This article was first published at The Daily Banter
Progressive intellectuals have been acting very bipolar towards labor lately, characterized by wild mood swings ranging from the “We’re sorry we abandoned labor, how could we!” sentiment during last year’s Wisconsin uprising against Koch waterboy Scott Walker, to the recent “labor is dead/it’s all labor’s fault” snarling after the recall vote against Gov. Walker failed.
It must be confusing and a bit daunting for those deep inside the labor movement, all these progressive mood swings. At the beginning of this month, New York Times’ columnist Joe Nocera wrote a column about having a “V-8 Moment” over the abandonment of labor unions, an abandonment that was so thorough and so complete that establishment liberals like Nocera forgot they’d ever abandoned labor in the first place!
The intellectual-left’s wild mood swings between unrequited love towards labor unions, and unrequited contempt, got me wondering how this abandonment of labor has manifested itself. While progressives and labor are arguing, sometimes viciously, over labor’s current sorry state, one thing progressives haven’t done is serious self-examination on how and where this abandonment of labor manifests itself, how it affects the very genetic makeup of liberal assumptions and major premises.
So I did a simple check: I went to the websites of three of the biggest names in liberal activist politics: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the ACLU. Checking their websites, I was surprised to find that not one of those three organizations lists labor as a major topic or issue that it covers.
Go to Amnesty International’s home page at www.amnesty.org. On the right side, under “Human Rights Information” you’ll see a pull-down menu: “by topic.” Does labor count as a “Human Rights topic” in Amnesty’s world? I counted 27 “topics” listed by Amnesty International, including “Abolish the death penalty”, “Indigenous Peoples”, “ “Children and Human Rights” and so on. Nowhere do they have “labor unions” despite the brutal, violent experience of labor unions both here and around the world. It’s not that Amnesty’s range isn’t broad: For example, among the 27 topics there are “Women’s rights”, “Stop Violence Against Women” and “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity”. There’s even a topic for “Business and Human Rights”—but nothing for labor.
Puzzled, I called Alex Edwards, Amnesty’s Media Relations guy in Washington DC, to ask him why labor unions didn’t rate important enough as a “topic” on Amnesty’s “list of topics.” Edwards was confused, claimed that he was totally unaware that there was a “list of topics” on Amnesty’s home page, and promised to get back to me. I haven’t heard back from him.
Amnesty’s “Topics”: Labor rights “disappeared”
Next, I checked Human Rights Watch. From my experience in Russia and Eastern Europe, I’ve learned to expect less from HRW than I would from Amnesty—my memory of HRW during the Kosovo conflict and in others is that, when called to, HRW acts as a propaganda arm for the liberal hawk war party. But HRW has also done a lot of important good work in areas not covered by the press, and they’re certainly better than most—so does Human Rights Watch consider labor unions an important human rights issue?
Checking Human Rights Watch’s homepage (www.hrw.org), there’s a tab listing “topics”—14 topics in all. Once again, labor is not listed among Human Rights Watch’s covered “topics.” Instead, Human Rights Watch lists everything from “Children’s Rights” to “Disability Rights” to “LGBT Rights” and “Women’s Rights”—along with “Terrorism”, “Counterterrorism” and, I shit you not, “Business”—as vital human rights topics. But not labor. “Business”—but not “Labor.”
On the advice of an old friend, Jan Frel, I read an excellent book on the human rights industry, James Peck’s Ideal Illusions, which helps answer why labor rights have been airbrushed out of the language of human rights. It wasn’t always this way: Economic rights and workplace rights were for decades at the very heart of the human rights movement. This was officially enshrined in 1948, when the United Nations adopted a 30-point “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” putting labor rights and economic equality rights alongside those we’re more familiar with today, like freedom of expression, due process, religion and so on. But somehow, labor rights and economic justice have been effectively amputated from the human rights agenda and forgotten about, in tandem with the American left’s abandonment of labor.
In Peck’s history, Human Rights Watch stands out as a force for rank neoliberalism, a major player in the extermination-by-omission of labor rights and economic equality rights from the language of human rights. How this happened sheds at least a bit more light on how the left abandoned labor.
Aryeh Neier, founder of Human Rights Watch and its executive director for 12 years, doesn’t hide his contempt for the idea of economic equality as one of the key human rights. Neier is so opposed to the idea of economic equality that he even equates the very idea of economic equality and justice with oppression—economic rights to him are a violation of human rights, rather than essential human rights, thereby completely inverting traditional left thinking.
Here’s what Neier wrote in his memoir, Taking Liberties:
“The concept of economic and social rights is profoundly undemocratic… Authoritarian power is probably a prerequisite for giving meaning to economic and social rights.”
Neier here is aping free-market libertarian mandarins like Friedrich von Hayek, or Hayek’s libertarian forefathers like William Graham Sumner, the robber baron mandarin and notorious laissez-faire Social Darwinist. As with Neier, William Graham Sumner argued that liberty has an inverse relationship to economic equality; according to Sumner, the more economic equality, the less liberty; whereas the greater the inequality in a society, the more liberty its individuals enjoy. It’s the fundamental equation underlying all libertarian ideology and politics—a robber baron’s ideology at heart.
Neier goes further, explicitly rejecting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because nine of its 30 articles focus on economic rights as human rights. Neier objects to that, singling out for censure “such economic issues as a right to work; to social security; and to an adequate standard of living.” The human rights article on “a right to work” that Neier dismisses as “authoritarian” is Article 23, and it reads:
“Article 23 (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”
It’s interesting that Neier rejects Article 23, the article on labor, which he mislabels as “a right to work”, because back in the 1970s, when Neier was executive director of the ACLU, he supported big business’s “Right To Work” anti-labor laws, against the rest of the left and the ACLU, which at the time still supported labor rights as civil rights. The so-called “Right To Work” laws are grossly misnamed—they’re really laws designed to bust unions by making it even more difficult for them to organize worker power against the overwhelming power of the corporation. It was corporate PR flaks hired to deceive and conceal the real purpose of those laws who came up with the false name “Right To Work” laws. Fred Koch, father of Charles and David Koch and one of the founders of the John Birch Society, got his start in rightwing politics as a leader of the “Right To Work” movement in Kansas in the mid-1950s.
