Tuesday, June 28, 2005

ACLU CORRECTNESS

(Post lifted from Bacon Bits)

I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself… I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.

Roger Baldwin (1884-1981). Founder, The American Civil Liberties Union


Think of that for a second. This is the founder of the ACLU speaking. I'm unwilling to let leftist elites claim that this quote is being taken out of context, that the ACLU stands ultimately for anything other than Baldwin's Weltanschauung. Just look at their actions, which speak louder than any of their mission statements. A key way that the ACLU's actions resonate with godless Communistic goals is in its systematic efforts to remove Christianity from the American public square.

Balance their efforts to thwart religious free speech for Christians with an example of their inaction. From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, this Letter to the Editor from 19 June 2005 says it all:

Has anyone wondered why the ACLU has not filed a suit to stop the government from paying for Qurans and prayer rugs for Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay?

If the government were paying for Bibles and rosary beads, the ACLU would be raising hell.

I think this demonstrates that the ACLU is not really concerned about the separation of church and state (in this case, mosque and state). It is concerned only about the influence of Christianity, because it knows Christianity stands in the way of its real goal, the same goal of other leftists, which is the supremacy of the state.

Frank Haller Scott


Rank hypocrisy? It sure is. Isn't it comforting to know that your tax dollars are supporting the ACLU.

There is now legislation before Congress that, if passed, could severely limit the hypocritical ACLU's ability to erode our nation's Christian heritage. Look into the Public Expression of Religion Act (PERA) of 2005 -- House bill HR 2679. If this bill is passed and signed by the President, PERA would eliminate the awarding of federal taxpayer funds to the attorneys for plaintiffs in Establishment Clause challenges to the 1st Amendment. These cases are taken by the ACLU (and others) pro bono for the express purpose of gaining these federal funds.

If the awarding of federal funding is removed, the number of these lawsuits which lead to the removal of our public expression freedoms might decrease. Regardless, if the ACLU and other organizations are so devoted to these causes, they should prosecute them with their own funds, not at taxpayer expense.



MORE ON THE ACLU: POLYGAMY

Socialists want to tear down existing society. The ACLU is in the forefront of that:

In a little-reported speech offered at Yale University earlier this year, ACLU president Nadine Strossen stated that her organization has "defended the right of individuals to engage in polygamy." Yale Daily News says Strossen was responding to a "student's question about gay marriage, bigamy, and polygamy." She continued, saying that her legal organization "defend[s] the freedom of choice for mature, consenting individuals," making the ACLU "the guardian of liberty ... defend[ing] the fundamental rights of all people."

The ACLU's newly revealed defense of polygamy may weaken the pro-homosexual argument for changing the traditional definition of marriage. Proponents of same-sex "marriage" have long insisted that their effort to include homosexual couples in that definition would only be that. However, conservative and traditional marriage advocates predict "other shoes will drop" if homosexual marriage is legalized -- perhaps including attempts to legalize polygamy and to changed current legal definitions of child-adult relationships.

Crawford Broadcasting radio talk-show host Paul McGuire concurs. He says in his opinion, the ACLU "has declared legal war on the traditional family." "Now the ACLU is defending polygamy," he continues, in response to Strossen's comments. "You know, there are male and female lawyers who wake up in the morning and are actually proud of being ACLU lawyers. But I think the majority of Americans view ACLU lawyers as people who hate America and who want to destroy all Judeo-Christian values and beliefs." McGuire summarizes by saying that Strossen's organization seems "to only defend things that tear down the fabric of society."

More here



HAS LEFTIST CORRECTNESS PASSED ITS PEAK?

Excerpts from a review of Brian C. Anderson's "South Park Conservatives"

As time passed an odd transformation occurred: the Puritans were now all on the left. Dour, humorless, self-righteous, eager to use the coercive power of the state to impose ideological orthodoxy, so-called "liberals" and "progressives" had become enemies of freedom. These days the humorless, repressed enforcers of rigid standards of behavior are the politically correct professors and media pundits, the dour feminists ("That's not funny!"), the race-tribunes, and the identity-politics hacks that monitor the media and popular culture for any deviations from the party line of liberal dogma, multiculturalism, and victim-politics.

