The poster (Katie Herzog) has a podcast 'Blocked and Reported' which you may find interesting [0]. It's broadly what I would consider in the small-el liberal bent.
I wonder how large the generational divide is there. Are younger lawyers less likely to take cases of clients they deem detestable? The article alludes to some internal rift but the topic may deserve an article all on its own.
> Are younger lawyers less likely to take cases of clients they deem detestable
If only that. The younger lawyers would attack (sometimes physically, like with Molotov cocktails, as in the case of Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis) those they find detestable, and anybody in the law profession that dares to provide them with any service. Which once was considered a basic human right, but not anymore - now, if you defend the deplorables, you become unperson yourself.
Take it as presumed that a questioner has a direct link to the side of the state or the opposition, or both, of 1930s Germany, and answer the question rather than dodge it.
It somewhat weakens an absolute assertion "X is not justified" when a response 1) lists numerous current or recent instances in which X is argued as justified by a substantial groiup, and the further response 2) boils down to "now is not one of those times in which X is justified".
A chief weapon of both tyrant and bully is to deny their victims and targets the right to self-defence.
There's a huge difference between "consequence of your speech is that you may be criticized and maybe shown you're wrong" and "consequence of your speech is that you will be fired from your job, physically attacked, denied access to business and services, and people who dare to support you will be attacked in a similar fashion". Pretending to not understand the difference and calling both "consequences" is plain disingenuous - and steps right into what Smirnov's original joke was about. Yes, speech has consequences in both free countries and totalitarian ones. In the former, it's debate, in the latter it's jail and execution. Thankfully, the woke is not yet in the latter position, but they long left the former one and are inch by inch moving to the totalitarian side.
And no, none of the facts I stated were "rebutted". One incorrect comment was made about Rahman and Mattis, clearly quoting old (and also incorrect) press articles, which totally missed the point (I never claimed they work for ACLU), and I was then hilariously called "parroting Taibbi". That's not rebuttal.
> And no, none of the facts I stated were "rebutted". One incorrect comment was made about Rahman and Mattis, clearly quoting old (and also incorrect) press articles, which totally missed the point (I never claimed they work for ACLU), and I was then hilariously called "parroting Taibbi". That's not rebuttal.
A. I made no assertions as to who's statements were correct. Incorrect statements get made on the internet all the time. Incorrectness is clearly not a pre-requisite for making a comment or this discussion would be moot.
B. "That's not a rebuttal". Perhaps. But neither is it firing you from your job, physically attacking you, denying you access to business and services, and attacking those who support you. Your qualifying alecb's response as equivalent as cancellation and making you an "unperson" was clearly over the top.
> Your qualifying alecb's response as equivalent as cancellation
I am sorry, what? I never qualified that response as cancellation, you must be confused here. When I talked about cancel culture, I did not mean any of the discussion here - which is completely ok, and even the comments that I completely disagree with, are part of proper and normal discussion that I have no issue about at all. I will of course argue against ones that are wrong - but that's completely not what I meant by cancel culture, and I never said otherwise.
Lawyers sometimes have a duty of representation—-they can be appointed by a court, for example. People that are strictly unable to set aside their personal feelings in the name of professional responsibility are not fit to be admitted to the bar.
It doesn't seem like there's so much a rift as a complete change in policy.
Per the article, the old policy defending Free Speech was ...
> "we are committed to represent those whose views we regard as repugnant"
Whereas the new policy says...
> "lawyers should balance taking a free speech case representing right-wing groups whose “values are contrary to our values” against the potential such a case might give “offense to marginalized groups.” "
It's actually really sad. They've even explicitly paid for campaign ads for Democratic political candidates...
It's really just the ACLU in name only. They've done what so many organizations have done, and sacrificed their principles to take sides in the GOP vs Dem battle. Shortsighted.
It's evidence of a fundamental misunderstanding of what free speech is and why it's important at the highest levels. Free speech is the right to say things that others find offensive. If being offended is enough of an excuse to silence others, then anyone, at any time, can silence anyone else with impunity. If this power is only given to marginalised groups, then it becomes a matter of who defines marginalisation and who gets to draw the dividing lines in identity politics.
Come on ACLU, is free speech a fundamental right or a contingent power to be granted or revoked?
I happen to favor the old interpretation of free speech, but I think there's a strong argument that the traditional approach of defending all free speech facilitates a system where black people and others have been denied their rights for generations, and that we must act now to ensure their rights - that waiting any more is criminal.
We should absolutely act now to ensure their right, including their free speech rights both now and into the future. I do not see how handing veto power over free speech rights to gatekeepers advances that agenda.
Even if doing so might advance that agenda in the short term, and I don't think that's the case to any great degree, all it takes is a shift in who the gatekeepers are for this to go very wrong.
Just look at how many countries outlaw all kinds of speech on the basis of this or that religious group being offended by it. Who gets to represent marginalised groups and say what they are offended by? How many or what proportion of them need to be offended for it to count? It's a quagmire.
I'm not ignoring the many problems marginalised groups face, I am simply addressing the current topic of conversation, free speech. Furthermore the ACLU isn't ignoring them, they have many excellent programs devoted to those issues.
Talking about X doesn't imply ignoring Y, and I object to the blatantly hostile and manipulative language.
I don't see anything hostile or manipulative, but apologies if it seems that way.
> I'm not ignoring the many problems marginalised groups face, I am simply addressing the current topic of conversation,
That is an example of my point and (in my understanding) the point of the new 'movement' in the ACLU: Free speech is always the topic, and has been for generations, and the other civil rights of marginalized people are never the topic - or not enough to motivate anyone to solve the problems.
A sort of dramatic hypothesis: Free speech affects the people who sit at the table, so that's what they see and what they care about. The marginalized get table scraps.
I actually support the ACLU's 'old' stance on free speech, but that's not the topic of conversation IMHO.
I believe in free speech but only when it suits my political views.
That's not free speech.
And just to counter your actual point, what about a lousiana white person who's family's been living in poverty for 100 years? Do they get free speech? Or not, because they're white?
As soon as you make civil rights selective and for only certain people, it’s a political view. Either it’s civil rights for everyone or you are taking some sort of political stance.
Whether that’s repressing a minority (past) or repressing a majority (current trend), it’s basically treating people unequally and it’s just as bad.
> As soon as you make civil rights selective and for only certain people ...
We agree (without getting into the weeds of the wording). My point is that the civil rights of marginalized people have long been highly 'selective'. The outrage when some rights of the majority are threatened is ironic, or something.
The majority usually doesn't need much help; look around, at successful people in almost every domain: white guys have tons of freedom, voice, opportunity, prosperity, safety, etc. Turn on the news and see who does the talking. I think concern for their rights is often (without talking about you in particular - I don't know you) cover for protecting their political and social power, protecting the established discriminatory system.
Civil rights are there for the vulnerable, who don't have power. 'Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.' People in the majority have rights, absolutely, but that's not a problem and it's a distraction from the serious issues.
Except you are lumping in all white people as powerful. Which I profoundly disagree with as per my point in the first comment, what about someone who's white but has been generationally poor? It is absolutely ridiculous to call these people powerful or free or having a voice even.
There might be racism in society but that doesn't mean you get to lump all white people together as more powerful than all black people. There are plenty of powerful black people, and plenty of zero power white people. What you are doing is basically race based identification and judgement, aka racism.
> There might be racism in society but that doesn't mean you get to lump all white people together as more powerful than all black people. There are plenty of powerful black people, and plenty of zero power white people. What you are doing is basically race based identification and judgement, aka racism.
I agree factually in some respects, but I think that argument is a distraction. Obviously we must generalize somewhat; we can't write out every detail, and no matter what level of detail we include, someone can point out more that we omit. We could list the status of every individual in the country, but then we would be omitting their histories. On the other hand, generalizing about race is something I think we should be very careful about.
So yes, there are disempowered white people. There are disempowered disabled people and short people and immigrants and poor people, etc. There are disempowered rich white male in SV, for various reasons.
But I strongly disagree in this respect: We are talking about power resulting from skin color (what a concept to write - it's just absurd, but it's true!), not from other things. And all white people are much more powerful than black people in that regard. White people can go anywhere, buy anything, get any job, walk down any street, rent an Airbnb, interact safely with police, all simply by power conveyed by their skin color. It even affects where you can go in cyberspace: Look at popular Tik Tok videos; from what I've seen (not a lot, but compilations on YouTube), 98% white, some Asian and Hispanic, I'd guess 0.1% black. Join a gaming forum and make it known that you are black, and see what happens (based on what I understand).
To catalog everyone else who is disempowered is like talking about every other disease at a cancer conference.
I find it very easy to ignore the distinction between defending one's speech, and defending one's freedom-of-speech. ACLU's historical defense of freedom-of-speech is now regarded, very regrettably, as defense of the particular utterances being facilitated under that freedom.
It's not unambiguously true that freedom-of-speech itself is substantially responsible for anyone's loss of other rights. We can't even have a public conversation about this without freedom-of-speech, where all relevant ideas and evidence can be openly evaluated, unless there is essentially no gatekeeper (committee, policy, "filter", etc.) deciding on what is relevant or permissible speech. We will only have biased answers if we bias the discussion.
Further, even mere perception about the bias in the discussion (caused by censorship etc.) causes some people to disengage from the discussion altogether, and facilitates the "silo-ing" of groups of people who have little contact with each other. That is not a recipe for a functioning pluralistic society, and ultimately for peace itself.
The speech utterances are not transgressions of rights; it is the physical actions: assaults, lynchings, unequal imprisonment for identical crimes, etc. So riling up a bunch of people about how "Trump is a Nazi" ought not be a crime, but if someone immediately punched Trump after hearing that speech, then it was that punch that was the crime (violation of right to physical security / life of victim).
I'm assuming that you're not claiming anything like a natural right against exposure to offensive speech ("speech acts").
My point is that when the general gives the order for the war crime and the soldier carries it out, it's the general who is by far the most responsible, even though all they did was speak. The heads of any organization, from a country to a company to a coven - all they do is talk, but they have the most power and are most responsible. The speech is the most significant, powerful part, not the action (with exceptions). For some crimes, no action is necessary beyond speech.
(I assume you know that speech can certainly be criminal or tortious: Fraud, slander, incitement, harassment, conspiracy, accessory, violating official secrecy, etc. But I don't think that's the issue here.)
The exact same restrictions on free speech disproportionately impact black activist groups who might not have the same corporate backing as many right wing think tanks or organisations.
The only thing restrictions on free speech incentivise is conformity to the ruling party's policies and there is an implicit assumption here that the democratic parties values are really the correct ones - which many people of colour will dispute.
The moment the Republicans take over (which they will inevitably considering how few campaign promises Biden has so far delivered), they will turn this on groups like BLM and the Antifa movement in general.
Sure, I agree, but what are you going to do about the civil rights of minorities? The current system isn't working. The problem is that people focus only on free-speech-for-all and ignore the enormous elephant in the room.
Civil rights are not granted from cancelling racists from exposing their hateful views online, it's from taking action against the racist systems and people in power that really impact their rights. This can take the form of both violent and non-violent struggle but the key word is struggle, not just speech or the curtailment of wrong speech.
> the key word is struggle, not just speech or the curtailment of wrong speech
Sure, but speech plays an enormous role, the largest role IMHO.
> taking action against the racist systems and people in power that really impact their rights
What is normalized among the public greatly determines, IMHO, the systems and powerful people. From another perspective: If we just changed the rules and the public didn't change, imagine what would happen. Also, note that people with political causes invest enormous resources in manipulating public opinion.
"If we just changed the rules and the public didn't change, imagine what would happen. Also, note that people with political causes invest enormous resources in manipulating public opinion."
You cannot in fact change the rules if there hasn't been a shift in the public so this seems a rather moot point. I'm not arguing that you shouldn't invest in PR and education on these issues but muzzling the opposition just gives the next rulers in charge an already existing muzzle to use back on yourself.
There is a history of often murderous suppression of "radical" groups in the US and by and far the majority of these were socialists, environmentalists, and marginalised people.
The current fake appeasement to these demographics is just that - a mirage. They're willing to ban Trump from the internet but not raise the minimum wage, abolish the drug war, really come after companies for their industrial scale damaging of ecology or cease trade relations with countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
Excuse me for not taking this current "wokeness" fetishization by fundamentally hierarchical power structures entirely as good faith.
It's also not clear to me at all that "speech plays the largest role". Of course, existing power structures want you to believe that because the thing they fear the most of all is armed and genuinely effective resistance and it also helps perpetuate the illusion of a free and democratic society as if all it took to conquer racism and imperialism was to have a sit down and chat - with the hidden assumption that prior exploited people were just too stupid to consider this before - but MLK and Ghandai would have gone nowhere if there weren't decades of riots and militant struggle preceding them that pushed the US and British governments to enter negotiations with these parties.
> They're willing to ban Trump from the internet but not raise the minimum wage, abolish the drug war, really come after companies for their industrial scale damaging of ecology or cease trade relations with countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
I think 'they' is way too broad. Some companies banned Trump from their platforms. Those companies aren't particularly involved with the policies.
> the thing they fear the most of all is armed and genuinely effective resistance
I strongly doubt it. Such things are so rare and unlikely, not only in the U.S. but in democracies in general, that it's not too far off saying 'what they fear most is a giant meteor strike'. Well that would be a big problem, but not what is most feared. There hasn't been one in the U.S. since the Civil War, and that one came top-down, from the power structure.
Obviously, these companies themselves are not involved in the policies themselves but am I supposed to believe that all the major social media platforms independently decided to ban the then president of the United States when he had repeatedly violated their terms of conditions in the past with no response? That stretches credulity.
I also don't know where you're getting this idea that armed conflict between the people and the state is rare in democracies, least of all the US which has had several riots and armed conflict between the state and guerrilla organisations since the civil war, many of which have had a direct effect on legislation and happened decades before the Civil Rights act of 1960.
But it was never free speech that denied them their rights. The entire point of free speech is that it protects the rights of marginalized groups and enables them to advocate for changes in society.
Racists never needed the protections of free speech to argue for denying people their rights because those views already had widespread societal acceptance.
Now that explicit racism is no longer the norm, organisations like the Klan need to rely on free speech protections, but thats only evidence of how unacceptable their beliefs have become.
These earnest arguments that limiting speech will help protect people are terrifying.
It remains the norm in many places IME, including on the Internet and in many private conversations with white people.
Which returns us to the problem: What do we do about the other civil rights of minorities? People keep focusing on free speech for the majority and never address the far more serious problem.
Again, What do we do about the other civil rights of minorities?. Notice how people talk about everything else. Once you notice this pattern, you will see it everywhere and see it going back generations, which is how the racist status quo continues (whether or not that's the intent of the people talking).
This is made worse by the fact that they're partisan political. It would be somewhat better if they refused free speech cases from all extremist groups.
> This is made worse by the fact that they're partisan political.
What if the greatest threat to free speech is a political party? Should the ACLU allow that threat to advance unopposed so that the ACLU can claim to be non-partisan?
Yes, they should. The ACLU exists to defend civil rights regardless of how those rights might be used. They do not (or at least did not previously) exist in order to further a political agenda.
Your freedoms should _never_ be contingent on the expression (or lack thereof) of a particular political ideology.
> he ACLU exists to defend civil rights regardless of how those rights might be used. They do not (or at least did not previously) exist in order to further a political agenda.
The former is inconsistent with the latter. The preservation of any set of civil rights you might conceive of is, absolutely, a “political agenda”.
Yes, perhaps that was worded somewhat poorly. The ACLU certainly does lobby for political change as well! They did not historically, however, take into consideration the degree to which one's political agenda aligned with theirs when deciding whether to render aid in the defense of (legally guaranteed!) civil liberties.
It's also worth noting that the meaning of the word "political" is overloaded here. I did not use it in the same sense that you did - I hope that doesn't escape your notice. (Still though, a potentially ambiguous wording is nonetheless a shortcoming. It's on me to ensure that my communications are as clear as possible.)
> The ACLU exists to defend civil rights regardless of how those rights might be used. They do not (or at least did not previously) exist in order to further a political agenda.
Again, what if a party or politician is a significant threat to civil rights, and necessary to the defense of those rights is the defeat of that party? I think the ACLU would be abandoning its duties if they stood helpless on principle. Probably they should make clear their reasoning.
> Your freedoms should _never_ be contingent on the expression (or lack thereof) of a particular political ideology.
