The American Civil Liberties Union was founded by Roger Baldwin on January 20, 1920. The ACLU scheduled a Centennial Gala for March 31, 2020, but had to cancel it because of Covid restrictions.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on the ACLU as well as two books: The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union (with a preface by Aaron Wildavsky) and Twilight of Liberty: The Legacy of the ACLU. The former was published in 1985 and the latter in 1994 (new material was published in the 2001 edition).
Both were published by Transaction Press and both were chosen as the Book of the Month by the Conservative Book Club.
The ACLU brands itself as the nation’s most non-partisan defender of civil liberties and as an indispensable force for freedom. The truth is that while the ACLU has done some important work, its record is one of duplicity. From its founding in 1920, its goal has never been civil liberties for everyone: it has always been the legal arm of the liberal-left (the exception being during the 1940s and 1950s).
In more recent years it has become increasingly politicized. Moreover, its unbridled defense of radical individualism has wreaked havoc in American society.
To set the record straight, earlier in the year Donohue published a 25-page booklet, The ACLU at 100, that was mass mailed to thousands of legal and advocacy organizations, the nation’s top 200 law schools and departments of political science, the media, and others. It contains nearly 100 endnotes, detailing his sources.
We are now making this booklet available online to the public. To access it, click here.
