ACLU loses its way

Wendy Kaminer, a prominent civil libertarian, has a disturbing piece in The Wall Street Journal about the degeneration of the ACLU from an organization that defends everybody's rights, no matter how unpopular, into one that cherry-picks the people it supports.

Once the nation's leading civil liberties group and a reliable defender of everyone's speech rights, the ACLU is being transformed into just another liberal human-rights group that reliably defends the rights of liberal speakers.

Even worse, in some instances the ACLU is coming to overtly oppose certain expressions of free speech that its leadership finds unpleasant.

"Take hate speech," [ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero] remarked to the New York Times in May 2006. "While believing in free speech, we do not believe in or condone speech that attacks minorities."

This transformation is especially disquieting in the age of the Patriot Act and the security state, when we need a committed civil libertarian organization more than ever. It's not that the ACLU no longer takes important cases; the problem is that an ACLU that defends only a particular point of view becomes an inconstant advocate. It turns the defense of individual rights into a partisan activity exercised only on behalf of "right-thinking" people and inevitably alienates potential allies who don't buy into left-wing ideology.

I'm still an ACLU supporter because the organization remains the best bet for opposing the Bush administration's excesses in the endless War on Terror. But I no longer expect the organization to be a consistent advocate for liberty--especially if somebody more to the leadership's liking wins the next presidential election.