I'm not sure how that is relevant to the question. Also, there are exceptions to everything, including free speech and political ideologies. First, anything can be called a 'political ideology'; those words are not a shield. Second, if your political ideology is to seize power and end civil rights, you don't have unlimited right to promote it (especially if you are a threat to succeed); my tolerance for your rights doesn't extend to you taking away my rights.
No. Such considerations are out of scope when defending against infringement of civil liberties. Limits and exceptions are defined by law; the courts can and do enforce them.
The ACLU did not previously, and should not going forward, make value judgments about a defendant when deciding whether or not to take a case. Such value judgments run directly counter to the notion of equal rights under the law which is what they supposedly stand for. The ACLU should quite literally defend enemies of the state in the event that their civil rights are violated. If they are no longer willing or able to act in such a principled manner then we are in sore need of a replacement.
It is imperative that your legal rights not depend on others agreeing with or liking your views. You don't enjoy freedom of political speech "while saying the right things", you enjoy freedom of political speech "full stop".
(Do note that I have nothing at all against organizations that lobby for political change. The ACLU has historically done that as well! What set them apart was their commitment to defending the civil liberties of anyone and everyone, no matter what.)
> No. Such considerations are out of scope when defending against infringement of civil liberties.
That merely ignores the problem: It's (arguably) necessary for defending civil liberties. The old formulation now fails to defend civil liberties (and arguably always has, for minorities).
When I was in university, there were law students who called for lawyers defending certain people (in this case Jian Ghomeshi) in court to be disbarred.
Wow, considering how that trial ended up, with the women involved lying, colluding together on testimony, interacting with him after events, on and on...
Well, they want punitive action against anyone doing the entirely legal, and correct thing by representing him, so they didn't want him having a fair day in court...
Again, laws don't matter... the truth doesn't matter, have a trial of public option, and even make it hard to have his side heard.
After all, they didn't want him to have a fair defense?
Canadians pay too much attention to US politics. We're not perfect, but for example "defund the police?
Look at a Toronto sized US city police, and social program budget. Now look at Toronto.
Surprise! Toronto's social programs almost rival the police budget. US city? Almost non-existent, and they get military surplus weaponry. No comparison. Not even remotely the same.
Yet Canucks run around, gibbering on about defund the police, when we've effectively always done that!
Perfect? No. But we should focus on our real issues, not transplant US issues here.
So I looked up San Diego, not quite as big, but close in a liberal leaning state. Health and humans services get $2.7b vs $2.2b for public safety on a $7b total budget.
I'm not sure if California does it better. I just know much of the funding comes from the federal/state government. A significant portion of the sheriff budget in my county is local taxes. Local funding is 3% for social services, the other 97% are state/federal taxes.
One of the narratives I've seen in news articles is that a writer will talk about the proportion of general funds to police vs social services. The funding levels could come from city general funds, county, state, or federal agencies. It makes sense to talk about overall funding instead of local funding for things like police and social services. People that are taking that tact are either disingenuous and slanting hard for their political gain, or ignorant of the complexities involved.
As to the hand me downs, $6b worth of equipment has been passed down to police from 1990-2017. That to me doesn't seem to be a significant amount. Averaged over 27 years across 50 states is $4m/year per state. I know it wouldn't distribute evenly, but that isn't a significant amount of value. There would likely be some unique items they couldn't get anywhere else though.
I don't know how large the generational divide is _within_ the ACLU, but I know that there is a generational divide. I'm 57, and a firm believer in free speech, but my younger friends have a different viewpoint.
I don't understand this take. Were Boomers, for example, adamant defenders of free speech (on the whole)? Gen X might be an exception, but it seems to me that all prior generations attempted to squelch speech and other rights more so than Gen Z and Millenials.
The change many people are noting is that opposition to free speech used to be largely confined to the religious right. It's now much more broad.
I think part of it is the rise of online echo chambers. People act like the media they consume, and latter generations grew up with online circle jerks being the norm.
Another factor is the rise of so much bad faith disinformation coupled with the extreme virality of bullshit on social media. It seems like the truth of a story is inversely proportional to its likelihood of being shared on Facebook.
There's been a panic about the explosion of things like Qanon, neo-fascism, and anti-vaccine disinformation. I hear a lot of people questioning whether it's possible to have a liberal open society without... ironically... censorship.
I don't think censorship can be the answer, but I don't know what the answer is. The last few years has left me utterly shocked at the gullibility of human beings. Do people even think at all or are we indeed just mindless "meme machines" whose central nervous systems are vectors for replicating patterns?
I think the answer is to view Free Speech as a positive right. Ie, something the state guarantees you have. As a logical consequence, the state must then also fight those who actively oppose you having the right to speak freely. Or any of your other rights. Those who seek to destroy your positive freedoms should have them taken away. Similarly, not being discriminated based on skin color or sex or gender is also a positive right in my view, so anyone who discriminates based on those categories should similarly be punished, otherwise their intolerance propagates.
Censorship of those who seek to oppress is necessary to require freedom (or to put it another way, the paradox of intolerance is that you must be intolerant of those who are intolerant, to guarantee that maximum tolerance is not only possible but guaranteed over a long time frame).
On the note of meme machines, I always liked to think that Memes ought to be studied in a university course, Memetics could become a serious field of study.
I suppose one could argue that this amounts to a threat of violence, which is a form of limited speech. I am not free to make bodily threats of violence toward other named individuals. Threatening positive rights is threatening force, so it definitely gets at least near to that line.
It doesn't have to be force at the start. If a politician were to run on the platform "no free speech for poor people", obviously they're not applying force or threatening it.
And even when elected, they threaten no force, they simply remove a right from the law.
At no point did they threaten force against poor people, only that their free speech be taken away. They got elected and are doing it non-violently.
Now poor people no longer have free speech.
Hence, either you must treat a threat against free speech as violence unconditionally of it's physical or psychological component (ie if it has a legal component) or you must acknowledge that free speech can be threatened by non-violent oppression.
> Censorship of those who seek to oppress is necessary to require freedom
Besides the obvious, who defines what is oppressive? If we are censoring people then there should be due process at a minimum, so who writes those procedures and laws? How do we ensure they don’t become politicized?
Oppressive is that which seeks removes your positive freedoms. Positive freedoms should be fairly uncontroversial, things like freedom of opinion, freedom to bodily autonomy, freedom to seek work, freedom to basic living conditions etc.
To ensure they don't become politicized, any new positive freedom should require a 2/3rds approval by the government (and for the people in the US that means you need to figure out multi-party or this is gonna suck) and removing a positive freedom would require 3/4th approval by the government.
The procedures and laws should be handled and drafted by a separated government branch, which is dedicated to protecting the freedoms granted by the constitution (as well as protecting the constitution of your country itself). They substitute prosecution in case of violations but do have to go through the same courts as everyone else.
To ensure that this doesn't escalate for person-on-person disputes, generally they should only prosecute those who are threatening to oppress or have oppressed a group of people or a person for being part of a group of people under protection from the constitution (like their sex, gender, economic background or skin color).
And you think this new gov department won’t become politicized? Whatever affiliation you are, imagine the opposite side running these offices. That is very scary.
Then there’s the question about your so-called “nonpositive rights”. What does this include? What does it take to remove these?
Your vision of the future here is terrifying, and I will personally fight against a truth dictator and the removal of rights with every ounce of my being.
Positive and negative freedoms aren't something new and even the US has plenty of examples. They merely stipulate what the state has to do to ensure them. A positive freedom is one where the state has to act to preserve them. A negative freedom is one where the state has to not act to preserve them.
For example, owning property is a negative freedom, because the state must not act against your property to ensure this freedom.
Being free of violence is a positive freedom, as the state will have to act to ensure this freedom (by sending a police officer when you dial 911 for example). In this note, not being a victim of theft would be another positive freedom, as the state will act to prevent it or redress you as a victim.
Negative rights don't have to be removed, as you fear, they're simply rights that the state can passively guarantee without having to interfere. Generally, such negative rights/freedoms don't require protection from the state, (hence they're negative).
On the flipside, the positive rights and freedoms do need to be protected. You have a freedom of speech/opinion, which is positive in that the state should act that you can enjoy them. If it were a negative freedom, then they could be lost at the toss of a hat the next time a truth dictator comes to power, as they aren't required to be protected.
So by the very nature you say you fight the removal of these rights, you're already reinforcing that freedom of speech is a positive right. (I don't even get were truth dictator comes in?)
To point out, there is gov departments in a few countries that already do what I describe or very close to. While generally not perfect, they have been useful in digging out neonazi groups and fighting for your freedoms more than the armies of those countries.
This got real buried. Thanks for the intro to positive and negative rights. My complaint is with removing rights. Rights are not supposed to be removed, you’re born with them. I do not think any entity should be able to remove any right, positive or negative. It’s a dangerous precedent and I reiterate, every ounce of my being.
Again, I don't advocate for removing them, but that in order to protect your positive freedoms, the state will have to violate someone else's freedoms, negative or positive.
At the moment, the US has no protection against a political party removing your freedoms from the constitution. If someone were to attempt it, they would be let off scotts-free, so to speak. There is no punishment for saying "poor people shouldn't have the right to vote or freedom of speech", which some of your politicians are already saying in a roundabout way.
And once you lost them, you won't get them back as easily and that will be more dangerous that violating someone's freedoms to protect everyone elses.
In the Boomer and GenX generations the right wing opposed free speech and the left wing fought for it. In Millennials and GenZ it’s the opposite. If you have a group that’s mixed in age but most made up of left of center people from their respective generations then you are likely to see all the would be censures in the younger half.
I don't know about others but I'm totally the opposite of #1. The more I know about a domain the more I am willing to propose new ways of doing things in that domain. I am conservative about things I don't understand because I don't feel like I know enough to break the rules effectively.
The ACLU has been the premier organization fighting for free speech since its inception. This transformation is like the staff of the Muscular Dystrophy Association deciding it really ought to put its energy into fighting herpes. There’s nothing wrong with fighting herpes, but if staffers did that they’d be stealing the organization.
Well, more like refusing to help certain people suffering from AIDS on the basis that they’re “a net negative” by engaging in behaviors that spread the disease.
This article is not the first time I’ve ever heard of the ACLU. I read dozens of their cases in law school and attended lectures and conferences they’ve organized. I’m well aware of their history.
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.
Theyve said previously that the reason they mostly stay out of the 2nd amendment is that there's already a well funded organization that has made the 2nd their sole focus. The NRA's budget is larger than the ACLUs.. so it makes sense for them to prioritize other constitutional issues.
There have been others. I join in the disappointment at the sad turn the ACLU has taken. But they have been consistent in their opposition to no-fly lists, as an end-run around due process, and have applied the same argument against proposals to create similar no-gun lists.
They are right in both cases.
Then there was this case, which was mainly 1st amendment, but with strong 2nd amendment ingredients:
America is a weird outlier in lifting worship of freedom of speech far far beyond where other rich, free countries do, so that’s not all that surprising.
Increased rights have consequences. Decreased rights have consequences. There are limits on rights everywhere, even the US. I think it's quite rational for people to favour one or another system or limitation.
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.
The issue is who gets to define 'hate' or any other limited category of speech. You might feel that Canada's limits are benevolent, but the existence of such laws codifies the avenue of their corruption. The risk is that such limits grow more and more restrictive until disagreement is unacceptable.
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.
> I'll continue to defend the US model. Speech should have no legal limits
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.
> there’s _plenty_ of legal limits to free speech in the US
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).
Right, apart from incitement to violence, words liable to cause breach of the peace, threatening speech, obscenity, defamation, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, campaign financing, speech by government employees, many forms of national security related speech, and instruction on how to make weapons, what speech is banned?!?
Defamation - A famously high bar in the US. It has to be a knowing and intentional falsehood and have caused measurable harm if I understand correctly. That really seems like the absolute minimum of limitations to me if we're going to have a hope of maintaining a functional democracy. (We've got laws against false advertising as well ...)
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?
> Defamation - A famously high bar in the US. It has to be a knowing and intentional falsehood
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.
I don't think there should be any limitation on the right to freedom-of-speech except that strictly necessary to be compatible with other natural rights, like the right to your life. The classic ban on shouting "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater can be justified entirely on this ground, because that utterance may cause people to be trampled when people panic. It is not clear that libel laws can be defended on similar grounds, or such grounds at the very least would severely limit the reach of libel laws.
> The classic ban on shouting "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater can be justified entirely on this ground
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.
> except that strictly necessary to be compatible with other natural rights
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.
The non-seriousness of Canadians about free speech is part of the reason I was happy to move to America. I used to defend hate speech laws (as in formal public debate), but in hindsight I was naive about putting the power to define hate speech in a political process. Such laws and their brethren in private organizations that nominally exist to promote public discourse, are used to silence opposition and therefore I find them repellent.
There used to be a grudging respect between the ACLU and the Federalist society. They disagreed on a lot, but not everything by a long shot. I saw ACLU officials speak at Federalist Society events and vice versa. RBG was famously friends with Scalia.
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.
The goal of the Federalist Society is to replace every single member of the Judiciary with hand-picked candidates that strictly agree with a narrowly-defined canon of legal doctrine.
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.
It seems to me that certain people fixate on free speech because they have the luxury to be able to. It's like once they've progressed past a certain level of Maslow's hierarchy they forget about the previous levels.
No, people fixate on free speech because no other right even makes sense if you don't have free expression. It's the foundation for our democratic society.
Eh, countries like Germany seem to have managed OK with banning nazi symbols - it hasn't proven to be a slippery slope leading to a ban on criticising the government, or anything like that.
> 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.”
Germany has strong protections for individual freedoms and privacy in their constitution, precisely to avoid an illiberal government from arising ever again. The Nazi ban is effectively the lone exception to the rule.
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).
Stop the straw man please. No one is going around killing citizens. Something like nine unarmed people per year are killed by US police out of 10 million interactions.
That's total deaths caused by police. It would obviously be higher in the US because the criminals are more likely to have and use guns, policemen in the US just can't afford the peaceful approaches most policemen in Europe can. That doesn't mean they get away with more.
No, those life essentials are not required _before_ getting the right to freedom-of-speech. Indeed, freedom of speech may be essential to discussing how to arrange a society to enable the procurement of those things. Holding off freedom of speech until "basic needs" are met is, to me, a way to guarantee that a tyrant in a poor country stays in power.
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.).
Or perhaps they come from a place where speech can get you jailed, and unlike you know what it is like to have no constitutional right to free speech? Perhaps they know the value of what you seem so eager to give up, because unlike you they've lived without it?
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.
All the people that come from a place where speech can get you jailed, can only come because they are alive. There's a certain element of survivorship bias there.
The ACLU still has free speech lawyers, and I supported the ACLU to the tune of 1k last year. But logically it follows that supporting the right of African Americans to survive encounters with police, or for Transgender people to have healthcare, increases the amount of free speech in the world by ensuring their voices can speak in it. A decrease in the survival of people is necessarily a decrease in free speech.
The right of people not engaged in violence to survive police encounters is a natural/inalienable right and a right to healthcare are not similar classes of rights. The former is a "negative right", or liberty, from harm by others (the police), whereas the latter is a "positive right", or entitlement/privilege, to goods & services provided by others.
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.
Ok, I'll play your game. Political enemies (in China, the USSR, other historic Eastern European states, Turkey.. maybe you'd prefer MLK as an example) are denied the right to life on the basis of their speech.
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?
Are you playing my "game"? My question is pretty simple: what's a more fundamental right, life, or speech? Which one would you select if you could only select one? Which one is it possible to have without the other?
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.
Both are inalienable and therefore not granted to me by anyone. I have them by default. However, I would easily choose to risk my life to defend my right to speak.
Ok, but your existence precedes both your ability to speak and your ability to fight for your right to speak. Inalienable or no, both rights can be taken from you, but only one is a requirement for you to have the other. Existence is therefore a fundamental requirement for freedom of speech to exist. People who don't exist can neither speak nor fight for the right to speak.
You asked which would one select. I choose the right to exist with my rights intact. Personally, I feel that the alternative isn't life or an existence worth living.
By choosing to "exist with your rights intact" you're choosing both, so you haven't answered the question. Which would you prefer if you could only have one: Life, or Freedom of Speech?
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.
> If by living, you have the right, then you don't need to fight for it. You already have it.
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.
This is an intentionally antagonistic line of questioning. The answer has been given clearly. Freedom of speech is equally important as freedom of life. To put it bluntly, you'll have to kill me to silence me.
