Where’s the ACLU?

I recently wrote an essay (I want to say column, but I don’t want to be confused with literary pornographers like Paul Krugman) about Casually Slurring Christians which generated a debate about whether the ACLU was a defender or an attacker of Christianity in America.

What is not in dispute is that the ACLU is litigious. They will threaten to sue at the drop of a crucifix or the threat to utter a prayer at a public function.

So where is the ACLU when it comes to some questionable – some would say illegal – acts of the Obama administration? Which is a greater threat to American civil liberties: a cross on a hill or a government official ordering the chairman and board of directors of a private company to resign? What is the bigger threat to civil liberty: valedictorian of Foothill High, Brittany McComb, sharing her faith voluntarily at her graduation ceremony or a President over-ruling the law regarding the distribution of assets when a company goes bankrupt – to the benefit of said President's political contributors – as in the case of Chrysler?

The argument may be made that the company in question is a debtor of the government. Whether governments should lend money to private companies is an issue for another day because collaboration between big business and big government has an unsavory history.

Shareholders – and even creditors – of companies have been known to demand changes in management. But that is the private sector negotiating among itself. The government stands in a much different position to corporations than do private creditors and shareholders. The latter can’t send the IRS, the SEC, the FBI, and all the other agencies of coercion to threaten you with jail if you don’t agree.

I am amazed and baffled that there have been no outcries from the self-described “civil libertarians” in the legal community about the actions of the Obama administration. Team Obama’s annexation of some huge chunks of the private sector has gone virtually unremarked from a legal perspective. Except for a few scattered lawsuits regarding the Chrysler and GM takeovers - suits that were quickly quashed by pressure from the White House – the legal eagles have been largely silent regarding the clear threats to civil liberties. The same lawyers that demanded that foreign terrorists captured in foreign countries during a war should be treated like domestic criminals including Miranda warnings – are silent when the government in-effect nationalizes private property.

I was going to say strangely silent, but I never really expected that the Left, the law professors and legal Libertarians really were being honest about wishing to preserve civil liberties. By their silence they appear to be perfectly fine with a Liberal Fascism. They couch their disagreement – if any exist – on policy rather than legal grounds. It strikes me as a cowardly ducking of the issues. Of course there does not appear to be a support group in the legal professoriate for anyone who wants to defy a popular demagogue, thus demonstrating the level of courage for which the academy is famous.

What's disappointing is that Conservatives don't seem to have the legal infrastructure to do for the Right what the ACLU does for the Left.