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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

#501

Post by wolverine876 »

asabjorn wrote: post #449
wolverine876 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 p…

As I said in response elsewhere, these claims really need some support or they are just bytes on the Internet.

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

#502

Post by asabjorn »

wolverine876 wrote: post #500
asabjorn wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 encoun…

I get the idea; what I'm asking is, can you support these claims? More claims are not support for prior claims. > The most obvious way to undermine the 1619 Project in specific, then, is not to argue about matters of historical fact ... Well that is a convenient formulation for someone who disagrees and has no facts.

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.

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

#503

Post by thaumasiotes »

himinlomax wrote: post #443
thaumasiotes wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 or…

> 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.

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

#504

Post by Applejinx »

kbelder wrote: post #478
Applejinx wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a journalist"?

"Journalist". Someone who writes a journal. It's not like the state issues licenses.

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

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

#505

Post by birdyrooster »

sgerenser wrote: post #477
birdyrooster wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Haven’t heard about this. Googling doesn’t unearth anything either. Have any links to details on this?

page 22 of their 2020 impact report https://blacklivesmatter.com/2020-impact-report/

meanwhile families of those who died in 2020 still haven't received help from BLM despite promises https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/breonna-ta... https://www.complex.com/life/michael-browns-father-ferguson-...

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

#506

Post by shitpostbot »

wolverine876 wrote: post #395
simonh wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

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

#507

Post by tekknik »

zaarn wrote: post #470
api wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bullsh…

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 po…

> 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?

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

#508

Post by dang »

jon37 wrote: post #60

I see HN still has a policy of deleting all political content except for political articles whose thesis is "the left is anti-free-speech."

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:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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

#509

Post by wolverine876 »

shitpostbot wrote: post #506
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.

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 li…

> Now that explicit racism is no longer the norm

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.

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

#510

Post by wolverine876 »

asabjorn wrote: post #502
wolverine876 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the idea; what I'm asking is, can you support these claims? More claims are not support for prior claims. > The most obvious way to undermine the 1619 Project in specific, then, is not to argue about matters of historical fact ... Well that is a convenient formulation for someone who disagrees and has no facts.

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 m…

Perhaps we're talking past each other:

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.

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