Democracy IS incompatible with Peter Thiel's freedom to be as irresponsible as he pleases. He might prefer citizenship in South Sudan. We fought for our freedom once before, and too many seem lulled into consumerism instead of citizenship, allowing the Peter Thiels to hoover up our democratic rights.
Never forget (if you had even learned) that so many colonial leaders got their democratic bearings from the way native peoples governed themselves. Natives were universally appreciated for their generosity, kindness, robust lives, and articulate speech, while so many colonists distinguished themselves as liars, thieves, cheaters, and obnoxious prigs ("business as usual")
As much a psychopathic, powerobsessed, deluded monster as Peter Thiel is, in some ways he is arguably less evil than many of his fellow tech oligarchs like Larry Ellison.
He is one of the few techlords to not be not a self admitted human extinctionist, so unlike them he isn't so much interested in fully exterminating the human race to complete it's replacement by machines, but in "only" turning humanity into the Borg with himself as the Queen.
I was thinking last night, always a bad idea, but we boomers were the last generation to grow mostly up without computers, beyond the stodgy IBM mainframes and glowing green screen terminals in the school library. As these guys took the tech and ran with it, I was deep into IT by then and realized something was going to break at some point, in a big way. I just didn’t know where. I thought the internet (or usenet, or Arpanet or whatever) would not last and so I downloaded and saved everything of interest.
Short sightedness is my strong suit, except for the intuition part that is there without offering explanation. I have “aha” moments a lot, but they are never the good kind. There probably was a dystopian future image in my mind, but it was actually stuff like believing “The Terminator” got it right, and with the ground being salted and the hoods being pulled over our winks. With the terrifying rise of AI, Skynet has basically arrived.
(I am also reminded about what the invention and proliferation of the automobile did to the world at large, and I don’t mean just putting buggy whip manufacturers out of business.)
Considering that the American people have repeatedly sanctioned their government reducing other countries' citizenry to the level of peasanthood through overthrowing democratically elected leaders (Carlos Prio Socarrás, Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende all come to mind), that this would be turned on Americans themselves is not too surprising to me and elicits little sympathy. Americans are having done to them what they have permitted their government to do to other populations.
EDIT: As I've seen it put, there's a certain dark humour in seeing the CIA overthrown in a right-wing coup.
Unfortunately, the “Ugly American”, has been around at least since the time of the Spanish-American War. Too many of us have been so isolated from international events and our monolingualism to follow at all closely what goes on in the rest of the world. Many of us have, at times, tried to rouse the general population. Those attempts were too short-lived to accomplish lasting change — especially in light of the currently culminating efforts of reactionaries to stealthily change our culture to render us peasants!
Every citizen needs to hear that sentiment more, that they DO how power and agency over their rulers. For the Thiels, Musks, Altmans, and other oligarchs of America, the only "freedom" they want is for them to be able to tread on people's rights and livelihoods without any consequences for themselves. Thankfully, however, We The People still have the freedom to oppose these corporate tyrants, and fight tyranny in all its forms. Because we're individual human beings, not a faceless mass to be controlled by a king.
I'm gratified that you and others are keeping us informed. So frustrated with the complacency and grandiosity of Thiel thinking he can decide for all of us. Yes, we are the great unwashed, as it were.
I just listened to Sam Harris #435 with Gregory Warner and Andy Mills. Your name was mentioned. I will definitely follow their series.
Great stuff! And... democracy is a moving feast. Our ability to participate as citizens is mediated by the form of democracy in operation in some place at some time. And the next iteration is urgently required!
I'm afraid I'll have to disagree. We Peasants sat through 20 plus years of Vietnam to turn around and gladly except 20 plus years anew, of another needlessly costly war. We have no problem with the deaths of innocent people in Palestine, We bombed Iran for 4 months of delays on their part, we've now blown up 4 boats in international waters. Death sentences by our military are a tad unusual IMHO
I could add other things We Peasants allow the Kings and Queens to control, but I feel that these are sufficient to show how much "votes" are worthless except for the dividing people further than we have so far .