I'm exercising my ability to speak freely, and it would be impossible for me to be here, speaking, if I was dead. However, it would be possible for me to live without freedom of speech. To put it bluntly, without life, my freedom of speech is useless. Being alive gives me the ability to exercise my right to live, and my right to speak freely. Its two rights for the price of one! Clearly a better deal!
The question is simple but inane, and implies losing the right to speech cannot be life-threatening. Then once conditions progress and the right to life is directly under attack, there is "no one allowed to speak for you".
Sure. Nobody dared speak up against the Holocaust. (Those that did were sent to a labor camp or had their heads sliced off.) Lack of free speech meant the Nazis could (and did) kill anyone for any reason with complete impunity. There was no right to life under Hitler.
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.
Yeah, this honestly seems like a nothingburger to me. They have institutional priorities right now for other civil liberties, and once they feel satisfied with progress there they'll probably re-invest resourced into their free speech cases to avoid churn or even grow that area.
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.
The head of the ACLU from the 1970s to 2001 says he doesn't think the ACLU of today would have taken the cases that made them famous. (See "Mighty Ira" a documentary on him.)
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.
There are many ways this can occur. Think of intimidating, racist language being used to discourage minorities from voting, for example. Or a public official whose expression of obnoxious views about women prevents female employees from feeling secure in the workplace.
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.
All of this was well understood in, say, 1975. The tension you're describing is why the ACLU's hardline stance on speech and the rights of the accused has always been controversial and deeply unpopular in some circles. Without putting too fine a point on it: that's literally what made them the ACLU.
The article uses charlottesville as an example where their actions to guarantee free speech ended up inciting violence and got someone killed. But that's always been the line right and hindsight is 20/20
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.
charlottesville was a pretty consequential event politically, which also result in a 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.
The problem is this sort of logic can be applied to any position. You can always cherry-pick an example of someone with views that you don't like engaging in violence, and then use that to justify silencing anyone else that holds similar views on the grounds that it "may lead to violence".
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 low hanging fruit answer: taking up the defense of the KKK could free up resources for the organization to actively infringe on the rights of others, either through direct violence and intimidation, spread of hate speech materials, or allowing political spending on issues with further its white supremacist agenda.
The article seems to be mostly grasping at straws and doesn't support the notion that the ACLU is against free speech. Articles that primarily reference tweets shouldn't be taken seriously. It's not like the ACLU has never experienced such internal debates over the proper course of action. If the ACLU stops defending the 1st amendment I would consider that a major loss, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all, opinions of individual members in a few scattered instances notwithstanding.
Let's substitute into your sentence, a statement I feel is equivalent (please let me know if you think it's an unfair characterization):
"Any government regulation of speech or published material is destructive to free society."
Hopefully you immediately think of exceptions: illicit pornography, fire in a theater, ingredient labels/active ingredient listings, directly false marketing, misrepresenting contracts, direct physical threats/"fighting words," convincing someone to commit suicide, intellectual property related speech, advertisements to kids, speech in the military, speech under NDA's, security clearance related information, publicly accusing someone of a crime they didn't commit. Maybe you might think speech is different whether it's from a citizen or non citizen. Maybe it's different from a corporation and a person. Maybe it's different if speech is done in good faith (because a person honestly believes their words) or bad faith (because someone wants to manipulate somebody). Maybe the mode of speech matters, whether it's internet, radio, spoken word, telephone, or otherwise.
Referring to free speech in indirect terms creates a problem, because it denies the grey. Free speech arguments are all about determining the correct gradient of grey for society. Being able to identify and understand grey area is a strong signal of being informed. The grey area is why people who are knowledgeable are unsure and people who know nothing are confident. One sees complexities, the other is blind to them.
Every person on the planet being able to publish a message that can be read by every human (twitter) is something the human race has never had to face before. Facebook can choose to promote hateful speech with algorithms and incite hatred through doing so, gaining them engagement (addiction) in the process. Is that healthy for society? Is fox news healthy? On the other side is CNN (fake news?) healthy? Should China/Russia be able to purchase American airtime? Should American celebrities and businesses be protected from having their speech coerced by foreign powers?
Reasonable people can come to different conclusions on what it means for speech to be "free", what counts as speech, what context around the speech matters, and what entities should get "free speech" protection.
> Reasonable people can come to different conclusions on what it means for speech to be "free", what counts as speech, what context around the speech matters, and what entities should get "free speech" protection.
This is why it is encoded as an absolute, so that one’s perspective on what is reasonable or not is irrelevant. If speech causes harm that person can be sued for harm in a civil case. But the government shall not make any law infringing on the right to free speech.
This ignores all the government limits and requirements on speech that exist.
Fighting words, credible threats... These topics can't just be hand waved when discussing whether the ACLU should be fighting for the rights of Nazis to spout hate. Civil lawsuits are rarely even redress as most people can't afford a lawyer to just go around sueing people, even when the cases are egregious. And I don't think anyone wants a world where the ACLU is the unofficial 4th branch of government.
> "Any government regulation of speech or published material is destructive to free society."
Things go off the rails right off the bat by conflating the First Amendment with freedom of speech, which almost always bodes ill for the remainder of the arguments presented. Anyway, the 1st Amendment is a subset of the general principle of freedom of speech that happens to bind the government. The formulation in Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is a bit clearer about what freedom of speech is:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers"
This encompasses individuals, organizations, businesses, and, yes, governments. This is why the deplatforming of Parler (which in some sense was a happy thing) is still a freedom of speech issue despite not being a First Amendment issue or illegal; third parties stepped in to interfere with those who wanted to impart legal (albeit deplorable) speech and those who wanted to receive legal (ditto) speech. What can be done to one set of people can be done to any other, bad or good, and that's a hazard.
> "Hopefully you immediately think of exceptions..."
Sets up the unfortunately all too common "speech that causes clear and immediate harm is illegal so you don't _actually_ believe in freedom of speech" argument which, much like attacking a point nobody was trying to defend, is neither interesting nor persuasive. Such speech is seldom the core issue of the controversial freedom of speech cases we're discussing in the first place. For example, neither the ACLU's Skokie or even Charlottesville freedom of speech cases had known expectation of immediate harm to others, despite the odious nature of who they were defending.
> "The grey area is why people who are knowledgeable are unsure and people who know nothing are confident. One sees complexities, the other is blind to them."
A pleasant appeal to HN's collective intellectual vanity. Let's see where it takes us.
> "Every person on the planet being able to publish a message that can be read by every human (twitter) is something the human race has never had to face before. Facebook can choose to promote hateful speech with algorithms and incite hatred through doing so, gaining them engagement (addiction) in the process. Is that healthy for society? Is fox news healthy? On the other side is CNN (fake news?) healthy? Should China/Russia be able to purchase American airtime? Should American celebrities and businesses be protected from having their speech coerced by foreign powers?"
Let's substitute for your final paragraphs, a statement I feel is equivalent (please let me know if you think it's an unfair characterization):
"The knowledgeable know better than the ignorant so it's justifiable for the knowledgeable to protect them from themselves by limiting fake news/hateful speech from what they see, with the understanding that what constitutes fake news/hateful speech is decided on by the knowledgeable."
While seductive to a certain type of mindset, the paternalistic and ripe for abuse nature of this idea should be self-evident. It is the progressive equivalent of Kipling's (deeply racist and colonialist) "The White Man's Burden", only here the it is the progressive who are being exhorted to bring enlightenment to the benighted ignorant.
But let's go further and suppose that it were justified somehow, we'd still be faced with the problem that we not know the truth now and, even worse, we don't know what the future will determine the truth to be. Permitting suppression of "hateful speech" would have suppressed the civil rights movement (immensely unpopular in its time), LGBT rights movement (same), and other social movements now deemed important steps in improving human civil rights.
So, in the end, there is nothing new, insightful, nor persuasive to be found here.
(I await the inevitable reply where I'm accused of being a conservative.)
> Free speech is table stakes for a free society. Those claiming otherwise are playing with fire.
>> Referring to free speech in indirect terms creates a problem, because it denies the grey. Free speech arguments are all about determining the correct gradient of grey for society. Being able to identify and understand grey area is a strong signal of being informed. The grey area is why people who are knowledgeable are unsure and people who know nothing are confident. One sees complexities, the other is blind to them.
"Free speech is table stakes for a free society" is not code for "I believe every entity should have the inviolable right to say whatever they want whenever they want." – I interpret it to mean "A society can't be free unless one of its founding principles is freedom of expression." Another sentiment it expresses is, "we should start from the position that what happens to be expressed is allowable unless it falls under a category where we deem it to be curtailed – versus – speech is strictly regulated, it's a privilege rather than a right, we need to explicitly enumerate the areas where it is unregulated". You're not interpreting what they said charitably in my opinion. And saying "You know things aren't black or white, they're grey" is rather pointless a lot of the time in because you can just counter the supposed argument without the additional lecturing meta-observation which to be honest comes across as kind of condescending to my ears.
Lastly – it's not some massive revelation that there are limitations to freedom of expression:
“Freedom of speech is not regarded as absolute by some with most legal systems generally setting limits on the freedom of speech, particularly when freedom of speech conflicts with other rights and protections, such as in the cases of libel, slander, pornography, obscenity, fighting words, and intellectual property.
Some limitations to freedom of speech may occur through legal sanction, and others may occur through social disapprobation.”
Most societies function perfectly fine without a constitutional protection for speech. In fact a few countries rank better than the United States on press freedom without it.
The press freedom index places Burkina Faso, a country that bans journalists from visiting displacement camps, higher than the US, so I'm a little skeptical of its findings
> The press freedom index places Burkina Faso, a country that bans journalists from visiting displacement camps, higher than the US
The places the US does not let journalists access are countless. A prominent example are most of the US' border facilities, the detention-like migrant "housing" facilities among them.[1]
So what you brought up can clearly not be a differentiator between those countries in terms of such an index.
To be fair to Burkina Faso I should point out that their 'displacement camps' are a case of taking care of people in need: refugees of war. Meanwhile the US facilities are just locking people up before sending them home.
As far as I can tell, yes. There are rules regarding access that were written in 2010. The most recent info I found on the matter (during my admittedly limited internet searches) are in relation to new regulations that were introduced and then removed in August, 2019:
If you're aware of more recent information, do share. As I said, this is just the results from a cursory search and may not reflect the current situation.
This isn’t an argument about how good political scientists think journalists have it. The dispute is about free speech rights. For the people, plebeians of no special importance, not a priestly class with graduate degrees who have been anointed journalists by getting their Masters from the right J school, or getting an Ivy League degree.
So what would you choose as a measurement of how free speech is in a country? Usually the press is chosen since it's job in a functioning free country is to scrutinize the state and other powers. So if the press is free and it is free to distribute it's voice unimpeded by corporate or state influence then it is considered a more free state.
True, but there is also the Paradox of Tolerance to contend with where defending certain types of free speech may be undermining support for other civil liberties. I honestly think this rift is just the organization trying to figure out which side of the paradox of tolerance they are on and I don't think there is a single correct answer to it.
The slippery slope isn't a fallacy. It's another term for Overton Window.
In other words, if the baseline of what is societally acceptable is moved, things that were previously considered extreme are more likely to be seriously considered.
>To which David Cole, the national legal director of the A.C.L.U., rejoined in an interview: “Everything that Black Lives Matter does is possible because of the First Amendment.”
Not at all: functionally, there's a meta-gaming thing that goes on where 'free speech' is treated as sort of antifa Kryptonite. It's not being argued in good faith at all. It's a tactic.
You'll find that the same people making a big noise about 'free speech' will do everything they possibly can to suppress and conceal the speech of those who are calling 'em out for arguing in bad faith… because they are arguing in bad faith, because they have absolutely no intention of furthering free speech. It is purely a tactic.
If you're conspiratorial about everybody who supports free speech not really supporting free speech, and instead just saying it in bad faith(?), you're going to have a tough time with meaningful debate and enjoying HN. One of the core tenets is a belief in the principle of charity — assume the strongest interpretation of the commenter's argument, not the weakest.
Oh, this doesn't happen at all times on all subjects. There are a few more or less Nazi-adjacent topics where it's gonna happen. Could be worse, on Reddit it happens in a coordinated fashion, here it's a bit more organic.
You are invoking exploitable core tenets. If one is arguing in bad faith the FIRST thing you'll do is invoke free speech, invoke the principle of charity, call for the strongest possible interpretation and insist that good faith MUST be assumed.
For instance: I neither said nor meant that 'everybody' who supports free speech was doing this. That's half the trouble: it's protective coloration among people who are acting in earnest. I'm stating unequivocally that SOME folks in this camp are acting in bad faith: not just hypocrisy, but pursuing calculated behaviors akin to people coaching their peers to 'not reveal their power level' so as to better influence the communities they're operating on.
I don't know how many of 'em there are, but I find it a catastrophic failure of a community's intentions to assume charity. It's nothing more than an exploit, and there are some topics, political topics, that bring this out.
While there is a component of free speech advocates who are doing so because of partisan interests, there is another component who are sincere. (The way to tell is to ask whether they would accept censorship of their ideological foes.)
> where 'free speech' is treated as sort of antifa Kryptonite
I'm a bit confused by this. Whether or not free speech is repelent/harmful to antifa isn't an argument against free speech. If free speech harms a movement, then so be it. If it allows a movement to prosper, then so be it.
On the object level, I've seen a lot of allegations that antifa attack people who film them (and one of their movement sucker punched a journalist on air.) This gave me the impression that antifa is at least as interested in controlling speech as their opposition.
So, Richard Spencer, deeply committed white nationalist passionately advocating for fascist reformulation of the nation's policies, and the man who personally coined the term 'alt-right' and led the marching at Charlottesville, crying out 'you will not replace us' and 'blood and soil'? This guy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer
You can enable showdead in your settings, and even low contrast messages can be spoken aloud by your friendly neighborhood TTS or pasted somewhere friendly for your reading displeasure.
Not to say that ample downvotes don’t show some particular biases of the HN crowd, but it’s not like those comments disappear and you can make your own mind if they are low quality drivel or inconvenient dissent.
Well, if they did disappear completely, you'd have no way to retrieve their contents. They are extremely faded, true, but I've spent many of my childhood years watching cartoons on an old B&W television set with an extremely faded CRT, so I may be a bit desensitized.
I'm not overflowing with boundless adoration for the HN forums (I've heard someone calling them "like Reddit, but made of galaxy brains" and it made me laugh out loud) and feel that the overall crowd here does display certain biases and flaws (myself included, of course), and that it has a set of wrongthink taboos for which you can be downvoted into oblivion, but at least there is a setting which will show you the downvoted, flagged, and dead comments at all so you can see for yourself and make your own judgement if it was fair.
Unsurprisingly, most of the flagged/dead content is a sort of toilet humor, or some memespeak interjections devoid of content at all. Some messages are interesting, but they are few and far between. (I enjoy reading dead/flagged stuff nevertheless.)
There exist forums which moderate messages in a way that the inconvenient/wrongthink/irrelevant/taboo/spam content disappears along with all the replies, as if it never appeared there. I doubt you'd want it quite like that.
Downvoting is a form of free speech too. You have the freedom to say what you like, but there’s no obligation on anyone else to listen to it or like it, or publish and distribute it.
You're conflating downvoting with flagging. Enough flagging + default reader settings on HN = distributed ability to censor HN stories/comments. Of course this is all by design - the moderators have been clear that they're not optimizing for freedom of speech, but rather interesting discussions.
And that's their right. Freedom of speech is not a requirement for a platform, it mainly means you won't be arrested and punished for things you say. And if you do, that's where the ACLU steps in.
However, in any community where the down vote is used for mere disagreement, there is no room for dissenting opinions. An open discourse requires that people are willing to listen to those whom they disagree with. Down voting liberally is counter to that principle.
I disagree. Downvoting for disagreement is a way of saving time in the discussion from reading lower value comments. To much low value content can mask more thoughtful discussion.
Just because I don't agree with someone's perspective, doesn't inherently make it low value or not thoughtful. I find I often learn much from people I disagree with, even if their argument didn't change my mind.
No the disagreement doesn’t make it inherently make it low value, and I personally don’t downvote purely for disagreement, but for disagreement with argument methods wether I agree with the positions or not.
People forget that Hacker News is explicitly not a forum for free speech or open discourse. It's a forum for curated speech, sometimes aggressively curated, preferring fewer comments of higher quality over more comments of lower quality, even at the cost of open discourse.
It gets on my nerves too but that's Chinatown, as it were.
I don’t see how the message is anti-white. The claim seems to be that “free speech” has become something of a dog whistle. It’s certainly true where I am, and as a supporter of free speech I dislike the association!
