I was a member for 10 years and stopped renewing a year or two ago, when it seemed to stop putting free speech and expression first.
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.
ACLU (and others) cite it as a 5-4 decision but even the dissenters on the case believed it was an individual right, they just still thought it could be regulated / scrutinized. In that sense the individual right won 9-0.
Further what the hell does a "collective right" even look like in the first place....
the ACLU hates guns, does not believe anyone outside the government should have guns, the "collective right" was just their cover so they did not have to admit they only stood for some of the constitution not all of it
//EDIT: Mods have rate limited me, so in response to comment below allow me to add
I guess I should have implicitly stated Constitutional Rights, and more specifically Bill of Rights in the context.
On top of that, that is still not a "collective right", that is more of a Balance of rights, You have a right to your property, I have a right to my property, if your actions (aka polluting ) damage my property then you have directly harmed my individual rights and are thus liable
An example of this would be the fact that I have the right to swing my arms, but if I swing my arms in a manner that hits another person I have violated their bodily rights not to be injured by me. No one would claim that is a "collective right", no here we are balancing individual rights, their right to not be injured trumps my right to swing my arms in the physical space they occupy at that moment
I'll give a non-gun example - you buy a piece of property near the headway of an important river. You have an individual right to improve the property, and really use it any way you want. HOWEVER - the people who live downstream of you ALSO have a collective right to use the river, which puts a limit on your individual rights. You can't dump pollutants or trash in the river, nor can you divert the waterway. You have an individual right to use your own property, but your neighbors (depending on the issue, this may be local or global) have a collective right not to suffer damage or externalities from that use.
In the context of the gun discussion, the collective rights people believe that gun ownership is intended to defend the neighborhood, not for individual self-defense.
(Another thing you'll learn immediately by reading that discussion is that one of the primary purposes of the second amendment was to prevent the United States from having a standing army...)
Further, its not at all clear to me that carrying permits have anything to do with the constitutional amendment. The discussion at the time and the amendment itself refer to national defense, both from external and internal threats to the nation, not "bring a gun with me to the store" (concealed/open carry), which I think is what makes many people uncomfortable.
Many other countries have regulations of this form, that you have to purchase safety equipment and the government can audit you to ensure that you are safely storing your firearms. This gets people concerned about the government seizing your guns, but I don't think those concerns are realistic (assume the gov decides to do that one day, does having a national gun registry and your gun in a safe make things look any different than the police going door to door with a swat team and searching the house)? I don't think it does.
[0]: Eventually. this would take a generation or two
I'm sorry, but this is just laughable on the face of it. You see, I'm French (as hinted by the mis-autocorrect of "too"), and "regulated" (well, "régulé") means the same in contemporary French as in contemporary English. And the meaning comes straight from Latin (regula: rule, law), probably by way of 1066 like most legal terms.
The notion that "regulate" means anything but regulate IN A LEGAL DOCUMENT of all places is thus ridiculous. Or at the very least utterly implausible. But maybe you're right; I can't fail to notice you don't provide any proof for this improbable claim.
> Another thing you'll learn immediately by reading that discussion is that one of the primary purposes of the second amendment was to prevent the United States from having a standing army...
Another unsubstantiated claim, and just as improbable on the face of it. In any case nothing in that wording even hints at that.
> I can't fail to notice you don't provide any proof for this improbable claim.
> Another unsubstantiated claim, and just as improbable on the face of it.
I'm not responsible for the failures of your knowledge. These claims are both quite obvious, if -- as I specified above -- you take the time to read the things that this set of people said and wrote at the time.
Here's a letter from George Washington in which he contrasts an "irregular and disjointed militia" with a "well regulated militia": https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-08-02-...
> The irregular and disjointed State of the Militia of this province, makes it necessary for me to inform you, that unless a Law is passed by your Legislature to reduce them to some order, and oblige them to turn out in a different Manner from what they have hitherto done, we shall bring very few into the Feild, and even those few, will render little or no Service.
> your first object should be a well regulated Militia Law. The people, put under good Officers, would behave in quite another manner, and not only render real Service as Soldiers, but would protect, instead of distressing the Inhabitants.
