TAKING LIBERTIES
With help from the media and by waving the Constitution, the ACLU intends to dismantle America
BY KEN WARD

Ken Ward is opinion page editor of the Press Journal in Vero Beach, Fla. A Las Vegas resident from 1990-2002, he was a freelance columnist with the R-J and assistant managing editor at the Sun. E-mail him at kenricward@juno.com  Other stories by Ken Ward

"I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal."
- Roger Baldwin, 1950

There you have it: the mission statement of the American Civil Liberties Union, as expressed by its founder. With its faux constitutionalism and fawning media coverage, today's ACLU is bent on dismantling this country - and everything it stands for. When ACLU lawyers argue a case, you can be sure that morality, national security, public order and commonsense are under attack.

Thus, the ACLU:

• Battles the Boy Scouts while defending the North American Man/Boy Love Association.
• Attempts to quash religious speech (most recently at Henderson's Foothill High School) while representing the rights of atheists.
• Uses the courts to block the U.S. government from hunting down terrorists while looking to international law to "interpret" the U.S. Constitution.
• Files lawsuits on behalf of detainees at Guantanamo, but does nothing for six U.S. servicemen shackled at Camp Pendleton on charges of killing an Iraqi.

Most amazingly, the ACLU does all this while wrapping itself in the Stars and Stripes. Again, Baldwin: "We want to look like patriots in everything we do. We want to get a lot of flags, talk a good deal about the Constitution and what our forefathers wanted to make of this country."

That's enough to send George Washington spinning in his grave. Josef Stalin must be quite pleased, however.

From affirmative action to gay rights to promoting free speech for pornographers (one commercial enterprise this outfit does support), the ACLU wages its perverse war with the help of friendly fire from a gulled media and gullible Libertarians.

These latter two groups deserve special attention.

Misconstruing its own slogan of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, the mainstream media compliantly serve the ACLU's well-heeled base - mainly Jewish trial attorneys and an assortment of guilt-ridden liberals.

Whatever the issue, the ACLU positions itself for the "little guy" or the "victim." The press, always eager to trumpet the cause of the underdog, frames its coverage accordingly and the template is set: Anyone who questions government - especially to weaken social order or its religious underpinnings - merits heroic status.

Occasionally, the ACLU barristers get one right. In Skokie, Ill., they actually defended the right of neo-Nazis to march through the heavily Jewish burg. But that was three decades ago, and such cases are few and far between. The rare bad press they generate ensures that these will remain the exception.

Libertarians can also get sucked into the spin machine. Forgetting Baldwin's communist manifesto (or blissfully ignorant of it), Libertarians may be duped by the ACLU hype about "constitutional" rights - even as its attorneys work the courts to override the people's elected representatives on issues ranging from gay marriage to flag desecration to school prayer.

Of course, there are valid reasons to oppose the war in Iraq and to be concerned about governmental overreach at home. Here, many Libertarians, conservatives and liberals can find common ground. But Americans delude themselves and do their country and Constitution a disservice when they let the ACLU prosecute the agenda and dictate the terms of engagement.

To grasp the ACLU's duplicity, just watch its hypocritical leadership. The very group that tirelessly advocates for "diversity" wants to impose a Stalinist gag order on its own board members. Any criticism of the ACLU or its presidium to outsiders would not be tolerated, under proposed rules. These avatars of free speech also are considering a policy of destroying the taped records of all board meetings.

"(These) things have made us a laughingstock with the public," complained New Mexico board member Bennett Hammer.

Indeed, such policies would be risible if they didn't cut so close to the truth. We can only assume that, somewhere in the lower reaches, Roger Baldwin and Uncle Joe are nodding their approval. LW