The only real progress humans have actually accomplished since our beginnings is our ability to live longer lives, all else is simply air-conditioning.
Interesting thoughts on our u.s. Constitution. The writings of the authors suggest they were concerned far more about property rights
May 26, 1776
It is certain in theory, that the only moral foundation of government is the [agreement] of the people, but to what an extent shall we carry this principle? Shall we say, that every individual of the community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must [agree] to every act of legislation?...
Is it not equally true, that men in general in every society, who [are poor and do not own property], are also [unfamiliar] with public affairs to form a right judgment, and too dependent upon other men to have a will of their own? …Few men, who have no property, have any judgment of their own. They talk and vote as they are directed by some man of property, who has attached their minds to his interest.
Depend upon it, sir, it is dangerous to open [such a] source of controversy and altercation, as would be opened by attempting to [change] the qualifications of voters. There will be no end of it. John Adams
There are no citizens anymore and there won't be, unless millions of Americans stop acting like peasants. Peasants think that all that citizenship requires is a vote every four years and that going to a protest for a day accomplishes something.
I see this as the logical outcome of the long running neoliberal project to convince people to imagine themselves as customers or taxpayers rather than as citizens.
Actually, eg, I believe the neoliberal project, in this country anyway, can be seen as a splintering of some liberals to find common ground with some of the most reactionary conservatives.
I'd have to see Kaine's actual quote, but given that it was Thomas Jefferson who wrote the words in question about self-evident truths, and Jefferson was either a deist or an atheist, the notion that only theocrats would disagree with it seems ludicrous.
Everyone from Tim Kaine to everyone here misunderstands what Jefferson was saying. One can find a clue to what Jefferson means when he says they are self-evident, as he goes on to observe in the Declaration that "all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
One might see this as a contradiction of sorts. But Jefferson wasn't making a universalist claim. He was making an observational one—grounded in experience, in history, in what actually happens when human beings confront injustice.
The "self-evidence" Jefferson speaks of isn't metaphysical necessity or divine revelation. It's the clarity that emerges when you finally stop suffering what has become insufferable. It's what becomes visible when the gap between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be grows so wide that continuing to endure it would require a kind of willful blindness.
Self-evidence, for Jefferson, is experiential. It's what you see when you look clearly at the human condition without the distortions of habit, custom, or the exhausted rationalizations we tell ourselves to make injustice bearable.
This is why the "we" matters so much. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" means: to us, looking clearly at our situation, these truths have become undeniable. Not because God wrote them in nature. Not because reason alone compels them. Not because law creates them. But because when we look honestly at human experience—at what happens when power operates without consent, when rights exist only at the pleasure of monarchs, when people are treated as subjects rather than citizens—these truths become clear.
They're self-evident to those who have stopped looking away.
Jefferson understood that most people, most of the time, will look away. Will suffer. Will accommodate. Will find reasons why the forms they're accustomed to, however unjust, are preferable to the terrifying work of reconstruction.
But when a community—a "we"—finally looks directly at the reality of their condition, certain truths become undeniable. Not universal truths that everyone everywhere must recognize. But truths that cannot be unseen by those who have chosen to see clearly.
The Declaration isn't philosophy in the abstract. It's a community describing what has become self-evident to them, through their experience, in their historical moment, when they finally stopped suffering what had become insufferable.
When Jefferson says “Self evident” he is actually misquoting Locke. A self evident proposition requires no evidence like “All bachelors are unmarried men.” Jefferson uses it to mean really obvious.
The Declaration’s intended audience was the King and Parliament. Locke’s work comes in context with the Glorious Revolution which replaced James II Stuart with Mary II and her husband, William of Orange. Jefferson, then, is arguing for American independence from historic precedent. Precedent without which George III would not have the Throne. A fact everyone in Parliament would have to concede.
He’s arguing Lockean to Lockean, from principles in which they should be in mutual agreement. Eighty eight years ago you threw out a rotten king on similar principles.
