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→Connection of ACLU michigan
ACLU michigan is listed as affiliated with the ACLU on the ACLU's webpage. This should be modified. [[User:JoshuaZ|JoshuaZ]] 19:05, 24 February 2007 (EST)
ACLU michigan is listed as affiliated with the ACLU on the ACLU's webpage. This should be modified. [[User:JoshuaZ|JoshuaZ]] 19:05, 24 February 2007 (EST)
==Article opening contains material not included in the reference which supposedly supports it==
The opening paragraph once was:
:The ACLU is the American Civil Liberties Union, which was run for its first 30 years by a Unitarian socialist named Roger Baldwin, who helped found it in 1920 in response to the Espionage Act and Sedition Act. During most his tenure at the ACLU Baldwin was sympathetic to the communist movement, only breaking off ties on the eve of World War II.
Seems reasonably OK to me. (One might of course observe that sympathy to the communist movement was pretty common in the days when the communists seemed to be the only serious opposition to the fascists, but never mind that...) It now reads
:The ACLU is the American Civil Liberties Union, which was run for its first 30 years by a non-Christian socialist named Roger Baldwin, who helped found it in 1920 in response to the [[Espionage Act]] and [[Sedition Act]]. Baldwin's stated purpose in creating the ACLU was "We are for SOCIALISM, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the state itself... We seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the SOLE CONTROL of those who produce wealth. COMMUNISM is the goal."[http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9402/aclu.html]
I have a strong objection to the sentence beginning "Baldwin's stated goal" because that statement is ''not found in the cited source.'' A Google search on it does turn up many hits (with identical all-caps emphasis), but the ones I skimmed were all right-wing blogs and attacks on the ACLU, and none of them cited sources themselves.
Maybe he said it, maybe he didn't, but if it's going to go in the article I want to see a good source for it... good meaning, first, that it actually includes the words he's supposed to have said; second, isn't part of a patently anti-ACLU rant; third, does a reasonably good job of identifying the original published source that includes those words.
Now, I also have an objection to the change from "Unitarian socialist" to "non-Christian socialist." ''Unitarian'' is perfectly specific. Since Unitarian Universalism is non-creedal, it cannot be described ''either'' as Christian or as non-Christian. Transforming "Unitarian" into non-Christian looks like POV-pushing to me. Many Unitarian Universalists describe themselves as Christian. Many do not. The UU's own statement on this is can be found [http://www.uua.org/aboutuu/uufaq.html here], the section "Are Unitarian Universalists Christian?" (First line: "Yes and no.") Wishy-washy? OK. Non-Christian? Not a fair characterization. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 09:13, 25 February 2007 (EST)