From Jihad Watch:
The Infallibility of the ACLU
Back in the 80s and 90s I used to joke that there was no real need in the world for papal infallibility, since we had the ACLU. Whatever stand they took on any issue, you could infallibly say the opposite, and you'd be dead right, every time. From their origins as a front group for the Communist Party, USA, to their defense of antiwar extremists in the 60s and violent felons, their “First Amendment” defense of kiddie porn but disdain for pro-life demonstrators, right up to their sick espousal of the “right” of Neo-nazis to march past and mock Holocaust survivors... they had a perfect record: Wrong about everything. Then the Bush administration came along, and in its well-meaning but ham-handed War on Terror it took actions that seemed to many of us to violate real (as opposed to fictitious) civil liberties, and the ACLU was ruined for me: On occasion, if only by accident, it was right.
Still, they do their best. The ACLU has partnered up with the terrorist-friendly CAIR on a regular basis, and it opposes even sane and necessary domestic security measures, border control.... Give those guys credit, they're wrong about almost everything!
Now they have to go and confuse me again. The ACLU has stumbled, surely inadvertently, onto the right side of an issue, as the Mansfield News Journal reports:
MANSFIELD -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio expressed disappointment and concern over a decision by Mansfield City Schools to withdraw permission for a controversial speaking event that had been scheduled Monday at a school building.
The event, organized by the Mansfield North Central Ohio Tea Party Association, included a presentation by Usama Dakdok, characterized by some as "anti-Islam."
"While we might disagree with the message of the speaker, they have a right like any other group to fully air their views without interference by government officials. Public officials -- sheriff and superintendent included -- have a duty to provide a safe venue for all speakers. Shutting down an event because some individual or group does not like the message is dangerous to free society and the democratic process," ACLU of Ohio Executive Director Christine Link said in a written statement Tuesday.
Mansfield City Schools Superintendent Dan Freund announced Monday the school would not host the evening event organized by the tea party group, citing safety concerns about the number of people who would turn out to support or oppose Dakdok.
Freund said the presumed content of the speaking event was not a factor in the decision.
A coalition of advocacy groups opposed to the message of the keynote speaker was scheduled to host a press conference later that morning. The groups, including the Mansfield branch of the NAACP, applauded the school district for not allowing the event to happen.
Bonnie Oleksa, an organizer with the tea party group that invited Dakdok, said she was disappointed with the district's decision.
"We don't deserve this treatment," she said. "We paid to rent (space in) that school, we had a contract for that school and we put out radio spots advertising the event."
Oleksa said the district was pressured to cancel the event. She said the tea party group will be pursuing legal action in response to the school district's decision.
"I don't want this to happen to us again," Oleksa said.
She said she was grateful for the ACLU's words of support.
The tea party group is scheduled to host several future events at Mansfield Senior High School, including a mayoral candidate's forum and a rally commemorating the founding of the tea party movement. The ACLU expressed concerns whether the group would be allowed to hold the events at the school.
"Shutting down the venue for one speech does not eliminate the message. Censorship is counterproductive for all groups, as it lays the groundwork for the government to suppress future messages of the very groups protesting," Link said. "Speech must be protected for all, or ultimately it will be available to no one."
Freund said the school district has not discussed whether it will allow the tea party group to hold future events on school grounds. He said the district's decision to withdraw permission for the Monday event was the right move. Freund consulted with Mansfield police before making the call.
"We think we followed our policy and did what was best to protect our children, who are in and around our building in the evening," he said.
Police Chief Dino Sgambellone said allowing the event to be held on school property presented a potentially dangerous situation.
"It was just unknown if 20 people would attend or 500," he said. "When you have passionate people coming together on both sides of an issue, I would hate to see something tragic happen.
"It's not that people don't have the right to protest, but let's do it at a venue that doesn't present a possible danger for children."
The tea party group was able to arrange an alternate location for the Monday speaking event, an office complex at 1456 Park Avenue West. More than 350 people crowded into the space to hear Dakdok. Tea party members receptive to the lecture bumped elbows with concerned listeners from the local branch of the NAACP and the Islamic Society of Mansfield.
No one was observed protesting outside during Dakdok's 150-minute lecture. The Christian evangelist's interpretations of Islam and the Koran drew mixed reactions from the crowd. The meeting included a few outbursts, but was otherwise orderly.