If 'free speech' is a 'dog whistle' what would be a viable alternative to get the same ideal, without falling afoul of a shift in the 'dog whistle' goalpost?
It’s not as simple as that. You need to look at when someone comes out in support of free speech. Do they only use it as way to defend people who they support (for other reasons) and never in support of people they disagree with?
I think many a BLM protester was violently repressed even as most of the were peaceful and well within excercise their free speech rights.
For both the 1/6 protesters and BLM protesters there were some subgroup that destroyed property and exceeded what many would consider reasonable speech boundaries - but that is something where it make take some time to fully understand how it plays out individually in legal cases.
Devil's Advocate: If I could trade quality UBI for some restrictions on speech I'd probably take the deal. The ability to tell a bad employer to go fuck himself/herself without the threat of homelessness, decent healthcare without bankruptcy, or a guarantee of affordable housing, is worth far more to me than the ability to spew racist or conspiratorial crap on forums, for example.
Same. I was turned off by the “my way or the highway” mentality on trans issues shown in their Twitter. Failure to defend 2A rights, now that NRA is clearly not principled in any way (maybe it never was), also bothered me.
It is hard to imagine them defending an anti-trans person in 2021. As despicable as those people are, they still have civil rights. As a gay man, I would have been despicable for most of the past 100+ years, but the ACLU would have defended me anyway. That version of the ACLU no longer exists.
Reading through their Twitter again just now, it is clear they have gone off the rails.
> As a gay man, I would have been despicable for most of the past 100+ years, but the ACLU would have defended me anyway. That version of the ACLU no longer exists.
This precise thing is why it's baffling that people can suggest cancel culture is only something to complain about if you've done / said something wrong. What is considered wrong does not always age well. Sometimes we ourselves are the baddies.
Well, that was in the past. Mistakes were made. But now, with modern theories and Science, we, The Warriors of Light, have finally figured out what's right, once and for all. So we can throw out the caution and the epistemic humility to the wind and go punch the baddies. Doesn't it feel good?!
>people ... suggest cancel culture is only something to complain about if you've done / said something wrong
This is an oversimplification. What you might be extrapolating from is the common sentiment that complaining about cancel culture is not substantive in cases where an individual appears to have done something wrong enough to justify the consequences. Yes, "wrong enough" is of varying subjectivity in each case, but focusing on "cancel culture" as some kind of monolithic evil instead of focusing on the details of each case is a very common source of noise, and so is commonly criticized, and that criticism may be what you're accumulating into "cancel culture is only something to complain about if you've done / said something wrong".
The whole concept of cancel culture seems to just be used as a way to silence legitimate criticism of others as far as I can see. I'm sure it meant something at one point, but now it's just silly.
Cancel culture is not responding to an argument with counter-argument. Cancel culture is responding to an argument with an effort to personally destroy whoever dared to voice that argument, exclude them from the discussion and silence them. That's why it is "cancel" culture and not "debate" culture - you're not supposed to criticize somebody, you're supposed to end ("cancel") their presence in the society. In older, harsher, times, this was done by literally murdering people, but we have, thankfully, evolved past that. Now it's done by removing these people from their jobs, blocking their social media accounts, preventing them (sometimes by violent action) from speaking on any public forum and attacking (again, sometimes violently) of anybody who dares to give them support and comfort. Much more civilized!
> In older, harsher, times, this was done by literally murdering people,
In past times, nonviolent forms of 'cancelling' that would seem familiar to us today were also employed. It was/is called 'shunning.' Our modern term is just a euphemism for that.
This looks like a semantic/identity disagreement. What you call cancel culture is the most extreme minority of cases of what I call cancel culture. It's common to serve one's biases by using a well heard label to refer only to the cases in some ideological context that are "doing it right", or, on the opposite end, to refer to the worst version of cases in that ideological context. Hopefully we're both trying not to fall toward the edges.
When you are not killing people quickly in accidents, you are killing them slowly with particulate pollution. And if that's not enough, you are also making a big contribution to global warming, an existential threat to our civilisation. It is unconscionable!
This is what people will say in the future anyway. You can make your own mind up.
Discriminating who you’d like to be in a relationship with based on physical characteristics? It’s already somewhat controversial to reject a potential partner based on race, and I suspect things like height or weight might be considered petty attributes to judge people by in the future.
I don't have an answer to the practical problems, don't know how they'll do it, but I'm completely convinced future societies (think centuries) will look back at prisons with the same disgust and bewilderment we reserve for things like slavery.
I doubt it on pets. Cats serve the valuable social purpose of keeping mice in check, which reduces disease and limits damage to property. That the domestication of cats has persisted for so long is a testament to its antifragility. I could side with you on more exotic pets, however.
Besides home schooling children are already being "trained" by professionals while the parents both work full time. I don't see where the benefit of fully separating children from their parents would come from.
Human animal relationships I can't see being approved, for one how could you ensure consent from a dog or other animal. Robots definitely, it's already happening. Robot brothels/sex dolls are already here.
I can't see the last happening unless we become some sort of Handmaid's Tale religious dystopia which I think is very unlikely with the growing trend to secularism.
> Raising children at home. In the near future an idea will arise that trained professionals will be better to train children as they grow up and parents would provide more value to society if they continued to work and not had to spend time with their children.
Separating parents from their children is an idea from the recent past; no need to invoke the near future. It was a policy element of various communist societies including Israeli kibbutzim.
It is staggeringly, tremendously unpopular. There is no need to fear it taking off.
Since we're going down this road of wild guessing for the future ... marriage will probably evolve a lot by then with more legal bindings or stop making sense for most people entirely. Maybe a renewal clause will become standard and every X months, the parties opt in to keep it going.
Trans politics was going okay until they took the lions share of BLM donations that was raised on the death of cisgendered straight black men. There are people that are unhappy with this distribution being called anti-trans and it’s kinda insane.
NRA never was, they wrote or substantially contributed to most of the Gun Laws we have today, they comprised the 2nd amendment way in never ending trail of "reasonable gun control" [1]
GOA and SAF (Second Amendment Foundation) are far far better when it comes to actual legal challenges to laws that infringe the 2nd Amendment
At this point, I think the NRA exists only to act as a foil for gun control groups. I have donated to both of the groups you mentioned as I think that they're both lightyears ahead of the NRA when it comes to actually doing anything.
Probably for stupid reasons, but a legitimate reason for downvoting you would be because that is no such thing as a gun which is illegal[0]; that's the whole point of the second amendment.
That's a very extreme interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, that it outlaws all limits on civilian weapons ownership except those which also apply to the military. Even among gun rights activists, few would go as far as you are going here.
The 2nd Amendment was originally only meant to apply to the federal government. Its original authors were happy for state and local government to regulate private firearms ownership, they just didn't want the federal government to be able to do it. At the time, various state and local laws existed restricting gun ownership, and the authors of the 2nd Amendment had no intention to disturb those laws. So they were a long way off the kind of gun rights absolutism that your views represent.
It was only in the 1920s that the US Supreme Court began to interpret the 14th Amendment to mean that the Bill of Rights applied to the states, an interpretation that the original authors of the 14th Amendment likely did not envision or intend. And it didn't apply that interpretation to the 2nd Amendment until 2010. It still hasn't to the 3rd or 7th Amendments, nor parts of the 5th or 6th.
> that it outlaws all limits on civilian weapons ownership except those which also apply to the military.
Yes, that is the point; to ensure that militias independent of the national government have force parity with the professional military.
(Although strictly speaking I'm talking about the underlying human right that it enforces, not the second amendment per se. Just like the right to free speech isn't actually contingent on the specific wording or intent of the first amendment.)
> Even among gun rights activists, few would go as far as you are going here.
Thanks, I guess? Though that's more a condemnation of most gun rights activists.
> Yes, that is the point; to ensure that militias independent of the national government have force parity with the professional military.
But what about the professional militaries of the state governments? (Which still exist on paper in every state, and in practice too in 22 of them; the "state defense forces"). The 2nd Amendment's intention was certainly not to give militias force parity with the professional militaries of the state governments. The point was to reserve the regulation of militias, and civilian weapon ownership more generally, to the states, not to put them beyond government regulation altogether. The very phrase with which the 2nd Amendment began, "A well regulated Militia", presumed the continuing power of the state governments to regulate militias, and hence also regulate (and even restrict) private firearms ownership.
> (Although strictly speaking I'm talking about the underlying human right that it enforces, not the second amendment per se.
I don't think the 2nd Amendment was ever intended to enforce a universal human right. That's reading back into it something in which you believe but in which the authors of the text itself by and large did not.
There is no evidence that the majority of its authors and ratifiers shared your belief in a universal human right to gun ownership; very many of them had no problem with state and local laws limiting gun ownership, and the original intention of the text they enacted was solely to keep the federal government out of the matter.
I meant having a controlled substance while also having a gun is illegal. I did not mean to suggest the gun was illegal. That was poor wording on my part.
The ACLU has never defended or supported Hellerian 2A rights (https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment), and its not clear that they should change their position due to a shift in SC precedent, anymore than that they should shift their position on speech if the SC decided to revert to Schenck.
Once they came out after Heller and stated they still believed it was a collective right, I knew my relationship with them was over.
ACLU (and others) cite it as a 5-4 decision but even the dissenters on the case believed it was an individual right, they just still thought it could be regulated / scrutinized. In that sense the individual right won 9-0.
The collective right never made any sense in the first place, not a single other amendment in the bill of rights is viewed as a "collective right" so why in the hell would this lone amendment be a "collective right"
Further what the hell does a "collective right" even look like in the first place....
the ACLU hates guns, does not believe anyone outside the government should have guns, the "collective right" was just their cover so they did not have to admit they only stood for some of the constitution not all of it
//EDIT: Mods have rate limited me, so in response to comment below allow me to add
I guess I should have implicitly stated Constitutional Rights, and more specifically Bill of Rights in the context.
On top of that, that is still not a "collective right", that is more of a Balance of rights, You have a right to your property, I have a right to my property, if your actions (aka polluting ) damage my property then you have directly harmed my individual rights and are thus liable
An example of this would be the fact that I have the right to swing my arms, but if I swing my arms in a manner that hits another person I have violated their bodily rights not to be injured by me. No one would claim that is a "collective right", no here we are balancing individual rights, their right to not be injured trumps my right to swing my arms in the physical space they occupy at that moment
> Further what the hell does a "collective right" even look like in the first place....
I'll give a non-gun example - you buy a piece of property near the headway of an important river. You have an individual right to improve the property, and really use it any way you want. HOWEVER - the people who live downstream of you ALSO have a collective right to use the river, which puts a limit on your individual rights. You can't dump pollutants or trash in the river, nor can you divert the waterway. You have an individual right to use your own property, but your neighbors (depending on the issue, this may be local or global) have a collective right not to suffer damage or externalities from that use.
In the context of the gun discussion, the collective rights people believe that gun ownership is intended to defend the neighborhood, not for individual self-defense.
Riparian rights vary state by state, and can be attached to a piece of property and defended by the legacy of the property.
I am no expert in water rights at all, but this seems to be a pretty clumsy example.
I do get that you are trying to give an example of the "tragedy of the commons", but you are comparing civil liberties which while not ensconced as "inalienable rights", are supposed to be applied equally and non-revocable.
Almost every tragedy of the commons example I can think of is subject to government just doing its job and coming up with the best compromise (once they even realize it is a problem). In many cases what seems best for everyone today may change in the future.
How would you even apply this collective right to any other amendment from the Bill of Rights? Only give a fair trial if an entire community is arrested? Only stop unfair search and seizure if its for an entire town?
Do they? That would imply a model where the neighborhood watch is free (encouraged, even!) to own guns. My sense is that the collective rights people believe the police should be allowed to own guns, but certainly not local volunteers.
The design purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect the people from government impositions. Do you think that people who wrote it, with that purpose in their minds, were worried that the State would ban their own State Police from carrying firearms, and that's what they should prevent? How would that even look like - the Government will issue an edict that no Government employee is allowed to carry firearms, even in law enforcement, but the Courts would come in and say - no-no-no, your police has the right to bear arms! So you must have the armed police, whether you want it or not!
This sounds completely contrary to what in practice every government on Earth does. Of course the State can arm their agents, if they want to - you don't need to specially mention it as a fundamental right, as you don't need to specially mention they are allowed to breathe or eat - that's how it always happens. What doesn't always happen and needs special protection - is the right of the citizens which are not government agents, and thus the government - which always has a lot of armed people in their employ - can easily walk all over them. To mitigate it somewhat was the exact purpose of the Bill of Rights.
The overriding concern of the constitution is that the federal government not tromp all over the rights of the States. It would not be reasonable for the constitution to have provisions to secure the right of the federal government to arm its police, but it does seem reasonable to me to have provisions to ensure that the federal government does not interfere with the right of the several States to arm their police.
However, multiple states specify in their constitutions who comprises their militias. In Virginia, for example, it is "composed of the body of the people." In Illinois, "The State militia consists of all able-bodied persons
residing in the State except those exempted by law." Given such constitutional provisions, it seems unreasonable to think that police were in view when speaking of a "well-regulated militia."
The policing and military functions were, because large permanent standing forces for internal and external security which would inevitably become closed societies with interests divergent from the public were the threat the 2A was to protect against, by providing an alternative that would make them unnecessary.
At the time of the constitution most policing was done by a local sheriff that was elected and did not really have a "dept", the sheriff would enlist local volunteers if there needed to be a police action that required more than him and a single deputy.
For this reason the ability to local community members to be armed was required as they needed to defend themselves as well as the local community when called upon by the sheriff.
I'm not sure why you replied to me, but to be more clear:
I'm saying that the second-amendment-means-collective-rights people are not concerned with what the second amendment said or with what it was meant to do. I am saying that their concern is preventing people from having guns, and their criteria for making an argument are, first, can this argument be used to prevent people from having guns, and, second, can it be connected -- however tenuously -- to the raw text of the second amendment. The goal is repeal-through-motivated-interpretation.
The term "well regulated" in the second amendment means something like "in good working order". (Compare the sense of the word "order" as "command", which is a similar development.) This is very clear if you read the contemporaneous discussion, which often substitutes synonyms. The idea is that you can call for a force from the militia and they will show up, already possessing weapons that they already know how to use.
(Another thing you'll learn immediately by reading that discussion is that one of the primary purposes of the second amendment was to prevent the United States from having a standing army...)
I don't think collectivists in general think that individuals shouldn't be allowed to own guns, but that ownership can be well regulated, in the sense that gun owners should be required to show some level of knowledge and such before purchasing a firearm (that is, ownership can be licensed[0], as opposed to carrying).
Further, its not at all clear to me that carrying permits have anything to do with the constitutional amendment. The discussion at the time and the amendment itself refer to national defense, both from external and internal threats to the nation, not "bring a gun with me to the store" (concealed/open carry), which I think is what makes many people uncomfortable.
Many other countries have regulations of this form, that you have to purchase safety equipment and the government can audit you to ensure that you are safely storing your firearms. This gets people concerned about the government seizing your guns, but I don't think those concerns are realistic (assume the gov decides to do that one day, does having a national gun registry and your gun in a safe make things look any different than the police going door to door with a swat team and searching the house)? I don't think it does.
[0]: Eventually. this would take a generation or two
> The term "well regulated" in the second amendment means something like "in good working order".
I'm sorry, but this is just laughable on the face of it. You see, I'm French (as hinted by the mis-autocorrect of "too"), and "regulated" (well, "régulé") means the same in contemporary French as in contemporary English. And the meaning comes straight from Latin (regula: rule, law), probably by way of 1066 like most legal terms.
The notion that "regulate" means anything but regulate IN A LEGAL DOCUMENT of all places is thus ridiculous. Or at the very least utterly implausible. But maybe you're right; I can't fail to notice you don't provide any proof for this improbable claim.
> Another thing you'll learn immediately by reading that discussion is that one of the primary purposes of the second amendment was to prevent the United States from having a standing army...
Another unsubstantiated claim, and just as improbable on the face of it. In any case nothing in that wording even hints at that.
What do you think you're saying? The fact that a word has the same meaning in contemporary French that it does in contemporary English is not relevant to whether it had another meaning in the English of three hundred years ago.
> I can't fail to notice you don't provide any proof for this improbable claim.
> Another unsubstantiated claim, and just as improbable on the face of it.
I'm not responsible for the failures of your knowledge. These claims are both quite obvious, if -- as I specified above -- you take the time to read the things that this set of people said and wrote at the time.
