The ACLU
America's Guardian of Liberty(?)

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) characterizes itself as America's "guardian of liberty."

In their words, they are working 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." (Sounds like our kind of group, doesn’t it?) Defending individual rights and liberties…
"We work," says the ACLU, "also to extend rights to segments of our population that have traditionally been denied their rights, including Native Americans and other people of color; lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people; women; mental-health patients; prisoners; people with disabilities; and the poor."

The ACLU was established in 1920. Its co-founder Roger Baldwin said (at that time), "I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately, for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the properties class, and sole control of those who produce wealth.

Communism is the goal. It all sums up into one single purpose -- the abolition of dog-eat-dog under which we live. I don't regret being part of the communist tactic. I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent liberal. I wanted what the communists wanted and I traveled the United Front road to get it."

As of early 2004, the ACLU had nearly 400,000 members and supporters. The organization handles nearly 6,000 court cases annually from its offices in almost every state. During the 20 months following September 11, 2001, its membership rolls swelled by some 55,000 - largely in response to its attacks on the Bush administration for allegedly trampling on the civil liberties of citizens and non-citizens alike.

In practice, the ACLU is part of the "legal left" and works in concert with radical, anti-capitalist, anti-American organizations like the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights to hack away at the fabric of the American constitutional framework.

There will be more to come on the ACLU, I promise. BVN

Saints, sinners and bigots

By Suzanne Fields

Thursday, October 26, 2006

When my mother died at the grand old age of 91 she left behind a long letter to her children, filled with loving reflections and one exhortation. "I think if I had one wish for all of you other than a long and healthy life," she wrote, "it would be that you give the grandchildren a little religion. Something that has lasted for over 6,000 years has to have something going for it."
She knew that her assimilated Jewish family was tempted by the secular culture. At the end of her long life she was puzzled by how difficult it had become for the generation following hers to integrate religious faith into their lives.

Whether Jewish or Christian, organized religion has fallen on hard times. Millions of Americans attend synagogue, church and cathedral services every week, but even among the devout, God is less integrated into daily life than in earlier generations.

The Founding Fathers, tutored intellectually and sometimes theologically in the Judeo-Christian tradition, counted on the wall separating church and state to insulate religion. This would allow the faithful to go about their business of spreading their good news freely. Skeptics would always assert their prejudices in the public square, but intolerance would be exposed as bigotry.

References to God -- such as "In God We Trust" -- are commonplace in our history, indeed right on the money. What astonishes me is that people of faith rarely sneer at nonbelievers, but scientifically oriented cosmopolites rarely hesitate to mock believers. Evangelical Christians are routinely scapegoated with impunity, as if they're troglodyte know-nothings unified in a cabal to promote ignorance.

George W. Bush is ridiculed as chaplain-in-chief because he openly speaks of his faith. Does anyone doubt his sincerity? Kevin Phillips, betraying an ignorance of American history, writes in The Washington Post that under George W.'s leadership, "The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history." Gerhard Schroeder, the former chancellor of Germany, writes in his memoir that what bothered him about the president "and in a certain way made me suspicious despite the relaxed atmosphere, was again and again in our discussions how much this president described himself as 'God-fearing.'" (Would that an earlier generation of Germans nourished a little fear of God.)
Critics of evangelical Christians usually lump evangelicals together as if they all walk in lockstep with Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and Pat Robertson. The evangelicals I know are an independent lot who take pride in their ornery resistance to taking orders from anybody, and hold varying views on gun control, capital punishment, stem cell research, evolution and just everything else except, as one Baptist friend says, "deep-water baptism" and the right to do as conscience pleases.

Andrew Sullivan, author of "The Conservative Soul," is a lump-'em-all-together" critic, snidely referring to the evangelicals as "Christianists" as if they're looking for an office tower to ram a jetliner into. David Brooks, reviewing the Sullivan book, writes: "When a writer uses quotations from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and the 'Left Behind' series to capture the religious and political currents in modern America, then I know I can put that piece of writing down, because the author either doesn't know what he is talking about or is arguing in bad faith."

Evangelical Christians are attacked with the derision critics would never apply to Catholics, Jews or atheists. Conservative Protestants and other Christians voted overwhelmingly for the president when their only alternative was John Kerry, but their values, though nurtured by faith, are hardly synonymous with religion.

Belief in God begets a great variety in the thinking of thinking men and often acts as a check on behavior. So does conscience. After the Enlightenment emphasized reason as a guide, reason was nevertheless linked to religion. Woodrow Wilson, a preacher's son, a professor and the president of Princeton, was one of our most intellectual presidents, and observed that the Bible "reveals every man to himself as a distinct moral agent, responsible not to men, not even to those men whom he has put over him in authority, but responsibility through his own conscience to his Lord and Maker." He was a Presbyterian and, like the Methodist George Bush, saw his religious belief as inspiration and sustenance for his political decisions.

Religion, like reason, has its inconsistencies. Harry Truman, a church-going Baptist, was fond of contradictory references. He often quoted the prophets -- Isaiah for stressing the need to beat swords into ploughshares and Joel for emphasizing the need to beat ploughshares into swords. Conditions, he said, determined which policy to use.

That sounds about right to most of us. George Bush, like Harry Truman, should be judged on his policies and not on what inspired them. The devil, after all, is in the details.

Suzanne Fields is a columnist with The Washington Times.

What would you do?

You are about to take a short test. It consists of only one question which is very, very important. Don't answer too quickly or without thinking. Answer truthfully and you will test your moral fiber. It is an imaginary situation, in which you have to make a decision. Remember, you have to give a spontaneous answer, but it must be truthful.
(Scroll down slowly to ensure the test is accurate...)

You are in Florida..... ....in Miami, to be exact.

You are in the midst of the chaos of tremendous flooding after a hurricane.....

.....unbelievable amounts of water everywhere. You are a photographer for CNN.......

....and here you are, in the middle of an historic disaster.

The situation seems almost without hope. You're trying to shoot some great pictures that capture the scene...

....while all around you the flood swirls, houses float away, people disappear The power of nature is unleashed mercilessly with all its fury . . .

...and takes everything with it. Suddenly, you see a woman in an SUV.... She's struggling valiantly not to be swept away by the mass of debris in the flood.

You wade closer, against an angry current.

She seems somehow familiar.

Then you see her--it is Hillary Roddam Clinton!

Suddenly, you notice that the rising flood is about to sweep her away, forever. You have to make a choice: Save her, or snap the picture of your career!!!

Save her, or take the photo that will win you the Pulitzer prize.

One photo, which records the horrible accidental death of one of the most important women in the world....

Now, the question (answer truthfully!):





Glossy or matte finish?