Isn't the First Amendment itself a "pragmatic strategy" to achieve social justice? The right to speak is a check upon authorities that would silence a person or group simply because the authorities have the power to do so. It is like the Establishment of Religion clause: If I don't let other people teach perverted nonsense to their kids, I will lose the right to teach good things to mine.

If we are going to talk about the limits of what is permitted, it should be noted that free speech runs up against established power when the law and enforcement of the law oppose the polity being promoted. In the article, Weinrib underlines how the strategy did not spell victory for the labor movement or the power of collective bargaining. I think the analysis should have included the role of civil disobedience as a means of changing policy. When people personally risk their freedom to express a point of view or to protect what they see as their right, then they are throwing themselves on to the mercy of a different court than those established by our Constitution.

We live in a time where almost all of the items on the White Supremacists to-do list are against the law. This makes them more like the resistance to Jim Crow than the evolution of Labor as a thing in the law. So this situation could be described as a test of whether the moral censure that gave birth to civil rights laws is still alive and well.
 

Nazi riffraff legally marching through the streets assaulting people, waving swastikas and shouting white supremacist slogans while carrying weapons is sine qua non evidence of a liberty loving society!   Destined for ever greater greatness! 

Better yet, if many have criminal records or have beaten a disabled parent.

The Virginia ACLU apparently understood the core western values here.

(Sarcasm alert!)

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-- Congrats on your very erudite relative and her book - so relevant to the times!

I think free speech is an end to itself and I buy the old saw about hating what some people say but defending their right to say it.  If the ACLU is merely considering not backing armed demonstrations, I think that's fine.  Open carry laws do kind of change the facts on the ground.  It's one thing for you to stand on the corner yelling hateful things at me.  It's another to do it with a loaded gun in your hand.  That gun robs me of my freedom to shout back.

While I appreciate the context here, I don't think that you only support free speech in the interests of some other social cause. I think the ACLU gains a lot of credibility for its willingness to defend speech without regard to content. Without the ACLU playing that role, the whole conversation devolves into partisans in a power struggle to defend the speech they like and to eliminate the speech they don't.

ack! off-topic but a good place to put it, because: pushing that free speech envelope as far as it will go:

Charlie Hebdo cover suggests Hurricane Harvey victims are neo-Nazis

French hate speech laws, bloody terrorist attacks, nothing deters them.....

Article about new lawsuit that should interest her and the rest of us interested in the topic

President Trump keeps blocking people on Twitter. Is that legal? @ Boston Globe Aug. 31

ACLU is not the entity involved, though, rather it is the "Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University." that is backing the suit for 7 individuals that  Trump had curtailed First Amendment rights by blocking their access to speak freely in a public forum. The DOJ has argued that it would send the First Amendment deep into uncharted waters. But a  law professor colleague of hers is quoted as recently changing her mind because of the way Trump has been using the site.