Noam Chomsky is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Roger Nash Baldwin became head of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB) in 1917. An independent outgrowth of the American Union Against Militarism, the Bureau opposed American intervention in World War I. The NCLB provided legal advice and aid for conscientious objectors and those being prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 or the Sedition Act of 1918. In 1920, the NCLB changed its name to the American Civil Liberties Union, with Baldwin continuing as its director and Walter Nelles as chief counsel. Jeannette Rankin, Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman, Albert DeSilver, Helen Keller, along with other former members of the NCLB, assisted Baldwin with the founding of the ACLU. Among the founding members was Felix Frankfurter, who later became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. DeSilver and Nelles were Baldwin’s closest associates.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) consists of two separate non-profit organizations: the ACLU Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization which focuses on litigation and communication efforts, and the American Civil Liberties Union, a 501(c)(4) organization which focuses on legislative lobbying. The ACLU’s stated mission is “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” It works through litigation, legislation, and community education. Founded in 1920 by Crystal Eastman, Roger Baldwin and Walter Nelles, the ACLU was the successor organization to the earlier National Civil Liberties Bureau founded during World War I. The ACLU reported over 500,000 members at the end of 2005.
Lawsuits brought by the ACLU have been influential in the evolution of Constitutional law. The ACLU provides legal assistance in cases in which it considers civil liberties to be at risk. Even when the ACLU does not provide direct legal representation, it often submits amicus curiae briefs.
Outside of its legal work, the organization has also engaged in lobbying of elected officials and political activism. The ACLU has been critical of elected officials and policies of both Democrats and Republicans.
The ACLU was formed to protect aliens threatened with deportation, along with U.S. nationals threatened with criminal charges by U.S. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer for their communist or socialist activities and agendas. It also opposed attacks on the rights of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and other labor unions to meet and organize.
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May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
By that and all the …
By that and all the rites of knighthood else, will I make good against thee, arm to arm, what I have spoke, or thou canst worse devise. Look, what I speak, my life shall prove it true; I say and will in battle prove, or here or elsewhere to the furthest verge that ever was survey’d by English eye, that all the treasons for these eighteen years complotted and contrived in this land fetch from false Chomsky their first head and spring.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Which to maintain I …
Which to maintain I would allow him odds, and meet him, were I tied to run afoot even to the frozen ridges of the Alps, or any other ground inhabitable, where ever Englishman durst set his foot. Mean time let this defend my loyalty, by all my hopes, most falsely doth he lie. Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage, which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except. If guilty dread have left thee so much strength As to take up mine honour’s pawn, then stoop:
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Let not my cold …
Let not my cold words here accuse my zeal: ‘Tis not the trial of a woman’s war, the bitter clamour of two eager tongues, can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain; the blood is hot that must be cool’d for this: Which else would post until it had return’d these terms of treason doubled down his throat. Setting aside my high blood’s royalty, I do defy him, and I spit at him; call him a slanderous coward and a villain:
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Now, Chomsky, do I …
Now, Chomsky, do I turn to thee, and mark my greeting well; for what I speak my body shall make good upon this earth, or my divine soul answer it in heaven. Thou art a traitor and a miscreant, too good to be so and too bad to live, since the more fair and crystal is the sky, the uglier seem the clouds that in it fly. Once more, the more to aggravate the note, with a foul traitor’s name stuff I thy throat; and wish, ere I move, what my tongue speaks my right drawn sword may prove.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
They probably …
They probably alienate so many moderates and libertarians on that one issue one wouldn’t believe the numbers. I just don’t get it I guess.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
I’ll never …
I’ll never understand why the ACLU doesn’t speak out against abortion. Balance the privacy rights between mother and baby for minors, rape, incest, life of mother, etc. It just flies in the face of everything else they do and is so fundamentally repulsive from an individual rights perspective. It screams life the same way someone being wrongfully executed does.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
@samerk321 That’s a …
@samerk321 That’s a pretty pure freedom of speech issue, which they support. The problem in elections isn’t independent ad funding. It is ads without info disclaimers, current individual contribution limits that make equality and voting illegitimately undemocratic, and a myriad of other complications. You have to look at the speech separate from the effects aforementioned. An amendment would probably do good; curtailing speech would just make things worse.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
“When you’re Noam …
“When you’re Noam Chomsky, everything is conservative.”
There’s a light bulb going off in your head.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
When you’re Noam …
When you’re Noam Chomsky, everything is conservative.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
The constitution …
The constitution and the ideology surrounding it was libertarian but it wasn’t truly democractic. The idea was that the wealthy men would be in control of public policy and the ‘rabble’ would not interfere in matters of the state. Combine that with the fact that legal precedents determining corporations to be equal in rights to persons I think you’ll find that whilst we don’t agree with it, the ACLU’s support of that case is not hugely surprising.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Oh right, I hadn’t …
Oh right, I hadn’t heard that. Whilst you can’t judge a whole organisation on one action, especially one that’s been around for so long, i’d still say that that decision would be congruent with the ACLU’s conservative ideology.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Its just I am …
Its just I am confused because the ACLU is a right wing organization. It supported the recent supreme court case that allows corporations to spend money on elections with no limits.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
In the classical …
In the classical 18th century sense. Why not just watch the video?
May 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Does he say the …
Does he say the ACLU is conservative in the 18th century sense or in the modern sense?