Don’t much think so, Todderbob. The Democratic Candidate (Gore) actually won the Popular Vote and I seem to remember an unusually close election that required weeks to determine a “winner.”
The ACLU does not have a closed membership. Anyone is welcome to join.
What about the First Amendment Rights of the students who filed the complaint against the school principal and the teacher (who admit wrong-doing)? Maybe these educators should be working in private schools if they cannot respect the rights and/or the religious beliefs of other Americans in public schools. The principal and teacher could have prayed SILENTLY.
It is not mean white people and Jim Crow Laws that are keeping poor children out of private schools. It is a lack of money. Who will pay for the poor children to go to the private schools? The government can’t even pay to keep decent public schools open now.
I’m not entirely opposed to vouchers. But I do wonder what will be left behind in our inner cities when all of the good students pull out to go to private schools. (That shouldn’t be the concern of the good students, though.)
Your comments have been interesting even when I don’t always agree.
How in the everloving fuck could you not only support, but JOIN an organization that did that to you? If that happened to me, I would dedicate every second of my free time for the next two years to discrediting and condemning the ACLU. Why on earth would you want to be a part of something that tried to fuck you over? Talk about the frog and the scorpion. What would you do if someone robbed your house at gunpoint - offer him a cigar and a snifter of brandy?
This is at the heart of it. You’ve basically said that they have no loyalties (although I think they are loyal to the truth and to the law). They take enough cases on both sides of the political divide that there are both lefties and righties that can’t stand them.
They probably don’t, but it serves the interests of justice that the guy be vigorously defended because maybe the video isn’t of two kids but adults who merely look like kids, or possibly it can’t be proven the defendant knew they were kids, or possibly the undercover officers helped the situation along in a manner that suggests entrapment, or really any number of potential elements that should be explored in lieu of just grabbing the GUILTY! rubber stamp which in a case like this, a great many people would be happy to do.
The ACLU can’t and doesn’t (and indeed shouldn’t) win all its cases, but the role it (and the defense attorney in general) plays is still critical as a check on the state.
It looks like there are 3 kinds of people when it comes to the ACLU: Those who support them across the board, those who support them to some degree but call them out on certain contradictions or biases, and those who put them on the sort list of people who are destroying America.
Not to hijack, but I’ve read and heard this before here, and in the real world and it just about makes me want to laugh out loud.
At first I thought people were saying that because they wanted to believe it, but more are more I think they are serious. Maybe they are just too young to have seem the ebb and flow of both parties. Both this comment is just ridiculous. And it was equally nonsensical when Republicans argued it when they had control of the White House for 20 of the last 28 years at the end of the second Bush administration.
This country is pretty evenly split. I think members here at time believe that TDS is representative of the county at large, which is obviously not the case. More and more I think the the true believers on each end of the political spectrum are significantly outnumbered by the moderates in each party and the true independents in the middle.
By and large the American people like the friction that is produced by the dems the pubs going at it, and will keep them both in the game.
What if, after seeing the robber caught and convicted, you discover that he’s a much better person than you are in spite of that one incident (stealing as he was to feed his handicapped kids)? You could wind up being a positive influence in his life–and he yours.
If BlinkingDuck went on to support the ACLU despite being subjected to blatant racial discrimination, doesn’t that bespeak of how great the ACLU is overall, rather that what an idiot BD is?
(And you can put me in category #2 from my previous post).
Because I looked into the organizations history. I noticed that they took on some very unpopular fights…some of which I didn’t agree with. However, most of them I did. It was the only organization really doing something like this. In the whole, the good far outweighted the bad and I didn’t have an alternative choice that had less bad.
There are plenty of parents in America whose religion is Jewish, Muslim, or miscellaneous other, but who choose to send their children to Christian schools. It would appear that they’re less frightened about a few daily minutes of prayer in a Christian school than about the militant scourging of all religion from the curriculum in the public schools. (Or perhaps they just want their kids to learn reading, writing, and 'rithmetic.) Also, there are many private schools not officially attached to a church that still include some religious instruction and prayer at school events; I work at one such school. We have no problems with the wide variety of religious beliefs among the student body, nor any conflicts about the non-sectarian prayers that we read. It simply is not true that agreement can’t be reached on these issues. In a country with freedom of religious practice not everyone gets to run the show in public schools, but people have a much greater ability to negotiate than you give them credit for. Governing public schools democratically would satisfy almost everyone, while governing them by lawsuits makes almost everyone unhappy.
Emphasis added. Nobody objects to people choosing to go to a christian school–I did so myself. That is very different from the question of what is appropriate, or what is constitutional for the state to do.
Public schools have two attributes that are distinct from private schools: (1) they are run by the government, and (2) people are, at the margin, compelled to go to them (if they cannot afford private school, for example).
If public schools have a religious component, then (1) means the government is endorsing some religion, and (2) is the government compelling students to engage in religious observances/go to religious schools, regardless of their beliefs.
I contend both of those are unconstitutional, and are wrong.
As I point out–people can, quite legitimately, make that choice. Putting religion in public schools is denying that choice to others. That is very different.
Further, the ACLU is, as I understand it, not about “militant scourging of all religion” from the curriculum–Religion is, quite appropriately, in the curriculum at public schools in the study of history, and perhaps social studies. That is learning about religion. Teaching, or compelled observation of one religion is very different.
Good for you. You are, I assume, teaching at a private school, where people choose to go to a school with such religious instruction–and can, perhaps, choose between one that takes a relatively liberal approach (as yours seems to), and, for example, a Catholic school where all official observances are in that faith.