Less than twenty years after Fred Koch fought to destroy labor rights through “Right To Work” laws, the executive director of the ACLU, Aryeh Neier—the same Aryeh Neier who later led Human Rights Watch— colluded with William Buckley to push the ACLU rightward against labor by getting the ACLU to represent big business and “Right To Work” laws, under the guise of “protecting free speech”—the same bullshit pretense always used by lawyers and advocates to help big business crush labor and democracy. This “free speech” pretense is the basis on which the ACLU currently supports the Citizens United decision, which effectively legalized the transformation of America into an oligarchy.
I found an article from 1971 written by William Buckley in which the National Review founder praises Neier for working with him to turn the ACLU against labor: “I invited the ACLU to practice consistency by associating itself with a lawsuit which would prove unpopular among its labor union supporters,” Buckley wrote. “The executive director, Aryeh Neier, has replied, rather straightforwardly, I think. He says, ‘for many years, it has been the ACLU’s policy that the union shop does not, by itself, violate civil liberties. I have felt for some time that we should review this policy and I will use your request to initiate reconsideration,’ going on to say that it will take a while to canvass the directors.”
New Right “libertarian” William Buckley teams up with ACLU’s Neier to destroy labor
A few years later, Buckley boasted of his first early success in turning the ACLU against labor, citing not just his ally Aryeh Neier, but also another well-known name in the so-called “left,” Nat Hentoff. Buckley wrote in 1973:
“Meanwhile, Mr. Nat Hentoff, a left-winger of undiluted loyalty to the first amendment, has urged his very important constituency to side with me and with Evans [M. Stanton Evans, an early libertarian and longtime defender of Joseph McCarthy] and has attempted to persuade the American Civil Liberties Union to file a brief amicus curiae. He has almost singlehandedly persuaded the ACLU to change its historic opinion about union membership. The union shop, the ACLU now says belatedly, ought not to be required for people who are journalists.”
The lawsuit Buckley refers to, Buckley and Evans vs. AFTRA, was backed by the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation, the legal arm of the notorious union-busting outfit of the same name. And “leftist” Nat Hentoff. People used to think Hentoff was a leftist—and he seemed like one to de-politicized Baby Boomer imbeciles, who figured the Village Voicelabel on Hentoff’s columns meant whatever he said was leftist. Today, Hentoff is finally in his ideological home at the Cato Institute, the Koch brothers’ anti-labor, pro-oligarchy libertarian think-tank. Despite the Cato Institute’s tireless efforts to undermine democracy and labor, many progressives today consider Cato as “left” or “progressive”—a perversion only possible in today’s mutant left, stripped of its historical relationship to labor and economic justice.
The ACLU under Aryeh Neier also allied with another Buckley in another key decision that hurt labor and democracy and helped the oligarchy: Buckley v Valeo in 1976. Neier was the ACLU head at the time that the ACLU sided with William Buckley’s brother, James Buckley, in a lawsuit to open up the money floodgates into American politics. Most people don’t know Neier’s role in moving the ACLU against labor and against egalitarianism—instead, he did a lot of cheap grandstanding on behalf of Nazi marchers in Skokie. That’s the sort of pseudo-politics and pseudo-bravery that, stripped of economic politics and labor politics, results in the pseudo-left of today, a left absorbed by “identity politics” at the expense of labor, egalitarianism and socio-economic justice.
And that brings me to the ACLU today—the most depressing part of this story. I had an inkling that the ACLU had abandoned labor before my simple exercise check of their website. Mike Elk has shared with me some of his research into this subject. And it’s well known that the ACLU vigorously supported the disastrous Citizens United decision; the ACLU also took $20 million dollars from the Koch brothers, whose libertarian outfits have played a major role in making Citizens United a reality. Supposedly that money was meant to “fight the Patriot Act”—which is odd, considering that the director of the Koch brothers’ Center for Constitutional Studies at Cato and Vice President for Legal Affairs at Cato, Roger Pilon, explicitly supported the Patriot Act from 2002 through 2008, and that the Kochs’ Cato Institute hired John Yoo to serve on their editorial advisory board for the Cato Supreme Court Review. One should be skeptical when it comes to Koch “donations” sold to the public as charity work in the service of human rights.
Maybe there’s no connection there whatsoever between the Kochs’ $20 million gift to the ACLU, and the ACLU’s advocacy for the Kochs’ pet political issue, Citizens United, which transferred greater power from democracy and into the hands of billionaire oligarchs like the Kochs. Maybe it’s all a coincidence, I don’t know. But we do know that there is precedent for the ACLU taking money from corporations, advocating their cause under the guise of “protecting free speech” and hiding the conflict of interest from the public in order to make their defense seem more convincing.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ACLU vigorously defended the interests of the tobacco lobby under the guise of protecting their “first amendment rights”—and they did it for payments in-kind. Leaked tobacco documents in the 1990s exposed the ACLU working out explicit deals with the tobacco industry to take their money in exchange for advocating their interests in public, without disclosing that gross conflict of interest and violation of the public trust. The documents and memos revealed that the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to the ACLU by the tobacco companies were payments in kind to for the ACLU’s defense of Big Tobacco, a relationship that both parties tried to hide in order to confuse the public into believing that the ACLU’s arguments for tobacco were motivated by purely altruistic constitutional arguments, rather than sleazy under-the-table cash payments. The ACLU is, after all, a trusted institution among progressives—that made them the ideal “Third Party Advocate” in PR terms for the tobacco industry’s interests.
Yessiree, it’s all about protecting our Constitutional liberties!
One of the best accounts of the ACLU’s sleazy relationship with big tobacco comes from former Washington Post investigative reporter Morton Mintz, in his piece, “The ACLU and the Tobacco Companies,” published in Harvard University’s Nieman Reports. Mintz reported how the ACLU laundered the tobacco lobby’s money as supposedly charity money to fight for workplace rights. This abuse of public trust so outraged former ACLU legal director, Melvin Wulf, that he publicly denounced the ACLU’s rationalization as a “sham” — the ACLU worked with tobacco to fight against second-hand smoke laws, the very opposite of “workplace rights”:
“The justification that the money is used to support workplace rights is a sham. There is no constitutional right to pollute the atmosphere and threaten the health of others. The revelations…support the conclusion that the ACLU’s mission is being corrupted by the attraction of easy money from an industry whose ethical values are themselves notoriously corrupt and which is responsible for the death annually of 350,000 to 400,000 persons in the U.S. alone.”
