politically sensitive labels

[Fred Shapiro]

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004, Laurence Horn wrote:

> (3)  A quick and dirty google inspection suggests that the claim that
> _civil liberties_ "is almost always associated with the
> often-controversial American Civil Liberties Union" may be accurate
> if "almost always" conveys about 20-25% of the time.

I hesitate to venture what could be deemed a political opinion in response
to a posting (not Larry's, but the one before) by someone who once
complained about my half-assed political comments, but I think this is a
factual, nonpartisan point:  The current Administration, while undertaking
controversial legal and legislative innovations in response to terrorism,
has given the term "civil liberties" more currency than it has had since
the McCarthy era, and the term has taken on a new life going way beyond
the specific activities of the ACLU.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
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  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
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