What’s Wrong With the ACLU

     I stopped contributing to the ACLU in 1978 when the organization intervened on behalf of the American Nazi Party which had been denied a parade permit by the Skokie, Illinois City Council.   The Nazis had chosen Skokie because of its large Jewish population and intended to appear in full swastika regalia.

     It was not a matter of my denying that the Nazis had a “free speech”, First Amendment, right to march, rather I  did not believe that I had an obligation to pay for their forum.  It was my view that the ACLU did not have unlimited resources. The money and time expended on one case was money and time not devoted to another. I could not bring myself to believe that there was not at that time some poor guy on death row because he did not have adequate counsel or a woman somewhere being harassed on the job with no one to come to her aid. I wanted whatever money I could contribute to organizations seeking social justice to be spent on those kinds of cases rather than facilitating Nazis harassing Holocaust survivors.

     Update 40 years to Charlottesville. But for the ACLU going to court on their behalf the Klan, the Nazis and the other assorted haters might never have been able to march, and again people of good conscience have to ask questions about the organization's actions.

    Does your conception of “speech” embrace thugs carrying assault rifles  and torches and shouting Nazi slogans?

     Even if it does, are you morally obliged to help promote this “speech”?

     Could the contribution you made vindicating the constitutional rights of Klansmen and Nazis have been spent on behalf a kid doing serious time because his constitutional right to assistance of counsel was not honored, or  on any of countless other extant failures by the legal system to respect the rights of the poor and the powerless?

     There is nothing wrong with refusing to expend available time or money on certain kinds of matters where issues of constitutional rights are in the balance. I did criminal appeals when I practiced law, pleading on behalf men convicted of murder and other serious felonies, but there was one type of case I could not, would not handle----people convicted of child abuse.  That did not mean that I believed the constitutional rights of child abusers should be ignored. It was simply a matter of choosing not to spend my time or money vindicating those rights. There were other attorneys who did, and God bless them, just as there are other  attorneys ready to step forward on behalf of the Nazis and the Klan.  But, even had there not been, my position would be the same. There is a certain personal economy relative to time and money that serving certain kinds of needs rather than others. 

     There would be nothing wrong with the ACLU simply recognizing that every hour spent on Nazis is hour not spent on others who may have no one to speak on their behalf.