So it should come as no surprise that on the ACLU’s website, on the page marked “Key Issues”— labor does not appear. Not among the 14 categories of ACLU “Key Issues” — which include “HIV/AIDS”, “LGBT Rights”, “Technology and Liberty” and “Women’s Rights”. Not even among the 90 sub-categories of “Key Issues” is there a single mention of “labor rights.”
Everything under the civil liberties sun but labor rights and economic/social equality are named as ACLU “key issues.” Among the 90 sub-categories: “Marijuana Law Reform”, “Flag Desecration”, “LGBT Parenting”, “Medical Care in Prison” and “Mental Care In Prison” [separate sub-categories], “Biological Technologies”, “Internet Privacy”, and “Sex Education.” All of these certainly qualify as key issues to progressives; but the list of categories, 114 in all, without a single mention of labor unions, let alone economic equality or even the very word “equality”—provides a grim and shameful picture of a left stripped of labor, stripped of economic egalitarianism. It is not a left at all: It is, alas, libertarianism. The left was born of labor struggles and the fight against oligarchy and for egalitarianism, economic justice and equality. Now there isn’t even a memory of that.
Stunned by the fact that the ACLU didn’t even include “labor” or “equality” among the 114 “key topics” listed, I called and then wrote to the ACLU asking for comment.
Here is the response I received from Molly Kaplan, the media relations liaison at the American Civil Liberties Union:
Hi Mark,
Labor rights are certainly a key issue for the ACLU; it is folded into our work for free speech, immigrants’ rights and women’s rights. If you look into the pages for those issues, you will find that labor rights have a presence. Let us know if we can be of any further assistance.
Cheers,
Molly
Well, at least someone has labor rights.
Would you like to know more? Read Mark Ames exposé “Debunking Cato Institute Myths: GOP Bad Ideas Mill, Home to John Yoo and Rupert Murdoch“. Also read “The Oligarchy’s Rule Of Law”.
Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.
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Read more: aclu, amnesty international, aryeh neier, charles koch, citizens united, david koch, fred koch, human rights watch, james peck, koch, labor unions, libertarian, right to work, tobacco, Mark Ames, Class Warfare
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70 Comments
Add your own1. Sam | June 22nd, 2012 at 10:40 am
Christ this is depressing
2. damn red | June 22nd, 2012 at 10:56 am
Thanks I just gave up drinking and now I need a drink.
3. mest | June 22nd, 2012 at 11:14 am
yea… @ previous 2 comments.
Great to know my conspiracy theories of everything being bs and all run by bs is turning out to be true
4. Scott | June 22nd, 2012 at 11:29 am
Great article.
As a libertarian, or as someone who claims to espouse liberty, Nat Hentoff is fraudulent, especially when you consider his views on the Iraq war, on Israel, and on abortion.
That Phil Ochs song, “Love Me I’m a Liberal”, could’ve been written about him.
5. CensusLouie | June 22nd, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Nothing gets me madder than when a reactionary bleats on and on about “Big Brother” but then supports Patriot Act horseshit while demonizing the ACLU as “Nazi lovers”, completely failing to understand what the 1st amendment is really about.
But good god, nothing sucks out any hope you had for the ACLU like reading the ACLU newsletter and emails. I think I’ve read three different accounts of defending transvestites’ right to use whatever bathroom they wanted, but nothing on labor like you’ve pointed out.
Even their handling of the Occupy crackdowns was pathetic. Almost zero mention of blatantly illegal police procedures. The entire focus of their article was how Occupy Boston protestors were so much smarter than the Davis protestors because they chose to quietly disperse before the cops crushed them, all because a judge told them to, under the guise of the usual “fire safety” concerns after the fire marshal testified to the court. It was the most pathetic bowing to authoritarianism I’d seen all year. I can only imagine the kind of advice the modern ACLU would have for the 60s civil rights movement.
6. hogorina | June 22nd, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Hey there, it’s a good thing there’s a moderator here to correct and improve whatever it was I just drooled on my keyboard. Many thanks!
7. LuisManaceFrance | June 22nd, 2012 at 2:52 pm
The Left is dead.TINA(There is not alternative) is the only game in town.
What we call Left today is the left-wing of the oligarch party.
8. Cavoyo | June 22nd, 2012 at 2:56 pm
This is probably what’s to blame for the rise of libertarianism in the US. When libertarians describe their ideology, they often say that it’s “social liberalism and economic conservatism.” I think this is the core of their beliefs: they get to be “moderate” in a sense and yet be extremists. Their ideas, and the political milieu, let them think their goals are basically good. Liberals aren’t willing to call them out for their horrendous positions on economic equality, since they abandoned labor to focus on identity politics. Conservatives are willing to ignore their positions on social equality since they need all the help they can get to lower taxes and destroy the welfare state. And so libertarians have an ideology that they think can please everyone, and it often appears to do so, since no one is willing to call them out on their crap. No wonder they have such a religious devotion to their ideas: they really think they can satisfy the most important objectives of liberalism and conservatism (and thus most Americans) at the same time.
That’s why the most important thing to tell libertarians is that you hate their ideology and everything it stands for. They think that, since they’re eclectic extremists, everyone has to love them, or at least tolerate them. Showing how much you loathe them and their messiahs, especially if you’re a “regular folk,” is the only way to get them to reconsider their political beliefs. Perhaps they might even begin to think that most people don’t like their ideas and that they aren’t basically good. Sure, you might get some wimpering at first, some “well at least he wants to end a war and/or have less repressive marijuana laws,” but keep going until they understand that those weak positions don’t excuse all of the horrible things they also support. Showing the depth and breadth of hatred for libertarianism is the only way to get them to understand that they aren’t God’s gift to American politics. That’s what’s great about The Exiled, since they are the lone voice in the wilderness doing this. Here’s hoping that more will follow their lead.
Also on libertarians, they claim to support “social liberalism and economic conservatism” and yet when it’s time to campaign, there’s always enough time and money to fight for economic conservatism (and often social conservatism) but social liberal causes always get the short end of the stick. Funny how that works.
9. Dan | June 22nd, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Well, for one thing, the ACLU could leave employment rights to other organizations that can focus more effort on it. Namely, labor unions.
But more important has been the divorce between union members and anything else that could be considered “liberal”. The typical liberal today is a highly educated professional who is not in a unionized job category. Union members are very conservative as a group.
In fact my experience, and I know I may not be typical, is that the majority of union members (100% in the case of my acquaintances) absolutely detest the labor movement in general and their own union in particular. And furthermore they are opposed to issues the ACLU and other left groups might support.
