7 ms·

The ACLU, Prior to Covid, Denounced Mandates and Coercive Measures for Pandemics

78 points by miles 5y ago

ErikVandeWater 5y ago
> “The law enforcement approach to public health offers a rationale for the endless suspension of civil liberties,” they explained. Using post-9/11 expansions of state power as its framework, the group explained that “the ‘Global War on Terror' may go on for a generation, but the war on disease will continue until the end of the human race. There will always be a new disease, always the threat of a new pandemic. If that fear justifies the suspension of liberties and the institution of an emergency state, then freedom and the rule of law will be permanently suspended.”
- charbonneau 5y ago
  A monk asked master Jōshū "Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?" Jōshū answered, "Mu variant"
ajay-b 5y ago
The ACLU is now a political organization aligned with the Democratic party. Even Ira Glasser it’s former, longtime director agrees the ACLU has lost its way. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html
- mc32 5y ago
  It’s become clear that almost every advocacy organization of any kind is no longer principles based and have taken a political approach because it brings in more money. Standing up for unpopular views doesn’t excite the wallets (so ACLU, NRA, etc.)
- sufehmi 5y ago
  "Spreading pandemic is not considered a constitutional right" - Supreme Court https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1432069918397194244 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/143206991839719424...
  - a0-prw 5y ago
    If the goal is to suppress the pandemic, then the correct approach would be to shut down MSM and social media like FB, Twitter, etc. That is how the global mass hysteria commonly known as "covid-19" is spread.
- viridian 5y ago
  It's true, and and an awful shame to see. I've donated to both the ACLU and been a member of the NRA in the past, and it's very obvious as someone who has received donor requests that both organizations have become captured by the larger political apparatus of a single party. I'm also genuinely not trying to engage in 'whataboutism' with this comment, it just really sucks to see public advocates for both the first and the second amendment, surrender their own positions in favor of becoming wholly partisan.
refulgentis 5y ago
Greenwald's article misrepresents the source: he glosses over that the report was on coercive quarantining enforced by the military (in countries outside America) during SARS, while quoting the lead-in to it.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  China has enforced coercive quarantining in their SARS-CoV2 response, and these measures have been picked up in the West (via "shelter in place" orders). To their credit, they seem to have successfully contained SARS-CoV2. So maybe the ACLU was proven wrong here.
  - refurb 5y ago
    I’m not sure China is a great example of a country where this type of activity hasn’t harmed civil rights.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    > they seem to have successfully contained SARS-CoV2 There is no evidence of that. Wuhan was devastated by alpha, with around 45,000 deaths in a city of 11 million. (The 5 crematoria ran day and nite for months, and the 1-year funeral rites were mobbed with family members.) Several cities are currently under lockdown, as China has struggled with delta. Compounding that is the Chinese Sino* vaccines only have about 50% efficacy, which WHO considers ineffective for a vaccine. China has also spread corona globally via their BRI workers. A dozen Iran leaders died from Chinese commercial flights. So don't believe a single word the CCP says.
- handoflixue 5y ago
  > he glosses over that the report was on coercive quarantining enforced by the military https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/civil-liberties-and-vaccine-mandates-heres-our-take/ https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/civil-liberties-an... "In this context, Covid-19 vaccine mandates — much like mask mandates — are public health measures necessary to protect people from severe illness and death. They are therefore permissible in many settings where the unvaccinated pose a risk to others, including schools and universities, hospitals, restaurants and bars, workplaces and businesses open to the public." Their stance is very explicitly about more than just the military.
chrisgd 5y ago
And now they changed their mind, since 2008. Perhaps it was due to the real nature of a pandemic that killed a large number of people. What is the problem?
- refurb 5y ago
  Are you saying that, in their original argument, they never considered the scenario where an epidemic killed a large number of people?
  - chrisgd 5y ago
    I imagine it is easier to deal with in the abstract than confronted in the real thing I find the argument that my civil liberties are being more impacted if you don’t wear a mask more impactful than the reverse.
    - refurb 5y ago
      I mean the article explicitly lays out that their position is based on prior polio, smallpox and Spanish flu epidemics, so they aren’t dealing with the abstract. At all.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - foerbert 5y ago
        Only if you believe those drafting that opinion actually lived through polio, smallpox, and the Spanish flu. Otherwise, yes, it was absolutely abstract to them. Just because you're dealing with a real event or real data doesn't mean you're not dealing with it in the abstract. Humans react very differently when they're just thinking about something real hard and when they actually experience the thing directly.
      - sufehmi 5y ago
        "Spreading pandemic is not considered a constitutional right" - Supreme Court https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1432069918397194244 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/143206991839719424...
scarmig 5y ago
I was a card carrying member of the ACLU for a decade. Not necessarily because I agreed with them on everything--probably vaccine mandates are something I'd have disagreed with their original stance. But they were an essential part of civil society in how they consistently advocated for civil liberties, even for the benefit of unpopular or unsympathetic causes. At some point their goals changed when they became an auxiliary arm of the Democratic Party. But why bother to support them when I can just give to the party directly?
- xqcgrek2 5y ago
  Why give any money to corrupt political machines
fallingfrog 5y ago
Ah, it’s easy to take positions based on abstract principles when they don’t have real consequences measured in lives. But in the middle of a crisis, when nobody knows what will happen, and everyone is scared and angry, you make the decisions you feel like you have to make. It’s easy to criticize decisions later that were made in a pandemic, or during wartime, etc, isn’t it?
spfzero 5y ago
I wonder if their donor base has shifted? One big donor can obviate many thousands of grass-roots members with a few 10's of millions. I've donated several times, thought they stood for something. Similar thing happened with the Sierra Club when they started taking money from big oil. Now they're mostly just anti-nuclear lobbyists. Point is, once an entity gets a reputation for doing "good", they become so valuable as a business sheepskin than any number of individual donors could ever hop to match.
rejectedandsad 5y ago
The US isn't Australia and it definitely isn't China. What coercive measures have eroded our civil liberties?
tonfreed 5y ago
Their biggest donors are all Democrat aligned. Of course they say that kind of thing, it drives donations
- sufehmi 5y ago
  "Spreading pandemic is not considered a constitutional right" - Supreme Court https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1432069918397194244 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/143206991839719424...
esarbe 5y ago
So,the position that was drafted without any personal experience of how a pandemic progresses and how to best behave during a pandemic was revised once the people doing the drafting had the chance to actually get some first-person experience with pandemics? Very nice!
sufehmi 5y ago
"Spreading pandemic is not considered a constitutional right" Supreme Court https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1432069918397194244 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/143206991839719424...
- lenkite 5y ago
  Even the vaccinated spread the virus - so what's the point of your statement ?
sufehmi 5y ago
"very recently, the same group warned of the grave dangers of the very mindset it is now pushing" That is pure, unadulterated, bullshit. The original report masterly managed to strike a balance between the public and private rights, between the need to effectively combat this pandemic and the civil rights. If you can't be bothered to read the full report, feel free to skip directly to the "Recommendations" Only a delusional person will claim that this report "Denounced Mandates and Coercive Measures to Fight Pandemics: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/privacy/pemic_report.pdf https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/privacy/pemic_...

