The American Civil-Liberties-We-Like Union
By Michael R. Bowen (07/08/03)
Why doesn't the ACLU defend Second Amendment rights?
Like many lies, the ACLU contains a grain of truth. It is founded on the proven concept that governments will naturally overstep their bounds unless the citizens are vigilant. So far, so good. But they might take a moment from their courageous struggle against Christmas displays to consider this: what happens when a renegade government tells the ACLU to shut up and get back in line?
Is the ACLU just kidding when they say that government can't be trusted, or do they only mean it can't be trusted on certain issues, at certain times? If the Bush Administration is really the bunch of Brownshirts they say it is, what is the ACLU going to do when they smash the printing presses and take over the courts? When the secret police come to take them away, their lawsuits won't do any good.
Take a minute to visit the ACLU web page. Note the noble slogan beneath the name: "Defending The Bill of Rights". Last time I checked, the Second Amendment was still one of them. But the official ACLU policy is that the Second Amendment describes only a collective right, such as the right to establish a National Guard or a police force. This a most disingenuous position, coming from an organization which takes the rest of the Bill of Rights extremely literally. Since amendments I, IV, IX, and X also use the expression "the people", why doesn't the ACLU contend that free speech applies only to police, government, and the media? Why don't they think Amendment IV protects only National Guard armories from unreasonable search and seizure? Why do they think the Founders meant one thing by "the people" in the Second Amendment, and another thing everywhere else in the Constitution?
Their website declares that the collective right interpretation is settled law. Funny, that's not what Lawrence Tribe thinks. Widely held to be the most influential living American constitutional scholar, he held in 1999 that the Second Amendment guarantees citizens the right "to possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes", adding that "the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification." And the Supreme Court has never made an up or down ruling on the collective vs. individual right issue. The only settled thing is the minds of the ACLU.
Pressed on this issue, a senior ACLU official finally blurted out that they just don't like guns. Now there's high principle at work. This must mean that the ACLU likes pornography and Nazis, since they have defended both, and hates Christians, since they have brought so many lawsuits against them. Maybe the correct name is the American Civil-Liberties-We-Like Union.
So which is it, ACLU? Is our government really a tyrant-in-waiting, kept in check only by your valiant struggle? If that's the case, then government will sooner or later use force to suppress dissent. If the citizens do not have the means to resist, your ACLU is a joke. If you really don't think that Americans have the right to resist the government all the way to the sticking point, that leaves only one explanation: that you have a political agenda which you are intent on forcing upon us. This would explain your reliance on the courts, thereby sidestepping the will of the people. And it would explain your consistent selection of causes which erode the independent character of the American people. The defense of licentiousness, the deconstruction of marriage, the systematic attacks on the right of private citizens to associate with people of their choice, the removal of all morality from the public sphere: all these have one thing in common. They lessen our ability to make our own choices and stand on our own two feet.
The ACLU is unwilling to trust the people to resist the government, unwilling to trust their voice at the ballot box, unwilling to trust the people, period. They refuse to defend the Second Amendment because the ACLU isn't really about Civil Rights at all. It's about placing a Leftist agenda in the driver's seat of America.
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