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[1] Early years [ edit] Ira Glasser was born on April 18, 1938, at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. Greater New York City Area. Suppose Mayor Giuliani's opponent Hillary Clinton wants to respond to the New York Post'selectioneering. "Skokie passed three new laws," Glasser explained in the podcast. The ACLU is a nationwide, non-profit organization consisting of nearly 300,000 members dedicated to protecting the principles of freedom and liberty set forth in the Bill of Rights. We hear Heather Heyers mother make this exact argument, saying, when asked if those white nationalists should have the right to speak again, I do, and thats not a popular opinion. She adds, I think once we take away the right to free speech, we may never get it back. However, the film isnt quite so trite or easy. The Court's split decision created several anomalies. ", https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/chrt.fm/track/35917C/d2h6a3ly6ooodw.cloudfront.net/reasontv_audio_8088607.mp3. Similarly, incumbents can make news. As friend David Sirota points out in his terrific and funny bookBack To Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now, two of the three top-grossing movies in 1975 were the anti-puritanical romp,The Rocky Horror Picture Show,andOne Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, an anti-authoritarian drama written by beat novelist Ken Kesey. even people who are political enemies or have political opinions that are opposite to . After moderator Michael Kinsley provides an introduction, Buckley officially proposes the resolution . We've received your submission. The ACLU therefore supports public financing to provide a floorfor campaign expenditures in an amount sufficient to insure a fair public debate, rather than caps on contributions and expenditures, which only enhance inequality and curb speech. That he supports the First Amendment., Heres how the FAAs failure delayed thousands of flights, COVID Lockdowns Led to Huge Spike in Human Trafficking, Survivor Warns, Heres Why Senator Rand Paul is Blocking the Latest Russia Sanctions Bill, Biden Bans Russian Oil, Blames U.S. Oil for Sitting on Sidelines, CNN Poll: Majority of Voters Say Biden State of the Union Failed to Adequately Address Inflation. But it is the right road for Congress to travel. The ACLU thought this sort of expenditure limitation was a clear violation of the First Amendment, and had no relationship to the legitimate purpose of reducing corruption. Even though there were no large contributions to his campaign and therefore no plausible possibility of bribery or corrupt influence, the new law said that after a point, he could speak no more. The honor roll included Senator George McGovern. It sought to enjoin them from publishing such ads, and it wrote a letter toThe TimesthreateningThe Timeswith criminal prosecution if it published such an ad again. No set of limits can possibly limit everything. The discussion ended up being an exercise in mutual puzzlement. Next thing you know, Forsyth County, Georgia, might be banningHosea Williams from marching on Martin Luther King Day. Now Glasser is the subject of a new documentary, Mighty Ira, that celebrates his time at the ACLU and his legacy of protecting free speech. ", The 82-year-old Glasser fears that in becoming more political and less absolutist when it comes to defending speech, the ACLU is shrugging off a hard-earned legacy. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Moreover, when the law forces supporters to be devious and to spend their money directly instead of giving it to the candidate, electoral accountability is severed. The major cost of election campaigns is the cost of communicating with voters - a core First Amendment activity. In both these cases the government argued that barring such ads was necessary to achieve fair elections even though the rights of individuals to criticize their government would be curbed. Family Tieswas just one sortie in a massive corporate public relations campaign that began in the seventies and eighties, aimed at undoing the cultural hegemony of Glassers brand of liberalism. The thread that ran through that movie, and through hits likeDie Hard, Lethal Weapon,and even shows likeThe A-Team,was that democracy doesnt work, and the insistence on due process and rights just inhibits justice and enables bad guys. Campaign finance reform based on limits is what we've had for nearly 30 years, and it has not worked very well. In 1977, David Goldberger and Ira Glasser defended Nazis' rights to rally in National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, affirming in the U.S. Supreme Court that privileges under the First Amendment must extend to Democracy's most offensive ideas in order to protect its best. Speaking in Maine returns to Camden and the Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations, for an address by Ira Glasser, longtime