Probably like most other libertarians, I have come to this philosophy from the Right end of the political spectrum. Over the years, I have been very critical and, I must admit hostile, to The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). That said, our movement must welcome all to our cause. We have been receiving interest also, for quite a while, from the Left end of the spectrum.
Many libertarians have found reason to work with ACLU on certain issues and there is no doubt that there is firm common ground on which we stand. In those matters, we can join them. I have been having some exchanges with members of two libertarian e-groups and decided to do some more intense study of ACLU. I wish I could say that this mollified my feelings but it made it worse. What I found out about its origins horrified me. It was the political goal of many of the founders of ACLU to destroy this country and everything it stood for.
ACLU was founded on January 19, 1920. It grew out of a predecessor group, The National Civil Liberties Bureau which in turn had grown out of the American Union Against Militarism, and a soiree that was held in New York City and attended by just about every radical from the thriving New York scene of the time. The founders numbered over 60 but the bulk of the work was assumed by the following core:
When Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses, he was making a statement that was true in a way he could not have envisioned. Communism is the epitome of The Religion of Man as practiced in The Church of Government. In its permutations, national socialism, socialism, including that American liberalism and the governmentalism of both the Republican and Democratic Parties, there is a faith that the government and laws of man, can lead us to perfection. Just pass a law and that makes it so.
The action of opium was unknown to Marx at the time. It works at certain physiologic sites but can be blocked by other agents. If another agent occupies the site, opium cannot work. It’s an either or situation. Religion vs. government works the same way. With Marx, man must satisfy the religious needs of the people but it must force God out. This principle explains the communist need to drive God from our lives and the acquiescence of the rest of the Left. Enter The American Civil Liberties Union.
As we have seen, there was a huge communist presence in ACLU at the beginning. The communists were committed to the overthrow of this country. Indeed, in communist theory, their Nirvana could not be reached without communist world wide hegemony. Part of ACLU’s mission became to drive any reference to God or religion, in any way, out of government and it would pursue it with a vengeance.
Over the years, ACLU sponsored many lawsuits over free speech and it has been consistent in its efforts. It has taken the forefront in the fight against The PATRIOT I & II Acts and some other very controversial actions, most notoriously, to overturn the ban against a Nazi parade and demonstration in Skokie, Illinois. While those jerks shouldn’t have been denied a permit for their parade, it should be noted that the intent of the Nazis was not to recruit or publicize their position, but to provoke. Skokie is home to many Jews and many survivors of the Holocaust lived there. The Skokie incident led to the resignation of many Jewish members. ACLU also has supported the rights of the Ku Klux Klan and the North American Man Boy Love Association. ACLU fought bans of James Joyce’s Ulysses, an attempt by the NAACP to ban the movie Birth of a Nation, a Boston ban of H.L. Mencken’s American Mercury and Margaret Sanger’s public speaking on birth control.
As admirable as ACLU’s consistency has been, it is important to realize that its original reasons may not have been so. Many if not most of ACLU’s founders were searching for ways to protect themselves as they sought to replace the United States government, overthrow it, if necessary. It was a diabolically clever scheme to protect themselves with the very constitution that they wished to destroy. As the organization became more dominated by communists, this was to become a greater factor and since the purging of the 1940s, it has become a lesser one. However, ACLU has never relented in its hostility to anything even remotely religious, especially Christian and most especially Catholic, in public life or acknowledgment. Nothing is too picayune for ACLU to pursue and just when you think they’ve reached the very bottom, they come up with something even more ridiculous.
Over the years ACLU has fought prayers in schools, school vouchers, public school teachers assigned to religious schools (read: Catholic) to supplement instruction in non-religious subjects, release time for Catholic School parents to send their children for religious education, lunches for religious schools and school buses for children in parochial schools. (The last is especially interesting inasmuch as the buses were a safety matter. Without them, the children were endangered and because, often, the parochial schools were even farther than the public schools, the danger was heightened. I infer that ACLU didn’t mind the possibility of Catholic school children dead as part of the price their parents had to pay for them to be educated as they saw fit.) So far, at least, ACLU has not sued to stop municipalities from providing school crossing guards at religious schools, or maybe they have or maybe it’s better not to give them any ideas.
But it got worse. ACLU fought to have The Ten Commandments removed from some courts, Not the federal courts mind you. ACLU knows how to pick its fights. Like the nerd who got the neighborhood bully on his side, ACLU knows not to push the bully too far.
Just recently, ACLU has sued in California to have a cross removed from the emblems of Los Angeles and another town. They complied rather than go through the legal process. They know that ACLU has gotten the deck stacked against them. When someone found that a fish was placed on a Missouri town flag because it represented Jesus Christ, he became ‘offended’ and ACLU successfully sponsored the lawsuit to force its removal. It evidently didn’t matter that the early Christians chose the fish as a symbol of Christ because it represented fertility and abundance in the eastern Mediterranean basin, as it also did in many other cultures. Interestingly, ACLU has not seen fit to sue to remove the symbol of Lady Blind Justice, which was derived from the pagan polytheistic religion of ancient Rome. This would seem to be as much an endorsement of religion as a fish or cross on a flag. (Anyone offended by it? I am.)
Evidently in its monomania, ACLU has forgotten The Declaration of Independence which mentions a creator and God and that ‘all men are created equal’ in the first two sentences. The Declaration states the philosophy of the Constitution which in turn is supposed to guarantee a government that puts it into effect. In Rhode Island, the affiliate opposed a proposed act which would require the reading The Preamble of the state constitution because it invoked God.
This all makes sense if you assume that ACLU is still, at its core, communist. What better way to destroy this country than to undermine its philosophic underpinnings and destroy any link to the source of the solace for its people?
Related article:
THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION – UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS ABOUT THE ORIGINS
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