If Jefferson meant 'self-evident' the way Locke did—as propositions requiring no evidence, like 'all bachelors are unmarried men'—then why does he immediately follow by observing that 'all experience hath shewn' the opposite? Why point out that mankind consistently fails to act on these supposedly obvious truths?
You can't have it both ways. Either these truths are self-evident in the logical sense—obvious to all rational observers—or all experience shows that humans don't recognize them and instead suffer tyranny. Jefferson explicitly says the latter.
I am familiar with this interpretation. But I think it fails to recognize something radical in Jefferson's thoughts.
You're right that the Declaration was addressed to Parliament. But it's not primarily an argument designed to convince them. It's a declaration of independence—a statement that *we* hold these truths, regardless of whether *you* do. The document isn't a legal brief hoping for agreement; it's a divorce decree explaining why continued union is impossible.
His actual comments are more reasonable than my one sentence question would imply, but they're effectively "even natural rights come from law and government, not the Creator." His primary objection seems to be assigning the source of the rights as God and not nature, but that distinction seems to be moot when he asserts that they flow from law.
I think I see where he's coming from and think I agree with the point that he is trying to make, but disagree with the idea that our rights come from government and not from some inalienable aspect of us.
This is the first link to a video of the comments that I could find.
I can’t speak for Sen. Kane but the idea that rights come from government is tainted by loaded notions of what government is and what is is supposed to do. We have been conditioned by conservatives to believe in government as this necessary evil that has to be restrained to protect liberty.
What I think Kane was getting at, and I would propose, is that in a democracy the government should be the construction and instrument of the People. It is the ACTIVE COMMITMENT to preserving the principles of our Republic and to the Rule of Law that is the only guarantor of our Rights. Otherwise, God help us.
Democracy IS incompatible with Peter Thiel's freedom to be as irresponsible as he pleases. He might prefer citizenship in South Sudan. We fought for our freedom once before, and too many seem lulled into consumerism instead of citizenship, allowing the Peter Thiels to hoover up our democratic rights.
Never forget (if you had even learned) that so many colonial leaders got their democratic bearings from the way native peoples governed themselves. Natives were universally appreciated for their generosity, kindness, robust lives, and articulate speech, while so many colonists distinguished themselves as liars, thieves, cheaters, and obnoxious prigs ("business as usual")
As much a psychopathic, powerobsessed, deluded monster as Peter Thiel is, in some ways he is arguably less evil than many of his fellow tech oligarchs like Larry Ellison.
He is one of the few techlords to not be not a self admitted human extinctionist, so unlike them he isn't so much interested in fully exterminating the human race to complete it's replacement by machines, but in "only" turning humanity into the Borg with himself as the Queen.
I enjoy his Anti-Christ thoughts ha.
Excellent points taken! I wish everyone would read them.
Hear, hear!! Thus my repost!
I was thinking last night, always a bad idea, but we boomers were the last generation to grow mostly up without computers, beyond the stodgy IBM mainframes and glowing green screen terminals in the school library. As these guys took the tech and ran with it, I was deep into IT by then and realized something was going to break at some point, in a big way. I just didn’t know where. I thought the internet (or usenet, or Arpanet or whatever) would not last and so I downloaded and saved everything of interest.
Short sightedness is my strong suit, except for the intuition part that is there without offering explanation. I have “aha” moments a lot, but they are never the good kind. There probably was a dystopian future image in my mind, but it was actually stuff like believing “The Terminator” got it right, and with the ground being salted and the hoods being pulled over our winks. With the terrifying rise of AI, Skynet has basically arrived.
(I am also reminded about what the invention and proliferation of the automobile did to the world at large, and I don’t mean just putting buggy whip manufacturers out of business.)
Considering that the American people have repeatedly sanctioned their government reducing other countries' citizenry to the level of peasanthood through overthrowing democratically elected leaders (Carlos Prio Socarrás, Mohammad Mosaddegh and Salvador Allende all come to mind), that this would be turned on Americans themselves is not too surprising to me and elicits little sympathy. Americans are having done to them what they have permitted their government to do to other populations.
