Posted on 06/07/2021 8:36:14 AM PDT by RandFan
It was supposed to be the celebration of a grand career, as the American Civil Liberties Union presented a prestigious award to the longtime lawyer David Goldberger.
He had argued one of its most famous cases, defending the free speech rights of Nazis in the 1970s to march in Skokie, Ill., home to many Holocaust survivors.
Mr. Goldberger, now 79, adored the A.C.L.U. But at his celebratory luncheon in 2017, he listened to one speaker after another and 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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
NYT is a cancer on this nation. ACLU has been a bunch of communists since day one. Who are they trying to fool?
Should Nazis rally in a town populated largely by Jews? Maybe not...but it’s hard to see the 1st Amendment prohibiting it. Should Trump be on Twitter and Facebook? Of course he should.
When you defend the first amendment rights of idiots, you are giving them enough rope to hang themselves. But when someone’s speech scares you because it may have solid veracity, apparently you don’t defend it if you are the ACLU of today.
If they really thought this hate speech was what they say it is, they would defend it to allow it to collapse of it’s own self exposing nonsense.
There are no more liberals.
Long live the collective!!!
/sarc
ACLU needs to finally remove the camouflage, and rename itself the .........ACCP.
The ACLU has always been liberal. The few times they did support a conservative POV, it was grudgingly.
Since when have the EVER been a bastion of free speech?
ACLU has always been a political group.
i thought the aclu had pretty much dried up and blown away due to massive falloff in contributions ...
Years ago I attended a woman‘s lawn seminar held in the middle of one of the most conservative states in the country. The headline speaker was one of the past presidents of the ACLU. I forget her name. In her speech she said that it was harder to represent pro life demonstrators than it was to represent Nazis and members of the KKK. I got up and left. And of course, the audience applauded.
I browsed the ACLU website a year or so ago and was surprised by what an unprincipled, poorly written mess it was. My sense was that they had experienced some kind of brain drain. It was like their core values (aside from being leftist) and just basic talent hadn’t gotten passed down to the new generation.
It’s a characteristic of any institution that it is corruptible, regardless of any good intentions upon which it was created. That’s true of political, religious and even philanthropic organizations. Organizations evolve beyond their original purpose and eventually become self serving, existing solely for their own perpetuation and enrichment. It’s why our founding fathers provided that our governmental institutions are subject to being dismantled and “reimagined”, if you will. Unfortunately, history also teaches us that the old guard will defend the bureaucracy unto death. Convincing people of the benefits of change is nigh on impossible.
Like most on the far left, the ACLU supported certain rights only when it was in their best interests.
So the American Communist Lawyers Union has finally figured out that they are a Union of Communist Lawyers and have consistently acted as such?
Surprise, surprise.
We are living under communism.
Once the socialist/communist takeover is complete, the first to react in horror are their own supporters.
“Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis”
ACLU = American Criminal Lunatic Union
Anti-American Communist Lovers Union.
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