Has the ACLU Lost Its Mind?
Etzioni, Amitai
Has The ACLU Lost Its Mind? By taking on truly bizarre cases—from defending tobacco companies to child molesters—the old left's favorite interest group is undermining its reputation and cheapening...
...But more importantly, the ACLU has never been able to explain satisfactorily how its position in support of unbounded money bags is compatible with a free give-and-take of ideas...
...In New York City, a teacher is openly advocating having sex with young boys...
...But these people violated the law, and the public is clearly in need and fully entitled to find them and help ensure that they will make amends (pay up, ship out, etc...
...When it comes to metal detectors in schools, the ACLU is truly daffy...
...Funds are granted to whomever is favored by the managers of PAC associations (such as the National Rifle Association, various banks, and several labor unions...
...In the fifties, the ACLU was a leader in the battle against the McCarthy era "loyalty oaths...
...Meanwhile, if the ACLU tries, it may be able to find at least somewhat more worthy causes to assign to its lawyers...
...The case involved none other than Senator Alfonse D'Amato's brother Armand, who was convicted of fraud in a plan to influence the senator...
...The detectors are a measure of the desperation of schools that face, on an average day, 135,000 children who come to school with loaded guns...
...But only those who keep close tabs realize that the ACLU has gone silly...
...Prior to 1920, the year the ACLU was founded, the Supreme Court had never upheld a free speech claim under the First Amendment...
...What you may not know is that the group has accepted more than $500,000 in contributions from the tobacco industry...
...It's far from evident why such applications of a database are troubling to the point that we should forgo the health care card...
...The ACLU's argument, absurd as it sounds, is that baggy pants and bandannas are forms of political expression...
...Expulsions, it argues, may consign students "to a life even more disadvantaged than it might have been otherwise...
...President Clinton proudly waved in front of the nation the symbol of his universal health care plan—a national health security card...
...The ACLU's regional director in Texas questioned the constitutionality of dress codes imposed by malls that discourage certain clothing items favored by gang members, such as bandannas and baggy pants...
...Its protection of the right of youngsters to wear T-shirts that display social and political slogans is a sound part of its protection of free speech...
...friends argue that friends should not criticize a beleaguered champion of the freedom of speech...
...Legal scholars may well raise some questions about the standing of commercial speech as distinct from political and social speech...
...Moreover, would anybody be better off—other than maybe computer staffers—if we apprehended these offenders by drawing on a separate database for each subgroup instead of a single comprehensive database...
...Not so fast, says the ACLU...
...Some democratic participation...
...While Common Cause, People for The American Way, Congress Watch, The Communitarian Network, and practically all other reform-minded groups strongly oppose the unlimited flow of private money into the coffers of elected officials in the form of campaign contributions to politicians, the ACLU maintains that the flow should go on uninhibited on the ground that "money is speech...
...Even these days, occasionally it still gets the job right...
...And they'll raise the other eyebrow—and much more—when they learn that the ACLU received more than $500,000 in contributions from the tobacco industry—and did not disclose this to the public or its members...
...In effect, it accepts and legitimizes the self-serving arguments of special interest groups that use PACs to sway legislators—that this money gives citizens opportunities to participate in democratic politics...
...The ACLU used to play an important role in our nation, particularly in the protection and expansion of First Amendment rights...
...While the detectors do not solve the problem, and clearly much more needs to be done to stem violence, screening reduces gun fatalities...
...Several bar associations attacked the ruling on the flimsy grounds that such a billing practice is common among lawyers and that it is protected by client-lawyer privilege...
...What are these other nefarious purposes...
...It could also allow potential patients to carry in their pockets their medical histories and other relevant information on the cards' magnetic strips, to be "read" by whomever the cardholders choose...
...Amitai Etzioni is the author o/The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda and the founder of the Communitarian Network...
...If some other group, say, one that favors a ban on pornography, pocketed $500,000 on the q.t...
...Champions of free speech should seek to ensure that all are able to speak freely...
...But even ACLU aficionados did a double take when they read that the organization had marshaled its legal big guns to protect the rights of lawyers to file misleading bills...
...To be fair, the ACLU is at least consistent...
...The ACLU trivializes rights and adds to litigiousness when it pursues many of these cases...
...The ACLU recently honed its long-standing talent to find, in a world full of the downtrodden, the most bizarre cases...