78 points by miles 5y ago

> “The law enforcement approach to public health offers a rationale for the endless suspension of civil liberties,” they explained. Using post-9/11 expansions of state power as its framework, the group explained that “the ‘Global War on Terror' may go on for a generation, but the war on disease will continue until the end of the human race. There will always be a new disease, always the threat of a new pandemic. If that fear justifies the suspension of liberties and the institution of an emergency state, then freedom and the rule of law will be permanently suspended.”

charbonneau 5y ago
A monk asked master Jōshū "Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?" Jōshū answered, "Mu variant"

ajay-b 5y ago

The ACLU is now a political organization aligned with the Democratic party. Even Ira Glasser it’s former, longtime director agrees the ACLU has lost its way. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

mc32 5y ago
It’s become clear that almost every advocacy organization of any kind is no longer principles based and have taken a political approach because it brings in more money. Standing up for unpopular views doesn’t excite the wallets (so ACLU, NRA, etc.)
sufehmi 5y ago
"Spreading pandemic is not considered a constitutional right" - Supreme Court https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1432069918397194244 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/143206991839719424...
- a0-prw 5y ago
  If the goal is to suppress the pandemic, then the correct approach would be to shut down MSM and social media like FB, Twitter, etc. That is how the global mass hysteria commonly known as "covid-19" is spread.
viridian 5y ago
It's true, and and an awful shame to see. I've donated to both the ACLU and been a member of the NRA in the past, and it's very obvious as someone who has received donor requests that both organizations have become captured by the larger political apparatus of a single party. I'm also genuinely not trying to engage in 'whataboutism' with this comment, it just really sucks to see public advocates for both the first and the second amendment, surrender their own positions in favor of becoming wholly partisan.

refulgentis 5y ago

Greenwald's article misrepresents the source: he glosses over that the report was on coercive quarantining enforced by the military (in countries outside America) during SARS, while quoting the lead-in to it.

