I remember when HN did not have a political agenda. Right or wrong, this used to be mainly about startups. Now its become a highly political message board
No, it hasn't. The rule has been the same for years: most politics are off topic. Check it out: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The difference between "most" and "all" is significant. HN can't be immune to what's going on in the outside world and we've learned from years of experience that it doesn't make sense to try. At the same time, we're not going to let politics overwhelm the site, since that would kill it.
The issues affecting the tech community seem to have gotten a lot more political in the past year as well. Immigration issues, net neutrality, surveillance, women and diversity issues have all been particularly politicized recently.
I used the word 'mainly' because I understand that HN has always had some political conversation in the background. I have personally learned about immigration issues, digital privacy, etc. etc. on HN. Those are valuable things to understand, and I enjoyed reading about them.
Now, it is clear that YC leadership has taken a highly liberal stand. I won't make a judgement on liberal or republican, but it feels more and more extreme. When an organization leans either direction too hard, it loses its purity. YC is becoming the liberal version of the Koche Brothers. HN is reflecting that in YC's movement.
I'm sure that Sam Altman and the rest of your team feel that it is worth it, but in my opinion, overt political support by an organization feels like a losing long-term strategy.
> Now, it is clear that YC leadership has taken a highly liberal stand.
How do you figure? It seems more that the GOP has driven off of a sanity cliff, and the "liberal" party is the only party left for sane people to join.
Supporting civil rights is not taking a "highly liberal stand". Just because American politics has shifted to the extreme right doesn't mean everyone needs to shift with it or that people who were moderates yesterday are now extreme liberals.
I would be very afraid of anyone who thinks that protecting the rights guaranteed by the Constitution is "highly liberal". You do realize that the ACUL has been known to defend the rights of KKK and Nazi party members too, right? They stand up for everyone's rights, not just liberals.
I'm a supporter of the ACLU, my cousin even worked there for a bit. Regardless of your personal beliefs, it is clear that YC's involvement with the ACLU is a political decision which does not match their business model. They are even referencing the recent election and republican party's decisions as the reason they are doing it.
There were lots of civil liberties eroded during Obama's presidency, but YC & Sam Altman at no point in time stood up and said anything or did anything like they are doing now.
YC is a business. They're a tech company, really. And like most tech companies, they employ a lot of immigrants. It's not hard to imagine they've been impacted by the president's recent policies. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Reddit, Uber, Lyft, Netflix, Slack, Facebook, and a ton more have directly spoken out against Trump's order. It has a pretty major impact. Are all of those companies shameless liberals, too? Just playing politics? Or are they speaking out against something that will directly hurt their business?
Donald Trump's order is not conservative, and opposing it is not liberal. The order is authoritarian. This is not a conservative vs liberal fight in any way and the ACLU is not a liberal organization. If you want to be cynical about it, this is a business move. They didn't stand up in the past because Obama's policies didn't threaten their business model like Trump's do.
YC is a private, early stage investment company that also has an asset management arm. They focus on making technology related investments including everything from web apps to nuclear power. They are not a technology company any more than any VC is. YC is a finance company, more similar to Goldman Saches than Apple.
The rest of your comment is too political for me to comment on.
I think it's uncontroversial that there are likely a large number of HN members who have favorable opinions of Y Combinator. That said, I don't see evidence of Y Combinator exercising any kind of persuasion or manipulation of the members where one can reasonably say that HN members are following Y Combinator's lead. And there's enough vociferous, contentious, argumentative political discussion on HN that it's clear to me that HN doesn't represent a single bloc of anything other than all participating in the HN forums.
As for YC becoming the liberal version of the Koch brothers, I think it's hard to underestimate the difference in scale. In January 2015, the Koch brothers budge for the 2016 campaign was nearly $900 million.[0] Along with Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers largely bankrolled the Tea Party into national government[1] in 2010.
Another significant difference, in my opinion, is that the Koch brothers themselves are not very vocal or public. They operate largely behind the scenes. Y Combinator has been much more vocal about what they're doing.
And it bears keeping in mind that YC has kept Peter Thiel on as a part-time partner: if YC's motivations were purely political, I think it's fair to say they'd have cut ties with Thiel just as so many have been clamoring for them to do.
All said, I don't think the comparison has much merit.
The last election clearly showed that dollars are not as important as they once were. Mobilizing individuals is now becoming more and more powerful and YC surely understands it.
HN moderation isn't particularly connected to developments like YC funding the ACLU. I add 'particularly' because maybe there's some weak action at a distance that none of us are conscious of, but it's nothing like the close correspondence your comment suggests. We have well-established methods for moderating HN that don't fluctuate a whole lot even as the world fluctuates around them.
The travel ban disproportionally impacts the tech community, including "startups."
From the hundreds of Big 4 employees who now can't return home or travel overseas, to the 110,000 answers submitted to StackOverflow from the now banned countries, this affects the industry.
I would like to know how many people in the tech community are actually impacted by this. A temporary ban on immigration from a few unstable counties is not an embargo.
Being indifferent and taking our (US) liberties for granted have landed us in a tough spot. While it isn't ideal for YC to have to get involved, it's going to be a knock-down-drag-out to prevent as much damage as we can. This is probably going to be annoying to a subset of the users here that don't care or who support the current administration. There is no pleasing everyone. But YC is an org in the US, and will be affected by what is happening.
I was very happy to see YC do their part in what will be a 4-8 year (at least) battle of attrition and will. The ACLU is one of the best advocates for the people, in a country where corporate and religious lobbying trumps most.
