The Aclu Essay, Research Paper
Where do you go if someone is threatening your personal rights? Do you
go to the police, or maybe to the government? What if the police and
government are the parties threatening your rights? All you have to do is just
call the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). Sounds like a commercial
doesn’t it. The ACLU blankets the United States with its legal protection. It is
involved in so many aspects of the fight for civil liberties that it is difficult to
cover it all. To fully understand what the ACLU has done for the United States
would take much longer than I have. Therefore, I have picked a couple of
incidents that, to me, exemplify what the ACLU is, and how they have affected
our society.
The ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, is an organization that began
the struggle to protect the civil liberties of the American people. The ACLU is
defined as being a US non-partisan organization offering legal aid and other
assistance in cases of violation of civil liberties.(Websters) Civil liberties contain
a substantial body of law including: freedom of speech and press, separation of
church and state, free exercise of religion, due process of law, equal protection,
and privacy.(Walker 3) The Encyclopedia of the Constitution defines civil
liberties as “those rights that an individual citizens may assert against the
government.” In a formal sense, the ACLU is a private voluntary organization
dedicated to defending the Bill of Rights. Officially established in 1920, the
ACLU now claims over 270,000 members. With offices in most of the states and
the District of Columbia the ACLU justifiably calls itself ” the nation’s largest law
firm.”(Walker 4)
The ACLU, despite its noble goal, has a terrible public image. The reason
for such hatred or support is the fact that civil liberty cases generally involve
moral and personal issues. These issues are those that incite feelings from all
corners of society. The rights the ACLU is generally protecting are those
segments of society that least agree with mainstream society. The ACLU has
promised to protect the rights of everyone. Those rights include the free speech
rights of such detested groups as the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, and Communist. The
Skokie Case is an example of the classic freedom of speech case the ACLU
would undertake. This case which hit the media April 28, 1977, concerned the
right of American Nazi Frank Collin to demonstrate in Skokie, IL. (Walker 323)
This case like many before and after defended the rights of a person espousing
one of the most universally despised ideology in the country. While the ACLU
was just doing its job it almost had to shut down when many withdrew their
memberships and support.
The ACLU became the taunt of the 1988 Presidential campaign. The race
between George Bush and Michael Dukakis brought the ACLU to the forefront
of media attention. The ACLU became the stumbling block of the Dukakis’
presidential bid. The Bush campaign asked for ammunition to help chip away at
Dukakis early lead. The staff came back with a quote, for a speech, calling
Dukakis a “card carrying member of the ACLU who opposed the death
penalty.”(Dionne 311) He was pro-gun control, pro-abortion, and had as the
Bush campaign put it, “…vetoed the pledge of allegiance.” Dukakis, in short,
was a classic, unrepentant “sixties liberal.”(Dionne 311) This accusation gave
Dukakis a liberal reputation in a campaign that was middle of the road leaning
toward conservatism. In this case the truth hurt. “In the Bush formulation,
belonging to the ACLU meant never balancing an individual claim against a
social claim.”(Dionne 314) Unfortunatly the opposites sounds suspiciously like
anarchy. The flip side to this is the negative publicity unintentionally helped to
increase the membership and strength of the ACLU. ” In the end it added nearly
70,000 new members perhaps half as a direct result of the campaign…exceeding
even the peak [membership] of the Watergate years.”(Walker 369)
The ACLU is the watchdog of civil liberties. They protect us by defending
those we might hate. They have shaped politics, the legal system, and media. I
may not like the liberal policies of the ACLU and its members, but I have to
respect the principles and ideals it was founded on and still expound today.
Bibliography
“American Civil Liberties Union.” Webster’s New Lexicon Dictionary. 1989
Walker, Samuel. In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU. New
York: Oxford UP, 1990.
Norman Dorsem, “Civil Liberties.” in Leonard Levy, ed., Encylopedia of the
Constitution (New York:Macmillan, 1986), pp. 263-270
Dionne, E.J. Why Americans Hate Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991