https://twitter.com/kittypurrzog/status/1401610476237197312
The ACLU should split into two groups: ACLU Sr, which fights for free speech rights, and ACLU Jr, which fights against them
(Yes, I saw this when PG retweeted it.)
If only that. The younger lawyers would attack (sometimes physically, like with Molotov cocktails, as in the case of Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis) those they find detestable, and anybody in the law profession that dares to provide them with any service. Which once was considered a basic human right, but not anymore - now, if you defend the deplorables, you become unperson yourself.
Per the article, the old policy defending Free Speech was ...
> "we are committed to represent those whose views we regard as repugnant"
Whereas the new policy says...
> "lawyers should balance taking a free speech case representing right-wing groups whose “values are contrary to our values” against the potential such a case might give “offense to marginalized groups.” "
It's actually really sad. They've even explicitly paid for campaign ads for Democratic political candidates...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0aqKS3ihVM
It's really just the ACLU in name only. They've done what so many organizations have done, and sacrificed their principles to take sides in the GOP vs Dem battle. Shortsighted.
1. Everyone is conservative about what they know best
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies
https://www.aclu.org/blog/civil-liberties/mobilization/aclus...
As I support their efforts generally. I find picking and choosing seems counter to the what protecting our civil liberties means in a whole.
More seriously, the ACLU has always faced an identity crisis and a consequent PR problem.
If the ACLU embraced all civil liberties, wouldn't you expect more Bill-Of-Rights-T-Shirt wearers to be more supportive?
First step of the free speech agenda: Breathe.
It's short term vs long term thinking and clearly they know way more about the Constitution and law than I do to identify major threats to liberty. It's pretty normal for both lay people and professionals to disagree with that strategy, as there are often disagreements in the law. And while I think having this discussion is important, framing it as an existential crisis for the organization is a bit fatalistic.
It's my opinion, and people are welcome to disagree (that's OK), that much of the angst directed towards the ACLU in this thread is more appropriate and effective if directed at the government bodies suppressing free speech, instead.
"In Soviet Russia, we too have freedom of speech. But in America, you have freedom after speech" -- Yakov Smirnoff
"Any government regulation of speech or published material is destructive to free society."
Hopefully you immediately think of exceptions: illicit pornography, fire in a theater, ingredient labels/active ingredient listings, directly false marketing, misrepresenting contracts, direct physical threats/"fighting words," convincing someone to commit suicide, intellectual property related speech, advertisements to kids, speech in the military, speech under NDA's, security clearance related information, publicly accusing someone of a crime they didn't commit. Maybe you might think speech is different whether it's from a citizen or non citizen. Maybe it's different from a corporation and a person. Maybe it's different if speech is done in good faith (because a person honestly believes their words) or bad faith (because someone wants to manipulate somebody). Maybe the mode of speech matters, whether it's internet, radio, spoken word, telephone, or otherwise.
Referring to free speech in indirect terms creates a problem, because it denies the grey. Free speech arguments are all about determining the correct gradient of grey for society. Being able to identify and understand grey area is a strong signal of being informed. The grey area is why people who are knowledgeable are unsure and people who know nothing are confident. One sees complexities, the other is blind to them.
Every person on the planet being able to publish a message that can be read by every human (twitter) is something the human race has never had to face before. Facebook can choose to promote hateful speech with algorithms and incite hatred through doing so, gaining them engagement (addiction) in the process. Is that healthy for society? Is fox news healthy? On the other side is CNN (fake news?) healthy? Should China/Russia be able to purchase American airtime? Should American celebrities and businesses be protected from having their speech coerced by foreign powers?
Reasonable people can come to different conclusions on what it means for speech to be "free", what counts as speech, what context around the speech matters, and what entities should get "free speech" protection.
This is why it is encoded as an absolute, so that one’s perspective on what is reasonable or not is irrelevant. If speech causes harm that person can be sued for harm in a civil case. But the government shall not make any law infringing on the right to free speech.
> "Any government regulation of speech or published material is destructive to free society."