Politics are involved in everything. Each business decision made by a company the size and scale of YC has political ramifications. Even something 'innocuous' as funding Scribd is a political move - why? Think about copyrights, the lawyers needed to handle trademark laws and to challenge them. Or Soylent - they circumvent the FDA and do direct food testing on people, resulting in contamination outbreaks. Are these not political moves, this policy of 'disruption' i.e. grey-area skirting of existing so-called 'burdensome' regulation(s)?
There are no vacuums anymore, if there ever were (which I doubt). If something is 'about' startups then it is by necessity also about the politics those companies are involved in, especially considering in the US companies are persons with certain rights of expression.
Thanks to the intertwining of capitalism with our representative democracy by way of lobbying, our everyday lives are politicized. Should we suppress these notions or engage with them?
This is great news. The ACLU has always been important, and is even more important right now as the disregard for civil liberties continues to grow in our government (at all levels including federal, state and local.)
I set up a monthly donation to the ACLU last year, and encourage everyone who can afford to do so to join in.
I believe they may be making an oblique reference to the ACLU acting on behalf of immigrants this past weekend.
Of course, it's perfectly consistent to believe that the government of the United States of America does not sufficiently respect the civil liberties of non citizens.
Huh, what a weird point to make. If he were to actually look at the ACLU's mission, though, he'd see that there's nothing in it about only working to protect the rights of American citizens.
You could understand it as Civil Liberties in America. When the USA grants you permission to live here, and then takes it away midflight, then that's a problem with America, even if it is not a problem for "Americans".
It is the American Civil Liberties Union, Not the Union of Americans' Civil Liberties. 'American' in this context refers to the provenance of the civil liberties in question, not some sort of property interest. The more you know!
Clearly I didn't know we had a one world government.
If American liberties are a concept to apply over the whole world, the ACLU should be encouraging the whole world to a adopt the Bill of Rights and our Constitution.
So in the US a lot of civil rights actually show up as restrictions on what the government is allowed to do.
Isn't it reasonable that we should seek to limit the actions of our government towards non citizens to those actions that are necessary or beneficial (either to US interests or to both parties)?
So for example, it may be reasonable to investigate the backgrounds of people that would like to visit the United States. But after such a reasonable investigation, I personally don't think the government should then be allowed to use those people as political props.
An absurd straw man argument that reflects poorly upon you. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the word 'provenance' or the concept of an international policy.
Our Constitution contemplates the arrival of immigrants and indeed specifies that their should be 'uniform rules' for their naturalization. It also distinguishes between citizens and persons, granting some rights to the latter group and limiting others to the former.
Any word on whether or not this was planned, or is this a reaction to recent events?
If the latter, then I can't help but feel that this is just politically conveninent.
The alternative is worse (not giving any funding), but hey, I feel what I feel.
It's not that it's politically convenient right now, it's that it is necessary. No need to be cynical. The executive orders that made this necessary only started happening within the last two weeks.
My view would be more that it was unclear _how necessary_ this was before January. I think a lot of people, pundits and politicians included, expected a certain amount of moderation, which hasn't really happened. I'd put this move as an ounce of prevention, personally. And what's the alternative, not to do this? I don't see how that could be counterproductive.
There must be a misunderstanding. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do this. I'm just hoping that Ycombinator isn't simply being reactive. Even if they are, it's better than nothing, but generally speaking, for things like this, they're done far in advance, no?
We are delighted to be funding the ACLU as a non-profit[0] in our Winter 2017 batch.
The ACLU has always been important, but has a particularly important role[1] right now. We are honored to be able to help, and we will send some of our team to New York for the rest of the batch to assist.
The ACLU will have full access to the Y Combinator network and community, and they will present at Demo Day in March.
We are hopeful that the YC community will join us in supporting this important work. In particular, if you’re an engineer and want to spend some time helping them out, let us know.[2] We’ll keep you updated on opportunities.
I don't know exactly what this means, as the implementation details are hazy, but if this entails substantial support to the ACLU (in terms of lawyers, money, or both), then that is awesome. I donated to the ACLU yesterday and I'm encouraging everyone I know to do the same.
Im taking this as a statement, that progress for traditional ycombinator startups is under threat from things the ACLU deals with. It isnt a startup, far from it, but the ACLU is someone that you want on speeddial these days.
For people outside the US, I believe it is perfectly fine to donate to ACLU, but do check if there is an equivalent organization in your country. For example in the UK there is Liberty (https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/). Threats to human rights are a global problem after all.
I don't donate to the ACLU because I believe in the civil rights for all people, outside the womb, and inside. Is there a similar organization I can donate to?
Consider the EFF. They're more narrowly focused, and unlikely to come in conflict with your beliefs. And, with a battle over Net Neutrality being almost inevitable, they could use our help, too.
To really spell it out, as these "pro-life/pro-choice" terms are somewhat esoteric and not always understood by foreign speakers, the ACLU is in favor of abortion rights and many conservatives are against abortion rights.
The terms I usually see are "pro-choice" and "anti-choice." Everyone on the planet is "pro-life" and thinks abortion is a bad thing, the question is whether outlawing abortion results in better outcomes than allowing it. I think there is room for reasonable disagreement, though legally speaking it's largely a settled issue.
That the terms you usually see are "pro-choice" and "anti-choice" means nothing more than that your particular filter bubble is strongly pro-choice. Pro-lifers never call themselves "anti-choice"; they call themselves "pro-life." Conversely, pro-choice activists never call themselves "pro-life" (except maybe in rhetorical arguments such as the one you just provided).
