Guess who's getting a lump of coal this year

The ACLU of Northern California wrote me to share this great news:

Dear Mr. Caruso,

The decade is ending with more hope than it began.

The Obama administration has begun to restore some of the fundamental rights this country was founded upon — rights that have been dismantled for too long.  Rights that you care so much about.

Yay!  I care so much about these rights, and the Obama administration is restoring them!  Thank you the Obama administration, for giving us more hope than when it began!  And Anthony D. Romero of the national ACLU wrote me another letter with even more good news:

Dear Mr. Caruso,

As 2009 comes to a close, two things have become clear to those of us who work to protect and advance freedom's cause.

The first is that our hopes for progress on civil liberties are brighter than they have been in nearly a decade.  The second is that powerful forces are aligning to block the forward momentum that America so urgently needs.

Oh no!  Powerful forces aligning to block the forward momentum that America so urgently needs?  Who can they be?  Spin me a scenario that illustrates their blackhearted no-goodness, Anthony D. Romero!

Attorney General Holder moves forward with a decision to restore the rule of law and use our time-proven U.S. courts to try those accused of the 9/11 attacks — and, like clockwork, a wave of fear-mongering and angry rhetoric about "coddling terrorists" erupts.

Ah, so on one side we have the powerful forces aligning to block the forward momentum that America so urgently needs—and on the other we have Attorney General Holder, dedicated civil liberties protector in the administration of Nobel Prize-Haver Barack Obama, who reveres the rule of law and is therefore restoring some of the fundamental rights this country was founded upon that have been dismantled for too long.  Yay!  Yay, Obama administration!

But sadly the mail didn't stop there, and what should I receive next but this dreary, whining missive from the malcontents at the Center for Constitutional Rights:

A year ago, there was great hope for change with the coming of a new presidency; and yet today we find ourselves fighting many of the same battles we fought during the Bush administration. [...] CCR is committed to ultimately prevailing on our work to put an end to the problems created by Bush (and continued under Obama), including: ending rendition (outsourcing torture); safely shutting down Guantánamo; ending warrantless spying by the NSA; repealing portions of the Patriot Act in the Supreme Court; and continuing our efforts to hold torturers accountable. Rest assured that the Center will be there for all these struggles.

Center for Total Bringdown is more like it.  "Problems created by Bush and continued under Obama"?  Didn't they get the memo?  Don't they realize that Hero-President Obama and Attorney General "Robin" Holder are doing all they can to restore some of the time-proven U.S. courts that are aligned like clockwork with fear-mongering powerful forces who have been dismantled for far too long, and America urgently needs a wave of angry terrorist rhetoric to restore the rule of law, or something like that, yay Obama!!!?  It's like they're applying a single universal standard without fear or favor to both Republican and Democratic administrations—as though the same actions deserve the same response no matter who's carrying them out.  Absurd!

No, really: absurd.

And this, my friends, is why I'm not going to send so much as a penny to the ACLU this year.  This is not just the usual sordid but ultimately excusable pandering that you expect to see during the fundraising season; it's the willful propagation of dangerous falsehoods and fantasies by an organization that should be doing everything it can to dispel them.  The ACLU should be using my money to tell its supporters the truth: that in the area of civil liberties, Obama is practically indistinguishable from Bush.  But they know that the vast majority of their members are Democrats, and they'd much rather keep them writing those fat checks than upset them with the inconvenient reality.

So if you're a card-carrying member of the ACLU, please consider redirecting your annual donation money to CCR—an organization that understands that feeding people's Democratic fantasies (no matter how profitable that might be) only makes it that much easier for the Obama administration to continue its embrace and expansion of the assault on civil liberties.

Comments

[NomadUK]

Those of us on this side of the pond can send money to Liberty, which does its best to do what the ACLU should be doing over there, and has no illusions about the difference between Tories and Labour when it comes to civil liberties.

[InThecity]

NomadUK - Liberty is a great organisation. As a citizen of both countries, it is certainly my duty to give money not only to Liberty but to CCR.

John - Thanks for pointing out CCR! We who can give in this holiday season must do so with gusto.

[mitch]

I wasn't planning to renew my ACLU membership this year but had been backtracking on that recently, with them losing that big donor or whatever. But giving to CCR sounds like a much better idea. I'll check them out. Thanks John!

[John Caruso]

I hadn't heard about the donor (and the ACLU losing a quarter of its funding). That's a shame—it's not like they don't do good work. But I've been shifting my donations from the ACLU to CCR for years, and seeing them actively undercut their professed mission by shilling for a major civil rights abuser like Obama was the last straw. And I get the sense that the ACLU hasn't had to run lean in years, so it may actually be good for them to be forced to take a hard look at where they're spending our money (like the multiple begging bowl letters I get from them every few weeks).

[Catherine]

CCR is way fine. Check them out at the URL below. (No, I'm not on staff, I wish.)

"Robin Holder," good one, John. Very sad about the ACLU.

http://ccrjustice.org/

[John Caruso]

Oops, should have included a donation link in the posting. Added.

