Who else remembers Skokie?
Hurrah for the ACLU
In Charlottesville, a principled stand for the speech rights of even odious speakers.
William McGurnAug. 14, 2017 6:51 p.m. ET
Opinion Journal: Free Speech in Charlottesville
Opinion Journal Video: Main Street Columnist and Former White House Speechwriter Bill McGurn on the American Civil Liberties Union. Photo Credit: Getty Images.
By
William McGurn
It’s not every day this columnist finds himself on the same side as WikiLeaks, Glenn Greenwald and the American Civil Liberties Union.
That’s especially true for the ACLU, because these days it has too often let progressive politics trump its founding mission of protecting core civil liberties such as speech and due process. All the more reason, however, to applaud the ACLU for the principled—and unpopular—stand it took in Charlottesville, Va., for free speech.
In two tweets put out just hours after James Alex Fields drove his Dodge Challenger into the crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring many others, the ACLU’s national office explained its work in Charlottesville this way. “The First Amendment is a critical part of our democracy,” it said, “and it protects vile, hateful, and ignorant speech. For this reason, the ACLU of Virginia defended the white supremacists’ right to march.”
This, of course, hasn’t tempered the outrage on Twitter , where the attacks on the ACLU are mostly variations of “How could you?” Or in the New York Times , where a Princeton prof complained that the ACLU goes out of its way “to defend the rights of provocative speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter to speak on campuses but has been virtually silent on cases involving leftist or progressive faculty members who face suspension for provocative comments.” On Monday Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe piled on, suggesting the violence was the ACLU’s fault.
The unkindest cut came from within, when a board member of the ACLU’s Virginia chapter resigned in protest of . . . well . . . the ACLU. “I won’t be a fig leaf for Nazis,” declared Waldo Jaquith.
Plainly Mr. Jaquith, when he joined the ACLU, somehow hadn’t noticed that way back in 1977 the organization had defended a similarly provocative plan by Nazis to hold a march in Skokie, a Chicago suburb where Jewish Holocaust survivors constituted a high percentage of the population. In the end the ACLU prevailed at the Supreme Court but lost many donors and members in the process. (Ironically, the Nazis never did march in Skokie.)
The ACLU’s involvement in this past weekend’s march in Charlottesville started after the city revoked a permit issued in June to local alt-right activist Jason Kessler. The permit was for a rally in a park that until this June had been named for Robert E. Lee and features a statue of the Confederate general the City Council wants to remove.
A week before the rally, the city of Charlottesville revoked the permit, saying it wanted the rally moved to another park, a mile away, because the police couldn’t handle the crowd. The ACLU (and the Rutherford Institute) sued in federal court on Mr. Kessler’s behalf, saying the Charlottesville police had handled crowds of thousands before in the same park. It further noted that the city’s action seemed to be motivated by what it feared counterprotesters might do, in effect granting them a heckler’s veto.
But the ACLU’s chief argument was that the First Amendment precludes governments from blocking public protests based on their viewpoints, however loathsome those views may be.
On Aug. 11, the day before the rally, a federal judge sided with Mr. Kessler and the First Amendment, enjoining the city from revoking its permit.
In addition to defending the free-speech rights of the protesters, the ACLU also sent observers to the rally on Saturday, who then tweeted out what they saw as it happened. Among the ACLU Virginia tweets: “Clash between protesters and counter protesters. Police says ‘We’ll not intervene until given the command to do so.’ ”
Another tweet: “Not sure who provoked first. Both sides were hitting each other at Justice Park before police arrived.”
At 9:40 p.m., after the young lady had been killed, the group issued a larger statement on the day’s violence. It began by saying the ACLU of Virginia was “sickened” by the “vile acts committed” in Charlottesville, condemning “white supremacy,” calling what happened “terrorism,” and insisting that included in their condemnation was President Trump, “who condones today’s inhumanities by default.”
But it didn’t back down on the stand it had taken: “What happened today had nothing to do with free speech.”
As usual the liberal website Vox put its finger on what is at stake in a way it almost surely did not intend, when it explained the reasoning of those attacking the ACLU. “It’s one thing in theory to support universal free speech rights, but it’s another to actually spend time and money defending neo-Nazis.”
Exactly. The ACLU’s sin here is that it didn’t just support free speech in theory. It supported it in practice. Even speech the ACLU detests. Even while most ACLU members are probably more personally in sync with the anti-Trump sentiments of the counterprotesters.
So three cheers for the ACLU for defending free speech at the moment it most matters: when it’s guaranteed to make you unpopular.
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
Appeared in the August 15, 2017, print edition.
