Posted on 11/25/2004 1:53:23 AM PST by Exton1
Smoke & Mirrors & The ACLU
Thirty-Five Years ago, The Veritas Foundation (headed by President Theodore Roosevelt's son Archibald) published a staff study on The Great Deceit, Social Pseudo-Sciences, which carefully documented the Fabian Socialist assault upon the American Social Sciences and legal system during the first six decades of this Century. After dealing at length with the antics of former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter--whom Roosevelt's father once compared to Leon Trotsky (ib., p.295)--the study describes the birth of the ACLU:
Frankfurter organized the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920, in company with Morris Hillquit (head of the American Socialist Party), Laski, Roger N. Baldwin, Jane Addams, Harry F. Ward, A.J. Muste, Scott Nearing and Norman Thomas. This organization was a socialist front pure and simple. (ib., p. 327.) The study goes on to show that known Communists were also permitted high positions in the new organization.
Yet despite its antecedents, the ACLU has always enjoyed a respectability not accorded to other organizations headed by the same group of individuals. How and why? The answer is in a mastery of the Fabian technique of seeming to be something very different than they actually are.
Rather than a force for socialist repression, the ACLU has managed to create an image for itself as the foremost American defender of individual liberty--of the right of the individual to be free of excessive Government. Thus, despite their suspect origin, the organization has achieved a wide following even among moderate civil libertarians. And yet you will wait in vain to hear them speak out in the present debate against an Administration, incessantly seeking to limit the individual's right to self defense by restricting his Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. You will wait in vain to hear them speak out against the excesses of Government in the field of "Civil Rights" (ie. Governmentally created rights opposed to the pre-Governmental, God endowed liberties, such legislation is designed to curb). An over-taxed generation will also wait in vain for them to oppose a tax structure that in the words of Kipling (see below) robs selective Peter, to pay for collective Paul.
To the American mainstream, these incursions threaten the Civil Liberties of all Americans; but that threat is no concern of the ACLU. Indeed, individual leaders of the ACLU have been prominent in attacking the whole concept of the God endowed Liberty, so sacred to the Fathers.
Almost the entire focus of the ACLU has been either on the First Amendment--on questions of religion, speech and assembly--or on the rights of criminal defendants. But even on the First Amendment, the approach has been peculiarly skewed towards a not always obvious agenda. It is important that the would be Conservative spokesman understand the pattern that has emerged. Let us try to make obvious, what others have obscured.
The ACLU leadership has well understood the concept and use of the high visibility case. In earlier years, they were conspicuous in defense of those accused of various forms of sedition, of conscientious objectors to military service, and of groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, whose faith caused them to often stand out, because they would insist on going door to door to proselytize, while refusing to pledge allegiance to the flag in school assemblies. While many of these cases involved an extension of Federal judicial intrusion into State and local affairs, the principles for which the ACLU contended were not totally without merit--and indeed, had they been brought in State rather than Federal Court, would in many cases (though certainly not all) have had the support of some Conservatives. But, involving an appeal for Federal intervention into local affairs, they usually managed to garner an unusual degree of visibility, far indeed beyond the community actually under attack. And, above all, they created the image of an organization, ever ready to stand up for the sacred liberty of the unpopular, the downtrodden and oppressed.
In 1978, a marginal group calling themselves the American Nazi Party proposed a march, featuring banners and slogans deliberately intended to be offensive to ethnic Jews, into Skokie, Illinois, a predominantly Jewish community in suburban Chicago, despite a local refusal to sanction the march. The real issue, of course, had little to do with the First Amendment guarantees against Congressional interference with Free Speech, or Freedom of Assembly, since no one was trying to tell the "Nazis" they could not assemble on their own turf, in their own communities, and speak to their hearts' content. That is not the same thing as a right to go into other people's communities, to try to force them to listen to a form of speech, deliberately calculated to offend. There is also the obvious point that this march was not intended to further the avowed aims of the marchers. If their purpose really was to convince others of the merits of their anti-Jewish diatribe, they were preaching to those least likely to buy the message.
