Yet Another Reason To Never, Ever Give Money To The Southern Poverty Law Center

As a lad I often donated money to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), considering it to be a valuable source of information on the racist right as well as a positive social group working to curtail the activities of extremist groups in the U.S. As I grew older and progressively more cynical, I began to see the SPLC as an extremely biased organization that engaged in questionable fund raising practices such as greatly exaggerating the threat posed by white supremacists as a way to scare yet more donations out gullible white liberals. At some point I may write a sweeping indictment of the SPLC as a whole, but for now I will satisfy myself with pointing out one example of the group’s rank hypocrisy. The SPLC worships the non-violent civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s while of course decrying the violent tactics of terrorist groups like the KKK. This is of course all well and good until you realize that the SPLC’s definition of what a terrorist is seems to vary depending on if the acts of violence in question are committed by right or left-leaning persons. Take Bill Ayers. This guy was a member of the Weathermen in the 1960’s and took part in actions such as the bombing of the U.S. capital building. After his girlfriend was killed during a botched bomb-making project, Ayers went underground. He emerged years later and ended up becoming a professor of education at the University of Illinois. If Ayer’s doesn’t qualify as a terrorist, it’s hard to see who would. Yet Teaching Tolerance, the SPLC’s educational wing, saw fit to publish a fawning interview with Ayers on the issue of social justice in education in which they make only a passing reference to his “60’s radicalism”. I guess some people at the SPLC are nostalgic enough for their own longhaired past that they are able to overlook a bombing here or there. The SPLC is still does a great job of digging up the dirt on white power people. I just don’t think I’ll be cutting them any checks anytime soon. Oh, and by the way, if you believe the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives you the right to own firearms, the SPLC says you’ve fallen victim to a bizarre militia legal theory. So there.