...When New York ACLU representative Arthur Eisenberg was asked what the hell possessed the ACLU to side with Armand, he explained: The ACLU is concerned that D'Am-ato would be convicted, not of influence peddling, but under a Federal mail fraud statute, and the ACLU believes the wording of these statutes is not sufficiently precise...
...Even if the ACLU has a good case, you can rest assured that it will find a way to ride it ad absurdum...
...However, the probability may well be just as high and the crime at least as hideous...
...Candidates without deep pockets do poorly in elections dominated by money, no matter what the content of their messages...
...the ACLU argues that his right to speak is being violated...
...In its first year, the ACLU helped gain the release of hundreds of prisoners whose only crime had been that they spoke out against World War I. During World War II, the ACLU provided one of the few voices that condemned the relocation of Japanese-Americans to internment camps...
...In other words, it's better for all students to learn in fear of being shot than to expel the ones carrying guns...
...You have two different views, [and] this is not the way to go...
...Unless you believe that the only value we care about is free speech, we are entitled to wonder whether parents should be expected to leave their children with an advocate of pedophilia...
...Seeking deadbeat dads, university graduates who welshed on their student loans, and illegal immigrants...
...But this is far from self-evident...
...The fact is that contributions are collected from individuals who are not allowed to designate which politician will receive the PAC money...
...As a rule, contributors to PACs are not told even after the fact who got their bucks...
...Some recent ACLU peculiarities have explanations, but you will not find them in legal textbooks...
...And the reference is not to eight in the evening...
...Personally, I can't see much political content in any kind of pants...
...It is far from self-evident what is wrong if, indeed, it is the case that police and teachers see things differently...
...However, even the ACLU acknowledges that one may not shout fire in a crowded theater (though it often adds, "unless there really is a fire...
...The executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Norman Siegel, told a reporter that "the cops see these kids as criminals...
...Armand collected money from a corporation by billing it for legal services that were never performed...
...The card could facilitate compilation of national statistics on the uses of health care resources, vital if waste is to be curbed...
...Just as not every time one shouts fire do scared crowds overrun people, so not every time a teacher advocates molesting young children are they actually abused...
...Got it...
...By taking on truly bizarre cases—from defending tobacco companies to child molesters—the old left's favorite interest group is undermining its reputation and cheapening free speech BY AMITAI ETZIONI Foes of the American Civil Liberties Union believe it has veered off to the left...
...Money buys consultants, studies of the hidden crevices of the public's mind, and massive TV ads...
...educators see them as consumers of school services...
...Actually, the facts are that the police, far from arresting the truants, simply shepherd them to schools, where everyone agrees they belong...
...Jan Lori Goldman, head of the organization's project on privacy and technology, explains: "The problem is that the databases are enticing...
...In exchange, Armand promised the corporation access to Senator D'Am-ato...
...When the new mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, tried to get kids back into school by drawing on new community police officers to help locate truants, the ACLU protested...
...Presumably the reason the ACLU is willing to tolerate an exception to the First Amendment is that the "proximity" of the cause (shouting) to public harm (being trampled) is closer than in the teacher's classroom...
...The ACLU argues that all it is doing is sticking to its traditional defense of commercial free speech, a fundamental part of the First Amendment...
...The teacher has been suspended until hearings are completed about his future assignment...
...It's like allowing those who advocate arson to be in charge of fire safety in schools...
...Our liberties would be better protected if the ACLU would focus its zeal where it matters, rather than on drummed up, far out, or indefensible cases...
...People want to use them for other purposes...
...You may know that the ACLU is fighting for the rights of cigarette companies to advertise their products...
...A case in point is the ACLU endeavor to protect the jobs of whistleblowers...
...The ACLU is fighting to preserve the right of the tobacco industry to advertise cigarettes...
...Private money in politics is often compared to a person who brings a huge, expensive amplifier to a town meeting and drowns out everybody else...
...He is a leader of NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association), a national association whose slogan is "sex after eight is too late...
...The opposition to this measure is led by the Southern California chapter of the ACLU, which opposes not merely the gates but also the expulsion of students caught carrying guns...
...However, its active opposition to dress codes in schools and shopping malls is stretching matters too far...
...Many of the principles for which it fought are now taken for granted...
...I bet that the fire department and sanitation officers look at the same kids in still different ways...
...from, say, the Christian Coalition, you can bet the ACLU would be in its face...
...But all in the know will raise at least one eyebrow when they learn that the ACLU also fought a congressional bill that would have cut the tax deductibility of tobacco promotions...
Vol. 26 • January 1994 • No. 10