Legally speaking, the situation could change drastically based off of new composition of the U.S. Supreme Court, legislation making abortion de facto banned, or an amendment to the Constitution explicitly banning it.
I feel like you have that backwards. All evidence indicates that legal abortion results in no more abortions occurring, but those that do occur will be safer. Legally speaking there seem to be a fair number of people who want to outlaw it anyway.
It can be better than the alternative, but I think you would be hard pressed to have anyone say abortion is a good thing. The ideal would be no unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
That response assumes that "unwanted pregnancies" are the only reason a woman would want an abortion. There's plenty of medical reasons why it would be necessary.
I believe that outside of the weirdness in America and the church, and perhaps a few religious groups a lot of people really don't care. I'd say a vast majority of people in the world aren't caught up this particular whirlpool of emotions.
Not so much pro life, as I like to disassociate myself from that hypocritical stance, but I like to call myself "whole life" or basically pro life for the whole life, from beginning to end.
The mission of FIRE is to defend and sustain individual rights at America's colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience — the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE's core mission is to protect the unprotected and to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them.
That this is being downvoted is extremely telling of the audience here. Engage in a discussion if you disagree. Downvoting unpopular opinions into oblivion is how you get a SV/liberal echo chamber.
There is no reasoning with people who don't use reason. Banning abortion would result in countless problems and if people aren't willing to do the research to understand that .... downvotes are indeed required.
"There is no reasoning with people who don't use reason. Banning slavery causes a lot of problems. Where are all these slaves going to live? Where are they going to work? Where are the 40 acres and a mule going to come from? What if they want to return to Africa? Educate yourself before you ban obviously immoral practices. Downvotes are indeed required."
The parent comment called everyone pro-life uneducated and incapable of reason; I hardly see how mocking him for it in a way that demonstrates how asinine that line of thought is is out-of-line. Yes, this is how I would respond face-to-face if someone maligned half my country.
This is being downvoted because of the intentionally passive-aggressive language that was used by the poster. It's fairly clear that the poster isn't interested in engaging in a discussion due to this. Even ignoring the phrasing, it wasn't a post that merits much discussion -- simply responses in the form of references to groups similar to the ACLU that are anti-abortion.
I am afraid you have read way too far into my comment. It really isn't, it's simply a way of rephrasing the argument, rather than just saying "I am Pro-life" which will get surely downvoted to oblivion, I phrased in a way that might make sense to rational thinkers -- that I believe civil rights should be applied to all created beings, both born and unborn, but boy was I wrong. I am legitimately interesting in supporting civil liberties, as I have had the graces of benefiting from civil liberty groups myself in the past, I just cannot look past the fact that the ACLU views persons inside the womb as somehow less human than those immediately outside.
I think I read into your comment exactly how you intended and have just described. Perhaps the "intentionally" portion of my "intentionally passive-aggressive" comment was incorrect, but the rest of what you just described is exactly what I (and I presume other down-voters) understood your comment to be.
Your phrasing as "I believe in the civil rights for all people, outside the womb, and inside" carries the implicit assumption that pro-abortion people do not, in fact, believe in the civil rights for all people. The reality is that the down-voters likely do believe in the civil rights for all people, but do not believe that a fetus is a person yet. Since that is generally the debate between those who are for and against abortion, the feeling of passive-aggression from your comment stems from entirely disregarding the other side's point of view and instead simply implying that they don't care about civil liberties.
FWIW, I think just saying "I am pro-life" wouldn't have gotten you down-voted to oblivion.
I appreciate that you're concerned for people inside and outside of the womb, but I think you're not paying enough attention to a third group: the people who are the womb.
I would caution people about how they donate to the ACLU. I made a donation last year and since then have been awash in solicitations for donations from SCLC, Planned Parenthood, Grean Peace, PETA, and other leftist organizations.
While I don't object to many of these organizations, I take my privacy very seriously and I wasn't aware when I donated that my personal information would be given/sold out the way it has been.
there's an option on the donation page where you can opt-in to the ACLU sharing your details with other charitable organizations. (the default is opt-out).
I verified via the wayback machine and the page is the same today as it was when I made my donation. I'm fairly certain I would not have checked that box. I make it a point to read checkboxes very carefully as companies are so prone to anti-patterns to get you to agree to share your info or join mailing lists.
Except, you know, they're a bunch of lawyers so any abuse of their own privacy policy is not really going to fly with them, especially from an optics perspective. It's far more likely that you did, in fact, click the checkbox, and just forgot about it than the ACLU deciding to ignore your request and forward your information anyway.
Yes, I experienced this as well, though it was about 8 years ago. I was really disappointed in the ACLU, I would have thought of all people they would be the last ones to sell off private information. It bothers me that all these groups have spent more money on sending me mail in the ensuing years than the original donation amount to the ACLU.
At least now it seems like they let you opt out.
This is a problem in the non-profit industry that should get addressed, especially given younger generations are less likely to respond to mailers anyways.
I don't think you can fault the ACLU? In my experience: I donated a few times in the past and now I am a guardian of liberty (monthly donation) and I've never gotten any solicitations from any other charity/organization. However in college I never donated to any charity (wasn't stingy, just prioritizing being able to eat and pay rent at that time...) And I got piles and piles and piles of solicitations for those organizations you've mentioned. I don't know where the "leak" came from.