Clearly, the purpose was provocation, not persuasion. Clearly, the purpose was to alarm those to whom the message would appear to be a threat; at the same time, making reasoned discussion of ethnic or religious issues appear tainted and suspect in the climate of reciprocal hatred being deliberately engendered. [To understand how "Liberals" (Fabian Socialists), actual Nazis and Communists all use each others' excesses to advantage against the rest of us, see our essays on the Compulsion For Uniformity, below.] And, of course, the ACLU took the "Nazi" case, parading once again their apparent dedication to unfettered free speech and public debate. The organization, which had defended the rights of religious dissenters to opt out of public ceremonies, in the name of religious Liberty, did not recognize the right of the Jews in Skokie to opt out of allowing their streets--paved by their local tax dollars--to be tied up by persons coming in from outside their community (some from very far outside), to use those same streets to call for the extermination of the local citizens!
The public perception of the ACLU is thus of an organization that puts the freedom to advocate the unpopular cause above all else--the true disciples of Voltaire. But the public need to probe a little deeper:
In 1959, an investigator for the Richmond (Virginia) News Leader--then under the brilliant editorship of James Jackson Kilpatrick--managed to capture a copy of the February 4th Minutes of the Mass Media Committee of the Consultative Conference on Desegregation (an organization composed of 29 "member agencies" including the ACLU, a number of ultra liberal religious agencies, and a number of organizations openly devoted to the forced integration of virtually every aspect of American Society.) These were published on the editorial page on February 27, 1959. The document shows the ACLU up to their eyeballs in a publicity shy Conference, bent not upon promoting free inquiry and open debate upon the most controversial issue of the day, but upon manipulation of the media, and distortion both of issue and fact.
The point is not that the "Liberal" (ie. Fabian leadership) of the ACLU may not involve themselves in promoting collectivist causes in league with other collectivist egalitarian groups. The point is that if they were active participants in a movement seeking to distort racial issues to gain an advantage for those advocating forced race mixing and affirmative action, their widely touted defense of so-called "Nazis" in Illinois, and their frequent publicity seeking defenses of local groups calling themselves the "Klu Klux Klan" in other areas, may not be the classic liberal celebration of Voltaire's famed quotation, but a cynical effort to demonize all opposition by focusing a spotlight on groups and individuals, easy to caricature in the liberal media. But consider more closely the CCD minutes.
Among all the groups, Alan Reitman of the ACLU was given the job of talking to the Associated Press, United Press International and Editor and Publisher on the subject of "race labeling," and it is very clear from the context that it was not to assure them that the ACLU wanted to defend the right of a free press to report on race! Mr. Reitman also agreed to contact Life "again" concerning a proposed article on the role of the clergy in the South "in supporting law and equality." Apparently, the ACLU's scruples on the separation of Church and State did not extend to situations where Church intervened in matters of State on the side of the ACLU's own social agenda.
The busy Mr. Reitman also agreed to suggest what was deemed a useful human interest article on students returning to desegregated public schools from private schools and tutoring classes, to The New York Times. Again an exercise in trying to condition public attitudes rather than vindicate civil liberty or a right of dissent.
The Committee minutes show particular concern over the publication, in paid newspaper ads across America, of an open letter which Carleton Putnam had sent to President Eisenhower, questioning both the fairness & historic bases for the School Integration cases, while challenging the social assumptions that the Warren Court had made in reaching its sweeping conclusion in Brown vs. Board of Education; the decision by which the Court swept aside 110 years of legal precedent, and overturned the educational systems in 17 Southern and Border States.
