Freedom of speech is in retreat (2016)

economist.com

6 points·ddtaylor··4 comments

Some good news on this front: the individual-rights organization FIRE recently rebranded itself from Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in order to widen its mission and hopefully take the reins from the once-great ACLU, which has unfortunately become yet another partisan grifting operation.

The ACLU is the American Civil Liberties Union, not the American Free Speech Union. It's consistent with their mission to decide to for example defend the right for trans people to get appropriate medical care, and decide not to defend the right for people to say transphobic things.

If an organization like FIRE wants to defend the one particular right of free speech to the exclusion of all others, that's more complementary than antagonistic to the ACLU's mission. Or at least it should be.

Note that, despite their name, the ACLU doesn't defend all civil liberties either. They expressly chose not to defend the 2nd.

Relating to free speech, I believe the ACLU from last century would generally oppose the ACLU of today.

The 2nd amendment as supporting collective rather than individual gun ownership is the traditional interpretation. The more maximal interpretation as supporting individual gun ownership is a recent thing. The ACLU has chosen not to defend that more maximal interpretation which was made law by the Supreme Court in 2008 in D.C. v. Heller. Reference: https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment.

For the 1st amendment, you might find this 2022 article interesting: https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/defending-speech-w.... It refers to ACLU history and lists recent 1st amendment support they've given to Trump supporters, the NRA, people making homophobic statements and so on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com