Yes, its pretty simple. Different audiences prefer different style. Experts prefer brevity and jargon, they don't need explanations of concepts they already understand. Beginners prefer less jargon and inline explanations as they'd need to hunt for references otherwise to understand the text.
It seems more and more that if war between US and China starts it will be US-initiated. You just can’t stand not being the top dog anymore.
For context, EU+UK is over 500M people, Russia is 143M.
I think two weeks back many Europeans took for granted (at least I did) we would get involved in the Pacific theatre if needed on US side, but after what is happenning now… I am for not getting involved in any coflict in Pacific if US treats us this way.
Sounds very similar to how the Ukraine “special military operation” was intended and you see the result. Its also probably a scenario Taiwan’s defense is preparing for.
Do supporters of this philosophy still self-identify as conservatives? Such radical futurist visions seem directly opposite to core conservative values.
The never really did. If you saw them referred to that you were getting flimsy analysis. These people have a much more purposeful, active, and visionary approach to politics and society than any conservative ever has. Conservatism, since 2018, can be pithily summed up by this quote:
> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Thiel et al's machinations are much more sophisticated than this quote (not an endorsement), but it basically does encapsulate the irritable gestures of your sundowning uncle and the cold selfishness of the old money class.
They do not, conservatism is seen as serving as a governor for liberalism and without conservatism liberalism would fail faster. Neo-reactionary is anti-enlightenment where some are accelerationists and others are not. The accelerationist support liberalism (to speed up the self-immolation) and the non-accelerationists support conservatism.
One way to look at it is how far back do you want to unwind the clock, if to the 90s then they consider that a 'this far and no further conservative' which they consider to be a liberal. You'd have to unwind the clock all the way to pre-enlightenment to get to the neo-reactionary position.
Most of the people in this story - most of the people in the current administrations - aren't originally conservative. Trump, Musk, Gabbard...
In a sense (American) politics is experiencing a vanishing middle of epic proportions where only two strongly held positions are becoming turbo capitalism or state communism. Trump et. al. call themselves progressive only in so forth as their voters dream of the return of the good old days.
The democrats still haven't had their "tea party" and stick to economic liberalism with a dash of mild progressivism. Maybe that's why they're losing steam?
He is so well read that what he is saying doesn't work in a blog summary like this.
I think he also says things exactly so people write blogs like this to make him sound extra controversial for marketing purposes.
If he just said what he really believes, that the US needs a president like FDR, it would get no traction.
Implying democracy is dead while really meaning Athenian democracy that we don't have and that the US needs a monarch when really talking about FDR/Hoover/Coolidge is a professional writer basically marketing themselves so other writers like this run with it and do marketing for him.
I get the feeling he is doing a type of "dangerous idea" performance art because it is really hard to be a professional blogger.
Almost the way the Ice-T band Body Count went from obviously stirring up controversy for the song Cop Killer for marketing purposes to Ice-T playing a cop on Law and Order.
Conservative at this point has as much to do with conservation as Liberal has to do with laissez-faire economics.
> Implying democracy is dead while really meaning Athenian democracy that we don't have and that the US needs a monarch when really talking about FDR/Hoover/Coolidge is a professional writer basically marketing themselves so other writers like this run with it and do marketing for him.
Conservatives like to argue that FDR was a dictator. And then argue that they want a "conservative dictator like FDR."
In fact, FDR was a democratic leader with a massive and overwhelming popular mandate. His mandate came because people could see that he was overturning the Gilded Age power structure and creating a system that made people's lives better.
I'm not a fan of the strongman approach no matter which party is doing it, but I think the argument is that conservatives want the power of an FDR-like figure absent any of the actual factors that contributed to the real FDR having that power.
FDR was faced with two of the greatest challenges to face the US, the great depression and WWII, and he had overwhelming support from the voters in how he was addressing those challenges as reaffirmed in 4 elections in a row. In my opinion that still doesn't justify FDR's extraordinary take on presidential power, and the passage of the 22nd amendment among other things seems to suggest mine was not an isolated view, but it's hard to argue FDR didn't have a unique set of circumstances and a rare mandate.
