The Disintegration of the ACLU
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[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-aclu-retreats-from-free-exp...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...
That's a problem. The huge pressure for conformity. Both Left and Right are way too insistent on this. The Left now insists on gender concepts that were considered totally wacko twenty years ago. The Right is stuck with fear of and attraction to Trump. Rejecting those positions can get people fired. This is not good.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/10-republicans-voted-impeach-trump-...
I’m surprised but then not to see Glaser has the same opinion of Romero that I do. I’m a card carrying member of the ACLU but even a decade ago I realized Romero was not a straight shooter. The ACLU newsletter had become a work of propaganda. Before I started sending it to /dev/null I would open it up, work up a frothy outrage at some documented injustice, only to be left annoyed when I googled for further details and realized Romero’s team had completely misrepresented the facts. It’s not that I disagree with defending someone who murdered a pizza delivery guy in front of his family (read up on the Juwan Wickware case). That’s what lawyers do. But the ACLU didn’t misrepresent the facts to make the Skokie Nazis seem like they were Boy Scouts.
Needless to say, I no longer donate to the ACLU. I know why they have changed, but I do not like it. I will not support it. They can take their dirty money and play their political games by themselves. There are many good charities that need support.
Charlottesville didn't deny the alt-right a permit. They denied them a permit in a particular park, which had a particular statue - but they denied it on the grounds that security would be difficult to arrange in the small park, and they granted them a permit in a larger, nearby park. The alt-right did in fact rally, and as the city predicted, there was an act of violence because of the crowded conditions, and someone died.
Both of these were tactical failures.
Which is to say, I don't think it's particularly easy to say that Ira Glasser-era ACLU was a great force for justice and Anthony Romero-era ACLU lost it. I'd argue that the ACLU made the same mistake, in the same context, both times. In neither case did they actually make it so someone could exercise their free speech rights. They just got lucky the first time that there were no obviously negative consequences to their action, and so they could engage in PR that they were the good guys. And the ACLU themselves bought into that PR, which kept them from realizing their mistake.
The article also makes this pretty wild assertion at the end:
> FIRE also discovered that female, LGBT, and Black students are less supportive of free speech than male, straight, Hispanic, Asian, and white students, a worrisome indication that the insidious effort to malign the entire concept of “free speech” as a weapon to “harm” minorities is bearing fruit. Rather than learning how the First Amendment has been a precondition for every social, political, legal, and cultural advancement secured by marginalized groups in America, it would tragically appear that indoctrinating the latter-day beneficiaries of these struggles in the belief that they are helpless against “oppressive structures” and “systems” has convinced many that free speech is their enemy.
Why is it taken as an obvious fact that said female, LGBT, and Black students are wrong about free speech? Why are they clearly indoctrinated? Why not ask them why they don't support it? Perhaps they have a well-considered opinion on the matter?
The way to make sure you have the right to talk about people being gay is to fight for those rights by throwing bricks at cop cars, not to trust a bunch of think tanks who say they value the abstract ideal of free speech.
It's certainly true that we also must not give in to BS abstractions about the virtue of free speech to solve all ills. That's also a tactic used to silence people, forcing them into quieter and quieter protests while falsely portraying them as violent. We can't completely wrap ourselves up when we know that they that they're just going to lie about it.
That's a hard line to walk, but calling for violence is clearly over it.
Violence works, and I hope you don't mean that calling for violence is over the "line" of acceptable free speech - where would America be without writings that called for violence?
If there's enough civil unrest then it's much easier for a law-and-order candidate like Nixon to win votes; I'm expecting this to happen in the next election.
First James Kirkpatrick argues that the ACLU doesn't stand for anything these days.
Then he starts to associate the ACLU with cancel culture. Mostly by citing surveys of leftist students and implying that the ACLU is also leftist thus it is basically the same.
Then he argues that the ACLU does stand very strongly for transgender rights but then criticizes it for being strong on that because James Kirkpatrick doesn't agree with it.
Argh. I think the key problem is that James doesn't like what the ACLU is prioritizing, that is all.
> My successor, and the board of directors that have supported him, have basically tried to transform the organization from a politically neutral, nonpartisan civil liberties organization into a progressive liberal organization
You are of course not obligated to agree. But acting like it's just the author sharing his funny opinions seems a bit disingenuous.
If you are a progressive, you might not object to the turn the ACLU has taken. For liberals and conservatives, it's been a marked decline. The same is true for the SPLC.
ACLU used to advocate for gay and lesbian rights. At the time it was viewed by conservatives as a bad thing generally. But now it is accepted and seems like they were on the right side of history.
I feel that trans rights is basically the same thing as gay and lesbian rights were previously. Not widely popular but important to advocate for.
James is just being a standard conservative and arguing for the status quo (conservatism is generally based in keeping things the way they were.) Where as the ACLU is advocating for equality in a place where we previously haven’t given it.
In fact in the light of James conservatism this article is stereotypical. It is better the way things used to be and this change is all bad. But in fact in the past the ACLU was controversial and it only seems less so in hind sight.
In general the article boring. Lots of words though but in the end boring.
It didn't talk about censoring books that were critical of gays and lesbians. Which would trample the rights not of the gays and lesbians but of the homophobic writer.
Except that's a serious criticism.
"“case selection guidelines,” stipulating, “Speech that denigrates such [marginalized] groups can inflict serious harms and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality.” Before agreeing to take a free speech case, the document continued, the ACLU would now consider “the potential effect on marginalized communities,” whether the speech advances the goals of speakers whose “views are contrary to our values,” and the “structural and power inequalities in the community in which the speech will occur.” "
i.e. you can't say something, even factual, if it doesn't support the ideological causes of a specific version of 'equity', or rather, the ACLU doesn't care about your rights in that endeavour.
And that right there, is the end of the ACLU.