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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

#511

Post by asabjorn »

wolverine876 wrote: post #501
asabjorn wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I guess I also have to repeat here as well then.

The problem with the kind of critical theory dialectic Nicole Hannah-Jones use is how the claim of truth is made. 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.

Universities are traditionally stewards of the liberal project, although unfortunately at this points it’s been corrupted to further the Hegelian religion of critical social justice.

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

#512

Post by asabjorn »

wolverine876 wrote: post #510
asabjorn wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

You can as well as me google to see the myriad of critical social justice conferences and events she has contributed to. She is quite productive. You can also see her calls for the critical social justice DEI solution when she calls for racial equity (as in redistribution based upon identity politics traits - not equality), inclusion (as in critical social justice activists of all identities must be given a platform with no critique by viewpoint opponents - not openness to different values being expressed) and calls for diverse voices to be heard (as in political activist voices with a critical consciousness - not viewpoint opponents).

Having a critical consciousness is about the process I described above, I never claimed I had to know what she felt. Deconstructing her words and going down the endless rabbit hole of claiming a “it quacks like a duck and walks like duck, it has ducklings, although it’s not necessarily a duck” then that might work on someone else, but not on me.

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

#513

Post by himinlomax »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #503
himinlomax wrote: post #443

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. 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 d…

You link says the word entered the English language in 1620, with that very meaning. Do you understand how citing references work? You're supposed to link to resources supporting your interpretation. Hope this helped.

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

#514

Post by thaumasiotes »

himinlomax wrote: post #513
thaumasiotes wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

You link says the word entered the English language in 1620, with that very meaning. Do you understand how citing references work? You're supposed to link to resources supporting your interpretation. Hope this helped.

That link traces the word to the early 15th century. It says that the meaning "to govern by restriction" dates back to the 1620s, which is the early 17th century.

But I wouldn't conclude that there was a 200-odd year period during which the word was in use, but had no meaning.

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

#515

Post by zaarn »

tekknik wrote: post #507
zaarn wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oppressive is that which seeks removes your positive freedoms. Positive freedoms should be fairly uncontroversial, things like freedom of opinion, freedom to bodily autonomy, freedom to seek work, freedom to basic living conditions etc.

To ensure they don't become politicized, any new positive freedom should require a 2/3rds approval by the government (and for the people in the US that means you need to figure out multi-party or this is gonna suck) and removing a positive freedom would require 3/4th approval by the government.

The procedures and laws should be handled and drafted by a separated government branch, which is dedicated to protecting the freedoms granted by the constitution (as well as protecting the constitution of your country itself). They substitute prosecution in case of violations but do have to go through the same courts as everyone else.

To ensure that this doesn't escalate for person-on-person disputes, generally they should only prosecute those who are threatening to oppress or have oppressed a group of people or a person for being part of a group of people under protection from the constitution (like their sex, gender, economic background or skin color).

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

#516

Post by zpeti »

wolverine876 wrote: post #487
zpeti wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As soon as you make civil rights selective and for only certain people, it’s a political view. Either it’s civil rights for everyone or you are taking some sort of political stance. Whether that’s repressing a minority (past) or repressing a majority (current trend), it’s basically treating people unequally and it’s just as bad.

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

#517

Post by simonh »

wolverine876 wrote: post #490
simonh wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not ignoring the many problems marginalised groups face, I am simply addressing the current topic of conversation, free speech. Furthermore the ACLU isn't ignoring them, they have many excellent programs devoted to those issues.

Talking about X doesn't imply ignoring Y, and I object to the blatantly hostile and manipulative language.

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

#518

Post by thu2111 »

dale_glass wrote: post #146
calcifer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At that point a lot of people started asking themselves "Are we really being a positive influence?". And a conflict began. Those people were clearly in the wrong though. After all, why join a civil liberties union if your support for said liberties is conditional on your whims?

That's because it's a lot easier to be principled in the abstract, than when it blows up in your face. Pre-Brexit, there were a lot of people that really wanted sovereignty. Post-Brexit, it turns out that sovereignty didn't make a lot of those people happy, because it got in the way of their employment or business, and it turns out you can't eat sovereignty. Same thing happened here. It's a lot easier to defend a des…

Your point about Brexit is totally wrong. Support for it hasn't changed much since before the vote: it still has majority support, and nobody ever claimed you could "eat" sovereignty but seeing as nobody in the UK is starving due to Brexit that's just a totally irrelevant soundbite isn't it?

Nothing the ACLU ever did blew up in their face. People haven't "started dying" because of the rights they defended. Instead they just got taken over by people who are immersed in your worldview and willing to parasitize and destroy any organization they can get their hands on in a belief that people should be ruled by hard-left "experts", who will make them "happy", even if they don't seem to realize it or agree.

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

#519

Post by norswap »

jseliger wrote: post #2

I was a member for 10 years and stopped renewing a year or two ago, when it seemed to stop putting free speech and expression first.

And so the ACLU gets worse and worse via evaporative cooling of group beliefs.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...

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

#520

Post by tekknik »

zaarn wrote: post #515
tekknik wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Oppressive is that which seeks removes your positive freedoms. Positive freedoms should be fairly uncontroversial, things like freedom of opinion, freedom to bodily autonomy, freedom to seek work, freedom to basic living conditions etc. To ensure they don't become politicized, any new positive freedom should require a 2/3rds approval by the government (and for the people in the US that means you need to figure out mu…

And you think this new gov department won’t become politicized? Whatever affiliation you are, imagine the opposite side running these offices. That is very scary.

Then there’s the question about your so-called “nonpositive rights”. What does this include? What does it take to remove these?

Your vision of the future here is terrifying, and I will personally fight against a truth dictator and the removal of rights with every ounce of my being.

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