I think this makes sense strategically for multiple reasons:
- YC would undoubtedly like to ensure there are no barriers to immigrant founded startups that they would like to invest in
- ensuring that there are fewer barriers to employment by immigrants in invested startups
- generally trying to build a better more open world (which is in line with the UBI initiative [0] as well as the stated interest in investigating new concepts for city design [1])
Except diversity-based hiring is no more than farcical politicking, building a better and more open world is an empty slogan, and barriers to employing immigrants are important to prevent the same violent demographic change we have seen in Europe.
What violent demographic change have you seen in Europe? I've lived here all my life (London/Amsterdam) and the only people I hear talking about the "terrible state of Europe" are Americans who have never been here.
building a better and more open world is an empty slogan
You don't speak for me. I favor a world without closed borders where labor can move as freely as capital does and transactional and jurisdictional burdens are coordinated so as to be minimal. I'm very impressed by the EU's Schengen agreement permitting free movement between all EU states, and I doubt any Americans would favor interstate border restrictions despite the sometimes huge differences between individual states.
You're welcome to hold a different opinion, but that's all it is.
YC has been donating to nonprofits for a few years. It's not an investment, and the relationship is not the same as the one they have with startups. I think the general idea is just to support a good cause, and give them access to a bunch of rich entrepreneurs who might want to partner or donate.
Hopefully not... YC needs to retain the inclusiveness. It should have the ability to disagree with civility. If PT is acting in a way that hurts YC's investments then I expect YC to have a civil discussion with him.
History shows that collaboration with fascists is without virtue. Fascist collaborators should not benefit from inclusiveness while trying to eliminate it.
I believe history also shows that labeling anyone who disagrees with you a fascist and organizing to systematically ostracize them from polite society is without virtue as well.
This confuses me, but "only donations to the 501(c)(3) foundation are tax deductible, and only the 501(c)(4) group can engage in unlimited political lobbying. The two organizations share office space and employees." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union
An organization can be simultaneously a 501(c)3 and a 501(c)4 - often this is managed by having two separate legal entities with a mutual relationship, but it's possible for the same organization to be classified both ways.
Separately, a 501(c)3 is allowed to engage in lobbying - they are just subject to restrictions on how much time and money than can spend (last I checked, it's up to 10% of time and 10% of money).
This is all correct -- Notably, you can't spend 501(c)(3) dollars on (c)(4) activities. All of those employees that work for both entities have to accurately record their time and expenses the (c)(3) must charge the (c)(4) for any support that they give it. It's a big pain in the ass but worth it to keep the IRS off your case.
"Peter is a part-time partner at YC, meaning he spends a small fraction of his time advising YC companies, does not have a vote in how YC is run, and in his case waives the equity part-time partners normally get."
No, they asked about funding organizations involved in politics. I wondered if they believed reddit to be apolitical, not whether they believed it fit some definition of some other concept.
Looking through last year's class, it's fairly easy to see a political bent to 50% of the groups or more.
Increasingly - and assuringly IMO - it's difficult to coherently distinguish "groups involved in politics" from other groups (ie, there is no other type of group).
Depends. Lots of people consider the EFF to be a political organization, but it has always enjoyed major social privileges here. Not sure about the specific financial relationships and don't feel like investing hours in compiling that information, but I'd be quite surprised if YC hadn't supported the EFF financially, directly or indirectly.
Peter Thiel insists that the immigration EO is does not constitute a religious ban [1], but Rudy Giuliani says this is exactly what the President asked for [2] (Also, we heard him say as much many, many times).
It's not just Peter Thiel but anyone of sound mind -- the top 5 countries by Muslim-majority population are not included.
* Indonesia 204,847,000 (87.2%)
* Pakistan 178,097,000 (96.4%)
* India 172,245,158 (14.2%)
* Bangladesh 145,312,000 (90%)
* Nigeria 75,728,000 (47.9%)
If Indonesia suddenly became plagued by radical Islamic terrorism then it would be on the list too.
The seven countries targeted by the immigration ban have been either failed states or antagonistic to the US for the past 30 years, it is quite plain to say that it makes sense for Trump's companies -- and various other companies across a wide swath of industries -- to refrain from conducting business there. To say that other Muslim-majority countries aren't on the list due to conflict of interest is to deny this simple logic.
Plenty of other Muslim-majority countries have kept a lid on their populace by maintaining adequate internal security within their borders and providing valuable counter-terrorism intelligence to to the US, meanwhile the seven "countries of concern" have not.
You think Indonesia doesn't have problems with terrorism? (Edit: also, Pakistan?). The idea that this is a reasonable counterterrorism measure by any means is a farce that doesn't stand up to the lightest of scrutiny. It's a test of executive power, perhaps for something more sinister [1].
It's a list inherited from the Obama administration. The best time to argue about whether this list stands up to scrutiny or not was years ago.
Edit: I'm not making comments about Trump's actions (specifically, I'm not defending what he did). As for whether this particular list stands up to scrutiny, that question should have been asked a long time ago.
Obama had veto power. How did republicans force it through?
What happened was Obama signed the bill imposing exceptions to the Visa Waiver Program in December 2015, and then his own DHS added the current list of middle eastern nations in February 2016.
It is the most tenuous argument to act like that was the work of the GOP.
The list was for increased border scrutiny and travel restrictions, created by a republican congress and passed as a string attached to a much larger bill. It was not an outright ban. And especially not a ban whose appeal priority would go to christians.
Bannon is a genius. The fact that he can co-opt partisans in the deflection of criticism with facile ideas like "Obama did it" is terrifying.
They do this constantly. See: Trump's tweet about imprisoning flag burners for a year and fining up to $100,000.
That was taken directly from a bill Hillary Clinton co-sponsored years earlier (though obviously with far less context or nuance).