The ongoing effort of stealth jihadists like the Muslim Brotherhood-founded CAIR to partner up with domestic leftists continues—and this time it went so far beyond the pale of American mores that it forced the ACLU to oppose it. We all know that Muslims are no friends of free expression: Blasphemy laws across the globe, the absolute ban on non-Muslim worship at the Islamic “Vatican” in Saudi Arabia, the violence aimed at those who “blaspheme” their non-divine prophet... it's not for nothing that we call Islam The World's Most Intolerant Religion.™ (I'd really like to see that used on CAIR's business cards—wouldn't you?)
In the past we've seen the Organization of the Islamic Conference herding U.N. delegates from all their godforsaken countries to demand a global ban on “religious defamation” (which would only apply to anti-Muslim speech—since if it covered Muslims it would ban the hateful, anti-pagan, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian Qur'an). It seems for now they'll have to settle for a resolution by the UN Human Rights Council “combating religious intolerance and negative stereotypes [and] stigmatization” as a first step.
It's grimly amusing to see the lead country opposing intolerance is... Pakistan, where “blasphemy” is punishable by death and government ministers are murdered with impunity for opposing such laws. But the OIC's agenda is out on the table: They want the world body to solemnly impose the equivalent of blasphemy laws... on the world as a whole. This flows as predictably as arithmetic from the fundamental Muslim belief that Islamic sovereignty, like Allah's, is universal.
So CAIR, the creature of the Muslim Brotherhood, is using American leftists to ban “blasphemous” speech in American schools—using the ludicrous canard that criticism of Islam could lead to violence and endanger children. The grotesquerie of this effort, the crass menagerie of distortions and hypocrisy proved too much even for the professional destroyers of social order who staff the ACLU. Maybe it gave them a too acute glimpse into the future.
I know better than to see in this a sign of hope that American liberals are waking up to the threat we (that even they) face. To people like this, every policeman is still a cossack, every Western flag bears the swastika, every pushback against an aggressive minority making outrageous claims is another Dred Scott decision. Some ideologies really are impervious to new information, and cannot be reformed. How ironic that a world-view which claims the honorable old title of “liberalism” (a word once associated with freedom lovers like Frederic Bastiat) should decay into a mirror of the old joke about the Bourbons: “They learn nothing, and they forget nothing.”
Posted by Roland Shirk on March 30, 2011 9:46 PM
The Infallibility of the ACLU
Back in the 80s and 90s I used to joke that there was no real need in the world for papal infallibility, since we had the ACLU. Whatever stand they took on any issue, you could infallibly say the opposite, and you'd be dead right, every time. From their origins as a front group for the Communist Party, USA, to their defense of antiwar extremists in the 60s and violent felons, their “First Amendment” defense of kiddie porn but disdain for pro-life demonstrators, right up to their sick espousal of the “right” of Neo-nazis to march past and mock Holocaust survivors... they had a perfect record: Wrong about everything. Then the Bush administration came along, and in its well-meaning but ham-handed War on Terror it took actions that seemed to many of us to violate real (as opposed to fictitious) civil liberties, and the ACLU was ruined for me: On occasion, if only by accident, it was right.
Still, they do their best. The ACLU has partnered up with the terrorist-friendly CAIR on a regular basis, and it opposes even sane and necessary domestic security measures, border control.... Give those guys credit, they're wrong about almost everything!
Now they have to go and confuse me again. The ACLU has stumbled, surely inadvertently, onto the right side of an issue, as the Mansfield News Journal reports:
MANSFIELD -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio expressed disappointment and concern over a decision by Mansfield City Schools to withdraw permission for a controversial speaking event that had been scheduled Monday at a school building.
The event, organized by the Mansfield North Central Ohio Tea Party Association, included a presentation by Usama Dakdok, characterized by some as "anti-Islam."
"While we might disagree with the message of the speaker, they have a right like any other group to fully air their views without interference by government officials. Public officials -- sheriff and superintendent included -- have a duty to provide a safe venue for all speakers. Shutting down an event because some individual or group does not like the message is dangerous to free society and the democratic process," ACLU of Ohio Executive Director Christine Link said in a written statement Tuesday.
Mansfield City Schools Superintendent Dan Freund announced Monday the school would not host the evening event organized by the tea party group, citing safety concerns about the number of people who would turn out to support or oppose Dakdok.
Freund said the presumed content of the speaking event was not a factor in the decision.
A coalition of advocacy groups opposed to the message of the keynote speaker was scheduled to host a press conference later that morning. The groups, including the Mansfield branch of the NAACP, applauded the school district for not allowing the event to happen.
