
What Disturbed Me About the Facebook Meeting - _pius
https://medium.com/@glennbeck/what-disturbed-me-about-the-facebook-meeting-3bbe0b96b87f#.njwke2jql
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woodandsteel
Glenn Beck is puzzled by how Silicon Valley entrepreneurs can be pro-business
but suppor many progressive causes. That is because they are not standard
liberals, they are libertarians.

~~~
CPLX
> That is because they are not standard liberals, they are libertarians.

No, they are not.

I am pretty sure they don't believe in abolishing all forms of government
excepting national defence and contract enforcement.

What they actually want is for the government to support their priorities.
Like preserving open space and parks and zoning against development,
environmental regulation, support of infrastructure and transportation
improvements, education and science research etc. But they don't like paying
taxes much, they aren't interested in the government regulating their
reproductive choices or recreational drug habits, etc.

Those positions are far from libertarianism. The accurate political term to
describe this general world view is "elitism".

~~~
Diederich
People can be libertarian and still believe that the government should do more
than national defense and contract enforcement. One example:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/zq0ow/i_am_gov_gary_j...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/zq0ow/i_am_gov_gary_johnson_the_libertarian_candidate/c66qg6j)

~~~
CPLX
Libertarians believe in selling off the National Parks and abolishing the EPA.
Just ask them:
[https://www.lp.org/issues/environment](https://www.lp.org/issues/environment)

Silicon Valley types as described above are just pro-business types that
fetishize technology and are socially liberal. Or what used to be coastal
Republicans before that party was overrun. Libertarians they certainly are
not.

~~~
Diederich
I hear you, largely agree with you. My point is that people can correctly call
themselves 'libertarian' without subscribing to ALL of the tenets, even some
of the core ones.

In the same way, there are people who correctly call themselves 'democrats'
that don't believe in the kind of gun control that is part of the official
party dialog.

------
zeeed
before you read through it, note that the article has been written by Glenn
Beck.

~~~
Zeno84
I'm not sure if you're trying to discredit it because it's by Glenn Beck or
not.

It's a thoughtful commentary regarding how conservative media has developed a
victim complex akin to those they criticize.

~~~
ewzimm
This reads almost like an existential crisis. Glenn Beck is an interesting
mixture of honest self-reflection and partisan blindness. He both praises
Silicon Valley for sharing values of business innovation and self
determination and at the same time wonders how anyone who values those things
could be liberal, even says they're certainly not Progressive.

The whole Progressive movement is based on the philosophy of improving
business conditions by balancing power. It sees conflicts coming from
monopolies and consolidations of power and tries to minimize those through
strategic government intervention. Lots of people believe in small businesses
but think that some government intervention is needed to allow them to
compete. Theodore Roosevelt considered himself a Progressive Conservative. I
can easily accept that Glenn Beck doesn't think that this kind of intervention
is effective, but I can't believe he isn't even aware that this opinion exists
when he spends every day of his life talking about it.

Maybe he's just pretending not to understand to relate to his audience who
generally like straw man arguments. Maybe it's a brilliant strategy to slowly
introduce people to the idea that the other side might have some things in
common with them. If it is, I hope it works.

~~~
gherkin0
Can you really make much of a statement about the modern "progressive
movement" by talking about Theodore Roosevelt? While they both used the
"progressive" label and perhaps one descended from the other, there's about
100 years of significant social and political change between them.

~~~
ewzimm
I think you understand my point. I was talking about the roots. Roosevelt was
already distinct from the mainstream Progressives, but he wasn't afraid to say
he thought they had some good ideas because he understood he had a lot of the
same goals and that they could find common ground. Most Republicans and
Democrats in the USA could be part of the same political party in other
countries, but here they hardly even talk to each other.

Glenn Beck is acting as if Progressives would naturally be anti-business, but
the movement, even the modern movement, is based on improving business
conditions. Of course other areas too, but it has a big focus on people's jobs
because that's where they spend their time.

It started out to address the concerns of the left while also standing against
socialist ideas. You could say it's like the Open Source movement that saw the
Free Software movement as a little too anti-business and wanted to pursue a
similar agenda while not coming out too hard against business as usual.

Conservatives and Progressive have a lot more in common that I could get into
here, but that's not the point. It's that Glenn Beck knows a lot of Democrats
are pro business and pro tech and acts as if he doesn't understand how it
could be possible. He's just playing dumb.