In my view the labor movement is dead and that is because those whom it can benefit hate it and those who like it don’t need it.
10. hogorina | June 22nd, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Listening to voices in my head is like talking with an over grown moron.
11. marduk | June 22nd, 2012 at 3:05 pm
Amnesty mentions labor unions in the topic section titled “ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS.” They have 1000 results for “unions” doing a search on their site, all are about labor unions being messed with, see http://www.amnesty.org/en/ai_search?keywords=unions&op=Search&form_id=search_theme_form&form_token=821fc5e9083ae3dc506c99df64f1cb61
A.E.C. RESPONDS:
Ah, so you’re saying that Amnesty “folded in” labor rights into the broad general main topic “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”? Thank you for proving Ames’ point.
12. euro-dude | June 22nd, 2012 at 3:14 pm
For several years I have trolled websites and annoyed the shit out of web moderators. Now, thanks to the AEC, I shall annoy you no more. Thank you AEC!
13. Peter | June 22nd, 2012 at 4:40 pm
@CensusLouie:
If the ACLU said that, the ACLU had bad information. I’m involved with Occupy Boston and I can tell you from experience that neither the campers at Dewey Square or the hundreds of people who came out to support them when eviction threatened were leaving willingly. You can read my account of the night before the eviction — when Occupy Boston got at least a thousand people in the streets and effectively prevented the BPD from shutting them down that night — here http://exiledonline.com/occupy-atlantic-avenue-the-night-before-the-occupy-boston-clearance/ .
If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, the gist is that OB knew what was coming and moved a bunch of their shit out so the police couldn’t throw it away. They then called out their supporters, and kept the BPD away for the night. The BPD then came in and arrested the people left over, which sucked and is a tactic we ought to have thought about. But saying that OB caved on a fire marshal’s say-so is wrong.
14. joe | June 22nd, 2012 at 6:45 pm
I think you should abandon your SHAME project and instead make a new project that lists organizations that aren’t corrupt. The list would be a hell of allot shorter.
15. Adam | June 22nd, 2012 at 6:50 pm
“That’s the sort of pseudo-politics and pseudo-bravery that, stripped of economic politics and labor politics, results in the pseudo-left of today, a left absorbed by “identity politics” at the expense of labor, egalitarianism and socio-economic justice.”
Mark,
This article on Nietzsche bears out everything you’ve said above.
http://wsws.org/articles/2000/oct2000/niet-o20.shtml
It’s a trotskyite take on how, jaded with stalinism, European left intellectuals sought refuge from the wreckage of their earlier revolutionary aspirations in Nietzsche which lead them to rank French post-modernism and later, via Foucoult, to bankrupt “identity politics”.
And all at the expense of…YOU GUESSED IT…THE WORKING CLASS!
16. domovoy | June 22nd, 2012 at 8:24 pm
Last Saturday this tart with a nose ring, fluorescent green hair, and about $6k of tats came to my front door and announced she was with the ACLU to help lesbian, gay, and trans-gendered children and, like, would I be interested in getting involved with this. Then yesterday I was at Walgreen’s and they started to announce this same shit of the store intercom, about helping lesbian, gay and trans-gendered children. I kid you not – the ACLU !!
17. Punjabi From Karachi | June 22nd, 2012 at 9:20 pm
Been wondering for the longest time (a decade I think), why Michael Moore sounded more militant for poor & underprivileged people, whilst playing a court jester, than the guys at the ACLU who have to stick their necks out to protect suspected Al Qaeda idiots from getting tortured to death.
18. CensusLouie | June 22nd, 2012 at 9:29 pm
@13
It was ACLU Boston’s monthly print newsletter, The Docket. It claimed that the Occupy movement put all their faith into the court’s decision and when the judge’s decision told them to disperse, they gladly and orderly did so out of respect for the law.
I’m looking through their online archives trying to find it, but it looks like the article as originally printed is gone.
Here’s the closest one:
http://www.aclum.org/on_liberty_12.1.11
I specifically remember the fire marshal testimony and the part about school kid tours, but this was written before the court decision. The printed version merged this and the post court decision into a single article, praising Occupy for dispersing once word came down. That part is nowhere to be seen in the online archives.
19. bob | June 22nd, 2012 at 10:22 pm
White collar unions are good, blue collar unions are bad. The AMA and the bar association are good because they add so much value to everything they touch. Most of what they produce, as organizations and as a whole, are drains, economically speaking.
Is that a bug or a feature?
20. Punjabi From Karachi | June 22nd, 2012 at 11:56 pm
You guys really know how to swing an axe at thing people like, don’t you?
It’s like Matt at #1 said:
“But I liked this guy’s book….”
21. Mothra VIP | June 23rd, 2012 at 2:28 am
you know what’s really cool
if I say, “fuck the ACLU”, well, yeah, that’s fine and good but who will stick up for weirdos like me, but if I don’t, eventually they won’t either when they don’t need us
we are fucked on every level and in every direction
22. Jesse | June 23rd, 2012 at 4:44 am
The New Left of the early sixties was where labor was kicked off the bus. Focus shifted to students and identity politics. This tendency was pushed by a relatively small but highly influential cadre of Frankfurt School professors at Berkeley, Columbia, and other key institutions. Key words: , Ardurno, Marcuse, Horkheimer, post-modernism, critical theory, cultural marxism.
23. Termysquirm | June 23rd, 2012 at 5:22 am
ACLU is a mixed bag. They see the state as the protector of bourgeois (read: upper middle class donor base) prosperity and act accordingly. I saw Amy Goodman scold them in Boston last month over their support for the Citizen’s United decision. It was wonderfully awkward. She apologized for biting the hand that fed her that night as the keynote speaker, but really shamed them all the same. That said the ACLU is the only one in MA really systematically looking at police state issues.
24. gc | June 23rd, 2012 at 8:50 am
@8
Excellent.
Only point on which I disagree is your hope that libertarians, if they understood how much everybody hates them, would stop being libertarians.
25. Peter | June 23rd, 2012 at 9:18 am
@18
Interesting. Maybe some weak-liberal wishful thinking got into the print edition? While OB had its fair share of liberals who loved the idea of packing up on a bureaucrat’s order, I can assure you, the police had to come and drag a lot of people out.
26. Stephen Malagodi | June 23rd, 2012 at 10:01 am
Good research, but the misleading headline leads to false perceptions.
