When y’all fake conversations in your heads do you sometimes say random sentences out loud too? I was just tying my shoes and said very sternly and loudly “I DO know how ants work, fucker”
SMALL TALK TIP FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE SMALL TALK: Ask people if they have any pets. This is light and impersonal enough to offend no one. People who have pets are usually pretty excited to talk about them and show off pictures, so there’s a good chance that you will be looking at kitties and doggos. People who don’t have pets will usually talk about the pets they wish they had, or have had in the past. People who neither have nor want pets are pretty rare.
It’s a neutral topic to talk about but be prepared for the weirdest shit. I once spent an hour listening to a financial manager who kept tropical velvet earthworms
that sounds like an excellent reason to try this strategy
lawyer probs: the growing number of people suddenly surprised that the aclu represents shitty people as well as good people because they didn’t have to read a bunch of aclu cases in law school.
That’s why I enjoy the ACLU’s work so much. You have to REALLY love civil rights to stand up for some of the shitty people the ACLU represents. Without them bringing those tough cases, though, where would the rest of us be?
The First Amendment equally protects those we agree with and those we disagree with. It protects Civil Rights marches and BLM protestors. It also protects the most deplorable among us.
Without the ACLU, and without the First Amendment protecting the most heinous and disgusting views out there, the Constitution also wouldn’t protect the protests and speakers we hold most dear.
This isn’t about right or wrong, or political beliefs. This is about policy. Our Constitution made the choice to protect ALL speech equally, lest ANY speech, good or bad, be suppressed.
THIS. I think everything you need to know about the importance/purity of principle of the ACLU is that I saw a meme on Facebook where someone had like Photoshopped an ACLU logo onto a burning office building and with some terrible caption like “We know what to do with Nazi sympathizers” and my immediate internal response was “the ACLU would defend your right to post that if the government tried to punish you for it. All the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.”
I don’t think there’s anything I’m so purely dedicated to the way the ACLU is dedicated to protecting freedom of speech.
The ACLU is pure lawful neutral. They’re here to make sure everyone gets equal protection under the law, even if that means defending people they’d otherwise like to punch in the face.
I think the lawful neutral label is really really apt, and also a good way to point out the precise way in which active liberals have sort of gotten the wrong idea about the ACLU.
It seems like a lot of people have kind of imagined the ACLU as a chaotic good. Righteous defenders of the left’s favorite causes, turning the very power structures that allow or actively create oppression (legislatures, the justice system) into tools against that oppression. And it’s totally understandable why, especially if you’re pretty young and have just gotten into liberal campaigns in the last 5-10 years why you might think of them that way. Because you’d see them doing these high profile cases and campaigns for things like LGBT rights and fighting the travel bans, and there are plenty of organizations that sort of do fit in to that type of mold–SPLC, HRC, Emily’s List, etc., all on varying points on the lawful to chaotic spectrum–so it’s easy to think it makes sense to lump the ACLU in with them.
But you’re right that the ACLU is much more of a lawful neutral, ESPECIALLY in the free speech arena. They’re just there doing the really not glamorous work of refereeing to make sure that oppressive government actors can’t silence anybody, which makes sure that organizations like SPLC and HRC have the ability to do their work without interference.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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