Send the ACLU a Christmas Card

Wanna have some fun this CHRISTMAS? Send the ACLU a CHRISTMAS CARD!
As they are working so very hard to get rid of the CHRISTMAS part of this holiday, we should all send them a nice, CHRISTIAN, card to brighten up their dark, sad, little world.


Make sure it says "Merry Christmas" on it.

Here's the Address, just don't be rude or crude.
(It's Not the Christian Way ya know?)

ACLU
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004

Two tons of Christmas cards would freeze their operations because they wouldn't know if any were regular mail containing contributions.. So spend 37 cents and tell the ACLU to leave Christmas alone. Also tell them that there is no such thing as a Holiday Tree. . . . It's a Christmas Tree even in the fields!!

 

I understand that if you do this, you will get a nice letter back from the ACLU, thanking you for the holiday greetings. The letter will remind you that the ACLU strongly supports your consitutional rights, as a private citizen, to celebrate any religious holiday (or no religious holiday) as you see fit. They might even ask you for a contribution and put you on their mailing list.

If you want to annoy the ACLU, then you need to send them a "Christmas card" as a local, state, or federal government official, preferably at taxpayer expense. That will tick them off. But it is rather pointless to send them a "Christmas card" as a private citizen with your own 37 cents, because the ACLU would support your right to do just that.

 

Better yet, send every Republican member of Congress a Christmas card with the standard postage attached, taped to a brick.... so they get the postage due on their account. Maybe hitting 'em in the pocketbook will teach them to stop messing around with basic American freedoms - such as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

Please provide the evidence that the ACLU is "working so very hard to get rid of the CHRISTMAS part of this holiday." Otherwise, this is just unsupported drivel.

The whole issue this year has been drummed up by the likes of Bill O'Reilly. It is a strawman. I'm shocked (well, maybe not) that you were taken in by it.

The ACLU does focus on the establishment of a religion by the state. It doesn't ask that the people, nor their government, be anti-religion. Just non-religious. That contributes to--not inhibits--freedom of religion. But I've found that the most fervent of the pious don't want freedom of religion at all--they want everyone else to believe as they do. So they get upset when their entrees into government are opposed.

 

Oooh, that'll leave a mark!

 

Abner

 

The ACLU are the worst type of cowards....those who turn to the courts to impose their agenda on the majority, who would never approve of their ideas, were it put to a vote.

 

Amen, Bruce.

 

Although on the issue of Christmas I disagree with the ACLU, the organization does serve its intended purpose. I don’t think Santa Claus or a Christmas tree are religious symbols (But a nativity scene definitely is.). However, even if sometimes the organization takes its stands too far, they done a lot of good for American and Americans when it comes to protecting our constitutional rights.

Even many atheists I personally know celebrate the holidays and have Santa Claus give toys to their children, so this time I think the ACLU has gone too far. However, we also have a lot of case law that is a direct result of the efforts of the organization.

Constitutional rights and ideals can not be put to a vote because those rights are there to protect those that are in the minority of the sociopolitical spectrum. Unpopular speech, religious beliefs, etc. need more protection from the Bill of Rights than do popular stands.

Let this issue stand on its own merits. I think things will be back to normal soon enough.

Happy Holydays to Everyone!

 

Yes! Yes! Those cowards! How dare they support that dated and antiquated concept of CIVIL LIBERTIES? What do they think this country is? America or something?

Oh wait! Duh! This IS America..... or is it now to be called "Amerika"?

In any case, obviously they are cowards.... that's the answer. I mean it is totally cowardly to stand up for the disenfranchised against the power and might of the corporate fueled state, who have all the military, police, and repressive powers on their side. Yes. Of course. Far better we just let the mob rule, because as you said none of these concepts would be supported anymore by the American public if put to a vote.

Phew! Thanks for clearing that up for us Bruce.....

By the way, does anyone else feel like Europeans must have felt in the middle of the 19th century? Except this time, there is no where to go to escape the built-in paternalistic repression of the state - we were the last frontier.

 

The U.S. Constitution isn't about the "majority." We have the legislature for that. The Constitution, rather, is about protecting the minority from the tyrrany of the majority.

IIRC, a majority of Americans would allow illegaly obtained evidence to be admitted at trial. But the Constitution provides protections against this (the 4th Amendment, for example, and the 5th).

I'm thankful for the rights and freedoms that truly define what being an American is all about. The ACLU defends the extremes of that freedom so its core remains solid for all. As we're seeing with the current administration, our rights are very vulnerable and subject to trampling, even by elected officials.

Finally, it isn't "coward"ly to take unpopular stances in order to do what is right. Quite the opposite, in fact. Left to its own devices, even a well-meaning government will eventually smother us.

 

Dr. Douglas, you are truly a gentleman and a scholar. Thanks for articulating what I was trying to say in much less sarcastic prose....

 

OK, if that's the way you feel about it, don't send us a Christmas card.

