5 ms·
I'm pretty sure where he gets it. For comparison: Rush Limbaugh, a social conservative, is threatened by any narrative of history that attributes great misdeeds
by sowhatquestion 14y ago
I'm pretty sure where he gets it. For comparison: Rush Limbaugh, a social conservative, is threatened by any narrative of history that attributes great misdeeds, e.g. the genocide of Native Americans, to the dominant social group (Christian white males of European descent). Any evidence for the narrative that Limbaugh disfavors must be due to a conspiracy of minorities--hence we end up hearing him claim that Native Americans should pay reparations to white people. ESR, a libertarian, is threatened by any narrative of history that decouples the outcomes of individuals' lives from their innate merits, and instead places emphasis on the role of background factors such as race/class/gender/sexuality (viz. Alan Turing's persecution for being gay leading to his suicide). Any evidence for the narrative that ESR disfavors must be due to a conspiracy of bleeding-heart liberals--hence he throws Turing as well as Ada Lovelace under the bus.
- drzaiusapelord 14y agoSadly, its all too common to see tech visionaries buy into this dog-eat-dog libertarianism. Heck, slashdot is unreadable and reddit is often a Ron Paul lovefest. Its ugly, but some people, especially those who have impressive achievements, seem to need to believe that everthing is fair in life and if you're not doing well its because you suck. This is also why I don't read ESR or RMS or any ideologue. Last I heard, it took the product of a northern European leftist-socialist* society to produce a college kid with a "fuck it, lets write a kernel and dismiss the Ayn Rand politics" attitude to do anything with their philosophies. *by American standands