EDIT: As I've seen it put, there's a certain dark humour in seeing the CIA overthrown in a right-wing coup.
Unfortunately, the “Ugly American”, has been around at least since the time of the Spanish-American War. Too many of us have been so isolated from international events and our monolingualism to follow at all closely what goes on in the rest of the world. Many of us have, at times, tried to rouse the general population. Those attempts were too short-lived to accomplish lasting change — especially in light of the currently culminating efforts of reactionaries to stealthily change our culture to render us peasants!
https://www.historynet.com/two-new-perspectives-kent-state-shootings
In the immediate wake of the Kent State massacre, a majority of Americans blamed the protesters.
Four dead in Ohio.
Every citizen needs to hear that sentiment more, that they DO how power and agency over their rulers. For the Thiels, Musks, Altmans, and other oligarchs of America, the only "freedom" they want is for them to be able to tread on people's rights and livelihoods without any consequences for themselves. Thankfully, however, We The People still have the freedom to oppose these corporate tyrants, and fight tyranny in all its forms. Because we're individual human beings, not a faceless mass to be controlled by a king.
I'm gratified that you and others are keeping us informed. So frustrated with the complacency and grandiosity of Thiel thinking he can decide for all of us. Yes, we are the great unwashed, as it were.
I just listened to Sam Harris #435 with Gregory Warner and Andy Mills. Your name was mentioned. I will definitely follow their series.
Great stuff! And... democracy is a moving feast. Our ability to participate as citizens is mediated by the form of democracy in operation in some place at some time. And the next iteration is urgently required!
I'm afraid I'll have to disagree. We Peasants sat through 20 plus years of Vietnam to turn around and gladly except 20 plus years anew, of another needlessly costly war. We have no problem with the deaths of innocent people in Palestine, We bombed Iran for 4 months of delays on their part, we've now blown up 4 boats in international waters. Death sentences by our military are a tad unusual IMHO
I could add other things We Peasants allow the Kings and Queens to control, but I feel that these are sufficient to show how much "votes" are worthless except for the dividing people further than we have so far .
The only real progress humans have actually accomplished since our beginnings is our ability to live longer lives, all else is simply air-conditioning.
Do you believe that it's the power of the State that grants us our rights, or that of God?
Interesting thoughts on our u.s. Constitution. The writings of the authors suggest they were concerned far more about property rights
May 26, 1776
It is certain in theory, that the only moral foundation of government is the [agreement] of the people, but to what an extent shall we carry this principle? Shall we say, that every individual of the community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must [agree] to every act of legislation?...
Is it not equally true, that men in general in every society, who [are poor and do not own property], are also [unfamiliar] with public affairs to form a right judgment, and too dependent upon other men to have a will of their own? …Few men, who have no property, have any judgment of their own. They talk and vote as they are directed by some man of property, who has attached their minds to his interest.
Depend upon it, sir, it is dangerous to open [such a] source of controversy and altercation, as would be opened by attempting to [change] the qualifications of voters. There will be no end of it. John Adams
There are no citizens anymore and there won't be, unless millions of Americans stop acting like peasants. Peasants think that all that citizenship requires is a vote every four years and that going to a protest for a day accomplishes something.
Lukas has quite the image: Peter Thiel as Borg Queen!
I see this as the logical outcome of the long running neoliberal project to convince people to imagine themselves as customers or taxpayers rather than as citizens.
Actually, eg, I believe the neoliberal project, in this country anyway, can be seen as a splintering of some liberals to find common ground with some of the most reactionary conservatives.
What are your views on Tim Kaine's assertion that our rights are not self-evident but flow from law and that only theocrats would disagree?
I'd have to see Kaine's actual quote, but given that it was Thomas Jefferson who wrote the words in question about self-evident truths, and Jefferson was either a deist or an atheist, the notion that only theocrats would disagree with it seems ludicrous.
