Discriminations

Tom Maguire skewers liberals Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias for “their unsteady commitment to civil liberties.”

“The topic,” Maguire writes,

is the right of Deborah Weinsig, a Citigroup equity analyst who covers retail stocks, to explain to her clients why she thinks that card check will be bad for WalMart.

Mr. Klein:

This is a big deal for two reasons. First, it calls into question the impartiality of Citibank's ratings division. Second, it happened amidst a government-funded bailout of Citibank. This is a moment when you'd expect Citibank to be on its best behavior, both in terms of its political action and its business practices. In fact, they appear to be dispatching their analysts and leveraging their ratings division to oppose a policy that the Obama administration supports.

So much for dissent as the highest form of patriotism. Here is Mr. Yglesias:

But there’s a fairly clear case to be made that firms on the public dole shouldn’t be engaged in lobbying or political activities.

I would say that it’s a polite exaggeration to describe their “commitment to civil liberties” as “unsteady.” In fact, their spotty or non-existent commitment calls to mind a very revealing episode from the 1930s in the history of contemporary liberalism, the first bitterly divisive debate inside the American Civil Liberties Union over ... civil liberties. There has been a good deal of talk, much of it uninformed, over Obama’s determination to usher in a new New Deal, but we may be able to learn more about the values of current liberals by looking at the 1930s schism in the ACLU over “civil liberties for our side only” than by looking at the National Industrial Recovery Act or the Civilian Conservation Corps.

That schism was caused by the ACLU’s intervention in a dispute between the Ford Motor Company and the National Labor Relations Board over limits on the right of Ford, and by extension other employers, to campaign against union organizers. (A nice summary can be found here, especially around pp. 47-50.) “From its inception in 1920,” writes William A. Donohue in The Politics of The American Civil Liberties Union, the work just linked, “the ACLU had defended Communists and Fascists, labor agitators and Klansmen, but never once — not for eighteen years — did it defend the free speech rights of capitalists to oppose unions.”

It was forced to confront that issue head on in 1938, when the National Labor Relations Board found Ford guilty of “unfair labor practices” under the Wagner Act, and one of those “unfair” practices was distributing anti-union literature to employees.

Do employers have the right to free speech? The NLRB did not find the question difficult. It ordered the company to cease and desist from “circulating, distributing or otherwise disseminating amongst its employees statements or propaganda disparaging or criticizing labor organizations, or advising it employees not to join such organizations.”

Government restriction of the right to distribute literature would seem to be a clear First Amendment violation, but, Donohue reports, “the mere suggestion of such a fundamental civil liberties principle was greeted as heresy by members of the ACLU’s ‘non-partisan’ staff.”

A bitter fight then ensued. The ACLU’s labor committee initially supported the NLRB.

[ACLU founder and long-time head Roger] Baldwin ... stated that when employers were asking if they too did not enjoy the right of free speech, the [American Civil Liberties] Union said, “No, you have not rights of free speech against unions now because the right to form a union is now a fundamental one under the National Labor Relations Act.” When employers asked, “Well, can’t we even talk?” most of the board members, according to Baldwin, replied, “No, you can’t even talk.”

One labor committee member dissented, “suggesting that the same test of coercion used by the NLRB would have to be applied to the statements of government bureaucrats....” He was promptly dismissed, and subsequently he accused the ACLU of a “liberal purge” and resigned from the organization.

Eventually the ACLU board compromised. It half-heartedly reaffirmed its commitment to free speech by stating its opposition to “any interference with the expressions of opinion on the part of employers” but placated its pro-labor faction by also announcing its opposition to “threats” such as “We’ll never recognize the United Automobile Workers or any other union,” claiming that such statements violate the civil liberties of workers.

This “civil liberties for our side only” approach to fundamental (or not) rights frequently roils the shallow waters of liberalism. How many of those today, for example, who want to muzzle Citibank employees will propose imposing similar restrictions on other beneficiaries of government largesse, such as ACORN?

Readers of DISCRIMINATIONS, I’m sure, will also be quick to see the similarity — indeed, almost identity — of the belief that only progressives should have unfettered free speech rights and the equally unprincipled position that the right to be treated without regard to race, ethnicity, or gender applies only to some races, ethnicities, and genders — and to them only some of the time (when it works to their alleged benefit; at other times, they have the right to preferential treatment).

ADDENDUM

I have had, or at least taken, the opportunity to mention the repeated appearances of the “civil liberties for our side only mentality” in recent liberal positions on a number of occasions, including the following: here, here, here, here, and here.