The ACLU and HRW should not be conflated with a generalized grouping called “The Left.” So while the evidence presented is a healthy attack on the the ACLU and HRW, it cannot logically follow that it constitutes “The Left’s Big Sellout.” Bla Bla Bla I own the trademark rights to “The Left” and I can point to the scientifically recognized definition of “The Left” so therefore what I am saying here is not my opinion, but rather, scientific trademarked fact.
More profitable would be an examination of the actual history of how Labor sold out [or never was] the Left. Again, by “actual history” I mean the history that I believe in and therefore in my mind is actually the actual history, since what I believe in is true for everyone else in the actual world of actual history. Even a cursory history of the labor movement in the U.S. reveals its historically conservative, reactionary and racist roots. I don’t mean that of course, because a cursory history would not reveal that—however, in my mind, which I never challenge because I know that what I know is “actuality” not just “reality” (see truTV),—anyway, in my mind this cursory history of labor as the embodiment of every evil that has ever plagued the planet is replayed over and over and over. In a cursory way. And it’s actual. History, I mean. It was for a time the locus of European socialism and communism in the U.S., but those tendencies were all purged by the end of the 1950s. This purge by organized labor left “the Left” with no (secular) institutional structure. So it is today. So I am today. So we all are today. For today, I so am.
It is the fundamental misunderstanding and ignorance of the actual [there’s my word “actual” again, which actually is more real than reality, as truTV will tell you] history of U.S.labor, the foundations of American anarchism (versus the European influx) that results in the confusion about today’s political alignments so common in contemporary discussion. Not that I’m confused. You’re confused. They’re confused. This whole court is confused!
Nice research though; signifying not much. In my mind. And wow, by ending my comment that way, in my mind, I can almost hear you yell out “ouch! god he’s so smart and he knows everything in the ‘actual’ as it ‘actually was’ unlike me, dang, I really blew it, why aren’t I Stephen Malangagangondoli?” Well, actually, you are Stephen Magalangalangoldi, we all are Stephen etc. Signifying everything in the world all at once.
Nice comment though.
27. Stephen Malagodi | June 23rd, 2012 at 11:15 am
Oh, I get it. I’m the type who uses the word “snarky”. And who says “Oh, I get it.” By saying “I get it,” I show that I have contempt for the A.E.C. And my contempt-rays trump your snark rays.
Also, I’m better than you. In an actual historical way. If you want to know more about “the actual history” of the “actual left” you should actually read more of my comments. Snark-free. Lots of sweat put into them too, unlike you lazy refugees.
Sincerely Yours,
Not-at-all-hurt-or-bothered-nosiree!-cuz-I-know-actuality-mwah-hah-hah!
28. jonnym | June 23rd, 2012 at 11:52 am
This is depressing. Even the supposed liberals want to shit on poor working people who want to stand up for themselves and keep from being exploited by the wealthy and their employers. They’ve been at this for decades — it almost seems like they have too much of a headstart for anyone on the other side to beat them. But I guess shining a light on their inner workings is a good start.
I’m doubly depressed that a righty like Nat Hentoff was ever considered a leftist. It’s like suddenly finding out what you thought was red is really blue.
29. mrbe | June 23rd, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Ah, the ACLU. A Palestinian friend, one of the members of an antiracist group I was once involved in, was facing a politically-motivated prosecution a few years ago. Desperate for help, we tried to get the ACLU involved and after making some sympathetic noises they refused. Our joke at the time was “If only he was a child molester too!”
30. you guys are on to something | June 23rd, 2012 at 5:43 pm
After having read this great exiled piece, I randomly stumbled upon this:
http://www.reasoncruise.com/
Gee look who’s on board speaking at the reason-libtard cruise… Nadine Strossen, the head of ACLU for 17 years, and her hubbie.
Her picture is right by the pic of Veronique de Rugy, the retard who claims that there is no austerity in europe.
31. COCKSON | June 23rd, 2012 at 11:33 pm
please have uncle dolan come back and write something really nihilistic
32. Hick | June 24th, 2012 at 1:01 am
Wow. A good friend of mine was extricated from a Chilean concentration camp by Amnesty International. I’ve seen many instances of the ACLU standing up for people like street musicians, and well, hell, even I think that if a guy wants to wear a dress and gets his nails done and use the ladies’ room he ought to be able to without a fuss.
And now this. This is even creepier than reading that article about Whole Foods’ right-wing links and credentials. I mean, that was not actually that huge a surprise; I like to read weird stuff and by that I mean, I probably know more about Hitler and the social and philosophical milieu that led that pantload to take the career he did instead of contenting himself with being Austria’s “Painter Of Light” and saving a lot of people a lot of trouble. The far-right even 100+ years ago was obsessed with not only purity of blood (whatever that actually means) but food purity. The TL:DR is that the “health food” movement has deep, far-right roots. Don’t believe me? Do the research. So it was not a huge surprise to read about Whole Foods and the Bush family.
But the ACLU and the tobacco industry? And the rest of it? Crap on a cracker. We’re fucked.
33. Dameocrat | June 24th, 2012 at 1:12 am
It is even more hopeless and bleak when you consider that trade unions themselves are run by neocons like Social Democrats USA and NED, and that they do gotv for dems who hate them like Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama and Tom Barrett.
34. Jim Vail | June 24th, 2012 at 1:12 am
Great article!
I remember Ralph Nader complained that the ACLU would not take up his case when not allowed to the debates in 2000 or 2004.
If the ACLU gets $20 million from the Kochs, well, that says it all. The neo-conservative right knows how to invest in the media and political system and thus shape everyone’s views via brainwashing from so-called ‘trusted’ experts.
Follow the money.
The dwindling membership in unions in this country mirrors the destruction of our middle class and the growing inequality, which I guess the Human Rights guy would argue is a good thing.
Ahhh, shills for the 1%. I say, “Off with their heads!”
35. Dameocrat | June 24th, 2012 at 1:14 am
By the way most social democrats usa leading lights freely admit that they don’t believe in the labor movement, or the right to join a union, so why labor submits to their dictates is beyond me.
36. El_Escondido | June 24th, 2012 at 3:29 am
Well it’s no surprise. Why? Because they’re liberals not the revolutionary left… they still want to work within the current economic system.
If anyone truly believed that the liberals are some kind of ass saver for the workers, you are completely delusional. The only ones that can get workers to protect labor rights are the workers themselves.
