The ACLU Suddenly Reverses Its Support for Transparency

https://www.inquiremore.com/p/the-aclu-suddenly-reverses-its-support

by steelstraw • 5 years ago

46 81 5 years ago

_-david-_4• 5 years ago

There seems to be more and more cases where the ACLU is putting politics over there previously stated ideals? Does anybody have some organizations that still hold to their ideals? My understanding is the EFF is still pretty good, but quite limited in scope.

version_five• 5 years ago

I think it's been harder and harder recently for organization based around some principal to avoid "picking a side". I withdrew support from the CCLA (Canada's ACLU) because I felt similarly, and I now favor supporting direct action, for example GoFundMe campaigns, as opposed to "causes". I actually wonder if this will be a side effect of politicization, ie that fewer people will trust nonprofits to represent their interests and well see more direct involvement in giving. That could be good in some cases, but maybe worse in things like drawn out court cases that you might expect the ACLU to get involved in

Grakel2• 5 years ago

Project Veritas

ahevia• 5 years ago

That’s a good way to waste your money on a low information grift.

mrtesthah4• 5 years ago

Sorry to say that’s not a reputable organization.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Project_Veritas

0x7E3• 5 years ago

I settled on Institute for Justice as an alternative. https://ij.org/

josephcsible9• 5 years ago

The EFF has been losing its way too lately, e.g., by being anti-police even in matters unrelated to dragnet surveillance, being anti-Israel, and https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-...

It's definitely not as bad as the ACLU yet, though.

manuelabeledo3• 5 years ago

This is a terrible article.

The proposed bills are clearly directed at vetoing teaching of race and gender issues by manufacturing discontent. It’s not like republican lawmakers are trying to hide it - it was quite literally part of their 2020 agenda. The ACLU is not asking for _less_ transparency in schools, but _more_ transparency and accountability by lawmakers weaponising public opinion.

The case handled by the ACLU in Alabama is about constitutional rights and the separation of religion and state. It’s not remotely the same.

zozbot2342• 5 years ago

The bills require schools to post syllabuses for their courses and information about any assigned textbooks, readings etc. online. How can people conflate this with "vetoing any teaching about race and gender"? The two issues have basically nothing to do with one another.

manuelabeledo3• 5 years ago

The two issues have basically nothimg to do with one another.

Again, this excludes both the political climate and the republican agenda.

In a town or city with a republican majority, these laws would enable parents to exclude any textbooks deemed “not appropriate” from children curriculum.

cltby• 5 years ago

The transparency push would effectively veto race and gender teachings--the bet being that any teacher pushing leftist doctrines would be buried under parent complaints. Needless to say, this has been a very successful bet thus far! The ideas in question are evidently too repulsive to survive even the faintest sunlight.

supperburg• 5 years ago

The weak point of this article is that they never explain in depth what the laws would do. The liberals do this all the time saying that conservative bills are “anti voter rights” when in reality they just require ID to vote which is standard in many places that are more civilized than the US.

kaashif• 5 years ago

The liberals do this all the time saying that conservative bills are “anti voter rights” when in reality they just require ID to vote which is standard in many places that are more civilized than the US.

This issue in particular is very interesting. I saw an article [1] which seems to indicate voter ID laws have little effect in either direction on fraud or turnout. Does that mean Democrats should "give it away" to the Republicans in exchange for something else? Or would that be dishonest?

Well, I guess this whole contest is about trading political blows, not anything to do with the real world. Even if a policy has no or positive effect, giving a win to your opponents is bad.

1: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/21/18230009/v...

joshuamorton14• 5 years ago

It's worth reading the abstract of the paper you indirectly cite:

The lack of negative impact on voter turnout cannot be attributed to voters’ reaction against the laws, measured by campaign contributions and self-reported political engagement. However, the likelihood that non-white voters were contacted by a campaign increases by 4.7 percentage points, suggesting that parties’ mobilization might have offset modest effects of the laws on the participation of ethnic minorities.

