Printer Friendly“I am for socialism, disarmament and ultimately for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is, of course, the goal.” ACLU founder Roger Baldwin, 1935
The left wing bias prevalent on college history faculties colors just about everything that shows up in mainstream history books. Textbook portrayals of Joseph McCarthy, for example, are very negative because liberals, including the great majority of university history professors, view McCarthy with hostility. The beneficiaries of this bias are persons and groups whom liberals view with favor.
One such group is the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU’s leaders and admirers are always claiming that the group exists to protect the individual rights of all Americans, without any political bias; but the claim is disingenuous. In reality the agenda of the ACLU is very similar to that of any other left wing group.
The group fights tooth and nail for abortion rights, for example, despite the lack of any clearly stated right to abortion in the Constitution, because the Democratic Party and the left in general are pro-abortion. They refuse to support gun rights, even though a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms is clearly spelled out in the Second Amendment, because Democrats and liberals opposed gun rights.
Defending Socialists and Inventing New Rights
In his widely used textbook Give Me Liberty, Columbia Professor Eric Foner introduces the ACLU this way:
The arrest of antiwar dissenters under the Espionage and Sedition acts inspired the formation in 1917 of the Civil Liberties Bureau, which in 1920 became the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). For the rest of the century, the ACLU would take part in most of the landmark cases that helped bring about a “rights revolution.” Its efforts helped give meaning to traditional civil liberties like freedom of speech and invented new ones, like the right to privacy.
What Dr. Foner doesn’t say is that ACLU founder Roger Baldwin, and charter members like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, were ardent left wingers who identified with the Communist movement from the start of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.
Professor Foner does, however, display admirable candor when he credits the ACLU with helping to “invent new rights, like the right to privacy.” He’s referring to the 1965 US Supreme Court decision in Griswold v Connecticut, in which the Court overturned a stupid, but perfectly constitutional, Connecticut law against contraception. Eight years later this chimerical “right to privacy” would form the basis of the Court’s Roe v Wade decision, overturning state laws against abortion.
Most liberals claim that the “right to privacy” cited in the Griswold decision was based in the Constitution, despite the absence of any language to that effect in the actual document. Professor Foner is much more accurate and honest when he credits the ACLU with urging to court to “invent” such a right.
Radical Origins
Roger Baldwin was a leftist radical long before he founded his famous “civil rights” union. Biographer Robert C. Cottrell admiringly describes him as “one of the nation’s leading figures in left-of-center circles.” Baldwin was a friend and admirer of Anarchist leader Emma Goldman, who once conspired with self-described “Communist Anarchist” Alexander Berkman to murder a businessman who was hiring strikebreakers to replace union workers.
Other charter members of the ACLU included Socialist Crystal Eastman and Communists Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; and William Z. Foster, who would later serve as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA.
The ACLU and Atheism
One of the ACLU’s proudest moments, according to many history texts, is its success in 1925 in persuading a Tennessee schoolteacher named John Scopes to violate a state law against teaching Darwinian evolution. The freshman textbooks America’s Promise and Nation of Nations, along with Dr. Foner’s book Give Me Liberty, all cite the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial” as a triumph of modern science over primitive superstition.
Atheism was the prevailing religious belief among the ACLU’s leadership then as now, and is widely popular among history faculties today, so it’s not surprising that history profs would give the Scopes trial prominence in their textbooks.
Labor vs Management
Organized labor is another darling of both history professors and the ACLU. In Give Me Liberty Professor Foner tells us how the ACLU began defending the proletarian victims of property-owning capitalists in the 1930’s. “By 1934,” said Foner, the ACLU had “concluded that the ‘masters of property’ posed as great a danger to freedom of speech and assembly as political authorities.”
Stalin Loses Roger Baldwin
In 1939 Roger Baldwin suddenly renounced Communism and kicked everyone with Stalinist sympathies, including charter member Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, out of the organization.
It wasn’t Josef Stalin’s genocide in the Ukraine that alienated Baldwin; that had happened back in 1932 and ’33, and Baldwin had managed not to notice. The thing that turned Roger Baldwin against Stalinist Russia was the ironically named “non-aggression pact” that Stalin and Adolf Hitler signed, in which they agreed to stay out of each other’s way while conquering and enslaving different parts of Europe. Flynn and Foster were willing to support Hitler if it helped Stalin; Baldwin was not.
