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 . Ira Glasser was born on April 18, 1938, at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. His life was the subject of the 2020 documentary Mighty Ira. 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. 's former culture editor. They swarmed over Mike Dukakis, a Kinsley-esque monotone nerd who looked like a dink in a tank and wouldnt defend his wife when Bernard Shaw invited America to fantasize about her rape and murder on national TV. In books, movies, music, and TV, the acquisitive rich were recast as the edgy hedonists who got what America was all about and earned all the rewards worth seeking as Madonna put it inMaterial Girl, the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mr. Right while liberals were losers. And he was deeply concerned about the growth of hate speech in American life. However, it makes sense as we realize we may soon also miss Glassers brand of liberalism in the same way. Campaign journalists, then and now, pushed the same theme. They shared French fries and a few political opinions. Former ACLU leader Ira Glasser slams organization's 'progressive' new This is a requirement now for the national ACLU employers, that before they take a case defending someones free speech they have to make sure that the speech doesnt offend or threaten other civil liberties values., In other words, before theyre going to defend your free speech, they want to see what you say, a befuddled-looking Glasser continued. We need to get off that road now. Between the New Deal and the civil rights movements of the sixties, the Democrats identification with poor and working-class people especially gave them something close to a permanent majority in congress. Ira Glasser, former executive director of the ACLU, wrote at Huffington Post that critics "have failed to appreciate what a great ruling it was for the First Amendment, and what a huge victory it was for freedom of speech and against government censorship." 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 . If he does so, he violates the law, because current campaign finance laws place strict limits on the size of contributions, and the cost of even a single full-page ad exceeds those limits. 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. Amazon.com: Mighty Ira [Blu-ray] : Ira Glasser, Ben Stern, David Ira Saul Glasser (born April 18, 1938) served as the fifth executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1978 to 2001. Many schools now drug test students without suspicion as . Ira Saul Glasser (born April 18, 1938) served as the fifth executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1978 to 2001. He has the First Amendment right to do so, which no one can dispute, and which federal election laws recognize. "[3] At the end of Glasser's directorship the ACLU maintained staffed offices in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico; when he became director in 1978, only about half of the states had staffed offices. Ira Glasser Updated Oct. 05, 2020 11:26PM ET / Published Oct. 04, 2020 5:03AM ET N ot too long ago, I was speaking to an audience at a prominent and highly regarded law school. No, thats the government! he insisted. Maher noted how Glasser famously defended the right for a group of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, in 1977, asking his guest, Im guessing the Nazis did not reflect your values?. ", https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/chrt.fm/track/35917C/d2h6a3ly6ooodw.cloudfront.net/reasontv_audio_8088607.mp3. He loves it. But the Court upheld the law's limits on the size of direct contributions to candidates. Around that same time, TV news began to push another angle. Stern continues to be a principled activist against racism and antisemitism. In October, Glasser spoke with. This does not advance the goal of equality. Former ACLU head Ira Glasser blasts organization for failing to defend Ira Glasser also fields listener calls about free speech and discusses everything from the First Amendment to our fear of hate speech. 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. Mighty Ira movie review & film summary (2020) | Roger Ebert [1] Early years [ edit] Ira Glasser was born on April 18, 1938, at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. 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. 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. You see a Nazi. They also sensitized us to the unintended effects of campaign finance reforms. Some supporters of expenditure limits believed that the purpose of campaign finance reform was not only to reduce corruption, but to enhance fair elections by giving all candidates equal access to the voters. April 7, 2022 Ira Glasser returns to the scene of the crime. Limits designed to forestall corruption also give wealthy candidates an unfair advantage. The so-called "Party of God" is an umbrella group for radical Shiites ideologically aligned with and funded by Iran. The leading social problem in America is the loss of moral coordinates, Buckley says. Not only were liberals over-educated dolts who loosed child killers on the world, they were wimps. Skokie seemed to establish the willingness to take an unpopular stand in defense of a principle as another prerequisite for all liberal thinkers of my generation, especially young ones. As a young person helping to read off test questions as my single mother prepared for the LSATs, I had a vague idea of it as a school of thought that believed strongly in the law and due process, and was concerned with protecting the rights of people without means or clout. A film with even more prescience wasThe Star Chamber,a crime thriller starring Michael Douglas and the just-passed Yaphet Kotto, whose title referenced an ancient English tribunal that operated in secret, judging those too powerful to be tried in common-law courts. 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. "When people say they want to ban hate speech, what they mean is they want to ban speech that they hate . Mighty Iragoes shows scenes from Charlottesville and the death of Heather Heyer, which serves as the obvious bookend tale to Skokie. This worsened the inequality of campaign financing. ", 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. That's historically and politically true without exception. Maher continued, Our values, but your value is free speech. Glasser laughed at Mahers observation. (Its full name is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.). What happened to the Glasser-style liberalism we grew up with? Public Policy Advocacy Highlights for February 2023 - Vox PPLI The discussion ended up being an exercise in mutual puzzlement. Mighty Ira 's timing is quite welcome. In early 1972, three elderly individuals with no connection to any candidate or political party published an advertisement in The New York Timesthat condemned the secret bombings of Cambodia by the U.S., called for the impeachment of President Nixon and printed an honor roll of those members of Congress who had opposed the bombings. Its changing. But let me return to the early cases, and briefly describe the facts that led to them, because these facts put a human face on the often abstract arguments that dominate this debate. But it is the right road for Congress to travel. For these kinds of reasons, the ACLU challenged FECA in Buckley v. Valeoand in 1976 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled partially in our favor. Mighty Irashows Glasser debating Rudy Giuliani about Broken Windows policing, which encouraged the police to do what they already do, violate the rights of many innocent people in order to catch a few who are guilty. Its true that Giuliani was responsible for ushering in the stop-and-frisk model of policing, but that same system became the template for local Democratic politicians across the country. Ira. Requiring that marchers post a $350,000 liability insurance bond, when no private insurer would grant it, was equally a violation. Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story Podcast:The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie, 2022 Reason Foundation | That's historically and politically true without exception. One candidate gets an entire newspaper's support every day, while the other is denied even one page once during the campaign. Free Speech-Former ACLU Leader Ira Glasser Tells Us It's Not What You Public financing is a possible solution, but it must be sufficient and fair to all candidates: it must be structured to avoid providing advantages to incumbents and it must avoid discriminating against third party candidates. But the team was disappeared, kidnapped to Los Angeles by owner Walter OMalley, described by Glasser as one of historys three great villains, the other two being Hitler and Genghis Khan (Ive always rooted for the San Andreas Fault to take care of the Dodgers in Los Angeles ever since, Glasser quips). | Forget factories, coal mines, and courthouses. But he knew little about the specific battles these men, and their allies, had fought. Nico Perrino was only 26 when he met two giants in the history of the American Civil Liberties Union: Ira Glasser, its executive director from 1978 to 2001, and Norman Siegel, the leader of the New York Civil Liberties Union from 1985 to 2000. Glasser, 82, is one of the most important civil-liberties advocates of the past 50 years. Constructing such a system of public financing will be a complicated task. 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. He got his start as an examiner in BuckleysFiring Lineshow, and could be heard introducing the premise of a debate between Glasser and Buckley: Resolved: the ACLU is full of baloney. It wasnt an accident that when CNN went looking for someone to play the liberal on its phony debate show, they picked someone with the correct pedigree (Cranbrook, Harvard, Oxford,The Washington Post) instead of a Flatbush type like Glasser. By Matt Taibbi "Mighty Ira," a documentary about legendary former ACLU chief Ira Glasser, is simultaneously inspiring and unnerving. Movie review of "Mighty Ira," Directed and Produced by Nico Perrino, Chris Maltby and Aaron Reese . To the contrary, many were small groups of people expressing their views - like a tax reform group in New York or the Maine Right to Life organization. As such, he was aware of the ACLUs vast expansion under Glasser and its role in broadening the First Amendments protection for free expression for all Americans. Glasser then said, more seriously, If youre hiring a lawyer to defend the First Amendment, you want to have a reasonable assumption that he likes the First Amendment. In addition to establishing an unbiased system of public financing, there is another area in which Congress can improve the existing system of campaign regulation: public disclosure of large gifts. As the son of a reporter I also gathered it had something to do with questioning authority, because power corrupts and the people who had it tended to abuse it. *Negotiated with the acquisition of . ira glasser political party. Thus, under current law, Perot is able to spend whatever he wants to run for office but if an equally wealthy donor wants to enable Colin Powell to run against Perot, he commits a crime. Subscribe to the Real Time YouTube: http://itsh.bo/10r5A1BThe former ACLU Executive Director and subject of the documentary, "Mighty Ira," joins Bill to disc. Do you want every little town to decide which speech is permitted? Glasser asked. Thus, providing a floor of support through public financing for all qualified candidates is a better and more likely constitutional route to reform than the failed attempt to establish ceilings by imposing legal limits on contributions and expenditures. Ira Glasser, who grew up in Brooklyn as a devout Brooklyn Dodgers . Articles by Susan Glasser's Profile | The New Yorker, The Political The HBO host then targeted what he sees as the problem. One of the most telling scenes inMighty Irashows Buckley on TV, teeing off on the ACLU over Skokie. "Mighty Ira:" A Documentary About The Man Who Defined American Civil Its a generation that also saw the essentiality of free speech in fighting for racial justice, Perrino says. There was nothing particularly left or liberal about Kinsley, but he had the characteristics Hollywood and Madison Avenue associated with liberals: Jewish, nerdy, vacillating, and analytical. The two narratives are eerily similar. Newspaper publishers could support Clark's opponent without limit, but Clark was prohibited from spending money to buy an ad in order to respond. ACLU Hero Ira Glasser: How Freedom of Speech Protects You from Rulers Thus, the owner of a newspaper could openly campaign for one candidate in the pages of his publication, but a wealthy individual could not provide equivalent support to the other candidate to allow him to respond. Ira Glasser, who led the ACLU for two pivotal decades, is profiled in 'Mighty Ira,' a documentary that focuses on the organization's controversial involvement in the landmark Skokie case of. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The Source of the Problem - and Its Remedy. Ira Glasser is one of America's unsung champions of civil rights and liberties. 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. 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.. We've received your submission. google hiring committee rejection rate. Okay, Im guessing the Nazis did not reflect your values., Thats a good guess, Glasser replied, to audience laughter. Limits have been in place for nearly 30 years, but the problems limits were designed to solve remain, and new problems have been created. Mighty Ira: Directed by Chris Maltby, Nico Perrino, Aaron Reese. In interviews for the film, Glasser was forthcoming, engaging and compelling in his account of those times, Perrino says. Irish general election: Profile of Irish political parties - BBC News 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.
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