The Conservative Case for Andrew Yang and the Freedom Dividend (UBI) | #YangGang | TaraElla Report S4 E7

TaraElla: Welcome to the TaraElla Report, where I chat with my friends about cultural and political issues. All of us are individuals who are simply looking for more freedom. I believe that it is only through amplifying the conversations of everyday individuals that we can cut through the nonsense and bring back freedom.

Today I continue my conversation with Allison, my independent conservative friend for whom strong families is the top social and political priority. In the last episode, we established that the priorities of Tea Party style political conservatives and family-minded social conservatives are now divergent, now that the main threat to strong families is in fact everyday economic stress, and Tea Party style conservatives had no credible answer to this challenge. In the previous episode we looked at the positive reception of Bernie Sanders among some conservatives, now we will talk about Andrew Yang and his policies. Much has been said about Andrew Yang's strong support among some conservatives, and there have indeed been articles and videos talking about the so-called Conservative Case for Andrew Yang. However, such articles have been more about economic conservatism, and what's still missing is a look at Yang's policies from the family values perspective.

Allison: As I said before, I think right now the top political priority should be to help struggling families get by. Economic stress caused by an ever increasing cost of living is hurting families, and this is contributing to more family breakdowns and a weaker social fabric. In modern times, family breakdowns disproportionally happen in poorer areas, which tells us the importance of economic factors in maintaining strong families. If every mom and dad had an extra $1000 to spend each month, it would go a long way towards easing the stress. Also, just knowing that there will be an unconditional $2000 for each family every month will give many struggling families a sense of security. That's why I think Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend could be the most pro-family policy we have seen in a generation.

TaraElla: I totally agree. As human beings, we are evolved to care deeply about our families. From the perspective of the average person, if there isn't even the ability to provide adequately for your family, there is basically no effective freedom to do anything else at all. No fancy ideological spinning can obscure this truth. I believe this is part of the reason why the Freedom Dividend is called that: it takes care of the basic needs of working families so individuals can have the freedom to do what they want to do, whether this be to start their own business or to decide that mom should stay home and look after the kids for several years, something that most families used to be able to do back in the 1950s.

Allison: It's good that you mentioned the point about stay-at-home moms. If most mothers could choose to stay at home back in the 1950s, why shouldn't they be able to choose that now? I am disappointed that political conservatives never seem to ask this question. I mean, many women want to opt for a more traditional lifestyle, it's becoming a thing now, but it seems only the relatively rich can do that in practice. On this point, we have actually regressed a lot in the past 60 years! It just isn't right that families with two working parents nowadays are effectively doing worse than families with only one working parent back in the 1950s. This is what I hope the Freedom Dividend can fix. I mean, as conservatives, we don't agree with endless handouts or stifling private enterprise, but a modest $2000 per family per month isn't going anywhere near that.

Besides the Freedom Dividend, I am also encouraged by the fact that Yang seems to have a particular commitment towards strengthening families, something I haven't seen from anyone else in the past ten years. For example, one of his policies is to provide for marriage counselling. It's something that won't cost a lot, but would likely save many families from breakdown every year. He is also concerned about falling birth rates and rising suicide rates, issues that pro-family people deeply care about but currently don't have much of a platform to raise.

TaraElla: Andrew Yang is perhaps one of the very few politicians who even have a particular policy to support families, and this is very inspiring to see. My long standing view is that freedom doesn't exist in a vacuum, and strong families are the best defense against the creep of authoritarianism. We first learn our individuality and our independence in the context of growing up in individual families, which separates us from the collective mass that is society. I mean, if we were raised in large communes instead, we would probably all end up without individuality, because we would have learned to be cogs in a much bigger system from a young age. This is why, we who believe in individual liberty, must do everything to support strong families.

That's all for today. I'll be back next time with another conversation. Subscribe if you want to follow our story. The transcripts are available on my website, and my Medium profile. And remember to resist the hive mind and stay individualistic. The world depends on it.

What Bernie Sanders Taught Us at his FOX Town Hall | Moral Libertarian View

Welcome to Moral Libertarian View, a podcast style program where we discuss big ideas to see if they can contribute to more individual liberty and equal opportunity, values that are at the heart of the Moral Libertarian idea.

Today, we're looking at the recent Bernie Sanders Town Hall hosted by Fox, where he was in fact very positively received, to the surprise of progressives and conservatives everywhere. Democrats and progressives have hated Fox News for decades, but now one of their biggest heroes have not only gone to the enemy camp, but were actually well received there! This has predictably caused some cognitive dissonance among many self-identified progressives.