They're very mindful to use some sort of liberal precedent when fanning their flames, giving them (and their flock) plenty of retaliatory talking points.
Half the entries on the list are from Congress, the other half were added by the Obama administration which was given the power to add to the list as it saw fit. Any strange omissions are therefore entirely on Obama's head. Also, if I'm reading the congressional record correctly the original, non-consolidated version that was not attached to anything else passed the House of Representatives with a substantial bipartisan majority, 407-19 - see https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/158/...
One reason this is interesting is that there there were some very widely-circulated - and of course false - claims on social media that the choice of countries was somehow influenced by Trump's business interests, and that the fact no-one from countries on the list had killed in the US proved Trump was inspired by racism or even an outright fascist. https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/825473088758374400 was typical of the genre. Snopes decided to show an uncharacteristic lack of interest in online rumours by not mentioning them. Naturally, the same people who were spreading those claims are now spreading the debunkings about how no, Trump's ban is nothing like Obama's.
Pakistan and Indonesia maintain good relations with the US and they are able to provide reassurances that radical members of their Muslim populace won't try to spread Jihad across the world.
Because Saudi Arabia and Egypt have kept a lid on their populace by maintaining adequate internal security within their borders and providing valuable counter-terrorism intelligence to to the US, meanwhile the seven "countries of concern" have not.
Six of the seven countries are failed states and the other openly calls for the US' destruction.
To be clear, I'm not arguing in favor of any of these blanket bans. But yes, that is a question that someone who is in favor of them would have to answer.
You mean the Saudi Arabia that was so complicit in 9/11 that Republicans in Congress passed a law saying private citizens could sue the government of Saudi Arabia for damages caused by 9/11?
That's your definition of "keeping a lid" and "maintaining internal security"?
9/11 was 16 years ago. Threats change. US domestic security has changed, and so has Saudi Arabia's. There is no reason to believe they are a current threat.
> There is no reason to believe they are a current threat.
Saudi-Arabian nationals provide the ideological standing that IS leaders use, and Saudi-Arabian money financed the rise of IS. And I believe that there's a large number of SA-origin IS fighters, but can't remember where I read that, so take it with a grain of salt.
Has the leadership in Saudi Arabia changed? Because it's not just "some Saudi guys" who did it. It was the government of Saudi Arabia. That's why Republicans said Americans are allowed to sue them.
You mean "to distract the person I was replying to", I presume - my entire point here is that the list is nothing to do with the new administration, and we should be focusing on the stuff that they're actually responsible for, since frankly that's rather more horrifying than the particular list of countries they're doing it to.
They implemented the list, and the fact that you've found an argument why it could be reasonable is enough reason for them to use it - to slow you down. It doesn't matter to them if it's effective or sensible or not.
The seven countries have been either failed states or antagonistic to the US for the past 30 years, it is quite plain to say that it makes sense for Trump's companies -- and various other companies across a wide swath of industries -- to refrain from conducting business.
Why should anyone ask President Obama why he left them out in 2011? The list was a list of countries that wouldn't or couldn't provide the enhanced background data we requested. People on those listed countries were scrutinized more, absent extra information from their home countries.
the countries chosen were done so by the Obama Administration and already had travel restrictions in place since 2015. Trump's EO merely put a 90 day ban on such travel.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt are allies in that region with functioning governments that we don't have emigration issues with and can vet anyone coming over from.
Of the 7 nations on the list, Iran has the only functioning government, but is a huge state sponsor of terrorism against our allies in the region and we are not allied with them.
To claim this is a bigoted move by Trump because of Islam is a simple and narrow minded view and shows a clear lack of factual information and first rate thinking.
Its known and documented in intelligence reports Saudi government supports terrorists. Here's a quote from one of intelligence reports, "it was well-known in intelligence circles that the Islamic affairs office functioned as the Saudis’ ‘fifth column’ in support of Muslim extremists."
9/11 commission report documented the terrorists meeting with Saudi intelligence officers on US soil and they were partly funded by Saudi royalty. Also lets look at Pakistan. They were harboring Osama Bin Laden.
I don't disagree, but the chaos from Trump declaring Saudi Arabia, a current strategic ally in the region both for material resources and military cooperation, would be on a scale that no one here would like to pick up the pieces from.
We deal with a lot of countries around the world that do things we don't like, we don't have to like it, but diplomacy and politics are messy and require compromise in situations where it's a better choice versus the alternative.
Round and round you go with circular logic and rationalizations. This is at best security theater and a dumb executive order designed to appeal to emotion rather than reason. That's putting aside any ethical considerations. You can keep trying to sell it, but nobody with a brain is buying it.
How does banning Iranians from coming over fight state sponsored terrorism? Has there been a single instance of an Iranian traveling or immigrating to the US and committing an act of terrorism?
"Why were Saudi Arabia and Egypt left off the list? "
The nations on the list have vast regions of lawlessness and they've lost control of their populations.
Egypt, Tunisia, Kuwait etc. have functioning governments that are very actively engaged against terrorism.
Remember that ISIS/AlQueda wants to take out the House of Saud before they go after the USA :)
The 'Islamic countries not on the list' are much more afraid of terrorism than the US is.
Just today a Saudi ship was hit by a missile from Iranian backed terrorists in Yemen, off the coast.
The only country that is on the list that has a 'sound government' is Iran - but they are state-sponsors of terror, and are actively trying to destabilize the region - and pushing hard to topple Saudi, as well as supporting Assad. I suggest that one is a little more political because Iran does not itself produce terrorists of the kind we are afraid are going to come and 'bomb America'.