The champions of freedom, in contrast, today are more likely to be found on the right, where one can find diversity of thought, freewheeling discussion, impatience with orthodoxy, a commitment to individual freedom, and anarchic humor. And, as Brian Anderson documents in his fast-paced, entertaining analysis of how conservatism has flourished in recent years, the result has been the weakening of the liberal dominance over the media and popular culture.

Anderson starts with a quick survey of "the old media regime," as he calls it, and its propensity for selecting and shaping news to suit its liberal biases. In the Reagan years, for example, the media depictions of what they called a "homeless" person "looked like your hard-working family-man neighbor, suddenly, catastrophically down on his luck because of a bad economy and a lack of 'affordable housing,' not the drug-addled, gibberish-spouting, fist-waving deinstitutionalized lunatic he was likely to be in the real world." So too with abortion: supporters are rarely called "liberal," but opponents are regularly tagged as "conservative." Pro-life protests get scant coverage, even though a 2003 survey found 51% of women either don't support abortion at all or do so only in cases of incest and rape.

More recently, the coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with its emphasis on civilian and U.S. casualties and setbacks, has reflected the media's liberal prejudices. At the same time the U.S. army was achieving one of the swiftest victories in military history, "the elite press proclaimed imminent U.S. defeat, trumpeted every purported injustice or error committed by our troops, and, Cold War-style, even sympathized with the enemy." Coverage of antiwar protests, most of which have been coordinated by leftist if not outright-Communist organizations, was as "indulgent and celebratory" as coverage of the war was grim and critical. Worse, the coverage implied a greater support for the protests than actually existed: "In thirty-eight different stories on antiwar street demonstrations, CNN noted only once that most Americans did not support the protestors' views." And of course, popular culture has been as biased liberally as the media, demonizing businessmen, Christians, and conservatives even as it celebrates and approves sexual deviancy and heathenism.

The liberal-leftist monopoly over media and popular culture has fostered as well what Anderson calls "illiberal liberalism," "an ugly habit of left-liberal political argument to dismiss conservative ideas as if they don't deserve a hearing, and to redefine mainstream conservative views as extremism and bigotry." Many liberals and leftists are enabled in this addiction by a media that seldom calls them on their use of question-begging epithets like "racist," "sexist," "homophobic," and "insensitive" in order to avoid serious debate and defense of their ideas. Thus reasoned debate, the lifeblood of participatory government, is excluded from much of the public square, and politics degenerates into a quasi-religious obeisance to ideas and values no matter how worn out or pernicious.....

For me the best part of the book is the chapter on "South Park Anti-Liberals." The raunchy, foul-mouthed, frequently vulgar show on cable television's Comedy Central provides some of the most devastating puncturing of liberal pretensions and smug self-satisfaction.....

The popularity of such shows among the young has contributed to what Anderson calls in his last chapter "campus conservatives rising." From being non-existent or nearly invisible on college campuses a decade ago, conservative students have increased their numbers and become much bolder at challenging their professors and college administrators on hot-button issues such as affirmative action and abortion. College Republican groups, for example, have tripled in just six years, with 120,000 members (compared to 100,00 College Democrats). And surveys of student attitudes find a corresponding increase in conservative and libertarian views among college students, a change reflected as well in the increasing numbers of conservative college newspapers. Anderson also rightly credits organizations such as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which since 1953 has fostered and supported conservative ideas in higher education. Thanks to ISI and other groups such as the Students for Academic Freedom and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, "the Left's hold on academe is beginning to loosen," as Anderson writes. The consequence will be the creation of the intellectual diversity that universities are supposed to promote, but have sacrificed in the last few decades to a rigid ideological conformity harmful both to democratic politics and to the development of a critical mind....

Anderson ends with some salutary caution about thinking that the culture war is over and the left has lost. Yet all the trends are in the right direction. Mainstream media can no longer get away with partial or biased reporting, now that cable news alternatives and Internet blogs are around to monitor them. And the fact that these days liberal dogma is the elite authority in schools means that the rebellious and populist inclinations of young people will be focused precisely on the those smug and sanctimonious authorities. The net result will be to compel the liberal-left "to reexamine, argue, and refine its positions, so many of which have proved disastrously wrong, and stop living off the past. It's hard to imagine that this development won't result in a broader, richer, deeper national debate." And in a greater scope for the liberating power of truth.

More here

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