Some conservatives seem to want to emulate FDR's approach of having the President act like a King, but skip over the circumstances and mandate unique to FDR that "justified" that approach. It might be different if they were trying to build such a massive, enduring electoral mandate by identify some generational problem to solve with real solutions and a man or woman of destiny to embrace their historical moment. But they don't have any of that and are nevertheless jumping to the President=King step anyways, like a store brand FDR knockoff.
FDR didn't "act like a King" he worked through congress, getting enabling legislation and appropriations for every thing he did.
In addition to winning his own elections he also maintained large Democratic majorities in both houses of congress. The only branch that opposed him was the unelected one, because every opportunity the people had to consent to what FDR was doing, they gave him not just a victory but an overwhelming one.
His planned attack on the judicial branch was a step too far for me. Unelected or not, the Supreme Court is still part of the US system of democratic governance and trying to change the workings of the system for near term partisan gain is undemocratic whatever the motivations.
But you're also absolutely right that FDR wasn't ruling by executive fiat and instead also had major legislative majorities backing and enacting his policies. He really wasn't a king so much as the leader of a political juggernaut able to achieve significant sweeping changes unlikely most other presidents. If anything that makes the cheap imitation American conservatives are pursuing even more notable. FDR was powered by a movement based on overwhelming victory in multiple elections in election cycle after election cycle. Modern American conservatives want to translate one historically unimpressive presidential election victory and a narrow, relatively weak legislative majority, into the same sort of seismic generational change. It's not store brand FDR, it's Temu knockoff FDR.
this appeal to 5D chess falls on its face when you watch what they do. they do things that cause harm and don't care. you don't become a billionaire by caring about other people. empathy doesn't just snap on when your net worth hits one billion.
It's possible that China censors info about Tiananmen square because so much of what was published came from Western news orgs - and the West has form for using the "news" to attack other nations. Another example might be the supposed "genocide" of the Uyghur people - the MSM pushed the genocide narrative hard, while radicalising, funding and arming Uyghur Islamic extremists, so they could control the narrative. And of course, it largely worked.
This is more a political discourse that a business or technical one.
You sure can establish that there is a qualitative difference on the type of censorship carried out - congrats.
The main point I spelled out is that there is no comparative advantage (technical or business wise) on working on these products in the west as you have to implement and operationalize the same amount of censorship / safety.
Atheism is defined as the absence of belief which is essentially what OP said.
The fact that we are open to changing our mind if theoretically presented with strong evidence does not make us agnostic.
You’d probably also accept that sun is made of cheese if presented strong enough evidence but don’t call yourself agnostic about the topic given your current knowledge.
Atheism is the position that God does not exist. An atheist is someone who therefore says “I believe that there is no God.”
It is not a mere lack of belief, as agnostics can be said to lack belief in God as well. People who are simply ignorant of God also lack a proper belief in God, but this is not atheism, only ignorance. They simply have not come to terms with the subject and therefore have no position on the matter. An atheist does, however unsophisticated it may be.
This view that atheism is simply a lack of belief in God is common among the intellectually challenged New Atheist crowd and would have been ridiculous to the much more intellectually substantive atheists of old, like Neitzsche (who, btw, while an atheist, found it a horrifying thing; the other classic atheists could be described as world-weary rather than insipid, parochial, middle class triumphant).
For someone concerned with the lack of intellectual seriousness of the New Atheist movement, you seem especially committed to ontological realism. Is there some compelling argument I've missed?
That aside, "atheism" can obviously mean both things—with regard to a belief or the endorsement of an "existence" proposition. In the case of atheism/theism, the belief part plays a substantial role—it distinguishes between B(~p) and ~B(p), the strong and weak positions, respectively.
There are other ways besides ignorance or agnosticism to arrive at ~B. For example, if my view is that ontological claims can't be propositions, then obviously I can't have beliefs about them one way or another. Or I could reject all supernatural claims out of hand. Why would you insist that one take a firm position on whether "God" specifically "exists" or not? Isn't atheism just a consequence of these views?
To put it plainly, logical consequences of other views can make one an atheist just as much as rejecting p outright. One needn't explicitly endorse or reject every mystical metaphysical claim out there. That would be a bit silly, just as it's a bit silly that we've inherited a special word for "atheism" in the first place.
Not true, while Germany was not solely responsible, it and Austria-Hungary were much more responsible than others.