What's the ACLU, then, chopped liver? (Was Re: Liberals Re: Ramsey Clark)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Feb 21 08:16:08 PST 2003



>You flatter me, Yoshie, but there is this outfit I belong to and for
>which I work as a cooperating atty called the ACLU which is full of
>liberals who defend civil liberties in time of crisis. It's almsot
>certainly much larger than all the far left group in America put
>together. The ACLU didn't do so good in the first Cold War period
>(late 40s, early 50s), but it's done fine since. jks

It's true that the ACLU is a dedicated and dependable defender of liberty, and you have worthy allies in the organization as far as defense of civil rights and liberties at home is concerned. I'm not sure, however, of where members of the ACLU stand when it comes to the defense of republicanism, i.e. the principle of self-government of an independent people, which the rejection of the "White Man's Burden" entails. For all I know, some or even all in the ACLU actually share, for instance, your view of the "war on terrorism" (investigate, arrest, and prosecute terrorist suspects according to domestic and international laws, rather than drop bombs on Afghans and others, assassinate terrorist suspects, or take other illegal actions), but I'm not acquainted with its public stance on the Empire's claim to the right to intervention in other nations' affairs and exercise of power in pursuit of it in general, which I believe compromises freedoms of Americans and other peoples fundamentally. As the "war on terrorism" creates more and more cases of violations of civil rights and liberties of individuals in combination with violations of other nations' sovereignty (e.g., terrorist suspects kidnapped without formal extradition and then pushed into a legal limbo with no or few rights), the ACLU may have to say something more public about the Empire, too, even though the organization does not exist for that purpose. -- Yoshie

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