Director of the ACLU and now President of the Drug Policy Alliance. On Friday, HBO host and comedian Bill Maher interviewed former American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Executive Director Ira Glasser on his HBO program "Real Time." Glasser has spoken out in recent years about how much his former organization has drifted away from its roots of fearlessly defending absolute free speech for all. However, we support public financing that would establish a floor of support for candidates to communicate with voters. They just produced a couple of years ago new guidelines for their lawyers to use when deciding what free speech cases to take, the ex-ACLU man explained. He has the First Amendment right to do so, which no one can dispute, and which federal election laws recognize. The spirit of Glasser and Stern's friendship, and their message that difference of opinion does not preclude understanding and. The leading social problem in America is the loss of moral coordinates, Buckley says. That does not seem to be an amount that is prohibitive for a democracy to spend in order to assure fair access to the voters. He describes driving past as the baseball cathedral was torn down in 1960 and seizing up with horror, an experience like losing a parent., Now, nothing is left but a plaque in the ground where home plate once sat, and he cant process the idea that there might be washing machines doing somebodys dirty laundry on the ground where Robinson once stole home. bdc loan default / 1440 daily digest unsubscribe / 1440 daily digest unsubscribe Thank you for inviting me to testify at today's hearing. We should insist that required campaign finance reports be filed in a uniform format on tape or disk so that they can be posted on the Internet and available to all interested individuals at once. Glasser and Stern met in person for the first time Wednesday. The so-called "Party of God" is an umbrella group for radical Shiites ideologically aligned with and funded by Iran. The 99-minute documentary honors Glassers lifelong commitment to strengthening the legal support system for free expression, even when that expression may run counter to majority views. This short article by Ira Glasser (former head of the ACLU) is the best concise explanation of why we need the First Amendment that I've ever read. Brian Stelter and Susan Glasser discuss the resignations of Fox News contributors Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. By Ira Glasser, Guest Writer Guest Writer Apr 5, 2010, 05:12 AM EDT | Updated May 25, 2011 He describes cheering in the stands next to 35- and 40-year-old black men, an experience white children could not have anywhere else in America at the time. Limits have been in place for nearly 30 years, but the problems limits were designed to solve remain, and new problems have been created. The Source of the Problem - and Its Remedy. Mighty Iragoes shows scenes from Charlottesville and the death of Heather Heyer, which serves as the obvious bookend tale to Skokie. The original Irish Republican Army (1919-1922), often now referred to as the . "The purging of the media ecosphere on the right creates even more potential for . Limits designed to forestall corruption also give wealthy candidates an unfair advantage. If ever there was a moment when speech could be harm, rubbing salt in the wounds of camp survivors, whod spent decades convincing themselves that this leafy suburb in the American midwest was a safe haven, had to qualify. Once he won in court, the Nazi leader Collin decided not to march in Skokie, and was eventually humiliated first by a giant counter-demonstration in Chicago, then by a child molestation charge that landed him in prison. Ira Glasser was born on April 18, 1938, at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. For these reasons, the ACLU opposes limits on contributions and expenditures. Ira Saul Glasser (born April 18, 1938) served as the fifth executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1978 to 2001. Thats a good guess, Glasser replied to laughter in the audience. Meanwhile, three of the top seven TV shows in 1975 were liberal dramas likeAll in the Family,which cast Archie Bunker as the recalcitrant bigot-with-a-heart who had to be gently introduced to positive social changes by comic irritants Sally Struthers and Rob Meathead Reiner. I am very aware always have been that Ive been able to really enjoy free speech especially here on HBO, and at ABC before they fired me, he quipped. Actually, most of the speech we defended didnt reflect our values. Because it ruled that a candidate could not corrupt himself, it permitted a wealthy candidate, like Ross Perot, for example, to spend an unlimited amount on his own candidacy. Thats the ACLU? Inequalities are thus created in the name of equality, unfair advantages are institutionalized in the name of fairness and some forms of political speech are protected while other forms are criminalized. Liberalism