I’ve wanted for years if the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) shouldn’t, in the interest of intellectual honesty, change its name to the “Manhattan, San Francisco and other Blue cities Civil Liberties Union”. It’s been that long since they represented civil liberties that weren’t popular/convenient among that set.
Classic example Dash they think the “Heller” decision was just a big mistake, and that “US vs. Miller” should still be the defining president regarding the Second Amendment.
David Bernstein at Reason agrees:
Since the George W. Bush administration, the ACLU’s dedication to its traditional civil libertarian mission has waned ever further. With the election of Donald Trump, its membership rolls have grown to almost two million, almost all of them liberal politically, few of whom are devoted to civil liberties as such. Meanwhile, the left in general has become less interested in, and in some cases opposed to, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the rights of the accused.
Future historians will have to reconstruct exactly how and why the tipping point has been reached, but the ACLU’s actions over the last couple of months show that the ACLU is no longer a civil libertarian organization in any meaningful sense, but just another left-wing pressure group, albeit one with a civil libertarian history.
Next, you’ll be telling me that the Southern Poverty Law Center has become more of a hate group then the groups it used to track…
The original purpose of the ACLU was to protect the speech of those advancing leftist ideas. To do so required the defense of all free speech – however, when the left achieved its goals of cultural, corporate and political dominance – free speech was no longer useful, instead it became a problem.
It’s like the business that starts with a couple of guys in a garage and goes viral; eventually dominating the industry. It does not fear government, it does not fear its “competitors”. What it fears is a couple of guys in a garage.
These are the things that the ACLU does NOT believe in:
-Presumption of innocence
-Freedom of speech
-Freedom of religion
-Equality under the law
The ACLU, like the SPLC, has become a generic radical left-wing hate group.
Mammuthus Primigenius, I totally disagree.
The ACLU still believes in those things:
-Presumption of innocence (for Antifa)
-Freedom of speech (for shouting down conservatives)
-Freedom of religion (for Muslims only)
-Equality under the law (for groups who are more equal than others)
The Left takes over all non-profit organizations over time. We’ll look up one day and Cato and Heritage will be left-wing.
Mr D
the left takes over anything that feeds off the donor-class – they have an unerring nose for Other People’s Money™
I wouldn’t be surprised if the ACLU simply copies the business model of the SPLC.
This business model is to mass-mail fundraising letters to people with Jewish sounding names on the east and west coasts, saying that their organization is the only thing standing between them and the Skinhead Nazis of the Hinterlands.