The ACLU has made the name of the organization Orwellian
The acronym “ACLU” stands for “American Civil Liberties Union.” Once a proud defender of free speech and other liberties, it stood by the principle of defending the right to speak even for those whose speech is offensive.
But that’s so Twentieth Century. A brand new day his dawned, in which the ACLU is in favor of civil liberties only for those who support the left, making the “civil liberties” in the title something like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth and Ministry of Love, the opposite of what it professes to be.
Founded in 1920, almost exactly 100 years ago, the organization’s original credo was (emphasis mine), “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
No more. Here’s law professor Josh Blackman on the changing of the ACLU guard:
…[T]he New York Times published a detailed analysis about the ACLU’s “identity crisis.” The article begins with a vignette about David Goldberger, who argued the famous Skokie Nazi case for the ACLU. In 2017, the ACLU gave him an award. But during the ceremony, he felt a growing unease.
“A law professor argued that the free speech rights of the far right were not worthy of defense by the A.C.L.U. and that Black people experienced offensive speech far more viscerally than white allies. In the hallway outside, an A.C.L.U. official argued it was perfectly legitimate for his lawyers to decline to defend hate speech. Mr. Goldberger, a Jew who defended the free speech of those whose views he found repugnant, felt profoundly discouraged. ‘I got the sense it was more important for A.C.L.U. staff to identify with clients and progressive causes than to stand on principle,’ he said in a recent interview. ‘Liberals are leaving the First Amendment behind.’
No, Mr. Goldberger; these are not liberals. They are leftists, and the difference is that leftists do not care about the First Amendment, any other amendment, or civil liberties, if those things stand in the way of their power. In fact, any liberal who “leaves the First Amendment behind” has also left liberalism behind. And these days the ACLU is staffed nearly entirely by leftists rather than liberals, as the rest of Josh Blackman’s article describes.
The liberals vs leftists distinction is a tough one. Dennis Prager says this all the time and he admits he gets pushback from the right that there is no longer a difference.
In theory there is a difference but if liberals vote and support leftists aren’t they really just leftists now?
The terms “liberal” and “progressive” should be abandoned by conservatives when discussing the transformation of the Democrats into the party of hard-left identity politics and of the acquisition of power and control “by any means necessary”. No-one is less “liberal” than today’s “woke” SJW Biden-supporters, and the policies favored by almost all “progressives” will ineluctably lead to society’s moving backward, not forward. Unfortunately, in completely Orwellian fashion, leftists control the language and thus the terms of discourse, just as they control the teaching of the past and thus the likely shape of the future.
The ACLU has now essentially become the very thing it fought against decades ago: a racist, suppressor of free speech, a sad mockery of what it once was. Like many other once grerat long standing institutions of our times, the poison seeped in slowly over decades, so slowly that it wasn’t noticeable until it was too late.
Maybe it’s my imagination, but on the surface it appears as if our world is becoming less free and less tolerant every day. People seem angrier and more close minded. And it seems to have happened rather quickly. Just a few short years ago I thought human civilization was moving in the right direction generally. I no longer think that.
“In fact, any liberal who “leaves the First Amendment behind” has also left liberalism behind.”
In just one sentence you’ve delineated the difference between liberals and the left. And I think that progressives (turn of the 20th century) really thought they had a better way of doing things. Much like some believe communism is a better system.
But leftists are only interested in power. They may believe that a carbon tax might “save the planet.” But they really like the idea of controlling other people…those people being those they disagree with.
Hence the desire to shut down any rational discussion with cries of “racism”, “sexism”, or “trans-phobia”.
I love my country but I fear my government.
This isn’t new with the ACLU. I noticed they had abandoned their original mission about 20-25 years ago. Just another left/communist organization now.
““Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
Eric Hoffer
physicsguy:
I used to support the ACLU and give them money. I stopped doing that about 20 years ago because I noticed a change.
Neo, me too, though I seem to recall it was the early to mid-90s I stopped.
“ The Analects [of Confucius] states that social disorder often stems from failure to call things by their proper names, that is, to perceive, understand, and deal with reality.” This is called “The Rectification of names”.
Progressives, leftists, Democrats, and their ilk should all be renamed “ totalitarian left” since they all believe in Mussolini’s doctrine of everything inside the state, nothing outside the state, no one against the state. It will simplify all debates with them because it makes crystal clear their goals in all things. Whatever their programs, their claimed reforms, their “protection of oppressed groups” it all boils down into one thing, a powerful state that rules us all, the totalitarian state. So, whenever you debate them, call them what they are, totalitarians and don’t let them escape by trying to use a different name.