was pro-labor: Clinton Democrats embraced NAFTA and accelerated the Reagan-era export of the manufacturing economy, which allowed them to attract Wall Street donors and end their dependence on union money. Incumbents also have the franking privilege - they enjoy a large number of free mailings to their constituents. Those insurance bond requirements had been a classic mechanism by which white Southern towns used to ban civil rights demonstrations, Glasser said. We asked the Court to strike down the campaign finance law because it violated the First Amendment rights of citizens to speak their minds on public policy issues and to criticize or praise elected officials. And his ability to speak to the electorate -to publish leaflets, to mail to constituents, to buy radio and TV time, to buy ads in newspapers etc. Maher continued, Our values, but your value is free speech. Glasser laughed at Mahers observation. He is remembered by Ira Glasser, president of the Drug Policy Alliance's board and former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union: It was sometime in the eighties. Suppose, however, that she has a very wealthy individual supporter who doesn't own a newspaper, but who is willing to give her the money to run a full-page ad on behalf of her candidacy. Ira Glasser: And this turned out to be my political life in a way that totally fulfilled, I mean totally in an unimaginably terrific way, all of those dreams and ambitions and desires that couldn't be articulated when I was 15 and 16 and 18 and 19, and that no adult could give a vocational shape to because and partly these organizations used to . In a statement relevant to the political tensions of today, Perrino adds, Its a generation that also knew it had to engage their ideological opponents in debate, to speak across lines of difference, in order to win their values something Ira did repeatedly with his sparring partner and friend, William F. Buckley Jr.. Its a generation that also saw the essentiality of free speech in fighting for racial justice, Perrino says. However, it makes sense as we realize we may soon also miss Glassers brand of liberalism in the same way. The former head of the American Civil Liberties Union has ripped the group for no longer defending all free speech claiming it now cherry-picks cases that fit a new progressive agenda. Tags: Ira Glasser, documentary, ACLU, neo-Nazis, free speech, Ben Stern. The old-school liberalism Glasser represents believed in that model of constant engagement and constant dialogue, which is probably what RFK was talking about when he said the ACLU defended the root ideas of the country. Laura Paull is J. He believes what he says will convince you. The Election of 1896. Main Menu. Ira Glasser is one of America's unsung champions of civil rights and liberties. Rupert Murdoch owns the New York Postand decides to use his newspaper to campaign for the election of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to the U.S. Senate. The primary reason why this cost has escalated so dramatically in recent years is the dominant use of television and the high cost of television advertising. Ultimately, the ACLU argued that Skokie was a Tower-of-Babel moment for American law. Or knows about it, Maher added, to audience applause. The Joe Rogan Experience. But if a challenger secures a large contribution to pay for similar mailings to the same constituents, a violation of the law occurs. For the American public radio personality, see, Last edited on 21 September 2022, at 05:19, ACLU Chief Ira Glasser to Retire in 2001; 23-Year Tenure Transformed "Liberty's Law Firm", Ira Glasser on Free Speech | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO), Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics Biography, ACLU Press-Release on Glasser's Retirement, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ira_Glasser&oldid=1111476438, This page was last edited on 21 September 2022, at 05:19. This is bad First Amendment law, it has little to do with curbing corruption, it doesn't level the playing field and it is the opposite of true campaign finance reform. The reality is that Skokie could have and probably would have ended in much the same way, had Collin chosen to march. The ACLU receives no funding from the federal government. It was replaced by a marketing campaign that before long saw almost complete reversals on everything from war to deficits to surveillance to financial bailouts leaving America in such a weird place politically that Donald Trump, famous until then solely as a rich pig who fired people for fun, could successfully paint his Democratic challenger as a tool of the wealthy. The HBO host continued, Can I show a quote from the current head [of the ACLU] , Anthony Romero, he said I reject that we need an entrance exam on civil liberties to establish the bona fides needed to work here., What? Maher wondered aloud. Mighty Ira 's timing is quite welcome. You couldnt have