I don't agree with Trumps policy - but 'the list' is quite rational.
If Trump had found a way to ban muslims from those countries, he would have.
Trump tried to find a way to institute this ban such that it wasn't blatantly a muslim ban. He decided that if he used a country list from the Obama administration, he could use that as a defense. This is generally how people try to create racist laws in modern times. The Voting Rights Act wasn't created because states created laws saying "minorities should be discouraged from voting". It was created because politicians came up with laws that targeted minorities without explicitly naming them.
Thiel went to Stanford Law, he knows this, he is just trying to recover because he still doesn't know what to do about the fact that Trump was talking literally, despite Thiel's insistence repeatedly that Trump was talking symbolically. If this isn't a muslim ban, Thiel can continue to insist that Trump's promise of such a ban was not literal.
I think it's correct to say this executive order is not a, "global Muslim ban," but it's clearly focused on specifically stopping Muslims from coming to the US.
The "logic" for the countries selected is that they were already "countries of concern." [1] However, the executive order is written in such a way as to allow religious minorities in, even though they're from a "country of concern." The implication is that what makes the countries, "of concern," is their Muslim majorities. Otherwise, it would be unsafe to let in other religious groups as well.
There are all kinds of explanations for this, of course. The administration may have wanted to ban everyone, but didn't want the heat from the Christian right. They may have wanted to specify Christians instead of minorities, but they would look even more anti-semitic than they already do [2]. They may have written a sloppy executive order and not forseen how it would play.
They may also have used a list of countries from the Obama era as cover and written the order such that it would focus on Muslims with plausible deniability about that focus. They've already said they can add more countries to the list.
I think pointing out that the executive order could have banned more Muslims is worth saying but somewhat misses the point. The people who wrote this clearly think adherents to Islam are more dangerous than other believers. The fact that most Muslims can still get to the US does not change the nature of the order.
The people who wrote this clearly think adherents to Islam are more dangerous than other believers.
I think it would be more exact to say that the writers believe some self-identified Muslims are sufficiently dangerous that it justifies temporarily banning anyone associated with certain Muslim-majority countries from coming into the US until we can distinguish those who wish to cause harm from those who do not. And since it's difficult to imagine how one could ever distinguish between these groups perfectly, and since other countries can be added to the list, it seems possible that this will lead to a permanent ban on Muslims entering the US.
I find their precept reasonable: there are individuals from these countries who claim to be Muslim and who intend to enter the US and cause us harm --- possibly because we bombed their cousin's wedding, killing half their relatives and maiming half the rest. It seems likely that our current approach to immigration is not sufficient to prevent these harmful individuals from entering the US.
So what should we do? Personally, I think we should stop killing people with drones, since I can't see how this is actually helping the situation. But given that previous administrations have killed a lot of people, and given that some of their surviving relatives are likely to seek revenge, is there anything we can do to protect ourselves? Or is the threat overblown, and any attempt at mitigation is worse than the damage the these (potentially non-existent) terrorists can do to us?
I understand the point you're making about the difficulty of the situation, but I go the other direction.
If someone wishes to come to the US, we'll need to ask if they're a religious minority. I'm sure that anyone wishing to attack the US (Muslim or otherwise) would be willing to lie to the US so they appear to fit the requirements.
To deal with that possiblitiy, the US would have to do research on that person's background. If it can conclude with satisfaction they actually are of that religion, they can come. Otherwise, the US denies the application with "not enough evidence."
If the US can do the research on their religious background, why can't the US do research on their political affiliations? On their views on the US?
Even from a, "damn the morals, let's be practical," perspective religious belief strikes me as a very weak indicator. Its confounded by all kinds of personal factors. Especially in muslim majority nations.
To your question: A mix of both. I think one of the "disadvantages" of a free society is that it's easier to commit terrorism. Yet we have few attacks. I think it's sensible to check that someone is not an active member of a group that wishes a country harm, but I think we need to consider the cost in lives to that filtering. If we double the time spent checking someone's background and they die after the halfway point, is that moral? If we half the number of people we can process to lower the risks, is that moral?
If nothing else, I think the executive order is totally divorced from a reasonable and adult conversation about risk and morality.
12/17/2015 “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on. [...]
It's entirely reasonable to consider a politician's stated aspirations as well as their more limited actions in office, since the latter are often incremental steps towards a larger goal.
Please don't argue but trying to bury people in irrelevant facts. That tactic is called a Gish Gallop and makes you look like you're arguing in bad faith. Considering the administration's on-again off-again relationship with basic concepts of truth and fact, nitpicking arguments are best avoided.
It cannot be that the administration gets to decide when to cite facts and figures or when to make sweeping and inaccurate generalizations; if critics are to be held to a different standard of truth from the administration, then we have a government that asserts exclusive domain over the notion of truth itself. Are you sure that's something you want to support?
until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on
What do you feel about the argument that we've "figured out" that Muslims coming from these larger countries are not a significant threat, but that our visa and refugee policies are not yet sufficiently reliable for us to say this about the countries that we've recently been bombing?
Do you think there is a legitimate threat, but the measures in the executive order are insufficient to prevent it? That there is a threat, but that there are no positive steps we can take to mitigate it? That the best way of countering the threat is to embrace potentially dangerous immigrants from these countries? Or that there is no particular threat and there is no need to change the current system?
I feel it's kind of bullshit because we already perform exhaustive checking on applicants for refugee status, and while it's certainly harder for someone coming from a war zone to provide official documentation of the risks they face, there is abundant detailed guidance for consular officers and other immigration-focused employees of the government to assess risk factors. Unverifiable claims can frequently be validated through circumstantial evidence like medical inspections.