See Wm. Donohue’s work on the ACLU, published more than 30 years ago. His thesis has been that the ACLU was never a non-partisan promoter of civil liberties and that by 1988 promoting civil liberties had as much to do with their stock in trade as telegraphic equipment with AT&T’s.
See also Nat Hentoff’s commentary from around 1991, on the use of numchukas to restrain anti-abortion protesters in San Diego. The local ACLU slept right through it. (Hentoff maintained that the New York chapter would have been all over that sort of thing like white on rice).
The defense of Nazis marching through Skokie is often invoked. What people forget is that neo-Nazi outfits have never been serious adversaries in the public square. They’re just a 3-digit population of obnoxious screwballs everyone despises. Anti-abortion protesters are something else, and have as their target the sort of thing ACLU types value viscerally.
Nazis are far left in governing range (i.e. totalitarian), economic regulation, and social progression, including: diversity [dogma], political congruence, “Jew privilege”, redistributive change, wars without borders, Cecile clinics, and the Pro-Choice religion not limtied to selective-Jew… child. The ACLU diverged before it started and has followed a progressive path and grade.
There are no more “liberals”. There are some who claim to be but are really leftists.
Anti-abortion protesters are something else, and have as their target the sort of thing ACLU types value viscerally.
Yes, pro-Life, but also pro-Choice: abstention, prevention, adoption, or compassion.
One less Choice than the neo-N… Progressive Liberals’ wicked solution. The compelling interest to deny women’s dignity and agency, to keep them appointed, available, and taxable, which is an ambition embraced by both feminists and masculinists, and, of course, Cecile clinics, abortion industry, and the multitrillion dollar sociopolitical complex: woke and [morally] broke.
Liberalism is, in principle, divergent, which is commonly perceived as tolerant or open-minded. Sometimes it is, but often with a social ulterior motive and processed through politically congruent legerdemain.
There are three broad categories on the Left. Individuals within those broad categories may well occupy elements of other categories. Some are radical on some issues and moderate in other areas.
They are: Hard-Core Marxist Leftists who are solely about power and control, then there are the True Believers, i.e. Progressives and finally, Liberals. The first is self descriptive. Progressives actually think that their view of reality is accurate. They are by far the most deluded. Liberals such as Manchin and Dershowitz are in willful denial (at least publicly) of the fact that the democrat party is now a Marxist organization whose agenda is the destruction of the American Republic. Many who claim to be liberals are actually progressives. If memory serves, in 2012 a poll revealed that only 40% of those who self-identify as “strongly liberal”, ever feel pride in being an American. Other polls consistently reveal that the younger the group, the less the percentage that support America as founded.
They’ve been indoctrinated into throwing away their birthright and are enabling the fashioning of their future chains of enslavement.
There is no Marxism in American political discourse.
“The Analects [of Confucius] states that social disorder often stems from failure to call things by their proper names, that is, to perceive, understand, and deal with reality.” This is called “The Rectification of names”.
Yup. And those birds you hear breaking the deafening silence are called Cuckoos. Expect some stickler for details to pop up shortly to produce statistics showing that they’re in fact Bullfinches.
In the realm of politics, a big problem is that institutions no-longer do what their names say they do. The Supreme Court would be more accurately named the Sanhedrin. State Department would be the Foreigners’ Department, Congress perhaps the Shady Lady Ranch, and so on.
And of course the ACLU is the Prevention of Noticing Society.
“There is no Marxism in American political discourse.”
There is no Compulsion in Islam. Just you’ll get your throat cut for non-compliance.
Only a complete @%#^tard would be a Marxist in 2021, but just about everyone is a Leninist.
“There is no Marxism in American political discourse.” Art+Deco
Sure… on the off chance that to be a serious assertion…
“None are so blind as they who will not see”
“A rose by any other name”…
“Already The Great Reset is being widely advertised on posters and in ads across the UK and Europe and, no doubt, will be here before too long. “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” is just one of their marketing slogans.” [my emphasis]
“Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…” John Lennon’s lyrics to “Imagine”
Most encouraging on the one hand to see Confucius channeling Orwell. On the other hand…
Language, it is true, has been taking a shellacking. To what extent there will be a backlash—and what form this backlash will take remains to be seen.
However, many people will not take this lying down.
