Synopses & Reviews
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 the ensuing conflict between independent thinking and group solidarity. In this concise and provocative book, she tells an inside story of dramatic ethical decline at the American Civil Liberties Union, using it as a poignant case study of conformity and other vices of association. In
Worst Instincts, Kaminer calls on her experience as a dissident member of the ACLU national board to illustrate the essential virtues of dissent in preserving the moral character of any group. When an organization committed to free speech succumbs to pressure to suppress internal criticism and disregard or spin” the truth, it offers important lessons for other associations, corporations, and governments, where such pressure must surely be rampant. 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 ACLUs post-9/11hypocrisies, including conformity and suppression of dissent in the interests of collegiality, solidarity, or group image; self-censorship by members anxious to avoid ostracism or marginalization by the group; elevation of loyalty to the institution over loyalty to the institutions ideals; substitution of the groups idealized self-image for the reality of its behavior; ad hominem attacks against critics; and deference to cults of personality. From a renowned advocate of civil liberties,
Worst Instincts is a surprising story of ethical meltdown at a revered organization that has abandoned its core principles. It is a powerful book that has much to tell us about the land mines of groupthink.
Review
Standing up to your political enemies is easy, fun, and often profitable. Taking public issue with your friends and allies on a matter of great principle is none of these, but it is a far more important service to others. I am enormously grateful to Wendy Kaminer for the intellectual integrity and moral courage this book represents.”
Congressman Barney Frank The willingness to criticize your own based on principles you would apply to others is a measure of integrity. Kaminers important book about her beloved ACLU has that integrity. She tells a startling, sad, and exceptionally well-documented story.”
Ira Glasser, former executive director, ACLU Witty, trenchant, devastating, Worst Instincts is a study of institutional decay, of how good organizations, blinded by the righteousness of their mission, do bad things.”
Jack Beatty, author of Age of Betrayal and On Point news analyst
"It is far from a grudge book or a simple insider tale of hypocrisy in the high echelons of public interest law. Although Worst Instincts reflects the authors understandable desire to set out a clear record of what happened and what was at stake, Kaminer is also a canny and thoughtful observer of human and institutional behavior. Her opening chapter insightfully reflects on the herd instinct and the pressures for conformity that sometimes prevent even dedicated individuals like those who comprise the ACLUs national board from standing up for principle when faced with the risk of ostracism from the group."
Free Expression Policy Project
Synopsis
In this concise and provocative book, Kaminer 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.
Synopsis
When an organization committed to free speech succumbs to pressure to suppress internal criticism and disregard or "spin" the truth, it offers important lessons for other associations, corporations, and governments. Wendy Kaminer, a renowned advocate of civil liberties, calls on her experience as a dissident member of the American Civil Liberties Union national board to tell an inside story of dramatic ethical decline that has much to teach us about the land mines of groupthink.
Note from the Author
Ch. 2, The Problem with Partisanship, note 2.
This book is not a comprehensive expose of ACLU controversies, (which would be too tedious for me to write or you to read,) and the Beacon Press archive only documents this book; but my colleagues and I have been in the process of making a comprehensive record available in another publicly accessible archive.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
About the Author
Wendy Kaminer is the author of many books, including
Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today;
I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions; and
Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety. She lives in Boston.
From the Trade Paperback edition.