If you haven't notice, the ACLU is now proudly choosing sides politically, not so much acting on broad-based principles. Good luck trying to find any modern analogue to the ACLU 1978 Skokie litigation.
Matt Taibbi offers this quote by former ACLU director IRA Glasser.
On March 17, 2021, Author Abigail Shrier testified at a Senate Judiciary Hearing. Because of the harm that it would cause to girls and women and unfairness to female athletes, she strongly opposes the pending "Equality Act."
To what extent can the government prosecute lies? First Amendment Law Professor Eugene Volokh has written an excellent article considering many angles. Here's an excerpt:
Surprisingly, the Supreme Court has never resolved the question. It hasn’t resolved the big-picture question: When can the government punish lies? It hasn’t resolved the medium-size question: Can the government punish lies in election campaigns? And it hasn’t resolved the particular question: Can the government punish lies about the mechanisms of voting, and in particular about how to vote?
[T]he court considered the case of Xavier Alvarez, a local government official in an LA suburb; he had lied about getting the Congressional Medal of Honor, and was prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act, a statute that bans such lies about military decorations. Unconstitutional, six justices said. There was broad agreement that “Laws restricting false statements about philosophy, religion, history, the social sciences, the arts, and other matters of public concern … would present a grave and unacceptable danger of suppressing truthful speech.” “The point is not that there is no such thing as truth or falsity in these areas or that the truth is always impossible to ascertain, but rather that it is perilous to permit the state to be the arbiter of truth.” (That’s from the dissent, but the concurrence endorsed it, and the plurality’s opinion was even more speech-protective than the others.)
Yet when it came to more specific lies, whether about one’s own medals or something else, there was no majority opinion.
Numerous catalytic converters are being stolen in my neighborhood in the City of St. Louis. This note is from a recent meeting of my neighborhood association: "The number one crime continues to be the stealing of catalytic converters from people’s cars. These types of crimes are hard to investigate since they happen very quickly." The attached surveillance video below that it only takes 1 minute to steal a catalytic converter.
One of my neighbors was very upset to find hers stolen a couple weeks ago. To replace the converter on her Honda Element would have been in excess of $3,000, and this was more than the value of her car. How much do the thieves get for damaging or destroying your car? "Although the amount of metal in a single catcon is relatively small, a thief could expect to get from $50 to $100 out of a single poaching." This can ruin a car for many people and this is happening during the pandemic, when many people are already severely stressed.
There are various devices you can buy or create to make it a lot harder to steal your catalytic converter. I'm looking into buying and installing one of these devices now.
Back in October 2020, I watched Jodi Shaw go public to explain a problem with the hostile work environment at Smith College, her then-employer and her alma mater. I'll never forget the earnestness in her voice, the determined look on her face and her intense emotions as she carefully described the situation. She knew she was about jump off the high dive and there would be no turning back. As I watched her video, I didn't sense any attempt at advocacy or showmanship. Shaw made her video to say some things that were factually straightforward, but socially dangerous for the many Smith adherents of the new religion of Critical Race Theory. She called out that the Emperor had no clothes.
Shaw was concerned that Smith College was attempting to fight racism with what has come to be known as neoracism, a pernicious new version of racism. At Smith College, Martin Luther King's great dream is dead. At the urging of the leadership of Smith College, complex human beings are proudly categorized and judged by the color of their skin, not by the content of their character.
I've followed Shaw's postings and videos carefully since October. Shaw has expanded on her concerns in subsequent videos and tweets: Reducing people to "colors" undermines moral agency, reduces people to "racial objects," and needlessly creates antagonistic in-groups and out-groups. She knew that breaking her silence would threaten her loss of income and perhaps her personal safety and it now has, as explained below.
Bari Weiss is also following Jodi Shaw's story, most recently in an article she titles "Whistleblower at Smith College Resigns Over Racism." Weiss writes:
Jodi Shaw was, until this afternoon, a staffer at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She made $45,000 a year — less than the yearly tuition at the school. She is a divorced mother of two children. She is a lifelong liberal and an alumna of the college. And she has had a front-row seat to the illiberal, neo-racist ideology masquerading as progress.
As part of her article, Weiss has reprinted Shaw's resignation letter in full. Here is an excerpt from Shaw's letter:
I can no longer work in this environment, nor can I remain silent about a matter so central to basic human dignity and freedom. . . . Under the guise of racial progress, Smith College has created a racially hostile environment in which individual acts of discrimination and hostility flourish. In this environment, people’s worth as human beings, and the degree to which they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, is determined by the color of their skin. It is an environment in which dissenting from the new critical race orthodoxy — or even failing to swear fealty to it like some kind of McCarthy-era loyalty oath — is grounds for public humiliation and professional retaliation. . . . Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. . . .
What passes for “progressive” today at Smith and at so many other institutions is regressive. It taps into humanity’s worst instincts to break down into warring factions, and I fear this is rapidly leading us to a very twisted place. It terrifies me that others don’t seem to see that racial segregation and demonization are wrong and dangerous no matter what its victims look like. Being told that any disagreement or feelings of discomfort somehow upholds “white supremacy” is not just morally wrong. It is psychologically abusive.
Jodi Shaw is no longer working as an employee of Smith College, but she is continuing to actively help Smith College find its way out of the Critical Race Theory thicket. You can follow her tweets here. She has set up a GoFundMe to help with her living expense and her legal fees.
Bari Weiss concludes her article:
What is happening is wrong. Any ideology that asks people to judge others based on their skin color is wrong. Any ideology that asks us to reduce ourselves and others to racial stereotypes is wrong. Any ideology that treats dissent as evidence of bigotry is wrong. Any ideology that denies our common humanity is wrong. You should say so. Just like Jodi Shaw has.