Things go off the rails right off the bat by conflating the First Amendment with freedom of speech, which almost always bodes ill for the remainder of the arguments presented. Anyway, the 1st Amendment is a subset of the general principle of freedom of speech that happens to bind the government. The formulation in Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is a bit clearer about what freedom of speech is:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers"
This encompasses individuals, organizations, businesses, and, yes, governments. This is why the deplatforming of Parler (which in some sense was a happy thing) is still a freedom of speech issue despite not being a First Amendment issue or illegal; third parties stepped in to interfere with those who wanted to impart legal (albeit deplorable) speech and those who wanted to receive legal (ditto) speech. What can be done to one set of people can be done to any other, bad or good, and that's a hazard.
> "Hopefully you immediately think of exceptions..."
Sets up the unfortunately all too common "speech that causes clear and immediate harm is illegal so you don't _actually_ believe in freedom of speech" argument which, much like attacking a point nobody was trying to defend, is neither interesting nor persuasive. Such speech is seldom the core issue of the controversial freedom of speech cases we're discussing in the first place. For example, neither the ACLU's Skokie or even Charlottesville freedom of speech cases had known expectation of immediate harm to others, despite the odious nature of who they were defending.
> "The grey area is why people who are knowledgeable are unsure and people who know nothing are confident. One sees complexities, the other is blind to them."
A pleasant appeal to HN's collective intellectual vanity. Let's see where it takes us.
> "Every person on the planet being able to publish a message that can be read by every human (twitter) is something the human race has never had to face before. Facebook can choose to promote hateful speech with algorithms and incite hatred through doing so, gaining them engagement (addiction) in the process. Is that healthy for society? Is fox news healthy? On the other side is CNN (fake news?) healthy? Should China/Russia be able to purchase American airtime? Should American celebrities and businesses be protected from having their speech coerced by foreign powers?"
Let's substitute for your final paragraphs, a statement I feel is equivalent (please let me know if you think it's an unfair characterization):
"The knowledgeable know better than the ignorant so it's justifiable for the knowledgeable to protect them from themselves by limiting fake news/hateful speech from what they see, with the understanding that what constitutes fake news/hateful speech is decided on by the knowledgeable."
While seductive to a certain type of mindset, the paternalistic and ripe for abuse nature of this idea should be self-evident. It is the progressive equivalent of Kipling's (deeply racist and colonialist) "The White Man's Burden", only here the it is the progressive who are being exhorted to bring enlightenment to the benighted ignorant.
But let's go further and suppose that it were justified somehow, we'd still be faced with the problem that we not know the truth now and, even worse, we don't know what the future will determine the truth to be. Permitting suppression of "hateful speech" would have suppressed the civil rights movement (immensely unpopular in its time), LGBT rights movement (same), and other social movements now deemed important steps in improving human civil rights.
So, in the end, there is nothing new, insightful, nor persuasive to be found here.
(I await the inevitable reply where I'm accused of being a conservative.)
>> Referring to free speech in indirect terms creates a problem, because it denies the grey. Free speech arguments are all about determining the correct gradient of grey for society. Being able to identify and understand grey area is a strong signal of being informed. The grey area is why people who are knowledgeable are unsure and people who know nothing are confident. One sees complexities, the other is blind to them.
"Free speech is table stakes for a free society" is not code for "I believe every entity should have the inviolable right to say whatever they want whenever they want." – I interpret it to mean "A society can't be free unless one of its founding principles is freedom of expression." Another sentiment it expresses is, "we should start from the position that what happens to be expressed is allowable unless it falls under a category where we deem it to be curtailed – versus – speech is strictly regulated, it's a privilege rather than a right, we need to explicitly enumerate the areas where it is unregulated". You're not interpreting what they said charitably in my opinion. And saying "You know things aren't black or white, they're grey" is rather pointless a lot of the time in because you can just counter the supposed argument without the additional lecturing meta-observation which to be honest comes across as kind of condescending to my ears.
Lastly – it's not some massive revelation that there are limitations to freedom of expression:
“Freedom of speech is not regarded as absolute by some with most legal systems generally setting limits on the freedom of speech, particularly when freedom of speech conflicts with other rights and protections, such as in the cases of libel, slander, pornography, obscenity, fighting words, and intellectual property.