Hurrah for the ACLU
In Charlottesville, a principled stand for the speech rights of even odious speakers.
William McGurnAug. 14, 2017 6:51 p.m. ET
Opinion Journal: Free Speech in Charlottesville
Opinion Journal Video: Main Street Columnist and Former White House Speechwriter Bill McGurn on the American Civil Liberties Union. Photo Credit: Getty Images.
By
William McGurn
It’s not every day this columnist finds himself on the same side as WikiLeaks, Glenn Greenwald and the American Civil Liberties Union.
That’s especially true for the ACLU, because these days it has too often let progressive politics trump its founding mission of protecting core civil liberties such as speech and due process. All the more reason, however, to applaud the ACLU for the principled—and unpopular—stand it took in Charlottesville, Va., for free speech.
In two tweets put out just hours after James Alex Fields drove his Dodge Challenger into the crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring many others, the ACLU’s national office explained its work in Charlottesville this way. “The First Amendment is a critical part of our democracy,” it said, “and it protects vile, hateful, and ignorant speech. For this reason, the ACLU of Virginia defended the white supremacists’ right to march.”
This, of course, hasn’t tempered the outrage on Twitter , where the attacks on the ACLU are mostly variations of “How could you?” Or in the New York Times , where a Princeton prof complained that the ACLU goes out of its way “to defend the rights of provocative speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter to speak on campuses but has been virtually silent on cases involving leftist or progressive faculty members who face suspension for provocative comments.” On Monday Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe piled on, suggesting the violence was the ACLU’s fault.
The unkindest cut came from within, when a board member of the ACLU’s Virginia chapter resigned in protest of . . . well . . . the ACLU. “I won’t be a fig leaf for Nazis,” declared Waldo Jaquith.
Plainly Mr. Jaquith, when he joined the ACLU, somehow hadn’t noticed that way back in 1977 the organization had defended a similarly provocative plan by Nazis to hold a march in Skokie, a Chicago suburb where Jewish Holocaust survivors constituted a high percentage of the population. In the end the ACLU prevailed at the Supreme Court but lost many donors and members in the process. (Ironically, the Nazis never did march in Skokie.)
The ACLU’s involvement in this past weekend’s march in Charlottesville started after the city revoked a permit issued in June to local alt-right activist Jason Kessler. The permit was for a rally in a park that until this June had been named for Robert E. Lee and features a statue of the Confederate general the City Council wants to remove.
A week before the rally, the city of Charlottesville revoked the permit, saying it wanted the rally moved to another park, a mile away, because the police couldn’t handle the crowd. The ACLU (and the Rutherford Institute) sued in federal court on Mr. Kessler’s behalf, saying the Charlottesville police had handled crowds of thousands before in the same park. It further noted that the city’s action seemed to be motivated by what it feared counterprotesters might do, in effect granting them a heckler’s veto.
But the ACLU’s chief argument was that the First Amendment precludes governments from blocking public protests based on their viewpoints, however loathsome those views may be.
On Aug. 11, the day before the rally, a federal judge sided with Mr. Kessler and the First Amendment, enjoining the city from revoking its permit.
In addition to defending the free-speech rights of the protesters, the ACLU also sent observers to the rally on Saturday, who then tweeted out what they saw as it happened. Among the ACLU Virginia tweets: “Clash between protesters and counter protesters. Police says ‘We’ll not intervene until given the command to do so.’ ”
Another tweet: “Not sure who provoked first. Both sides were hitting each other at Justice Park before police arrived.”
At 9:40 p.m., after the young lady had been killed, the group issued a larger statement on the day’s violence. It began by saying the ACLU of Virginia was “sickened” by the “vile acts committed” in Charlottesville, condemning “white supremacy,” calling what happened “terrorism,” and insisting that included in their condemnation was President Trump, “who condones today’s inhumanities by default.”
But it didn’t back down on the stand it had taken: “What happened today had nothing to do with free speech.”
As usual the liberal website Vox put its finger on what is at stake in a way it almost surely did not intend, when it explained the reasoning of those attacking the ACLU. “It’s one thing in theory to support universal free speech rights, but it’s another to actually spend time and money defending neo-Nazis.”
Exactly. The ACLU’s sin here is that it didn’t just support free speech in theory. It supported it in practice. Even speech the ACLU detests. Even while most ACLU members are probably more personally in sync with the anti-Trump sentiments of the counterprotesters.
So three cheers for the ACLU for defending free speech at the moment it most matters: when it’s guaranteed to make you unpopular.
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
Appeared in the August 15, 2017, print edition.
