The poor American Civil Liberties Union. Once a controversial but brave organization, they have been reduced to shilling for the dregs of society and championing causes that must embarrass even their most frothing supporters. As such, their coffers are not what they used to be. So what do they do?

They try to gin up donations by calling for something patently absurd. Their thinking is maybe they can get a piece of the pie of all the cash donated by lunatics and terrorist fellow travelers to Antifa and Black Lives Matter. So they call for the abolition of the Department of Homeland Security, the main force standing in the way of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Easy, right. Except, DHS knows how to fight back.

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Heritage Foundation V.P. James Carafano comments on the kerfuffle: “Of course, the ACLU learned long ago that championing far-left fantasies was an express pass to fund-raising bonanzas. After 9/11, the ACLU made attacking the Patriot Act their cause célèbre — and an aroused Left cheerfully opened its wallets… Watching all the usual progressive Big Money Boys pour resources into the Black Lives Matter network, the ACLU must have set its cap at can getting part of the action. With ‘Defund the Police’ and ‘Defund Defense’ already taken, the ACLU set its sights on Homeland Security… The logic appears to be that, since DHS is a government agency being run by a president they don’t like and pursuing policies they don’t like, it should be eliminated. If conservatives had called for abolishing the State Department after Benghazi, the Left would have laughed. This complaint makes as little sense.”

Carafano defines the issue: “At its root, the ACLU’s beef with the department is that it is doing its job too well — protecting federal property in our cities, securing the border and going after radical, criminal extremist violence… To be against the department is to not want federal property protected; not care if law enforcement officers are attacked, injured, blinded or killed; not fear for equal protection under the law in our cities; and not worry that our citizens can’t safely walk our streets or open their doors for business without being harassed or extorted.”

When the ACLU was founded ages ago it fought for free speech, often in the face of wide and intensive opposition. More times than not they were on the right side of the Constitution, granted sometimes defending very odious people. They understood what Voltaire meant about defending free speech that isn’t popular.

But like so many groups that occasionally had their moments, the ACLU has fallen prey to the PC bacillus. Now they only seek to advance a hard-left agenda at any cost. And if they can make some filthy lucre off it by appealing to the lowest common intellectual denominator amongst the denizens of the fever swamps of the Left, they think so much better for them. But not really. Now they are just another of the grasping herd of Bolshevik hucksters. No more glory, no more moral and intellectual bravery. A sad state for a once scrappy band that here and there found themselves on the right side of the Constitution.