But should anyone have been surprised? I don't think so. I think we should start by looking at what conservatives actually want. They want, above all, to maintain their cherished values, free from infringement from elitist meddling. They want strong families and strong communities. They also want what most of us want, like job security, and opportunity for the average man to succeed. What Bernie Sanders did was to address this wishlist, and whether you agree with his policies or not, I think you have to agree that he made a good pitch for his platform based on what the average moderate conservative wants. Pushback against corporate power means more opportunity for the average man. Guaranteed health care and more economic security is good for families and communities. Strong families and communities mean a better chance to preserve traditional values.

There's also the misconception that conservatives and Fox viewers necessarily hate all Democrats, as if there was something about Democrats or progressives that inherently make them worthy of hate for these people. No, the reality is that they hate certain ideas that are often associated with progressives. Ideas like identity politics, where people can be treated differently because of their certain immutable characteristics. Ideas like political correctness, which limits free speech based on the mistaken postmodernist belief that speech is power. A clear feature of Bernie's campaigns is that he doesn't promote these ideas. It is clear that his focus is on economic issues. Even when he talks about 'a revolution', everyone knows that he means economic change, and not elite-driven cultural upheaval. This is why many socially conservative individuals are willing to listen to Bernie, while they are totally turned off by your average progressive pundit on CNN or NBC.

It was repeatedly said during the last decade when Bush was president and the Democrats were in crisis, that they would probably win much more support across America if they focused on their economic issues, and dropped their social issues, their culture war issues. No matter if you agree with his policies or not, I think you have to agree that Bernie is perhaps the best proof of the validity of this formula, as he wins over audiences of diverse backgrounds with his focus on economic policies. In fact, I think that everyday people don't want their politicians, no matter left-wing or right-wing, to be engaged in culture war issues at all. America is in fact an outlier for having so much culture war politics in election campaigns. Right now, as we are speaking, Australia is in the middle of an election campaign, and there have been basically no culture war elements in that campaign. Instead, issues around the economy, health care, education and the like take center stage. Perhaps American politicians of both parties should learn from that example. Cultural debates belong in the cultural arena, and political debates should focus solely on what the government should or should not do.

That's all for today. I'll be back next time to discuss another big idea. Subscribe if you want to follow our story. The transcripts are available on my website, and my Medium profile. And remember to resist the hive mind and stay individualistic. The world depends on it.

'Progressive' | Moral Libertarian View

Welcome to Moral Libertarian View, a podcast style program where we discuss big ideas to see if they can contribute to more individual liberty and equal opportunity, values that are at the heart of the Moral Libertarian idea.

Today, we are going to talk about what is meant by the word 'progressive'. For example, both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden consider themselves progressive, but most Bernie fans don't consider Biden progressive. Furthermore, while most Democrats probably consider progressive to be a good thing, most Donald Trump fans and Republicans consider progressive to be bad, even though some of them like Tulsi Gabbard. It's a word that has created unnecessary confusion, and probably unnecessarily limited the support base for candidates like Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang, just to name a few.

So how does your average Donald Trump supporter define the word 'progressive'? Many of them think that progressive means super SJW, with all the identity politics, political correctness and anti-free speech that comes with it. You know, take how Hillary Clinton behaved in 2016, and exaggerate everything by ten times. Some on the right probably also define 'progressive' to include what Jordan Peterson famously calls 'postmodern neo-Marxism', which mostly comes from French postmodernists like Foucault and are definitely not progressive ideas. To your average Trump supporter, progressive doesn't have too much to do with stopping the wars. Rather, to them, 'progressives' are those people who will take away your free speech and tell you to check your privilege. No wonder they dislike progressives so much. Which is very ironic because, from what I understand, many people who consider themselves to be 'progressive' think that true progressives would focus on the important issues like ending the wars and leave the SJW issues alone because racial and gender equality has been largely achieved anyway (not my own views, I'm just describing what many 'progressives' think). But if you are going to self-identify as a progressive, the average Trump supporter will think the exact opposite.

This just shows how language needlessly divides us. The truth is, most people are against the endless, needless wars. Most people are against the power imbalance between globalist corporates and everyday working people. Most people are also against the divisive identity politics, and the many postmodernist excuses to undercut free speech. We are more united by these things, than divided by the label 'progressive', or its opposite, that is 'conservative'. Vaguely defined labels often prevent us from seeing common ground. That is why those who truly want to serve their people should have little use for vague labels like 'progressive'.

