# Help me understand the dislike for the ACLU

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-the-dislike-for-the-aclu/517979>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [November 18, 2009, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-the-dislike-for-the-aclu/517979 "2009-11-18T00:32:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 7

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**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2009, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-the-dislike-for-the-aclu/517979/121 "2009-11-26T02:00:06Z")

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> [@Miller](#):
>
> How do you propose disentangling government and religion, when you are adamantly opposed to any effort to prevent the government from funding religious observances? In these threads, you’ve consistently characterized any attempts to keep government religiously neutral as an unconscionable intrusion of government into people’s religious freedoms. Can you provide an example (hypothetical, if necessary, but real world would be ideal) of a government taking a positive stand on religion that you would view as an unconstitutional entanglement of government and religion?

I would basically go back to the founding fathers to respond to this. They wrote, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” Now at the time, England has an establishment of religion, namely the Church of England, and I know no one who disputes that the founding fathers had this in mind when they wrote the establishment clause. In England at the time, only members of the Church of England could run for office, vote, teach in universities, hold certain ranks in the military, etc… The founding fathers disapproved of this, in large part because so many of the colonies were founded by refugees seeking religious freedom. Hence they wrote the First Amendment to guarantee that there would never be a Church of the United States, with basic rights restricted to its members. That’s the reason for the establishment clause, and I find it a very praiseworthy reason, and one I’d be happy to defend.

The types of cases that the ACLU gets involved in are very different, typically demanding that the federal government restrict what individual employees of lower governments can say or do while on the job, or what can be displayed on government property. Nothing in the Constitution or any amendment supports such an interpretation. Basic government property such as parks and public schools is there for the benefit of the people, at least in theory. To censor all religious expression on public parks, or by public school employees, is not being “neutral”, but rather is taking an active stand against religion. (Besides which, as we’ve seen, the ACLU tries to shut down volunteers and students as well as employees.)

And even if the original intent of the Constitution was to silence all on-the-job government employees on religious topics, the scope of government has changed since 1789. Back then, there were very few employees and very little government property. Now the government owns almost half the country and employs millions, most of whom consider themselves just ordinary people. So censorship of government employees and government property would be much more severe today than back in the 18th century.

> [@](#):
>
> Regardless of how they view themselves, how is someone who receives their paycheck from the government anything other than an employee of the government? What standard are you using to define whether someone is part of the government or not? The only reasoning I see here is how the person views his role. If a congressperson says that he doesn’t “view himself as part of the government,” and only got into the field because he wants to “help people,” does that make him not a part of the government, and therefore, immune to laws regulating government action? If not, how is our hypothetical congressperson different from teachers?

Don’t our politicians speak frequently about religion in public? If so, isn’t it obvious to ask why low-level government employees, volunteers, and students are not allowed to say things which Congresscritters and Presidents are?

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