> The irregular and disjointed State of the Militia of this province, makes it necessary for me to inform you, that unless a Law is passed by your Legislature to reduce them to some order, and oblige them to turn out in a different Manner from what they have hitherto done, we shall bring very few into the Feild, and even those few, will render little or no Service.
> your first object should be a well regulated Militia Law. The people, put under good Officers, would behave in quite another manner, and not only render real Service as Soldiers, but would protect, instead of distressing the Inhabitants.
> The means of national defence should rest in the body of the people. A well organized militia is the only safe bulwark of a free people, competent on all occasions to repel invasion and suppress insurrection. Standing armies are not only expensive but dangerous to the liberties of the state. In republics every citizen should be a soldier.
Note that this is not at all an unexpected meaning for the word "regulated" to have. "Regulation" as in command is related to "rule" as in rulership. "Regulation" as in correct operation is related to "rule" as in the straight line drawn by a... "ruler".
> What do you think you're saying? The fact that a word has the same meaning in contemporary French that it does in contemporary English is not relevant to whether it had another meaning in the English of three hundred years ago.
It had that meaning a thousand years ago. Nah, 2000 years ago ("regula"). You're saying that it meant something for a millennium, started meaning something else, and then went back to the original meaning -- all in good time to support your opinion. How convenient. And without any evidence. The rest of what you quote supports my interpretation, not yours, which is just weird.
> You're saying that it meant something for a millennium, started meaning something else, and then went back to the original meaning -- all in good time to support your opinion. How convenient.
No, you're the one making claims about the meaning in 1066. What I'm saying is that the meaning of the word that originated in the 17th century ( https://www.etymonline.com/word/regulate ) had not, by the 18th century, fully displaced the earlier meaning. That the displacement is complete today is meaningless.
You link says the word entered the English language in 1620, with that very meaning. Do you understand how citing references work? You're supposed to link to resources supporting your interpretation. Hope this helped.
That link traces the word to the early 15th century. It says that the meaning "to govern by restriction" dates back to the 1620s, which is the early 17th century.
But I wouldn't conclude that there was a 200-odd year period during which the word was in use, but had no meaning.
I held them up for years and years as an example of an actually principled organization in an age where every other institution was compromising their stated beliefs in favor of genuflection to fashionable slogans. Like you, I stopped doing this a few years ago : (
To their relative credit, they do seem to be struggling with it in a way that very few other orgs are, and you occasionally see them take principled action.
Thanks for the tip! I'm going to follow suit, and replace my donations.
I feel there's merit to a singleness-of-purpose within an organization, and ACLU's attempt to juggle "12 or 15 different values" detracts from its effectiveness.
"We defend civil liberties and rights guaranteed to each individual, including freedom of speech and expression, equal protection under the law, and the right to personal privacy."
I know a lot of faculty who have been attacked or even fired for "left wing" research and FIRE hasn't spread a peep. Heck, I know people who've been put on blast by Hannity and received death threats from strangers and had their students call them slurs in legally protected channels just because the kids know they can. Silence from FIRE.
Can you please provide examples where you think fire should have stepped in?
Universities are hardly right-wing institutions that fire academics for left-wing research, quite to the contrary "academics" too often engage in indoctrination instead of teaching students to engage a subject to mastery. We are at such a bad point that even harvard is so stooped in dialectic that it argue 2+2 is not always 4, something an elementary kid knows is bullshit.
It'd reveal my identity. More broadly, these faculty members include researchers who work in:
* climate science (death threats, widespread media attacks, attempts from politicians to cancel grants)
* digital privacy (death threats)
* history of policing (death threats, attacks from Hannity, attacks from the Hoover institute trying to prevent her thesis from being accepted)
* history of women in medieval europe (see below)
* US civil war history (attacks from state politicians)
The most extreme case is the person who does history of women in medieval europe. Organized groups of students take her class and are clearly trained in precisely the places where they can write hate speech specifically focused at her but also just general hate speech against women but have privacy laws make it impossible for them to actually be associated with their writing. This is a tactic designed to get her to slip up and breach some sort of privacy protection, upon which time they immediately bring legal action. I'll let you guess whether FIRE is protecting her in the legal action.
Universities are hardly right-wing institutions, true. But that doesn't mean that FIRE is a bipartisan institution.
If you want a nationally recognized example, go check out what is going on at UNC Chapel Hill now.
How would FIRE defend these people from these things. Death threats are already illegal, and a police issue. The rest of what you are describing sounds like things that are protected by the first amendment rights of those people / groups who disagree with the conclusions of the researchers.
You don't think people having their careers threatened for their research is the sort of thing FIRE would have in their wheelhouse if it were a conservative?
I am not sure how I am supposed to get your identity from you providing a few published examples.
The UNC Chapel Hill case is a bad example as Nikole Hannah-Jones engaged in divisive political activism in her role instead of academic rigor and is the brains behind major indoctrination efforts such as the 1619 project. Someone like her that teach students what to think instead of how should not get tenure, and does not meet the academic rigor to teach.
Calls for academic freedom has been used to subvert university resources from academic pursuits to political activism. This was never the intention behind protections of academic freedom and is a corruption of the academic pursuit.
> major indoctrination efforts such as the 1619 project
You may believe the 1619 Project is a "major indoctrination effort" and that it lacks "academic rigor", but that's not established fact at all. Many people think highly of it and of her work - including her potential UNC professional colleagues, who wanted her there in a tenured job at an excellent university. It does represent a point of view that disagrees with established ones, but that's almost the point of academic research: Find where established beliefs are flawed. Especially on sensitive topics, that may result in an angry reaction and division; that shouldn't stop people from publishing, and that's what tenure protects.
Nothing about the conservative response to the 1619 Project seems distinguished from that kind of reaction, or from the reactionary response to most attempts to address racism.
> Someone like her that teach students what to think instead of how should not get tenure, and does not meet the academic rigor to teach.
What basis do you have for saying she teaches in that manner? All professors have their own research, their own point of view, and they teach it. If you've taken a liberal arts college class, you will recall that you are expected to be able to handle that and think critically about it.
> Calls for academic freedom has been used to subvert university resources from academic pursuits to political activism.
What distinguishes those things? Who decides? Just because it has happened at some time in some place, is that evidence that it's happening now? Should we eliminate all academic freedom?
> You may believe the 1619 Project is a "major indoctrination effort" and that it lacks "academic rigor", but that's not established fact at all. Many people think highly of it and of her work - including her potential UNC professional colleagues, who wanted her there in a tenured job at an excellent university. It does represent a point of view that disagrees with established ones, but that's almost the point of academic research: Find where established beliefs are flawed. Especially on sensitive topics, that may result in an angry reaction and division; that shouldn't stop people from publishing, and that's what tenure protects.
If the intention of the 1619 Project was merely to use rigorous historical methods to expand the purview of the historical record in accordance with the useful-sounding aspects of truthful claims that have been suppressed, as some insist, it would be a valuable, if not necessary, contribution.
However, the goal the 1619 Project is not, and never was, to improve our historical understanding. Rather, its goal was always to perpetrate a critical historiography that muddles and besmirches it (i.e. problematize). This it seeks to achieve by calling into doubt the American metanarrative and establishing alongside it, if not in place of it, the critical race Theoretical metanarrative instead: that the United States is indelibly racist and has been since its origins. This includes undermining trust in the liberal ideas of individualism and human universality, wherein people are judged by the contents of their character and recognized for their common humanity, and forwarding identity-group thinking that is more useful for (radical) identity politics.
The fact that so many professors at UNC shares a critical consciousness is a sign of how far gone that university is from its original liberal vision of truth-finding in favor of identity politics.
> What distinguishes those things? Who decides? Just because it has happened at some time in some place, is that evidence that it's happening now? Should we eliminate all academic freedom?
If an academic is engaging in critical consciousness, basically creating meta-narratives to further a radical political activist goal instead of truth-finding, it should be treated the same as an academic that mainly teaches baptism of Christianity in history class and produce a revisionist meta-narrative to further baptism. Such a person would not receive academic freedom protections.
> the goal the 1619 Project is not, and never was, to improve our historical understanding. Rather, its goal was always to perpetrate a critical historiography that muddles and besmirches it (i.e. problematize).
Can you support that assertion? I got the sense of your position before; my question is, what makes it true?
Practically speaking, the idea behind the 1619 project is to make it impossible to think of the American Revolution or Founding without also thinking of slavery and a tendentiously, unnecessarily exaggerated notion of its significance both then and ever since, up to the present moment (where critical race Theorists say it, in effect, is still going on in many respects). This is achieved by forcing everyone who encounters the 1619 Project into a polarizing debate that isn’t interested in truth or falsity but instead which side of the politics of “oppression” and “liberation from oppression” one is willing to take.
As critical theories are self-critical only in accepting critiques from critical theories (all other criticism is deemed an application of hegemonic power), it is not possible to defeat a critical theory with matters of facts. They can only be problematized more severely, which, while it defeats the specific critical theory, ultimately replaces it with a stronger critical theory. The most obvious way to undermine the 1619 Project in specific, then, is not to argue about matters of historical fact around the events of 1619, 1776, 1863, or any such period; it’s to point out that it erases the earlier and more severe suffering of American indigenous people who were genuinely enslaved and subjected to genocide by the Spanish starting almost a century earlier.
Again, it is not the matter of fact here that will overturn the 1619 Project (as being, itself, problematic). It is specifically that the 1619 Project did harm to indigenous peoples by erasing their allegedly earlier and more consequential suffering (Again, because it’s so difficult to remember about critical theories, truth and falsity do not matter in these analyses; it just has to be forwarded forcefully enough while appealing to the lived experience of suffering of subjugated indigenous people).
Critical theory projects like the 1619 project is therefore not a tool to improve our historical understanding, and is inherently in conflict with the liberal projects ways of finding truth.
You asked:
> Can you support that assertion? I got the sense of your position before; my question is, what makes it true?
I disagree for the reasons below that
> Well that is a convenient formulation for someone who disagrees and has no facts
Your question is inherently about how the claim of truth is made in the type of dialectic the 1619 project use. I showed you how critical theory projects like the 1619 project makes a claim and deals with truthiness. I made it specific to this project and how it inherently makes unfalsifiable claims as it builds upon “lived experiences” of convenient political activist utility.
I even showed you an example of how you overturn a claim in critical theory projects, with an example relevant to the 1619 project. This example makes it very clear how different this type of academic dialectic is from the liberal project.
As an example, you talk about people's motives; what evidence do you have of these motives? What evidence do you have for your claims that it is 'critical race theory' and for your characterizations of it?
At this point, the claims above are only words from a random person on the Internet. If we want to talk about truth and criticism, such claims are notoriously very weak.
IME, the focus by some political groups on 'critical race theory' is the same old rhetorical tactic of attacking the messenger and changing the subject from the issue:
In this case, the issue issue is racism in America's founding. You openly say you won't address the evidence, which seems to match that pattern.
You can as well as me google to see the myriad of critical social justice conferences and events she has contributed to. She is quite productive.
You can also see her calls for the critical social justice DEI solution when she calls for racial equity (as in redistribution based upon identity politics traits - not equality), inclusion (as in critical social justice activists of all identities must be given a platform with no critique by viewpoint opponents - not openness to different values being expressed) and calls for diverse voices to be heard (as in political activist voices with a critical consciousness - not viewpoint opponents).
Having a critical consciousness is about the process I described above, I never claimed I had to know what she felt. Deconstructing her words and going down the endless rabbit hole of claiming a “it quacks like a duck and walks like duck, it has ducklings, although it’s not necessarily a duck” then that might work on someone else, but not on me.
I think the burden to support your claims is on you. Readers can't check the evidence for every comment. It's more efficient too - you already know your argument and what you've seen, and you do it once rather than every reader duplicating effort.
Sorry, but with no evidence it's not meaningful to me - there is so much dis- and mis-information on the Internet that I think people are insane to trust it. Note that I did spend the time to ask you, because you seem to have thought it through. Nothing personal.
> I never claimed I had to know what she felt.
You did make claims about the project's motivations and about hers as a teacher (and maybe more - I don't remember).
> Deconstructing her words and going down the endless rabbit hole of claiming a “it quacks like a duck and walks like duck, it has ducklings, although it’s not necessarily a duck” then that might work on someone else, but not on me.
Maybe assume some good faith; nobody is trying to make something work on you. For the reasons I said above, I simply can't trust what I read on the Internet; I need evidence. Trusting people's claims on the Internet is a cliche for foolishness these days, and we know it does incredible harm in our world. I know you don't want to write a dissertation on HN, but maybe link to someone with credibility who already has.
> I think the burden to support your claims is on you. Readers can't check the evidence for every comment. It's more efficient too - you already know your argument and what you've seen, and you do it once rather than every reader duplicating effort.
She is the creator of one of the biggest critical social justice anti-racist projects, the 1619 project, which is the strongest argument I can think of that she is an adherent of and an important figure in that ideology.
With that as an established fact then in the context of a traditionally liberal creed organization like the ACLU or a liberal University, its relevant to detail how that ideology is in conflict with liberalism and why it is reasonable that a top ideologue of critical social justice is not given stewardship of a liberal position.
> Maybe assume some good faith;
When you question if the creator of one of the biggest critical social justice projects is a critical social justice adherent I think its fair to question if you are arguing in good faith.
Teachers are employees, and freedom of speech has never been recognized in that context. For example, it would be kind of ridiculous if a science teacher was allowed to teach students flat earth theory because of freedom of speech. Outside of the classroom, which was the subject of the comment above, obviously it would be covered by the 1st amendment.
> Teachers are employees, and freedom of speech has never been recognized in that context.
In college, it certainly has and is recognized. Tenure, in particular, is at least partly designed to protect professors' ability to research and speak, free of censorship or influence.
> In college, it certainly has and is recognized. Tenure, in particular, is at least partly designed to protect professors' ability to research and speak, free of censorship or influence.
It is true that tenure is there to protect professors engaging in the liberal project on unpopular topics. However, many do not pass the bar to receive tenure.
Nikole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 project is not engaging in the liberal project tenure seek to protect. I've said elsewhere in this thread that the goal the 1619 Project is not, and never was, to improve our historical understanding. Rather, its goal was always to perpetrate a critical historiography that muddles and besmirches it (i.e. problematize). This includes undermining trust in the liberal ideas of individualism and human universality, wherein people are judged by the contents of their character and recognized for their common humanity, and forwarding identity-group thinking that is more useful for (radical) identity politics.
She is therefore in direct opposition to the liberal mission of the universities, and she does not deserve to receive tenure protection to continue subverting resources intended to further the university liberal mission to what is useful for (radical) identity politics. Protecting the universities liberal environment agains activists like her is a necessary precondition for continuing the liberal project.
The problem with the kind of critical theory dialectic Nicole Hannah-Jones use is how the claim of truth is made. I showed you how critical theory projects like the 1619 project makes a claim and deals with truthiness. I made it specific to this project and how it inherently makes unfalsifiable claims as it builds upon “lived experiences” of convenient political activist utility.
I even showed you an example of how you overturn a claim in critical theory projects, with an example relevant to the 1619 project. This example makes it very clear how different this type of academic dialectic is from the liberal project.
Universities are traditionally stewards of the liberal project, although unfortunately at this points it’s been corrupted to further the Hegelian religion of critical social justice.
Considering that we are here talking about one of the biggest and most famous anti-racist critical social justice projects, you are again not arguing in good faith.
Are you are a critical social justice adherent and subscribe to its anti-racist (which means being a racist) doctrine? If so I think you should declare that.
If you share this ideology we do not share values as I believe in the liberal doctrine of truth seeking and believe skin color is not informative of anything but melanin level, which both are in direct opposition to this faith/ideology.
She is free to continue doing activism and even continue her indoctrination efforts, she just can't expect to subvert university resources under tenure to achieve her activist goals. Note however that she was still offered an untenured position.
The importance of the point that her 1619 Project is not a serious attempt at historical understanding but a project within critical race Theory is beyond calculability. This is because the standard approach to challenging the 1619 Project’s bogus claims and attempts to roll itself out into our society and educational system is to challenge its historical legitimacy, and this is unfortunately a necessary part of engaging with it. The trouble is, because the 1619 Project neither is history nor claims to be history, this necessary activity is ultimately severely limited in its purposed utility.
Letting political activism like this into the universities therefore makes it harder to continue the Universitys original mission of continuing the liberal project of real knowledge seeking and research. Not everyone is fit for research and teaching, and you do have to protect the liberal system from efforts such as this for them to remain centers of knowledge production and truth seeking.
