> Many people wondered last summer why, for example, on the Black Lives Matter website the organization declared (and has since deleted) a “disruptive” stance on the nuclear family. What did that have to do with mobilizing against police violence?
For a long time I was very sympathetic to BLM, I would even have considered protesting with them. It was the above that caused me to rethink my position and eventually decide that BLM was actually antagonistic to their very goal.
I was sympathetic with the anti police (brutality) movement but I was never convinced that racism was disproportionally responsible for it. Gender seems to be an even greater factor, yet you don't see a "Male Lives Matter" movement. I don't have a strong opinion on the subject though and I'd be open to see some data.
This is the language from the BLM site regarding disrupting the nuclear family. I'm very pro nuclear family. This didn't seem bad to me.
--------------------------
We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
-----------------
I do hope everyone would be at least sympathetic towards other human beings wanting justice and equal treatment.
I would be wary about that website and I would take whatever you see about a central organization relating to BLM with a grain of salt. I've been involved in local protests and other events in Chicago and I've never once been directed to or heard of a centralized website.
I hope you reconsider your stance with the knowledge that BLM is a very decentralized movement, and (while anecdotal) no one I've known who's been involved has been "disruptive" towards the idea of nuclear families. If I can make any other supporting statements or answer questions that might sway you please let me know.
There's the notion of BLM, of which only sociopaths would disagree, then there's BLM the organization which is exactly how you described it.
The naming of this organization was actually a stroke of genius. Only the crazy edge cases would refute it's name but served as a Trojan horse for an ideology that is inherently un-American. If you disagree with them the immediate reaction has been "you don't think black lives matter?" This is a brilliant move.
BLM was founded by Marxist-Leninist activists. The original statements about the nuclear family were consistent with viewing the family as a site of patriachical oppression. None of that antagonism is innovative or surprising if you know a bit if intellectual history. I suspect they changed the language because it was too radical to hold a coalition together. Most people seem to like their families and view the nuclear family as a good thing.
In a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.” That same year, Tometi was hobnobbing with Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: “In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.”"
Black activists (people presenting themselves as activists on behalf of black folk) seem to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It's almost as if the people funding these activists don't have black folks interest in mind at all...
Long history of this. Many such cases. Follow the money and you'll see.
What's even more shady is that they did not acknowledge the criticism directed on this point at all. Instead they quiety scrubbed their "What We Believe" page (https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-ant...), without actually admitting that this screed was based on Marxist philosophy (likely Friedrich Engels). In various works, such as "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", Engels claimed that the modern family unit gave rise to the notion of private property, and therefore capitalism, and that it must be undone for socialism to succeed. The greater ecosystem of fundamental socialist and communist theory includes proposals to ban all home and religion education, banning concepts like property and inheritance, nationalizing various housework, and even separating children from parents at an early age so they could primarily be reared by the state (https://thefederalist.com/2015/06/29/americans-buy-into-marx...).
It's incredible to me that activists who often complain about vague "dog whistles" cannot connect the dots on an ideological relation that is so basic and clear.
The alliance of necessity between social liberals and racial justice advocates creates this problem. There is not anything inherent about “people of color should be treated equally” that also requires buying into “we should disrupt the nuclear family.” That’s just how the political alliances have worked out. The latter ideology in practice works to undercut the former ideology. The contribution to racial inequality is stark: the poverty rate for Black, Latino, and Asian children in two parent households is 1/4 to 1/2 the poverty rate for white children in single mother households.
As a south Asian person, I find the aggressive push to move Asian Americans to the left quite troubling. The intense social norms in south and East Asian culture in favor of two parent households is an incredible advantage we should not give up lightly. But it’s almost taboo in socially progressive circles to say that family structure matters (even though this is obvious to Asians).
It is amazing that people are always projecting these ideas of organization so aggressively. Here BLM is portrayed an organization with founding documents that are have important guiding philosophy from which the rest emerges.
Actually looking at the people and what happened shows that there was very little organization involved and what little there was got conjured up late in the game by the most extreme involved players. In reality what happened is that our media intensive culture broadcast a nearly nine minute video of a black man being strangled by a cop and there was a broad visceral reaction against that. So what is really being said here is that a cop strangling a black man isn't that much of a big deal and what really matters is the philosophical positions expounded by the founding documents of the organization that emerged as protests grew. Want to object to cops strangling black men? You better be really slick with your organizational skills and foundational document writing because that is what really matters.
