bobbyw24
11-30-2009, 06:58 AM
The realization that political debate in a free society is often raucous accompanied my journey from work as an ACLU staff attorney to becoming National Vice-Chair of the then-respected Anti-Defamation League. This journey was inspired in significant part by "refuseniks" -- met during an ACLU "mission" to the USSR -- who were consigned to the Gulag because there was no First Amendment to protect them.
You can thus understand the consternation, and not just mine, which greeted the ADL's hyped "Report" declaring that "rage" expressed against President Obama is un-American. These tidbits reveal the flavor of ADL's declaration:
Since the election of Barack Obama, a current of anti-government hostility has swept across the U.S. (creating) a climate of toxic rage (characterized by) shared belief that Obama poses a threat to the future of the U.S. (with) an intense strain of anti-government distrust and anger.
ADL's perfervidly purple prose belies an abysmal ignorance of American political traditions. Thomas Jefferson -- savaged by the press in his day -- believed that the purpose of the press (which he said was more important than government) is to express distrust of officialdom. Justice Holmes warned that "We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death." Justice Harlan the Second observed that "[o]ne man's vulgarity is another's lyric." Justice Douglas wrote that free speech "serves best its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger." Understanding our constitutional patrimony, most of the press greeted the ADL's broadside with a massive yawn (e.g., N.Y. Times: "Group Finds More Anti-Government Sentiment"). Yet some commentators recognized the ADL's naked partisanship, e.g., Jonathan Tobin, executive editor of Commentary:
Had ADL issued a report years ago that began by accusing Democrats of creating resentment against Bush and then linked opposition to the GOP to extremists who supported Hamas or denied al-Qaeda's role in 9/11, Democrats would have rightly cried foul. That never happened. By choosing to frame its reports so as to associate all those who oppose Obama's policies with the far Right, ADL has stepped over a line that a nonpartisan group should never cross (Emphasis added).
Feisty Jerusalem Post editor Carolyn Glick likewise noted that the ADL's decrying only anti-Obama expression "is strange given that the ADL never put out a report against parallel anti-Bush movements." In condemning only conservative sentiment as unprecedented, ADL overlooks evidence stored in its massive files (twice in recent years, the ADL has paid damages for unlawful surveillance). Has the ADL forgotten that rage against President Reagan triggered an assassination attempt? Or that Jon Stewart called President Bush "a jackass who talks like he's four" while comparing him to a "drug mule"? Rage against Bush extended even to the self-defined intellectual press. A New Republic nerd named Jonathan Chait shared what he probably told his therapist by confessing at unseemly length: "I hate President George W. Bush," whom he called "a dullard with limited brainpower." Such mass frenzy among mainline liberals (not Far-Left wackos) led Charles Krauthammer (remember, that man is a doctor!) to diagnose in Time magazine Democrats' "contempt and disdain (for Bush) giving way to a hatred that is near pathological." In the time of anti-Bush rage, the ADL held its tongue. Herbert Hoover accused Franklin Roosevelt of establishing fascism. The Chicago Tribune editorialized that President Truman "must be impeached and convicted (for acts) which have shown him to be unfit morally and mentally."
continue
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/why_the_adl_became_a_partisan.html
You can thus understand the consternation, and not just mine, which greeted the ADL's hyped "Report" declaring that "rage" expressed against President Obama is un-American. These tidbits reveal the flavor of ADL's declaration:
Since the election of Barack Obama, a current of anti-government hostility has swept across the U.S. (creating) a climate of toxic rage (characterized by) shared belief that Obama poses a threat to the future of the U.S. (with) an intense strain of anti-government distrust and anger.
ADL's perfervidly purple prose belies an abysmal ignorance of American political traditions. Thomas Jefferson -- savaged by the press in his day -- believed that the purpose of the press (which he said was more important than government) is to express distrust of officialdom. Justice Holmes warned that "We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death." Justice Harlan the Second observed that "[o]ne man's vulgarity is another's lyric." Justice Douglas wrote that free speech "serves best its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger." Understanding our constitutional patrimony, most of the press greeted the ADL's broadside with a massive yawn (e.g., N.Y. Times: "Group Finds More Anti-Government Sentiment"). Yet some commentators recognized the ADL's naked partisanship, e.g., Jonathan Tobin, executive editor of Commentary:
Had ADL issued a report years ago that began by accusing Democrats of creating resentment against Bush and then linked opposition to the GOP to extremists who supported Hamas or denied al-Qaeda's role in 9/11, Democrats would have rightly cried foul. That never happened. By choosing to frame its reports so as to associate all those who oppose Obama's policies with the far Right, ADL has stepped over a line that a nonpartisan group should never cross (Emphasis added).
Feisty Jerusalem Post editor Carolyn Glick likewise noted that the ADL's decrying only anti-Obama expression "is strange given that the ADL never put out a report against parallel anti-Bush movements." In condemning only conservative sentiment as unprecedented, ADL overlooks evidence stored in its massive files (twice in recent years, the ADL has paid damages for unlawful surveillance). Has the ADL forgotten that rage against President Reagan triggered an assassination attempt? Or that Jon Stewart called President Bush "a jackass who talks like he's four" while comparing him to a "drug mule"? Rage against Bush extended even to the self-defined intellectual press. A New Republic nerd named Jonathan Chait shared what he probably told his therapist by confessing at unseemly length: "I hate President George W. Bush," whom he called "a dullard with limited brainpower." Such mass frenzy among mainline liberals (not Far-Left wackos) led Charles Krauthammer (remember, that man is a doctor!) to diagnose in Time magazine Democrats' "contempt and disdain (for Bush) giving way to a hatred that is near pathological." In the time of anti-Bush rage, the ADL held its tongue. Herbert Hoover accused Franklin Roosevelt of establishing fascism. The Chicago Tribune editorialized that President Truman "must be impeached and convicted (for acts) which have shown him to be unfit morally and mentally."
continue
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/why_the_adl_became_a_partisan.html