ACLU Derangement

Over at the wonderfully named Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton has a few interesting posts on The ACLU Derangement Syndrome, which he got from Eugene Volokh, who named it after various earlier derangement syndroms. As Ed explains it:

The idea is that some subjects prompt such anger in some people that they are incapable of thinking rationally about that subject.

The ACLU derangement is, I think, frequently the result of an inability to distinguish between religious exercise by private parties and government preference for or sponsorship of a class of religions. The ACLU regularly opposes the government in latter case and defends private parties in the former case. I have run across quite a few people who feel that witholding government sponsorship of their religion is an infringement on their free exercise (rather than a limitation on government power,) and who thus view the ACLU as opposed to the free exercise of religion (particularly theirs.) They view the ACLU defense of religious exercise as inconsistent with their experience, and either ignore it outright or dismiss it as "window dressing."