Some limitations to freedom of speech may occur through legal sanction, and others may occur through social disapprobation.”
It is hard to imagine them defending an anti-trans person in 2021. As despicable as those people are, they still have civil rights. As a gay man, I would have been despicable for most of the past 100+ years, but the ACLU would have defended me anyway. That version of the ACLU no longer exists.
Reading through their Twitter again just now, it is clear they have gone off the rails.
This precise thing is why it's baffling that people can suggest cancel culture is only something to complain about if you've done / said something wrong. What is considered wrong does not always age well. Sometimes we ourselves are the baddies.
GOA and SAF (Second Amendment Foundation) are far far better when it comes to actual legal challenges to laws that infringe the 2nd Amendment
To their relative credit, they do seem to be struggling with it in a way that very few other orgs are, and you occasionally see them take principled action.
My replacement donations are Fire and Institute for Justice.
I feel there's merit to a singleness-of-purpose within an organization, and ACLU's attempt to juggle "12 or 15 different values" detracts from its effectiveness.
ACLU is lost, I stopped donating a while ago as well, and it won't return until they oust those that work against the liberal ideal.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...
"We defend civil liberties and rights guaranteed to each individual, including freedom of speech and expression, equal protection under the law, and the right to personal privacy."
I know a lot of faculty who have been attacked or even fired for "left wing" research and FIRE hasn't spread a peep. Heck, I know people who've been put on blast by Hannity and received death threats from strangers and had their students call them slurs in legally protected channels just because the kids know they can. Silence from FIRE.
Universities are hardly right-wing institutions that fire academics for left-wing research, quite to the contrary "academics" too often engage in indoctrination instead of teaching students to engage a subject to mastery. We are at such a bad point that even harvard is so stooped in dialectic that it argue 2+2 is not always 4, something an elementary kid knows is bullshit.
Maybe you should re-read your comment a few times and think critically about it.
You're just going to leave it there? What/who is FIRE? This isn't one of those unique words easily discovered during a web search.
It seems they also edited their comment to include a link - seems pretty reasonable to me.
Here's an interesting bit:
> The A.C.L.U. of Virginia argued that this violated the free speech rights of the far-right groups and won, preserving the right for the group to parade downtown. With too few police officers who reacted too passively, the demonstration turned ugly and violent; in addition to fistfights, the far right loosed anti-Semitic and racist chants and a right-wing demonstrator plowed his car into counterprotesters, killing a woman. Dozens were injured in the tumult.
> Revulsion swelled within the A.C.L.U., and many assailed its executive director, Anthony Romero, and legal director, Mr. Cole, as privileged and clueless. The A.C.L.U. unfurled new guidelines that suggested lawyers should balance taking a free speech case representing right-wing groups whose “values are contrary to our values” against the potential such a case might give “offense to marginalized groups.”
That's not political correctness, that's ideals colliding head-on with the grim reality. The real world isn't a Disney movie, and doing the "right thing" doesn't magically make everything work out positively.
So the Virginia ACLU defended the freedom of speech of Nazis, and the Nazis did what Nazis do and ran over people they didn't like, killing a woman. At that point a lot of people started asking themselves "Are we really being a positive influence?". And a conflict began.
I see this as a conflict between deontology and consequentialism. Deontology says "free speech was defended, the outcome doesn't matter. Let's keep going". But it turns out that deontology isn't that great of a fit for the real world, because people do care about consequences very intensely. Few have the iron-clad nerve needed to say "an innocent died as the consequence of my/my group's actions, and nevertheless I wouldn't change a thing".
I think the major difference now vs the 70s is that news spread far wider, and consequences are communicated far better and more viscerally.
Those people were clearly in the wrong though. After all, why join a civil liberties union if your support for said liberties is conditional on your whims?
I see this all the time in the so-called "paradox of tolerance", which is of course only a paradox if you assume a consequentialist framework as unstated background assumption.
Personally, I feel asking people to make personal consequentialist decisions gives them far too much leeway to bring personal bias in, so I'm in favor of deontological freedom of speech - on consequentialist grounds.