Or in other words, the authors conclude that voting laws don't ultimately affect turnout, but that's confounded by a nearly 5% increase in GOTV efforts. While it's probably wrong to conclude that a 5% decrease in GOTV would reduce turnout by 5%, there's almost certainly some offsetting impact there.

BoiledCabbage2• 5 years ago

Do you ever wonder why the conservative party in the US is pushing so strongly for Voter IDs and arguing them being mandatory when voter fraud is virtually non- existent?

Always take time to understand why people push strongly for a solution to a problem that isn't occurring. And usually when you do, you'll find there are second order effects that cause that group to benefit.

Looking into that gets to the root of the issue and the reason why people are correctly labeling it as anti-voter rights.

_-david-_4• 5 years ago

Do you believe European countries who keep voter id laws are trying to suppress voters or is it just the US that you have an issue with?

Grakel2• 5 years ago

Need a vaccine card to leave the house, but no ID to elect the government, it would be hilarious if it weren't literally destroying the country.

joshuamorton14• 5 years ago

“anti voter rights” when in reality they just require ID to vote which is standard in many places that are more civilized than the US.

This has to be viewed in context. In these other "more civilized" countries that require voter ID, how easy is it to get a national ID? In the US, getting valid ID is complicated, requires going somewhere in person (and often for people in rural areas a significant distance) and cost. In Switzerland on the other hand, one can order a valid national ID online and receive it in the mail for free.

josephcsible9• 5 years ago

How can you order a valid national ID online and receive it in the mail, while making sure that someone who's not you can't do the same pretending to be you?

jonp8883• 4 years ago

This is not true. The "ordering" includes making an appointment to visit a government office where your photo, signature and fingerprints will be taken.

autoexec2• 5 years ago

The liberals do this all the time saying that conservative bills are “anti voter rights” when in reality they just require ID to vote

The problem with voter ID laws is not that they require an ID to vote. It's that they do nothing at all to address the problem of getting IDs into the hands of voters. If those same laws made IDs free, easily accessible, and gave every eligible voter enough time to get their hands on one, there wouldn't by any problem with voter ID laws. Research shows that voter ID laws in today's conditions would prevent a large number of legal voters from being able to vote. The true goal of voter ID laws being proposed right now is voter suppression.

josephcsible9• 5 years ago

If those same laws made IDs free

Hasn't this already been true for years? https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/penndot-offers-fr...

easily accessible, and gave every eligible voter enough time to get their hands on one

Is there any voter ID requirement, or even a proposal for one, that doesn't accept drivers' licenses? You can get that at 16, and most people get it well before 18, the minimum voting age.

Research shows that voter ID laws in today's conditions would prevent a large number of legal voters from being able to vote.

Can you link to this research? In particular, is it making the assumption that people who can get an ID would just choose not to for some reason? Because I can't think of anyone who's allowed to vote but not allowed any form of ID that would let them.

random3142• 4 years ago

more civilized

Is this a dog whistle?

VirusNewbie• 5 years ago

https://www.fairforall.org/about/

is a group that seems to fill the void left by the ACLU abandoning their previous stance of being apolitical.

pvg2• 5 years ago

The ACLU has never had a stance of being 'apolitical'. That wouldn't make much sense given the nature of their work.

jevoten2• 5 years ago

'Principled' and 'non-partisan' described them better.

mrkstu• 5 years ago

They used to stand for protecting constitutional freedom, even if that conflicted with other leftist causes. Now they don't stand for protecting freedoms per se, rather advancing a more general progressive agenda. i.e. they used to protect freedom of speech for Nazis (literally)- now they consider viewpoint discrimination acceptable.

joshuamorton14• 5 years ago

Is there...anyone in that group who is left of center?

