[ad_hominem]

So you don't have any issues with the ACLU's heel turn into partisan activism over the past few years? Like reversing position on vaccine mandates, fighting for mask mandates in schools, fighting against school curriculum transparency, fighting to compel speech for teachers (Loudon County)?

[camhenlin]

Many of these talking points are only partisan in the US

[ad_hominem]

It's also "only in the US" where we have the most permissive free speech laws on the planet. Forgive me for expecting a little more from the former top-tier First Amendment defender to keep it that way.

[criddell]

Try steelmanning some of the ACLU positions you disagree with and see if your position softens or changes.

[syshum]

It does not. the ACLU policy shift can be best described as a shift from the defense of individual rights to defense of group or collective rights.

I am ardent supporter of individual rights.

This is largely also the difference between the EU/Canda and the US. where the US has traditionally and correctly placed the most importance on individual rights. Where as the EU places the focus more on society in general or groups in society over the individual

[zozbot234]

> I am ardent supporter of individual rights.

The smallest, most oppressed minority of them all is the individual. Individual rights are minority rights.

[camhenlin]

I just looked up your list from your previous post:

- ACLU supports vaccine mandates because it increases civil liberties by protecting our most vulnerable: https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/civil-liberties-an...

- ACLU supported mask mandates in some settings to protect vulnerable children: https://www.aclu.org/podcast/school-mask-mandate-bans-discri...

- Your school curriculum transparency item seems like government censorship that the ACLU was fighting: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-comment-curriculum-...

- last, “fighting to compel speech for teachers” is a bit of a stretch — they were pushing for teachers to use students’ correct pronouns, which is a common courtesy in most settings. https://acluva.org/en/cases/byron-tanner-cross-et-al-v-loudo...

[FFRefresh]

You are obviously not the ACLU, but the invocation of 'protecting the vulnerable' to support the reduction of individual liberties is a slippery rationale.

You could get rid of nearly all civil liberties with that reasoning.

[techif]

> pushing for teachers to use students' correct pronouns

Well from the point of view of describing material reality, these may well be the incorrect pronouns, if they are self-chosen.

Allowing students to choose their own third-person pronouns, assuming these to be the correct ones where they conflict with reality, and punishing those who don't use said pronouns, is only acceptable if you subscribe to the ideological practices of gender identity.

The ACLU of old would have argued for the opposite position - that these teachers must not be compelled to follow an ideology they don't believe in.

[jtbayly]

> “fighting to compel speech for teachers” is a bit of a stretch — they were pushing for teachers to use students’ correct pronouns, which is a common courtesy

Well, you’ve convinced me the ACLU is against free speech. Fighting to force people to speak “correctly” and with “courtesy” is the opposite of defending free speech.

[HWR_14]

Common courtesy was a bad way to describe it. "Prevent a state actor from using their authority to push their personal beliefs (in this case about transgenderism) onto children and single out minorities for disparate and inferior treatment" would be the part the ACLU is opposing. Not the lack of "courtesy"

[Banana699]

>increases civil liberties by protecting our most vulnerable

What a bizarre rhetorical maneuver, civil liberties aren't increased by trying to "Protect the most vulnerable", civil liberties are increased by leaving people the fuck alone.

You can acknowledge the fact that there's often a tension between individual freedom and public good and try to defend the ACLU by making a case that they chose what they view as (and many others don't share their view) public good, but twisting words to forcibly paint them as liberty defenders when they are doing the exact opposite is just strange.

>supported mask mandates in some settings to protect vulnerable children

The same children that study after study shows are psychologically damaged and learning-impaired by not seeing their peers' and their teachers' faces[1]. So instead of the few vulnerable children being exempted from school and taught at home or online or in special masked classes, we impose a rule that harms all children and affect, possibly permanently, their psych and development.

Good call.

>government censorship that the ACLU was fighting

No, it isn't government censorship. It's the public deciding what the public schools they fund through taxes can and cannot teach.

This is perfectly legal and perfectly moral, teachers are hired and paid salaries to teach what the school says they should teach. Especially when the allegedly "banned" topics are sexually explicit material featuring minors and debunked pseudo-history invented literally a year ago.

It isn't censorship when your employer forces you to use or not use a programming language, it's how jobs work.

>“fighting to compel speech for teachers” is a bit of a stretch — they were pushing for teachers to use students’ correct pronouns

So, they _were_ fighting to compel speech for teachers, but that's a good thing because pronouns?

>which is a common courtesy in most settings.

No it's not, it's a practice invented 4 to 6 years ago by a minority of delusional individuals living in a very specific place and time, and the vast majority of people in time and space can correctly identify the 3rd person pronoun most suitable for a person on their own and call them by it without any special requests.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1075842341/growing-calls-to-t...

[maccolgan]

>it increases civil liberties by protecting our most vulnerable

Why yes, sacrificing the individual in the interest of "society" is truly the greatest thing for civil rights.

[pessimizer]

> - ACLU supports vaccine mandates because it increases civil liberties by protecting our most vulnerable

> - ACLU supported mask mandates in some settings to protect vulnerable children

Couldn't you support 24 hour solitary confinement or execution for minor crimes in order to protect our most vulnerable? Should the ACLU have switched to protecting the vulnerable in general, rather than protecting those whose freedom to exercise their civil rights is endangered?

I mean, we do breast cancer research in order to protect the vulnerable, but if the ACLU is doing breast cancer research, it's not doing the thing that it specialized in or that people donate to it for.

I say this as someone who supports vaccine mandates and mask mandates.

> “fighting to compel speech for teachers” is a bit of a stretch — they were pushing for teachers to use students’ correct pronouns, which is a common courtesy in most settings.

"Common courtesy" is compelled speech. It's also not a thing that people agree on, so it's not common. It's related to "common sense" in that people only mention common sense when they want to call other people stupid without any evidence, and common courtesy when they want to accuse of being discourteous without any agreed context. To some people, not calling out the person who hired you for sexually harassing you could be common courtesy, or being obligated to have sex with someone who paid for dinner is common courtesy.

If anything, compelling common courtesy seems like the opposite of what the ACLU traditionally did. If nazis marching through a suburb full of holocaust survivors isn't a breech of common courtesy, I don't know what is.

[syshum]

The ACLU is the AMERICAN civil liberties union. So talking about them in an US context is the proper context