Here's a speech by George Clinton from 1798, in which, instead of referring to a "well regulated militia", he refers to a "well organized militia": https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N25292.0001.001/1:2?rgn=d...
> The means of national defence should rest in the body of the people. A well organized militia is the only safe bulwark of a free people, competent on all occasions to repel invasion and suppress insurrection. Standing armies are not only expensive but dangerous to the liberties of the state. In republics every citizen should be a soldier.
Note that this is not at all an unexpected meaning for the word "regulated" to have. "Regulation" as in command is related to "rule" as in rulership. "Regulation" as in correct operation is related to "rule" as in the straight line drawn by a... "ruler".
It had that meaning a thousand years ago. Nah, 2000 years ago ("regula"). You're saying that it meant something for a millennium, started meaning something else, and then went back to the original meaning -- all in good time to support your opinion. How convenient. And without any evidence. The rest of what you quote supports my interpretation, not yours, which is just weird.
No, you're the one making claims about the meaning in 1066. What I'm saying is that the meaning of the word that originated in the 17th century ( https://www.etymonline.com/word/regulate ) had not, by the 18th century, fully displaced the earlier meaning. That the displacement is complete today is meaningless.
But I wouldn't conclude that there was a 200-odd year period during which the word was in use, but had no meaning.
This sounds completely contrary to what in practice every government on Earth does. Of course the State can arm their agents, if they want to - you don't need to specially mention it as a fundamental right, as you don't need to specially mention they are allowed to breathe or eat - that's how it always happens. What doesn't always happen and needs special protection - is the right of the citizens which are not government agents, and thus the government - which always has a lot of armed people in their employ - can easily walk all over them. To mitigate it somewhat was the exact purpose of the Bill of Rights.
However, multiple states specify in their constitutions who comprises their militias. In Virginia, for example, it is "composed of the body of the people." In Illinois, "The State militia consists of all able-bodied persons residing in the State except those exempted by law." Given such constitutional provisions, it seems unreasonable to think that police were in view when speaking of a "well-regulated militia."
For this reason the ability to local community members to be armed was required as they needed to defend themselves as well as the local community when called upon by the sheriff.
I'm saying that the second-amendment-means-collective-rights people are not concerned with what the second amendment said or with what it was meant to do. I am saying that their concern is preventing people from having guns, and their criteria for making an argument are, first, can this argument be used to prevent people from having guns, and, second, can it be connected -- however tenuously -- to the raw text of the second amendment. The goal is repeal-through-motivated-interpretation.
I am no expert in water rights at all, but this seems to be a pretty clumsy example.
I do get that you are trying to give an example of the "tragedy of the commons", but you are comparing civil liberties which while not ensconced as "inalienable rights", are supposed to be applied equally and non-revocable.
Almost every tragedy of the commons example I can think of is subject to government just doing its job and coming up with the best compromise (once they even realize it is a problem). In many cases what seems best for everyone today may change in the future.
How would you even apply this collective right to any other amendment from the Bill of Rights? Only give a fair trial if an entire community is arrested? Only stop unfair search and seizure if its for an entire town?
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.
When you are not killing people quickly in accidents, you are killing them slowly with particulate pollution. And if that's not enough, you are also making a big contribution to global warming, an existential threat to our civilisation. It is unconscionable!
This is what people will say in the future anyway. You can make your own mind up.
1: https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
This is an oversimplification. What you might be extrapolating from is the common sentiment that complaining about cancel culture is not substantive in cases where an individual appears to have done something wrong enough to justify the consequences. Yes, "wrong enough" is of varying subjectivity in each case, but focusing on "cancel culture" as some kind of monolithic evil instead of focusing on the details of each case is a very common source of noise, and so is commonly criticized, and that criticism may be what you're accumulating into "cancel culture is only something to complain about if you've done / said something wrong".
In past times, nonviolent forms of 'cancelling' that would seem familiar to us today were also employed. It was/is called 'shunning.' Our modern term is just a euphemism for that.
meanwhile families of those who died in 2020 still haven't received help from BLM despite promises https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/breonna-ta... https://www.complex.com/life/michael-browns-father-ferguson-...
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...