ABSTRACT
Americans have always been preoccupied with freedom. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) epitomizes the struggle to make the American Creed a reality. Ever since liberalism became identified as a political philosophy in the first half of the nineteenth century, the English and the Americans have steadily redefined its meaning. Liberalism is the philosophy that gives expression to the meaning of liberal. The ACLU has selectively drawn on features of both autonomistic and collectivistic liberalism. The ACLU and the Moral Majority have two things in common: both pretend to be nonpartisan and both are wrong. The mind-set of the ACLU liberals is optimistic about the chances of making society more equal. The practical instruments of modern liberalism are democratic, libertarian politics and the doctrine that the human reason, in its secular function, is capable of establishing the social conditions of freedom.
