As an attorney and someone in tech, I used to strongly admire Thiel. He left biglaw and took a gamble, and it paid off. But between his support for Trump and the Gawker nonsense, I no longer have any respect for the man. Anyone on record supporting trump is on the wrong side of history.
On some issues maybe, on others probably not. I think he's on the right side of one key issue: http://www.salon.com/2016/06/22/donald_trump_is_no_lgbt_ally.... As a Bangladeshi with a beard I don't say that lightly, but we're at a weird point in history where only a guy not afraid of being called racist,[1] can take a stand (however opportunistic) on what is becoming a worldwide assault on cherished liberal social values.
[1] As an aside, calling facially race-neutral comments about particular immigration statuses or religious beliefs "racist" is kind of offensive to people of that race who don't share that immigration status or those religious beliefs. I'm sure there are a lot of Hispanics in the US who came here legally who don't appreciate liberals saying that Trump wants to deport their families, as if all Hispanics are here illegally.
Replying to your aside... You are absolutely correct. Thank you.
I'd add that implementing security "at the border" is the lightest touch option available and doesn't infringe on the rights of any citizens. But our leaders won't do it.
Instead they create the TSA to eliminate free travel and get access to our emails & phone calls to eliminate privacy.
Also, while I see both sides of the gun argument, it worries me that the government uses an obvious Islamic terrorist attack as an excuse to push gun control.
In fact, it's almost like our government doesn't mind terrorist attacks, because with every attack they have an excuse to infringe on more of our rights and expand their power.
The US government commits terrorist attacks on a regular basis. I may not convince all of you about the air strike in Syria the other day, or the hospital that was intentionally hit a few months back, but can any of you deny that the Shock and Awe bombing campaign at the outset of the Iraq war was terrorism? Shock and Awe was the "use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight". The stated purpose was to terrify the civilian population. The Oxford Research Group estimated that there were 6,616 civilian deaths.
that's not the common understanding of Terrorism. That's just war.
I'm sympathetic to anti-Iraq war views.
Less sympathetic to those actually against the war. Most seemed like they didn't want any response to terrorism at all, which is unacceptable.
There's an ideology out there that wants to come to my country and kill me and my family. I'm perfectly fine killing those people first - or at least making sure they can't come here and commit the ultimate hate crime.
You can't respond to terrorism with overwhelming force, its a concept. A tactic. It just goes underground when stamped out or gets taken up by other idealogues who act alone.
We went to fight extremists who happen to use terrorism. We also spent most of our time and money with our dicks in our hand instead of 'killing them before they killed us.'
They don't want you dead, anyway. they want you terrified.
Please don't mistake Trump's clickbait (trolling) with policy statements.
Apologies to Conor Lynch, author of that article you linked, but Trump is far from the only person opposing intolerance. Just one of a zillion examples: many liberals rationalized supporting Bush's Folly in Iraq and Afghanistan to better protect women.
You're a brown guy with a beard. May I please hear your experiences in America? Do you feel people have been unfair to you ever? Have they been more unfair recently?
By the way (if you don't mind me asking), did you have an Islamic upbringing? (as most Bengalis do I think). If you did, when did you decide to get away from it?
I feel like an unhyphenated American. Discounting a homeless person yelling something at me once in Atlanta, I've never felt anything but welcome here. I was an atheist growing up--my dad was an activist for secular westernization when he was a college student during the Bangladeshi war of independence. After I got married I started going to church with my wife, and I never felt unwelcome there either. Though, a large number of people in the world think I should be executed for apostasy.
Thanks for answering. I'm also a brown guy with a beard (but I've lost the beard now to distance myself of the label "brown guy with a beard"). I have had the same experiences... but lately I myself have become very self-conscious, so whenever I'm standing waiting at a busline with my big backpack that I always have on, I just can't help but think "yeah yeah this guy and girl around me are wondering if I'm a terrorist and what's in this huge backpack of mine". I usually have to remind myself that things are not as bad as internet makes it seem.
I now try to have a friendly smile on wherever I go, and I try to talk to strangers. The great news is that this is doing wonders. E.g. yesterday I met a Catholic guy in the T who was all like "Oh, I am so sorry what my country is doing to your country... bombing it all, killing innocents" -- and I was all like "oh, no, I am sorry that some bastards from my country are doing shitty stuff to this country". Having conversations like this sort of help me get back in thinking that most Americans indeed actually do not hate me or want me out.
Beards are trendy now! I once shaved mine off to pitch a potential startup client. Walked into the meeting and saw the guys we were pitching to all had thick luxurious beards. Doh!
I think I get what you are saying, but not sure. What is liberalism, BTW? Liberalism used to refer to philosophy of English enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and had natural rights as a large part of it's foundation. Today? well... hmmm... What is the intellectual foundation of today's "liberals"?
Not ceding classic liberalism with the word is the point. (Because ceding too much of it puts you at danger of a populist takeover, i.e., "literally Hitler".)
Skimmed the beginning, will read the rest later. Liberalism is definitely modern (it's from the enlightenment), it's definitely British (ie. has nothing to do with Rousseau)... I'll have to read more to see why the author thinks it's not political.
I personally like that they are embracing "progressive" more. I think it's more accurate than "liberal" and uniquely theirs.
There's an irony to using the marxist derived "side of history" construct to support something you believe in.
If there really is such a thing as history taking sides, Marx and his followers very clearly ended up on the wrong side. I imagine those co-opting the phrase now will suffer the same fate.
"History on our side" is a pretty common phrase, used by people of varying political stripes. A quick Google Books search turns up British MPs using it in the 1940s and George H.W. Bush using it in the 1990s, among others.
It's a bit of ideological poison, extracted from the root of the dialectical materialism tree (aka 'scientific socialism', as defined in the poems of Marx and Engels).
The allegedly scientific basis is that there is an unstoppable march of historical progress, and you should cheer it on and actively lay waste to the obstacles that are going to be swept aside anyway. (Yes, it's a strange creed.)
Isn't that more or less standard American ideology too? Manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, disruptive innovation... a whole cocktail of unstoppable onward marching. They disagree with the Marxists mostly in what is gloriously marching ever onwards, not that there is something doing so. There's even a popular patriotic song, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, about the onward marching.
Look, this isn't an ideology. More of an approach (not sure of the academic term for it, sorry.) I think it's marxist, though others have had the "inevitability of history" at times. As for your examples...
Manifest destiny = forward looking. Wasn't good justification for expansion, though good justfications did exist.
American exceptionalism = backward looking
disruptive innovation = Neither, more just an adjective.
Backward looking as a proofpoint, yes. Forward looking as a justification, no, it's not that common until recently and - at least to me - has a marxist sound to it.