Sowell has the great and challenging characteristic that he never quite gives you the answer that would let you justify your first reactions with, "See? He agrees with me!" His writing is too nuanced to provide an easy escape from thinking, even if people occasionally use cut-up quotes to do so.
Great piece. I have to admit I'm a bit of a fan when it comes to both Friedman and Sowell. They seem to have the rare gift of understanding subjects so well and intuitively that they can explain those subjects more plainly than anyone else. Where most economists have disappointed me greatly in their understanding of math, Sowell has done to opposite.
Thomas Sowell is a titan. As was his recently deceased best friend and intellectual colleague Walter E. Williams.
The leading public intellectual regarding race in America today is undoubtedly Ibram X. Kendi. His central thesis, that any differing outcomes between racial populations is evidence of racism, is the single topic that Thomas Sowell addressed more than any other. The breadth of his research on this particular topic spans hundreds to thousands of years, across the globe. Sowell has come to the near opposite conclusion, that to expect equal outcomes between populations with different histories, cultures, patterns of behavior, etc, is insane. And then to attribute the entire disparity as evidence of racism is doubly so.
While Sowell is undoubtedly king, if you're interested in other black intellectuals with alternative takes on philosophy to the racial collectivism of critical race theory, Coleman Hughes is the single clearest thinker I have ever heard. John McWhorter, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Glenn Loury, Kmele Foster, Jason Riley, Shelby Steele, Carol Swaine, Desi-Rae Campbell, Josephine Mathias, Thomas Chatterton Williams (author of the article above), Zuby, among many others. I think every person on this list would tell you that it's irrelevant that they are black, while understanding that it is an important characteristic they possess while bridging the gap between their own liberal ideologies and the prevailing race-conscious critical race theory, for which their racial identities are paramount.
> His central thesis, that any differing outcomes between racial populations is evidence of racism, is the single topic that Thomas Sowell addressed more than any other.
I am unaware of this idea in Kendi's work, please could you reference Kendi or Sowell on this specific point?
That is an interesting reading, but it is worth pointing out that Thomas Sowell consistently differentiates between race and culture. In particular in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals he asserts that many black people living in the American South picked up a redneck culture that does not well serve either them or the white people they picked it up from. Culture trumps race. Anyone could embrace redneck values if they feel they should.
I didn't know he had a book on late speaking children. I ordered that one because of this article. My 3rd child didn't say anything until 4. You couldn't get my first two kids to shut up starting around 2.
It was frustrating and challenging. I fear that he's not gifted in any way, as the summary of the book suggests. He has had a load of speech problems that has slowed down his reading abilities dramatically.
Written by Thomas Chatterton Williams [1], author of Self-Portrait in Black and White [2]:
> “It’s not about color for me,” my aunt said while railing against Obama. “For example, I love Thomas Sowell.”
> To that side of my extended family, I became the stereotype of a coastal liberal, writing for the New York Times and wholly out of touch with the real America. In fact, I’ve always prided and defined myself as an anti-tribal thinker, and sometime contrarian, working firmly within a left-of-center black tradition...
Why was this published in Law & Liberty, has he burned his left-of-center media bridges?
Yes and no. He doesn't burn bridges, but left of center media elites pull up the drawbridges.
On topics like this, they view college activists as authoritative, objective sources of truth on race. Those activists view Sowell, and TCW, as heretics.
> Why was this published in Law & Liberty, has he burned his left-of-center media bridges?
No, left-of-center media is under the throes of the cultural far left, and they "de-platform" anyone who doesn't adhere to their ideology.
So conservative media, along with non-traditional dissident media like Quillette, are often the only place dissident liberals like TCW can be published.
It's a loss for Americans of all political stripes that Sowell hasn't been the public face of American Conservatism for decades. He's passionate, articulate, and, most of all, deeply nuanced in his thoughts. I don't always agree with him, but I've rarely read or listened to his thoughts and not come away with something to consider.
I'm excited to read the linked biography when it's published.
I'm on the conservative side, mostly, and I'm deeply disappointed by most prominent conservative voices. There's much more of value in conservative thought than people hear from conservative mouthpieces in the media, but instead we get ugly stupidity.
.. and if you are wondering where to start, i'd suggest either "Basic Economics" or "Intellectuals and Society". The later being more relevant to todays culture.
I began studying sociology in my mid 20s. That's what threw me off the left most than anything else.
I remember I discovered Sowell about that time, and it was challenging and refreshing.
I'm still a strange flavor of a utilitarian social democrat, but he's the reason why I picked up this routine of reading libertarians and conservatives. I dismissed some controversial right-wing figures in my country and reading their books (sometimes) challenge my ideas, and often improves my empathy.