FIRE issued a statement about investigating UNC chapel hill. Do you have any information that NHJ approached them to represent her in a lawsuit and was turned down?
Your other examples are pretty vague but if they are secret enough that you can’t link to them, why would you expect FIRE to have learned of them? Is this inside information you have about the professor reaching out to FIRE and being turned down?
The civil liberties background of Harvey Silverglate, one of the founders of FIRE, is quite interesting. Apparently he used to be with the ACLU until they switched direction.
Type FIRE into wikipedia and you get a list of 13 choices. One of those 13 matches the context of this conversation: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties organization in the US
Perhaps, but then YOU are not doing it the service it deserves by simply slapping it in there and not providing any context.
This is the problem with the whole "DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH" retort that lots of political arguments deteriorate into. If YOU have already done said research, and you have an informed opinion from said research, then you should share it directly in the conversation at hand.
Not only do you avoid looking like a jerk by trying to end a conversation with "look it up" or something similar; you are also able to potentially be the reason someone changes their mind on the subject because you evangelized something that you believe in instead of leaving them potentially thinking "People who like FIRE must be jerks."
> Not only do you avoid looking like a jerk by trying to end a conversation with "look it up" or something similar
What on Earth are you talking about? Your whole comment is in reference to rebuffing a request for more details with "look it up". _Nobody here is doing that_. The original comment mentioned FIRE without describing it; presumably you don't think every mention of an organization must come with an executive summary? The response then whined about how the previous comment left them with an ungoogleable dead-end. My comment simply said that, with context, it was far from ungoogleable (and thus the aggressive tone towards the parent comment wasn't warranted). The reason I personally didn't provide more information is that I myself am not that familiar with FIRE, certainly not to the extent that I'd be able to summarize why they're an adequate substitute for the ACLU.
> you evangelized something that you believe in instead of leaving them potentially thinking "People who like FIRE must be jerks
This and the rest of your comment is a perfect example of the decay of discourse behind things like the ACLU's troubles. Instead of trying to understand what they read, people like you are desperate to pattern-match to some imagined ill and then mistake your hysterical emotional response for moral reasoning.
ACLU has been subverted by political correctness, mob mentality of internet, and the do-gooder activists. ACLU is a perfect example on how we ended up in the through the looking glass world.
That's not what I get from reading it. You could give that a try.
Here's an interesting bit:
> The A.C.L.U. of Virginia argued that this violated the free speech rights of the far-right groups and won, preserving the right for the group to parade downtown. With too few police officers who reacted too passively, the demonstration turned ugly and violent; in addition to fistfights, the far right loosed anti-Semitic and racist chants and a right-wing demonstrator plowed his car into counterprotesters, killing a woman. Dozens were injured in the tumult.
> Revulsion swelled within the A.C.L.U., and many assailed its executive director, Anthony Romero, and legal director, Mr. Cole, as privileged and clueless. The A.C.L.U. unfurled new guidelines that suggested lawyers should balance taking a free speech case representing right-wing groups whose “values are contrary to our values” against the potential such a case might give “offense to marginalized groups.”
That's not political correctness, that's ideals colliding head-on with the grim reality. The real world isn't a Disney movie, and doing the "right thing" doesn't magically make everything work out positively.
So the Virginia ACLU defended the freedom of speech of Nazis, and the Nazis did what Nazis do and ran over people they didn't like, killing a woman. At that point a lot of people started asking themselves "Are we really being a positive influence?". And a conflict began.
I see this as a conflict between deontology and consequentialism. Deontology says "free speech was defended, the outcome doesn't matter. Let's keep going". But it turns out that deontology isn't that great of a fit for the real world, because people do care about consequences very intensely. Few have the iron-clad nerve needed to say "an innocent died as the consequence of my/my group's actions, and nevertheless I wouldn't change a thing".
I think the major difference now vs the 70s is that news spread far wider, and consequences are communicated far better and more viscerally.
> At that point a lot of people started asking themselves "Are we really being a positive influence?". And a conflict began.
Those people were clearly in the wrong though. After all, why join a civil liberties union if your support for said liberties is conditional on your whims?
No principle is beyond question. How can you be in the wrong for wanting to discuss the value of maintaining a position? Particularly in the face of such tragic circumstances.
Unwavering, unconditional support for an idea - any idea - seems like it could result in a bad time.
Personally, I'm not sure where I sit on this one, and I think there's a valuable, good-faith discussion to be had on whether free speech as we see it today, is actually a net good or not. It's an inherently complex question worthy of debate.
That's because it's a lot easier to be principled in the abstract, than when it blows up in your face.
Pre-Brexit, there were a lot of people that really wanted sovereignty.
Post-Brexit, it turns out that sovereignty didn't make a lot of those people happy, because it got in the way of their employment or business, and it turns out you can't eat sovereignty.
Same thing happened here. It's a lot easier to defend a despicable person's right to hold a protest when they're powerless. But when people start dying that gets a lot harder to justify.
> But when people start dying that gets a lot harder to justify.
Only for those who were unprincipled in the first place. Those who approach civil liberties from a point of subjective right vs wrong are doomed to failure - the moment a case comes up that clashes with their own viewpoints, they will abandon the liberties they claimed to defend. On the other hand, those who approach civil liberties as a matter of principle face no such dilemma.
> On the other hand, those who approach civil liberties as a matter of principle face no such dilemma.
...until they remember that there are that there is more than one civil liberty, and more than one person who has civil liberties, and that sometimes one person exercising a particular civil liberty can prevent or conflict with another person exercising a different civil liberty.
Once you are dealing with a society bigger and more complicated than Gilligan's Island, you cannot escape these dilemmas.
I don't see why that would be a dilemma for the civil-liberties-as-a-principle group. One can support the legal rights of both parties with opposing views. For example historically, the ACLU has defended both the NRA and the victims of policies that were funded by the NRA.
This isn't how most people actually work. Most of us see principles as a means to an end, even if we don't say so, or initially don't admit it.
It's kind of a fairy tale of the kind Disney sells you: if you do the right thing, everything works out for the best. We like that idea because simplicity is appealing, but the real world is complicated and conflicts with such nice notions.
In Disney movies when you do the right thing, it saves the world in the end.
In the real world when you do the right thing, sometimes all you achieve is nazis running over a crowd, and you end up with a crisis of conscience and not much to show for it.
> This isn't how most people actually work. Most of us see principles as a means to an end, even if we don't say so, or initially don't admit it.
I agree completely. This is exactly the reason why I believe most ACLU staff are thoroughly unqualified for the job. Defending civil liberties as a matter of principle is not something most people can do. That's perfectly fine. What annoys me is the hypocrisy of it. Don't believe in civil liberties for all? Fine, just don't pretend you do.
The way I read that is that the pragmatic bit is the true reason, deep down.
Most of us aren't pure-logic Kantian robots. We have a goal in mind that's beyond simply being logically consistent. When we form an organization that sometimes defends the Nazis, we're not doing it because our only motivation is that some rights are absolutely inviolable no matter what. We do it for mostly pragmatic reasons, such as the one you've outlined. If the Nazis get a fair trial, then that helps ensure that we also do. If we make too bad of a law to use against the Nazis, we could end up as victims of it some day. Defending the Nazis is ultimately a means to the end of achieving a good society for us to live in.
That's why whenever the true end of doing such things starts being endangered, principles start faltering.
All principles are rooted in that kind of pragmatism, starting with thou shalt not kill.
And it's valuable. Barely a year after getting people fired for takes was popularized during BLM, we see the cannon turned on journalists who wrote a pro-palestine essay in college. Nobody could have predicted it.
Your point about Brexit is totally wrong. Support for it hasn't changed much since before the vote: it still has majority support, and nobody ever claimed you could "eat" sovereignty but seeing as nobody in the UK is starving due to Brexit that's just a totally irrelevant soundbite isn't it?
Nothing the ACLU ever did blew up in their face. People haven't "started dying" because of the rights they defended. Instead they just got taken over by people who are immersed in your worldview and willing to parasitize and destroy any organization they can get their hands on in a belief that people should be ruled by hard-left "experts", who will make them "happy", even if they don't seem to realize it or agree.
> I see this as a conflict between deontology and consequentialism. Deontology says "free speech was defended, the outcome doesn't matter. Let's keep going". But it turns out that deontology isn't that great of a fit for the real world, because people do care about consequences very intensely. Few have the iron-clad nerve needed to say "an innocent died as the consequence of my/my group's actions, and nevertheless I wouldn't change a thing".
I see this all the time in the so-called "paradox of tolerance", which is of course only a paradox if you assume a consequentialist framework as unstated background assumption.
Personally, I feel asking people to make personal consequentialist decisions gives them far too much leeway to bring personal bias in, so I'm in favor of deontological freedom of speech - on consequentialist grounds.
> I see this all the time in the so-called "paradox of tolerance", which is of course only a paradox if you assume a consequentialist framework as unstated background assumption.
Everyone is consequentialist in some measure. It's in human nature.
In the end, we all want to be happy and to enjoy life, and to be proud of our work, and as a result we care when things get in the way of that.
You can see plenty evidence of this in modern times. Eg, to pick something a bit less dramatic, Brexit didn't work out so well for a lot of fishermen that supported it, and it's not hard to find news of them being very upset by this and demanding change. It turns out having sovereignty doesn't make one all that happy when it threatens one's own livelihood.
All of this. When the reality is that a political movement will operate in bad faith and intentionally, aggressively exploit any such ideological fulcrum as a weakness in a coordinated way, clinging to deontology makes you a knowing ally… which means you have taken sides.
I can see why this discussion's turned ugly, but it can't NOT be ugly. None of this is hypothetical. It's blown up because the aforementioned Nazis worked out that they could compel the ACLU to effectively become a Nazi ally and devote their forces to the cause of terrorism. Under the ground rules of what the ACLU is, if properly managed, the organization can be used to clear the way for violence and actions that are not on brand for the ACLU, and not what it thinks of as 'civil liberty'.
This is a clever sort of meta-gaming thing, but it's also an obvious existential crisis for the ACLU to the extent that the ACLU cares at all about terrorism. I think there's an assumption that we can define some things with a bright line never to be infringed upon, and that there will never be exploits to undermine our assumptions.
And I mean, that's not even true for mathematical proof, much less free-speech liberalism.
> clinging to deontology makes you a knowing ally… which means you have taken sides
Nope. It becomes a side-taking issue when sides are taken in a self-directed manner, rather than indiscriminate support. eg When the UN medics treat warlord soldiers after they have been left behind, the UN has not "taken sides".
Please don't take HN further into ideological flamewar. Even in this thread, your comment stands out as a noticeable step in that direction, and we're trying to go the opposite way here. What to do instead: (1) turn down boilerplate rhetoric and name-calling; (2) turn up relevant details and pertinent specific information.
One idea is that the generational change is like all generational political changes:
Unsatisfied with the world they've inherited, as they should be, the next generation wants revolution, not reform. They want to tear down the old system and build something new. They see the results of the old system and have little respect for its jaded, corrupt defenders.
The older people decry it, saying that the revolution is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, that reform is the best approach. The new movement responds that reform hasn't worked.
I think both sides have a point; the problem is winner-take-all outcomes for either side: Revolution does destroy, often more than it creates, and I think the principles of free speech must be preserved. But if you are satisfied with the old system, you are living a privileged life under a rock: Tens of millions or more in the U.S. alone are denied their rights, denied life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The old system has not delivered on its promises; reform has not delivered. And the new movement is right that older people are corrupt and jaded: I've seen myself that many of my peers, people who used to be honest and open, have aged to fit that description; it's worse than the younger people think.
What is this ‘revolution’ revolting against? All I see is a violent astroturfed corporate-funded government-supported mob demanding more wealth and freedom to be taken from the average individual, and given to the already most powerful. It doesn’t look like a revolution to me; it looks like the same old parasitism moving from host equilibrium to final harvest.
If we talk about revolution we could take a look at the French one and see how things can turn up. I see a lot of parallels in terms of terms/narrative: privilege, virtue, reactionaries.
I wish I'd taken a photo of the "survey" they sent me the other day.
I've managed to get junk mail from both sides of the political spectrum now, which has been interesting (the conservative groups have had me on their mailing list forever, and I think a subscription to Harpers got me on the liberal groups).
Unfortunately, other than the issues involved, I can't really tell a big difference between fundraising styles. "Assume the reader is an idiot and send surveys with the most leading questions you've ever heard of, then ask for money." Usually, they say "Please send us $15 to process the survey, and your best gift."
The questions are absolutely, loaded, leading questions that would be laughed out of any courtroom or actual attempt at a statistically accurate survey. They're things like "Do you agree that racial injustice and white supremacy is the most important issue facing America today?" and "Do you agree that widespread, unchecked illegal immigration is on a path to destroy the nation we love?"
One group actually has survey stickers you respond with - "Yes, illegal immigration is a huge concern!" and "No, I'm a global elitist who supports illegal aliens voting in our elections and overthrowing our Democracy." Or something of the sort.
I guess it works or they wouldn't do it, but it's absolutely insane how these "surveys" are worded. I'm sure all they do is look for a check on the inside instead of "processing" them.
Oh, and just in case you're a drooling moron who doesn't know how to read a letter, the attached letter highlighting the supposed problems will reliably include at the bottom of the pages, "Over!" "Next page please!" "Flip over to continue reading!" and other insulting directions that more or less imply I don't know how to read a multi-page document. Since it's apparently against federal law to leave whitespace in such a fundraising request, they fill the last page with "PS: This is an URGENT issue that requires your rushed donation to STOP THEM from DOING EVIL THINGS." "PPS: Please rush your donation back!" "PPSS: I'm still going to put stuff here so there's no whitespace."
But I do tend to respond in long form, usually expanding on answers, and often include 2-3 typed pages in response when the survey lacks nuance. I doubt it ever gets read, but it's good practice for being able to expand on issues.
In any case, the ACLU isn't getting my money. Neither is the Heritage Foundation, and neither are any other groups that send me these "surveys" where the only important question is "But how much can you afford to give?"
That’s because the primary purpose of such a poll is not to gather data, but to influence opinion. It’s called a push poll: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll
That makes a ton more sense - thanks! I hadn't realized there was a specific term for it. New terms to use when writing my long form responses to whoever might read them...
It's particularly disheartening to get a letter like this from the office of a politician that you actually admire. Often it's not a fake survey, but rather an appeal to "fight voter suppression" (for the US left) or "defend our borders" (for the US right). Always ending by asking for money, of course. I wonder if the politicians are even aware their staffs are sending out spam mail like that, and making them seem like hucksters.
> just in case you're a drooling moron who doesn't know how to read a letter, the attached letter highlighting the supposed problems will reliably include at the bottom of the pages, "Over!" "Next page please!" "Flip over to continue reading!" and other insulting directions that more or less imply I don't know how to read a multi-page document.
I haven't drooled in a while, but I do actually appreciate those kinds of hints.
I agree with everything else you said though. It's hard to imagine that debasing the very concept of surveys will be a net positive for democracy.
I think they dream these things up more while drinking claws.
But it's very, very consistent. The "Outrage you so you give us money" letters in these surveys don't leave any whitespace on the last page.
On the other hand, there are some groups I support who will send something along the lines of a 10 page, single sided, properly written letter (no random *BOLD* italic and the ever-popular "ink pen looking circles to draw your attention to the outrage of the day") explaining in competent written English what they've been doing, where they'd like to expand, and what they need to accomplish this. I'm far, far more likely to support those groups (though I generally just give locally, I've less interest in what's going on in Washington than in our local town and region).
Can confirm, I get surveys like this from all sides and they all use the same sort of push polls. During election season, they'll call you and give you surveys like this too, sometimes.
It's not ACLU's identity crisis, it's the Left's identity crisis. Civil rights are checks on government and institutional powers. When the left gained a massive institutional power and a lot of governmental power, it turned out it doesn't really like this power to be checked and challenged. It's one thing to fight for the free speech of people who are maybe abhorrent, but ultimately their speech won't change much, it's another thing when the speech is by your political rival, the fate of the power distribution in the nation depends on it, and you have all the tools to shut it down. It is hard to resist the temptation, and the Left didn't even try to resist it for long - in fact, they embraced it. Turns out, the hard question question wasn't "can you defend the Nazi's free speech", but "can you defend the Republican's free speech, if it could cost your favorite candidate the election?". Looks like the major part of the Left decided the right answer is "no", and winning is more important that preserving the liberties. After all, if the good guys are in power, who needs their powers to be checked? Only the bad guys.
no offense but since when was rights based discourse ever the focus of the left? The left's self-declared purpose is advancing material interests of ordinary and marginalized people, using collective institutions like the state to make that happen.
