This change of de facto mission has been obvious for years. The ACLU is now unapologetically partisan, which is in sharp conflict with its stated principles. This NYT new coverage of this change is better late than never.
“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.
“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.”
The A.C.L.U., America’s high temple of free speech and civil liberties, has emerged as a muscular and richly funded progressive powerhouse in recent years, taking on the Trump administration in more than 400 lawsuits. But the organization finds itself riven with internal tensions over whether it has stepped away from a founding principle — unwavering devotion to the First Amendment.”
The NYT piece offers this compelling evidence in support:
Since Mr. Trump’s election, the A.C.L.U. budget has nearly tripled to more than $300 million as its corps of lawyers doubled. The same number of lawyers — four — specialize in free speech as a decade ago.
As I’ve pointed out many times, the legacy media take-over by social justice/woke partisanship mirrors the take-over of the ACLU. Good to see the NYT finally look into the mirror and ask itself some simple questions about its own mission. That had to happen in order for this ACLU article to find the light of day.
And another one bites the dust. I’m quickly running out of admirable institutions.
You’re generous in your assessment as to why they hid the truth. I believe it was to protect themselves from the responsibility they bare for their participation in the world wide pandemic. The “powers that be” seized on the opportunity to wrest power from the masses, and tested our collective willingness to go along. How’d we do? Think how different some of this could have been if we’d protected those that were/are vulnerable to this virus & the rest of us kept it all going. This past year or more has opened my eyes to many possibilities. This one feels about right.
There have been more dire threats to our republic, our freedoms, and to the future of our republic under Trump and the Republicans than perhaps any other time in U.S. history.
The media are “the enemy of the people,” anything or anyone Trump doesn’t want to hear from is a traitor, liar, perpetrating an elaborate Hoax!”, or just hates “us real Murkins!”
Trump’s myriad ethical issues from the beginning of his candidacy and that still continue are ripe for litigation, whether under the emoluments clause or other federal laws.
Trump’s actions in support of Russia and theirs for him are questionable. The debacles of the kidnapping, caging, torture and killing of innocent infants, toddlers, and children seeking asylum at our Southern Border need continuing litigation.
The abject failure by Trump and the Republicans to take any rational, expert-recommended, science-based national measures to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in, as of 1:58 p.m. yesterday, 32,439,942 avoidable COVID-19 infections and 585,208 avoidable COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.
The daily numbers are arrived at by comparison analysis of the relative infrction and morbidity rates from COVID-19 in the U.S. and S. Korea.
Both nations had Patient Zero on January 20,2020. S. Korea did all national, rartional, expert-recommended and science based measures to suppress the pandemic. Trump and the Republicans took none.
Both nations fit into the “most developed nation” category and have the civil society institutions to deal with the pandemic through national action.
Our experience with the “Spanish Flu” in the past showd we have the national cohension if matched with government sanction and compliance to mandate wearing masks and taking other measures to stop the pandemic; testing, tracing, isolation or treatment, mask wearing, hand washing or sanitizing and a 14-day quarantine for foreign traverlers to the nation.
There needs to be thorough use of the FOIA to find out what was done and by whom in the Coingress to support the failed coup attempt by Trump and his death cult supporters on 1/6. Litigation is ertain to follow those requests as Trump and the Republicans are lying, libeling and engaging in lawlessness to revise and cover-up the extent of Trump and the Republicans’ actions before, during and after the failed coup attempt.
The latest and greatest threat to our republic is Trump’s use of the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election “was stolen” from him as impetus for changing state laws to prevent anyone other than Republican voters from casting a ballot. The state efforts are liley to be successful and in place for the 2022 mid-term elections. The only way to stop the onslaught of state laws suppressing voters’ rights is litigation. Some 400 bills have been introduced in 48 states to supress voter participation.
Federal legislation could stop the most blatant partisan political power grab in U.S. history but two Democratic Senators are either going to vote against the legislation or refuse to allow a majority vote be taken for the passage of this essential legislation. No other aspect of Senate action is so encumbered since McConnell and the GOP got rid of the nomination filibuster rule so they could pack the SCOTUS and lower courts with far-right-wing partisan zealots, many that were entirely unqualified ewhether by background, experience, or their demeanor.
So, I don’t see the ACLU as a “partisan” group. I see the ACLU as a necessary organization to the preservation of citizens’ rights against the most comprehensive and expert-guided efforts to make our republic over into a far-right-wing authoritarian dictatorship. Based upon present actions by the GOP and the inaction by Democrats, it may all be over with by 2022.
Tim: I recommend that you read the linked article before responding. You have written absolutely nothing that shows that you read even a sentence of the NYT article on the ACLU.
I wonder if NYT is really “looking in the mirror.” My husband and I finally cancelled our subscription several months ago, but up until that point they often had opinion pieces that gave a different perspective than their usual woke perspective. Also there were regulars like David Brooks and Ross Douthat who held their own against the prevailing ideology.
What I’ve read is that Dean Baquet, the executive editor, hired a bunch of new writers in the years after he took over (which was 2014) and allowed them to completely set the ideological agenda, including on the editorial page. The Sulzberger family (which owns most of the shares) and other people on the board have sat by and let things go as they have gone without intervening.
I think they have drunk the kool-aid and are running what used to be a good paper into the ground. But of course that is just my opinion and I am willing to stand corrected by someone who knows better.