I can see why this discussion's turned ugly, but it can't NOT be ugly. None of this is hypothetical. It's blown up because the aforementioned Nazis worked out that they could compel the ACLU to effectively become a Nazi ally and devote their forces to the cause of terrorism. Under the ground rules of what the ACLU is, if properly managed, the organization can be used to clear the way for violence and actions that are not on brand for the ACLU, and not what it thinks of as 'civil liberty'.
This is a clever sort of meta-gaming thing, but it's also an obvious existential crisis for the ACLU to the extent that the ACLU cares at all about terrorism. I think there's an assumption that we can define some things with a bright line never to be infringed upon, and that there will never be exploits to undermine our assumptions.
And I mean, that's not even true for mathematical proof, much less free-speech liberalism.
Unsatisfied with the world they've inherited, as they should be, the next generation wants revolution, not reform. They want to tear down the old system and build something new. They see the results of the old system and have little respect for its jaded, corrupt defenders.
The older people decry it, saying that the revolution is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, that reform is the best approach. The new movement responds that reform hasn't worked.
I think both sides have a point; the problem is winner-take-all outcomes for either side: Revolution does destroy, often more than it creates, and I think the principles of free speech must be preserved. But if you are satisfied with the old system, you are living a privileged life under a rock: Tens of millions or more in the U.S. alone are denied their rights, denied life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The old system has not delivered on its promises; reform has not delivered. And the new movement is right that older people are corrupt and jaded: I've seen myself that many of my peers, people who used to be honest and open, have aged to fit that description; it's worse than the younger people think.
It's never a mistake to get rid of hereditary monarchs.
I've managed to get junk mail from both sides of the political spectrum now, which has been interesting (the conservative groups have had me on their mailing list forever, and I think a subscription to Harpers got me on the liberal groups).
Unfortunately, other than the issues involved, I can't really tell a big difference between fundraising styles. "Assume the reader is an idiot and send surveys with the most leading questions you've ever heard of, then ask for money." Usually, they say "Please send us $15 to process the survey, and your best gift."
The questions are absolutely, loaded, leading questions that would be laughed out of any courtroom or actual attempt at a statistically accurate survey. They're things like "Do you agree that racial injustice and white supremacy is the most important issue facing America today?" and "Do you agree that widespread, unchecked illegal immigration is on a path to destroy the nation we love?"
One group actually has survey stickers you respond with - "Yes, illegal immigration is a huge concern!" and "No, I'm a global elitist who supports illegal aliens voting in our elections and overthrowing our Democracy." Or something of the sort.
I guess it works or they wouldn't do it, but it's absolutely insane how these "surveys" are worded. I'm sure all they do is look for a check on the inside instead of "processing" them.
Oh, and just in case you're a drooling moron who doesn't know how to read a letter, the attached letter highlighting the supposed problems will reliably include at the bottom of the pages, "Over!" "Next page please!" "Flip over to continue reading!" and other insulting directions that more or less imply I don't know how to read a multi-page document. Since it's apparently against federal law to leave whitespace in such a fundraising request, they fill the last page with "PS: This is an URGENT issue that requires your rushed donation to STOP THEM from DOING EVIL THINGS." "PPS: Please rush your donation back!" "PPSS: I'm still going to put stuff here so there's no whitespace."
But I do tend to respond in long form, usually expanding on answers, and often include 2-3 typed pages in response when the survey lacks nuance. I doubt it ever gets read, but it's good practice for being able to expand on issues.
In any case, the ACLU isn't getting my money. Neither is the Heritage Foundation, and neither are any other groups that send me these "surveys" where the only important question is "But how much can you afford to give?"
Which, yeah, sucks but I'm a sufficiently intense competition and all that..
I haven't drooled in a while, but I do actually appreciate those kinds of hints.
I agree with everything else you said though. It's hard to imagine that debasing the very concept of surveys will be a net positive for democracy.
Oh nice, we are following federal fundraising laws now. This is an improvement.
But it's very, very consistent. The "Outrage you so you give us money" letters in these surveys don't leave any whitespace on the last page.