It seems like you're complaining about the fact that the left is not conservative at heart, which is odd. It's not exactly some sort of hidden agenda that the point of the left is to win elections and wield executive power rather than obstructing the government and focusing solely on individual rights.
> no offense but since when was rights based discourse ever the focus of the left
I am old enough to remember times where at least some individual rights - speech, association, honest elections, equality in the eyes of the law for all people regardless of their identity, due process - were the causes that most of the left would support. There were people on the left that genuinely supported Civil Rights movement because they believed all people should have equal rights. Now equality is offensive for them, and so are due process, free speech and other values their previous generation wrote on their banners.
and I don't think that's even been sidelined to the degree that people argue (as the article points out the ACLU did take up numerous free speech issues including the NRA or even Trump's social media ban), but one thing ought to be recognized I think.
There is a big difference however between the traditional old American left largely coming out of an academic, fairly elite milieu, and the much more diverse left today.
For people like Chomsky who used to defend the right to Holocaust denial say, it's a very abstract, intellectual debate. For a lot of Asian working class people, proliferation of hate-speech is a very real threat today. I don't think this tension is new either. Even during the civil rights era, there were marked differences between black activists (or even militant groups) and the public left-wing intellectuals.
Equality is not offensive and a left-wing value but today it is more obvious that there is a tension between formal equality in front of the law and genuine equality in the real world. And because there is now more voices in politics, the left is changing.And so is the right by the way, whose elite values are very, very far removed from the ordinary voter.
ACLU is just beginning its transformation. If I were asked 10 years ago "would ACLU take a free speech case?" I'd say "duh, it's ACLU, of course they would!". Now it's more like "depends on whose case it is and what Twitter thinks about it". What would happen in 10-15 years, when the old guard has retired? Who knows.
> For a lot of Asian working class people, proliferation of hate-speech is a very real threat today.
Anti-Asian hate speech has the history over a century long, at least, in America - sad, but true. It's not a new thing. And for all those years, Asian community managed to achieve huge success and become very prosperous, in fact so much that now the woke higher education institutions discriminate against this community (as they did against Jewish community years ago) - because they are too successful and make their formalistic "diversity" goals harder to achieve! Clearly, abandoning the ideals of the free speech is not necessary for the community to succeed, even in the presence of haters.
> there is a tension between formal equality in front of the law and genuine equality in the real world
No, there's no tension. Of course, the former does not guarantee the latter - it's only a necessary condition, but never a sufficient one. There's much more that a society needs to achieve equality of opportunity - if it's at all possible, and it will never achieve the equality of outcomes, of course. But the paradoxical conclusion the new left is making from this - completely common in human affairs - difference between the ideal and the worldly practice falling short of it - that the ideal has to be abandoned completely, since our inability to achieve it - even witnessing the huge progress that has been achieved - means it's a false ideal.
Even worse is that to replace this ideal, the old and tired ideas of racial division, segregation, racial hate and unequal treatment depending on skin color and ethnic identity, are unearthed, dusted off, and paraded as some kind of solution for inequality. Not only it could never work - forced inequality can't lead to equality - it is morally repugnant, and will cost us as a society a lot to drive those ghosts of the past back underground where they belong.
Some form of appeal to the rights of the individual is the cry of every political minority until it seizes power.
Some of the group's members might actually be pluralist civil libertarians at heart.
But this news demonstrates that the vast majority are not. They were authoritarians in libertarians' clothing, and today's political environment is woke enough for them to swap out their duds.
I don't think your conclusion that the majority of the left has adopted that position is founded, but I agree that this is a very interesting tension that you've perfectly described.
It's easy to be principled when it doesn't matter. To anyone who didn't live through it, the Nazis are an ancient demon that feels as relevant as Darth Vader or the Devil. What do I care if 4chan wants to name a soda "Hitler did nothing wrong" for the lols?
It's a lot harder when you perceive the speech that your principles would have you save to be a tangible threat to your safety. If some on the left (rightly or wrongly) see e.g. unmoderated alt-right social media activity as a risk factor for something bigger than 1/6, there would be an inherent tension between principles and pragmatism.
I'd be interested in seeing evidence as to whether the left has trended toward a particular side, but it's a shame that this has to become an issue in the first place.
We already had something massively - orders of magnitude - bigger than 1/6. In fact, it is happening right to this day - riots in Minneapolis and Portland continue right now, and have been happening all through 2020. The economic harm is in billions, the victim counts is raising steadily, and that before we account for the huge spike in crime - including murders - that happened in the last year in many major cities.
Yet somehow it's not a "tangible threat to safety" while a bunch of wackos fantasizing on the internet how Trump is about to be revealed as the Messiah is. Sorry, it's very hard to treat such "safety" concerns as genuine while keeping ignoring the real safety threats. It's more like a pampered $100K-per-year college student cries that she feels "unsafe" going to their college campus because somewhere there on campus there is a professor who once said something that puts him slightly on the right of AOC. It's not what people mean by "safety", it's weaponizing "safety" for political reasons.
Liberalism and Identity Politics never really sorted out their relationship, and it turns out the latter won Twitter (and created excellent foot-holds for bad-actors doing information "warfare" now everyone has social media welded directly to their brains.)
Edit: A reply would be nice if down voting. The examples the first subject in the article uses are implicitly comparing liberty of speech to protected/disenfranchised classes or characteristics of people, and how ACLU seems to have changed disposition here. That's my point. My use of Identity Politics is not baiting -- it's a well studied topic in the social sciences.
I would say that those who sign up to be part of the ACLU should know that they will inevitably have to defend the rights of people they find repugnant. As much as I don't like Nazis, I surely don't want the government to have the power to enact what they would if they were in power (censorship, genocide, etc). So having the ACLU being an aggressive opponent to the government's overreach on civil liberties is fine. I just wish more folks would recognize this.
Free speech is the only “right” that matters. Thoughtcrime should not be allowed to be prosecuted, mob lynching is not justice. But if the ACLU is compromised maybe it is too late.
There are laws regulating speech in some way or form regarding: Directly inciting violence. Threats. Various advertising and commerce standards. Specific details on how to carry out crimes. Publishing or modifying copyrighted works without permission. Photographing your ballot. Obscenity. Child pornography. Non-consensual pornography of adults. Laws enabling time and place restrictions with protests. Libel. Trade secrets. Invasion of privacy. Sedition. Various laws restricting things tending to fraud. Various national security laws. Regulations on the content of over-the-air broadcasters. Regulation and restriction of political advertising. Laws against foreign propaganda.
And probably some other things. A holistic theory for what should or shouldn't be covered has always escaped me.
That gives rise to the fair question of, 'is free speech the only law that exists?' To what extent do all other considerations go by the wayside in order to draw a bright line sanctioning ALL possible expressions of ideas in speech, by definition rendering them immune from any sort of judgement or consequence?
I think there's a fair amount of existing law that's made rather ridiculous by this position. In particular, the whole notion of conspiracy goes out the window when it's by definition not possible to share in responsibility for an act by persuasion. I'm not even sure it's possible to extort: if you can plausibly say you will wreak mayhem on a person for failing to comply, and you do so, and they comply rather than get mayhem wrought upon them, you've got what you want but you have never done more than speak. Your actions have never once crossed the line. The fact that your speech functioned as plausible threats is irrelevant: it was always and only speech, because nobody called you on it.
The right-wing angle of most of most of these comments, while not surprising considering the article, belies the fact that the right has a similar free speech problem to the left. In fact, the left response has been partially motivated by opposition to a notably authoritarian former president and his willing allies. Where is any discussion of things such as:
- Anti-BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) statues being written into state and local law in jurisdictions all over the country.
- Efforts to legally sanction corporations that exercise their free speech rights in opposition to certain political issues, such as repealing MLBs antitrust protection for moving the All-star game from Georgia.
- Even if there are not legal efforts, widespread outrage at similar exercises of free speech, such as the rights holders of Dr. Seuss books voluntarily deciding to discontinue publication of a small subset of his not-very popular books.
- Anti-protest bills that in some cases essentially decriminalize violent opposition to the free speech rights of people you may not agree with. (1)
- The Trump White House banning left-of-center media from attending certain events (2), and overall making numerous statements aiming to paint media they don't agree with as fake, lying, etc.
I can readily admit the left has a free speech problem, but this problem is in no way unique to the left.
I don't understand why you would join the ACLU if you don't actually support the first ammendment and the stances the ACLU has taken? Seriously. Why? Its like joining a bowling league and complaining that you want to play soccer.
It is fairly common... Join an organization/group/fandom that is popular/powerful, complain about the causes/people/beliefs of the organization/group/fandom in order to force a change in the organization, exile any with in the organization/group/fandom that disagree with you...
When those you exile move to a new organization/group/fandom either attempt to shut that down before it grows, or if grows to become powerful Join an organization/group/fandom that is popular/powerful, and complain ....
Its got a huge endowment and a strong brand that can be subverted into fighting for progressive causes instead of what it used to do. It's woke 101 playbook.
Basecamp and coinbase showed that you either choose to have zero tolerance of politics in the workplace, or the woke will make you spend as many resources as possible on political activism instead of whatever you used to do. A dynamic that has been so toxic to work dynamics and productivity that even a woke company like Basecamp had to course-correct.
The organizations that have chosen to forbid political activism at work have lost employees that prioritize this over work, but those that remained have gotten back to work with fewer distractions and its arguable that loosing people that prioritize activism at work over the company vision is a net positive.
What does the term “woke” mean in this comment? You use it like it has a specific set of definitions I should know, but it mostly looks like a catch-all for any uncomfortable positions someone would rather not confront.
In brief, “woke” means having awakened to having a particular type of “critical consciousness,” as these are understood within Critical Social Justice. To first approximation, being woke means viewing society through various critical lenses, as defined by various critical theories bent in service of an ideology most people currently call “Social Justice.” That is, being woke means having taken on the worldview of Critical Social Justice, which sees the world only in terms of unjust power dynamics and the need to dismantle problematic systems. That is, it means having adopted Theory and the worldview it conceptualizes.
Under “wokeness,” this awakened consciousness is set particularly with regard to issues of identity, like race, sex, gender, sexuality, and others. The terminology derives from the idea of having been awakened (or, “woke up”) to an awareness of the allegedly systemic nature of racism, sexism, and other oppressive power dynamics and the true nature of privilege, domination, and marginalization in society and understanding the role in dominant discourses in producing and maintaining these structural forces.
Furthermore, being woke carries the imperative to become a social activist with regard to these issues and problems, again, on the terms set by Critical Social Justice. This—especially for white people—is to include a lifelong commitment to an ongoing process of self-reflection, self-criticism, and (progressive) social activism in the name of Theory and Social Justice (see also, antiracism).
Roughly speaking, it generally refers to a combination of progressive political goals with a you're-either-with-us-or-against-us intolerance of anyone who is neutral (or insufficiently supportive) toward those goals. I assume this is more or less what asabjorn meant.
I am not the person you replied to (I am the root commentor). As he's been down voted he won't be able to reply for a while I think.
As it is, I think a good faith reading of his comment would just require woke to mean "people who expect their work to conform to their politics".
I worked at an investment bank recently, they just wanted to make money -> not woke. After that I worked at a brokerage, the CEO announced she wanted more female managers, not just because it would be profitable but for her political beliefs -> woke.
What the ACLU does is inherently political, talking about basecamp and coinbase here doesn’t make much sense to me.
The question facing the ACLU is should they be partisan (fight for the rights of just one side) or merely political (fight for all side’s rights, even the sides that you disagree with).
I would change the framing a little: should they continue to be non-partisan.
And becoming partisan isn't just a way of pushing for the core mission more/less effectively. It means dropping huge chunks of the core mission (rights for anyone you disagree with).
It is relevant because you had an organization with a clear creed and track record to protect the liberal principles even when its inconvenient, that is now subverted into political activism for progressive causes in the same way that similar activism subverted basecamp and coinbase.
They really have struggled lately with free speech, the difference between classical liberalism and modern liberalism (which is "free speech that progressives approve"). I hope they figure it out.
You could write a similar article about a lot of nonprofits, lately. "Once a Developer of Web Browsers, Mozilla Faces an Identity Crisis." "Once a Free Online Encyclopedia, the Wikimedia Foundation Faces an Identity Crisis."
In Sheldon Messinger’s analysis of an old-age pressure group formed in the 1930s, the Townsend organization, he shows how the organization managed to stay alive by transforming its political goal of increased support for the aged through a radical economic plan into social goals of fellowship and card playing and fiscal goals of selling vitamins and patent medicines to its members. The unanticipated consequence of fund-raising techniques based on selling items, rather than political programs, was to turn the organization into a social club. The changing social and political scene also, of course, produced a change in goals. In a somewhat similar vein, Joseph Gusfield shows how the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) had to abandon its attack on drinking per se after prohibition was repealed and change to an attack on middle-class mores and life-styles in general, in order to serve the needs of its members. Mayer Zald outlines how the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) changed from helping poor migrants from the farm or abroad, who found the city a fearsome experience, to providing recreation for middle-class suburban youths. The Christian ethics of the early period, designed to sustain the faith of helpless people, gave way to a bland ethic of the American way of life; the practical help and training changed from information and techniques for survival in the urban jungle to physical culture and recreation for youths and adults with leisure time on their hands. In both cases, the organization survived the environmental changes and found a new mission.
-- Charles Perrow, Complex Organizations (1972, 1979, 1986)
> You could write a similar article about a lot of nonprofits, lately. "Once a Developer of Web Browsers, Mozilla Faces an Identity Crisis." "Once a Free Online Encyclopedia, the Wikimedia Foundation Faces an Identity Crisis."
"Once overtaken by a clique of political activists using it as a the platform to further an agenda unrelated to the org mission's statement, organisation X faces an identity crisis"
This is why tech businesses like Basecamp, Coinbase or Shopify are pushing back against partisanship and political activism in tech.
You could, but then you’d be missing the point, while also highlighting the root problem with organizational changes that directly impact the original stated goal(s).
ADL's stated mission is "To stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all..." It seems like the ADL has legitimate work it can be doing, unless you think Jews and all people are treated fairly. I don't think you're saying that, and I do think you're saying it's not doing the work that it could be doing. Could you say more about that?
"Of the 1,715 victims of anti-religious hate crimes:
60.2 percent were victims of crimes motivated by offenders’ anti-Jewish bias."
Anti-Jewish hate-crimes make up a majority of the anti-religious hate crimes in the US. (You could argue they should be classified as "Racial/ethnicity/ancestry bias" but that's another discussion).
The statistics aren't perfect - not every crime or possible crime is reported to law enforcement, and not every law enforcement agency in the US shares hate crime information with the federal government. A recent law changed that so it's required instead of optional, so likely more will be doing so in the future.
I think you’re referring to BDS and anti-BDS laws. Is that right? Are you referring to something else in addition to those?
Do anti-BDS laws mean the ADL has an identity crisis? Or they should be having one? They seem related to their mission.
I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not an expert in the first amendment, its case law, or anti-BDS laws. You might be right that some or all anti-BDS laws violate some first amendment right in some way. I don’t know which analogy is the right one to apply to anti-BDS laws, something different legal scholars and lawyers argue about. It seems like reasonable people can disagree about what is constitutional and what is not here. Maybe the supreme court will rule on it specifically, and even then it might still be the case that reasonable people can disagree.
The ADL has opposed the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. If you wouldn't take a Holocaust-denying organization seriously, you shouldn't take the ADL seriously.
It has, but it quite clearly recognizes it as genocide currently.
"So, let me be crystal clear: the first genocide of the 20th century is no different. What happened in the Ottoman Empire to the Armenians beginning in 1915 was genocide. The genocide began with the ruling government arresting and executing several hundred Armenian intellectuals. After that, Armenian families were removed from their homes and sent on death marches. The Armenian people were subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre and starvation.
What happened to the Armenian people was unequivocally genocide.
We believe that remembering and educating about any genocide – Armenian, the Holocaust, Bosnia, Rwanda, and others is a necessary tool to prevent future tragedies."
"In 2007, Abraham Foxman came under criticism for his stance on the Armenian genocide. ADL had previously described it as a "massacre" and an "atrocity", but not as a "genocide".[134] Foxman had earlier opposed calls for the US Government to recognise it as a "genocide".[135]"
The assertion that early 20th century Georgian (American South) police permitted a poor black man to get away with the rape and murder of a young white girl never really made much sense to me in the first place. The ADL seems dodgy from the start. I think the ADL has gotten away with framing Jim Conley.
