The ACLU has been the premier organization fighting for free speech since its inception. This transformation is like the staff of the Muscular Dystrophy Association deciding it really ought to put its energy into fighting herpes. There’s nothing wrong with fighting herpes, but if staffers did that they’d be stealing the organization.

It's really more like the staff of an anti AIDs org trying to organize to give as many people AIDs as possible

Well, more like refusing to help certain people suffering from AIDS on the basis that they’re “a net negative” by engaging in behaviors that spread the disease.

"he ACLU has been the premier organization fighting for free speech"

Just b/c the article says it does not make it so. The ACLU has a broad agenda of things they defend. "Civil Liberties" does not just mean speech.

This article is not the first time I’ve ever heard of the ACLU. I read dozens of their cases in law school and attended lectures and conferences they’ve organized. I’m well aware of their history.

It’s true that civil liberties means more than just free speech. They’ve also done very important work in defending the rights of the accused, for example.

What they never were, until the organization was stolen, was a generic left of center organization that advocated whatever happened to be popular among that sector of society regardless of whether or not it had anything to do with civil liberties, or indeed were outright opposed.

There’s always been ideologues that thought that anything and everything else should give way before their moral certainty about everything. It just unfortunate that they’ve destroyed an institution that stood up for specific meta-principles.

Much like they just stay out of 2nd amendment…

https://www.aclu.org/blog/civil-liberties/mobilization/aclus...

As I support their efforts generally. I find picking and choosing seems counter to the what protecting our civil liberties means in a whole.

Theyve said previously that the reason they mostly stay out of the 2nd amendment is that there's already a well funded organization that has made the 2nd their sole focus. The NRA's budget is larger than the ACLUs.. so it makes sense for them to prioritize other constitutional issues.

There's mostly downside for them because a significant fraction of their members are not fans of the 2nd amendment.

The closest I think they've gotten to gun cases is probably this one, which was more of a 4th amendment issue:

https://www.aclu.org/cases/caniglia-v-strom

There have been others. I join in the disappointment at the sad turn the ACLU has taken. But they have been consistent in their opposition to no-fly lists, as an end-run around due process, and have applied the same argument against proposals to create similar no-gun lists. They are right in both cases.

Then there was this case, which was mainly 1st amendment, but with strong 2nd amendment ingredients:

https://lee-phillips.org/aclu2/

Didn't the NRA help form early gun control laws?

Yes but for all practical purposes it's not the same organization anymore.

The NRA is bankrupt and about to be dissolved.

Its not a pick and choose if they fundamentally disagree with the interpretation of the amendment.

It does seem to be the one civil liberty where ACLU people very strongly disagree with each other.

America is a weird outlier in lifting worship of freedom of speech far far beyond where other rich, free countries do, so that’s not all that surprising.

> weird outlier

That's what, despite its flaws, makes the US special.

It is bizzare to advocate for fewer rights.

Increased rights have consequences. Decreased rights have consequences. There are limits on rights everywhere, even the US. I think it's quite rational for people to favour one or another system or limitation.

The first amendment in America protects speech (etc), while freedom of expression in Canada has stricter limits on speech w.r.t. hate speech. I'd argue that Canada's limits are more reasonable. I also accept that rational people could argue the opposite. I trust in the democratic process to deal with these issues.

The limitations on hate speech are something I agree with strongly, and would vote against someone wanting to reduce them. So I guess you'd find my position bizarre.

The issue is who gets to define 'hate' or any other limited category of speech. You might feel that Canada's limits are benevolent, but the existence of such laws codifies the avenue of their corruption. The risk is that such limits grow more and more restrictive until disagreement is unacceptable.

Personally, I'll continue to defend the US model. Speech should have no legal limits, but that doesn't meant it doesn't have civic consequences. Those who disagree are free to do so publicly, repeatedly and loudly.

> 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.

> there’s _plenty_ of legal limits to free speech in the US

Not really? The limits are essentially directly inciting violence, directly threatening, and knowingly aiding someone in the commission of a crime (ie literally coaching someone else on how to break the law). That's not "plenty", that's really the bare minimum (and exactly how it should be, from my perspective at least).

Edit: Crap, just realized I forgot about our ridiculous obscenity limitations. Those shouldn't exist IMO, but to be fair about the only thing that's managed to run afoul of them so far is literal bestiality porn. (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/413/15/) (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/535/234.html)

Right, apart from incitement to violence, words liable to cause breach of the peace, threatening speech, obscenity, defamation, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, campaign financing, speech by government employees, many forms of national security related speech, and instruction on how to make weapons, what speech is banned?!?

Defamation - A famously high bar in the US. It has to be a knowing and intentional falsehood and have caused measurable harm if I understand correctly. That really seems like the absolute minimum of limitations to me if we're going to have a hope of maintaining a functional democracy. (We've got laws against false advertising as well ...)

