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

nytimes.com

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

#241

Post by diamond559 »

ipaddr wrote: post #126
IshKebab wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think it's interesting to think what people of today will be cancelled for. My best guesses are eating meat, and doing business with China.

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. Human animal relationships. Animals will gain rights and it will be a natural outcome. Robot phobia, followed by robot acceptance and relationships. Kissing or…

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.

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

#242

Post by beisner »

koheripbal wrote: post #227
whymauri wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

You're missing the issue. They aren't ignoring Free Speech cases. They are actively fighting against them.

Sometimes rights conflict with one another.

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

#243

Post by tomlockwood »

MikeUt wrote: post #221
tomlockwood wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. First step of the free speech agenda: Breathe.

Or maybe they don't have the luxury of ignoring free speech, that others take for granted. Claiming a stance is a result of "luxury" is not the shortcut to win a debate that you imagine it to be.

What is a more basic right:

1) Life

2) Free speech

Which one do you feel precedes the other?

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

#244

Post by himinlomax »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #197
arrosenberg wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

A well regulated militia, perhaps? Tout bad nobody thought of that.

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

#245

Post by [deleted] »

dale_glass wrote: post #232
refenestrator wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're aware, but way back when the ACLU supported Nazis right to march on pragmatic as well as principled grounds. If WE are stopping the BAD GUYS from marching on OUR turf, then what precedent does that set for permitting a civil rights march in Selma?

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…

[deleted]

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

#246

Post by marcusverus »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #99
tpmx wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, now it's flagged so much that it actually is removed. I can only read "[flagged]". I really dislike this particular HN design decision. Reddit handles this case much better.

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.

I enabled showdead and refreshed, but the message above is still displayed as "[flagged]".

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

#247

Post by tomlockwood »

dmitrygr wrote: post #228
tomlockwood wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. First step of the free speech agenda: Breathe.

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…

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.

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

#248

Post by smsm42 »

istorical wrote: post #63
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…

> 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?!

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

#249

Post by refenestrator »

dale_glass wrote: post #232
refenestrator wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're aware, but way back when the ACLU supported Nazis right to march on pragmatic as well as principled grounds. If WE are stopping the BAD GUYS from marching on OUR turf, then what precedent does that set for permitting a civil rights march in Selma?

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…

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.

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

#250

Post by smsm42 »

tomerico wrote: post #225
p1necone wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Note how you have just did exactly what you criticized ( “silence legitimate criticism of others” by dismissing those that called out cancel culture)

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!
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