Strategically, positioning is everything. Sun Tzu describes certain positions, that he calls "entangling positions" that when you leave them, you cannot get back into them. You, in effect, destroy these positions by abandoning them. This is one of those insights that make it clear that Sun Tzu wasn't only writing about more than military strategy. I am not sure about how "entangling positions" work on the physical battlefield, but they are extremely common in personal and business battles. For example, most marriages are entangling positions: if you divorce (or even stray), you destroy the relationship and cannot return to it. In business, a company cannot return to one form of product distribution after going to a competing form. For example, if Tupperware went retail, they would destroy their home marketing system and be unable to return to it. This long introduction is meant to describe what happened to the ACLU. Once, this group played an important role, opposing seemingly "good ideas" like the flag-burning amendment currently making its way through Congress. The ACLU's position as a protector of basic rights gave it the credibility to take unpopular stands defending the constitution. Unfortunately, the ACLU squandered that position in a campaign opposing Christianity and supporting pedophilia . The ACLU is now positioned as a force supporting the destruction of basic social norms rather than the constitution. Unfortunately, thishas created a gapping hole in the forces that would defend the constitution. This is not good. For example, it means that the ACLU isn't even involved in cases like this recent Supreme Court decision about the state taking private property. Update: I know nothing about it, but maybe the Institute for American Justice that Michele Malkin mentions here can take over the position abandoned by the ACLU.