11 ms·

The Disintegration of the ACLU

65 points by jdkee 6y ago

geofft 6y ago
This article glosses over the actual results of Skokie and Charlottesville, both of which are pretty important. The Nazis never ended up marching in Skokie, nor did they march in any of the other small towns where they'd requested permits, either. There's a fair bit of reason to believe that their goal wasn't to promote their ideas, nor even to harass the heavily Jewish village of Skokie through marching, but to harass the village through the courts - they found someone who they could bully and they enjoyed it. 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?
- jfengel 6y ago
  They do seem surprised that "groups most frequently harassed, most frequently support limits on harassment".
  - jwalton 6y ago
    Historically, countries that have outlawed speech have outlawed “talking about being gay” far more often than “harassing gay people”. I suspect it’s a unique form of madness that assumes that if you open the door to outlawing speech in America, then future Trumps and Pences and Bushes of the world will refrain from such a thing out of the kindness of their hearts.
    - geofft 6y ago
      Historically, countries that have valued free speech (the US and much of Western Europe) have not had a great track record of actually extending those legal protections to truly unpopular speech, either. 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.
      - jfengel 6y ago
        We really need to not throw bricks at cop cars. It doesn't attract additional support, and it's easily co-opted to spread a false narrative that it's only about violence. There are plenty of agents provocateurs happy to throw bricks and then point fingers at others. 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.
        geofft 6y ago
rayiner 6y ago
> “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,” Glasser says about Anthony Romero 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.
- obviouslynotme 6y ago
  The ACLU used to be my favorite organization to donate to. They had a set of principles and defended them rigorously. Due to the way US jurisprudence works, most people who are victimized by laws and courts are criminals and general scum. It takes maturity to rise above that initial distaste and accept that criminals and scum not only have rights too, but are the most important people to defend from victimization. Not every civil rights case will be Rosa Parks. 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.
Animats 6y ago
"And unlike the 1970s, when the ACLU was run by stubbornly principled people who refused to buckle under the weight of fashionable opinion or donor pressure, the new generation of leaders prioritized conformism over intellectual consistency." 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.
- esyir 6y ago
  Is there any major trend of cancellation for not liking trump /hating trump? The media in generally drowned in its pretty left aligned, so I haven't heard much of that.
  - Animats 6y ago
    If you're a Republican elected official, and oppose Trump, you may be "primaried". That is, a Republican candidate more loyal to Trump may be found and funded to run against you.[1] [1] https://www.newsweek.com/10-republicans-voted-impeach-trump-7-already-facing-challenges-their-seats-congress-1565248 https://www.newsweek.com/10-republicans-voted-impeach-trump-...
  - naturalauction 6y ago
    You can also get censured by your state/local GOP. See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/06/liz-cheney-censured-by-wyoming-republican-party-for-voting-to-impeach-trump https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/06/liz-cheney-c...
- m_mueller 6y ago
  As an outsider, I think it is beyond not good. Your house is on fire.
Simulacra 6y ago
I used to support the ACLU personally and financially but the leadership took a decidedly left turn at some point, and lost its neutrality. The shift to the left has been so great that it's hard to tell if their motives are one-sidedly political.
- dmitrygr 6y ago
  I cancelled my monthly automatic donation to them a few years back in 2018, when this happened [1]. I started those donations when I was 18 (15-ish years ago), because I read about this [2]. Having come to this country from a place where speech could get you jailed, it was glorious to support a fight to keep speech free - to me it is what made America magical. Sad to watch them (and the country) fall so far on this important topic... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-aclu-retreats-from-free-expression-1529533065 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-aclu-retreats-from-free-exp... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...
bhouston 6y ago
It is hard to take this as a serious criticism 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.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  He's not arguing that the ACLU stands for nothing, I don't think. He's arguing that it's shifted towards being a general-purpose progressive activism group, standing up for whichever causes are trendy in progressive circles and ignoring causes that aren't, rather than prioritizing based on the underlying principles of civil liberties they're nominally protecting.
- slibhb 6y ago
  The article quotes the guy who led the ACLU from 1978 to 2001: > 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.
  - bhouston 6y ago
    Is trans rights progressive? This seems to be one of his big objections to the current ACLU. 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.
jonny_eh 6y ago
I don't see the benefit to being neutral if the Right is going to demonize it anyways.
- ehvatum 6y ago
  Sure, why stand for principle if someone else might use rhetoric? What even is the point? Just go ahead and become the monstrous caricature your enemies sketch of you, at that point.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway0x3 6y ago
Liberals are scared, leftists are not. It's leftist activist who are pushing and approving these changes. Old school liberals, like the ones mentioned and outlined in this post's article, are quickly finding themselves to be politically homeless. >If anything, the article tends to support the case that they're not indoctrinated. This is where you're wrong: "This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions." It's been institutionalized. We now have primary school administrators making claims as outlandish as "acronyms are white supremacy": https://abc7news.com/sfusd-renaming-schools-board-meeting-sa https://abc7news.com/sfusd-renaming-schools-board-meeting-sa... These are the children becoming undergraduates. Those undergraduate students with pronouns in their Twitter profiles having a well-considered opinion on free speech? Press X to DOUBT.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway0x2 6y ago
Liberals are scared, leftists are not. It's leftist activist who are pushing and approving these changes. Old school liberals, like the ones mentioned and outlined in this post's article, are quickly finding themselves to be politically homeless. >If anything, the article tends to support the case that they're not indoctrinated. This is where you're wrong: "This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions." It's been institutionalized. We now have primary school administrators making claims as outlandish as "acronyms are white supremacy": https://abc7news.com/sfusd-renaming-schools-board-meeting-sa https://abc7news.com/sfusd-renaming-schools-board-meeting-sa... These are the children becoming undergraduates. Those undergraduate students with pronouns in their Twitter profiles having a well-considered opinion on free speech? Press X to DOUBT.