Since worker consciousness is fucking low, shit is going to get much worse for the working class. The future is a bleak one and personally I don’t think things are going to get better any time soon.
Maybe when the worker’s situation worsens, they will develop more consciousness. Only time will tell and it’s likely it’s going to be a very long time.
Just remember this, when shit hits the fan don’t count on the ‘left’ to help you out because they are also in on fucking over the workers. So be prepared for a double penetration by both the dumb fuck right and deceitful ‘left’.
37. LuisManaceFrance | June 24th, 2012 at 10:28 am
@35: Because the today non-hard “left”(and some part of the hard left) believe in all the bourgeois ideals like “meritocracy”(so they push for “equality of opportunity”,that is a bogus concept),the idea of “infinite growth”,material and scientific positivism,infinite negative freedom,the idea that technological progress(techno-fix) will resolve any problem,the idea that human nature is competitive,individualism and freedom over social justice etc
The bourgois theology will fuck us
38. Joel | June 24th, 2012 at 11:21 am
Sorry if someone already posted this, but the thread is long and my time is short.
I’m calling bullshit on your concern-troll post.
http://www.aclu.org/organization-news-and-highlights/collective-bargaining-and-civil-liberties
“The ACLU has championed the right of workers to organize unions since its inception more than 90 years ago, beginning with efforts to counter the vehement anti-union crusades of the 1920s.
The ACLU continues to support the rights of employees, both public and private, to organize unions and bargain collectively. Collective bargaining statutes provide critical and necessary protection for workers who exercise basic civil rights, in particular, the rights of speech, association, and petition. Efforts to strip workers of these protections have no place in our democracy.”
Now, by posting this I’m completely ignoring the arguments and evidence in Ames’ article—I’m avoiding addressing how the ACLU under Neier worked with the Buckleys for Right To Work laws and against campaign finance laws, and I’m ignoring what Ames wrote about the ACLU using fake labor concerns to lobby for tobacco, and I’m ignoring Ames’ point that the ACLU doesn’t list labor among 114 “key issues.” But hey, I’m calling bullshit all right! Yessiree, bullshit, I called you, thank you for picking up the phone! (And thank you Almighty Sir for improving my comment, it’s not easy improving trolls like me.)
39. Designer Rants | June 24th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
I like this article, but had to comment when I got as far as this:
What progressives are YOU talking about? Typically someone who knows what a “think tank” is knows enough that they lean toward a side of the political spectrum.
If someone knows (and then cares) that the CATO institute exists, they probably know enough to find out which way their political agenda leans before putting stock into their output.
40. par4 | June 24th, 2012 at 12:39 pm
It’s pretty simple really. Liberals and Progressives are not ‘of the Left’. Fascism on the right, Communism on the left. Hitler and Mussolini were capitalists. Marx and Engels were not. So if you are a capitalist supporter you are not ‘of the Left’.
41. Erik | June 24th, 2012 at 12:50 pm
Good job, Ames.
Reminds me of something, now what was it? Keanu Reeves…? No, that’s not it, wait… A tall moccachino grande? Hm… No. Ernest Hemmingway? No, not that either, but there’s some kind of bell ringing… Or tolling, rather, maybe it’s something to do with…
No wait! Journalism! There we have it! Oh, that takes me back. I’d almost forgotten what it looked like.
42. Kevin Jon Heller | June 24th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
My comment fundamentally — and seemingly deliberately — misrepresents Ames’ article, so thank you in-advance for improving my first sentence. If you want to what I do and completely ignore what Ames has written and pretend none of that ever happened, then here something about the work of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that should help.
Also, since I don’t disclose my conflict-of-interest here, I will have to rely on the eXiled’d moderator to improve this comment: Yes, it’s true, I, Kevin Jon Heller, have served as an “external legal adviser” to Human Rights Watch. Also, I have taken it upon myself to act as HRW’s internet troll policing and attacking anyone who dares criticize Human Rights Watch. Look me up, if you dare.
Interested readers should check out my post at Opinio Juris:
http://opiniojuris.org/2012/06/24/no-human-rights-watch-and-amnesty-international-dont-ignore-labor-rights/
43. Snipe | June 24th, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Those institutions on the left seem to take up immigration at the same time they were leaving labor rights behind. Now for sure they will fight for the immigrants’ right to labor, when that in itself has been a competitor to the traditional working class of native born Americans. Unmitigated third world immigration has driven down wages and driven up unemployment. It has hurt unions because it is more difficult to organize if a new pools of cheap labor are always on hand to import across the border. Even Caesar Chavez was for immigration control, because he couldn’t organize the farm workers if the large farms could just bring more bus loads of Mexicans across the border.
I think that many liberals have left the traditional working class left behind. They pursue policies that are hostile to the working class, like open borders. They are hostile to religion and traditional values. They pursue fetishes like busting damns for salmon or the delta smelt, they want “green energy” that drives up energy costs for the working class, and they are obsessed with high speed rail. If you are a working class Democrat in the State of California, what has the liberal left done for you? Wages are down, unemployment is up. The price of housing is artificially high because of environmental restrictions; the price of energy is artificially high because of the greens. And even if you can afford a house and the price to turn the lights on, try having kids and sending them to a public school where many students don’t speak English.
You can’t have everything you want. It seems labor has been cast away in favor of open borders. The votes from new immigrants are going to outweigh the votes for organized labor, so it is a win for them politically. They will be able to keep power, but at what cost? And who is left to care for the traditional working class Americans?
44. COCKSON | June 24th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
great to see seaworld being advertised on your site. real great brand. does great things for the world. AEC: Did you click the banner? If you did I absolve you of sin, you did it for a righteous cause.
45. Pavel | June 25th, 2012 at 3:49 am
Great article Mark, thank you
46. super390 | June 25th, 2012 at 9:42 pm
#43:
The price of housing in CA is artificially high because of bourgeoise house-flipping, which is capitalist speculation. The price of energy is high because your stupid state deregulated electricity prices. Remember Enron, the pro-deregulation company that then rigged fake price surges in CA? Of course you don’t, that’s how you were all tricked into firing your governor when he called out Enron and replacing him with a joke like Schwarzeneggar.
The Exile is one of the few media organs that has pointed out the true history of CA: down the toilet ever since Proposition 13, which reduced property taxes so much that state institutions began to be dismantled (my high school nearly cut back to only 5 class periods a day), while causing a speculative boom in real estate. Proposition 13’s lies were part of Reagan’s Orange County takeover of America. So learn some real California history and follow the big money, like in “Chinatown”.