Campaign financing - Notorious for enjoying minimal regulation in the US relative to other developed countries. Again I'm not sure how else a functional democracy is supposed to be maintained?

Invasion of privacy - I'm a bit fuzzy on this one. Are you referring to things like HIPAA, or to something else? Bear in mind that such regulations only apply to the professionals who are already authorized to view the data. To me it seems similar to the confidentiality you enjoy when talking to an attorney.

I already noted that I disagree with the existence of obscenity restrictions. The other ones you mention (national security, government employees, emotional distress) are fairly nuanced and quite limited as far as I understand. The vast majority of restrictions seem to boil down to the generic idea of knowingly and intentionally working to break some law that isn't itself related to speech.

I just can't seem to get too worked up over such a practical set of restrictions myself. Does it bother you that you can't legally incite a mob, or intentionally teach an aspiring terrorist to manufacture explosives? Or do you just object to my characterization of that as being a minimal set of restrictions? But if that isn't minimal, then what is?

> Defamation - A famously high bar in the US. It has to be a knowing and intentional falsehood

No, it doesn’t. Even the narrow standard applied when a public figure is the subject (“actual malice”) can be satisfied either by the speaker/publisher knowing the material is false or speaking/publishing it with reckless disregard for whether it is true or false.

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 grounds, or such grounds at the very least would severely limit the reach of libel laws.

> 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

> except that strictly necessary to be compatible with other natural rights

Sure, and that’s exactly the basis for it in most rich free countries. You’ll find some social and historic wrinkles, but there’s very little you can’t say in Canada that you can say in America.

The Canadians don’t make a whole dog and pony show over MY FREE SPEECH RIGHTS though, which is why Canadian politics is a little less completely beholden to special interests, why hate speech is illegal there, and why you don’t get direct-to-consumer pharma advertising there.

The non-seriousness of Canadians about free speech is part of the reason I was happy to move to America. I used to defend hate speech laws (as in formal public debate), but in hindsight I was naive about putting the power to define hate speech in a political process. Such laws and their brethren in private organizations that nominally exist to promote public discourse, are used to silence opposition and therefore I find them repellent.

> the existence of such laws codifies the avenue of their corruption

As a practical example, consider China's recent "security" law that allows only "patriots" to run for political office.

For something a bit closer to home, looking at various ToS and codes of conduct reveals how wildly definitions of "hate speech" vary in the US alone.

Sounds like you’re advocating for removal of all laws?

The US Constitution is about guaranteeing rights using laws.

Do they spend any time defending firearm rights? Because it is, after all, the second enumerated right after free speech.

True. We also need to keep soldiers from moving into our homes.

More seriously, the ACLU has always faced an identity crisis and a consequent PR problem.

If the ACLU embraced all civil liberties, wouldn't you expect more Bill-Of-Rights-T-Shirt wearers to be more supportive?

There used to be a grudging respect between the ACLU and the Federalist society. They disagreed on a lot, but not everything by a long shot. I saw ACLU officials speak at Federalist Society events and vice versa. RBG was famously friends with Scalia.

But the current mood is absolutely moral certainty and off the charts self righteousness.

Agreed.

The moral certainty is obnoxious to a comedic level, bordering on tropes of self righteous college students in Che Guevara shirts lecturing about their enlightenment after two semesters at uni.

The goal of the Federalist Society is to replace every single member of the Judiciary with hand-picked candidates that strictly agree with a narrowly-defined canon of legal doctrine.

Their members may be less openly confrontational - more genteel - than some ACLU employees.

But if you think they're any less certain of their morality, or any less self-righteous than those ACLU employees, you're not seeing reality clearly.

You know a 3rd category would ruin the joke (and its power to provide insight and perspective) right?

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.

No, people fixate on free speech because no other right even makes sense if you don't have free expression. It's the foundation for our democratic society.

Eh, countries like Germany seem to have managed OK with banning nazi symbols - it hasn't proven to be a slippery slope leading to a ban on criticising the government, or anything like that.

It didn't work the first time[1]:

> Researching my book, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic. I found that, contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate.

and some are saying it's not working now[2]:

> For the Michalskis, all this was evidence that German society never truly reckoned with anti-Semitism after the war. Germany had restored synagogues and built memorials to the victims of the Holocaust, Wenzel said: “So for a lot of mainstream, middle-class people, that means: ‘We’ve done it. We dealt with anti-Semitism.’ But nobody really dealt with it within the families. The big, the hard, the painful questions were never asked.” In Wenzel’s view, the Muslim students who tormented his child were acting in an environment that was already suffused with native anti-Semitism. “A lot of conservative politicians now say, ‘Oh, the Muslims are importing their anti-Semitism to our wonderful, anti-anti-Semitic culture,’ ” he said. “That’s bull. They’re trying to politicize this.”