That's all for today. I'll be back next time to discuss another big idea. Subscribe if you want to follow our story. The transcripts are available on my website, and my Medium profile. And remember to resist the hive mind and stay individualistic. The world depends on it.

How Pete Buttigieg Can MAKE SOCIAL JUSTICE GREAT AGAIN | TaraElla Report S4 E4

TaraElla: Welcome to a new season of the TaraElla Report. From now on, we have a new format, where I chat with my friends about cultural and political issues. All of us are individuals who are simply looking for more freedom. I believe that it is only through amplifying the conversations of everyday individuals that we can cut through the nonsense and bring back freedom.

Today I continue my conversation with Ashley, an old friend of mine who had been an SJW, and then an anti-SJW, and finally neither, because she now see through the limitations of both sides. In this episode, we talk about how SJW politics got out of hand, how that led to the anti-SJW counter-response, and how social justice could be done in a better way.

Ashley: As I said before, I used to be an SJW. Many of us who supported Obama continued to go left after 2009, and some of us eventually became SJWs. It started out simply as a desire to see less racism and sexism in this world, and to see LGBT people get better treatment in society. What we have to remember is, it really wasn't so bad in the early days. But around 2014, things started getting extreme. SJWs were getting increasingly militant and started to threaten free speech. A big problem was how divisive everything was becoming. This whole notion that minority groups were always being oppressed and that they should get angry was gaining ground. Rational debate became 'exhausting' and compromise became 'selling out'. The militant people wanted to quash the middle ground. That was when a lot of us became anti-SJWs. We lost our faith in social justice, because if social justice meant what the SJWs were doing, we wanted no part of it.

TaraElla: I think I made a similar point in an episode in Season 1, where I said that sections of the New Left are literally making people allergic to social justice. I think this is how the whole 'social justice is cancer' thing got off the ground. Of course, real social justice doesn't have to look like that. I think we need someone that can bring some sense back into social justice. Perhaps like 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. I really like the comments he made about Chick-Fil-A recently. While he made it clear that he didn't like the company's long-standing support for anti-gay politics, he also suggested that all the calls to boycott the company was basically sanctimonious virtue signalling. And he's right! It's time somebody pointed out the ridiculous levels of virtue signalling that goes on in some circles, which by the way has nothing to do with actual social justice. I also like how he said that political issues should be resolved in the political arena. In recent years, there has been a blurring of the political arena and the other arenas of life, making everything political. Many people are very upset at the social division this has caused. This really needs to end.

Ashley: I think that the New Left idea that 'the personal is political' has been taken way, way too far. Political issues have come to color every sort of interaction in life, from commercial transactions, to friendships, and even family gatherings. People have even ended friendships over elections, most famously over the election of Donald Trump in 2016, but it also happens in other countries. Meanwhile, radical identity politics means that people are seen as their immutable characteristics, a society is divided into factions based on immutable charactersitics like race, gender and sexual orientation. The whole fabric of society is being torn apart. This is why people are sick of SJWs.

TaraElla: I totally agree. What we need to do is to repair the social fabric. Again, here is something I like about Pete Buttigieg. He wants people to find the common ground in their lived experience, and he is opposed to the way identity politics is being practiced at the moment, which instead emphasizes the differences in our experiences. Again, I don't know how far the Buttigieg 2020 campaign will go, but no matter what becomes of the campaign, I hope that he will continue to be an influence in our culture and politics, to help moderate the social justice movement.

That's all for today. I'll be back next time with another conversation. Subscribe if you want to follow our story. The transcripts are available on my website, and my Medium profile. And remember to resist the hive mind and stay individualistic. The world depends on it.

Cult of ContraPoints vs Cult of Jordan Peterson | TaraElla Report S4 E3

TaraElla: Welcome to a new season of the TaraElla Report, where I chat with my friends about cultural and political issues. All of us are individuals who are simply looking for more freedom. I believe that it is only through amplifying the conversations of everyday individuals that we can cut through the nonsense and bring back freedom.

Today's conversation is with Ashley, another old friend of mine with whom I have had political conversations going back to our college days. Like myself, Ashley has been all over the political spectrum. Earlier this decade she used to be an SJW, and around the middle of the decade she was an anti-SJW. Today, she identifies as neither, having seen through all of them. She also has a lot to say about how cults of personality can help drive political shifts in a large number of people, and how that can be both good and bad.

