Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the Aclu

What happens when an organization with the express goal of defending individual rights and liberties starts silencing its own board? Lawyer and social critic Wendy Kaminer has intimate knowledge of such a conflict between individual conscience and group solidarity. In this concise and provocative book, she tells an inside story of the dramatic ethical decline of the American Civil Liberties Union, using it as a case history to detail the many vices of association.In Worst Instincts Kaminer calls on her experience as a dissident member of the ACLU national board to discuss the virtues of dissent itself as an essential tool for preserving the moral character of any group. If an organization committed to free speech can suffer from pressure to suppress differing opinions, and disregard for truth, this pressure must surely be rampant in other associations and corporations, as well as government. Kaminer clarifies the common thread linking a continuum of minor failures and major disasters, from NASA to Jonestown. She reveals the many vices endemic to groups and exemplified by the ACLU’s post-9/11 ethical decline, including: conformity and suppression of dissent in the interests of collegiality; self-censorship by members anxious to avoid ostracism; demands to close ranks and launch ad hominem attacks against critics; elevation of loyalty to the institution over loyalty to the institution’s ideals; substitution of the group’s idealized self-image for the reality of its behavior; and deference to cults of personality.