Why the ACLU Males Me Nervous

Back in the early 1990s the then-new-head of the ACLU was interviewed by Reason Magazine. One of the questions asked was why the ACLU ignored the 2nd Amendment and gun control in general. The answer was illuminating.

It seems that the ACLU is not protecting constitutional liberties. Their goal is to protect "natural" civil liberties. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are tools that they use but no more than that.

So who decides what civil liberties need protecting? They do. Specifically, their board of directors decides what their specific policies are on issues.

That's why the ACLU sometimes seems so rudderless, at least to conservatives and libertarians. I judge civil liberties by their constitutional protections. Changing the Constitution is justifiably difficult and represents the consensus viewpoint of a super-majority of the nation.

Here are some examples taken from their web site:

Your First Amendment rights-freedom of speech, association and assembly. Freedom of the press, and freedom of religion supported by the strict separation of church and state.

Note the words I italicized. This is not what the First Amendments says. Here is how it is worded in the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

The ACLU's version justifies suppression of all public references to religion. Schools no longer teach that the Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom, just freedom (or more likely, the Pilgrims are not taught at all).

Here's another one from their web site:

Your right to privacy - freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs.

The constitutional background for this is complicated. The closest provision in the Bill of Rights is the 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In addition, the Supreme Court "discovered" a right to privacy between a woman and her doctor in their Roe v. Wade ruling.

The purpose of the warrant is to keep the police from making general house-to-house searches to see what they turn up. This was done under the British and was one of the reasons that we demanded independence.

The ACLU opposes the Patriot Act, particularly the part that allows delayed delivery of a warrant. The wording in the 4th Amendment has nothing to say on the matter implying that the fact that law enforcement officers have sworn out a warrant is enough.

The ACLU goes on:

We work also to extend rights to segments of our population that have traditionally been denied their rights, including Native Americans and other people of color; lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people; women; mental-health patients; prisoners; people with disabilities; and the poor.

I wonder why lesbians lead the list? I also wonder exactly what they had in mind when they included the poor? Do they mean the poor's lack of access to representation or their lack of access to money?

While I can quibble about the wording on their web page, a bigger problem is that the ACLU goes beyond their official limits. They have a whole section on immigrants rights which is too long to reproduce here but it stresses legal immigrants and the rights of foreigners once they enter the US. Nothing is said about the unlimited right of foreigners to enter the US but that has been their policy. The ACLU was the biggest opponent of Operation Minuteman. This project placed volunteers with binoculars and cell phones near the Mexican border. When they spotted a group of people entering the country illegally they called the authorities. Contact between the Minutemen and the illegals was strictly prohibited. When one volunteer saved a Mexican from dying of thirst, he was sent home.

So why would the ACLU fight this? Because they decided that everyone in the world has the right to enter the US (and thereby receive all the benefits of citizenship without having to become citizens).

I do not oppose the ACLU on all issues and I greatly admire them for some of the stands they have taken in the past. At the same time, I sometimes feel that they are as oppressive about establishing their own values as any government and as intolerant of other's beliefs as some hate groups.