The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech

[Krugminator2]

From the New York Times. The paper hit all time lows today. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/o...ttesville.html

The American Civil Liberties Union has a long history of defending the First Amendment rights of groups on both the far left and the far right.

While admirable in theory, this approach implies that the country is on a level playing field, that at some point it overcame its history of racial discrimination to achieve a real democracy, the cornerstone of which is freedom of expression.

For marginalized communities, the power of expression is impoverished for reasons that have little to do with the First Amendment. Numerous other factors in the public sphere chill their voices but amplify others.

Most obviously, the power of speech remains proportional to wealth in this country, despite the growth of social media. When the Supreme Court did consider the impact of money on speech in Citizens United, it enabled corporations to translate wealth into direct political power. The A.C.L.U. wrongly supported this devastating ruling on First Amendment grounds.

Other forms of structural discrimination and violence also restrict the exercise of speech, such as police intimidation of African-Americans and Latinos. These communities know that most of the systematic harassment and threats that stifle their ability to speak have always occurred privately and diffusely, and in ways that will never end in a lawsuit.

This is a vital question because a well-funded machinery ready to harass journalists and academics has arisen in the space beyond First Amendment litigation. If you challenge hateful speech, gird yourself for death threats and for your family to be harassed.

Left-wing academics across the country face this kind of speech suppression, yet they do not benefit from a strong, uniform legal response. Several black professors have been threatened with lynching, shooting or rape for denouncing white supremacy.

[tod evans]

[acptulsa]

So the ACLU is bad because it's fair, and as blind as true justice to everything but the facts.

The Left is eating its own. Is the Right smart enough to affiliate with the Left's quality castoffs?

If we let Left and Right make us hesitate to embrace anything which values truth and substance over style and fads, we lose, and the Deep State and their useful idiots win. Or rather, the Deep State wins, and their useful idiots don't go to the gulag until after we do.

I've seen libertarians turn their noses up at people and groups of real quality before, because they're associated with The Left. Bill Moyer is one, and the ACLU itself is another. Well, folks, the $#!+ is getting real, and we had better get over that foolishness real damned fast.

[Raginfridus]

Most obviously, the power of speech remains proportional to wealth in this country, despite the growth of social media.

OK, let's start by dismantling the 5 conglomerates controlling 90% of all media, of which the Times are members, and making interlocking directorates illegal across the board, so that corporate sponsors, such as theirs, can't weave networks of influence and conflicts of interest in other industries. Or does the Times shill want more corporate sponsors to flush their paper with money, so that the good people at Times reserve an ex cathedra privilege to tell us what to think, where to work, and what to buy? Social Media's been a tool of both the State and Corporatism since Web2.0, and the Times' tacit praise of it as a force for good is a red herring.

[Anti Federalist]

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

The Alt Left is intolerant.

The Alt Left is unhinged.

The Alt Left is hateful.

[specsaregood]

OK, let's start by dismantling the 5 conglomerates controlling 90% of all media, of which the Times are members, and making interlocking directorates illegal across the board, so that corporate sponsors, such as theirs, can't weave networks of influence and conflicts of interest in other industries. Or does the Times shill want more corporate sponsors to flush their paper with money, so that the good people at Times reserve an ex cathedra privilege to tell us what to think, where to work, and what to buy? Social Media's been a tool of both the State and Corporatism since Web2.0, and the Times' tacit praise of it as a force for good is a red herring.

yeah, just what I was thinking: what we need is more laws. I'm sure that will make things better.

[acptulsa]

Actually, we used to have a few laws that we're not doing all that well without. Like a law limiting how many media outlets one entity could own.

No law ever gets repealed--except the ones that actually protect the common people.

[Raginfridus]

yeah, just what I was thinking: what we need is more laws. I'm sure that will make things better.

All I'm saying is that the Times should eat their own words for a ride on the censorship bandwagon. But on second thought, a law pulverizing media conglomerates and forbidding interlocking directorates could result in less red tape, not necessarily more. How many files have to be filled to document that all these conglomerates and their hundreds of sponsors comply with our anti-trust regulations? If the sort of law was passed that broke these chains completely, then the government could stand to lose a bit of it's oversight within the media. That wouldn't disable the government-media complex, because the government can infiltrate just about anything with impunity, but criminalizing secret police/undercover cops is another issue.

For perspective, I read that in the early 80s, 50 corporations controlled 90% of information we received. Maybe through the time matrix, the past doesn't seem all that much better for free speech, and that's true in a sense, but as these media giants grow up and out, our perspective looking back, just like the present, is shaped by a tenth of the gatekeepers it was 30 years ago, and we're way more dependent on jolts of information now than ever in history.

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

There is no right and left; there's just right and wrong

[Swordsmyth]

The American Civil Liberties Union will no longer defend hate groups seeking to march with firearms, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, a policy change that comes on the heels of protests by white nationalists and counter-protesters at the weekend in Virginia.The newspaper quoted the ACLU's executive director as saying in an interview that, after violence during the Charlottesville protests, judges, police chiefs and legal groups would be required to "look at the facts of any white-supremacy protests with a much finer comb."
An ACLU spokeswoman confirmed the policy shift and said the concern over weapons was not something the group has had to contend with in the past."We’ve had people with odious views, all manner of bigots. But not people who want to carry weapons and are intent on committing violence," ACLU spokeswoman Stacy Sullivan said in a telephone interview.
White nationalists staged a "Unite the Right" protest in Charlottesville last weekend over plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a park. A number of them carried weapons, according to witnesses and video.
"If a protest group insists, ‘No, we want to be able to carry loaded firearms,’ well, we don’t have to represent them. They can find someone else," the newspaper quoted Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director since 2001, as saying.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-rights-...013747752.html

[tod evans]

Don't they sound like the sane-n-sensible ones........

Clubs-n-mace get a pass but not legally carried firearms...

Agenda much?

[Swordsmyth]

Don't they sound like the sane-n-sensible ones........

Clubs-n-mace get a pass but not legally carried firearms...

Agenda much?

Clubs and mace that were used vs. guns that were not.

[tod evans]

Clubs and mace that were used vs. guns that were not.

Shaddup white devil!

[pcosmar]

Clubs and mace that were used vs. guns that were not.

That will change.

By who and for what purpose is still an open question.