Everyone from Tim Kaine to everyone here misunderstands what Jefferson was saying. One can find a clue to what Jefferson means when he says they are self-evident, as he goes on to observe in the Declaration that "all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
One might see this as a contradiction of sorts. But Jefferson wasn't making a universalist claim. He was making an observational one—grounded in experience, in history, in what actually happens when human beings confront injustice.
The "self-evidence" Jefferson speaks of isn't metaphysical necessity or divine revelation. It's the clarity that emerges when you finally stop suffering what has become insufferable. It's what becomes visible when the gap between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be grows so wide that continuing to endure it would require a kind of willful blindness.
Self-evidence, for Jefferson, is experiential. It's what you see when you look clearly at the human condition without the distortions of habit, custom, or the exhausted rationalizations we tell ourselves to make injustice bearable.
This is why the "we" matters so much. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" means: to us, looking clearly at our situation, these truths have become undeniable. Not because God wrote them in nature. Not because reason alone compels them. Not because law creates them. But because when we look honestly at human experience—at what happens when power operates without consent, when rights exist only at the pleasure of monarchs, when people are treated as subjects rather than citizens—these truths become clear.
They're self-evident to those who have stopped looking away.
Jefferson understood that most people, most of the time, will look away. Will suffer. Will accommodate. Will find reasons why the forms they're accustomed to, however unjust, are preferable to the terrifying work of reconstruction.
But when a community—a "we"—finally looks directly at the reality of their condition, certain truths become undeniable. Not universal truths that everyone everywhere must recognize. But truths that cannot be unseen by those who have chosen to see clearly.
The Declaration isn't philosophy in the abstract. It's a community describing what has become self-evident to them, through their experience, in their historical moment, when they finally stopped suffering what had become insufferable.
When Jefferson says “Self evident” he is actually misquoting Locke. A self evident proposition requires no evidence like “All bachelors are unmarried men.” Jefferson uses it to mean really obvious.
The Declaration’s intended audience was the King and Parliament. Locke’s work comes in context with the Glorious Revolution which replaced James II Stuart with Mary II and her husband, William of Orange. Jefferson, then, is arguing for American independence from historic precedent. Precedent without which George III would not have the Throne. A fact everyone in Parliament would have to concede.
He’s arguing Lockean to Lockean, from principles in which they should be in mutual agreement. Eighty eight years ago you threw out a rotten king on similar principles.
If Jefferson meant 'self-evident' the way Locke did—as propositions requiring no evidence, like 'all bachelors are unmarried men'—then why does he immediately follow by observing that 'all experience hath shewn' the opposite? Why point out that mankind consistently fails to act on these supposedly obvious truths?
You can't have it both ways. Either these truths are self-evident in the logical sense—obvious to all rational observers—or all experience shows that humans don't recognize them and instead suffer tyranny. Jefferson explicitly says the latter.
I am familiar with this interpretation. But I think it fails to recognize something radical in Jefferson's thoughts.
You're right that the Declaration was addressed to Parliament. But it's not primarily an argument designed to convince them. It's a declaration of independence—a statement that *we* hold these truths, regardless of whether *you* do. The document isn't a legal brief hoping for agreement; it's a divorce decree explaining why continued union is impossible.
Again, Mike, hear, hear!
Thank you
His actual comments are more reasonable than my one sentence question would imply, but they're effectively "even natural rights come from law and government, not the Creator." His primary objection seems to be assigning the source of the rights as God and not nature, but that distinction seems to be moot when he asserts that they flow from law.
I think I see where he's coming from and think I agree with the point that he is trying to make, but disagree with the idea that our rights come from government and not from some inalienable aspect of us.
This is the first link to a video of the comments that I could find.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9q0ch8
I can’t speak for Sen. Kane but the idea that rights come from government is tainted by loaded notions of what government is and what is is supposed to do. We have been conditioned by conservatives to believe in government as this necessary evil that has to be restrained to protect liberty.
What I think Kane was getting at, and I would propose, is that in a democracy the government should be the construction and instrument of the People. It is the ACTIVE COMMITMENT to preserving the principles of our Republic and to the Rule of Law that is the only guarantor of our Rights. Otherwise, God help us.