What's permissible to ACLU?

But since so much attention has been focused on supposed religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, I assumed a report on the matter would enlighten me.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon released its report, which stated that "the (Air Force) team found a religious climate that does not involve overt religious discrimination."

The report found evidence of the "perception" of religious intolerance, though no real religious intolerance. It found "perceived bias" but no real bias.

The report goes on to say that the AFA exhibited "a lack of awareness where the line is drawn between permissible and impermissible expression of beliefs."

It's certainly reasonable for the AFA to foster a more tolerant institution. But it is reprehensible for cadets to be saddled with the concept of "impermissible expression of beliefs."

The report, admittedly, is an impressive work of political savvy. It placated groups as diverse as the Anti-Defamation League and Focus on the Family.

Last week, a group of Democrats in Congress tried to pass a measure condemning the Air Force Academy for allowing religious proselytizing at the school before the report was released.

In response, an Indiana Republican injected a bit of high drama, contending that "like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians."

Now, describing all Democrats as anti-Christian is about as intelligent as calling all Republicans white Christians.

Yet there are some groups, like Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union, with the help of some Democrats in Congress, that denigrate and undercut religious freedom at every turn.

And if these congressmen were genuinely interested in condemning even the "perception" of religious intolerance or "perceived" bias, they could start in their own backyards.

Last week, for instance, a mock impeachment hearing regarding President Bush (nothing wrong with fantasizing) run by the dependably outlandish Congressman John Conyers featured a bunch of Father Coughlin types like Virginia's Jim Moran.

Or, if the Senate cared, it could censure Illinois' Richard Durbin, who made a moral comparison between the incineration of millions of Jews and the playing of rap music in the jail cell of the alleged 20th Sept. 11 hijacker - a terrorist who resides in a virtual Club Med, as far as I'm concerned.

At the AFA, some cadets pray. Others had the temerity to mention Jesus in conversation. One cadet called another an "(expletive) Jew." This, we should deduce, means that there is institutional religious intolerance?

I've been called an "(expletive) Jew" plenty of times. Perhaps I should call for an investigation of Denver? Colorado?

But more distressing than being called an (expletive) Jew was an e-mail I received from a big shot at the Colorado ACLU the last time I wrote on the AFA.

This person offered to give me a lesson on the First Amendment - which, I suspect, would have been as constructive as a tutorial on marriage from Bill Clinton.

We'll see if the ACLU, which selectively fights for freedom, has a problem with the concept of "impermissible expression of beliefs."

After all, I'm sure they were mortified when an AFA coach hung a banner that read, "I am a member of Team Jesus Christ."

Problem is, if that banner had read, "I am a member of Team Bin Laden," the ACLU would have a lawyer shielding his First Amendment rights before you could say, "Who would Jesus bomb?"

A.1.3 Why is anarchism also called libertarian socialism? Many anarchists, seeing the negative nature of the definition of "anarchism," have used other terms to emphasise the inherently positive and constructive aspect of their ideas. The most common terms used are "free socialism," "free communism," "libertarian socialism," and "libertarian communism." For anarchists, libertarian socialism, libertarian communism, and anarchism are virtually interchangeable. As Vanzetti put it:

Here is a link for more, if you would like to read more about the subject.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secA1.html "After all we are socialists as the social-democrats, the socialists, the communists, and the I.W.W. are all Socialists. The difference -- the fundamental one -- between us and all the other is that they are authoritarian while we are libertarian; they believe in a State or Government of their own; we believe in no State or Government." [Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, p. 274]

But is this correct? Considering definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary, we find:

LIBERTARIAN: one who believes in freedom of action and thought; one who believes in free will.

SOCIALISM: a social system in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods.

Just taking those two first definitions and fusing them yields:

LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM:

a social system which believes in freedom of action and thought and free will, in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods.

(Although we must add that our usual comments on the lack of political sophistication of dictionaries still holds. We only use these definitions to show that "libertarian" does not imply "free market" capitalism nor "socialism" state ownership. Other dictionaries, obviously, will have different definitions -- particularly for socialism. Those wanting to debate dictionary definitions are free to pursue this unending and politically useless hobby but we will not).

However, due to the creation of the Libertarian Party in the USA, many people now consider the idea of "libertarian socialism" to be a contradiction in terms. Indeed, many "Libertarians" think anarchists are just attempting to associate the "anti-libertarian" ideas of "socialism" (as Libertarians conceive it) with Libertarian ideology in order to make those "socialist" ideas more "acceptable" -- in other words, trying to steal the "libertarian" label from its rightful possessors.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists have been using the term "libertarian" to describe themselves and their ideas since the 1850's. According to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, the revolutionary anarchist Joseph Dejacque published Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social in New York between 1858 and 1861 while the use of the term "libertarian communism" dates from November, 1880 when a French anarchist congress adopted it. [Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism, p. 75 and p. 145] The use of the term "Libertarian" by anarchists became more popular from the 1890s onward after it was used in France in an attempt to get round anti-anarchist laws and to avoid the negative associations of the word "anarchy" in the popular mind (Sebastien Faure and Louise Michel published the paper Le Libertaire -- The Libertarian -- in France in 1895, for example). Since then, particularly outside America, it has always been associated with anarchist ideas and movements. Taking a more recent example, in the USA, anarchists organised "The Libertarian League" in July 1954, which had staunch anarcho-syndicalist principles and lasted until 1965. The US-based "Libertarian" Party, on the other hand has only existed since the early 1970's, well over 100 years after anarchists first used the term to describe their political ideas (and 90 years after the expression "libertarian communism" was first adopted). It is that party, not the anarchists, who have "stolen" the word. Later, in Section B, we will discuss why the idea of a "libertarian" capitalism (as desired by the Libertarian Party) is a contradiction in terms.

As we will also explain in Section I, only a libertarian-socialist system of ownership can maximise individual freedom. Needless to say

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