hey can we please stop citing the aclu as a like, a good organization
Alright y’all, actual lawblr here to jump in and tell you that the ACLU is, like, a good organization.
The right to free speech is enshrined in our Constitution. That means that everyone, everyone, has that right. It is a cornerstone of Constitutional Law that you cannot, cannot, CANNOT pass a law banning someone from speaking based on their viewpoint. This means that the right to free speech protects that which we find disagreeable, or even reprehensible.
If you would actually, idk, read those links, it would say that the ACLU used the exact same legal arguments defending neo-nazis that it did defending pro-civil rights protestors during the civil rights era. These are also the same legal arguments that protect all protestors currently around the country.
You cannot, cannot, cannot support your right to free speech and protest but not someone else’s.
Protest against them, call them assholes, do whatever you want, but everyone has that right.
The American Civil Liberties Union is committed to defending that right to free speech, that civil liberty, no matter who is speaking.
In order to uphold the right to free speech for everybody, somebody somewhere had to take a bullet to their reputation and defend neo-nazis. If the law prohibiting neo-nazis from speaking were allowed to stand, that would set a legal precedent that would allow laws prohibiting any other protestors based on their viewpoint. The ACLU stepped up because they saw the BIG PICTURE.
Here’s a list of arguably gross things the Supreme Court has said you can do because of the right to free speech:
- Wear a shirt that says “fuck the draft” in a government building, Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).
- Burn the American flag, Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989).
Actually Imma stop there because you can just google “free speech cases” yourfuckingselves.
The same laws that say you can burn flags and tell the government to fuck itself protect neo-nazis, and in order to protect the line of cases that say you can burn flags and tell the government to fuck itself, somebody had to defend the neo-nazis. The ACLU took that bullet.
I leave you with Justice Kennedy’s beautiful and famous concurring opinion from Texas v. Johnson where he joined the court in striking down a ban on flag burning, which was something he personally found gross:
The case before us illustrates better than most that the judicial power is often difficult in its exercise. We cannot here ask another Branch to share responsibility, as when the argument is made that a statute is flawed or incomplete. For we are presented with a clear and simple statute to be judged against a pure command of the Constitution. The outcome can be laid at no door but ours.
The hard fact is that sometimes we must make decisions we do not like. We make them because they are right, right in the sense that the law and the Constitution, as we see them, compel the result. And so great is our commitment to the process that, except in the rare case, we do not pause to express distaste for the result, perhaps for fear of undermining a valued principle that dictates the decision. This is one of those rare cases.
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But whether or not he could appreciate the enormity of the offense he gave, the fact remains that his acts were speech, in both the technical and the fundamental meaning of the Constitution. So I agree with the Court that he must go free.
In conclusion, take your black-and-white, you-are-either-good-or-evil, they-did-something-bad-once-and-so-are-bad-forever attitude and GROW THE FUCK UP.
THE WORLD EXISTS IN GRAY AREAS AND SO MUST THE LAW IN ORDER TO PROTECT EVERYONE.