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/magazine/anti-semitism-ge...

Germany has strong protections for individual freedoms and privacy in their constitution, precisely to avoid an illiberal government from arising ever again. The Nazi ban is effectively the lone exception to the rule.

This said, European police generally gets away with a degree of prevarication that North Americans would find unconceivable. The US constitution enshrines the rights of individuals over government, in a way that no European country can match (as far as I know).

> This said, European police generally gets away with a degree of prevarication that North Americans would find unconceivable.

Not to be inflammatory, but North American police generally gets away with a degree of murder that Europeans find inconceivable.

Stop the straw man please. No one is going around killing citizens. Something like nine unarmed people per year are killed by US police out of 10 million interactions.

From 2015 to 2020Q1, 753 unarmed people were killed by US police for an average of about 145/year or approximately one every 60 hours / 2.5 days.

Key quote: "The victims were unarmed in 1 in 6 (753;16%) fatal shootings."

https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/fatal-police-shootings-...

For balance, this 2018 gives lower numbers - hovering around 60ish per year. Although that is still significantly higher than 9.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/fatal-police-s...

Nice statistic, but killings by police are 28 per million in the states versus 1.3 in Germany/France:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enfo...

That's total deaths caused by police. It would obviously be higher in the US because the criminals are more likely to have and use guns, policemen in the US just can't afford the peaceful approaches most policemen in Europe can. That doesn't mean they get away with more.

The jailing and fining of holocaust deniers is pretty slippery, I'd say.

No, without existence, there can be no democracy or democratic representation. Being allowed to exist is the most fundamental right.

If you don't exist you don't have rights to defend. Did you mean the right to life, as in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

That's precisely my point. Food, water, shelter, air, and good health, are all required before one can begin to pursue the right to free speech.

No, those life essentials are not required _before_ getting the right to freedom-of-speech. Indeed, freedom of speech may be essential to discussing how to arrange a society to enable the procurement of those things. Holding off freedom of speech until "basic needs" are met is, to me, a way to guarantee that a tyrant in a poor country stays in power.

Ultimately, those life necessities must be provided by oneself or by someone else, or some combination. Freedom of speech can allow for the best ways of providing these things to be selected. The alternative is that only the prevailing view is considered or approved, often leading to much worse provision of these necessities, including starvation (feudal systems, communism, warlords, etc.).

You can speak without air?

Free speech was guaranteed by the US Constitution in a time where the US was a poor backwater still relying on subsistence farming.

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 killed.

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.

So by your logic, as long as at least one murderer in the world exists, we are not allowed to discuss any other topic, liberty, or important subject?

The ACLU still has free speech lawyers, and I supported the ACLU to the tune of 1k last year. But logically it follows that supporting the right of African Americans to survive encounters with police, or for Transgender people to have healthcare, increases the amount of free speech in the world by ensuring their voices can speak in it. A decrease in the survival of people is necessarily a decrease in free speech.

The right of people not engaged in violence to survive police encounters is a natural/inalienable right and a right to healthcare are not similar classes of rights. The former is a "negative right", or liberty, from harm by others (the police), whereas the latter is a "positive right", or entitlement/privilege, to goods & services provided by others.

The Bill of Rights was primarily all about liberties / negative rights, whereas since the 20th century people have started talking about entitlements as rights, when they're not, because that entitlements ultimately must be provided by others (primarily through taxes, but also in constraints/mandates on the behavior of others, e.g., limitations on striking by police or other services, the requirement to register in the draft / Selective Service for men, & eminent domain). Government entitlements typically involve the involuntary actions and compelled behavior of people.

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?

Without free speech, I can be killed, and you'll never know it happened. Even if I in theory had a right to life.

In that sense all other rights depend of free speech.

I can perceive a death without being told about it.

The deaths we see directly are overwhelmingly outnumbered by those we learn about second-hand.

> Without free speech, I can be killed, and you'll never know it happened. Even if I in theory had a right to life.

> In that sense all other rights depend of free speech.

That's not true.

Ok, I'll play your game. Political enemies (in China, the USSR, other historic Eastern European states, Turkey.. maybe you'd prefer MLK as an example) are denied the right to life on the basis of their speech.

So if they fight for the right to not be sent to gulags (from which many did not return) on the basis of speech, you consider this an expression of "luxury"?

And do you think free speech might help fighting for their right to life? For example would BLM find fighting to end police killings of Black people easier, or harder, if they could be jailed for their advocacy?

Are you playing my "game"? My question is pretty simple: what's a more fundamental right, life, or speech? Which one would you select if you could only select one? Which one is it possible to have without the other?

You simply cannot exercise free speech without life, you cannot fight for free speech if you are not alive. Free speech is totally dependent on existence.

