Books in Brief: Our Endangered Rights

Our Endangered Rights: The ACLU Report on Civil Liberties Today, edited by Norman Dorsen (Pantheon, 335 pp., $22.50)

It is said that even paranoids have enemies, and the ACLU is no exception. The worst of them, of course, is Ronald Reagan, who in this book is repeatedly attacked for everything from heartlessness toward the poor to pandering to religious Americans; other anti-civil-liberties forces include the Moral Majority, the pro-life lobby, the lawyers for Walter Polovchak, and the insidious Christmas crèche. The 15 essays in this book are by prominent ACLU members and officials, including executive director Ira Glasser and legal director Burt Neuborne. Perhaps the most revealing is the one on religious liberty by Norman Redlich, a professor and dean at NYU’s School of Law. What comes across in this essay is not so much an anti-religious attitude (which the ACLU will swear it does not have but which it most certainly does) as a sense of horror. Itisasif Professor Redlich cannot believe that there are people who believe religion holds a firm place in American life; who do not object to young Americans exercising their right to pray in a classroom; who do not believe that a nativity scene erected each year on public property “epitomizes the gravity of the present danger” to the Constitution. With this book the ACLU has its say. But it displays a lack both of honor and of honesty that seriously undermines its case. To say, for example, that Gabriel García Márquez was “denied [a] visitor’s visa” to the United States and fail at the same time to clarify that statement does not inspire a reader’s trust, let alone admiration. (Márquez was offered a conditional visa, which he rejected.) Distortions like these, though, may be necessary if the ACLU’s arguments are to be made credible.

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Susan Vigilante

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Our Endangered Rights: The ACLU Report on Civil Liberties Today, edited by Norman Dorsen (Pantheon, 335 pp., $22.50)

It is said that even paranoids have enemies, and the ACLU is no exception. The worst of them, of course, is Ronald Reagan, who in this book is repeatedly attacked for everything from heartlessness toward the poor to pandering to religious Americans; other anti-civil-liberties forces include the Moral Majority, the pro-life lobby, the lawyers for Walter Polovchak, and the insidious Christmas crèche. The 15 essays in this book are by prominent ACLU members and officials, including executive director Ira Glasser and legal director Burt Neuborne. Perhaps the most revealing is the one on religious liberty by Norman Redlich, a professor and dean at NYU’s School of Law. What comes across in this essay is not so much an anti-religious attitude (which the ACLU will swear it does not have but which it most certainly does) as a sense of horror. Itisasif Professor Redlich cannot believe that there are people who believe religion holds a firm place in American life; who do not object to young Americans exercising their right to pray in a classroom; who do not believe that a nativity scene erected each year on public property “epitomizes the gravity of the present danger” to the Constitution. With this book the ACLU has its say. But it displays a lack both of honor and of honesty that seriously undermines its case. To say, for example, that Gabriel García Márquez was “denied [a] visitor’s visa” to the United States and fail at the same time to clarify that statement does not inspire a reader’s trust, let alone admiration. (Márquez was offered a conditional visa, which he rejected.) Distortions like these, though, may be necessary if the ACLU’s arguments are to be made credible.