The Misguided Attacks on ACLU
This is a bad article. A general principle in debate is to attack the strongest arguments from the opposing side, not the weakest ones. Yes, dragging Shanley for her low-context low-nuance tweets is easy. (I suspect she enjoys seeing people fall into that trap.) The article completely dismisses a well-reasoned critique of the ACLU by a former-as-of-yesterday ACLU of Virginia board member who was directly involved in the Charlottesville legal proceedings until the ACLU showed up to oppose him:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;waldojaquith&#x2F;status&#x2F;896512190563454977" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;waldojaquith&#x2F;status&#x2F;896512190563454977</a> (thread)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;waldojaquith&#x2F;status&#x2F;896566113974317058" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;waldojaquith&#x2F;status&#x2F;896566113974317058</a> (thread)<p>All they say about this is <i>&quot;One board member of the ACLU of Virginia, Waldo Jaquith, waited until the violence erupted to announce on Twitter that he was resigning in protest of the ACLU’s representation of the protesters – as though he was unaware when he joined the Board that the ACLU has been representing the free speech rights of neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups (along with Communists, Muslims, war protesters and the full spectrum of marginalized minorities and leftists) for many decades.&quot;</i><p>Of course he knows that and knew that. Greenwald would do well to debate his actual points.<p>In particular, the ACLU was not defending the right of the neo-Nazis to assemble, but the  right of the neo-Nazis to assemble <i>in a crowded park that was too small for effective logistics</i>. (Greenwald half-mentions this in a parenthetical, without context.) Jason Kessler and Emily Gorcenski agree on approximately nothing, but they both have criticized the inability of the city to keep order during yesterday&#x27;s events, which appears to be the direct cause of the life lost yesterday: the road that James Alan Fields drove his car down was not a protest location but was between two of the parks, and the counter-protesters believed that it was supposed to be closed to vehicular traffic.<p>The city was not trying to prevent the neo-Nazis from speaking. They were merely trying to move them to a larger, easier-to-secure area to prevent exactly the thing that happened yesterday. The ACLU defended the right of the neo-Nazis to protest in the smaller park simply because they claimed it was their free speech right to assemble next to the statue of Robert E. Lee, instead of somewhere that the city could ensure a safe event.<p>It also gives no serious response to this critique of the ACLU by a current ACLU lawyer:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;chasestrangio&#x2F;status&#x2F;895351745693585419" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;chasestrangio&#x2F;status&#x2F;895351745693585419</a><p>and completely ignores this information, which utterly wipes out Greenwald&#x27;s non-serious response to Strangio, from an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;anoop_alc&#x2F;status&#x2F;896468870764011522" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;anoop_alc&#x2F;status&#x2F;896468870764011522</a><p><i>&quot;I asked the ACLU for help defending a Muslim immigrant being deported for protected speech. They declined. They CHOOSE to protect the KKK.&quot;</i>