Ashley: The topic of political evolutions is interesting. I think you are I are not unique in our political evolutions, many people have switched back and forth and in recent years, simply because we couldn't find a good solution for freedom anywhere. During the Bush years many of us hated the religious right and thought the opposite would give us freedom, so we joined the so-called left by default. Many of us continued to go left during the early Obama years, and some of us, myself included, became SJWs. It started out simply as a desire to see less racism and sexism in this world, and to see LGBT people get better treatment in society. I even got involved in Tumblr SJW-ism for a while; trust me, it wasn't so bad in the early days.

But around 2014, many of us saw that something was wrong with the SJW way. They were getting increasingly militant and started to threaten free speech. And then there were all these new taboos, like cultural appropriation, rules around pronouns (edit note: which even some trans people weren't comfortable with), even the idea that straight white people should speak less, as if this would be justice. Many of us felt like the SJW left was the new threat to freedom, so we became anti-SJW. During those days, anti-SJW leaders like Sargon of Akkad seemed to speak sense. We still had limits though; nobody I knew liked Milo Yiannopoulos and his trolling, for example. And then Jordan Peterson came along and explained so clearly what the problems with the left are, and where they stem from. It was fascinating to understand the history of the so-called New Left and postmodernism. Studying the ideas of Foucault, who thought that mental illness was a social construct, gave me a scare, because if people in the left really believed these things, then they had no sense of reality at all.

TaraElla: Yes, some of the ideas of Foucault and the postmodernists are really scary indeed. If you aren't committed to truth, there's no way to be committed to free speech. The justification for free speech rests on the importance of discovering truth. On the other hand, if one is committed to fantasies, one necessarily needs to limit free speech in order for those fantasies to survive. I even suspect that when postmodernists say that speech is power, what they subconsciously fear is the power of truth-speaking to smash false fantasies. Postmodernism is problematic because a society that privileges the survival of fantasies above free speech would be necessarily totalitarian. I think one of the reasons why Jordan Peterson is so popular is because he has made so many people aware of the postmodern problem. This doesn't mean he is right on everything, it merely means he has got us talking about something important.

Ashley: I think you're right. I guess in hindsight, a lot of anti-SJW-ism was basically freedom-loving people beginning to see the postmodern worldview and not liking what we saw. When we have the right language to describe the problem, we don't have to resort to saying 'crazy SJW' every time. Besides, social justice is still inherently a good thing, it's the infiltration of thinking of people like Foucault, bell hooks, and several others that's the problem.

Another postmodernism-related problem I see is the development of cults, people being committed to personalities rather than truths. Even Jordan Peterson, yes he says a lot of useful things, but there's legitimate concern about the cult-like worship some Peterson fans engage in. Not everything Peterson ever says is always right. One thing I've learned in the last ten years is, even if the SJW is objectively extreme, the anti-SJW is not always right either, and one always needs to hear all sides of each argument. And the development of cults of personality on one side encourages the development of mirroring cults of personality on the other side. For example, there seems to be a cult of personality around a YouTuber called ContraPoints just in the past year or so. Interestingly, this seems to have started with her posting a video about Jordan Peterson, in which she appeared to refute Peterson's arguments, unconvincingly in my opinion. Some ContraPoints fans seem to uphold her as the anti-Peterson, even calling her the 'lobster queen', lobsters being symbolic of Jordan Peterson in some circles. Again, meme culture on both sides contributes strongly to this cult of personality thing.

TaraElla: I think we've seen so much of this cult of personality thing, with factions coalescing around particular figures pit against other factions coalescing around other particular figures. We've had SJWs rally around Lena Dunham and Anita Sarkeesian, anti-SJWs rally around Sargon and Milo, IDW intellectuals rally around Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, and now anti-IDWs, if you can all them that, rally around ContraPoints. No wonder our politics is also going that way, with Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg all having cult-like followings, just using American and British examples, I'm sure there are more in other countries. Our politics is all the poorer for this, because people stop debating ideas and start turning the whole show into a popularity contest, like Political Idol. I mean, the 2006 film American Dreamz was supposed to satirize this development, but we've gone up to a whole new level since then.