It’s hard to find a negative word about the ACLU in modern history books, but Baldwin’s 1939 rejection of Communism did rub historian Howard Zinn the wrong way. In his widely used textbook A People’s History of the United States, Professor Zinn (himself an undercover Communist, according to his FBI file) accuses the ACLU of a lack of resolve:
Even the American Civil Liberties Union, set up specifically to defend the liberties of Communists and all other political groups, began to wilt in the cold war atmosphere. It had already started in this direction back in 1940 when it expelled one of its charter members, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, because she was a member of the Communist party.1
It’s worth noting that the ACLU was not the only organization expelling Communists during that period. The Hitler-Stalin pact, which was in effect from August of 1939 to June of 1941, caused a backlash against Communism all around the US.
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A Self-Made Nation
In 1940 the federal government passed the Smith Act, which made it a crime to “teach, advocate, or encourage” the violent overthrow of the US government. State legislatures in California, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas all established committees to screen public employees for loyalty to the United States. Twenty one states quickly passed laws requiring public school teachers to sign loyalty oaths.
The New York anti-subversion law forced colleges and universities around the state to fire some sixty faculty members with Communist or Fascist sympathies, fully two thirds of them from one campus. City College of New York was such a hotbed of Communism in those days that the new state law forced CUNY to dismiss forty faculty members, one of whom was Jack Foner, the father of the modern day history professor who wrote Give Me Liberty.
The younger Professor Foner addresses the 1940 New York law in his textbook, portraying it as an immoral product of anti-Communist “hysteria,” but he fails to mention that his father was one of the fired Communist sympathizers.
The ACLU Today
On its homepage, the modern day ACLU boasts of “90 YEARS OF PROTECTING YOUR LIBERTY,” but the group’s consistently leftist bent results in some interesting definitions of the term “liberty.”
They bring lawsuits to force state governments to give bigger welfare checks to the prolific poor. They call on the federal government to regulate the compensation businesses pay their employees.
When malcontent feminists tried to force a privately owned country club to change its admission policies through public protests, media campaigns, and punitive lawsuits targeted at the club’s members, a truly non-partisan civil rights group would have defended the club’s right of association. The ACLU apparently values political correctness over Constitutional rights; they joined the feminists in trying to pressure the club to change its policies.
It is easy to understand why college professors and other leftists would admire the ACLU. It stands for all the same values that liberals hold dear.
Al Fuller
1 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (2003 edition), p. 436
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Aiden claims that the website is retarded, yet he cannot use proper grammar to form an intelligent statement. More proof that schools indoctrinate rather than educate.
The Rutherford Institute is doing what the ACLU should be doing.
A liberals’ argument: conservative: it’s partly sunny…liberal: no, it’s partly cloudy. It never ends.
The ACLU and their partners in evil, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, as much as they hate Christianity and oppose it every chance they get, are unknowingly proclaiming the truth of Christianity! Because they only oppose Jesus Christ and Christianity, and give every other (FALSE) religion a free pass, they are confirming the very Word of God that says Jesus Christ is THE ONLY WAY TO GET TO HEAVEN, and that ALL other religions are FALSE!!!
That’s Great, they are so anti-Christ, and yet they are confirming theTruth of the very Bible that they hate!!!
The ACLU is still one of the greatest threats to the freedoms of the American people equal to that of George Soros. The goal of the Atheist and the Liberal Left Democrats is the destruction of America. They use Hollywood, the media and the liberal courts to win decisions over the will of the American majority. HAD ENOUGH, support America First and the American People First.
From everything we see in today’s society, it appears more and more that the ACLU is one of the primary causes of all the school and mass shootings. They have worked very hard at removing God from the schools and everywhere else in society and replaced Him with their godless theology. They have promoted the use of drugs for recreational use, the drugging of our school children because of some nonsense they call ADHD, then wonder why kids grow up crazy wanting to shoot their classmates, teachers and parents. The ACLU promotes and urges the genocide of babies through ‘women’s rights’, abortion, the removal of guns from the American landscape and actually help put criminals on the streets. Now tell me that they are promoting the freedom and rights of the American Citizens.
If any of my classmates are reading this, this right-wing website is so bias. But Legg wants us to use retarded defaming websites so use it up.
This is from an ACLU statement and its a hypocritical statement. Discriminating against and forcing those that believe in God have not rights to practice what they believe. It’s just another attack on the constitution. this time the 1st. amendment, the one the founders believed to be the most important one.
Yes, religious freedom needs protection. But religious liberty doesn’t mean the right to discriminate or to impose one’s views on others. The RFRA wasn’t meant to force employees to pay a price for their employer’s faith, or to allow businesses to refuse to serve gay and transgender people, or to sanction government-funded discrimination. In the civil rights era, we rejected the claims of those who said it would violate their religion to integrate. We can’t let the RFRA be used as a tool for a different result now.
