A TIME FOR TESTING

...Prosperity and peace have been ours in rare degree...

...Indeed, one of the main reasons why they launched a revolution and established a new nation was that they wanted a government based on the consent of the governed—one that would secure to all men the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...

...Fortunately, in the 30 years since the United States came of age and the American Civil Liberties Union was founded, there have been great gains in one area of civil liberties—equality of treatment under the law...

...Four score and seven years had passed between the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, which was delivered in the midst of "a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure...

...Then every new idea at home tends to be labeled as foreign, disloyal, and subversive...

...But it confronts people with an almost unmanageable problem, creating a vast and intricate and dynamic system of inter-relationships which may collapse at any minute...

...It calls on all Americans to re-read President Truman's veto message and to re-examine carefully the wisdom of the various provisions of the act, looking toward its prompt amendment—perhaps general repeal, with specific re-enactment of its valuable portions...

...McCarthy before a Senate investigating committee...

...Let no one delude himself that this is a temporary or superficial condition...

...Too much organization means stagnation and tyranny, too much freedom means weakness and anarchy...

...Now, 30 years along in its history, the American Civil Liberties Union must render its specialized service to the American nation and the American people in a setting of economic complexity and international tension much greater than in 1920—immeasurably greater than in 1776...

...It is no accident that the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union occurred at that moment of immense national and international significance...

...Its own people are educated to expect freedom and justice and equality, and are ready to give their last full measure of devotion only if they are confident of the continuance and development of freedom and justice and equality...

...Labor unions had a tiny membership, and were hounded by yellow-dog contracts, injunctions, and violent interference with their efforts to organize, strike, picket, and bargain collectively...

...He demands that the industrial system be managed smoothly and equitably, so that he may have continuous employment and an abundance of the good things which it makes possible...

...It will be with us for as far ahead as we can see, because it is rooted deep in the two major characteristics of our era— industrial complexity and international tension...

...The American Civil Liberties Union is utterly opposed to Communism, and believes that subversive acts should be prevented and punished...

...We must oppose the revocation of bail for Harry Bridges so long as he avoids actual subversion, the procedures under the Federal loyalty program which violate the rights of due process and fair trial, and the antics of Sen...

...Exactly the same number of years have now passed between the Gettysburg Address and the Truman Message of Aug...

...At the very least, liberty-—whether the independence of a country or the right of a citizen—always exacts the price of eternal vigilance...

...They have to be guarded and developed...

...The founding fathers believed PATRICK MURPHY MALIN is director of the American CiviJ Liberties Union, having succeeded Roger Baldwin last year...

...We must hold hard to the principles of J. Edgar Hoover's statement of July 26: "The FBI is interested in receiving facts...

...II Democratic government is at heart the practice of the three-fold doctrine of civil liberties, as majestically announced in the Declaration of Independence and carefully elaborated in the Constitution and its amendment: 1—Government by the people, grounded on free religion and free expression—for everybody...

...The act will embarrass our democracy in its world-wide struggle for the minds of men, by making us appear hypocritical in our professed devotion to civil liberties—shaming us in the eyes of both our friends and our enemies, as frightened deserters of our own basic principles...

...And people all over the world need to be convinced again and again of the sincerity of democracy in its struggle with autocracy...

...Moreover, its rise has coincided with—stimulating, and being stimulated by—the rise of the so-called common man...

...He was American director of the International Migration Service in 1940-1942, price executive of the OPA's Chemicals and Drug Branch, an official of the relief and rehabilitation program of the State Department, and vice-director of the relief and rehabilitation program of Refugees, London...

...He is president of the National Council on Religion...

...Tyranny can rely on power, at home and abroad...

...Observance and enforcement of those principles through legislative and executive and judicial processes is a never-ending struggle...

...Good luck has done a lot for the freedom of the United States and its people...

...But the problem which we of the American Civil Liberties Union try to help the American nation and the American people to solve is essentially as old as history itself...

...Modern machinery does wonderful things for people, increasing their productivity of goods and services and leisure far beyond ancient dreams of avarice...

...All individual and social life is an adjustment—an adjustment between two intense human needs, the need for organization and the need for freedom...

...His demands imply social stress and strain over what reforms are practicable and just, and freedom of expression and due process are exposed to a triple threat...

...Standpatters often want to silence the reformers, crusaders often want to limit civil liberties only to their special brands of agitation...

...They were not interested in bringing forth merely a new nation...

...There is still no justification for complacency...

...3—Equality of the people, in the privileges and immunities of citizens —for everybody...

...We run no such individual risks as they did, but freedom is always a risky business...

...they have to be applied in constantly changing circumstances...

...Those who specialize in defending civil liberties are obligated to recognize the special claims of national survival in a time of war or rumors of war...

...V The Union has announced its readiness to aid in court tests of those provisions of the act which it regards as unconstitutional...

...we are not interested in what a person thinks but in what he does which undermines our internal security . . . Hysteria, witch-hunts, and vigilantes weaken internal security . . . We all can contribute to our internal security by protecting the innocent as well as by identifying the enemies within our midst...

...and he has the newspaper and the radio, through which he can be informed and influenced, and through which he can make his demands felt...

...Democracy must take account of right...

...2—Specific rights guaranteed to the people, such as due process and fair trial—for everybody...