one without the other, they argue. We see him hanging out at the Comedy Cellar on MacDougal Street in New York Glasser probably could have been a comic, not something one can say about a lot of current activists engaging with a table of comedians, who push him hard on where exactly the line is between speech and violence. Glasser, a down-to-earth liberal Jew from Brooklyn, made numerous appearances on Firing Line, the political debate show hosted by the aristocratic conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr., and . Now they have a bigger problem with it than they did in the old days when they were more sophisticated.. The result? However, Clinton won by hurling overboard most of the meaningful principles of liberalism. In an interview with Spiked, the man who was the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1978 to 2001 and turned the organization into a national power slammed the organization for abandoning its core principles of defending free speech, asserting that the organization is "intellectually dishonest.". Everybodys in favor of free speech, as long as its theirs., Everybody has an exception, he explained. The appropriate response to the disparities in the ability of different groups and individuals to communicate their political views to voters during an election campaign is to expand, not limit, the resources available for political advocacy. In his segment of the film, he explains to Glasser why he still thinks the ACLU was wrong to defend the right of neo-Nazis to demonstrate in Skokie and how the events in Charlottesville evoked painful memories. Other voices in the film include acclaimed public-interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson (founder of the Equal Justice Initiative), Michael Meyers (leader of the New York Civil Rights Coalition), the aforementioned Siegel (former NYCLU lawyer) and many others with hands-on experience in linking, and fighting for, the civil rights of all Americans as the principle under which they are legally united. ), Hosea Williams from marching on Martin Luther King Day, Back To Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now, arresting 100,000 people in a single year, Patrick Lawrence: The Return of Non-Alignment, Sy Hersh: US Bombed Nord Stream to Prolong Ukraine Proxy War, The Nightmare Espionage Act That is Killing Julian Assange and the First Amendment, Chris Hedges: The Trump-Russia Saga and the Death Spiral of American Journalism, China Report Excoriates 'US Hegemony', War Crimes, CIA Coups 400 Foreign Interventions, Matt Taibbi: Twitter FilesGEC, New Knowledge, and State-Sponsored Blacklists. An objection to this sort of public financing is that it will be too expensive. And he was deeply concerned about the growth of hate speech in American life. In October, Glasser spoke with. Actually, most of the speech we defended didnt reflect our values. Glasser then explained why this trend is so dangerous. on Is Traditional Ira Glasser-Style Liberalism Vanishing? After pausing to make a confused expression, he continued, In other words, before theyre gonna defend your free speech, they want to see what you say.. For the next 23 years, he defended the principle of free speech across the political spectrum. By Peter Baker , Susan Glasser , Erica Thompson , Leila Philip. Opinion polls ahead of the Irish election suggested a surge in support for left-leaning Sinn Fin . Mighty Iraspends a lot of time on stories like Glassers unlikely friendship with William F. Buckley, or his tearful meeting years later with Skokie resident Ben Stern, who lost his family in concentration camps and vehemently opposed Glasser in the seventies. In 1967, Glasser joined the New York Civil Liberties Union as associate director. Campaign journalists, then and now, pushed the same theme. By the end of Clintons run, not much was left to connect the party to either its New Deal or Great Society legacies, and the apparently self-evident logic of his two wins versus the crushing losses of McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis (as well as the embarrassing one-term malaise of Jimmy Carter) made old-school liberalism infamous among the pundit class. A theme of the movie is Glasser just talking and talking. Modern elite politics believes, as Perrino puts it, that all that is good and noble has been decided, a new version of theEnd Of Historydelusion that assumes problems are simple binary choices best decided by the push of a button, and has no interest in the idea that things have to be worked out through struggle and debate, over time. The need for civilized restraints has met with encouragement for people who want to parade in Skokie with their Nazi banners The ostensible aims of the ACLU are admirable it is a national pity that it has now become, to use Sunday suited ramblings, a bunch of baloney.. Once again, little attention was paid to the unintended ways in which such reforms would provide the government with unprecedented powers to curb citizen speech. They have the ability to get themselves covered on television and in newspapers. Or if youre for womens equality you see Playboy magazine, and you dont like that., Glasser continued: People used to say to me, Isnt it hard to defend free speech when so few people in this country are in favor of it? And my response was always, No, thats wrong. Organizations have the right to change. That Charlottesville ended in bloodshed while Skokie did not is blamed on bad policing, the one moment in the movie where Glasser seems to be copping out. But in 1998, all congressional general-election candidates combined spent approximately $740 million - roughly $3.69 per eligible voter. