Posted on 12/01/2002 10:43:06 AM PST by RCW2001
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ACLU, Once Branded Ultraliberal, Sees Membership Surge After Sept. 11 Terror Attacks
The Associated Press
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| W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 1 — Whether protecting the disenfranchised or standing up for the right to offend, the American Civil Liberties Union has sided with those claiming they were wronged, even if it meant a distinctly minority stand.
But since Sept. 11 and the government's expansive campaign of monitoring and detention, people are turning to the 82-year-old organization to help safeguard their liberties. Among them are conservatives who made the phrase "card-carrying member of the ACLU" a political insult, but who now are signing up. "Larger numbers of American people have realized that the ACLU is fundamentally a patriotic organization." executive director Anthony Romero said. There are now 330,000 dues-paying members, 50,000 of whom joined after the attacks. The group has been in the thick of legal challenges to the government's broadening anti-terror powers. Last week, in response to an ACLU lawsuit, the government agreed to tell the group by mid-January which documents it is willing to release about its increased surveillance activities. Especially notable among the new enthusiasts are conservatives who once thought the ACLU represented everything that was wrong with the left. "They are very useful and productive force in jurisprudence," said Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. Conservatives such as Hyde are mindful of the history of an organization that was lonely in its defense of positions now accepted as universal: Blacks who suffered spurious prosecutions in the 1930s, Japanese interned in the 1940s, books banned as obscene now regarded as part of the literary canon. Yet the group continues to exasperate some with its uncompromising positions against a Ten Commandments monument in a Frederick, Md., park, against the government's attempt to get libraries to use computer filters to block sexually explicit material from children, against drug sweeps that it claims are racially motivated. "Some of their positions are extreme, such as objecting to metal detectors in high schools" where there has been a high incidence of violence, Hyde said. For the first time, the ACLU is spending part of its $50 million annual budget on a national television commercial. An actor portraying John Ashcroft crosses the phrase "We the People" from the Constitution as a narrator says the attorney general has "seized powers for the Bush administration no president has ever had." "This focus on civil liberties post-9/11 has been a wonderful opportunity to reach out to constituencies who would never have thought of the ACLU as their home," said Nadine Strossen, the ACLU's president. The organization has budgeted $3.5 million for a campaign that asks Americans to monitor their government monitors and report abuses. It is a mirror image to the government's plan to empower some Americans to check on their neighbors, under a program known as the Terrorism Information and Prevention System. "When you have the highest ranking law enforcement official in the country saying either you're with me or against me, and that your tactics aid the terrorists, that rubs people the wrong way," Romero said. That includes conservatives who bridle at government intrusions into privacy. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., have said they will consider serving as consultants for the group when they leave Congress next month. Hyde has worked with the ACLU to protect free speech on campuses and limit the right of authorities to seize assets. "I'm glad the ACLU raises the objections it does, because it forces the government and Congress to be mindful of First Amendment rights," he said. In 1989, Hyde railed against the organization as a smirking opponent of the rights of the unborn. Before that, he had said it was part of a "Bermuda Triangle" swallowing up Reagan administration anti-crime measures. Hyde chuckles at those memories, and even admits he may have used the "card-carrying member of the ACLU" phrase coined by Vice President George Bush in his 1988 presidential campaign against Democrat Michael Dukakis. Probably the ACLU's most unpopular stand came in 1978, when it successfully defended the right of neo-Nazis to march through Skokie, Ill., a Chicago suburb. ACLU membership dropped by 15 percent after that. Its insistence on removing Christmas and Hanukkah decorations from publicly owned property did not help, either. Strossen says nothing has fundamentally changed; defending Nazis' right to march then is the same as defending the right to roam the Internet now. "One person's stigma is another's badge of honor," she said. "Putting your money where your mouth is means defending those whose views are counter to yours." Still, the organization says it now recognizes a need to reach out, and some conservatives are glad about that. "The one thing that I find very encouraging about all of this is that people are willing to move beyond their ideological trenches and join forces," said Ward Connerly, a conservative whose frustration with the ACLU's support for affirmative action led him to found the competing American Civil Rights Institute. "If they keep hiring more Bob Barrs, I might renew the membership I canceled in 1962." |
There are that many Muslims in the U.S.?
http://archive.aclu.org/library/aaguns.html
Hogwash. The day America needs "patriots" like these Commie front men, we can hang wrap our dead hopes in the Star-Spangled Banner and bury them in the Tomb of the Unknowns.
