Maybe this is the liberal side of me speaking, but I have a lot of respect for organizations that stand up for people whose rights have been abused. Organizations like ACORN, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, the Innocence Project, get As in my book, mostly only for the principles they stand for. Their execution, however, generally leaves something to be desired.

Case number one: ACORN. When conservative activists entered ACORN offices around the country posing as a pimp and a prostitute, employees were fully willing to help with legitimizing an obviously illegitimate business.

Case number two: Human Rights Watch. It was discovered in September that an analyst had an extensive Nazi memorabilia collection, conservative blogs took the news and ran with it, eventually leading to the suspension of the analyst.

Case number three: The Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is an organization that attempts to exonerate wrongfully convicted criminals. There are new allegations out that the Innocence Project paid a witness in an investigation about a wrongfully convicted murderer.

I don’t think the problem is with the principle of the organization. These are non-profits that operate under the charter of providing services to underprivileged people. The problem is how the organizations choose to portray themselves to a wider audience. These are “moral” organizations that stand for some sort of “moral good”. As such, they are (and should be) held to their own moral standard if anybody should take them seriously.

It is true that, for example, conservatives would rather have ACORN just not exist. ACORN should take a different approach though. Rather than threatening to sue, ACORN and similar organizations should be modest and use these experiences to refine their message and moral values.