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Can the ACLU be Stopped?



 

In a passage of scripture in the Old Testament, Moses sent a representative of each of the 12 tribes of Israel for a mission. Each was given an assignment: visit the land of Canaan and bring back a report in 40 days as to what they saw and what the future would hold in that land.

 

After 40 days expired, all 12 reps told Moses and Aaron that they saw a land filled with milk and honey. But only one, Caleb, told Moses "let us go up at once and take possession for we are well able to overcome it". The other 11 viewed the situation differently, saying "we were like grasshoppers in our own sight and so we were in their sight"

 

Ultimately, Caleb and Joshua, who was not among the 12 but one whom Moses also called, was given favor by God to go and enter the land. Like the 11 doubting Thomases, they recognized the size of the giants to be conquered. Unlike the 11, Caleb and Joshua believed God would grant them favor to enter Canaan and defeat the enemy if it was in His divine plan to do so. They knew God was not with the inhabitants of Canaan, saying "their protection has departed from them".

 

Nonetheless, the 11 and the congregation of Israel rebelled against Caleb and Joshua and were later hit with a massive plague and died. But good things were in store for Caleb and Joshua.

 

So the moral of the story is like the old illustration of a glass of water - is it half full or half empty? The answer is how you look at it.

 

Now take the ACLU, an organization with Communist roots and ties since 1920 (they're linked on the web site of the USA Communist Party). We seem to hear more than ever of their incessant scare tactics and legal rulings in their favor - can't display the 10 Commandments anywhere, can't have crosses or any other perceived religious symbols on city logos or edifices, can't pray here, can't pray there. In fact, if you do pray, you might end up in a jail cell as the director of the Louisiana chapter of the ACLU demanded a judge do to school officials in one district.

 

The ACLU is said to have in the range of $200 million in assets, let alone millions of dollars. Among their 400,000 or so members are very wealthy contributors, many of them Hollywood actors and actresses, doctors and of course, lawyers. CEOs like Peter Lewis of Progressive Insurance give millions of dollars to the ACLU annually. Foundations like Gill (a software giant pouring millions of dollars into homosexual causes), Ford (yes, related to the car maker) and Rockefeller have filled the ACLU's pockets for decades. And those many of us consider to be in the societal gutter, abortionists and pornographers, certainly haven't been loath to pad ACLU coffers.

 

There, did I just paint a bleak picture of what we Americans are facing with the likes of the ACLU? Do you see the bankrolls? Do you see the continual stampede of our American values with no hope in sight? Or do you see the power of We the People?

 

It was approximately 12 years ago that the Alliance Defense Fund came together as a result of pooling together of a mix of leaders from groups like Focus on the Family who were fed up with the ACLU's continual wrestling into submission of those who didn't want to do their bidding. Seldom did anyone want to take them on, either as a plaintiff or a defendant, knowing the ACLU's seemingly bottomless pockets and their opposition's limited resources. School districts and towns with modest financial means were often the target and quickly threw in the towel if so much as a letter of demand from the ACLU hit their desks.
 

The American Center for Law & Justice was one of the first groups on the scene to stand up to the ACLU and is still doing an excellent job of it today. However, with the ACLU's rampage in courts across America back then, it was not possible for the ACLJ back then to handle all the cases that needed attention. So people like Dr. Dobson of Focus, Dr. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, the late Larry Burkett and others came together and in essence wanted to add some significant legal muscle in addition to what Jay Sekulow and the ACLJ were doing. Enter ADF.

 

As Alan Sears, president of ADF, has pointed out many times, the first thing we can do to stop the ACLU is show up. And has ADF ever. ADF has racked up many victories in the courts since its inception in 1993, simply by showing up against the ACLU and providing sound legal, constitutional defenses in contrast to the ACLU's bastardization of the U.S. Constitution. ADF has won a vast majority of their cases against the ACLU over the last dozen years thru, as their web site states "strategy, training, funding and litigation".

 

Other groups like the Rutherford Institute, Liberty Counsel, Thomas More Law Center and the Christian Legal Society have also shown up and stood up to the ACLU in the courts and given them a run for the money. And thank God for them as well.

 

cont'd

After showing up, the next way to help stop the ACLU is by pouring in financial resources the way of groups like ADF. The ACLU, as noted above, has many big financial allies. The likes of ADF represent cities, school districts and others under attack by the ACLU at no charge. The money has to come from somewhere to file the cases, pay for the transcriptions and to actually represent their clients in courts. Any money sent their way will most definitely be put to good use and I strongly encourage all who can to do so.

 

Thirdly, it will take dogged determination to conquer the ACLU. In its early years of existence, the ACLU would go to court to defend and promote its agenda (still radical back then, though maybe not quite like now). Quite frequently, they would lose their cases unanimously. They would just regroup and go back to the drawing board and fight again. They continued to lose cases but eventually they got a judge or two to take their position in a suit. The ACLU would take that loss and build on it. It was a matter of time, particularly beginning in the 1960s, when the ACLU was getting more and more judges and its favor and ultimately winning its cases.

 

You have to give the ACLU credit for their relentless persistence. As such, we can and must do no less if we want to defeat them.

 

Fourthly, it will take We the People to ultimately end the ACLU. The above great legal firms are winning against the ACLU in the courtrooms by showing up and exposing the ACLU's exploiting of the Constitution to achieve their aims. It's time to defeat the ACLU and their allies (Americans United, People for the American Way, Freedom from Religion Foundation, etc.) in the public arena.

