Judge says Education Dept partisan out-of-office emails violated First Amendment

“the First Amendment is a cheap thing if all it provides is the assurance that one may say what a current majority is willing to hear.” Charles Rembar

I think we can all agree on this. It would just be nice if there was consistent enthusiasm for the first amendment when it comes to actual taboo ideas. Are you quoting this when you hear about right wing extremists being canceled or jailed in Europe? In the 1970s, Jewish lawyers at the ACLU defended the American Nazi Party’s right to march in Skokie. Not out of support, but to uphold the principle of free speech for all. What happened to intellectual honesty?

> What happened to intellectual honesty?

It’s gone. The ACLU itself is pretty anti free speech these days and happily looks the other way when censorship on private social media platforms aligns with their ideological views. People have been writing about free speech issues at the ACLU for about a decade now:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/is-the-aclu...

Sadly, agreed. The ACLU used to be known as a stalwart on this, fighting for the right of the KKK to hold marches etc. The "their speech might be reprehensible, but we need to fight for all free speech" perspective.

Now, they're uninterested in a lot of these issues.

And I say this as someone very liberal.

You can also separately debate where the line is on the topic of say "absolute free speech", but whatever the ACLU used to fight for, it fights for a distinct subset only, now.

Why is free speech defined by freedom of nazi and never by freedom for left wing people?

Nazi are popular now and sympatisants are political leaders. It is not their defense what defines freedom, it is everybody elses rights that define lack of it.

I'm glad I live in a country where nothing you say or think or do can ever take away my natural right to speak any opinion in a peaceful way. If you don't already have freedom too, I hope someday your government will stop oppressing your people and let them express their opinions in a peaceful way.

You dont live in America then. But that was not my question.

My question was while is it ok to silence progressives, feminists, left wing, critics of nazi and still be considered free speech activist while "not actively defending nazi" is excluding you from that.

Your only benchmark for free speech is "are nazi helped enough in their quest to oppress others". You dont care about anybody elses rights.