ACLU & Christmas Cards

Subject: Christmas Cards

This is a GREAT idea!!!!!!Yes, Christmas cards. This is coming early (really early) so that you can get ready to include an important address to your list. Read on........

What a GREAT idea!Fun with the ACLU...... Wanna have some fun this CHRISTMAS? Send the ACLU a CHRISTMAS CARD this year.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 itHere's the Address, just don't be rude or crude.

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 39 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!! And pass this on to your email lists. We really want to communicate with the ACLU! They really DESERVE us!!

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REPLY:

Despite my liberalism, I truly cannot understand the ire of conservatives toward the ACLU. I see it as I see old line Conservatives denounce FDR, none of them realize that all the so-called "socialistic" acts of the FDR administration actually saved capitalism. Also, I have never heard of anyone sending their SS check back to the Treasury.

Getting back to the ACLU, they are the only dedicated organization that defends your rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Do they defend and fight for causes that many find repulsive? Yes, of course, but in our society there are varied interests, rights, obligations, etc not applicable to all of us because of our differences and we cannot deny rights to some just because we disagree with an issue or believe differently. We sure as hell think its OK when they defend a right that applies to our interests or beliefs.

For example: The ACLU brought about the "Scottsboro Boys" Supreme Court decisions which guarantees everyone the right to effective counsel under the 6th Amendment. If YOU, or your child, were charged with a capital crime would you want an inept lawyer or a lawyer that fell asleep at your trial or showed up for trial drunk defending YOU?

Our folks went through the depression, my dad was an uneducated immigrant, legal of course, but no skills. He once worked 10 hours a day for 7 days, shoveling coal into a boiler, 3 stories underground at a huge commercial laundry, his pay envelope contained $5.00. He and 7 or 8 others went back to the office and tore it up, were arrested and hauled off in a paddy wagon. During the ride to the station the cops learned the story of the workers, turned around and went back and beat the hell out of the owner. Who would defend them? The ACLU. No one went to jail as the judge found the wages were "unconscionable" and a provocation for understandable anger. My folks thought of moving to California as my dad couild do farm work but California was stopping poor people at the state line, an "anti-Okie" policy. It was actually a crime to transport poor people into the state of California until the ACLU argued to the Supreme Court to have it declared un-Constitutional on the grounds of freedom of inter-state travel. Would YOU like to be denied access to cross any state line because you are poor? Hell, that was only in 1941, well into our lifetimes.

The big deal with so many "Christians" is the church/state issue. A bedrock of our founding. There is not one mention of "God" in the Constitution, 6 of our earliest presidents were Deists, not church members, appearances to the contrary. God was not in the coinage motto til when? Look it up, Eisenhower was president when it was enacted as a counter to the great "Red-scare" (I played a part in the fall of the U.S.S.R., saying all those rosaries every night for the "Conversion of Russia"). It was put on the 2 cent piece by a religio-wacko director of the mint in the 1860s, never a part of the founding of this country. Never. I. for one, think it is as it should be. For chrissakes, I don't want a Baptist telling me or influencing me through official acts how to live or what to believe any more than I want to follow Islamic precepts. Nor will I impose my religious beliefs on anyone.

Is there anyone today that would repeal 'Brown v Board of Education'? Certainly not a politician, The ACLU was counsel before the Supreme Court.

How about Burstyn v Wilson where the Supreme Court ruled New York State's refusal to license a film, "The Miracle" was termed sacreligious violated the 1st Amendment. Do YOU want the State determining what religious film you can see? Who would decide? A Muslim, a Baptist, a Catholic, a Buddhist? Or would you prefer the right to judge for YOURSELF?

How about the anti-miscegenation laws? Do YOU want the State telling you who you can or can not marry? 16 states forbid inter-racial marriage legally, it was a crime. This reminds me of the racial bigots I would argue with in Texas, for the most part stupid, prejediced jerks which I could shut up by simply asking them, "if you were stranded on a deserted island, who would you rather be stranded with: Kate Smith or Lena Horne?" Or, to a woman, "Harry Bellafone or Fatty Arbuckle?" End of argument.

How about a Connecticut LAW that forbid the use of contraceptives, even with married couples. Are you serious? And this was in 1965!!

How about Reed v Reed where the SC struck down a state law that gave automatic preference to men over women ias adminstrators of estates. Violation of Equal Protection under the 14th. 1971.

How about the conviction of an activist in MA that gave a woman a contraceptive device? Reversed by the Supreme Court, 1972.

How about the famous Nazi march in Skokie? We cannot pick and choose which rights will be granted and which withdrawn just because we dislike something. Smith v Collin, the SC reversed Skokie's ban, rightfully so. The same decision applies to the right of your religion, or his religion, or her religion, or their religion, however offensive to you and me, to march also.

How about Cohen v California. An ant-Viet Nam war protestor was convicted for wearing a shirt with the words, "fuck the draft", overturned by the Supreme Court on the grounds that the govt. cannot prohibit free speech just because it is "offensive". I find signs and tattoos, shirts and bumper stickers that say, "Jesus Saves" offensive. But I wouldn't deny for a moment the right of the proclaimer to say it.

These and literally hundreds of other decisions made by the Supreme Court that assure freedoms to us all were either brought by the ACLU or the ACLU was involved as a friend-of- the-court. The ACLU has defended many conservative positions, religious faiths, off-beat issues that no one bothers to learn about but either directly or indirectly benefits from. They do NOT discriminate, they stand for YOUR rights as the Contitution provides but it is "in" to bash the ACLU as it was to bash "pinko-commies" during McCarthy and the Black Lists, Nixon's Enemies Lists and all the authoritarian fascist administration apologists we have today. I wrote Rumsfeld and suggested he look up the definition of 'appeasement' and 'fascist', I did, before I excoriated him for questioning any administration or war critic by alluding to Hitler and and a photo of the great 'appeaser' of WWll, Chamberlain. I also reminded the Secretary that there are photos of him kissing Saddam in his palace in Bahgdad when the gassing of Kurds was well known years before and we knew exactly what kind of dictator he was and we probably sold him the gas that killed the Kurds. Things are either TRUE or or they are not. The fascists in this country are the nativist, authority following Bushies! Come November it will be a new ballgame and people will be held to account for their gaffes, if not outright crimes.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "a WALL of separation" was intended between church and state. That is why Jefferson was great and that is why all Americans should appreciate the ACLU.....which they do when it is THEIR ox being gored.

No one is against a Christian holiday or Kwanzaa or Hanukka or whatever, just don't think it is an official, govt deal or we end up as surely theocratic as Iran.


MAS