The ACLU as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center have absolutely no interest in the clients they take. They only care about how they can use the client to pursue their marxist goals. These groups should be be labeled as ‘Anti-American’ and be made to print that on all their literature and calling cards. They have cost taxpayers billions over the years trying to destroy America. The people that run these ‘covens’ should be prosecuted for treason.
the ACLU hates liberty but defends the freedom of those who hate America. why hasn’t Congress stopped them ?God bless America!
While Roger Baldwin in 1935 said what he said, the ACLU has in no way acted in this way. Nearly all of the comments, and even the article itself, is about feelings and come from partisan opinions. The attempt to associate words with actions reeks of desperation. The comments are even more desperate.
The ACLU has been overwhelmingly consistent in trying to help protect civil liberties for all. This article does not take away from that fact. And, if anything, the article is totally hyperbolic. Classic words like “leftist,” and “liberal” are used to get an emotional response from the readers. This stuff is easy to spot. But only if you’re not some ideologue looking to inflate your ego.
The ACLU has formed it’s own 4th liberal branch of Government inside of our judicial system. About as far left as one could possibly be. I watched them line up at airports ready to defend people that hadn’t even arrived in our country yet in spite of the fact that they have no rights under our constitution. I watched them sue San Diego for having a cross on top of Mt Soledad marking a war memorial because ONE person had objections. I’ve watched them remove God from our Nation. I’ve watched them always fight for the criminal and his rights, never the victims. I watched as they took Christmas our of our land. I watched as they decided your children could sue you, with their help, for punishing them. I’ve watched gender become a “Fluid Situation” where the few have more rights than the majority and now any freak that wants can sit beside our sons &wives & daughters in the bathroom. I’ve watched as now, if you don’t fall into one of the ACLU special interest groups, you will suffer their wrath of endless court battles and suits until you run out of money or will. I believe what I see, not what I hear.
Honestly reading the comments on this post are wild. More damage than terrorist organizations? Also what the hell does the ACLU have to do with Common Core? I’d like to remind you guys that the ACLU has an issue with school-led prayer, but has actively defended the right of students to pray in school… But bias runs both ways, and though the ACLU and the left are biased it seems the right-wing is just as bad…
NY YEARS AGO I saw a film that PROVED that the top founders of the ACLU were Communist Socialist Leftists. Nevertheless a Communist plant. I have always called the ACLU the
American Communist Liabilities Union. The cases that ‘seemed’ to be fair and just were out to set up laws that undermined the Constitution. Pet cases to build bigger cases was/is their scenario. Look at one pet case – a friend of mine bragged about supporting the ACLU. He was given the fake status as a minister, though an atheist. Many were given this status by the ACLU ‘sneakily’ so that the ACLU could take away the tax free status of Christian Church’s. Nice??? As corrupt as their devilish fannies could contrive. The MOST charitable organization in helping out people efficiently is the CHURCH. Most monies in government end up in rich guys pockets dribbling out ‘so called help’ like welfare to make people dependent on government rather than self and God – not helping people to get JOBS so they can have personal dignity – earning their keep and living by guts not laziness – which too many end up in. Help the needy, always, not freeloaders! If a person does not want to help oneself then the person should not eat, unless truly handicapped and truly needy (not needy from spending money given them by government for booze and drugs – not feeding their own families)
Why can’t we abolish the ACLU or not give in to their liberal plans. They say they are for diversity but when it comes to Christians that does not count. I would agree with Vincet Gamble. They are like the Trojen Horse of America. They are destroying us from with in. Think we should send them all to the Countries that support their socialism and their communistic ideas. Why do they stay here other than to destroy democracy.
this organization is destroying the values of the country using the 45 goals set out in the “Naked Communist”, it has helped to implement 22 of these goals. they have taken over the Democratic party, helping to keepthe liberal plantation alive in America
I am amazed by the fact that says the ACLU always acts the Christian faith while they always remain silent when it comes to teaching the Muslim religion in our public schools. Under Common Core education we now have children praying to Allah as they denounce the Christian faith. Where are those ACLU lawsuits when it comes to the Muslim religion.
I feel the aclu has caused more harm to the US than any terrorist group. I enjoyed reading the informative article but if the aclu are trying to hide their extreme left wing bias, they are not. We need Judges who will enforce Constitutional law and refrain from creating any.