Like Bari Weiss, Kenny Xu, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Andrew Sullivan, Will Reilly, John McWhorter, Abigail Shrier, Megyn Kelly, Zaid Jilani, Peter Boghossian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Glen Loury are all people who I'd either describe as "generally conservative" or "have known clearly intolerant views against some group", whether it be immigrants, Muslims, or transgender people.

(and those are the only names I recognize, except for Angel Eduardo who I know nothing about except that he's been criticized by people I follow on Twitter for being a part of FAIR).

It's really, really, really hard to believe that an organization claiming to be against "racism and intolerance" is apolitical, when there's no notable left-of center representation on its board, and a good 10-20% of its board members are notable primarily because of their intolerance towards certain groups.

Like you could perhaps make the argument that this group is devoted very, very specifically to free speech and I'd believe you. But "intolerance", no. Those two things are fundamentally at odds.

Manuel_D5• 5 years ago

Most of them? That having liberal views on almost every flashpoint issue (guns, abortion, immigration, vaccines, etc.) save one or two, usually just one.

Take Kenny Xu, how do you justify categorizing him as "racist and intolerant"? Is the idea that college admissions should not discriminate on the basis of race really so abhorrent?

everybodyknows• 5 years ago

Board of Advisors:

https://www.fairforall.org/about/board-of-advisors/

Quite an overlap with the U of Austin crowd:

https://www.uaustin.org/board-of-advisors https://www.uaustin.org/founding-trustees

s1artibartfast4• 5 years ago

Consider what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had to say about pandemic management in 2008: “The notion that we need to ‘trade liberty for security’ is misguided and dangerous. Public health concerns cannot be addressed with law enforcement or national security tools.” 13 years later, in a guest essay in The New York Times, the ACLU proclaimed that “the real threat to civil liberties comes from states banning vaccine and mask mandates”. Think what you want about these policies, but the shift in the Overton window and ACLU values is real.

joshuamorton14• 5 years ago

It's worth noting that, practically speaking, none of the public health measures used in the recent pandemic have reached the level of what the ACLU was arguing against, which was things like forced quarantine (e.g. you're infected with asymptomatic covid, so you're locked in a hospital ward and not allowed to leave). In that original article, the ACLU also mentions that individuals and community engagement are important in the initial article.

13 years later, it spoke out about states banning businesses from mandating vaccinations or masks to enter their place of business. It should absolutely be within my rights as a business owner to ban an unvaccinated or unmasked patron, and it is a violation of my civil liberties for the government to ban this.

In other words, the 2008 and 2021 positions are entirely compatible.

throwoutway2• 4 years ago

It should absolutely be within my rights as a business owner to ban an unvaccinated or unmasked patron, and it is a violation of my civil liberties for the government to ban this.

Maybe it was the way you worded this but it surprised me. I recall that civil liberties said that businesses can’t ban people for what they look like, or if they have a beard, or a religious symbol, etc. I don’t think that changes for Covid

how is it a violation of your civil liberties? And then how is it not a violation of THEIR civil liberties?

I’m vaxxed and masked, but I think the ACLU has lost their collective heads in many ways

josephcsible9• 4 years ago

It should absolutely be within my rights as a business owner to ban an unvaccinated or unmasked patron, and it is a violation of my civil liberties for the government to ban this.

Do you think it's also within your rights as a business owner to allow unmasked and unvaccinated patrons, or to ban masks? If so, then are you upset that these civil liberties have been violated? If not, then why do you think the opposite is?

s1artibartfast4• 4 years ago

This is the article. It is clearly talking about top down state mandate compelling businesses, not allowing businesses to set their own policies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/opinion/covid-vaccine-man...

Here is the ACLU statement in opposition the SCOTUS rulings that the new york ban on church gatherings was unconstitutional

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-comment-scotus-deci...

During the pandemic, there were many mandates that infringed personal liberty. For example, in CA the governor claimed to have the power to bar healthy people leaving their house and visiting the private homes of their lovers, friends, and family. If that's not a civil liberties issue, I don't know what is.

The ACLU Suddenly Reverses Its Support for Transparency

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