...Formerly a professor of economics at Swarth-more College, he has been identified in recent years with a number of non-academic activities...

...III It is in the other two areas of civil liberties—freedom of expression, and due process and fair trial —where we are having most of our trouble, and where we are unfortunately destined to have more trouble...

...But ever since World War I, when America came of age in a special sense, we have been increasingly in need of good management, also...

...All Americans should make sure that the passage of this act does not cause a general cancellation of free speech and other civil liberties—either by fear of exercising their own rights, or by suppression of the rights of others...

...For reasons of national survival alone, a democratic nation cannot afford to let its friends become embarrassed or faint-hearted...

...But we must keep such measures from becoming an indiscriminate penalization of simple difference of opinion among genuine patriots...

...They are obligated to help their fellow-citizens and their government to work out, from day to day, the best possible adjustment between those special claims and the enduring values of civil liberties...

...As the New York Times said editorially, this is "legislation which is couched in language so broad that it could seriously infringe upon individual liberty, which could set a precedent for interference with the traditional freedom of political parties or political organization, which as a practical matter might defeat its own purpose and which at the present time is not necessary for the defense of our institutions...

...Negro citizens also are advancing along their road to equality of treatment...

...That desire cost them something...

...But their fundamental obligation remains to fight for the most nearly absolute and complete preservation of civil liberties that is possible, for everybody and under all circumstances...

...It cannot afford to give its enemies a propaganda weapon to use against it with deadly effect among the overwhelming mass of people who—all over the world outside of a few favored regions— live and work in misery, unacquainted or only a little acquainted with the freedom and justice and equality which we so glibly promise them...

...Combining provisions originally identified by the names of Mundt, Nixon, McCarran, Hobbs, and Kil-gore, the final omnibus form of this legislation lumps together matters which should have been dealt with separately, and contains last-minute provisions which are of great importance but which were given no chance of thorough discussion...

...All this would be bad enough without the complication of international tension...

...We must oppose wholesale exclusion from unions of aliens who cannot get citizenship or have not taken out their first papers, the General Foods Corporation's cancellation of Jean Muir's contract for "The Aldrich Family" on the radio —and the Internal Security Act of 1950...

...Machinery began to be important about the same time as this free nation of free people was coming into existence...

...Many Senators and Congressmen seem to have hastily surrendered—on the eve of an election—to actual or supposed popular hysteria, abdicating their proper function as rational and discriminating representatives...

...But it becomes terrible when our nation is locked in titanic struggle with another nation, whose political and economic and social system is the opposite of our own...

...Organizers are even now beaten up, and the Taft-Hartley Act continues to embody a number of threats if full employment should sag...

...Now they are a mighty force, equipped with a great amount of legal status...

...and our Government has the right and duty to take measures to secure the freedom of our nation against them...

...And even the war strength of a democracy depends in great degree on its success in continuing to practice what it preaches...

...but it regards most of them as unwise or unconstitutional, or both...

...8, 1950 on interna] security, which was sent to Congress near the beginning of a new time for testing...

...Not only is all life an experiment, as that grand old man of the free and the brave, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, frequently reminded us...

...IV Now, there are such things as espionage and sabotage and other forms of disloyalty and subversion...

...But we are well on our way, and eternal vigilance will keep us traveling rapidly...

...Hence, we must oppose such slapdash methods as the University of California's oath for faculty members, the Pittsburgh school board's refusal to open one of its buildings to a meeting of the Progressive Party (an action incongruously approved by local CIO and AFL officials), and the Birmingham ordinance requiring Communists to leave town...

...They were interested in bringing forth a nation of a particular kind— a nation of free and equal people...

...The problem always is: how much organization, how much freedom...

...Organisation is needed for internal order and external protection, freedom is needed for variety and progress...

...Truths are not literally "self-evident," rights are not literally "inalienable...

...They knew that it required them to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor...

...It approves a few provisions of the • Internal Security Act, and does not object to several others...

...This year has also seen another rejection of the President's civil rights program in Congress, and the necessity of a tremendous effort to obtain a partial victory in the Stuyvesant Town housing case in New York...

...The American Civil Liberties Union agrees that, for America's own sake and for the whole world's sake, this country must be both a free nation and a free people...

...As the President so well pointed out, "we face today, as we have always faced in times of international tension, the question of how to keep our freedom secure against internal as well as external attack, without at the same time unduly limiting individual rights and liberties . . . Success in achieving both these objectives [security and liberty] is of exceptional importance in the present period of international tension...

...This summer of 1950, for example, has seen a unanimous Supreme Court accord its high sanction to the Negro's right of equal access to public education, and Miss Althea Gibson play in the national women's tennis tournament at Forest Hills...

...The ACLU believes that most of the provisions of the act represent a danger to the constitutional rights of all American citizens, and that they will perversely weaken national security against subversive acts— by driving the Communists completely underground, among other ways...

...That is peculiarly the problem of democratic government— today, and forever...

...Once again, there is not the least warrant for smugness...

...The kind of nation which is to survive conflict remains vitally important...

...and, as government assumes ever-widening responsibility for economic well-being, administrators often use official power to throttle criticism...

...He can now read, and vote...

...But here too we can be heartily thankful for measurable advance, and take new courage for unremitting watchfulness and work...