Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 550 posts

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

#531

Post by wolverine876 »

ponow wrote: post #526
wolverine876 wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The speech utterances are not transgressions of rights; it is the physical actions: assaults, lynchings, unequal imprisonment for identical crimes, etc. So riling up a bunch of people about how "Trump is a Nazi" ought not be a crime, but if someone immediately punched Trump after hearing that speech, then it was that punch that was the crime (violation of right to physical security / life of victim). I'm assuming tha…

My point is that when the general gives the order for the war crime and the soldier carries it out, it's the general who is by far the most responsible, even though all they did was speak. The heads of any organization, from a country to a company to a coven - all they do is talk, but they have the most power and are most responsible. The speech is the most significant, powerful part, not the action (with exceptions). For some crimes, no action is necessary beyond speech.

(I assume you know that speech can certainly be criminal or tortious: Fraud, slander, incitement, harassment, conspiracy, accessory, violating official secrecy, etc. But I don't think that's the issue here.)

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

#532

Post by wolverine876 »

vimacs2 wrote: post #527
wolverine876 wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I agree, but what are you going to do about the civil rights of minorities? The current system isn't working. The problem is that people focus only on free-speech-for-all and ignore the enormous elephant in the room.

Civil rights are not granted from cancelling racists from exposing their hateful views online, it's from taking action against the racist systems and people in power that really impact their rights. This can take the form of both violent and non-violent struggle but the key word is struggle, not just speech or the curtailment of wrong speech.

> the key word is struggle, not just speech or the curtailment of wrong speech

Sure, but speech plays an enormous role, the largest role IMHO.

> taking action against the racist systems and people in power that really impact their rights

What is normalized among the public greatly determines, IMHO, the systems and powerful people. From another perspective: If we just changed the rules and the public didn't change, imagine what would happen. Also, note that people with political causes invest enormous resources in manipulating public opinion.

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

#533

Post by account42 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #509
shitpostbot wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> > 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.

If you insist on grouping and stereotyping people by their race then you are the one that is perpetuating racism.

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

#534

Post by zpeti »

wolverine876 wrote: post #530
zpeti wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> As soon as you make civil rights selective and for only certain people ... We agree (without getting into the weeds of the wording). My point is that the civil rights of marginalized people have long been highly 'selective'. The outrage when some rights of the majority are threatened is ironic, or something. The majority usually doesn't need much help; look around, at successful people in almost every domain: white…

Except you are lumping in all white people as powerful. Which I profoundly disagree with as per my point in the first comment, what about someone who's white but has been generationally poor? It is absolutely ridiculous to call these people powerful or free or having a voice even.

There might be racism in society but that doesn't mean you get to lump all white people together as more powerful than all black people. There are plenty of powerful black people, and plenty of zero power white people. What you are doing is basically race based identification and judgement, aka racism.

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

#535

Post by Qwertious »

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

Q: If someone causes damage to my property by emitting greenhouse gases, am I entitled to defend my property by shooting them?

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

#536

Post by Qwertious »

jl2718 wrote: post #419
dillondoyle wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> speech ... killed I’m not familiar with the incident (save it, don’t care), but I can promise you that no honest coroner has ever given “free speech” as a cause of death.

It's commonly called "stochastic terrorism".

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

#537

Post by Qwertious »

alfl wrote: post #319
devman0 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but there is also the Paradox of Tolerance to contend with where defending certain types of free speech may be undermining support for other civil liberties. I honestly think this rift is just the organization trying to figure out which side of the paradox of tolerance they are on and I don't think there is a single correct answer to it.

The "Paradox of Tolerance" is an example of the slippery slope fallacy.

Nonsense.

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

#538

Post by wolverine876 »

zpeti wrote: post #534
wolverine876 wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As soon as you make civil rights selective and for only certain people ... We agree (without getting into the weeds of the wording). My point is that the civil rights of marginalized people have long been highly 'selective'. The outrage when some rights of the majority are threatened is ironic, or something. The majority usually doesn't need much help; look around, at successful people in almost every domain: white…

Except you are lumping in all white people as powerful. Which I profoundly disagree with as per my point in the first comment, what about someone who's white but has been generationally poor? It is absolutely ridiculous to call these people powerful or free or having a voice even. There might be racism in society but that doesn't mean you get to lump all white people together as more powerful than all black people. T…

> There might be racism in society but that doesn't mean you get to lump all white people together as more powerful than all black people. There are plenty of powerful black people, and plenty of zero power white people. What you are doing is basically race based identification and judgement, aka racism.

I agree factually in some respects, but I think that argument is a distraction. Obviously we must generalize somewhat; we can't write out every detail, and no matter what level of detail we include, someone can point out more that we omit. We could list the status of every individual in the country, but then we would be omitting their histories. On the other hand, generalizing about race is something I think we should be very careful about.

So yes, there are disempowered white people. There are disempowered disabled people and short people and immigrants and poor people, etc. There are disempowered rich white male in SV, for various reasons.

But I strongly disagree in this respect: We are talking about power resulting from skin color (what a concept to write - it's just absurd, but it's true!), not from other things. And all white people are much more powerful than black people in that regard. White people can go anywhere, buy anything, get any job, walk down any street, rent an Airbnb, interact safely with police, all simply by power conveyed by their skin color. It even affects where you can go in cyberspace: Look at popular Tik Tok videos; from what I've seen (not a lot, but compilations on YouTube), 98% white, some Asian and Hispanic, I'd guess 0.1% black. Join a gaming forum and make it known that you are black, and see what happens (based on what I understand).

To catalog everyone else who is disempowered is like talking about every other disease at a cancer conference.

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

#539

Post by wolverine876 »

account42 wrote: post #533
wolverine876 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> > 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. If you insist on grouping and stereotyping people by their race then you are the one that is perpetuating racism.

Again, What do we do about the other civil rights of minorities?. Notice how people talk about everything else. Once you notice this pattern, you will see it everywhere and see it going back generations, which is how the racist status quo continues (whether or not that's the intent of the people talking).

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

#540

Post by wolverine876 »

asabjorn wrote: post #512
wolverine876 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You can as well as me google ...

I think the burden to support your claims is on you. Readers can't check the evidence for every comment. It's more efficient too - you already know your argument and what you've seen, and you do it once rather than every reader duplicating effort.

Sorry, but with no evidence it's not meaningful to me - there is so much dis- and mis-information on the Internet that I think people are insane to trust it. Note that I did spend the time to ask you, because you seem to have thought it through. Nothing personal.

> I never claimed I had to know what she felt.

You did make claims about the project's motivations and about hers as a teacher (and maybe more - I don't remember).

> 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.

Maybe assume some good faith; nobody is trying to make something work on you. For the reasons I said above, I simply can't trust what I read on the Internet; I need evidence. Trusting people's claims on the Internet is a cliche for foolishness these days, and we know it does incredible harm in our world. I know you don't want to write a dissertation on HN, but maybe link to someone with credibility who already has.

Post reply on HN