So the fact that it can work at a school people choose to go to says nothing about the propriety of religious instruction at a school people don’t get to choose to go to.
First of all, let’s be clear–public schools are governed by lawsuits when their administrators refuse to respect the law of the land, that forbids government-sponsored religion. I think it is not just inappropriate for the schools to do so, but it is wrong to support such school administrators when they decide to violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That law was created in a negotiation that formed this country. Why should it be devalued? Why should it not be respected?
Also, just to put out the point–I assume you’re a christian. Would you object if (say), you lived in Dearborn, Mich (where muslims are a very substantial proportion of the population), and sent your children to school where, according to your “democratic” principles, the schools would contain muslim prayers and observances? What if you couldn’t afford to send your kids to private school?
I contend you would not.
Further, I note that you haven’t responded to the question in my post–what should our hypothetical Jewish student do, if they cannot afford private school, and if the public schools contain christian observances–observances that directly contradict a tenet of the student’s faith?
The answer is simple: Religion in private school is well and good. Religious observances in public school are unconstitutional and wrong. That is the only way of ensuring people’s freedom of religion–by avoiding forcing any religious observances on them.
Today’s LA Times has an editorial on this very subject:
Again, I think that the animosity towards the ACLU comes from perceived sins of omission (failing to protect the rights of the 2nd amendment) and commission (backing discrimination in the name of affirmative action, activities wrapped up in the so called “War on Christmas”).
Where someone falls on the spectrum of support ("Card Carrying Member) vs. hatred (AC stands for Anti Christian) depends on your politics and whether something you believe in / support has been a target of one of their attacks.
to clarify my typo: I of course meant to say that I think ITR would object in my hypothetical–that he would not be as willing to accept the “democratic” forcing of another, inconsistent religion on his family as he seems to expect others to be.
My father once told me that he had been turned down for a high-level job at a popular local radio station, and he believed it was based on his race, and the race of the other candidate for the job.
He telephoned the local ACLU office asking for help, and they wouldn’t stop asking to know the race of the involved parties. My father says he answered that it shouldn’t matter, but it seemed clear to him that it mattered a lot to the ACLU.
Similar to Algher’s case, this is from a single, two-minute conversation with my father, about a single phone call back when I was small, but it has stayed with me.
How could they possibly know if someone might have a valid race discrimination case without knowing their race or the race of the other candidate for the job? That sounds like the kind of basic question any lawyer would ask anyone considering a race discrimination suit.
I had the privilege of interning (and later, volunteering) with an ACLU affiliate (state office). One thing worth noting in this discussion, I think, is that people tend to think of “the” ACLU as a single, homogenous entity. That’s not entirely wrong - the ACLU national organization sets broad policy, does a lot of the headline-grabbing litigation, and testifies before Congress on a regular basis.
However, the state affiliates do the majority of the ACLU’s litigation and advocacy, and they have a tremendous degree of autonomy. Not unlimited, of course - a state affiliate that declared waterboarding to be fine and dandy would find itself in hot water. But state affiliates can, and do, decide their own advocacy priorities and preferences, and they vary greatly from one another. Some of the posters in this thread said they dislike the ACLU because they feel it engages in too many “social justice” issues that are far removed from core constitutional values - well, yes, some affiliates will do that. Others, however, do take a narrower view of civil liberties - they’ll do free-speech issues, but rarely (or never) touch on economic justice, for example.
My point is that, if you’re on the fence about “the” ACLU, you might want to see what your local affiliate is up to, rather than just the actions of the national organization. You can find your local affiliate here: Affiliates | American Civil Liberties Union .
Firstly, nothing in the Constitution in any way stops government-run bodies from practicing religion. We have military chaplains paid by the federal government on every military base. We have chaplains in fire departments and police departments paid by local governments. We have prison ministries in every state (except Virginia) paid by state governments. We have Park Rangers who conduct services in the national parks. As far as I know, no one–not even the ACLU–objects to these things or dozens of others like them, so I have to conclude that no one really believes that the government isn’t allowed to fund religious activities. At most, they believe that such funding is disallowed in a few, select cases. At the same time, the ACLU does object to many things done with private money. (See the link in my first post regarding Salazar v Buono for one example.) Hence I have to conclude that whatever the ACLU’s beef is about religion, it has nothing to do with government spending.
Second, the Constitution does not say that everybody gets to be free from observance of anything remotely religious. If 98 percent of the students at a ceremony want a prayer and the remaining 2 percent don’t, someone must end up with an observance that’s not the one they prefer. Unfortunate, but luckily we have a process called democracy to deal with cases like this. That the ACLU’s claims come from “the negotiation that formed this country” is just not true. For nearly all our history, students have prayed and studied the Bible in public school. Those who didn’t want to participate merely stepped out of the classroom. The system worked fine for generations. It’s only in the last couple generations that the ACLU has placed government by lawsuit ahead of democracy on this issue.
As I make clear in every thread on this topic, I support democracy and local decision-making everywhere, regardless of who’s in charge. I would not object.
Those military chaplains don’t force you to attend their services.
I’m not intimately familiar with them, but I’d assume those park rangers also don’t force you to attend their services.
On the other hand… you are forced by law to attend public school. You are mandated by the government to attend, under penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment to send your child to an institution which actively encourages a certain religious viewpoint.
Simply saying “But they can ignore it” is not sufficient.
By feeling ostracised and isolated from society at large?