Apocalyptic visions can blind any of us. As an addendum to his defense of the ACLU's 1940 purge of Communists , Eugene Volokh posts a link to this 1934 article in Soviet Russia Today by Roger Baldwin, director of the ACLU:
I saw considerable of the work of the OGPU. I heard a good many stories of severity, even of brutality, and many of them from the victims. While I sympathized with personal distress I just could not bring myself to get excited over the suppression of opposition when I stacked it up against what I saw of fresh, vigorous expressions of free living by workers and peasants all over the land. And further, no champion of a socialist society could fail to see that some suppression was necessary to achieve it. It could not all be done by persuasion. . . .Posted by Ben Brumfield at September 8, 2005 01:15 PMHow long the proletarian dictatoriship will last, only world conditions and internal success in building socialism can determine. Highly centralized authority will give way. The State and police power will eventually disappear. Civil liberties will exist again;, within the confines of a socialist society; but not to oppose it, for who will want to? The extension of education, the bringing up of a generation to take active responsibility all over the Soviet Union will lessen power at the center and from on top.
If American workers, with no real liberties save to change masters or, rarely, to escape from the working class, could understand their class interests, Soviet "workers' democracy" would be their goal. And if American champions of civil liberty could all think in terms of economic freedom as the goal of their labors, they too would accept "workers' democracy" as far superior to what the capitalist world offers to any but a small minority. Yes, and they would accept — regretfully, of course — the necessity of dictatorship while the job of reorganizing society on a socialist basis is being done
So what's your point, Ben? Since I'm the only ACLU member here that I know of, I presume this is addressed to me. Are you trying to push me to choose between defending this quote word for word or condemning the present-day ACLU because of a thing someone said in the 1930s? Shall I demand that you either defend or repudiate, say, the behavior of Michael Brown or Barbara Bush? I would really rather not, is the thing. I'm not in a mood to be baited, nor to play the thankless role of "house liberal" in this increasingly conservative forum. Ben, I congratulate you on your work as a Katrina volunteer, and I humbly request that you quit the needling.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at September 8, 2005 01:45 PMWhoa!
That was not at all directed at you, Martha, nor did I intend it as a condemnation of the ACLU, nor of Baldwin, who Volokh points out later repudiated his position. My point (as I thought was clear with the first sentence) was the ubiquitous appeal of omlette-style-reasoning, even to the best of us (which I'd better specify includes Baldwin).
Perhaps this misunderstanding evens us up for the one over toys and gender roles.
I've certainly baited you in the past, and been baited in turn, but that was far from my mind here.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at September 8, 2005 02:01 PMFurthermore, in addition to not being directed at you, my post rested on the assumption that its readers (including editors here) generally think that
I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at September 8, 2005 02:13 PMI'm sorry if I mistook your intention. Guess I'm just not up for philosophical discussion at present.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at September 8, 2005 02:53 PMBen may be conservative, but he's better than most at avoiding such fallacies/tactics. :)
Posted by: Alan Hogue at September 8, 2005 04:25 PM