Re: HISTORY - pre-CDA, "compromise", untrue civil-liberties groups

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 19:18:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: Danny Yee <danny@staff.cs.usyd.edu.au>
Cc: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Re: HISTORY - pre-CDA, "compromise", untrue civil-liberties groups

I believe the ACLU gets most of its money from individual contributions.
(I may be remembering this from a conversation with some ACLUers.)

But Jonah has a point below. What's important is not just which
corporations fund a group, but whether the group sets policies based on
its funders' desires. 

I know the Cato Institute, for instance, lost money from corporate funders
during the Gulf War because of Cato's principled pacifist stance. I
suspect EPIC has remained at its modest (but effective) size because of
its principled uncompromising stance.

This goes back to the original debate: pragmatism vs. principle. How do
you stand on principle and remain an effective advocate in Washington? If
you navigate the route of pragmatism and compromise, what does that mean
for civil liberties? Can you avoid compromising them away?

I'm reminded of a scene in Lord of the Rings. Frodo offers the Ring to
Galadriel. She hesitates, then declines. She says she would have been
tempted by its power -- but transformed by it. "I will diminish, and
remain Galadriel." 

(This is from memory. It's been more than a couple years.)

-Declan


On Sat, 19 Jul 1997, Danny Yee wrote:

> > From: Jonah Seiger <jseiger@cdt.org>
> > What critics on this list seem to fail to understand is that CDT, EFF,
> > EPIC, ACLU, etc. get financial support based on our positions and goals,
> > not the other way around.
>  
> Amnesty International does not accept funding from any state.  It seems
> to me that there's a very good reason for that.
> 
> I'd be interested to see a list of financial supporters of the ACLU
> and EFF.
> 
> Danny Yee.

On Fri, Jul 18, 1997 at 07:19:31PM -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
[...]
> This goes back to the original debate: pragmatism vs. principle. How do
> you stand on principle and remain an effective advocate in Washington? If
> you navigate the route of pragmatism and compromise, what does that mean
> for civil liberties? Can you avoid compromising them away?

A quote you may find interesting:

"The debate between compromise and principle is a false debate, 
because principle doesn't speak, it acts.  People don't compromise 
their principles -- they simply mis-identify them."

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

Kent,

Yours is an interesting response. But what if one has no principles, just
strategy and tactics?

If you don't know what your principles are -- if you can't identify them
and speak to them -- then you have no business being an advocate.

    "I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though
     not in principle." --Jane Austen

-Declan



On Sat, 19 Jul 1997, Kent Crispin wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 18, 1997 at 07:19:31PM -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> [...]
> > This goes back to the original debate: pragmatism vs. principle. How do
> > you stand on principle and remain an effective advocate in Washington? If
> > you navigate the route of pragmatism and compromise, what does that mean
> > for civil liberties? Can you avoid compromising them away?
> 
> A quote you may find interesting:
> 
> "The debate between compromise and principle is a false debate, 
> because principle doesn't speak, it acts.  People don't compromise 
> their principles -- they simply mis-identify them."
> 
> -- 
> Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
> kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
> PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
> http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
> 
>

On Sun, Jul 20, 1997 at 02:40:07PM -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> Kent,
> 
> Yours is an interesting response. But what if one has no principles, just
> strategy and tactics?

???The obvious answer is that such a person doesn't exist.  You may
not be able to articulate your principles, they may change, they may
be "bad" or purely selfish, but they are there, guiding your actions. 
I view your question as equivalent to "But what if one has no
brain..." Principles are underlying rules controlling behavior, and
are orthogonal to bad and good. 

> If you don't know what your principles are -- if you can't identify them
> and speak to them -- then you have no business being an advocate.

If this rule were strictly followed there would be very few advocates 
indeed. :-) 

Your car is stuck in the mud, the river is raising.  Is it better to
get dirty and get the car out, or to keep your hands clean, and write
off the car? Obviously the question isn't whether or not your hands
get dirty -- the question is whether the car can be saved, and what it
is worth. 

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

On Mon, 21 Jul 1997, Kent Crispin wrote:
> I view your question as equivalent to "But what if one has no
> brain..." Principles are underlying rules controlling behavior, and

	I'd guess you never worked tech support have you.  

	There are people without <functional> brains. I <shudder> know. 

Petro, Christopher C.
snow@smoke.suba.com