 

We see the ACLU winning in the courts against the American people. 70% of Nebraskans voted for a marriage amendment to be between one man and one woman. The ACLU couldn't stomach that and sought homosexual activists to defend and overturn in court thru an activist judge what We the People of Nebraska achieved thru the political process.

 

In the same way, Michiganers used a provision in their state's constitution to overcome a gubernatorial veto on legislation to ban partial birth abortion. Citizens went out to get signatures from their fellow Americans to get a revote on the issue, got more than twice the number needed by state statute, got the legislature to once again approve of the legislation and it became law sans the governor's signature. We the People of Michigan were denied the right to have legislation in the state's best interests by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood suing to overturn the law in court.

 

In wanting to transfer the property of the Mt. Soledad Memorial Veterans Memorial to the U.S. government to avoid litigation due to a huge cross at the top, a judge told the city of San Diego in a special referendum that they needed a 2/3rd vote to get it approved, in spite of normal referenda needing a simple majority vote. The citizens of San Diego already obtained the required number of signatures to get the referendum on the ballot.

 

Not only did the city get the 2/3rd vote but they managed to get a 3/4 vote, yet this same judge struck down the intent of We the People of San Diego as expressed at the ballot box, thanks to an ACLU attorney representing an atheist against the people of San Diego. The attorney, Jim McElroy, also of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the vote of San Diegans didn't "mean a damn thing".

 

It may seem that the ACLU is oblivious to public reaction on issues, pushing the envelope as far as it can without impunity to them. But they can gauge the public perception on certain issues and act accordingly. One such example is the Pledge of Allegiance, targeted for removal by atheist Michael Newdow. When a three judge court of appeals struck down "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance by a 2-1 margin in June 2002, there was a huge uproar from across America to the point the ruling judge stayed his own ruling. The other judge ruling in favor of removal is the husband of the ACLU director of Southern California.

 

While the ACLU filed a brief before the Supreme Court in favor of the removal of "under God" in the pledge, they did not openly and proudly broadcast it. The case ultimately was dismissed for lack of standing by Newdow. However, in another case in September of this year, a San Francisco judge ruled again that the pledge was unconstitutional in another case filed by Newdow, a case with the outcome yet to be determined. But unlike the first ruling where the ACLU got involved minimally, they were dead silent on this one. There was no press release nor commentary from them and Google and Topix news searches for anything of the sort turned up empty as well.

Even Newdow was quoted in Reuters as saying that the ACLU won't defend him on the pledge.

 

So the ACLU knows a loser of an issue when it sees one. And now it's time to make them see that almost all the issues they are defending - removal of crosses, ceasing of prayers, teaching of homosexuality in the public schools, abortion sans restriction, illegal immigration - are all losers. But this will only occur if We the People get involved.
 

The Stop the ACLU Coalition (www.stoptheaclu.org) with supporters from all 50 states is shining the laser beam on the ACLU's agenda with the intent of putting them out of business. We the People can stop the ACLU in ways beyond what the great legal groups do. We are pushing hard to get Congress to defund the likes of the ACLU from receiving our tax dollars under HR 2679 in 1st Amendment cases. People should insist their lawmakers ensure that taxpayers not fill the ACLU's pockets in the event of adverse court rulings.

 

Other things We the People can do are good common sense things like writing to editors of newspapers, exposing the ACLU's threats to national security, religious liberty, marriage and the sanctity of life. We can show up when the ACLU rides into town to hold townhall meetings. We can blitz ACLU offices with millions of letters of outrage. We can talk about the ACLU at the water cooler, at the restaurant (if you do, be sure to publicly pray for your meal - this will really rankle ACLU lovers), at the health club, at the subway - the places are potentially limitless. It's not hard to do, especially when you know the issues and the radical stands the ACLU takes, especially when reading them from their own web site.

 

We the People can mobilize forces to picket and march on every ACLU office in America, an event the Stop the ACLU Coalition is sponsoring. We can urge our religious institutions under threat of the ACLU's agenda to get involved and take public stands against it. We can seek out ACLU backers, particularly those thinking they are strictly a civil rights group, and share with them the real agenda of this anti-American organization. We can do something like what thousands of Utah citizens did a couple years ago upon hearing of a publicly displayed cross targeted for removal - place crosses in our own yards.

 

We the People can educate those who donate to the ACLU and urge them to stop filling their coffers. We can boycott Progressive, Ford and all groups and lawyers tied to the ACLU. We can urge officials in our cities and schools under attack by the ACLU to stand up to its agenda and show moral support to them and get our friends and neighbors to do the same.

 

We the People are many more than the 400,000 or so ACLU supporters. We have the power to rein in the ACLU if we unite and mount sustained opposition to the ACLU's agenda. The silence and apathy of the people make it seem like this is an insurmountable task. It's not. It was Edmund Burke who said "The only thing it takes for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".
 

There is a lot we can do to stop the ACLU. Our numbers are greater, the truth is on our side, most of the ACLU's positions are such that only the extremest of the extreme can defend them (who can honestly defend NAMBLA?), even our resources are greater if We the People pool them together.

 

The odds were not with David when facing Goliath. Yet David decisively won. But the odds are in our favor as millions of Americans oppose the ACLU, even if they don't publicly say so. The power of We the People rests in the greatness of its citizens and America's heritage. The glass of water is much more than half full with Americans learning more about the truth of the ACLU. Massive public awareness and outrage of the ACLU has the potential to drive the ACLU to its knees.
 

The question is will we look at ourselves as grasshoppers or as giant slayers.