You know free speech isn't the only civil liberty right?
Just b/c the article says it does not make it so. The ACLU has a broad agenda of things they defend. "Civil Liberties" does not just mean speech.
It’s true that civil liberties means more than just free speech. They’ve also done very important work in defending the rights of the accused, for example.
What they never were, until the organization was stolen, was a generic left of center organization that advocated whatever happened to be popular among that sector of society regardless of whether or not it had anything to do with civil liberties, or indeed were outright opposed.
There’s always been ideologues that thought that anything and everything else should give way before their moral certainty about everything. It just unfortunate that they’ve destroyed an institution that stood up for specific meta-principles.
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.
The closest I think they've gotten to gun cases is probably this one, which was more of a 4th amendment issue:
Then there was this case, which was mainly 1st amendment, but with strong 2nd amendment ingredients:
The first amendment in America protects speech (etc), while freedom of expression in Canada has stricter limits on speech w.r.t. hate speech. I'd argue that Canada's limits are more reasonable. I also accept that rational people could argue the opposite. I trust in the democratic process to deal with these issues.
The limitations on hate speech are something I agree with strongly, and would vote against someone wanting to reduce them. So I guess you'd find my position bizarre.
Personally, I'll continue to defend the US model. Speech should have no legal limits, but that doesn't meant it doesn't have civic consequences. Those who disagree are free to do so publicly, repeatedly and loudly.
And honestly this is the weirdest fucking thing: there’s _plenty_ of legal limits to free speech in the US, and yet there’s this loud section of Americans who believe the particular lines drawn in the US were etched in stone or something.
Not really? The limits are essentially directly inciting violence, directly threatening, and knowingly aiding someone in the commission of a crime (ie literally coaching someone else on how to break the law). That's not "plenty", that's really the bare minimum (and exactly how it should be, from my perspective at least).
Edit: Crap, just realized I forgot about our ridiculous obscenity limitations. Those shouldn't exist IMO, but to be fair about the only thing that's managed to run afoul of them so far is literal bestiality porn. (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/413/15/) (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/535/234.html)
Campaign financing - Notorious for enjoying minimal regulation in the US relative to other developed countries. Again I'm not sure how else a functional democracy is supposed to be maintained?
Invasion of privacy - I'm a bit fuzzy on this one. Are you referring to things like HIPAA, or to something else? Bear in mind that such regulations only apply to the professionals who are already authorized to view the data. To me it seems similar to the confidentiality you enjoy when talking to an attorney.
I already noted that I disagree with the existence of obscenity restrictions. The other ones you mention (national security, government employees, emotional distress) are fairly nuanced and quite limited as far as I understand. The vast majority of restrictions seem to boil down to the generic idea of knowingly and intentionally working to break some law that isn't itself related to speech.
I just can't seem to get too worked up over such a practical set of restrictions myself. Does it bother you that you can't legally incite a mob, or intentionally teach an aspiring terrorist to manufacture explosives? Or do you just object to my characterization of that as being a minimal set of restrictions? But if that isn't minimal, then what is?
No, it doesn’t. Even the narrow standard applied when a public figure is the subject (“actual malice”) can be satisfied either by the speaker/publisher knowing the material is false or speaking/publishing it with reckless disregard for whether it is true or false.
Sure, and that’s exactly the basis for it in most rich free countries. You’ll find some social and historic wrinkles, but there’s very little you can’t say in Canada that you can say in America.
The Canadians don’t make a whole dog and pony show over MY FREE SPEECH RIGHTS though, which is why Canadian politics is a little less completely beholden to special interests, why hate speech is illegal there, and why you don’t get direct-to-consumer pharma advertising there.
Falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is currently allowed per the Supreme Court [0], as of Brandenburg v. Ohio [1], as it is not an incitement to imminent, lawless behavior. The "classic ban", incidentally, was actually a ban on speech opposing the draft during WW1. The "falsely shouting fire in a theater" analogy was created by judges to justify banning anti-draft leaflets.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
As a practical example, consider China's recent "security" law that allows only "patriots" to run for political office.
For something a bit closer to home, looking at various ToS and codes of conduct reveals how wildly definitions of "hate speech" vary in the US alone.
That's what, despite its flaws, makes the US special.
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?
But the current mood is absolutely moral certainty and off the charts self righteousness.
The moral certainty is obnoxious to a comedic level, bordering on tropes of self righteous college students in Che Guevara shirts lecturing about their enlightenment after two semesters at uni.
Their members may be less openly confrontational - more genteel - than some ACLU employees.
But if you think they're any less certain of their morality, or any less self-righteous than those ACLU employees, you're not seeing reality clearly.
First step of the free speech agenda: Breathe.
Ultimately, those life necessities must be provided by oneself or by someone else, or some combination. Freedom of speech can allow for the best ways of providing these things to be selected. The alternative is that only the prevailing view is considered or approved, often leading to much worse provision of these necessities, including starvation (feudal systems, communism, warlords, etc.).
