\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nlawyer probs: the growing number of people suddenly surprised that the aclu represents shitty people as well as good people because they didn\u2019t have to read a bunch of aclu cases in law school.\u00a0
That\u2019s why I enjoy the ACLU\u2019s work so much. You have to REALLY love civil rights to stand up for some of the shitty people the ACLU represents. Without them bringing those tough cases, though, where would the rest of us be?
\nThe First Amendment equally protects those we agree with and those we disagree with. It protects Civil Rights marches and BLM protestors. It also protects the most deplorable among us.
\nWithout the ACLU, and without the First Amendment protecting the most heinous and disgusting views out there, the Constitution also wouldn\u2019t protect the protests and speakers we hold most dear.
\nThis isn\u2019t about right or wrong, or political beliefs. This is about policy. Our Constitution made the choice to protect ALL speech equally, lest ANY speech, good or bad, be suppressed.
\nTHIS. I think everything you need to know about the importance/purity of principle of the ACLU is that I saw a meme on Facebook where someone had like Photoshopped an ACLU logo onto a burning office building and with some terrible caption like \u201cWe know what to do with Nazi sympathizers\u201d and my immediate internal response was \u201cthe ACLU would defend your right to post that if the government tried to punish you for it. All the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.\u201d
\nI don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything I\u2019m so purely dedicated to the way the ACLU is dedicated to protecting freedom of speech.
\nThe ACLU is pure lawful neutral. They\u2019re here to make sure everyone\u00a0gets equal protection under the law, even if that means defending people they\u2019d otherwise like to punch in the face.\u00a0
\nI think the lawful neutral label is really really apt, and also a good way to point out the precise way in which active liberals have sort of gotten the wrong idea about the ACLU.
\nIt seems like a lot of people have kind of imagined the ACLU as a chaotic good. Righteous defenders of the left\u2019s favorite causes, turning the very power structures that allow or actively create oppression (legislatures, the justice system) into tools against that oppression. And it\u2019s totally understandable why, especially if you\u2019re pretty young and have just gotten into liberal campaigns in the last 5-10 years why you might think of them that way. Because you\u2019d see them doing these high profile cases and campaigns for things like LGBT rights and fighting the travel bans, and there are plenty of organizations that sort of do fit in to that type of mold\u2013SPLC, HRC, Emily\u2019s List, etc., all on varying points on the lawful to chaotic spectrum\u2013so it\u2019s easy to think it makes sense to lump the ACLU in with them.
\nBut you\u2019re right that the ACLU is much more of a lawful neutral, ESPECIALLY in the free speech arena. They\u2019re just there doing the really not glamorous work of refereeing to make sure that oppressive government actors can\u2019t silence anybody, which makes sure that organizations like SPLC and HRC have the ability to do their work without interference.\u00a0
\nThe trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one\u2019s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
\n
H. L. Mencken
the ACLU\u2019s robustness lately is such a heartening sign of American civic health I teared up typing that but let\u2019s remember it\u2019s a finite structure
\n\nthis is a classic from the end of The Onion\u2019s Golden Age, ACLU Defends Nazis\u2019 Right To Burn Down ACLU Headquarters, which was at the time almost a jab from the right because the ACLU was so holy in the 90s\n
\nthey called it the \u201cACLJew\u201d, and said it was a front for communists and stood up for criminals
\nthe ACLU came out of the First Red Scare, after WWI when revolutionary energy was really bringing down governments and not just assassinating officeholders and there was a crackdown\n
\nand yeah it was a shield for radicals, in its last hugest waves of immigration America took in all sorts of oppressed workers from \u201848 and later revolutions, Ireland to Italy to the Baltic, shit got kinda nuts once they had a taste of victory in WWI and heard about the future in mother Russia
\nsmashy smashy go the Palmer Raids, etc., and the second KKK (the Jim Crow tightening and a lot more were anti-lynching measures, to win back deference to the state) and that\u2019s a threat to The Movement towards world emancipation
\nthen the SECOND Red Scare and by that time it was red diaper babies (cradle communists, without the convert\u2019s zeal) and arms-length-for-safety fellow travelers and honestly after the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 not much real support of the Moscow line though normies didn\u2019t know that
\nANYWAY the joke is a lot of their famous victories really WERE screens for Communism. NAACP v. Alabama (1958) that a political group couldn\u2019t be forced to reveal its membership by the state, the NAACP was popular with rightthinkers everywhere outside Alabama \u2013 who would obviously pass a list off to mischief-makers, likely uniformed. But the generalizable precedent!
\nThe Skokie Affair, the precedent that marching with Nazi flags (through a postwar Jewish neighborhood) isn\u2019t violence and is protected expression. That must extend, by your own logic (the legal mantra) to Communist flags and marches but haha how goofy do you sound saying \u201cthose Jewish lawyers are just standing up for Nazis for their own communist ends!\u201d and yet
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