The ACLU claims to exist to protect the civil liberties and constitutional rights of all Americans, but it’s really just an unprincipled left-wing lobbying group. Recently, the ACLU of Southern California opposed Proposition 98, a California initiative that would have reinforced state constitutional protections against seizures of private property, by preventing private property from being taken for commercial development, and ending rent control. The ACLU attacked Prop. 98 for seeking to “eliminate rent control,” and “restricting the government’s power.” Imagine that! Restricting the government’s power! That’s what most civil liberties guarantees do, after all: restrict government power. But the American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t have much to do with civil liberties, anymore, unless the beneficiaries are left-wing constituencies, like alleged terrorists.
While the ACLU was busy claiming that banning rent control is somehow a threat to civil liberties, it was also fabricating many new rights out of thin air: an alleged “right” to make sexual advances and have sex in public restrooms; an alleged “right” for swastika-wearing neo-Nazis to force restaurants like the Alpine Village Inn to serve them; an alleged “right” for illegal alien employees to demand that their citizen co-workers not say derogatory things about them, even outside their presence; and an alleged “right” for one Massachusetts man to perform oral sex on another man while on a public stage.
The ACLU in California is a “vigorous proponent of hate speech regulations,” and its Massachusetts chapter supports campus speech codes, ignoring that pesky First Amendment (which was, after all, written by dead white males — the ACLU is a big supporter of racial quotas, unsuccessfully arguing in Coalition for Economic Equity v. Wilson (1997), that minorities have a constitutional right to racial preferences that overrides state constitutional equal-protection provisions banning all racial discrimination). A prominent ACLU lawyer in Massachusetts argued that rape law should be redefined so that mere consent to sex is not enough, claiming that sex should only be allowed after express, explicit permission of the sort that precedes a medical operation.
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Hans,
In the time I spent working for the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office (WLO), I found just the opposite to be true. I can only speak from my experience with the national level ACLU and not its local affiliates –the perplexing actions of which you’ve cited above — which are largely autonomous; not centrally-regulated.
About two months ago, during one of the ACLU WLO’s staff meetings, the former National Director came to speak about preparing for the transition to a new administration. Her emphasis was on dispelling the likely widely-held belief by the newer ACLU staffers, that the change from a Republican to a Democrat-controlled government isn’t necessarily a good thing for civil liberties.
Her stories about how their relationship with the Clinton administration — because of the ACLU’s unwavering position on several (libertarian) issues, despite pressure from members of congress and the administration; and despite seeing donations fall and coalitions dissolve — led to the ACLU’s becoming personae non gratae to the Clintons and many former congressional allies. I was very impressed with just how principled a group the national ACLU actually is.
Though I certainly don’t agree with everything they do, my experience working for the national ACLU has felt very similar to my experience working for CEI — I agree with each organization’s positions about 90% of the time; which, of course, puts me in a difficult moral quandary about 10% of the time. The real difference is that I disagree with some of the ACLU’s positions on the issues, though I respect the fact that they stick to their principles; while my disagreements with CEI were more often about the things we were prevented from doing, for fear of alienating parts of our donor base.
+Shane
For the most part I like the things that the ACLU does. But maybe that’s because I’m not a free-market Reep but a lil “l” libertarian.
It’s sad to see the ACLU, or at least one of it’s major chapters, again failing to recognize the most fundamental human right —> the right to property. Once that’s gone the government can coerce you to do all sorts of things.