65 points by jdkee 6y ago

This article glosses over the actual results of Skokie and Charlottesville, both of which are pretty important. The Nazis never ended up marching in Skokie, nor did they march in any of the other small towns where they'd requested permits, either. There's a fair bit of reason to believe that their goal wasn't to promote their ideas, nor even to harass the heavily Jewish village of Skokie through marching, but to harass the village through the courts - they found someone who they could bully and they enjoyed it. 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?

jfengel 6y ago
They do seem surprised that "groups most frequently harassed, most frequently support limits on harassment".
- jwalton 6y ago
  Historically, countries that have outlawed speech have outlawed “talking about being gay” far more often than “harassing gay people”. I suspect it’s a unique form of madness that assumes that if you open the door to outlawing speech in America, then future Trumps and Pences and Bushes of the world will refrain from such a thing out of the kindness of their hearts.
  - geofft 6y ago
    Historically, countries that have valued free speech (the US and much of Western Europe) have not had a great track record of actually extending those legal protections to truly unpopular speech, either. 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.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      We really need to not throw bricks at cop cars. It doesn't attract additional support, and it's easily co-opted to spread a false narrative that it's only about violence. There are plenty of agents provocateurs happy to throw bricks and then point fingers at others. 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.
      - geofft 6y ago

rayiner 6y ago

> “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,” Glasser says about Anthony Romero 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.

obviouslynotme 6y ago
The ACLU used to be my favorite organization to donate to. They had a set of principles and defended them rigorously. Due to the way US jurisprudence works, most people who are victimized by laws and courts are criminals and general scum. It takes maturity to rise above that initial distaste and accept that criminals and scum not only have rights too, but are the most important people to defend from victimization. Not every civil rights case will be Rosa Parks. 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.

Animats 6y ago

"And unlike the 1970s, when the ACLU was run by stubbornly principled people who refused to buckle under the weight of fashionable opinion or donor pressure, the new generation of leaders prioritized conformism over intellectual consistency." 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.

esyir 6y ago
Is there any major trend of cancellation for not liking trump /hating trump? The media in generally drowned in its pretty left aligned, so I haven't heard much of that.
- Animats 6y ago
  If you're a Republican elected official, and oppose Trump, you may be "primaried". That is, a Republican candidate more loyal to Trump may be found and funded to run against you.[1] [1] https://www.newsweek.com/10-republicans-voted-impeach-trump-7-already-facing-challenges-their-seats-congress-1565248 https://www.newsweek.com/10-republicans-voted-impeach-trump-...
- naturalauction 6y ago
  You can also get censured by your state/local GOP. See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/06/liz-cheney-censured-by-wyoming-republican-party-for-voting-to-impeach-trump https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/06/liz-cheney-c...
m_mueller 6y ago
As an outsider, I think it is beyond not good. Your house is on fire.

Simulacra 6y ago

I used to support the ACLU personally and financially but the leadership took a decidedly left turn at some point, and lost its neutrality. The shift to the left has been so great that it's hard to tell if their motives are one-sidedly political.

dmitrygr 6y ago
I cancelled my monthly automatic donation to them a few years back in 2018, when this happened [1]. I started those donations when I was 18 (15-ish years ago), because I read about this [2]. Having come to this country from a place where speech could get you jailed, it was glorious to support a fight to keep speech free - to me it is what made America magical. Sad to watch them (and the country) fall so far on this important topic... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-aclu-retreats-from-free-expression-1529533065 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-aclu-retreats-from-free-exp... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...

bhouston 6y ago

It is hard to take this as a serious criticism 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.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
He's not arguing that the ACLU stands for nothing, I don't think. He's arguing that it's shifted towards being a general-purpose progressive activism group, standing up for whichever causes are trendy in progressive circles and ignoring causes that aren't, rather than prioritizing based on the underlying principles of civil liberties they're nominally protecting.
slibhb 6y ago
The article quotes the guy who led the ACLU from 1978 to 2001: > 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.
- bhouston 6y ago
  Is trans rights progressive? This seems to be one of his big objections to the current ACLU. 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.

jonny_eh 6y ago

I don't see the benefit to being neutral if the Right is going to demonize it anyways.

ehvatum 6y ago
Sure, why stand for principle if someone else might use rhetoric? What even is the point? Just go ahead and become the monstrous caricature your enemies sketch of you, at that point.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

throwaway0x3 6y ago

Liberals are scared, leftists are not. It's leftist activist who are pushing and approving these changes. Old school liberals, like the ones mentioned and outlined in this post's article, are quickly finding themselves to be politically homeless. >If anything, the article tends to support the case that they're not indoctrinated. This is where you're wrong: "This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions." It's been institutionalized. We now have primary school administrators making claims as outlandish as "acronyms are white supremacy": https://abc7news.com/sfusd-renaming-schools-board-meeting-sa https://abc7news.com/sfusd-renaming-schools-board-meeting-sa... These are the children becoming undergraduates. Those undergraduate students with pronouns in their Twitter profiles having a well-considered opinion on free speech? Press X to DOUBT.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

throwaway0x2 6y ago