47. super390 | June 25th, 2012 at 9:55 pm
All the evidence of history shows that in private property systems, wealth concentrates in fewer and fewer hands unless there is outside intervention. 100 years ago workers and farmers knew it because they could see it happen before their eyes. Teddy Roosevelt signed the income tax law saying that inequality was making a joke out of democracy.
But precisely because the old labor left succeeded in arresting that madness for a while by voting in government intervention, generations grew up never learning that hard truth. They never imagined the return of the nighmare Marx predicted of global wealth polarization.
If you’ve grown up with that knowledge, you know things will get worse for you unless you make equality priority #1. If you haven’t, then you are sure things will get better for you under laissez faire. And that’s why we have the liberals we have today. They don’t understand that with infinite inequality, the oligarchs will come after the blacks next, then the gays, then the women…
48. Elliotte Rusty Harold | June 26th, 2012 at 2:52 am
If you think Amnesty International is a liberal, progressive, or leftist organization, then you really don’t understand it at all.
Amnesty is quite clear about its purpose, and it has nothing to do with limited concepts like liberal vs. conservative or left vs. right.
Left and right make sense only to people whose ideas are mired in the politics of 18th century France. Amnesty has its own purpose based on the issues of the modern world, and is incredibly consistent in applying them no matter which end of the political spectrum they appear to be on with any given issue.
Oh, and I should add that anyone who tries to tell you that there’s no such thing as liberal vs. conservative and pretends that this is somehow scientific objective fact, rather than ideologically-driven opinion, is full of shit.
49. Mike Nomad | June 27th, 2012 at 7:24 am
Good article. Not surprises, as I paid attention while reading Nineteen Eighty-Four.
However, this is a bit of a wank. There is plenty of history to support the idea that, if you are part of the 85%, and not willing to shoot bankers and an industrialists, you really are not part of The Left.
Crap, now this has me thinking about E.P. Thompsons’s The Making Of The English Working Class. Thanks, I’ll have that stuck in my head all day. Left Behind, indeed.
50. ct | June 27th, 2012 at 6:46 pm
@48
Are you parodying a representative for Amnesty Intl? I really hope so.
51. darthfader | June 27th, 2012 at 7:14 pm
People gay bashing in the comments here don’t get it
52. John | June 28th, 2012 at 10:45 am
I really enjoyed this article.
That being said, I don’t think that the ACLU has ever claimed to have mission beyond protecting the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, which doesn’t say much about labor rights.
53. John | June 28th, 2012 at 10:57 am
Oh, and I should also say that I was on a state board of the ACLU. I”m not sure you should say that the ACLU is a liberal group. There are lots of surprising consequences of supporting the Constitution and Bill of Rights that might shock your given liberal/progressive sort.
All in all, the ACLU’s mission coincides with that of the left in this country, but far from completely.
Individual rights often clash with the collectivist aspirations of the left.
54. John | June 28th, 2012 at 11:02 am
Oh, and the ACLU would take money from Satan himself. The organization is all about fund-raising.
55. Nestore | June 28th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
“under the guise of “protecting free speech”—the same bullshit pretense always used by lawyers and advocates to help big business crush labor and democracy. This “free speech” pretense is the basis on which the ACLU currently supports the Citizens United decision, which effectively legalized the transformation of America into an oligarchy.”
AND NOW, that star chamber of corporate cock suckers and wal st jock strap carriers, The United States Supreme Court, with citizens untied has ruled that the people of an allegedlly “democratic” and “free” society cannot even pass laws via the so-called “democratic process” limiting the amount of money corporations can spend to purchase political power and disseminate costly, targeted, highly researched propaganda – in the name of “free speech”..i want Stalin Back.. he would know how to deal with this pack of rats.
56. Nestore | June 28th, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Thank you YET AGAIN, Mark Ames. This story and the Yasha Levine SHAME series are getting RIGHT THE THE HEART of the scam. That The coup was made possible by the generosity of the L. Knight Foundation John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation National ………………………….
57. Patriot | June 28th, 2012 at 4:43 pm
This was pretty depressing, but I guess it makes sense. If I were an angry oligarchy I would try to neutralize as many threats as possible, and an ACLU pushing for labor rights is definitely a threat.
Regarding identity politics: all politics is about identity. All politics is about getting together with people who share your identity and squabbling with the other people who don’t. And all politics is about drawing lines of who is in and and who is out.
“Identity politics” is a right wing dog whistle for “any politics that isn’t all white all the time.” The one good legacy of the multi-cultural push in the 80s and 90s, has been to build a more ethnically inclusive idea of what it is to be an American. Considering that larges chunks of the US are trending majority non-white, I’d say that was essential. A lot of leftist programs are all about collective action, and you can’t have that without first defining who is in the collective. In fact, I’d argue that Rick Perlstein is right, that the leftist coalition fractured in the 60s when some whites decided that they were so unwilling to see blacks as human and equal, that they were willing to destroy collective society. This is why, for example, in places like Mississippi, people went for private, discriminatory schools and pools, so they didn’t have to share with blacks. Period.
Now we have a tentative , multi-racial American identity, at least in some places. Now for the hard part.
58. F | June 29th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Jack is smart.
59. Yam Digger | June 30th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
I found this precious little gem on ACLUs Web site:
“The ACLU and Citizens United (2012 statement): A legitimate concern over the influence of “big money” in politics has led some to propose a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision. The ACLU will firmly oppose any constitutional amendment that would limit the free speech clause of the First Amendment.”
Yes folks, that says it all. I used to wonder why the ACLU would be so tunnel visioned in fighting for the constitution even if the decision gained would ruin American democracy. But having read this article about them deep throating some big Koch for 20 mil, it all makes perfect sense now! The ACLU is now just a faux-liberal organization that’s looking bugger the little guy’s back side with no lube. This is soooo depressing.
As one poster above mused: I wonder what the modern ACLU would have told 60s civil rights protesters? I hate to say this, but I think we’ll soon be entering a new era feudal system.
60. Nestore | July 1st, 2012 at 1:42 am
“I hate to say this, but I think we’ll soon be entering a new era feudal system.”
