[470] in libertarians
IRF
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (CEM)
Wed Dec 7 05:54:09 1994
Date: Wed, 07 Dec 94 04:44:08 -300
From: cem@MIT.EDU (CEM)
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
| Yes, they did good here. But MY question is can they ever point
|to any case that they have taken on that would go AGAINST the general
|"right-wing" outlook? I greatly respect the ACLU, because for all the
|arguments about having been soft on certain cases, they have an
|institutional record of principle that is matched by no other
|organization that I know of.
Yes, ACLU has been around for a long time, has a track record, and has a
large annual budget. But, they must have grown from some, possibly
humble, beginning. Or did they start out large, taking on only the tough
cases? I suspect that few of us are probably knowledgable about this,
and some, as I, would be interested in learning about it. Did they,
perhaps like IRF, find a niche market in which to "profitably" start up.
This is certainly an effective penetration method in most of life's
endeavors, including business, the law, etc.
I don't believe that there is a statistically large per cent of the
population that really cares much about politics, and it's attendant
polarization. Most would just like to do their work, and live their
lives with a minimum of outside intervention. So, why is there a "right"
and a "left" in the first place? Do each stem from from independent
agendae grown in a vacuum? Or is one the defense mechanism against the
other? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
It is their flexibility and rapid response which makes so many niche
businesses successful competitors, and which they typically lose with
growth. Is IRF just beating ACLU to the punch on their cases, or are
those cases situations which would go un-addressed without IRF? Are
these cases important enough to care about in the first place?
Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems that ACLU and IRF operate on the basis
that a righting the wrong to one individual establishes a principle
which benefits the many similarly wronged. But the broadly pervasive
nature of the mischief of the politicians and the polarized is in a
constant state if flux. The finger in the dike approach is not very
effective, because the whole dike is potentially leaky. If it were
possible to identify and permanently disable the mischief makers (and
there are so many of them and their flavors), and dismantle the
mechanisms for making mischief, perhaps we all could get back to
concentrating on having a life.
As one caught in the icy grip of three out of four of IRF's current and
proposed targets, I sense that they, and ACLU (and NRA) are just able to
plug a few holes, and the mischief makers merely move to another area in
the dike. I think that I'd rather have each of the organizations around
until they demonstrate that they potentially will do more harm than
good.
-Charlie Miller