Despite considering myself very politically aware, I first learned of him just in the last few years.
I'm perpetually amazed that more people are not familiar with Sowell's work over many decades. It makes me wonder whether he was ignored because he was a black man challenging many of the left's dogmas.
> In his 1995 book, The Vision of the Anointed, Sowell argues persuasively that, “The family is inherently an obstacle to schemes for central control of social processes. Therefore the anointed [essentially his proto-term for “woke”] necessarily find themselves repeatedly on a collision course with the family.” This is because, he continues, “the preservation of the family” is fundamentally a source of freedom. “Friedrich Engels’s first draft of the Communist Manifesto included a deliberate undermining of family bonds as part of the Marxian political agenda.”
In The Republic, Socrates famously argues that children should be raised in common, ignorant of their parentage. If you're going to take an ultra-rationalistic approach to raising children, "treat every child as if he/she is your own" is the ideal.
This debate has been going on forever with victories and losses on both sides. Public school is an example of a triumph on the rationalist side. Of course, just because public schools worked out doesn't mean we should "abolish the nuclear family" but it is a good argument for the utility of this long-running debate.
Thomas Sowell has a greater reach than many people at Hacker News may think. In Sweden (of all places), he is one of the most quoted conservative intellectuals by some of our most read right-wing writers.
The problem in the US is that many of the pundits on the right know of Sowell but don't know any of his work. They just recognize him as "one of us."
Which has been detrimental to the US right. His books/writings/talks are accessible because he communicates in ways that anyone can understand. There is no word salad, unnecessary jargon, etc.
Kendi proposes a constitutional amendment that would enshrine the principle that Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy (from certain threshold that he does not specify), and create Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas. [0]
Do you find this proposal even good, much less extremely good? I don't. This is an attempt to bend reality by law, which rarely works, but usually has a plethora of unexpected negative consequences.
It also goes completely against any individualism that characterizes the Western society and elevates racial groups to basic building blocks of the country.
> I suppose "consider the source" is at play here. From what I can tell, this site is nothing but the blogosphere version of some garbage neocon beltway think tank.
Thomas Chatterton Williams writes for New York Times Magazine and is (or I suppose now _was_, as either he has moved or his detractors will disown him) well known as on the left, as he writes at the beginning of the article. Maybe you think it’s beyond the pale for left wingers to consider the viewpoints of others outside of their “tribe” as having some merit but this “garbage neocon beltway think tank” appears to be _liberal_ enough to do the same as the writer.
The prevalence of the _you’re either with us or you’re against us_ attitude is why he was one of the signatories (and writer of an early draft) of the “Letter on Justice and Open Debate“[0] in Harper’s.
As the letter states:
> We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.
Every discussion of Sowell online seems to attract fans of his declaring how brilliant he is. It's a bit strange the sort of hero worship he attracts. Personally, I've never seen it; while he seems like a reasonably smart person, his ideas are simply a mix of standard conservatism and condemnation of the intellectual establishment as he sees it. His views on immigration are uninspiring, the reasons he believes the U.S. is declining are unconvincing to me, and he vocally refuses to believe that climate change in an issue (in my opinion mostly because he is ideologically opposed to proposals to fight climate change).
I think part of the reason a lot of conservatives love him is that his haughty and confident attitude, especially when speaking about other intellectuals, is quite seductive. It's convenient and attractive to think that many of the worlds problems are because of people (mostly liberals) who think they are smarter than they are.
I don't get what make him popular around certain crowds in HN. He is very polemical (I mean he was arguing that Obama would lead the US to live under Sharia law), is not a particularly good scholar, nor very insightful. Certainly, nothing he wrote as articles gave me a desire to read some of his books.
There are tons of smarter, more interesting people in the conservative sphere, especially around libertarian/conservative "brand". I don't get it.
You can argue that his claims about Iran's capabilities are exaggerated (Or that he was unaware of the then-secret war against Iran already going on), but the idea that Iran claims to be a sharia state and the laws of Iran are not something most Americans would want their granddaughters to have to live under is hard to dispute.
> The left takes its vision seriously — more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep.
(“Left” in this context is the authoritarian top-left of the political quadrant)
The political quadrant model is seriously overrated. It may be that libertarian/authoritarian Left is a meaningful distinction in some contexts and not others; or that authoritarian Left/Right is a useful categorization for some purposes, but not for others.
