Liberties Lost: The Endangered Legacy of the ACLU

No fight for civil liberties ever stays won, wrote Roger Baldwin (1884-1981) in 1971. He was in a position to know. After working hard to preserve the right of Americans to free expression during World War I, he founded the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. The ACLU quickly became, and remains to this day, the staunchest defender of American civil liberties. Woody Klein has selected from Baldwin’s vast writings those essays that are most pertinent to the civil liberties debate today. In each chapter these writings focus on a particular theme, such as national security or invasion of privacy. Each is followed by commentary from some of America’s most prominent politicians and journalists, including Nat Hentoff, Victor Navasky, and Senators Robert C. Byrd, Russell D. Feingold, Christopher J. Dodd, and Edward M. Kennedy.

The stellar contributors include :

Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), who has repeatedly spoken out in Congress against the war in Iraq and the U.S.A. Patriot Act

Senator Russell D. Feingold (D-WI), who cast the Senate’s lone vote against the U.S.A. Patriot Act

Ira Glasser, former Executive Director of the ACLU

Nat Henthoff, a nationally known award-winning journalist and columnist for the Village Voice

Anthony Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times

Victor Navasky, editor and publisher of the Nation

Aryeh Neier, head of the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundations network since 1993.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Days, about the administration of John F. Kennedy

William Sloane Coffin Jr., clergyman and longtime peace activist