Carleton Putnam was a well educated and articulate Northerner; a former Airline Executive, and the author of a then recently published and widely heralded biography of Theodore Roosevelt. In challenging the unproven--and indeed disproven assumptions of the Court and Justice Department--Putnam wrote not in the rhetoric or the animosity and hatred displayed by many of the ACLU's well publicized clients; but in measured and compassionate terms, seeking answers as much in the interest of the Negro minority as of the White majority. The plea in that original letter, and in those that followed to the Attorney General and others--as well as in two books, written later on the subject--displayed the perspective of a religious Christian, seeking racial understanding rather than compulsive propaganda, scientific inquiry rather than the suppression of debate being promoted on the Left. And as in the case of Reggie White, the great Negro athlete and Christian Minister, who sought such understanding from a different vantage point over a generation later, the self-anointed apostles of "civil liberty" were having none of it!
The publicity shy Committee wanted its members to have their local units "check with editors and publishers about the problem." When such ads appeared in the North, they wanted to get Southerners to write dissenting letters to the editor and to ask the editors to include editorials rebutting the ads, or at least to run "news articles" in the same issue, "quoting opponents of segregation." In short an orchestrated, rigged debate, by a manipulative but coordinated hand behind the scenes. No where was there the suggestion that the publicity avoiding Conference show its role, publicly--as for example by running its own ad, or challenging Carleton Putnam to a public debate. (He would have been eager to accept!)
Is there a common denominator between the publicity seeking ACLU in Skoekie, and the publicity shy ACLU in the Consultative Conference on Desegregation? We think there is. But it is a connection better understood by Communists and real Nazis than the American mainstream.
The ACLU is a Communist front group attempting to tear apart the founding concepts of this great country.....
Our troops are fighting the enemy abroad, we have to fight the enemy within.
Here's an outline to defeat LIEberalism. Explain to bluestaters:
1. Liberalism has destroyed morality for many people, 2. but that damage is reperable (though the reparation is perversely demonized). 3. Setting on the path of that renewal IS 4. GOOD CHANGE.
5. Describe HOW morality is destroyed without people even noticing it.
If you can, please foreward the above outline and feel free to use it the best way that you find. I am not a member of Stop The ACLU yet but I will join as soon as I get my recent payment issues together. From what I read, Kareiva has been getting more support because people are spreading the word.
The ACLU should be the baggage carrier used when the UN is sent packing.
The ACLU is a terrorist Organisation
Agreed, and it needs to be stomped to death.
Apparently, when Congress contemplated the fee-shifting bill three decades ago, it never conceived that 42 U.S.C. §1988 would be used to secure fees in esoteric battles over the meaning of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
The statute gives a court "discretion" to award attorneys' fees to the prevailing party in civil rights cases.
Study of the legislative history of the statute reveals that Congress intended this statute to apply to civil rights abuses, including certain race and sex discrimination cases, but not to arguments about whether Judge Roy Moore is allowed to display the Ten Commandments in the Alabama courthouse.
During the deliberations on the bill, the Senate penned that "in many cases arising under our civil rights laws, the citizen who must sue to enforce the law has little or no money with which to hire a lawyer."[6] In the recent First Amendment lawsuits filed by the ACLU, the tables are turned.
Small school districts and municipalities can either defend lawsuits and risk paying the ACLU's attorneys' fees if they lose, or they can voluntarily submit to the ACLU's view of the Constitution.
Even if lawsuits over the establishment clause somehow fall within 42 U.S.C. §1988, the statute empowers courts with nothing more than "discretion" to award fees.
In these cases, one would expect courts to withhold awarding fees. Since this is not happening, Congress must take immediate action to clarify 42 U.S.C. §1988 to explicitly exclude lawsuits related to the acknowledgement of God.
Of course I wish no ill befall anyone presently serving, ( he said ... tongue in cheek) however I would be elated by most being replaced within these next four years. And in the interest of civility, I won't comment on rogue justices serving both federal and state courts. ;)
Happy Thanksgiving!
Interesting find. I had never heard of this site. Bookmarked for long weekend perusal...
Amen.........beautiful sentiment.......and Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving!
It appears that almost 50 percent of the voting public are their stooges too..
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