Posted on 05/12/2017 10:07:42 AM PDT by DeweyCA
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The ACLU was once a nonpartisan organization focused on liberty and equality before the law. In recent years it has chosen its battles with an increasingly left-wing sensibility. In doing so, it has become considerably more equivocal and sometimes even hostile toward core civil liberties concerns of free speech and due process.
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On balance, the organization has been a quiet friend more than an active opponent of campus censorship. How often have you heard the ACLU speak out against progressive censors? How often have you seen it quoted defending speech in coverage of censorship news, like the violent protests of Charles Murray’s talk at Middlebury College?
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The ACLU even sided with the Obama administration’s crusade against due process for college students accused of sexual misconduct.
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How did the ACLU end up on the wrong side—or no side—of urgent debates about free speech and due process? In part the organization’s transformation is a result of generational shifts: The old liberal guard of ACLU leaders is aging. The new guard reflects the left’s turn away from traditional liberal values toward a “progressive” politics with expansive definitions of discrimination and restrictive approaches to speech.
New generations have wrought policy changes before. The ACLU became more concerned about discrimination in the 1960s and ’70s....
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Today, however, the left is the organization’s center of gravity, and achieving economic justice is an explicit ACLU mission.
Partisanship is an obvious pitfall for this ACLU, as its comprehensive—and enormously profitable—opposition to the Trump administration makes clear.
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But the ACLU’s concern for the due-process rights of visitors and immigrants contrasts with its refusal to defend the due-process rights of American college students. They can’t rely on the ACLU to defend liberty and justice for all, regardless of politics or ideology. Neither can you.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Ms. Kaminer is author of “Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity and the ACLU” (2009). Mr. Dershowitz is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. Both are former ACLU board members.
Gee; that's funny. I'm pretty sure that the ACLU's original charter stated that it's main goal was to turn the US into a Communist country.
Non-partisan? I don't think so.
Where are they? Just look for the big, fat, greedy hand in your pocket! ;)
Very nice excerpt. Thanks for that.
ACLU is compromised and infiltrated by globalist, HARD left puppets. Period.
Thank you for the compliment. It takes a fair amount of work to excerpt the most important parts of a WSJ article and still stay under the 300-word limit.
They defend murderers and rapists. They won’t defend us.
The ACLU is a joke. I was discriminated against by a previous employer but I was too old and white to have a case.
Yes, it isn’t easy. Good job and Happy FReeping!
I'm 67 but I don't remember this. Ever.
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