This said, European police generally gets away with a degree of prevarication that North Americans would find unconceivable. The US constitution enshrines the rights of individuals over government, in a way that no European country can match (as far as I know).
Not to be inflammatory, but North American police generally gets away with a degree of murder that Europeans find inconceivable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enfo...
Key quote: "The victims were unarmed in 1 in 6 (753;16%) fatal shootings."
https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/fatal-police-shootings-...
For balance, this 2018 gives lower numbers - hovering around 60ish per year. Although that is still significantly higher than 9.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/fatal-police-s...
> Researching my book, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic. I found that, contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate.
and some are saying it's not working now[2]:
> For the Michalskis, all this was evidence that German society never truly reckoned with anti-Semitism after the war. Germany had restored synagogues and built memorials to the victims of the Holocaust, Wenzel said: “So for a lot of mainstream, middle-class people, that means: ‘We’ve done it. We dealt with anti-Semitism.’ But nobody really dealt with it within the families. The big, the hard, the painful questions were never asked.” In Wenzel’s view, the Muslim students who tormented his child were acting in an environment that was already suffused with native anti-Semitism. “A lot of conservative politicians now say, ‘Oh, the Muslims are importing their anti-Semitism to our wonderful, anti-anti-Semitic culture,’ ” he said. “That’s bull. They’re trying to politicize this.”
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/magazine/anti-semitism-ge...
Claiming a stance is a result of "luxury" is not the shortcut to win a debate that you imagine it to be.
1) Life
2) Free speech
Which one do you feel precedes the other?
So if they fight for the right to not be sent to gulags (from which many did not return) on the basis of speech, you consider this an expression of "luxury"?
And do you think free speech might help fighting for their right to life? For example would BLM find fighting to end police killings of Black people easier, or harder, if they could be jailed for their advocacy?
You simply cannot exercise free speech without life, you cannot fight for free speech if you are not alive. Free speech is totally dependent on existence.
Could you help me understand how "history shows us" that this question implies that the loss of free speech can't be a threat to life?
The first thing dictators do is remove free speech. This is what enables removing all the other rights at the dictator's whim, because then nobody can speak out against it. Nobody can even inform others about it. This is why totalitarian regimes so aggressively suppress free speech.
The Soviet Union collapsed soon after Gorbachev stopped repressing free speech (glasnost and peristroika). This is not a coincidence.
Could you explain to me how you'd exercise freedom of speech, while dead?
Are you being pedantic to win an internet debate or really trying to understand other perspectives?
Edit: The thing you keep missing though is that one cannot choose. I have the right by default. I can choose not to exercise my rights, but by living I have the right to speech.
Exactly. I would not fight _for_ my right, but to protect the rights I already have. In the US, thats why articles in the bill of rights are phrased as they are. The first amendment doesn't say, "congress grants the right speak freely." Instead it is -- congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech. This is because I have the right already and the amendment is there to protect it.
Edit: typos, grammar, and clarification
In that sense all other rights depend of free speech.
> In that sense all other rights depend of free speech.
That's not true.
There are literally places in the world right now where wearing the wrong t-shirt color outside (Thailand, Belarus) Can get you jailed, tortured, or possibly killed.
The Bill of Rights was primarily all about liberties / negative rights, whereas since the 20th century people have started talking about entitlements as rights, when they're not, because that entitlements ultimately must be provided by others (primarily through taxes, but also in constraints/mandates on the behavior of others, e.g., limitations on striking by police or other services, the requirement to register in the draft / Selective Service for men, & eminent domain). Government entitlements typically involve the involuntary actions and compelled behavior of people.
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.
They aren't ignoring Free Speech cases. They are actively fighting against them.
The overall tone of the comments here seems to regard speech as an obvious, unadulterated good. I think the reality is actually much more complex.
The point many people here have is that if you only defend non-offensive speech, you’re not for freedom of speech at all. Nowhere on earth bans what they consider non-controversial, inoffensive speech.
I’m not familiar with the incident (save it, don’t care), but I can promise you that no honest coroner has ever given “free speech” as a cause of death.
this is not the first dismissive comment I've had on HN of people showing a disregard for knowledge & literally not caring to know the issue they comment on. both instances i've participated in involved race which is telling to me imho. Seems to go against the ideals of this forum.
I'm no trying to argue either way just point out the example in the article. Personally I lean more towards free speech at all costs.
Of course, the people who make these types of arguments never apply them consistently. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that someone still talking about a car accident in Charlottesville four years ago, while not mentioning the numerous murders, assaults, arsons, and other crimes committed by BLM activists, is someone that is genuinely concerned about "inciting violence".
The ACLU caving to political donors under new executive directors in the Obama years isn't a nothingburger to lawyers like me who looked up to them.