Here’s one example (of what hopes may prove to be a tsunami):
https://nypost.com/2021/06/08/teacher-at-nj-prep-school-quits-over-divisive-ideology/
Speaking of “backlash”, it seems that “Biden” is back to “his” old trick of throwing inconvenient geezers under the bus…except that in this particular case, rather amazingly (or should that be “predictably?), the geezer in question happens to “his” very “own” “hand-picked”, history-making—no doubt in multiple ways—VP….
https://nypost.com/2021/06/08/biden-throws-his-clueless-vice-president-under-the-bus/
(At this rate, “Biden” gonna need a much bigger bus…)
Bonus: Here’s how that posh preparatory high-school story (see the linked above) plays out in universities…:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/us/amy-chua-yale-law.html
Surprised?….(Didn’t think so….)
“None are so blind as they who will not see”
You’re not seeing anything that exists outside your imagination.
The ACLU has always been “The American Communist Litigation Unit”. They stopped trying to hide their ideological intent a long time ago.
Oh, sure, Skokie and Free Speech, they’re heroes of great moral fiber and integrity. Consider the country at the time… the institutions were largely center-right and the ACLU was protecting the rights of center-left to far-left groups to protest. As institutions became more left-leaning the American Communist Litigation Unit organized against the free speech rights of the right-leaning groups.
I’m not saying that the Nazis in the democratic party didn’t have the right to march/protest in Skokie. They clearly did because free speech, particularly speech unpopular with the ruling elites, is vital to healthy public discourse. What I’m saying is that the ACLU’s motives were not pure then and they’re not pure now.
And another bonus:
https://sapirjournal.org/social-justice/2021/05/critical-race-theory-and-the-hyper-white-jew/
It used to be Great Books (or Philosophy or History, etc.) 101.
Now it’s—simply—Room 101.
Yep, American “higher education” sure has been fundamentally transformed!!
(Not to worry, though—it’s just another “Biden” Manufactured Crisis…. Here’s another:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/one-bank-goes-apocalyptic-inflation-about-explode-leaving-global-economies-sitting-time
…might be of interest to Paul Krugman; then again, maybe not.)
Orwell anyone?
Seems that while “Biden” has been distracting us with manufactured crisis after manufactured crisis, here’s the one that really counts—the one by which the kingdom will fall into “Biden” ‘s (gropey?) hands:
https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1402315752334626819
Yes, The Coup (part 2) has begun….
File under: “The deplorable GOP terrorists may think they have foiled us. Poor deluded Manchin may think he has foiled us. (Perhaps Sinema, too.) Those miserable midgets crying for voter recounts may think they have us in a corner. Economists yelping “INFLATION! INFLATION” may think they are pretty smart. But none of this matters. We will NOT be stopped. We CANNOT be stopped. Tomorrow belongs to us. LET IT BEGIN….”
What I’m saying is that the ACLU’s motives were not pure then and they’re not pure now.
There’s a reason Ed Meese called it ‘a criminals’ lobby’.
Alan Dershowitz offered in 1988 that the ACLU at that time was an amalgam of civil libertarians and political leftists and the latter commonly prevailed in intramural disputes over what cases to take.
Go ask any 2A proponent about how serious the ACLU is, was, and has always been about civil rights that the Left doesn’t approve of. The same organization that found constitutional basis for abortion literally has said in its publications that the Second doesn’t exist except as Daddy Government allows.
If those Skokie Nazis had been straight, white, employed Christians marching about the RKBA, the ACLU would have laughed them out of the offices and told each other how righteous they were to give ‘those rednecks’ what for.
Go ask any 2A proponent about how serious the ACLU is, was, and has always been about civil rights that the Left doesn’t approve of.
Michael Kinsley of all people remarked on this > 30 years ago.
The only demonstration anyone can point to for the ACLU’s commitment to “civil liberty” is the Skokie case – from 40 years ago. And even then it was regarded as “odd” for the outfit to have taken on.
They have always been Leftists. Always.
And even then it was regarded as “odd” for the outfit to have taken on.
What Wm. Donohue said in 1988 applies, ‘civil liberties are still in the product catalog; that’s hardly where the action is. They were much more obtrusive trying to impede the work of the police by making 4th amendment jurisprudence incomprehensible, to prevent any reprobate from being executed, to prevent any legislature from regulating the practice of abortion, and to prevent any public official from acknowledging that this country is a Christian society and speaks in a Christian idiom.
The word, “progressive” always reminds me of ‘cancer” which is “progressive”.
Cancer killed my wife.
}}} No, Mr. Goldberger; these are not liberals. They are leftists,
PostModern Liberals, not Classical Liberals.
PMLs are a social cancer. Literally, not figuratively.
If someone needs a better description/justification, just search for other commentary here by me. 😉