zozbot234 5y ago
China has enforced coercive quarantining in their SARS-CoV2 response, and these measures have been picked up in the West (via "shelter in place" orders). To their credit, they seem to have successfully contained SARS-CoV2. So maybe the ACLU was proven wrong here.
- refurb 5y ago
  I’m not sure China is a great example of a country where this type of activity hasn’t harmed civil rights.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > they seem to have successfully contained SARS-CoV2 There is no evidence of that. Wuhan was devastated by alpha, with around 45,000 deaths in a city of 11 million. (The 5 crematoria ran day and nite for months, and the 1-year funeral rites were mobbed with family members.) Several cities are currently under lockdown, as China has struggled with delta. Compounding that is the Chinese Sino* vaccines only have about 50% efficacy, which WHO considers ineffective for a vaccine. China has also spread corona globally via their BRI workers. A dozen Iran leaders died from Chinese commercial flights. So don't believe a single word the CCP says.
handoflixue 5y ago
> he glosses over that the report was on coercive quarantining enforced by the military https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/civil-liberties-and-vaccine-mandates-heres-our-take/ https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/civil-liberties-an... "In this context, Covid-19 vaccine mandates — much like mask mandates — are public health measures necessary to protect people from severe illness and death. They are therefore permissible in many settings where the unvaccinated pose a risk to others, including schools and universities, hospitals, restaurants and bars, workplaces and businesses open to the public." Their stance is very explicitly about more than just the military.

chrisgd 5y ago

And now they changed their mind, since 2008. Perhaps it was due to the real nature of a pandemic that killed a large number of people. What is the problem?

refurb 5y ago
Are you saying that, in their original argument, they never considered the scenario where an epidemic killed a large number of people?
- chrisgd 5y ago
  I imagine it is easier to deal with in the abstract than confronted in the real thing I find the argument that my civil liberties are being more impacted if you don’t wear a mask more impactful than the reverse.
  - refurb 5y ago
    I mean the article explicitly lays out that their position is based on prior polio, smallpox and Spanish flu epidemics, so they aren’t dealing with the abstract. At all.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - foerbert 5y ago
      Only if you believe those drafting that opinion actually lived through polio, smallpox, and the Spanish flu. Otherwise, yes, it was absolutely abstract to them. Just because you're dealing with a real event or real data doesn't mean you're not dealing with it in the abstract. Humans react very differently when they're just thinking about something real hard and when they actually experience the thing directly.
    - sufehmi 5y ago
      "Spreading pandemic is not considered a constitutional right" - Supreme Court https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1432069918397194244 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/143206991839719424...

scarmig 5y ago

I was a card carrying member of the ACLU for a decade. Not necessarily because I agreed with them on everything--probably vaccine mandates are something I'd have disagreed with their original stance. But they were an essential part of civil society in how they consistently advocated for civil liberties, even for the benefit of unpopular or unsympathetic causes. At some point their goals changed when they became an auxiliary arm of the Democratic Party. But why bother to support them when I can just give to the party directly?

xqcgrek2 5y ago
Why give any money to corrupt political machines

fallingfrog 5y ago

Ah, it’s easy to take positions based on abstract principles when they don’t have real consequences measured in lives. But in the middle of a crisis, when nobody knows what will happen, and everyone is scared and angry, you make the decisions you feel like you have to make. It’s easy to criticize decisions later that were made in a pandemic, or during wartime, etc, isn’t it?

spfzero 5y ago

I wonder if their donor base has shifted? One big donor can obviate many thousands of grass-roots members with a few 10's of millions. I've donated several times, thought they stood for something. Similar thing happened with the Sierra Club when they started taking money from big oil. Now they're mostly just anti-nuclear lobbyists. Point is, once an entity gets a reputation for doing "good", they become so valuable as a business sheepskin than any number of individual donors could ever hop to match.

rejectedandsad 5y ago

The US isn't Australia and it definitely isn't China. What coercive measures have eroded our civil liberties?

tonfreed 5y ago

Their biggest donors are all Democrat aligned. Of course they say that kind of thing, it drives donations

sufehmi 5y ago
"Spreading pandemic is not considered a constitutional right" - Supreme Court https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1432069918397194244 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/143206991839719424...

esarbe 5y ago

So,the position that was drafted without any personal experience of how a pandemic progresses and how to best behave during a pandemic was revised once the people doing the drafting had the chance to actually get some first-person experience with pandemics? Very nice!

sufehmi 5y ago

"Spreading pandemic is not considered a constitutional right" Supreme Court https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1432069918397194244 https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/143206991839719424...

lenkite 5y ago
Even the vaccinated spread the virus - so what's the point of your statement ?

sufehmi 5y ago

"very recently, the same group warned of the grave dangers of the very mindset it is now pushing" That is pure, unadulterated, bullshit. The original report masterly managed to strike a balance between the public and private rights, between the need to effectively combat this pandemic and the civil rights. If you can't be bothered to read the full report, feel free to skip directly to the "Recommendations" Only a delusional person will claim that this report "Denounced Mandates and Coercive Measures to Fight Pandemics: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/privacy/pemic_report.pdf https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/privacy/pemic_...