If you don't mind legal reading, most large cities have law libraries and most large law libraries keep copies of Bender's Immigration bulletin or Interpreter Releases, two professional journals which chronicle legal proceedings in immigration cases. You may find it instructive to study some in order to get a better idea of the quality and weight of evidence offered in such proceedings.
Our Visa and refugee policies are the product of over a century of operational and historical experience. It's not as if we've never been faced with such complexities before and can't figure out where to begin. The claim that we can't figure this out right now is literally an appeal to ignorance. The reality is that we have tough and elaborate screening procedures in place already, and abundant data on the risk factors.
Would you be OK with calling it a "partial Muslim ban"? While it's true that it doesn't ban all Muslims, it seems obvious that it was crafted to ensure that the vast majority of the people it banned would be Muslims.
Those can both be true simultaneously - the president asked for something, and ended up implementing something slightly different - because what he originally asked for was likely unconsitutional.
I don't understand why it's even controversial to call this a Muslim ban. It's a ban on people from Muslim majority countries, except for religious minorities in those countries.
Because merely calling it a Muslim ban removes any plausible deniability and exposes the government to all kinds of legal challenges.
If the government wants to do some bad or unethical, they won't be straight about it. They will use euphemisms and "newspeak" to disguise their intentions (e.g. "enhanced interrogation").
It's akin to parallel construction. Start with the party that is presumed guilty, then work backwards to change your actions and arguments so that you can still persecute the party but without obviously breaking any laws.
Rudy Giuliani was also very publicly snubbed by Trump when it came time to appoint people to his administration, so it's not clear if this is actual inside information, revenge, or both.
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
So between Peter Thiel and the ACLU, I think we have some 1st rate minds at YC.
Does YC have a page of their particular positions on various political matters which guides their decisions on which non-profits to support and which ones not to? I'm genuinely interested in reading a "platform" as it were on what YC believes and is willing to support.
Yes this is somewhat dangerous for YC. I would like to see that this was planned before November and their support was not determined by who the president turned out to be. Combined with the outspoken politics of Paul Graham1, I get the feeling people who identify as conservatives may not feel welcome at YC.
EDIT: I changed "conservatives" to "people who identify as conservatives" to clarify. Some replies below referred to the philosophical conservatism, which is somewhat different.
Authoritarians are very possibly not welcome. Non-authoritarian members of the religious right, cultural conservatives, etc. are very likely welcome. (And of course any variety of libertarian.)
I think that depends, and the issue is more complicated than you make out. To play devil's advocate, consider the conflict between freedom of association (or religious freedom) and anti-discrimination laws. You could argue that valuing either is a pro-liberty stance. The notion of liberty is kind of difficult to pin down when you're talking about interactions between free individuals.
There are some people out there that are culturally conservative personally, but don't believe in forcing their beliefs on other via laws. Not many, but they do exist. And they generally vote libertarian.
The unfortunate thing is that the ACLU should be non-partisan and only fighting for those who are having their rights threatened. It just so happens that in the last week or so, it was Conservatives doing the threatening. There aren't a lot of incidents in recent memory of liberals taking away rights from folks, so you get a slant of ACLU vs Conservatives. The irony of wanting a small government I guess.
Yes I agree the ACLU should be (and IMHO is) non-partisan. It's just that if YC appears to fund and partner with the ACLU only when conservatives gain power, that will be negative for YC.
Not if there is some inciting incident that coincided with conservatives gaining power, like, say, a partial Muslim ban. In that case it wouldn't be an attack on conservatism as an "identity" but against certain specific policies that are being carried out by conservatives.
Some good evidence against your interpretation of YC's actions here as simple partisan attack:
* YC did not partner with the ACLU on election day, or on inauguration day, but only after a partial Muslim ban became the law of the land.
* YC quasi-defended Peter Thiel and allowed him to remain as a partner in the face of pretty strong pushback from the left.
Theoretically, yes. However, the ACLU has historically been perceived (especially by the right-wing) as a left-wing organization, since it stood for things like racial equality, religious equality, and most importantly the end to (mostly anti-Communist) restrictions on political expression.
Hence the attacks on Dukakis for being a member of the ACLU during his election campaign, and his joking self-labeling as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU" (in reference to McCarthy's references to "card-carrying Communists").
EDIT: And for yet more historical background - it was originally founded (as the Civil Liberties Bureau) to defend anti-war speech and conscientious objection during World War I, which were mostly left-wing and far-left-wing phenomena. Post-war, in addition to serving as an ethnically-neutral counterpart to ethnic civil-liberties organizations such as the ADL (Jewish) and the NAACP (African-American), it spent a lot of time defending free political speech. And the free political speech that was most under attack through its seminal period in the 1920s was labor organizing and socialist politics. (Because of the phenomenon of white-supremacist Southern Democrats, minority-rights issues did not necessarily line up with party politics, but they were indeed perceived as left-right issues in the sense that racial equality was considered a far-left position.)
