-Caveat Lector-
In the Name of "Civil Liberties"
by Joseph Sobran
The American Civil Liberties Union has been in business so long that it’s a
miracle that we have any civil liberties left. Though revered by the media as
the "watchdog of the Bill of Rights," the ACLU has always been devoted to the
destruction of the Constitution. And still is.
Just the other day, the ACLU’s Hawaii branch scrapped plans to invite Justice
Clarence Thomas to speak. One ACLU board member compared Thomas to Hitler and
called him "an anti-Christ."
Such vilification recalls the ACLU’s origins as a fellow-traveling pro-Soviet
organization, when ideological enemies were slandered in the roundest terms,
"fascist" being a favorite epithet. It’s telling that Thomas is likened to
Hitler rather than Stalin: during the 1930s, the ACLU was full of Stalinists,
even on its national board. It reluctantly removed some of them when Stalin
made his shocking pact with Hitler in 1939.
It later apologized for purging itself of such flagrant apostles of
totalitarianism, but it has never explained how men like William Z. Foster,
America’s leading Communist, could be working for Joe Stalin and the Bill of
Rights at the same time. Cynics like Foster were prating about constitutional
rights in America, knowing that in Russia, meanwhile, Stalin was torturing
and murdering millions who enjoyed no civil liberties or legal protections
whatsoever.
As Eugene Lyons wrote in his 1941 book The Red Decade: "The presence of
Stalin’s henchmen on an American organization of this type was an irony that
no amount of sophistry could erase." It’s only ironic if you’re naive enough
to assume that the ACLU has anything to do with liberty.
But the Reds and their fellow-travelers specialized in appropriating
venerable words for their causes and front groups, which were always
"liberal," "progressive," "democratic," and the like. One outfit of American
volunteers who fought for Stalin in the Spanish Civil War was called the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The old words and symbols were used to fool the
public, while the leftists were fighting for the very opposite of their
professed aims.
Today the ACLU is laboring to force the Boy Scouts of America to accept
homosexual scoutmasters. What happened to the freedom of association, which
the ACLU has always claimed for Communists? Isn’t Scouting a "valid
alternative lifestyle"? Aren’t private organizations allowed to set their own
standards and live by their own rules? And shouldn’t a group devoted to civil
liberties be fighting against state coercion, rather than for it?
Communism as we once knew it is gone, but not the sort of people who
supported it while it lasted. And they still use the same old semantic
tricks, such as using phrases like "civil liberties" and "civil rights" while
fighting for abridgments of liberty and individual rights.
Though its name appeals to our desire for limited government, the ACLU really
stands for enlarged government power. Always has, and always will. It hates
Clarence Thomas because he sincerely favors what the ACLU itself only
pretends to favor: strictly constitutional government. The hypocrite
recognizes the honest man as his deadly enemy.
And leftists have always used the coarsest smear tactics against their
enemies. Even though Stalin is no longer around to supervise the vilification
campaigns, that hasn’t changed either. Political libel is an abiding legacy
of the Red Decade.
Of course the ACLU has no obligation to welcome Thomas, but then the Boy
Scouts have no obligation to welcome homosexuals. This is so basic you wonder
why there’s any argument about it. But the Stalinist impulse to subjugate
every free institution remains; it neither began nor died with Stalin.
We can be grateful that the crudity of the Red Decade is long past, with its
brutal one-man tyranny backed by adulating hordes of willing servitors. But
today we face a more bland, refined, and subtle version of the desire for an
all-powerful state, in which every institution is politicized.
Using lawyers rather than firing squads, leftist groups like the ACLU have
perfected their techniques. The size and scope of government power are still
increasing, under both Republican and Democratic rule.
If the Scouts can be forced to take on homosexual scoutmasters, why shouldn’t
churches and synagogues be told what kind of clergy they may have? Will the
ACLU draw the line at imposing "civil liberties" on religious institutions?
Why should it?
July 13, 2001
Joe Sobran is a nationally syndicated columnist. He also writes "Washington
Watch" for The Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper, and edits SOBRAN'S, a
monthly newsletter of his essays and columns.
Get a free copy of Joe Sobran's lecture, "How Tyranny Came to America" by
subscribing to SOBRAN'S. See www.sobran.com for details. For a free sample of
SOBRAN'S or for more information, call 800-513-5053.
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