Bonnie Oleksa, an organizer with the tea party group that invited Dakdok, said she was disappointed with the district's decision.
"We don't deserve this treatment," she said. "We paid to rent (space in) that school, we had a contract for that school and we put out radio spots advertising the event."
Oleksa said the district was pressured to cancel the event. She said the tea party group will be pursuing legal action in response to the school district's decision.
"I don't want this to happen to us again," Oleksa said.
She said she was grateful for the ACLU's words of support.
The tea party group is scheduled to host several future events at Mansfield Senior High School, including a mayoral candidate's forum and a rally commemorating the founding of the tea party movement. The ACLU expressed concerns whether the group would be allowed to hold the events at the school.
"Shutting down the venue for one speech does not eliminate the message. Censorship is counterproductive for all groups, as it lays the groundwork for the government to suppress future messages of the very groups protesting," Link said. "Speech must be protected for all, or ultimately it will be available to no one."
Freund said the school district has not discussed whether it will allow the tea party group to hold future events on school grounds. He said the district's decision to withdraw permission for the Monday event was the right move. Freund consulted with Mansfield police before making the call.
"We think we followed our policy and did what was best to protect our children, who are in and around our building in the evening," he said.
Police Chief Dino Sgambellone said allowing the event to be held on school property presented a potentially dangerous situation.
"It was just unknown if 20 people would attend or 500," he said. "When you have passionate people coming together on both sides of an issue, I would hate to see something tragic happen.
"It's not that people don't have the right to protest, but let's do it at a venue that doesn't present a possible danger for children."
The tea party group was able to arrange an alternate location for the Monday speaking event, an office complex at 1456 Park Avenue West. More than 350 people crowded into the space to hear Dakdok. Tea party members receptive to the lecture bumped elbows with concerned listeners from the local branch of the NAACP and the Islamic Society of Mansfield.
No one was observed protesting outside during Dakdok's 150-minute lecture. The Christian evangelist's interpretations of Islam and the Koran drew mixed reactions from the crowd. The meeting included a few outbursts, but was otherwise orderly.
The ongoing effort of stealth jihadists like the Muslim Brotherhood-founded CAIR to partner up with domestic leftists continues—and this time it went so far beyond the pale of American mores that it forced the ACLU to oppose it. We all know that Muslims are no friends of free expression: Blasphemy laws across the globe, the absolute ban on non-Muslim worship at the Islamic “Vatican” in Saudi Arabia, the violence aimed at those who “blaspheme” their non-divine prophet... it's not for nothing that we call Islam The World's Most Intolerant Religion.™ (I'd really like to see that used on CAIR's business cards—wouldn't you?)
In the past we've seen the Organization of the Islamic Conference herding U.N. delegates from all their godforsaken countries to demand a global ban on “religious defamation” (which would only apply to anti-Muslim speech—since if it covered Muslims it would ban the hateful, anti-pagan, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian Qur'an). It seems for now they'll have to settle for a resolution by the UN Human Rights Council “combating religious intolerance and negative stereotypes [and] stigmatization” as a first step.
It's grimly amusing to see the lead country opposing intolerance is... Pakistan, where “blasphemy” is punishable by death and government ministers are murdered with impunity for opposing such laws. But the OIC's agenda is out on the table: They want the world body to solemnly impose the equivalent of blasphemy laws... on the world as a whole. This flows as predictably as arithmetic from the fundamental Muslim belief that Islamic sovereignty, like Allah's, is universal.
So CAIR, the creature of the Muslim Brotherhood, is using American leftists to ban “blasphemous” speech in American schools—using the ludicrous canard that criticism of Islam could lead to violence and endanger children. The grotesquerie of this effort, the crass menagerie of distortions and hypocrisy proved too much even for the professional destroyers of social order who staff the ACLU. Maybe it gave them a too acute glimpse into the future.
I know better than to see in this a sign of hope that American liberals are waking up to the threat we (that even they) face. To people like this, every policeman is still a cossack, every Western flag bears the swastika, every pushback against an aggressive minority making outrageous claims is another Dred Scott decision. Some ideologies really are impervious to new information, and cannot be reformed. How ironic that a world-view which claims the honorable old title of “liberalism” (a word once associated with freedom lovers like Frederic Bastiat) should decay into a mirror of the old joke about the Bourbons: “They learn nothing, and they forget nothing.”
Posted by Roland Shirk on March 30, 2011 9:46 PM
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