Ashley: You know, I blame meme culture for a large part of this. Memes are good for creating cults of personality, but they are not useful for actually thinking about and discussing serious ideas. Meme-based politics is ultimately empty and even distorted, like squashing a 3D object down into two dimensions, if you know what I mean. I think the emergence of ContraPoints is perhaps the ultimate result of meme culture: a lot of her popular videos have titles based on memes, she references a lot of memes in her videos, and she has been turned into a meme by her fans who call her the 'lobster queen'. Another thing is, the meme-like quality of ContraPoints is further enhanced by fans putting her in some sort of competition with other characters, as seen in her fanbase's recent delight when her subscriptions passed that of another YouTuber she had discussed in the past, Blaire White. There wasn't any actual competition between these two, but many ContraPoints fans imagined there to be a competition, maybe for some sort of YouTube Idol. You know, this is getting unhealthy.

TaraElla: Yes, I agree that we need to get away from the popularity contest mentality, and back to the truth seeking mentality that The Englightment and classical liberalism represents. This is why I discuss ideas from every side of politics and culture here on my show. This is why I don't tend to pick sides in popularity contests.

That's all for today. I'll be back next time with another conversation. Subscribe if you want to follow our story. The transcripts are available on my website, and my Medium profile. And remember to resist the hive mind and stay individualistic. The world depends on it.

Why the Media Still Ignores Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang #Tulsi2020 #YangGang | WikiEqual 2.0

NOTE: While I did support certain candidates in the 2019–20 Democratic primaries because of their ideas (e.g. UBI, anti-war, broad tent approach), it doesn't mean I endorse their other positions.

Welcome to the WikiEqual 2.0 podcast, where we discuss mainstream media bias and its undesirable flow-on effects to our culture and politics, as part of our longer-term effort to challenge the Wikipedia Notability Policy. In this episode, we will discuss the uneven coverage of the candidates running for the Presidency of the United States in 2020. Even at this early stage, more than a dozen candidates are already seriously campaigning, and many of them already have a huge following, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang. Wait a minute, who are Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang, you may ask. Regular audiences of my show would already know who they are, and those actively involved in the political scene would know too, but if you relied on mainstream media, you might not have even heard of them yet!

To say the mainstream media ignores Gabbard and Yang would be a bit of an exaggeration. They have appeared on shows here and there. But compared to the kind of coverage Sanders, Warren, Harris and O'Rourke have gotten, you would have thought that Gabbard and Yang are perhaps not serious contenders. But this couldn't be further from the truth! The truth is, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang are immensely popular at the grassroots level, and their fanbase is growing every day. People are talking about these two on social media, perhaps more than any other candidate. And they are popular for a good reason: Tulsi Gabbard stands for ending unnecessary wars first and foremost, and her message resonates particularly well with Millennials, who came of age around or soon after the disaster that was the 2003 Iraq War. Andrew Yang has the biggest list of interesting policies anyone has seen in a long time, and they are all built around the idea of Human Capitalism, to reform capitalism so it serves humanity. There's a lot that Yang has put out for discussion, and it is unsurprising that many people have found interest in his ideas.

So why do the mainstream media still ignore Gabbard and Yang? Firstly, because they can. Big media is used to being able to control the narrative, to create reality from their perspective. Gabbard and Yang simply don't fit their story. You know, the story in which America and the West are polarized, identity politics are central to everything, and the Democrats have a huge battle between so-called progressives and centrists. Two candidates who have interesting new perspectives, who take us away from the culture wars and into other discussions, and therefore draw support from former Bernie, Hillary and Trump supporters alike? No, they don't fit the story, and they need to be ignored as much as possible. And it isn't even new. Back in 2015, they tried to ignore Bernie Sanders the same way, until it failed.

That's all for this edition of WikiEqual 2.0. I'll be back next time with another story of mainstream media bias. With every story we build our case that the mainstream media unfairly excludes people, opinions and ideas, and ultimately build our case against Wikipedia's Notability Policy. Until next time, remember to think critically about what you hear from big media.

On Tulsi Gabbard & Pete Buttigieg vs Elitist Smear Campaigns #Tulsi2020 | TaraElla Report S4 E1

TaraElla: Welcome to a new season of the TaraElla Report. From now on, we have a new format, where I chat with my friends about cultural and political issues. All of us are individuals who are simply looking for more freedom, and many of us have been confused by so-called leaders from all sides, offering non-solutions with hidden agendas attached. I believe that it is only through amplifying the conversations of everyday individuals that we can cut through the nonsense and bring back freedom.