We are there my freind. Its now only a matter of degree
61. squidd | July 2nd, 2012 at 5:43 pm
not one word on “free” trade… i.e, nafta, et al…
NO issues organization can REPLACE 10’s of 1000’s of physical plants moved offshore…
there’s no labor movement… because there’s no ‘labor’ force anymore… those “retrained” workers now take home a quarter or less what they used to… have 2-3 jobs and too tired when they come home…
NOW… bill clinton (and obama) say nafta can be ‘tweaked’… there’s nothing left to tweak…
i worked on the perot effort to defeat nafta… and then the 96 telecom act… that put all the media in hands of 5-6 mega companies that can spew out “right to work” BS 24/7/365…
it took the right 50 years to regroup w/ saint ronnie who fired PATCO workers…
since then pensions… gone to leveraged buyouts and non-enforcement of anti trust, ala “too big too fail”…
401k’s in a bubble and bust post overturned-glass-steagal world (bill clinton – again?)…
and now they decimated the sancrosanct housing equity…
you guessed it… it’s on to “entitlements”… ooops… i mean old age and disability Insurance…
well written and researched… but i wouldn’t lay all of labor’s woes at their feet…
62. agar | July 6th, 2012 at 5:03 am
Christ almighty. With friends like these.
I’m tempted to say we’re pretty much fucked, but there are still many millions of politically inactive people who could yet be led to the straight and narrow.
As always, join or die, you poor forsaken sots. Are we citizens or aren’t we?
63. brandon | July 8th, 2012 at 12:33 am
I’m not sure I would want these organizations to support labor unions such as they are today. Labor rights, yes, definitely. But labor unions, to an outsider like myself, seem to be just another privileged, exclusive class themselves. If the protections of unionization are not applied to those who are most exploited, and only serve to make life more comfortable for some lucky ones, what is their value? In terms of economic equality what is their value?
I realize that the reason HRW, Amnesty and the ACLU do not support unions is entirely different than what I wrote above. Also, this viewpoint, in effect, probably just plays into the hands of the corporates. But it seems to me that if there is a labor union, there should only be one labor union. And anyone who earns a wage should be part of it and protected by it. No?
64. SkepticTank | July 14th, 2012 at 6:52 am
Paranoia, is just knowing the truth.
William Burroghs
65. hogorina | September 20th, 2012 at 7:55 pm
THE HONEYMOON ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF FENCE
It seems that a national orgy is taking roots, as to what manner specific people should practice self-indulgence, in attempting by-pass mother nature. Dr. Sigmund Freud coined the ” Oedipus Complex,” into play regarding individual repression and regressing as individuals differ as to the unknown conscious release of erotic inhibitions and anxiety, long stored away since childhood. During mass hysteria, as we witness, sublimating intellectual are coming forth, in order to subconsciously connect with this nationwide release of stored up energy, being diverted from memories of infantile fixations, long repressed desires coming forth from toddler insecurity to be loved. This abnormal courting of a contraceptive guardian as a post behavioral confrontation, in trying to trick the alter Ego, in abiding with the Id to defuse overdue anxiety of which mentally unstable instincts must take group satisfaction, in clasping hands that some way must be found to thwart massive psychoneurosis in avoiding all temptations that has hounded mankind from the days of Adam and Eve. The National Psychiatric Association has long ago questioned just how Sigmund Freud designated regression and repression as tied to individual libido, in somewhat somewhat altering this opinion and its psychological play on individual neurosis. The late Dr.Judd Marmor, in his ” Psychiatry In In transition ” disapproves of Freud’s contention that a double classification toward personality disorder ( schizophrenia ) is incorrect; and that both word structure means one and the same…repression. Too, that schizophrenia is being dropped from psychiatry, because it has no clarity towards a supposed personality disorder. We must conclude that Freud’s Oedipus syndrome is in question. Yet, the squabble between pro-contraception preservers and those against this proposal, are in the same in that two classes of individuals are using public sublimation, as erotic desires still lay deep within the unknown subconscious– repression and regression.
66. hogorina | September 1st, 2013 at 7:55 am
Idle times is acquired by the few, by converting the wholes life time of labor to work. All elce is built into the system as a diversion from converting misled people from comprehending the elite ruling classes from public exposure.
67. Hogorina- | October 25th, 2014 at 9:12 am
things go wrong
68. Hogorina- | November 1st, 2014 at 7:46 pm
NO TOLERANCE FOR POLITICAL GODS
God has always been intolerant towards pseudo-
religious philosophies, based upon man’s self-opinionated needs. Most people do not explain
as to what deity being referred to in the singular.
In most cases to believe is only allying with Satan and his gang; for even the devils believe. fear and tremble! From Gautama through Protestantism, one major religious empire thrown
together with fear. Pull the money rug from be-
neath and all crumble, into the ancient man-made
temples of lust and gain.
Naturally, the temple was destroyed in
70 AD. Apparently, Something had gone wrong. God said that his personal temple would be destroyed and resurrected in 3 days. Ignorant and super ignorant, collectively, had been clinging to
spiritual stagnation after returning from Babylon.
America has become a modern day Babylon. Most
likely God is rejecting America,as in the past, for his nation,and children, are now whoring
In the final days ( 100-170 ) that total
collapse of God’s church, which began at Antioch,
lost all contact with his people; God withdrew his divine messages through prophets and Apostles.
To even imply that God has no body, parts or passion, in implying that intolerance is
not love, is to subtly spread open rebellion
rebellion against anyone searching for truth.
The glory of God is intelligence. God actually hates ignorance! One cannot be schooled
while under the influence of spiritual pablum in the hands of hundreds of gods now flooding America. Look how Israel is treated today. The God
of Israel is now at the mercies of pseudo oriental
religious functionaries. Israel tries to practice
tolerance, while intolerance is preached from every house top.
Let me add: God is intolerant of every
device of pseudo religious whoredom and its political power that feeds from the national
treasury, Thank God for being intolerant.
69. Katherine Hine | December 14th, 2014 at 1:48 pm
Left, right, center . . . who cares? All I care about is FEMA FEMA FEMA FEMA FEMA and that proves that I “get it”
70. Katherine Hine | May 18th, 2016 at 2:26 pm
The reason for the ACLU’s behavior is no big secret. They’re Rothchild funded. It’s all over the net.
THE AEC RESPONDS:
We, the Royal We, are also funded by the Rothchilds. You know too much, and we know who you are and where you are. In your parents’ basement. You cannot hide from the Rothchilds.
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