On the other hand, there are some groups I support who will send something along the lines of a 10 page, single sided, properly written letter (no random *BOLD* italic and the ever-popular "ink pen looking circles to draw your attention to the outrage of the day") explaining in competent written English what they've been doing, where they'd like to expand, and what they need to accomplish this. I'm far, far more likely to support those groups (though I generally just give locally, I've less interest in what's going on in Washington than in our local town and region).
They've been accused of being racist and sexist for quite a few years. [1] is one example.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-11/black-at...
It seems like you're complaining about the fact that the left is not conservative at heart, which is odd. It's not exactly some sort of hidden agenda that the point of the left is to win elections and wield executive power rather than obstructing the government and focusing solely on individual rights.
I am old enough to remember times where at least some individual rights - speech, association, honest elections, equality in the eyes of the law for all people regardless of their identity, due process - were the causes that most of the left would support. There were people on the left that genuinely supported Civil Rights movement because they believed all people should have equal rights. Now equality is offensive for them, and so are due process, free speech and other values their previous generation wrote on their banners.
Some of the group's members might actually be pluralist civil libertarians at heart.
But this news demonstrates that the vast majority are not. They were authoritarians in libertarians' clothing, and today's political environment is woke enough for them to swap out their duds.
It's easy to be principled when it doesn't matter. To anyone who didn't live through it, the Nazis are an ancient demon that feels as relevant as Darth Vader or the Devil. What do I care if 4chan wants to name a soda "Hitler did nothing wrong" for the lols?
It's a lot harder when you perceive the speech that your principles would have you save to be a tangible threat to your safety. If some on the left (rightly or wrongly) see e.g. unmoderated alt-right social media activity as a risk factor for something bigger than 1/6, there would be an inherent tension between principles and pragmatism.
I'd be interested in seeing evidence as to whether the left has trended toward a particular side, but it's a shame that this has to become an issue in the first place.
Yet somehow it's not a "tangible threat to safety" while a bunch of wackos fantasizing on the internet how Trump is about to be revealed as the Messiah is. Sorry, it's very hard to treat such "safety" concerns as genuine while keeping ignoring the real safety threats. It's more like a pampered $100K-per-year college student cries that she feels "unsafe" going to their college campus because somewhere there on campus there is a professor who once said something that puts him slightly on the right of AOC. It's not what people mean by "safety", it's weaponizing "safety" for political reasons.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-disinte...
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/dont-wa...
https://reason.com/volokh/2018/06/22/aclus-david-cole-respon...
https://aclu.procon.org/did-you-know/
The Rutherford Institute is better than the ACLU today:
Edit: A reply would be nice if down voting. The examples the first subject in the article uses are implicitly comparing liberty of speech to protected/disenfranchised classes or characteristics of people, and how ACLU seems to have changed disposition here. That's my point. My use of Identity Politics is not baiting -- it's a well studied topic in the social sciences.
Please, define where the actual line should be.
I think there's a fair amount of existing law that's made rather ridiculous by this position. In particular, the whole notion of conspiracy goes out the window when it's by definition not possible to share in responsibility for an act by persuasion. I'm not even sure it's possible to extort: if you can plausibly say you will wreak mayhem on a person for failing to comply, and you do so, and they comply rather than get mayhem wrought upon them, you've got what you want but you have never done more than speak. Your actions have never once crossed the line. The fact that your speech functioned as plausible threats is irrelevant: it was always and only speech, because nobody called you on it.
- Anti-BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) statues being written into state and local law in jurisdictions all over the country.
- Efforts to legally sanction corporations that exercise their free speech rights in opposition to certain political issues, such as repealing MLBs antitrust protection for moving the All-star game from Georgia.
- Even if there are not legal efforts, widespread outrage at similar exercises of free speech, such as the rights holders of Dr. Seuss books voluntarily deciding to discontinue publication of a small subset of his not-very popular books.
- Anti-protest bills that in some cases essentially decriminalize violent opposition to the free speech rights of people you may not agree with. (1)
- The Trump White House banning left-of-center media from attending certain events (2), and overall making numerous statements aiming to paint media they don't agree with as fake, lying, etc.
