It’s all about where you draw the line

The following is the text of a letter I just sent to the ACLU:

You website (at this address — http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeechMain.cfm) states “It is probably no accident that freedom of speech is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment…”

Actually the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment is the free exercise of religion. The elipses in your quote, which omits the religion clause, is flatly deceitful.

The sentence begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech….”

Is it just me, or does the ACLU rely on people’s ignorance to make its points?

Hat tip to The Smallest Minority for pointing out the descrepancy.

Clarification: where I directly quote the First Amendment at the end, I’m quoting the actual First Amendment, not the ACLU’s elipsis-edited (…) version.

Update (27 Jan 2005): They have corrected the statement on their site.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 14th, 2005 at 9:27 am and is filed under Right & Left, Right & Wrong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.