Both are inalienable and therefore not granted to me by anyone. I have them by default. However, I would easily choose to risk my life to defend my right to speak.

Ok, but your existence precedes both your ability to speak and your ability to fight for your right to speak. Inalienable or no, both rights can be taken from you, but only one is a requirement for you to have the other. Existence is therefore a fundamental requirement for freedom of speech to exist. People who don't exist can neither speak nor fight for the right to speak.

You asked which would one select. I choose the right to exist with my rights intact. Personally, I feel that the alternative isn't life or an existence worth living.

By choosing to "exist with your rights intact" you're choosing both, so you haven't answered the question. Which would you prefer if you could only have one: Life, or Freedom of Speech?

Could you explain to me how you'd exercise freedom of speech, while dead?

Both or none. Death.

Are you being pedantic to win an internet debate or really trying to understand other perspectives?

Edit: The thing you keep missing though is that one cannot choose. I have the right by default. I can choose not to exercise my rights, but by living I have the right to speech.

If by living, you have the right, then you don't need to fight for it. You already have it.

> If by living, you have the right, then you don't need to fight for it. You already have it.

Exactly. I would not fight _for_ my right, but to protect the rights I already have. In the US, thats why articles in the bill of rights are phrased as they are. The first amendment doesn't say, "congress grants the right speak freely." Instead it is -- congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech. This is because I have the right already and the amendment is there to protect it.

Edit: typos, grammar, and clarification

Ok, would you be able to protect your right to free speech if you were dead? Is being alive a requirement for protecting your right to free speech?

This is an intentionally antagonistic line of questioning. The answer has been given clearly. Freedom of speech is equally important as freedom of life. To put it bluntly, you'll have to kill me to silence me.

I'm exercising my ability to speak freely, and it would be impossible for me to be here, speaking, if I was dead. However, it would be possible for me to live without freedom of speech. To put it bluntly, without life, my freedom of speech is useless. Being alive gives me the ability to exercise my right to live, and my right to speak freely. Its two rights for the price of one! Clearly a better deal!

The question is simple but inane, and implies losing the right to speech cannot be life-threatening. Then once conditions progress and the right to life is directly under attack, there is "no one allowed to speak for you".

It doesn't imply that at all.

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.

Still not sure how the question implied that the loss of the right to free speech can't threaten life.

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 liberty. It's pretty normal for both lay people and professionals to disagree with that strategy, as there are often disagreements in the law. And while I think having this discussion is important, framing it as an existential crisis for the organization is a bit fatalistic.

It's my opinion, and people are welcome to disagree (that's OK), that much of the angst directed towards the ACLU in this thread is more appropriate and effective if directed at the government bodies suppressing free speech, instead.

The head of the ACLU from the 1970s to 2001 says he doesn't think the ACLU of today would have taken the cases that made them famous. (See "Mighty Ira" a documentary on him.)

The ACLU caving to political donors under new executive directors in the Obama years isn't a nothingburger to lawyers like me who looked up to them.

You're missing the issue.

They aren't ignoring Free Speech cases. They are actively fighting against them.

Sometimes rights conflict with one another.

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

There are many ways this can occur. Think of intimidating, racist language being used to discourage minorities from voting, for example. Or a public official whose expression of obnoxious views about women prevents female employees from feeling secure in the workplace.

The overall tone of the comments here seems to regard speech as an obvious, unadulterated good. I think the reality is actually much more complex.

Nobody here is pretending all speech is good.

The point many people here have is that if you only defend non-offensive speech, you’re not for freedom of speech at all. Nowhere on earth bans what they consider non-controversial, inoffensive speech.

All of this was well understood in, say, 1975. The tension you're describing is why the ACLU's hardline stance on speech and the rights of the accused has always been controversial and deeply unpopular in some circles. Without putting too fine a point on it: that's literally what made them the ACLU.

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".

charlottesville was a pretty consequential event politically, which also result in a death.

this is not the first dismissive comment I've had on HN of people showing a disregard for knowledge & literally not caring to know the issue they comment on. both instances i've participated in involved race which is telling to me imho. Seems to go against the ideals of this forum.

I'm no trying to argue either way just point out the example in the article. Personally I lean more towards free speech at all costs.

Really? What was the race of the person who died? What was the race of the person who killed them?

If you're making the case that protests should not be allowed because sometimes violence occurs, then no protests would ever be allowed.

I'm no arguing either way - though personally I lean towards unrestricted speech at all costs. But just giving the example in the article.

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".

The low hanging fruit answer: taking up the defense of the KKK could free up resources for the organization to actively infringe on the rights of others, either through direct violence and intimidation, spread of hate speech materials, or allowing political spending on issues with further its white supremacist agenda.

Can you please expand on that?