ACLU Seeks To Silence Its Own Board Members: What Free Speech?
This is the kind of hypocrisy that Conservatives and most reasonable liberals can agree that the ACLU needs to some house cleaning on. Via NY Times:
The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization’s policies and internal administration.
“Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting the fact of such disagreement,” the committee that compiled the standards wrote in its proposals.
“Directors should remember that there is always a material prospect that public airing of the disagreement will affect the A.C.L.U. adversely in terms of public support and fund-raising,” the proposals state.
Given the organization’s longtime commitment to defending free speech, some former board members were shocked by the proposals.
I would take a guess that there is some reason that those that are shocked are “former” board members for a reason. How many times have we heard the ACLU ask the government for transparency? Most people that believe in true free speech and the right to dissent expect the ACLU to hold itself to the same ideological standards that it asks of others.
UPDATE:
HotAir has more
Cross-posted at Stop The ACLU
May 24th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Great Point.
May 24th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
The ACLU ONLY takes cases or plays games it can win. Ya’ can’t win if the whole team doesn’t pull together, right or wrong.
May 24th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
The real Mike Meyers would not sacrifice the true ideals of free speech no matter what was right or wrong.
May 24th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
ACLU, That Bastion Of Free Speech
Oh, the ACLU. I don’t like throwing the term hypocrisy around loosely, but in some cases it’s warranted (h/t: Stop the ACLU):The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizin…
May 25th, 2006 at 11:31 am
How is this any different from, say, the Republican or Democratic parties putting the big Reichian boot in the face of any party member who pubilcally dissents from the party line?