ACLU Threatens Its Own Members’ Free Speech

posted at 11:09 am on May 24, 2006 by Bryan
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The ACLU–famed defender of terrorists and illegal aliens–may crack down on the right of its own board members to criticize it. Yes, you read that right. The ACLU may come out against basic free speech. Details:

The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization’s policies and internal administration.

“Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting the fact of such disagreement,” the committee that compiled the standards wrote in its proposals.

“Directors should remember that there is always a material prospect that public airing of the disagreement will affect the A.C.L.U. adversely in terms of public support and fund-raising,” the proposals state.

Given the organization’s longtime commitment to defending free speech, some former board members were shocked by the proposals.

You don’t say. Although it’s hard to understand their shock. The ACLU is anything but transparent, and is anything but welcoming of criticism whether it’s external or internal.

The ACLU is, basically, a fraud. It has spent nearly every waking minute since 9-11 taking mighty swings at bat for terrorists, both captured and free range. When the Minutemen–American citizens all–went to the border to highlight the mess down there, the ACLU showed up (drugs in hand) to “monitor” and harass the Minutemen. Who were, of course, merely exercising their rights as American citizens. So this recent proposal isn’t the first time the ACLU has swiped at civil liberties. Ask any Christian group that’s had the misfortune to run up against the ACLU in the past few years about that.

There is a great deal of truth in Prof. Reynolds’ post about this issue today–that the ACLU is suffering in part because it’s catering to its small base of donors. I suspect there’s more to the ACLU’s recent actions that just placating a small donor base, though. Its actions over the past four years regarding terrorism are so one-sided, and its cozy relationship with the Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) so glaringly obvious, that it seems fair to say that the ACLU has become a satellite of CAIR. Whatever else it cares about, CAIR does not care about Americans and their civil liberties.

If the ACLU were as transparent as it demands of everyone else, we could know with certainty whether CAIR funding is having an undue influence on the organization. Though the ACLU’s recent actions make such an investigation more of a confirmation than anything else.

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