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

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Fri Feb 21 08:44:58 PST 2003


You're changing the subject. Yoshie. The ACLU is not an all-around political organization, it's not a peace or anti-imperialist group, it's a civil liberties group. You said that liberals (except me) don't defend civil liberties, I replied that the main defense of civil liberties in this country comes from the ACLU, a big liberal group. Here's the list of "issues" from the ACLU's main page that gives an idea of what we do:

Criminal Justice

Cyber-Liberties

Death Penalty

Disability Rights

Drug Policy

Free Speech

HIV/AIDS

Immigrants Rights

Int'l Civil Liberties

Lesbian & Gay Rights

National Security

Police Practices

Prisons

Privacy & Technology

Racial Equality

Religious Liberty

Reproductive Rights

Rights of the Poor

Students Rights

Voting Rights

Women's Rights

Workplace Rights

Our plate is pretty full. Maybe you are right about the future of the organization, but it's simply not true that liberals don't care about liberties -- at least ACLU liberals do.

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
>
> * Calendar of Events in Columbus:
> <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
> * Student International Forum:
> <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine:
> <http://www.osudivest.org/>
> * Al-Awda-Ohio:
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>

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