I can readily admit the left has a free speech problem, but this problem is in no way unique to the left.
(1) https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-legislature-oks-bill-t... (2) https://outline.com/dfhh9h
When those you exile move to a new organization/group/fandom either attempt to shut that down before it grows, or if grows to become powerful Join an organization/group/fandom that is popular/powerful, and complain ....
Basecamp and coinbase showed that you either choose to have zero tolerance of politics in the workplace, or the woke will make you spend as many resources as possible on political activism instead of whatever you used to do. A dynamic that has been so toxic to work dynamics and productivity that even a woke company like Basecamp had to course-correct.
The organizations that have chosen to forbid political activism at work have lost employees that prioritize this over work, but those that remained have gotten back to work with fewer distractions and its arguable that loosing people that prioritize activism at work over the company vision is a net positive.
The question facing the ACLU is should they be partisan (fight for the rights of just one side) or merely political (fight for all side’s rights, even the sides that you disagree with).
In Sheldon Messinger’s analysis of an old-age pressure group formed in the 1930s, the Townsend organization, he shows how the organization managed to stay alive by transforming its political goal of increased support for the aged through a radical economic plan into social goals of fellowship and card playing and fiscal goals of selling vitamins and patent medicines to its members. The unanticipated consequence of fund-raising techniques based on selling items, rather than political programs, was to turn the organization into a social club. The changing social and political scene also, of course, produced a change in goals. In a somewhat similar vein, Joseph Gusfield shows how the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) had to abandon its attack on drinking per se after prohibition was repealed and change to an attack on middle-class mores and life-styles in general, in order to serve the needs of its members. Mayer Zald outlines how the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) changed from helping poor migrants from the farm or abroad, who found the city a fearsome experience, to providing recreation for middle-class suburban youths. The Christian ethics of the early period, designed to sustain the faith of helpless people, gave way to a bland ethic of the American way of life; the practical help and training changed from information and techniques for survival in the urban jungle to physical culture and recreation for youths and adults with leisure time on their hands. In both cases, the organization survived the environmental changes and found a new mission.
-- Charles Perrow, Complex Organizations (1972, 1979, 1986)
https://www.worldcat.org/title/complex-organizations-a-criti...
The period described largely spans the first half of the 20th century.
"Once overtaken by a clique of political activists using it as a the platform to further an agenda unrelated to the org mission's statement, organisation X faces an identity crisis"
This is why tech businesses like Basecamp, Coinbase or Shopify are pushing back against partisanship and political activism in tech.
(Decided it was unfair to throw a large org under the bus without being able spend a few hours to defend the claim.)
Like why do no-profits and charities seem to corrupt their aim at a greater speed than for profit businesses?
It seems inherent to the different aims of charities and businesses. Nucor Corporation has a nominal lineage from "Nuclear Corporation of America Inc." incorporated in the 1950s. But its actual business has had nothing to do with nuclear technology in 50+ years; it found more success in the steel business. Shareholders aren't mad that the company isn't following its original nuclear technology mission since it found a better business. There's nothing to "corrupt" when a business goes after different markets.
But some donors will be upset if a charity focused on one mission broadens or deviates from its original mission. Some people may also be happy with these sorts of change, of course, but mission changes tend to be more controversial with charities than with for-profit companies.
I was really hoping to chime into a fruitful discussion about positive vs negative protection of the first amendment rights. 1A says "... Congress shall make no law ..." but California's Constitution (for example) goes farther to say "Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right". This lead to the fascinating Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins Supreme Court case[0] which surfaced the careful distinction between the two senses of Free Speech and the government's obligation to protect it. Where does an org like ACLU stand on what precisely defines Free Speech, and, the responsibilities of each State, Federal Govt and NGO like itself to protect it?
IANAL, just someone who hoped we'd discuss things a bit more carefully on HN.
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...
I find it incredibly ignorant that this article (or anyone here for that matter) fails to mention the name George Soros. The dude literally did a hostile takeover of the ACLU a few years back in the form of overly-generous donations[1].