Today's conversation is with Katie, an old friend of mine with whom I have had political conversations going back to our college days. We have had both convergent and divergent periods in our political evolutions over the years. A lot has happened since, say, Bush left the White House, and the past decade was perhaps the most chaotic one since the 1970s. Today, I'm more of an independent while she identifies as a progressive, even though she is also questioning where the progressives are heading. However, we still share similar hopes and concerns over many issues, for example being anti-war, because we are both individuals committed to freedom, even if we don't know exactly how to get there. So without further delay, I'll let Katie introduce herself.


Katie: I got interested in politics during college, around the time of the 2003 Iraq War. I remain staunchly anti-war today, and I am happy to see that a new generation of leaders like Tulsi Gabbard are running on an anti-war platform. I guess for many of us, being against the war meant being against Bush and his political allies, so we were progressive by default. I have continually identified as progressive over the years, even though I have had periods of questioning. For example, my faith with progressivism was quite tested during the SJW era around the middle of the decade, where things got a little too crazy. But I still stood by my values, even if I don't agree with their behaviour. More recently, I started to question where my fellow progressives are heading. They seem to have become unconsciously prejudiced against people with religious values, for example. I even think this is why some progressives have been reluctant to support Tulsi Gabbard, who is a Hindu, and Pete Buttigieg, who is a practising Catholic. In particular, Tulsi Gabbard's Hindu faith has been the focus of a low-key smear campaign.


TaraElla: I think I have seen quite a bit of the anti-religious thing going on in the left too. For some people on the left, they seem to have an attitude that religious people are not welcome, including even those who don't force their values onto others. I even suspect that some Democrats may have gotten the same message, hence their reluctance to publicly discuss their religious faith, compared with, say, Barack Obama back in 2008. By doing this, they earn the support of a certain kind of leftist, who almost openly disdain the way that people like Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg talk about their faith. And I think this is quite a worry, both as a religious person from a Buddhist family myself and as somebody who is concerned with the future of freedom, since freedom of religion has always been the most essential freedom, the cornerstone freedom of classical liberal history. You can't have true freedom of religion if there is a social penalty for being religious.


Katie: I agree. The religious have always been an important part of progressive movements historically. Religious groups were central to civil rights back in the 1960s, and they were also central to numerous anti-war movements. The exclusion of the religious is a new development for the left. And I think it stems from a wider problem of the left becoming a club for so-called intellectuals who all think a certain way. Let's face it: your typical left-wing activist is extremely unlikely to have a background like Tulsi Gabbard's. Instead, much of the current left-wing activist establishment is heavily staffed by people who studied certain humanity subjects in college, and are hence heavily influenced by the way of thinking that is dominant in those parts of academia. Religion is often seen as bad in that way of thinking, but it's not just religion. Ideas like postmodern philosophy, particularly the ideas of Michel Foucault, and ideas around identity politics, from thinkers like bell hooks, have become part and partial of the worldview. To be part of the elite club, you have to share the worldview. I guess that, besides being religious, Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg are also more generally seen by these elites as people who have a backwards worldview, which is ironic, because Tulsi is staunchly anti-war which is the most progressive thing. I even suspect that the repeated bad faith attacks on Tulsi's past gay marriage views are basically a dog whistle to remind the elitist left that she is not one of them.


TaraElla: Absurd as it sounds, you are probably right. In the Foucauldian postmodern worldview, politics is about identity-based power and oppression, and there's no room for the basic notion of service above self, and standing for what's morally right. It is clear that old-school progressives like Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg don't fit their criteria. I mean, they probably think that Tulsi Gabbard should focus on complaining about oppression against women of color and Pete Buttigieg should focus on complaining about oppression against gay people, and since they don't do that enough, they must be right-wing. In my experience, in the eyes of the elitist postmodern left, you are not a 'progressive' unless you don't care about religious freedom, you play identity politics and claim oppression wherever you can, and you speak in the language of Foucault and bell hooks every now and then. In fact, in postmodern philosophy, there's no such thing as right and wrong, and everything is relative. But one of the things I love about Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg is that they clearly know that there is a right and there is a wrong. It is because Tulsi Gabbard knows that fighting unnecessary wars is wrong that she has set out to end this practice, for example. Their progressivism is a moral progressivism, just like that of Lincoln. I, for one, would strongly prefer our leaders have a sense of what's morally right and wrong.

That's all for today. I'll be back next time with another conversation. Subscribe if you want to follow our story. The transcripts are available on my website, and my Medium profile. And remember to resist the hive mind and stay individualistic. The world depends on it.