Today's political thought

[gsh]

The recent question of "are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Federalist Society" seems awfully close to the McCarthy question of "are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party".

Of course that doesn't stop some people from blasting card carrying members of the ACLU.

Comments

[wotw]

It seems to me that when the goal is to ascertain a
person's beliefs, memberships in organizations
constitute perfectly relevant and useful information.

The "are you now or have you ever been..." question is
viewed as disreputable because (in many people's
opinion) it was asked on occasions when the beliefs
in question were nobody's business.

But once you've decided that someone's beliefs are fair
game for an inquiry, I don't see why you'd want to
exclude useful information from that inquiry.