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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

#481

Post by throwaway8582 »

dillondoyle wrote: post #349
koheripbal wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which civil right is diminished by someone's offensive speech?

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

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".

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

#482

Post by mindslight »

randompwd wrote: post #464
mindslight wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html : > 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 informa…

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.

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

#483

Post by laverya »

ponow wrote: post #439
peteretep wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

> 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.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

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

#484

Post by WalterBright »

tomlockwood wrote: post #454
WalterBright wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History shows us it does. The people who used to run the ACLU were very well aware of that.

> What's a more fundamental right, life, or speech? Could you help me understand how "history shows us" that this question implies that the loss of free speech can't be a threat to life?

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.

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

#485

Post by wolverine876 »

jl2718 wrote: post #413
wolverine876 wrote: post #397

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 thr…

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.

Very open minded. The GP post describes it.

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

#486

Post by jvanderbot »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #346
hayst4ck wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, direc…

Let's dissect this post: > " 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. Th…

This was a great read and did help me solidify my thinking on the issue. Thanks for adding...

... and sorry HN for polluting the database with ascii when a single upvote would have done fine!

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

#487

Post by wolverine876 »

zpeti wrote: post #425
wolverine876 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

> political views

I'm not talking about political views, but the civil rights of minorities.

Calling civil rights 'political views' is an old, simple tactic of denying people's rights.

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

#488

Post by wolverine876 »

ponow wrote: post #437
wolverine876 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> It's not unambiguously true that freedom-of-speech itself is substantially responsible for anyone's loss of other rights.

It is unambiguously true that speech has caused it. Speech is the source of almost all political activity - guns rarely play a role.

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

#489

Post by dredmorbius »

golergka wrote: post #474
dredmorbius wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_square_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Massacre I really don't think it's quite so cut and dried.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

Thanks for providing your rationale.

I reject it. NAP is an extraordinarily convenient and frequent cover for genocide, and arguably arose from just that basis.

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

#490

Post by wolverine876 »

simonh wrote: post #444
wolverine876 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> We should absolutely act now to ensure their right, including their free speech rights both now and into the future.

Nice to hear, but how do you plan to do it? The rest of your comment ignores the problem, which is what has happened for generations.

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