In 1931, a congressional report of the Special House Committee to
Investigate Communist Activities stated:

The American Civil Liberties Union is closely affiliated with the
communist movement in the United States, and fully 90 percent of its
efforts are on behalf of communists who have come into conflict with the
law. It claims to stand for free speech, free press, and free assembly;
but it is quite apparent that the main function of the ACLU is to
attempt to protect the communists in their advocacy of force and
violence to overthrow the government, replacing the American flag by a
red flag and erecting a Soviet government in place of the republican
form of government guaranteed to each state by the federal Constitution.

The House committee members had good reason to arrive at that
conclusion. The ACLU’s membership, leadership, and projects soon gave
rise to claims by critics that the organization’s acronym really stood
for Atheists, Communists, and Libertines United, or Anti-Christian
Lawyers Union. The ACLU was launched at a party given for Roger Baldwin
upon his release from prison for draft evasion in 1919. The main
attendees at the soiree were Norman Thomas, who would become the
patriarch of the Socialist Party; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who would
become the Communist Party’s national chairman; and Agnes Smedley, who
would become a Soviet espionage agent in China. Top Communist Party
officials who became national committee members or members of its board
of directors included Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William Z. Foster, Louis
Budenz, Corliss Lamont, and Scott Nearing, as well as hundreds of
Communist fellow travelers.

Roger Baldwin directed the ACLU for 30 years. Earlier, he described his
own philosophy this way in his college yearbook: "I am for Socialism,
disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the State itself as an
instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek the social ownership of
property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control of
those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal." He gave no evidence of
ever having swerved from that goal. However, he did give his comrades
good advice on effective stratagems for disguising their true intent.

In 1917, Baldwin wrote to Louis Lochner of the People’s Council, a
Communist group, counseling:

Do steer away from making it [the People’s Council] look like a
Socialist enterprise. Too many people have already gotten the idea that
it is nine-tenths a Socialist movement.... We want also to look like
patriots in everything we do. We want to get a lot of good flags, talk a
good deal about the Constitution and what our forefathers wanted to make
of this country, and to show that we are the folks that really stand for
the spirit of our institutions.

The ACLU has perfected this masquerade, posing as the Constitution’s
guardian while working to destroy it and the morality, responsibility,
and decentralized, local governance essential to our constitutional
system. The organization defends abortion on demand, child pornography,
flag burning, homosexual "marriages" and the right of homosexuals to
adopt children, full "constitutional" rights for illegal aliens, and
legalizing prostitution, pandering, and all recreational drug usage. It
opposes private ownership of guns, voluntary school prayer, religious
displays on public property, capital punishment, prison terms for most
crimes, and tax-exemptions for churches and synagogues.

For decades, the ACLU has worked hand-in-glove with the National Lawyers
Guild, officially cited by a committee of Congress as "the foremost
legal bulwark of the Communist Party." Both of these groups have been
striving since the early 20th century to undermine all U.S. immigration
and internal security protections. The easy access across our borders
enjoyed by the 9-11 hijackers is largely a testament to the nonstop
attacks by the ACLU-NLG saboteurs upon the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, the Border Patrol, and our immigration laws.

Following the September 11th terror attacks, the ACLU and NLG activists
have continued their subversion. One of their most outrageous ongoing
campaigns has been to support members of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a radical, Marxist branch of the PLO.
The INS had tried since 1987 to deport eight members of this terrorist
group from the U.S., but had been stymied by the continuous appeals and
legal delaying tactics of the ACLU-NLG attorneys. Working with Senator
Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative John Conyers of
Michigan, the ACLU-NLG radicals fashioned language to the USA PATRIOT
Act to exempt the members of the terrorist PFLP whom the INS was trying
to deport. This showed unequivocally that the ACLU has not changed its
spots. By undermining our internal security, the ACLU is actually
helping fasten federal police-state measures on the 99.99 percent of
Americans who present no terrorist threat, while protecting the small
minority of terrorists and their supporters whom law enforcement
agencies should be targeting.

By usurping the mantle of leadership of the opposition to the growing
police state, the ACLU’s current deception campaign provides a double
effect. First, it scares many conservatives familiar with the group’s
radical record into more readily accepting the Bush administration’s
dangerous measures concentrating more and more power in Washington. The
pseudo-conservative columnists and radio talk shows supporting the Bush
agenda are having a field day denouncing all opponents as liberal ACLU
dupes. On the other hand, patriotic Americans who have strong
constitutional principles, but are unfamiliar with the ACLU’s sordid
record and the role it is playing, may be tempted to join the ACLU-led
opposition parade. Both of these false alternatives must be rejected.