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Glasser points out that use of all drugs has gone down in countries such as Portugal and Holland where usage is decriminalized. If she owned a newspaper, she could do so. They can do that, the ACLU legend noted. Once he got to know the former ACLU icon, he realized that his story was completely lost on my generation, but also increasingly relevant, for reasons that become clear minutes into the film. One of the most telling scenes inMighty Irashows Buckley on TV, teeing off on the ACLU over Skokie. Limits have proven to be a bogus reform. Thats the most dangerous thing of all, Glasser finished. And then theres Nazis and flags which are concrete, Maher detailed. As Glasser says inMighty Ira, Anyone in power is going to violate civil liberties sooner or later, which is why we end up suing everybody, including our members.. While he did not initiate the. The ACLU has always believed that public disclosure of large campaign contributions, with the exceptions noted in Buckley, is the best check on corruption or the appearance of corruption in this area. I appreciate the opportunity to set forth my views and the views of the American Civil Liberties Union on the constitutional issues involved in campaign finance laws. He argues that partisanship has diminished the ACLU, dragging it leftward to the point of no longer defending those whose speech doesnt reflect their values.. The organization held a unique place in American society, Kennedy told him, dedicated to neither right nor left, but to defending the root ideas that held us together. Their right to express themselves on political issues has over the years been relentlessly interfered with by the FEC, which has, as a result of campaign reform, gained unprecedented power to regulate, inhibit and harass free speech and protected political activities. Gen Z Begins Political Support, Wants More Info, Isn't Locked Up By the Democratic Party: The youngest voters are now Generation Z, born after 1996, and 8 million of them were eligible to vote in the 2022 midterms. Movie review of "Mighty Ira," Directed and Produced by Nico Perrino, Chris Maltby and Aaron Reese . But if a prospective challenger wants to buy space to respond, he cannot secure a contribution to pay for it. Ira Glasser, the ACLUs executive director from 1978 to 2001, bemoaned the group for recently changing its guidelines to limit the rights it fights to uphold. You dont like it, Glasser interjected, Or, if youre anti-tobacco, you see a tobacco ad. Nonetheless, the Federal Election Commission, which was created in 1974 by FECA, tried to cite the ACLU for violating the law during the 1980s because we criticized President Reagan in direct mail fundraising solicitations to our own members! Some of the report . Once the law's expenditure limit was reached, he could not spend another dime on leaflets or letters or radio ads, even if thousands of his supporters contributed $5 each to allow him to do so. I had been the Executive Director of the . These steps would reform the system by reducing or paying for its major costs, thereby drying up the need to raise large amounts of money. Glassers amiability, sense of humor, and sincere dedication to principle end up impressing even his political opponents, who may not change their minds, but at least become convinced that people who disagree may become friends. Glasser won the argument then, narrowly, overcoming significant opposition within his own organization. It was a stalwart defender of free speech and civil liberties. Alongside the nonstop nostalgia for the fifties that time before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came, when I couldnt wait to join the Peace Corps, and I thought Id never find a guy as great as my dad, as Jennifer Greys Baby put it inDirty Dancing came an avalanche of political messaging. Ira Glasser: Would Today's ACLU Defend the Speech Rights of Nazis. The ad was a classic example of political speech protected by the First Amendment. As Glasser puts it, the stands at Ebbets field were probably the only fully integrated public accommodation in the country, and would forever be a symbol to him of what America could be and was supposed to be, at its best. April 1, 2021 1:00 pm.