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

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.

Organisational drift isn't a new thing:

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how the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) had to abandon its attack on drinking per se after prohibition was repealed and change to an attack on middle-class mores and life-styles in general, in order to serve the needs of its members.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)

https://www.worldcat.org/title/complex-organizations-a-criti...

The period described largely spans the first half of the 20th century.

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.

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.

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.