13 ms·

The extreme politicization of the ACLU over the last 4 years has really been a big loss for civil liberties. They used to be the ones defending the civil rights

The extreme politicization of the ACLU over the last 4 years has really been a big loss for civil liberties. They used to be the ones defending the civil rights of everyone, no matter how heinous the defendant or extreme the situation. These days they seem to just repeat hyper-partisan viewpoints ad infintum. Does a nonpartisan, alternative organization exist?

whatshisface 6y ago
I wonder whether the problem is with finding nonpartisan donors, or nonpartisan charity leaders, of if there's plenty of both but partisan forces work subversively.
goatcode 6y ago
> Does a nonpartisan, alternative organization exist? If it does, it soon won't. The only permanent home of Liberty is in the individual and families. Organizations become attractive to power-hungry psychopaths when they become effective, and those who gravitate to leadership are skewed toward self-serving. Therefore, compromise and decay are right on the heels of success. Faith in a man-made establishment is a slow escalator to a shallow grave.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  > The only permanent home of Liberty is in the individual and families. I agree. It has been unfortunate to see the attacks on individuality when it's the best way to view each other. Group identity has a long history of being evil and rationalizing inhuman or even dehumanizing treatment of out-groups. Liberty being associated with the individual, not a collective, is the peaceful path I believe. The grand irony of concepts like intersectionality is that when you slice a person enough ways, you end up with an individual. But that leap just hasn't been made it seems and I assume because there is power to be gained by forming and controlling a collective through the seduction of victimhood and grievance.
brennanpeterson 6y ago
This has been said for the history of the ACLU. And there are difficult balances there: do you defend the Nazi March? What if that March includes armed marchers aiming guns at others? Is aiming a gun speech? Or speech the ACLU has interest in defending? Does it maximize the freedom for marchers, counter marchers, or citizens? The ACLU had to come to terms with consequences, and harder answers. After defending and enabling a march where people died, the ACLU had to answer whether it was responsible...and it was. So the organization is a bit different, but I am not so sure that the ACLU could have continued. It had avoided really hard problems, and then had to come to terms with it. I prefer it this way: it is messy and tricky and also much less likely to be a disaster.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  Aiming guns at people is already illegal under brandishing laws. The ACLU has refused to support any armed demonstration
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    That's an interesting example of how partisan-seeming biases can develop inadvertently. There may be an objective reason why the ACLU doesn't support armed demonstrations, but there's only one side that likes to bring guns to their protests, so in practice this only cancels support for one side. Reminds me of the "anyone is equally free to marry a person of the opposite gender" response to gay people having the same rights. The ACLU may or may not want to support armed demonstrations, but if they want "docket diversity," they'd pragmatically have to loosen that rule, perhaps to "we don't support demonstrations where weapons were fired," or even, "we defend demonstrators in all cases except when they admit to specifically trying to shoot someone," or something like that.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      > There may be an objective reason why the ACLU doesn't support armed demonstrations, but there's only one side that likes to bring guns to their protests, so in practice this only cancels support for one side. is this true? I can think of at least one recent event in kenosha where people on both "sides" had guns.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 6y ago
> They used to be the ones defending the civil rights of everyone, no matter how heinous the defendant or extreme the situation They still are. > These days they seem to just repeat hyper-partisan viewpoints ad infintum Their involvement against broad interpretation of the CFAA in Van Buren v. U.S. doesn't seem hyperpartisan. Neither does their action in ACLU v. Clearview AI Neither does Nashville Community Bail Fund v. Gentry Nor it's involvement in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org Sure, right now one party is more actively using the power of government against the rights that the ACLU has always defended, which has a lot do with party ideology (which in both parties have shifted over time so that one aligns morr with and one more against ACLU's long-held positions than used to be the case) and a lot to do with control of the executive branch of government (both federally and in states), without which you can't usually take the kind of government actions that the ACLU defends against.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Taking a look at their Twitter, I have a hard time seeing how their viewpoints are anything but hyper-partisan. They often have nothing whatsoever to do with defending civil liberties in a nonpartisan manner.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    ACLU knows that they've been politicized externally. This messaging is a funding strategy, not necessarily related to their actual legal advocacy.
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      That doesn't seem to be the case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union#Free_speech_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union...
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Can you provide a specific example of what you mean?
mcv 6y ago
> "These days they seem to just repeat hyper-partisan viewpoints ad infintum." But that's only because everything is hyper-partisan these days. Even science. Or facts. Or the idea of an objective reality. It's impossible to be non-political in this kind of political landscape. And civil liberties have always been political to some extent.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  I don't really agree with this take and I think it's highly over-simplified. The ACLU used to be the organization that defended the really unpleasant people and popularized ideas like, "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it." They had a lot of responsibility. Today they are basically indistinguishable from Huffington Post with a law firm attached.
  - ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
    Come on, that’s bordering on the kind of contentless dismissal you see in right wing propaganda today. Someone already provided examples contradicting your assertions, and others have accurately explained that defending civil rights appears political because, in fact, one political party tends to oppose protections of civil rights more than the other. Rather than doubling down on blithe, unsupported assertions, you should demonstrate that you are here in good faith by either responding to the fair criticisms or admitting you’re wrong.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - notJim 6y ago
    Can you give an example? As far as I know, they're still defending the free speech rights of the Far Right, famously including in the Unite the Right rally [1]. [1]: https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/the-short-life-and-curious-death-of-free-speech-in-america/ https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/the-short-life-and...
sershe 6y ago
I've canceled my ACLU membership and stopped donating a couple years ago, but it's really hard to get off their email lists. This year after receiving some emails that made my blood boil, I've actually done some research and now donate to Institute for Justice and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - these are the reputable public interest law firms I could find; and also Reason Foundation, Foundation for Economic Education, and Cato Institute, that I think are all tangentially related.