[Bjorn]

Well said, John.

[druff]

i'm glad i'm not the only one who was put off by the bias in recent ACLU missives -- you said it, John. kinda sad that, despite all their important work, they're aiming to profit from their donors' delusion.

on the other hand, it seems clear that the cases the ACLU involves itself in are pretty non-partisan; that is, they don't shy away from the Obama administration in court. so maybe taking money from the ideologically-blinded to go after their golden boy is just a kinda sneaky means to a noble end. better the ACLU gets that dough than the DNC. maybe i like it now!

[JMC]

I've always given money to the EFF rather than the ACLU, since the EFF is clued in on the privacy implications of new technology, while the ACLU was stuck in the analog age.

[John Caruso]

so maybe taking money from the ideologically-blinded to go after their golden boy is just a kinda sneaky means to a noble end.

In other circumstances I might be able to go for that, but having an organization with the ACLU's credibility spinning this kind of disinformation isn't just an innocuous white lie, it's actively harmful, since it reinforces delusions that reduce opposition to Obama's ongoing crime spree.

better the ACLU gets that dough than the DNC.

Amen to that. But I was pretty sure the people who'd read this posting were bloody unlikely to redirect money from the ACLU to the DNC.

[RLaing]

When Bush launched the invasion of Iraq, rightly or wrongly I ignored entirely the claims about WMD, and subsequent claims of freedom-spreading. Instead, I paid a visit to the US Geological Survey website to find out how much oil there is, and how fast we are consuming it. Divide stock by flow, and you arrive at a time, past which the stock no longer exists. The result of this simple mathematical operation interfered with my sleep for some time after.

There is, you see, a tie-in to torture here. Without cheap energy, it is only the few, not the many, who can enjoy a life of luxury and for some decades the few have justified their hold on power through a cult of consumption (see Adam Curtis' documentary: Century of the Self). Without fossil fuel or some equivalent, of course this must end.

In the past, when the privileges of the few were under constant and dangerous assault by the needs of the many, one of the ways the rulers justified their hold on power was by claiming to protect the people from destruction by 'Satanic' forces, the so-called witch-hunts. The quantity of witches was proportional to the application of torture. As threats to established power ebbed and flowed, so did the use of torture and the threat of witchcraft. Surely there is nothing quite like the sight and smell of his fellows being burned alive to make a man rethink the benefits of revolution.

Of course in these modern times we thoroughly modern people have a hard time believing in witches, so the concept has been modernized somewhat: now we are encouraged to believe in the awesome threat of 'terrorists'.

In this way, I view things like the open embrace of torture, movement towards a police-state and destruction of civil liberties as indications that elites also take the prospect of peak oil seriously, and are planning for a future that will be quite different from the present in significant ways.

Donations to the ACLU or CCR or whomever are attempts to address symptoms, not causes. Given however that the causes are probably beyond our power to change, I suppose one is as well off dreaming as not.

[Save the Oocytes]

RLaing, could you please tell us the numbers you found?

[Gwendolyn Fang]

I'm confused. I thought the ACLU was the devil, and the CCR were sort of OK, and now you are suggesting it's the other way around.

[John Caruso]

RLaing: I'd definitely agree that the increase in the embrace of police-state tactics and other methods of control is driven in part by expectations of what the future is going to look like. Soylent Green looks less like fiction and more like prophecy every day.

Donations to the ACLU or CCR or whomever are attempts to address symptoms, not causes.

Well, the ACLU and CCR certainly have nothing to do with peak oil, but generally speaking I'd say they're among the main organizations that are addressing causes rather than symptoms. As I've written before and no doubt will again, there's a reason countries like Israel go insane when their war criminals face legal sanctions abroad.

[druff]

...it's actively harmful, since it reinforces delusions that reduce opposition to Obama's ongoing crime spree.

yeah but, what opposition? the ACLU gets results, whereas a new contingent of prog-blog fence-sitters who will end up voting D anyway, well... besides, if any issue ever spawns real opposition, i doubt it will be anything as trite as torture (yawn).

Amen to that. But I was pretty sure the people who'd read this posting were bloody unlikely to redirect money from the ACLU to the DNC.

i was referring to the BHO fanboys (and gals) who might get pissed off and redirect their donations if ACLU stopped pulling their punches in their correspondence. i was assuming that these people's substitute recipients might be much worse.

[John Caruso]

Oops, ok, I get it now. And it works both ways, of course: the flip side is that BHO realists might get pissed off and redirect their donations if the ACLU keeps pulling their punches. Which is why I wrote this posting.

I know from personal experience that there are a lot of Obama fans giving money to CCR, though, and yet even as CCR is busting his chops they're also doing better than ever on donations. So the profitability of pandering is an open question.

[Amandasaurus Rex]

I became wary of the ACLU when I read that during the 1970's members of the organization had auctioned off free abortions at a fundraising raffle. I mean, I realize that was a long time ago and to my knowledge the ACLU appears to have done more good than bad since then, but damn, calloused much? Roe vs. Wade wasn't just a win for your team, guys.