The ACLU was founded in 1920 by Harry Ward, Roger Baldwin and Louis Budenz -- all of them communists.
c>"The problem is that the ACLU has been getting further and further to the left with every passing year..."
B>The ACLU was founded in 1920 by Harry Ward, Roger Baldwin and Louis Budenz -- all of them communists.
9 posted on 12/01/2002 1:51 PM MST by Bonaparte
The ACLU was founded in 1920
by Harry Ward, Roger Baldwin and Louis Budenz --
all of them communists.
Thank you for a correct history lesson Mister "B"
XeniaSt <truth@YeshuaHaMashiach>
Make a note: 50,000 more spaces needed in the resettlement camps on the old military bases. We got all their names yet?
-archy-/-
I'll place my bet on the 200,000 members of Gun Owners of America against the 330,000 less-well-armed and experienced commie/libs of the ACLU any day.
-archy-/-
Actually, the objective of the ACLU is to destroy the United States from within.
First, look at what John H. Rousselot submitted on Seeptember 20, 1961 to the House of Representatives:
These are a few of the past and present prominent officials and leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union.
1. Roger Baldwin, founder and guiding light of the ACLU for over 30 years, is now a member of the National Committee of the ACLU. Mr Roger Baldwin has a record of over 100 communist-front affiliations and citations (documented in detail, CONGRESSIONAL RECORD May 26, 1952). In an article written for Soviet Russia Today (September 1934), Roger Baldwin said: "When the power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatsoever." "The class struggle is the central conflict of the world, all others are coincidental."
Entry of Roger Baldwin in the Harvard reunion book on the occasion of the 30th anniversary reunion of his class of 1905 (1935), "I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produced the wealth: communism is the goal."
2. Dr. Harry Ward, first chairman of the ACLU. Dr. Harry Ward has a record of over 200 Communist front affiliations and citations listed by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HCUA). Dr. Harry Ward was chairman of one of the largest Communist fronts to flourish in this country, "The American League for Peace and Democracy," which was placed on the Attorney General of the United States list of subversive organizations on June 1, 1948. Dr. Ward is the author of "Soviet Democracy" and "Soviet Spirit," two pro-Communist books which clearly show Dr. Ward's love for the Soviet system of government. The California Senate Fact Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, in their 1948 report, page 246, said: "The Communist affiliation of Dr. Harry F. Ward is indicative of the Communist sympaties of the members and sponsors of the "Friends of the Soviet Union."
3. Abraham L. Wirin, chief counsel for the Southern California Chapter of the ACLU, sometimes referred to as "Mr. ACLU."
In 1934 A. L. Wirin formed a law partnership with Leo Gllagher and Grover Johnson (reference: Daily Peoples World, Mar. 5, 1934, official publication of the Communist Party on the west coast). Mr Leo Gallagher ran for State office on the Communist Party ticket in 1936 and Grover Johnson, when asked by a governmental investigating agency if he had ever been a member of the Communist Party, refused to answer the question on the grounds that he might incriminate himself.
In 1954, A. L. Wirin was a candidate for the executive board of National Lawyers Guild (reference: Los Angeles Daily Journal, Jan 13, 1954). The National Lawyers Guild has been cited as a Communist Front organization by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) September 21, 1950. (Four years before, Mr. Wirin was a candidate for the executive board.)
4. Dr. Albert Eason Monroe, executive director of the Southern California Chapter of the ACLU:
In 1952, Dr. Albert Eason Monroe, U.S. Navy serial No. 316900, was discharged from the U.S. Naval Reserve under conditions other than honorable.
In 1950, Dr. Monroe was fired from his position as head of the English department of San Francisco college for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. (The purpose of loyalty oaths is to protect the unsuspecting individual from lending his name to a Communist cause and from becoming a Communist dupe. The requirements of loyalty oaths have multiplied the obstacles to the Communists in recruiting memberships for their front organizations and maintaining discipline over fellow travelers in Government service. Few people will swear to an oath knowing it to be false and knowing that they might be liable to indictment and imprisonment for perjury. This requirement places a most difficult hurdle in front of the Communists attempting to ensnare an unsuspecting recruit into their conspiracy.)
In 1953, Dr. Albert Eason Monroe was listed as being chairman of the Federation for Repeal of the Levering Act (ie., loyalty oaths), which was cited as being a Communist front organization by the California State Senate Committee on Education in its 1952 report to the State legislature.