I think theres probably an interesting full book here examining exactly how and why "cause based" orgs become all end up looking the same once they cross a certain threshold.
Power, influence and money seem to be a magnet for more of itself, so it fundamentally shifts the guiding principal of each org as it grows bigger.
Like why do no-profits and charities seem to corrupt their aim at a greater speed than for profit businesses?
Like why do no-profits and charities seem to corrupt their aim at a greater speed than for profit businesses?
It seems inherent to the different aims of charities and businesses. Nucor Corporation has a nominal lineage from "Nuclear Corporation of America Inc." incorporated in the 1950s. But its actual business has had nothing to do with nuclear technology in 50+ years; it found more success in the steel business. Shareholders aren't mad that the company isn't following its original nuclear technology mission since it found a better business. There's nothing to "corrupt" when a business goes after different markets.
But some donors will be upset if a charity focused on one mission broadens or deviates from its original mission. Some people may also be happy with these sorts of change, of course, but mission changes tend to be more controversial with charities than with for-profit companies.
People of the type needed to run an organization like the ACLU are rare. You need people who are willing to stand on principal even when it makes them unpopular, and who are skilled enough that they could be making a lot of money for themselves in the corporate sector, but are willing to forgo that. The failure mode of this is attention seeking "activist" types, and people who don't have the skills to cut it in the for-profit world. For profit businesses also have a failure mode like this too, where the initial leadership who got there off being innovative and willing to take risks are replaced by boring MBA types who are just there for the paychecks. But in this case, the people taking over are both more in line with the objectives of the organization (to make money) and more competent than the incompetent / activist types who take over non-profits.
I’m not sure they do. Restaurant owners make bad choices, start skimping on food, etc. all the time. The difference is that the customers notice and the restaurants go out of business. But political organizations “produce” nebulous goods which are difficult to value or sometimes even understand. So corrupt civil organizations can continue much longer and a practical business.
The ACLU going “corrupt” is arguably much better business for them since they can more effectively harvest donations from politically engaged partisans on the left - their fundraising has been supercharged since 2016. Right-wing partisans weren’t giving to them much anyway so more closely aligning with a side is all upside from a financial perspective.
Non-profits and charities perform at the behest of the whims of a small number of rich donors instead of needing to get through the reality filter of making a profit in the broad consumer marketplace.
This is because the people that drive those changes are leftists, and as I mentioned above, it is a general shift of the leftist ideology, from liberalism to wokeness. Liberalism requires limiting government intrusion in certain areas, while wokeness - as long as the government is woke - welcomes and requires it. Liberalism prescribes tolerance to diverse points of view, wokeness rejects it - anything that is not wokeness is deemed harmful and should be eradicated.
As much as I like a good political debate I wish HN restrict itself to more tech related articles rather than this. Sometimes tech has some political aspecst or we discuss the politics of certain tech companies, but this has nothing to do with either tech or tech companies, so why is it even here?
I agree. Most of the comments are disappointingly poor and as a result there's little actual critical discussion.
I was really hoping to chime into a fruitful discussion about positive vs negative protection of the first amendment rights. 1A says "... Congress shall make no law ..." but California's Constitution (for example) goes farther to say "Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right". This lead to the fascinating Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins Supreme Court case[0] which surfaced the careful distinction between the two senses of Free Speech and the government's obligation to protect it. Where does an org like ACLU stand on what precisely defines Free Speech, and, the responsibilities of each State, Federal Govt and NGO like itself to protect it?
IANAL, just someone who hoped we'd discuss things a bit more carefully on HN.
Correct me if I'm incorrect but the idea of the hn forum is to discuss and share things which spark curiosity or something along those lines. I believe this article and conversation is incredibly curiosity inspiring. Also if hn was to deviate from that aim I think hn would really cease to be what it is.
Well almost any subject can spark curiosity but there is some understanding that it has to be within the realm of some technological aspects, otherwise we can all go to reddit. I am not saying it is against the rules to put such an article, just that we should be careful not to expand the net too much.
Since the organization doesn't take responsibility for the "consumption of free speech" by its staff under its name on Twitter, perhaps they should use two Twitter accounts - one for uncensored staff tweets and one for official statements that ACLU stands behind.
> One hears markedly less from the A.C.L.U. about free speech nowadays. Its annual reports from 2016 to 2019 highlight its role as a leader in the resistance against President Donald J. Trump. But the words “First Amendment” or “free speech” cannot be found.
I find it incredibly ignorant that this article (or anyone here for that matter) fails to mention the name George Soros. The dude literally did a hostile takeover of the ACLU a few years back in the form of overly-generous donations[1].
The ACLU isn't "facing an identity crisis", it's been strategically taken over to push a divide-and-conquer strategy within America. Notice how everything they do nowadays is focused around heated "us vs them" topics? This isn't a mistake, or a natural byproduct...it's 100% by design. Not really sure what the end-goal is, but the ACLU's current agenda (and most of George Soros funded organizations) is clearly to get everyone in America to hate each other.
If the ACLU sacrifices its principles to earn the approval of the woke authoritarian left, then the people in charge never really had those principles.
This is why I stopped supporting the ACLU and instead support FIRE (https://www.thefire.org/). The ACLU is no longer a civil liberties organization but rather a progressive political organization that only pushes leftist political positions. They used their platform and large funds to betray their original mission and longtime supporters. I’m sad about how far they have fallen but also happy to move on instead of lending them my support.
They phoned me earlier this year and asked for $1500 USD. I asked them why we live in a country where people are starving, exposed, and sick in a country that has a bounty of food, housing, and healthcare. “Liberals are leaving the First Amendment behind,” says a person who probably has all three of those things. Feed people, and then ask for virtues from them.
I know how much food $1500 will buy, or how many months of rent it will cover, or how little of a hospital bill it can handle. How much civil rights can $1500 buy? They didn't know on the phone, but I was genuinely curious.
I agree that free speech is essential -- I imagine that they asked for money because I gave them money in the past. Can you agree that the starving, homeless, and sick might have difficulty exercising their right to free speech even if the ACLU protects it in court?
> “Liberals are leaving the First Amendment behind,”
That's nonsensical. If somebody leaves the First Amendment behind, they are leaving liberalism behind. If you do not support free speech, you simply are not liberal.
If you seek to use governance as a tool to strip citizens of their liberty you are demonstrably un-American. That doesn't stop many politicians from doing so and making it a foundation of their party's ideology.
You are talking text book liberal but I believe the person you are responding to is using liberal to refer to a specific political party, The Democratic Party. Democrats are referred to as liberals or THE liberals in the US.
I honestly think they were compromised from the very beginning, with their mission of "defending every civil right... except the 2nd amendment, we don't like that one."
But they still fought lots of commendable battles, sticking up for people that nobody else would. I think that's what they've lost... they would be scared to stick up for somebody that might get the wrong people upset with them.
It’s probably reasonable for an organization to choose not to conflate the civil liberties they stand for with amendments. In an ideal world the people would happily eliminate or modify laws that do harm, and of the existing US civil liberties, the 2nd amendment is likely the most debatable on whether it is a net win for liberty.
Even the most extreme proponents of the 2nd amendment have examples of it working
The various police forces during the capital seige - in January, remember how that was this year - said they used less force because the participants were armed and knew they could shoot back
Their whole thing is that they will make the state think twice, whereas the peaceful and unarmed protestors get knocked around with no recourse
Without examples, its easy to think they are advocating for actually killing government officials with their guns in order to get their way, but after a year of examples I can at least say I have experienced competing and conflicting ideas in action
> The various police forces during the capital seige - in January, remember how that was this year - said they used less force because the participants were armed and knew they could shoot back
I think this is mostly inaccurate? The Jan 6 protestors/rioters mostly left their guns at home due to fear of D.C.‘s strict gun laws. Even the oathkeepers planned to keep their guns in Virginia and ferry them over by boat only once “called up as militia”.
The Capitol police are used to dealing with protestors and demonstrators and have never opened fire on a crowd with live ammo before. The one time it did look like a rioter (Ashlii Babbit) was going to get too close to members of Congress they used their firearm without hesitation.
The ACLU’s mission isn’t about defending the constitution, plenty of other organizations step up for that. Their scope includes all those liberties which don’t show up on the constitution which is a much larger issue.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as”
Many people just have a problem with word except on that line and so many other places in society. As such the ACLU’s goal is to push for improvements not simply defend the current situation.
I have far from an encyclopedic knowledge of the ACLU and it's history, so I could be wrong. I had thought they have in the past done some 2nd amendment cases, and continue to do so. Their position is less strong, maximalist, whatever you want to call it than some other groups e.g. the NRA. They also don't see the need to focus a lot of resources on those types of cases when other groups do that, and effectively.
My recollection is they distanced themselves from gun rights cases after defending some right-wing group's right to hold an armed protest... at which one of the group members murdered a counter protestor.
Wow crazy! It's almost as if almost every adult American uses a car on a daily basis to support themselves, while an absolutely miniscule amount of Americans need to use a gun even once in their lifetimes.
Given the reference to "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State," the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right."
That's a pretty stupid position, since it's pretty clear the 2nd amendment is saying that it's a right of "the people". The preface is to explain the reason it's a right, that is to form the Militia, which is commonly understood to consist of most able-bodied men.
If individuals aren't allowed to own and practice with weapons normally, then when it's needed the Militia will not be "well-regulated", as in well-armed or trained.
The 2nd amendment is really very important to all civil liberties, since otherwise there is nothing to stop a repressive government from taking control.
Look, you're entitled to interpret the 2nd amendment the way you do, but the fact is that it is a short bit of text and yet it includes the words "a well regulated militia." It's perfectly reasonable to believe those four words are there for a good reason. Gun rights activists choose to ignore those words. If their position deserve any respect, the one that does not ignore them evidently deserves at least as much.
With this new trajectory, they could end up picking up the 2nd amendment by fighting for justice for Breonna Taylor. The NRA seems to have dropped the ball.
Taylor's boyfriend was defending his home against intruders, in line with his second amendment rights. Rather than backing off, the police used this as justification to escalate their attack. "No knock" warrants are fundamentally incompatible with an armed citizenry, and are therefore a 2A issue.
> While the department had received court approval for a “no-knock” entry, the orders were changed before the raid to “knock and announce,” meaning that the police had to identify themselves.
> The officers have said they did announce themselves, but Mr. Walker said he did not hear anything.
Amazing how in 2021, with an abundant of factually checked information available, some HN commenters can use the internet to write a comment, but cannot use the internet to fact check their assertions before posting.
I don't see how that affects my argument. The police still did not make positive contact with the occupants before proceeding with what is effectively a nighttime home invasion. Furthermore after receiving defensive fire, they chose to immediately escalate the situation rather than backing off, setting up a perimeter, and calling for reinforcements. These actions are fundamentally incompatible with armed citizens defending themselves.
I understand that, but Taylor was not accused of anything related to guns. I am not sure why the NRA should get involved with anything related to her. The charges against her boyfriend were dropped so they couldn't defend him if they wanted to. I do think if gun related charges are brought against him again the NRA should defend him.
Taylor was killed because her boyfriend exercised his second amendment rights. There are no charges to contest, because the police on the scene acted as judge, jury, and executioner. That there aren't charges against the extrajudicial killers ("murderers") to be litigated is exactly the problem.
The NRA does plenty of activism that doesn't involve defending people against charges, but for this incident they've been silent. For comparison, here is a statement that was put out by Gun Owners of America: https://www.gunowners.org/goa-speaks-out-after-no-knock-raid... . IMO it doesn't go far enough, condemning the general practice but failing to condemn the specific murderers, but at least they've said something.
I am very much in favor of getting rid of no knock raids. I believe the NRA or other pro gun groups should defend any person who shoots cops who do no knock raids. If we are going to have no knock raids I believe they should be heavily restricted and need approval from the mayor, governor or president (depending on the law enforcement agency).
However, I do not believe a pro gun group should work to get rid of no knock raids. I think a more generalized civil liberty group should work on that. I am very much in favor of NRA working on 2nd amendment cases (and those related like 4th amendment cases where they are taking a person's gun). I am not sure what other activism you are talking about, but if it is not about guns I don't think the NRA should work on it.
> I believe the NRA or other pro gun groups should defend any person who shoots cops who do no knock raids
If Kenneth Walker (Taylor's boyfriend) had been murdered instead, would this not include demanding justice for him? Or if by "defend" you mean only against legal charges, why should the home defender have to win the armed conflict in order to receive support?
> I do not believe a pro gun group should work to get rid of no knock raids
No knock raids are logically incompatible with private ownership of firearms, and the right to self defense in general. They directly follow from assuming a compliant disarmed populace that will suffer attackers until the "authorities" arrive, which is precisely what gun advocates reject. As such, fighting no knock raids is firmly within the scope of gun activism.
> O'Sullivan's First Law: All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing. I cite as supporting evidence the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, and the Episcopal Church.
For free speech to be a reasonable thing to priorise over other things you have to have some more fundamental rules of society in place.
E.g. fighting for free speech during the rise of the nazi party in 1920s Germany might sound like a noble thing, but once the Nazis whos speech you defended are in power they will shoot you at your doorstep for defending that of their enemies.
That doesn't mean you have forbid Nazis from ever speaking (as if this would work), it means you have to make sure your democracy and your institutions are stable enough to survive their first period in government and manage to get a peaceful and fair transfer of power after that (instead of Nazis setting fire to the Reichstag, blaming it on communists, declaring an emergency and never have elections again).
I'd rather loose the right to utter certain inflamatory phrases than loose the right and the possibility to vote the next government out of office in a fair and representative election.
> For free speech to be a reasonable thing to priorise over other things you have to have some more fundamental rules of society in place. E.g. fighting for free speech during the rise of the nazi party in 1920s Germany might sound like a noble thing, but once the Nazis whos speech you defended are in power they will shoot you at your doorstep for defending that of their enemies.
Do you mean the actual summary of what happened in the US over the past 50 years ?
"These Rights were convenient at the time we were a minority, but now, we are in power, they are in the way of our ideal utopia."
> I'd rather loose the right to utter certain inflamatory phrases than loose the right and the possibility to vote the next government out of office in a fair and representative election.
And that's why the 2nd Amendment is protecting the 1st. (and all the subsequent).
> Four years later at the University of Connecticut, two white students ...
> The A.C.L.U. of Connecticut demanded that the university hire 10 Black faculty and staff members
There's not a single word about Citizens United v. FEC (2010) in this article, and how defending the free speech of this organization set them on this downward trajectory.
Citizens United was about banning an organization from publishing a political attack video on Hillary Clinton.
If Citizens United had gone the other way, nothing would stop the government from banning books or social media posts as well. (During oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the government lawyer admitted they believed they could ban books and YouTube videos as well)
Citizens United is frequently misunderstood - the main problem with it is that because restrictions on recognized political party fundraising still remain on the books, political money ends up flooding into third party organizations that are less under control of the institutional party and are more likely to be extreme. Meanwhile political candidates can plausibly deny their connection to the actions of such super PACs. Making the playing field even again by allowing larger or unlimited direct donations to candidates or parties would be the way toward a just but also effective solution.
Freedom of speech is often a euphemism these days for capitalism of megaphones. I actually want to move away from celebrity culture and privately owned platforms, means of distribution, and audiences, and towards platforms based on collaboration, where people have to duke it out and address all serious arguments before the public sees it. It might take slightly longer but our society wouldn't be so divided. Individual people can't all be expected to be experts on climate change, vaccines, 5G and so on.
> ACLU Again Cowardly Abstains From an Online Censorship Controversy: The once-principled group issues P.R.-scripted excuses or engages in obfuscation to avoid taking stances that would offend its liberal donor base.
Strange how no one bats an eye when any other advocacy group defines in their own way their goals or values, but when it’s the ACLU that does it, people lose their minds.
No one cares that the NRA only gives a crap about half of 2A. No one cares that the federalist Society has a very specific view of the judiciary… but when the ACLU defines a cause in their own way, people go nuts with accusations of hypocrisy because it doesn’t line up with their own personal definition of “civil liberties”.
There's no such policy and there are countless counterexamples. I think you may be falling prey to the cognitive bias that causes people to notice and/or emphasize what they dislike much more than what they like. The bad stands out more than the good, pain is more memorable than pleasure, etc. This leads to false feelings of generality. Plenty of past explanation at these links, if you or anyone happens to care:
