Comments on the ACLU

Re: A few thoughts on Doolittle vs. the ACLU

by TommyG on Thursday, November 02 @ 05:19:21 PSt

I'm imagining the kinds of comments this letter is likely to receive. I wonder if the critics of the ACLU will bother to back up their attacks? Will they supply good reasoning, critical thinking, or valid references? I really doubt it. I think it more likely they'll rely on emotional gobbledigook, trying to rile us up with distortions, distractions, half-truths, and even resort to outright lies.

For example, a recent letter said that the ACLU was "a divisive organization dedicated to undermining the social fabric of the United States and to weakening our resolve to remain a strong, independent and sovereign nation."(1) Did they provide any support? No. Absolutely none.

Another letter says that the ACLU is "a group of liberal lawyers founded by Roger Baldwin, a certified Communist."(2) What this person doesn't tell you is that Mr. Baldwin left the Communist party in 1939, going on to denounce communism in his book, A New Slavery, which condemned "the inhuman communist police state tyranny," and that in the 1940s, Baldwin went on to lead the campaign to purge the ACLU of Communist Party members.(3) The same writer goes on to say that "the ACLU is waging war against any symbol of religion in public, mainly of Christianity. Hate of religion and sure money are their motivation." These statements are completely unbacked up and untrue, and while this person was obviously unhappy with the fact that the ACLU fought to have the 10 Commandments removed from Roy Moore's Alabama courthouse, he doesn't let on to us that the Separation of Church and State was what was used to enforce this ruling, protecting every other belief and religion from that group of Christians trying to take over a branch of our (freedom and) government.

In fact, in regards to the Separation of Church and State, the most common distortion I hear is from people trying to make it sound like the ACLU is attacking their own religious values, which isn't true. For example, one letter writer states "The ACLU opposes religious exercises - including Bible reading and prayer in schools. We know it is certainly against the words 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance."(4) In fact the ACLU is only trying to keep them out of our government, (our public schools: the "State"), which is just as our founding fathers asked (Bill of Rights, Amendment 1, paragraph 1). They'll even go on to say that the Separation of Church and State isn't in the Constitution, though in fact that's simply Thomas Jefferson's paraphrase of what the Establishment Claus says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...." This means government does not get involved in religion, which by that very meaning says that religion stays out of government (otherwise government is obviously involved). Thomas Jefferson simply gave us an easy paraphrase to sum it up with.

Yet another writer defines the ACLU as "the Anti-Christian League of Unbelievers."(5) Unless this person is completely brainwashed, this is an outright lie, and only shows how desperate these people are to hide what the real truth of the ACLU is. Adding to this untruth, this writer gives us more classic examples of untruths, defining myriad other things, again and again, as "examples of our Christian Forefathers." I guess these writers are taking the advice of Hitler: "...in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie," or to Goebbels: "...it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness... when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it." I say this because of how they try to tie in objects to the founding of America which have nothing to do with it, like the "Mayflower Compact," (not "American") or the writing on the Liberty Bell (Anglican, not "American"), or the "God" written into the Declaration of Independence (the "Natural God" written in by Thomas Jefferson, a Deist, who in fact has many documented writings, in the Library of Congress, which are clearly written against Christianity). Anti-ACLU proponents do this all in an effort to make the ACLU look to be against us, when in today's fact the ACLU only protects us from one religion trying to insert itself into government and take over our country.

In short, the ACLU, it's very name saying "Civil Liberties," is protecting those civil liberties, our civil liberties, from wanton destruction by self-righteous religious groups.