5. Rev. A. A. Heist, executive director of the Southern California Chapter of the ACLU in 1952, and Dr. Monroe's predecessor. Rev. A. A. Heist was a signer of the statement to the President of the United States, defending the Communist Party (reference: Daily Worker Mar 5, 1941). In 1952, the Reverend Heist resigned his position in the ACLU to become director of a new organization which he founded, called the Citizens' Committee to Preserve American Freedoms (CCPAF). This organization is run by its executive secretary, Mr. Frank Wilkinson, an identified Communist. At a meeting of the district council of the southern California district of the Communist Party, United States of America, Dorothy Healy, well-known Communist and chairman of the district council, said, "The party preferred public protest meetings against the HCUA to be held by the Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms rather than under party auspices because Communists could attend without danger of being exposed as party members." (Reference HCUA, H. Rept. 259, Apr 3, 1950, "Report on the Southern California District of the Communist Party". The Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms was cited as being a Communist front organization by the HCUA on April 3, 1959.
The Reverend Heist stated in a speech to an audience of high school and junior college students in Pasadena that "the Constitution of the United States is outmoded, outdated, and impotent." (One of the stated goals of the ACLU is to preserve the Constitution.)
In 1948, the Reverend Heist protested the withdrawal of the use of their hall by Occidental College to an identified Communist poet, Langston Hughes, who was to speak on a poem of his entitled, "Goodbye, Christ," which called for "Christ, Jesus, Lord God Jehovah" to "beat it" and "make way for a new guy named Marx, Communist Lenin, Peasant Stalin, and worker me." (Reference: Hollywood Citizen News, February 26, 1948.) This would not be a strange protest from an atheistic Communist, but when it comes from a Methodist minister?
6. Carey McWilliams, a member of the national committee of the ACLU in 1948, who now figures prominently in the affairs of the ACLU, has been identified in sworn testimony, according to Government documents, as a member of the Communist Party. Carey McWilliams has a record of over 50 Communist-front affiliations and citations. He is the editor of "Rights," the official publication of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee which has been cited as a Communist front by the HCUA (November 8, 1957).
7. Prof. William A. Kilpatrick, prominent member of the ACLU on the east coast, was for many years head of Teacherc College, Columbia University. In his book, "The Teacher and Society," published in 1939, Professor Kilpatrick said that "the revolution by force and violence was probably necessary in Russia, but it would not be necessary in America. Here, the same goals could be acheived by effectuating change within the framework of the Constitution."
8. William Z. Foster, former head of the Communist Party, United States of America, was a former member of the National Committee of the ACLU. 9. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, former member of the National Committee of the ACLU until 1940, is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, United States of America.
In the report on "Communist Propaganda in America" (published 1935, A.F.L.) as submitted to the State Department, by William Green, the late president of the American Federation of Labor, Mr. Green states that: "During all the years since the establishment of the Soviet regime in Russia, propaganda in the United States has been conducted, not only through agencies directly set up by the Communist high command, but through agencies and organizations in which non-Communists of good standing and repute have been induced to participate. A careful studyof these organizations shows that they are so related through interlocking directorates that apparently some hundreds of organizations are dominated by an interlocking group of directors numbering not more than 60. Their tactics may perhaps be called the tactics of irritation, since their purpose is to create dissatisfaction as widely as possible and to bring into disrepute the authorities, and the established institutions of the country. As an example, the American Civil Liberties Union may be cited."
To support Mr. Green's statement of "the interlocking directorates," we discovered that when we looked at the record of the top 15 past and current leaders of the ACLU, we found that they had a combined record of over 1000 Communist front affiliations and citations.
http://www.geocities.com/graymada/aclu.html
Meanwhile, you have the ACLU going after schools for using the word "God" ( http://loper.org/~george/trends/2001/Oct/20.html ), fighting libraries and Congress who want to keep obscene and illegal material out of the hands of minors ( http://archive.aclu.org/court/CIPA_Intro.html ), and defending pro-bono the North American Man-Boy Love Association, an organization that endorses, advocates and encourages the sexual abuse of children ( http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/nambla000831.html ).
And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The ACLU is one of the most dangerous organizations currently in existence, alongside the Democratic Party and the National Education Association.
And they must be stopped if this country wants to survive another centennial.
That's an increase of 15%. A nice little jump, but hardly a "surge." And, of course, we're taking their word for it. A lot of these organizations - NOW is by far the worst - just flat-out lie about the number of dues-paying members they have.
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