[+] [-] f154hfds|5 years ago|reply
For a long time I was very sympathetic to BLM, I would even have considered protesting with them. It was the above that caused me to rethink my position and eventually decide that BLM was actually antagonistic to their very goal.
[+] [-] olalonde|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] genghisjahn|5 years ago|reply
--------------------------
We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. -----------------
[+] [-] glasss|5 years ago|reply
I would be wary about that website and I would take whatever you see about a central organization relating to BLM with a grain of salt. I've been involved in local protests and other events in Chicago and I've never once been directed to or heard of a centralized website.
I hope you reconsider your stance with the knowledge that BLM is a very decentralized movement, and (while anecdotal) no one I've known who's been involved has been "disruptive" towards the idea of nuclear families. If I can make any other supporting statements or answer questions that might sway you please let me know.
[+] [-] brodouevencode|5 years ago|reply
The naming of this organization was actually a stroke of genius. Only the crazy edge cases would refute it's name but served as a Trojan horse for an ideology that is inherently un-American. If you disagree with them the immediate reaction has been "you don't think black lives matter?" This is a brilliant move.
[+] [-] ctrlp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nullifidian|5 years ago|reply
In a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.” That same year, Tometi was hobnobbing with Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: “In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.”"
[+] [-] ryanmarsh|5 years ago|reply
Long history of this. Many such cases. Follow the money and you'll see.
[+] [-] throwawaysea|5 years ago|reply
It's incredible to me that activists who often complain about vague "dog whistles" cannot connect the dots on an ideological relation that is so basic and clear.
[+] [-] rayiner|5 years ago|reply
As a south Asian person, I find the aggressive push to move Asian Americans to the left quite troubling. The intense social norms in south and East Asian culture in favor of two parent households is an incredible advantage we should not give up lightly. But it’s almost taboo in socially progressive circles to say that family structure matters (even though this is obvious to Asians).
[+] [-] collyw|5 years ago|reply
BLM seem to cause a lot of agitation, but I am not aware of them doing anything helpful to the communities that it claims to be fighting for.
[+] [-] scdp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0llusk|5 years ago|reply
Actually looking at the people and what happened shows that there was very little organization involved and what little there was got conjured up late in the game by the most extreme involved players. In reality what happened is that our media intensive culture broadcast a nearly nine minute video of a black man being strangled by a cop and there was a broad visceral reaction against that. So what is really being said here is that a cop strangling a black man isn't that much of a big deal and what really matters is the philosophical positions expounded by the founding documents of the organization that emerged as protests grew. Want to object to cops strangling black men? You better be really slick with your organizational skills and foundational document writing because that is what really matters.
[+] [-] JasonFruit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lbj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ralusek|5 years ago|reply
The leading public intellectual regarding race in America today is undoubtedly Ibram X. Kendi. His central thesis, that any differing outcomes between racial populations is evidence of racism, is the single topic that Thomas Sowell addressed more than any other. The breadth of his research on this particular topic spans hundreds to thousands of years, across the globe. Sowell has come to the near opposite conclusion, that to expect equal outcomes between populations with different histories, cultures, patterns of behavior, etc, is insane. And then to attribute the entire disparity as evidence of racism is doubly so.
While Sowell is undoubtedly king, if you're interested in other black intellectuals with alternative takes on philosophy to the racial collectivism of critical race theory, Coleman Hughes is the single clearest thinker I have ever heard. John McWhorter, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Glenn Loury, Kmele Foster, Jason Riley, Shelby Steele, Carol Swaine, Desi-Rae Campbell, Josephine Mathias, Thomas Chatterton Williams (author of the article above), Zuby, among many others. I think every person on this list would tell you that it's irrelevant that they are black, while understanding that it is an important characteristic they possess while bridging the gap between their own liberal ideologies and the prevailing race-conscious critical race theory, for which their racial identities are paramount.
https://youtu.be/TEBPCOG5RHs?t=66
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIv4L9M1ECU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18tfyp_XgkA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awIcRoDynh0
[+] [-] wcerfgba|5 years ago|reply
I am unaware of this idea in Kendi's work, please could you reference Kendi or Sowell on this specific point?
[+] [-] m0llusk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NDizzle|5 years ago|reply
It was frustrating and challenging. I fear that he's not gifted in any way, as the summary of the book suggests. He has had a load of speech problems that has slowed down his reading abilities dramatically.
[+] [-] sradman|5 years ago|reply
> “It’s not about color for me,” my aunt said while railing against Obama. “For example, I love Thomas Sowell.”
