Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU

An interesting essay on group think as Wendy Kaminer observed it in the leadership of the ACLU. She showed how a change in leadership to someone willing to deceive the executive board was not admonished by the board, but instead praised while his critics were forced off the board.

This is not her best piece of writing and reads in some areas as her venting her frustrations, but it was interesting and gave me pause to think about how collective conformity rules over individual truths. ( )

This is something of a dilemma; do I rate this based on whether I personally found this to be of interest (a “good read” generally) or do I evaluate this as a disgruntled-but-seemingly-fair dissertation on some very specific, very recent issues within one organization by an ex-member of high standing? Typically I choose the former (which in this case might be 2 stars) instead on the latter (4), but for this one I’ll say a average 3 as, really, hardly anyone will read my “review” and perhaps four people will ever see my rating. I might as well segue into a discussion of just how awful the Jimmy Fallon Show is or, even more pressing, why every small pothole repair now requires two Boston police officers.

In case anyone actually reads this (um…Hi Mom, How’s retirement thus far?) I’ll add my typically useless two cents about this book. If I go on the basis of my personal take, I felt this quite brief book read as something of an activist pamphlet with an appended quasi-psychological profile of the perils of groupthink conformity as it may eventually crush independent, rational opinion. The subsequent inclusion of issues revolving around the First Amendment on private campuses was more palatable as this relates to Kaminer’s narrative about internal strife within the ACLU over the last eight years. This incremental fracturing – according to her thesis – is already negatively influencing the way the organization operates in the public realm.

Whereas I certainly don’t consider her concerns “nitpicking,” I also don’t know that this is ready-for-Primetime in popular book form (that is, something my dismal local libraries would actually own a copy of). With all the other crap we’re bombarded with day-to-day, these, no doubt, troubling issues seem a bit tame. Obviously her reasoning is that these issues have been increasing exponentially and the whole infrastructure of the ACLU is at stake, therefore there’s no time like the present to get this information out there. I can respect that, but as a general reader I felt less than engaged through most of it. Perhaps my cynicism leads me to suspect that the ACLU – like other such large organizations – already had far worse, and certainly more numerous, bones in the proverbial closet. Despite Romero’s roguish leadership, I blithely assumed money laundering, political blackmail, and the like might have already been defining characteristics…since like 1922! I don’t watch CSI:Reno or whatever and I don’t think I’ve even seen more than one Michael Moore movie, but it seems to me that anytime an organization exceeds six people and seven-figure funding, a Denver prostitution ring supplying the money for Taliban Bazookas can’t be far off. Am I wrong? Does a bear sh*t in the woods?

Anyway, if I put aside what my wife says is my distorted world-view (one that’s rarely contradicted), I might read this as the story of a recently displaced, passionate ACLUer bravely exposing wrongdoings in the face of internal ridicule. Kaminer’s agenda is nothing more than reforming the recently maligned organization so it can pursue civil liberty protections unhampered as it once did. That’s great and I certainly wouldn’t deny this is her intent. I suppose I would say that I’m less shocked by the story than shocked that others may find the story shocking. ( )