The whole point of being a Civil Liberties Union is that you play it both ways. That’s why it’s easier to be a Nazi Puncher, not a Union of Civil Liberties.
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Who’s making “a whole big deal about it”? The ACLU is not obligated to defend every white supremacist whose mission in life is to destroy the civil liberties of others, any more than the ADL is not obligated to defend racists from intolerance.
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Why isn’t the ACLU defending this guy who isn’t being persecuted? Hypocrites!
I don’t know… there are a whole lot of people from the former President, to many current members of congress, to mainstream TV networks such as Fox News that are more than happy to defend the rights of white nationalists. On the other hand, there are very few people out there going around punching Nazis.
lol, look guy, I said this:
and then a bunch of people jumped in to defend the ACLU not doing this if it was happening.
Seems like you are just substituting my word “untenable” for your phrasing of not easy. Needless to say, working for Nazis in their chosen path to obtain political power and kill minorities isn’t logically a morally correct thing to do for the members who join such union. Intuitively, it would actually seem very bad!
It’s counter-intuitive to think that hmm, by helping the Nazis in one way we are actually helping the people they want to kill! Dunno, maybe that’s the cover the ACLU needed back in the day to also defend black activists.
But certainly there can be a social environment where the logical intuition of helping Nazis obtain political power and kill people = just straight up bad, and the members of such civil liberties union that aren’t just attention seeking weirdos should say our two options are to either disband or adopt a more nuanced position.
Pretty obvious that the ACLU taking an absolutist approach is very dumb when it requires helping Nazis do whatever they want.
The ACLU taking an absolutist position on defending civil liberties is dumb? So, just to be clear, the ACLU erred in taking on the Skokie case? Its job should be to defend civil liberties as long as the people they are defending aren’t bad, like white supremacists or Nazis?
Should the ACLU defend the rights of people convicted of murder or rape, who are almost certainly guilty but may have had some of their due process rights violated? What about a white supremacist murderer?
It can, but doesn’t have to, help a murderer after he has been arrested and is facing execution.
It definitely shouldn’t help the murderer purchase a gun to kill people even though he may legally entitled to it.
How do we figure out which bucket a case falls in? By looking at the facts and circumstances.
Nuance, nuance is the word we are looking. Hope this helps, but am sure it won’t.
I think they can make common sense judgments so that the work they’re doing isn’t harming society
The ACLU. They started a whole union.
This comic is my philosophy and it’s why I’m a filthy authoritarian statist, in theory.
I agree, see the above about the comic and crush them like roaches, but,
there’s no nuance here; either you think their ideas are dangerous and you do something about it, or you’re just bullshitting. And lol I don’t mean specifically you, going out and punching a specific nazi, but as a society. We already have laws covering actions, and covering the plotting and conspiracy to commit actions; it’s already totally against the law, in theory, to be a nazi in that sense, so what’s left?
These things aren’t really comparable to like going to bat for Nazi groups so they can organize on college campuses or something. Defending a random murderer who had their civil liberties violated is totally fine
I guess I don’t see the difference. The murderer is a bad person who should still be afforded due process. The Nazi is a bad person who should still be afforded free speech and freedom of assembly.
I mean, maybe that is the difference: the increasing indifference of many on the left to defending free speech and free assembly simply as a core American value, regardless of who is speaking or assembling.
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I think some people since ~2017 are legitimately afraid of Nazis having real power in this country, and are happy to weaken civil liberties in some limited ways if it creates a better framework for keeping Nazis away from power.
People aren’t afraid of murderers banding together to form a political party because that would be a really random political group
Or, as I put it above
Is that supposed to be an own? The effete libs don’t dislike Nazi groups because they’re gauche. People are legitimately terrified they could build a strong enough political coalition that they’ll be able to harm all the people they want to harm
The left wasn’t but the ACLU sure was. That’s why I supported them with a membership for many years. I said the the left is increasingly indifferent to the values of free speech, and I think that’s true. That doesn’t imply that they were all on the ACLU’s side twenty or forty years ago: Glasser says he ate a tremendous amount of shit from Jewish liberals for the Skokie case. But it’s worse today, to the extent that the ACLU itself doesn’t reflect those values.
Libs disliking Nazis because they’re “gross” is such a bizarre concept
What are you even talking about here. The airline doesn’t like the Nazi because he’s a disruptive mantoddler who makes the flight unbearable for the rest of their customers.
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