'To Hell with First Amendment,' says 2017 ACLU

2017 ACLU says: 'To Hell with First Amendment'

In his exhaustive 1990 study of the American Civil Liberties Union's history, "In Defense of American Liberties" (Oxford University Press), University of Nebraska at Omaha Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice Samuel Walker recalled the organization's challenging WWII-era interning U.S. citizens of Japanese descent.

That was truly a distinguishing moment in the ACLU's life. Today looms another Constitutional rights test with profound implications. But unlike their past counterparts, current ACLU officials seek the comfort afforded by shadows of acquiescence to perceived popular prejudices.

Previously supposed an unvarying advocate for all citizens' free speech rights, the ACLU recently announced its support of the First Amendment would henceforth be contingent on citizens not availing themselves of equally valid and judicially accepted Second Amendment ones.

Public assembly and statement making are acceptable enough and deserving of protection, the organization now declares, but only so long as participants don't legally carry arms. 

A civil liberties group that institutionally denounces Constitutional rights? Paging George Orwell!

(No perceptive observer will likely be fooled by this 'public safety' gimmick. Protection of controversial expression is being denied. One understands that's the goal.)

Harry Frumerman, in his Library Journal review of Walker's book, observed that the author "makes plain that it was by fearlessly championing unpopular or even 'dangerous' ideas of the [1920s] that the ACLU became a major force in shaping American attitudes on civil liberties."

But that was then, and this is now. And reports are that the 2017 ACLU's coffers have filled to overflowing during these days of progressive-authoritarian resistance to the populist Trump Revolution. 

So, no more strict adherence to free speech rights for the professional civil liberties group, lest clucking social justice scolds pounce and moneyed donor's ire be piqued. (One longs for the ACLU of 1973/Skokie.)

True, the organization did recently lend official support to conservative speaker and author Milo Yiannoupolos. His "Dangerous" book advertising was quashed by the Washington Metro Transit Authority, and some of his public events have been 'shut down' by violent progressive terrorists.

That action, though, now seems but a gesture. A final gasp of respectable belief. An ACLU lawyer named Chase Strangio refused to support Yiannoupolos, tweeting: "I don't believe in protecting principle for the sake of principle in all cases." 

Nevermind that that's pretty much the ACLU's defining philosophical essence. 

Today In Civil Liberties recalls that, in 1929, an address on the importance of free speech, set to be delivered by ACLU Director Roger Baldwin, was canceled by the Superintendent of New York Schools. In 1989, the group established the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award.

But while that's fine for glittery statuary, the organization is now typified more by the anti-principle Strangio than the superficially venerated Baldwin.

The ACLU's upper echelon is surely populated by ostensibly high-minded sorts, ones waving impressive educational degrees, and with years if not decades of free speech theorizing and legal advocacy to their credit. 

Doubtlessly, they would resent critics reminding them of the First Amendment's importance. To which would come this logical response: Someone clearly needs to.


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