 

Why not just masturbate instead?

It achieves the same end (pleasure without purpose) except that it doesn't hurt other people while you are doing it.

But the desire to hurt people is precisely why you are proposing this snail-mail denial-of-service attack, isn't it? If nobody suffers, it doesn't succeed.

Do you really seriously think that a harassment campaign organized by religious militants is going to change the ACLU's positions or its philosophy?

 

Re: Re: Send the ACLU a Christmas Card

But if a sperm gets wasted, God gets quite irate!

 

Blaming the ACLU is utterly mis-placed. They, in and of themselves, have no real power. It is the courts that decide whether or not the causes the ACLU supports are valid.

Seven of the last 10 administrations (1969 - present) have been Republican, appointing all those federal judges. Judges who are in place to decide, in many cases, the constitutionality of cases and laws. Statehouses? Held mostly by Republicans. (Of course, many state and local judges are elected.)

The problem these folks have isn't with the ACLU. In fact, it isn't even with the judiciary. It is with freedom itself.

 

The natural tendency in a true democracy is for the majority to impose their will on the minority. The natural tendency for men in power is to feel that they need more power especially when the men are self righteous and feel that they are trying to do good things. These tendencies were understood by our founding fathers and so checks and balances and the bill of rights were made part of our constitution. The goal of the ACLU is to protect our rights which means that they will sometimes take an unpopular position and use the courts to force the majority and our self righteous leaders to protect the rights of us all.

On a tangential issue, it will be very interesting to me to see what comes out of our Presidents apparent current position that the executive branch doesn't need any permission or oversight when spying on American citizens. I'm not prejudging what the outcome should be. For example, this may be a case where technology has developed to the point where it allows a communication media enmasse to be searched and the protections provided in the Bill of Rights should best be applied only when specific communications are sifted out of the total mass.

 

Regarding the ACLU in general, sometimes I disagree with them and on other occasions I support them. (There are few organizations that I would give a blanket endorsement to.) The ACLU does a necessary job, but occasionally they appear to confuse civil liberties agendas with the agendas of the political left.

Regarding this 'Christmas' issue, I'm unfamiliar with what the beef is. There's lots of inflammatory rhetoric going around, includng the post that started this thread, but I'm not sure what specific ACLU abuses have the religious right so up in arms.

I found these remarks posted on the ACLU website and I have to say that I agree with them:

When the angry phone calls and emails started arriving at the office, I knew the holiday season was upon us...

We get this type of correspondence a lot, mostly in reaction to a well-organized attempt by extremist groups to demonize the ACLU, crush religious diversity, and make a few bucks in the process. Sadly, this self-interested effort is being promoted in the guise of defending Christmas.

For example, the Alliance Defense Fund celebrates the season with an "It's OK to say Merry Christmas" campaign, implying that the ACLU has challenged such holiday greetings...

Of course, there is no "Merry Christmas" lawsuit, nor is there any ACLU litigation about U.S. currency, military chaplains, etc. But the facts are not important to these groups, because their real message is this: By protecting the freedom of Muslims, Jews, and other non-Christians through preventing government entanglement with religion, the ACLU is somehow infringing on the rights of those with majority religious beliefs...

As part of our justice mission, we work hard to protect the rights of free religious expression for all people, including Christians. For example, we recently defended the First Amendment rights of a Baptist minister to preach his message on public streets in southern Indiana. The ACLU intervened on behalf of a Christian valedictorian in a Michigan high school, which agreed to stop censoring religious yearbook entries, and supported the rights of Iowa students to distribute Christian literature at their school.

There are many more examples, because the ACLU is committed to preserving the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom for all. We agree with the U.S. Supreme Court's firm rulings that this freedom means that children who grow up in non-Christian homes should not be made to feel like outsiders in their own community's courthouse, legislature or public schoolhouse...

http://www.aclu.org/religion/gen/22324res20051207.html

 

Not true...

The ACLU uses its ability to be awarded court costs (at very inflated rates) to browbeat small organizations into settling out of court even when they have every chance of winning.

Also, the local ACLU operates as a semi-independent organizations and this allows the local administrators to go after violators of their personal pet peeves. Probably half of the BSA's ongoing litigation comes from SoCal and it is all over gay rights. There, a local governing body was fighting the ACLU and had every chance of winning their appeal, but a gay rights group got two people on the board and they immediately settled awarding the ACLU over a half million dollars. Since then, the board has changed politics and the decisions have gone against the ACLU but it was too late, the ACLU still got that money.

Anyone who thinks the ACLU is a strictly non-partisan advocate of personal freedom is rather naive.....

 

Re: Not true...

Interesting, can you point at a specific case?

I've heard of cases where the ACLU provided legal counsel for both sides of a case so that it would NOT be settled out of court. Settling out of court would not provide the case history so would not impact latter cases. At least that is my not-a-lawyer understanding.