The ACLU is officially a joke

This isn’t the first time the nation’s top civil liberties organization has used its official Twitter account (with nearly 2 million followers) to basically troll conservatives. The once-serious group now pushes Teen Vogue articles and harps about identity politics on the regular. Oh, and don’t forget their caps lock pro-abortion trolling, too.

Of course, a few wild tweets wouldn’t discredit the organization if they were still doing the excellent work they used to do, like when they took an unpopular but principled stand for the free speech rights of neo-Nazis in the late 1970s. But unfortunately, the ACLU has caved on many of its core principles in recent years, with a new generation of woke liberals replacing the respectable, principled, liberal advocates who used to run the place.

In 2018, an internal ACLU memo was leaked that showed left-wing employees were concerned their defense of free speech was undermining their commitment to “equality” and “justice.” It went on to say that their decision whether to defend free speech that was under assault should include consideration of “the impact of the proposed speech and the impact of its suppression … the potential effect [speech has] on marginalized communities … and the structural and power inequalities in the community in which the speech will occur.”

Liz Wolfe put it well at the time, writing for the Washington Examiner: “[I]s the ACLU backing down from taking the hard cases that protect the principle, even when it’s uncomfortable to do so? Free speech is messy, and it so often involves defending the right on principle, not because you agree with the groups that are speaking. To erode that is to admit that the free speech for everyone isn’t as important as we’d thought and no longer worth protecting.”

If wokeness now takes precedence over free speech principles for so many of the ACLU’s employees, then the organization has officially abandoned its mission and collapsed as an institution.

The ACLU has also caved on its once-noble defense of due process. It abandoned its longstanding role as an advocate for the rights of the accused out of an apparent irrational hatred of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. When DeVos announced in 2017 that she was revoking the Obama-era Title IX guidance that encouraged colleges and universities to adjudicate sexual assault allegations on campus in a way that displayed complete disregard for due process, the ACLU should have, based on their purported principles, thrown their support behind the move.

Naturally, they slammed the secretary instead. Here’s what the ACLU tweeted when DeVos proposed alternative rules in 2018:

The ACLU said the rules protecting due process would “make schools less safe for survivors” and “inappropriately favor the accused.” They said they “strongly oppose[d]” the changes.

This is the ACLU, for crying out loud! If the people running the ACLU can’t stand up for due process rights even of criminals, then why on Earth do any of them have jobs?

Basically, a left-leaning organization abandoned its commitment to due process rather than acknowledge the Trump administration’s accomplishment. To do otherwise would be to risk running afoul of #MeToo feminist dogma.

The ACLU did eventually moderate its stance somewhat, but the damage to its reputation is irrevocable, at least until there’s a big reorganization of its priorities. It’s a shame, because they still do good work on various issues, such as fighting the death penalty and pushing for criminal justice reform. But how long before these causes also become politically incorrect and the ACLU abandons them, too?