> To that side of my extended family, I became the stereotype of a coastal liberal, writing for the New York Times and wholly out of touch with the real America. In fact, I’ve always prided and defined myself as an anti-tribal thinker, and sometime contrarian, working firmly within a left-of-center black tradition...
Why was this published in Law & Liberty, has he burned his left-of-center media bridges?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Chatterton_Williams
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Portrait_in_Black_and_Whi...
[+] [-] JPKab|5 years ago|reply
On topics like this, they view college activists as authoritative, objective sources of truth on race. Those activists view Sowell, and TCW, as heretics.
[+] [-] monoideism|5 years ago|reply
No, left-of-center media is under the throes of the cultural far left, and they "de-platform" anyone who doesn't adhere to their ideology.
So conservative media, along with non-traditional dissident media like Quillette, are often the only place dissident liberals like TCW can be published.
[+] [-] seneca|5 years ago|reply
I'm excited to read the linked biography when it's published.
[+] [-] JasonFruit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] debacle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inglor_cz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apineda|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattanimation|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sparkling|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bruiseralmighty|5 years ago|reply
Reading this was illuminating. I had never heard this take on the story of America and race before reading Sowell.
[+] [-] spaniard89277|5 years ago|reply
I remember I discovered Sowell about that time, and it was challenging and refreshing.
I'm still a strange flavor of a utilitarian social democrat, but he's the reason why I picked up this routine of reading libertarians and conservatives. I dismissed some controversial right-wing figures in my country and reading their books (sometimes) challenge my ideas, and often improves my empathy.
[+] [-] chrispai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slibhb|5 years ago|reply
In The Republic, Socrates famously argues that children should be raised in common, ignorant of their parentage. If you're going to take an ultra-rationalistic approach to raising children, "treat every child as if he/she is your own" is the ideal.
This debate has been going on forever with victories and losses on both sides. Public school is an example of a triumph on the rationalist side. Of course, just because public schools worked out doesn't mean we should "abolish the nuclear family" but it is a good argument for the utility of this long-running debate.
[+] [-] ctrlp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newbie578|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjeds|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brodouevencode|5 years ago|reply
Which has been detrimental to the US right. His books/writings/talks are accessible because he communicates in ways that anyone can understand. There is no word salad, unnecessary jargon, etc.
[+] [-] throwaway183210|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] languagehacker|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] inglor_cz|5 years ago|reply
Kendi proposes a constitutional amendment that would enshrine the principle that Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy (from certain threshold that he does not specify), and create Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas. [0]
Do you find this proposal even good, much less extremely good? I don't. This is an attempt to bend reality by law, which rarely works, but usually has a plethora of unexpected negative consequences.
It also goes completely against any individualism that characterizes the Western society and elevates racial groups to basic building blocks of the country.
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2019/how-to-fix-politi...
[+] [-] kyrra|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brigandish|5 years ago|reply
Thomas Chatterton Williams writes for New York Times Magazine and is (or I suppose now _was_, as either he has moved or his detractors will disown him) well known as on the left, as he writes at the beginning of the article. Maybe you think it’s beyond the pale for left wingers to consider the viewpoints of others outside of their “tribe” as having some merit but this “garbage neocon beltway think tank” appears to be _liberal_ enough to do the same as the writer.
The prevalence of the _you’re either with us or you’re against us_ attitude is why he was one of the signatories (and writer of an early draft) of the “Letter on Justice and Open Debate“[0] in Harper’s.
As the letter states:
> We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.
[0] https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
[+] [-] DC1350|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zucker42|5 years ago|reply
I think part of the reason a lot of conservatives love him is that his haughty and confident attitude, especially when speaking about other intellectuals, is quite seductive. It's convenient and attractive to think that many of the worlds problems are because of people (mostly liberals) who think they are smarter than they are.
[+] [-] cdavid|5 years ago|reply
There are tons of smarter, more interesting people in the conservative sphere, especially around libertarian/conservative "brand". I don't get it.
[+] [-] bcoates|5 years ago|reply
http://web.archive.org/web/20090624060334/http://article.nat...
You can argue that his claims about Iran's capabilities are exaggerated (Or that he was unaware of the then-secret war against Iran already going on), but the idea that Iran claims to be a sharia state and the laws of Iran are not something most Americans would want their granddaughters to have to live under is hard to dispute.
[+] [-] ed25519FUUU|5 years ago|reply
(“Left” in this context is the authoritarian top-left of the political quadrant)
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] prionassembly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]