Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis

#101

Post by michael1999 » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

CerealFounder wrote: post #17

csande17 wrote: post #4

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."

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…

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.

Re: Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis

#102

Post by UncleMeat » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

asabjorn wrote: post #97

UncleMeat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FIRE is a joke if you care about bipartisanship. 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 e…

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.

Re: Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis

#103

Post by Natsu » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #90

nzrf wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like they just stay out of 2nd amendment… https://www.aclu.org/blog/civil-liberties/mobilization/aclus... As I support their efforts generally. I find picking and choosing seems counter to the what protecting our civil liberties means in a whole.

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's mostly downside for them because a significant fraction of their members are not fans of the 2nd amendment.

The closest I think they've gotten to gun cases is probably this one, which was more of a 4th amendment issue:

https://www.aclu.org/cases/caniglia-v-strom

Re: Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis

#104

Post by Applejinx » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #25

mudil wrote: post #3

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…

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.

Re: Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis

#105

Post by _-david-_ » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

stirfish wrote: post #58

nxc18 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1…

The NRA started as a way to retrain Union soldiers to actually aim their weapons instead of volleying them, as they were no longer using smooth-bored muskets. If that's a principle, they did that. I'm not sure why they became a weird mix of Russians and the KKK.

> I'm not sure why they became a weird mix of Russians and the KKK.

They didn't. The NRA supports the rights of all individuals to own gubs. The KKK supports gun control to stop minorities from owning guns.

Re: Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis

#106

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

happytoexplain wrote: post #85

istorical wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>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,…

[deleted]

Re: Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis

#107

Post by Natsu » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

Syonyk wrote: post #44

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…

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.

Re: Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis

#108

Post by asabjorn » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #96

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.

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.

Re: Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis

#109

Post by 1986 » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

_-david-_ wrote: post #105

stirfish wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NRA started as a way to retrain Union soldiers to actually aim their weapons instead of volleying them, as they were no longer using smooth-bored muskets. If that's a principle, they did that. I'm not sure why they became a weird mix of Russians and the KKK.

> I'm not sure why they became a weird mix of Russians and the KKK. They didn't. The NRA supports the rights of all individuals to own gubs. The KKK supports gun control to stop minorities from owning guns.

Then why was the NRA so silent about Philando Castile?

Re: Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis

#110

Post by ttt0 » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #95

ttt0 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can show dead or flagged posts by turning on showdead in settings.

Wow. It actually works, too. Makes me think of the "Beware of the Leopard" Douglas Adams quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on... Still, it's removed for the vast majority of readers, by design. That's how defaults work, particularly when the settings page is so vague.

You can always vouch for the comment if you think it was flagged unfairly. I think each comment can be "resurrected" only once though.