The ACLU isn't "facing an identity crisis", it's been strategically taken over to push a divide-and-conquer strategy within America. Notice how everything they do nowadays is focused around heated "us vs them" topics? This isn't a mistake, or a natural byproduct...it's 100% by design. Not really sure what the end-goal is, but the ACLU's current agenda (and most of George Soros funded organizations) is clearly to get everyone in America to hate each other.
[1] https://nonprofitquarterly.org/50-million-soros-grant-to-fun...
If the ACLU sacrifices its principles to earn the approval of the woke authoritarian left, then the people in charge never really had those principles.
I agree that free speech is essential -- I imagine that they asked for money because I gave them money in the past. Can you agree that the starving, homeless, and sick might have difficulty exercising their right to free speech even if the ACLU protects it in court?
That's nonsensical. If somebody leaves the First Amendment behind, they are leaving liberalism behind. If you do not support free speech, you simply are not liberal.
But they still fought lots of commendable battles, sticking up for people that nobody else would. I think that's what they've lost... they would be scared to stick up for somebody that might get the wrong people upset with them.
The various police forces during the capital seige - in January, remember how that was this year - said they used less force because the participants were armed and knew they could shoot back
Their whole thing is that they will make the state think twice, whereas the peaceful and unarmed protestors get knocked around with no recourse
Without examples, its easy to think they are advocating for actually killing government officials with their guns in order to get their way, but after a year of examples I can at least say I have experienced competing and conflicting ideas in action
Given the reference to "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State," the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right."
If individuals aren't allowed to own and practice with weapons normally, then when it's needed the Militia will not be "well-regulated", as in well-armed or trained.
The 2nd amendment is really very important to all civil liberties, since otherwise there is nothing to stop a repressive government from taking control.
> O'Sullivan's First Law: All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing. I cite as supporting evidence the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, and the Episcopal Church.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100715191034/http:/old.nationa...
That doesn't mean you have forbid Nazis from ever speaking (as if this would work), it means you have to make sure your democracy and your institutions are stable enough to survive their first period in government and manage to get a peaceful and fair transfer of power after that (instead of Nazis setting fire to the Reichstag, blaming it on communists, declaring an emergency and never have elections again).
I'd rather loose the right to utter certain inflamatory phrases than loose the right and the possibility to vote the next government out of office in a fair and representative election.
Do you mean the actual summary of what happened in the US over the past 50 years ?
"These Rights were convenient at the time we were a minority, but now, we are in power, they are in the way of our ideal utopia."
> I'd rather loose the right to utter certain inflamatory phrases than loose the right and the possibility to vote the next government out of office in a fair and representative election.
And that's why the 2nd Amendment is protecting the 1st. (and all the subsequent).
NYT's double standards are ridiculous
If Citizens United had gone the other way, nothing would stop the government from banning books or social media posts as well. (During oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the government lawyer admitted they believed they could ban books and YouTube videos as well)
Citizens United is frequently misunderstood - the main problem with it is that because restrictions on recognized political party fundraising still remain on the books, political money ends up flooding into third party organizations that are less under control of the institutional party and are more likely to be extreme. Meanwhile political candidates can plausibly deny their connection to the actions of such super PACs. Making the playing field even again by allowing larger or unlimited direct donations to candidates or parties would be the way toward a just but also effective solution.
I give an extensive explanation on the economics of free speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8HbvC6vqIY
I interviewed Noam Chomsky on it last week here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPZ8rSESZo
And we are building it here (sorry for the bad design so far): https://rational.app/
> ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From an Online Censorship Controversy: The once-principled group issues P.R.-scripted excuses or engages in obfuscation to avoid taking stances that would offend its liberal donor base.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/aclu-again-cowardly-abstain...
Edit: HN always seems to downvote anything which doesn't go with the censorship of controversial view points.
No one cares that the NRA only gives a crap about half of 2A. No one cares that the federalist Society has a very specific view of the judiciary… but when the ACLU defines a cause in their own way, people go nuts with accusations of hypocrisy because it doesn’t line up with their own personal definition of “civil liberties”.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
