I am convinced of one thing about the ACLU...

[Guy Fawkes]

they would defend wholeheartedly the rights of neonazis to burn down the ACLU headquarters as an act of free-speech. I support them completely, just for that: they are very serious about personal freedoms.

(FYI: this is in response to a column in the paper about the ACLU's backing of NAMBLA protests as a free-speech issue)

[wtmusic]

1. Um, not quite

When it involves destruction of personal property? That's not free speech, that's arson and jail time.

[AnnInLa]

2. It's always hard to hear that

but I will remain a member as long as the ACLU is the main organization in America that stands between us and complete fascism.

[lvx35]

3. They have a lot of integrity.

I have questioned whether I should even have it in my sig on a democratic site, because they are truly non-partisian in their defense of free speech...I worry that I might turn repubs against them when they also defend the rights of christians to do things, etc.

[tocqueville]

4. burning down houses isn't a "personal freedom" or

"free speech". It's barbary.

that's why the nazis win and the ACLU loses

[Mr_Spock]

5. Posters are all caught up in you example and missed the point!!

Oh, well - I know what you meant - people can be such sticklers for detail and completely destroy the perfectly good point made in this thread.

[H5N1]

6. The ACLU didn't back NAMBLA, did they?

[Guy Fawkes]

8. I checked it out on their website...

yeah, they did.

http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeechList.cfm?c=86&ContentType=&ContentStyle=1&num=1000

[H5N1]

10. Not quite: They are against a wrongful death NAMBLA lawsuit

Whew, I was about to turn in my ACLU card.

[SofaKingLiberal]

11. ACLU Statement on Defending Free Speech of Unpopular Organizations

NEW YORK--In the United States Supreme Court over the past few years, the American Civil Liberties Union has taken the side of a fundamentalist Christian church, a Santerian church, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. In celebrated cases, the ACLU has stood up for everyone from Oliver North to the National Socialist Party. In spite of all that, the ACLU has never advocated Christianity, ritual animal sacrifice, trading arms for hostages or genocide. In representing NAMBLA today, our Massachusetts affiliate does not advocate sexual relationships between adults and children.

What the ACLU does advocate is robust freedom of speech for everyone. The lawsuit involved here, were it to succeed, would strike at the heart of freedom of speech. The case is based on a shocking murder. But the lawsuit says the crime is the responsibility not of those who committed the murder, but of someone who posted vile material on the Internet. The principle is as simple as it is central to true freedom of speech: those who do wrong are responsible for what they do; those who speak about it are not.

It is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something many people find at least reasonable. But the defense of freedom of speech is most critical when the message is one most people find repulsive. That was true when the Nazis marched in Skokie. It remains true today.

- As much as I despise NAMBLA, I can see how a precedent could have been set that would have serious consequences for free speech.

[TahitiNut]

7. I agree; they have remarkable integrity.

It was when a Jewish attorney from the ACLU defended the free speech and assembly rights of the neo-nazi's to march in Skokie that I became a lifetime paying member. I could not, in good conscience, call myself a 'liberal' without doing so. I don't know of a more 'American' organization - at least in the sense that I grew up believing.

[unblock]

9. that case did cause a lot of turmoil within the aclu

it was a tough one for many jews to swallow. not that they disagreed, necessarily, but the aclu cannot fight every battle, and there was a big effort to sit that one out simply on the grounds that they had better cases to focus on.

as a jew, i'm glad they came out where they did, defending principle over politics, even though i think it was clear that the neo-nazis WERE trying to instigate violence -- why else march in an overwhelmingly jewish suburb, where of the neonazis lived, nor would they likely find any recruits?

my mother, a lawyer and proud aclu member, had a very tough time with this one and ended up opposing the aclu's decision. one of the few political issues we disagreed on.

[TahitiNut]

12. Yep. There were good ethical positions to be taken on both sides.

Moral dilemmas are NEVER simple. (They wouldn't be called dilemmas if they were.) That was, however, a point in my life where I'd recently chosen a deontological grounding over a teleological one ... and the difficult choice the ACLU made was emblematic of my own ethical development. The complexity, of course, was compounded by how one viewed the neo-nazis' intended act. The act, in and of itself (a deontological focus) was their right; the intended outcome (a teleological focus), assuming it was to provoke violence, was not 'right.' A complex dilemma. Not easy; but right, by my lights.

I can easily understand why a person trained and experienced as an attorney would tend mostly to fall on the teleological side.

[unblock]

13. fwiw, she wasn't "trained and experienced as a lawyer" at that time

she didn't go to law school until us kids were basically high school aged, i think that was later the same year as the skokie march.