“But I think that demonizing the ACLU is a bit silly…
… I do feel that they’ve become overly partisan in recent years, but they still do good work … “-Glenn Reynolds
There are two things that bother me about that statement made by Glenn Reynolds in the interview with Stop the ACLU the other day. Are ACLU detractors “demonizing” it? If their assertions about the nature of the ACLU are true, what defense is it to claim that the ACLU does “some good”?
First, a language lesson*, then an illustrative analogy. See the word below?
It ought to look familiar. It’s still used in that form, as a borrowed, word (“diablo”) in Spanish, for example. In an only slightly altered spelling, it becomes ‘devil” in English. Why the language lesson? Because the word, if translated from the Koine Greek, means pretty much the same thing as the Old Testament word “satan”-adversary, false accuser, slanderer.
Hmmm… so is it “demonizing” the ACLU to simply recognize what it is and what it does? In a word, no.
Take a look at how the ACLU twists the Constitution (_1_, _2_) in order to make false accusations against people and organizations. Heck! Look at how that twisting is itself a slander of the Constitution and its authors! Indeed, the ACLU has (admirably, at least in its steadfastness, unlike Congress) stayed true to its communist origins in its unrelenting efforts to undermine the Constitution.
Has the ACLU done some good along the way? Yes. (Well, I imagine a rabid, syphilitic blind pig finds the ocassional acorn, too, but what harm might it do along the way?) But think for a minute: serial killers of the “organized type” are often thought of as “nice guys” and are often people with productive lives and a reputation for good works in their communities. Doing some good cn be either a by-product of maintaining cover or just happenstance. The important thing to consider is this: what is a person’s (or an organization’s) fundamental character and behavior?
With the ACLU, it’s attacks on our Constitutional rights under the disingenuous cover of protecting them. So naturally, along the way-either by happenstance or to maintain cover-this serial abuser of our rights has done “some good” (in the immortal words of Instapundit).
And that brings me to my threatened analogy-*heh*-in illustration of the other problem I have with the “it’s silly to demonize the ACLU” attitude. Would you feed your children milk adulterated with a slurry of feces? If so, how little feces would the milk have to contain for you to consider it “good enough” for consumption? How about, would you feed your children a slurry of feces with just a wee tad of milk in it, because, after all, milk does a body good?
I think you can see the obvious analogy I’m drawing. Compromise with evil (lies and slander certainly qualify, don’t they?) is… evil.
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Linked at TMH’s Bacon Bits, where The Mary Hunter is featuring a review of another fine blog, in fact, the “blogmama” of the Open Trackback Alliance. heh. indeed. (See the blogroll in my left sidebar.). Also linked at Don Surber, The Conservative Cat (who has wisely quoted a TWCâ„¢ comment-heh-and built upon it some plausible speculation about Demoncrappic plans for 2006), Stop the ACLU, Brussels Journals, California Conservative, Choose Life!, Euphoric Reality, Jo’s Cafe, Stuck on Stupid, It’s a Pundit, bRight & Early, Basil’s Blog (and keep on heaping praise on Basil for “Basil’s Haloscan Hack” that allows me to do true open posts on Blogger! WTG, Basil!), Political Teen: Right on Right, and NIF (still MIA. “Won’t you come back N-I-F? Won’t you come back?” Personally, I think someone is just going for a world record number of trackbacks for one post. :-).
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*Because I am not certain Koine characters will reproduce in your browser accurately, since you’d likely need to both have the character set installed on your computer and its use specified for your browser, OR I’d need to put the character set on a server and do some html magic to get it to serve up, it was just easier to insert a pic of the word.