whatshisface 6y ago

I wonder whether the problem is with finding nonpartisan donors, or nonpartisan charity leaders, of if there's plenty of both but partisan forces work subversively.

goatcode 6y ago

> Does a nonpartisan, alternative organization exist? If it does, it soon won't. The only permanent home of Liberty is in the individual and families. Organizations become attractive to power-hungry psychopaths when they become effective, and those who gravitate to leadership are skewed toward self-serving. Therefore, compromise and decay are right on the heels of success. Faith in a man-made establishment is a slow escalator to a shallow grave.

nemo44x 6y ago
> The only permanent home of Liberty is in the individual and families. I agree. It has been unfortunate to see the attacks on individuality when it's the best way to view each other. Group identity has a long history of being evil and rationalizing inhuman or even dehumanizing treatment of out-groups. Liberty being associated with the individual, not a collective, is the peaceful path I believe. The grand irony of concepts like intersectionality is that when you slice a person enough ways, you end up with an individual. But that leap just hasn't been made it seems and I assume because there is power to be gained by forming and controlling a collective through the seduction of victimhood and grievance.

brennanpeterson 6y ago

This has been said for the history of the ACLU. And there are difficult balances there: do you defend the Nazi March? What if that March includes armed marchers aiming guns at others? Is aiming a gun speech? Or speech the ACLU has interest in defending? Does it maximize the freedom for marchers, counter marchers, or citizens? The ACLU had to come to terms with consequences, and harder answers. After defending and enabling a march where people died, the ACLU had to answer whether it was responsible...and it was. So the organization is a bit different, but I am not so sure that the ACLU could have continued. It had avoided really hard problems, and then had to come to terms with it. I prefer it this way: it is messy and tricky and also much less likely to be a disaster.

HideousKojima 6y ago
Aiming guns at people is already illegal under brandishing laws. The ACLU has refused to support any armed demonstration
- whatshisface 6y ago
  That's an interesting example of how partisan-seeming biases can develop inadvertently. There may be an objective reason why the ACLU doesn't support armed demonstrations, but there's only one side that likes to bring guns to their protests, so in practice this only cancels support for one side. Reminds me of the "anyone is equally free to marry a person of the opposite gender" response to gay people having the same rights. The ACLU may or may not want to support armed demonstrations, but if they want "docket diversity," they'd pragmatically have to loosen that rule, perhaps to "we don't support demonstrations where weapons were fired," or even, "we defend demonstrators in all cases except when they admit to specifically trying to shoot someone," or something like that.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > There may be an objective reason why the ACLU doesn't support armed demonstrations, but there's only one side that likes to bring guns to their protests, so in practice this only cancels support for one side. is this true? I can think of at least one recent event in kenosha where people on both "sides" had guns.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 6y ago

> They used to be the ones defending the civil rights of everyone, no matter how heinous the defendant or extreme the situation They still are. > These days they seem to just repeat hyper-partisan viewpoints ad infintum Their involvement against broad interpretation of the CFAA in Van Buren v. U.S. doesn't seem hyperpartisan. Neither does their action in ACLU v. Clearview AI Neither does Nashville Community Bail Fund v. Gentry Nor it's involvement in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org Sure, right now one party is more actively using the power of government against the rights that the ACLU has always defended, which has a lot do with party ideology (which in both parties have shifted over time so that one aligns morr with and one more against ACLU's long-held positions than used to be the case) and a lot to do with control of the executive branch of government (both federally and in states), without which you can't usually take the kind of government actions that the ACLU defends against.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Taking a look at their Twitter, I have a hard time seeing how their viewpoints are anything but hyper-partisan. They often have nothing whatsoever to do with defending civil liberties in a nonpartisan manner.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  ACLU knows that they've been politicized externally. This messaging is a funding strategy, not necessarily related to their actual legal advocacy.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    That doesn't seem to be the case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union#Free_speech_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union...
- adamsea 6y ago
  Can you provide a specific example of what you mean?

mcv 6y ago

> "These days they seem to just repeat hyper-partisan viewpoints ad infintum." But that's only because everything is hyper-partisan these days. Even science. Or facts. Or the idea of an objective reality. It's impossible to be non-political in this kind of political landscape. And civil liberties have always been political to some extent.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
I don't really agree with this take and I think it's highly over-simplified. The ACLU used to be the organization that defended the really unpleasant people and popularized ideas like, "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it." They had a lot of responsibility. Today they are basically indistinguishable from Huffington Post with a law firm attached.
- ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
  Come on, that’s bordering on the kind of contentless dismissal you see in right wing propaganda today. Someone already provided examples contradicting your assertions, and others have accurately explained that defending civil rights appears political because, in fact, one political party tends to oppose protections of civil rights more than the other. Rather than doubling down on blithe, unsupported assertions, you should demonstrate that you are here in good faith by either responding to the fair criticisms or admitting you’re wrong.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- notJim 6y ago
  Can you give an example? As far as I know, they're still defending the free speech rights of the Far Right, famously including in the Unite the Right rally [1]. [1]: https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/the-short-life-and-curious-death-of-free-speech-in-america/ https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/the-short-life-and...

sershe 6y ago

I've canceled my ACLU membership and stopped donating a couple years ago, but it's really hard to get off their email lists. This year after receiving some emails that made my blood boil, I've actually done some research and now donate to Institute for Justice and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - these are the reputable public interest law firms I could find; and also Reason Foundation, Foundation for Economic Education, and Cato Institute, that I think are all tangentially related.