The New York Times has a report about an internal struggle at the ACLU. The organization helped sue to for the right of assembly for the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in August that resulted in the death of a young woman, after a car driven by one of the white supremacists plowed into a crowd. The response from ACLU employees is alarming:
Meyers is absolutely correct. And this is not the first time a key First Amendment protection has lost favor within the organization. The ACLU was a strong proponent of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as copycat RFRA laws at the state level. But only as long as those laws were used to protect, say, Native Americans’ use of peyote. The moment that Christian bakers and florists cited RFRA laws to defend their refusal to participate in same-sex marriage ceremonies, the ACLU abandoned protecting a key constitutional freedom. The principle behind the law remained exactly the same, but the politics had changed dramatically. And so it appears they could be headed down the same road regarding free speech.
Additionally Robby Soave filed this report at Reason about how Black Lives Matter protesters shut down an ACLU event on free speech at William and Marry college in Virginia:
Based on the Times’s reporting, it seems that 15 percent of the ACLU also agrees with the sentiment that “liberalism is white supremacy.” And again, it should be clear that’s what’s changed at the ACLU is the political bent of the organization’s employees. The ACLU has always operated on the correct belief that vigorously defending free speech and the First Amendment leads to less political violence, not more—not to mention the salutary effect it has on keeping armed authorities from violently cracking down on dissent.
In 2003, The Onion published one of it’s all-time great satires: “ACLU Defends Nazis’ Right To Burn Down ACLU Headquarters.” The joke worked because it was a reference to how rigidly—and admirably—the ACLU was when it came to defending its core principles. Well, now it seems like a good many ACLU employees would be just as happy to figuratively burn down the place—and all it stands for—themselves.
