The Left Colonizes And Destroys Every Institution It Touches: Greenwald On The Transformation Of The ACLU Into A Leftist Propaganda Organ

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The 'CL' in 'ACLU' has been a sad, sorry joke for going on a decade now. As with every other institution it touches, the left has bent the organization to its purposes. Since the left does not value civil liberties, the result has been that the ACLU no longer values them. As the organization has explicitly stated, it is no longer in favor of freedom of speech unless that speech is in accordance with identity politics and/or the other political positions of the postmodern progressive left.

   One of the most prominent forms of insanity that has afflicted the new new left is its mania for institutionalizing and enforcing even its most fleeting whims--even when those are not essentially connected with its ruling ideology. When Trump was president and news began to break that Operation Warp Speed was likely to succeed, prominent progressives proclaimed that they would refuse "the Trump vaccine." After Biden won the election, their polarity switched--now progressives are religiously dedicated to forcing everyone to take it. Conservatives haven't been any better. Progressives vaxmania has been matched by a strange anti-vax commitment on the right. The proper approach is to let individuals make their own choice about it. But, of course, that is never the right answer according to progressives--everyone must be forced to vaccinate. That includes healthy young people who are at virtually no risk from the virus, people with religious objections, and even children. Children are an especially telling case since they are at almost no risk from COVID, but probably at greatest risk from unknown, long-term effects of the vaccine. An older person who is at great risk from COVID, and only has an average of twenty years of life remaining is in a much different situation than a child, who is at little risk from COVID but my have another sixty years of life during which adverse effects of the vaccine might manifest themselves. Of course the Wuhan virus may also have long-term effects--I don't deny that. The point, however, is that the cost-benefit calculation will look different for a kid than for a 60-year-old. 

   But the real points are, as Greenwald notes: (1) the ACLU--still nominally a civil liberties organization--is arguing in favor of mandates, and (2) its position on such mandates changed when the progressive orthodoxy flipped in favor of them. This is yet more proof that the ACLU's positions are now determined by progressive-left orthodoxy, no matter how arbitrary. 

   The ACLU now joins all the rest of our institutions as a pomo-prog propaganda organ / re-education enterprise. Universities used to primarily pursue knowledge; now they see Job One as indoctrinating students. Big Tech--formerly guided by a free-wheeling libertarianism--is now dedicated to advancing progressive-left dogma and policies and suppressing any dissent from them. Even the military now seems to care more about leftist indoctrination than warfighting.

   The nation is in the grip of a political cult.