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"The ACLU has stood four-square against the recurring tides of
hysteria that
from time to time threaten freedoms everywhere... Indeed, it is difficult
to appreciate how far our freedoms might have eroded had it not been for the
Union's valiant representation in the courts of the constitutional rights of
all people of all persuasions, no matter how unpopular or even despised by
the majority they were at the time."
former Chief Justice Earl Warren
"I'd hate to think what First Amendment rights would amount to today
-- if they still existed -- without the vigilance and dedication of the
ACLU. The severe challenges to free speech and free press that we've seen
in recent years, not all of which have been overcome, make it clear that if
we hadn't had the ACLU, we'd have had to invent it."
Tom Wicker
Columnist, New York Times
"How irritating the ACLU can be when it is wrong -- that is to say,
when it disagrees with me . . . How irritating and how essential, because it
is the right to differ that the ACLU above all fights to preserve, even to
differ with sound-thinking liberals. Again and again it has outraged its
own supporters, but in time most of them have understand that freedom
depends on one's willingness to be outraged. And history has most often
shown that the ACLU was not wrong, just lonely it its opposition to censors
and tyrants."
Anthony Lewis
Columnist and Author
"The ACLU may be prickly and annoying but it is probably
indispensable to a society which seems to need reminding of what its
liberties mean about once a week. What looks irritating today, often looks
wonderfully farsighted and reasonable, even inevitable, a year hence. And it
is entitled to be wrong-headed at times, like all the rest of us."
Robert MacNeil
Broadcast Journalist,
The
MacNeil Lehrer Report
"The ever increasing complexity of economic and social problems
confronting this country will inevitably lead to increasing the role of the
federal and local government in managing our affairs. The task of
protecting the rights of the individual from infringement by the government
will become more and more important. No other organization has performed
the task in the past and will be capable of performing it with the same
vigor and effectiveness in the future as the American Civil Liberties
Union."
Wassily Leontief
Nobel Prize-winning Economist
" For the past 60 years American democracy has been reinforced by the
existence of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has persisted in
meeting the most difficult tests of being the moral conscience of our
nation. It has protected the fundamental political and human rights of all
Americans----indeed of all human beings within our jurisdiction. Its
operational ideology has been and continues to be that all ideologies and
all beliefs must have equal freedom of expression; no human being or
groups of human beings can be permitted to restrict or suppress the rights
of other human beings. As expected, the ACLU has been criticized,
threatened
and ridiculed. But the power of its moral strength is demonstrated by the
fact that the greater the risks and threats, the greater its clarity, its
courage and its persistence. In fulfilling this difficult role, the ACLU
will continue to give substance to American democracy and will help us to
distinguish between social barbarism and civilization."
Kenneth B. Clark,
Psychologist and Educator
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