extremist side of a lot of ridiculous cases (especially those involving private money), but on the balance, it's a very worthwhile organization that does a tremendous amount of good to offset its nuttiness.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to put that in the same category as the other hysterical nonsense from your first link. Then again, I suppose that if all you're doing is speaking, it probably is free speech. I'd have to see the actual case--preferably information that's reasonably close to the primary source as opposed to internet rumors.
Agreed. Like most special interest groups, they engage in bizarre frivolities that aren't really of any consequence beyond annoying people. I could say that about any number of worthwhile activist organizations, though.
I don't think I'm going to follow you down that hole, though. I suppose it depends on the symbolism and the intent, but at some point there has to be a limit on how much of my tax money gets spent on other peoples' self-congratulatory promotion of their particular religion. The "like it or get out" attitude isn't one that I find particularly compatible with the idea of a democracy--especially one that prides itself on protecting its minority classes by limiting government power. I wouldn't raise a fuss over it, but I don't have strong religious convictions that would be offended by a cross. I'm not sure how people with serious religious beliefs would take it.
Yeah, I'm going to dump that one in the BS bin as well. The link you posted is one about the Thomas More Law Center (which is basically what you'd get if you took the bitwise complement of the ACLU and populated it with lawyers who bribed the proctor in order to pass the bar) bringing a bizarre 1st Amendment suit to counter another bizarre 1st Amendment suit.
And for the second time in this thread, I'm forced to ask, What do these two words have to do with one another, and why do people insist on conflating them?
I think that you make a lot of very important points, and it's good to see somebody on Slashdot who recognizes more philosophical work than "If God doesn't exist, then there's no morality or reason to live!" I'd like to add something important to your statement that God is an axiom, though: I don't think that simply taking the existence of God as axiomatic is enough to produce a definitive moral code. I think that one also has to accept the axiom that whatever God says is moral is actually moral. It's perfectly reasonable to assume God exists and completely reject the idea that what he happens to claim is moral is actually objectively so. I haven't seen much in the way of arguments to the contrary that don't boil down to the cosmic equivalent of devotion to one's parents or simply a "might makes right" system of morality in which God has the ultimate might.
More bluntly, I find the argument that atheists lack an objective basis for morality uncompelling because the religious basis for morality often appears so thin. The idea that one can "solve" the problem of morality by introducing a set of rules by fiat doesn't strike me as a stunning philosophical achievement any more than idea that asserting a special exception to the "first cause" problem in the form of a "prime mover" actually solves the first cause problem.
If I had a time machine and could go back and fix one thing, I would go back in time and kick Huxley in the balls for coining the term "agnostic" and make him drop the whole thing. I know, I could probably make better use of it, but it's the first thing that springs to mind for the moment. The idea that atheists in general hold some sort of active and non-provisional belief that no gods exist is really out there to me. Every atheist I have known has been of the "There's no way of showing gods to exist, so I see no reason to believe in them" variety. Likewise, none of the agnostics I know of seriously give equal credence to all possible unprovable statements. The reality is that while it may make people who call themselves agnostic feel better about not being lumped in with the mean, crazy, dogmatic atheists, for most purposes it's a difference without a distinction. If you enumerate the list of all things that you believe to exist and no gods turn up, you can reasonably be called an atheist. Call it "soft atheism" or "agnosticism" if it plays better, but frankly, I don't see it as anything more than a combination of philosophical wanking and a way of marginalizing people who honestly just don't believe in gods.
No offense, but I'm going to have to call shenanigans...repeatedly. First of all, the Rutherford Institute wasn't "defending" Raines as the Raines family appears to have filed the lawsuit. I also note that the only references I can find to it appear to be detail-free (and highly credulous) mentions of it in arguments that Christianity is somehow under attack in America. Oh, and this, which points out that the Superintendent claims that Raines "was disciplined for some matters that were totally independent of silent praying. We did a very thorough investigation. We talked to teachers, administrators, and also to some students, and we could not find any evidence of the allegations that the parent and the student made." I haven't gotten my hands on the original Washington Post article, but indications are that the specific claims of the plaintiff aren't exactly clear. I'm not inclined to believe that a school in the Bible Belt with a pastor on the school board has anything resembling a policy against private prayer. No, I think that we'll have to chalk this one up to the same gremlins who perpetuate the "You only use 10% of your brain" and "The World Trade Center fell faster than free-fall speed" myths.
I'm going to go a little further on this, though, because the article you linked to is a classic example of the type of content-free, outrage-laden pap that feeds the persecution complex of a group of people who essentially run the country in every measurable way. Point by point:
1) The thesis of the article is that the ACLU is a crazy left-wing organization that's out to destroy Christianity. I can find absolutely no evidence that the ACLU was involved in any of the specific cases the article mentions specifically enough to be fact-checked.
2) The Mike Ruestik incident (even more than the Raines incident) appears to be completely uncorroborated by anything other than a few anti-ACLU web sites claiming it's true. Given that the legal premise is ridiculous on its face, I'm led to conclude one of three things. Either this thing never happened, the lawyer involved has no involvement with the ACLU, or the ACLU's legal representatives are shockingly incompetent. Given the ACLU's history of legal successes and the fact that the right seems to regard it as the same type of omnipotent monster that Islamists regard the CIA as, I'm strongly leaning toward the first option with a limited chance at the second.
3) The Tanya Meyers case seems equally full of crap. Again, we have an example of the ACLU doing something evil with no actual evidence that the ACLU was involved. Even going back to the "source" (George Grant's "Trial and Error"), even Grant doesn't appear to claim that it was an ACLU action. I can't track the footnote back because I can't find any source for "The Journal of Non-Registered Churches and Charities" or even any hint that it actually exists.
4) The Layle French actually happened (and you can actually find court documents to boot!), but the lawsuit brought against them was brought by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, a government entity, not the ACLU. Why? Housing discrimination on the basis of marital status is illegal. French lost the case in summary judgment. I also hope that Mr. French isn't really facing "financial ruin" as the article claims given that he has an extra home to rent out and the judgment against him was $1048.
The rest of the article is just the typical attempt to smear the ACLU as an anarchist / communist organization by association, most of it cribbed from George Grant. I mean, "It should be evident to all that the ACLU is a formidable anti-family, anti-mor