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The ACLU has been criticized by liberals, such as when it excluded Communists from its leadership ranks, when it defended Neo-Nazis, when it declined to defend Paul Robeson, or when it opposed the passage of the National Labor Relations Act.[62][63] Conversely, it has been criticized by conservatives, such as when it argued against official prayer in public schools, or when it opposed the Patriot Act.[64] The ACLU has supported conservative figures such as Rush Limbaugh, George Wallace, Henry Ford, and Oliver North; and it has supported liberal figures such as Dick Gregory, Rockwell Kent, and Dr. Benjamin Spock.[18][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]
A major source of criticism are legal cases in which the ACLU represents an individual or organization that promotes offensive or unpopular viewpoints, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, Nation of Islam, North American Man/Boy Love Association, or Westboro Baptist Church. The ACLU responded to these criticisms by stating "It is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something many people find at least reasonable. But the defense of freedom of speech is most critical when the message is one most people find repulsive."[72]
```
Seems like ACLU historically has not cared about partisan politics, left vs right, and care most about their mission of defending civil liberties, and individual rights.
I didn't mean to imply that the ACLU sees its mission as a partisan, or that they follow partisan lines on pursuing cases; just that they have predominantly pursued leftist cases (because that's where civil rights were historically most seriously infringed) and that therefore that support for it is seen as a partisan act.
Says something about the as state of (particularly right-wing) American politics, IMO.
that depends entirely on whether you view a global job market as intrinsic to libertarianism. For nationalist libertarians, Trump's economic focus would presumably be a good thing.
as far as I've seen, a global job market has resulted in more exploitation than prosperity. Most of the profit seems to go to international businesses that have little interest in giving back to their host nation in the form of jobs or taxes.
That's not entirely a coherent combination of labels; the closest thing in the real USA to that seems to be bog-standard conservatives who selectively deploy libertarian rhetoric against programs they oppose.
>That's not entirely a coherent combination of labels
what is incoherent about it? Both libertarianism and nationalism are vast repositories of political thought that can be combined in any number of ways. Libertarianism at its core does not require forfeiting national interests, nor do national interests require forfeiting a global economy founded on capitalist principles.
The two labels seem to come from completely different cores to me. Namely, libertarianism stresses autonomy, personal liberty, and individual self determination. Nationalism tends to in contrast endorse a more collectivist viewpoint.
The reaction to Trump's executive order actually seems to personify the inherent conflict between the two sides -- while a lot of conservatives (including, I would say, those with more nationalistic viewpoints) approve of the executive order, the libertarian side so far seems to be pretty vocal about their disapproval.
I suppose it depends on what you value most within each political sphere and how you decide to splice the two together. For example, Trump wants to lower taxes across the board, and reduce regulation - both staple libertarian positions. He also wants strong borders and to invest in public infrastructure - both nationalist positions. There are some conflicts between these positions, but they aren't in any way incompatible in my opinion.
I think the assent/dissent situation around Trump is a lot more complex than "conservatives for, libertarians against", precisely because his platform consists of a mix of ideological positions. He has almost nothing in common with neoconservatives (which seems to have been a big hitter for public appeal), and both conservatives and libertarians seem to differ depending on their concern for specific libertarian policies. Hence the fracturing of the GOP, with as many representatives condemning him as supporting him. After all, the GOP is nothing if not a grab-bag of varying political positions.
That is being thrown around a lot and actually isn't true. Thiel did not accidentally back Trump and backing Trump isn't contradictory with being a libertarian. (However, claiming that Trump is perfectly adheres to libertarian principles would be.)
Compare Donald Trump to Ron and Rand Paul, which are the prime examples of what libertarianism is (unlike Gary Johnson), there is a lot of overlap: free market healthcare, strong borders, deportation of illegal aliens, deregulations, tax cuts and tax code simplifications. There are disagreements on free trade (and please note that TPP is "free trade", not free trade) and NSA spying.
Upvoted, thanks for a sensible statement (though I disagree, mostly on the basis of the free trade and police-state points which you rightly mentioned).
I don't think it's fair to call the Pauls more central examples of libertarianism than Johnson. They're more moderate on most things but also have a strong strain of cultural conservative that cuts against the libertarian strain.
>I get the feeling conservatives may not feel welcome at YC.
Among most people with an education conservatives are not really welcome right now. If you feel welcome, people are being polite, but we are all really really mad at you right now.
I have a degree in political science. I run in a number of highly educated circles, generally from left to libertarian. I can assure you, without any shadow of a doubt, that
> Among most people with an education conservatives are not really welcome right now
is untrue.
I don't think that most educated people lump Trumpian ignorance and the politics of idiocy with conservatism; the two traditions have completely different origin stories and share relatively little philosophical or political underpinnings. It is precisely people in the academic community who are most keen to recognize this.
> I get the feeling conservatives may not feel welcome at YC.
What we are seeing over the last week and what is expected to be coming from the Trump administration in the near future have little to do with liberal vs. conservative. I know many conservatives who are outright horrified by what they are seeing.
So they're not going to have to use eminent domain to purchase the land to build the wall?
A lot of conservative landowners on the border are very much against the idea, and private property ownership is part of the reason the current fence has gaps in it.
Ya know, some of us are fine with defending our borders but realize that the image of a big wall in our head is a lot nicer than the reality of seizing land and spending billions ineffectively.
The ACLU, in the past week, received as much $ in online donation as it has over the past six years.
Cash talks and bullshit walks. Tell me, if you're a free-market conservative, why YC or the ACLU should disregard such a resonating and clear message from the market.
one opinion: there's nothing wrong with YC supporting the ACLU or even openly opposing Trump, but consider any Trump supporters (either public or private) that they currently work with. How can they be sure that they won't be discriminated against if YC has taken a stance against their political beliefs? And for those supporters who were planning on applying to YC, how can they know that YC will treat them neutrally?
If YC wants to be politically oriented, they can and should, but it strikes me as something they should be open about.
I don't think there's any neutrality in the process and we shouldn't pretend there is.
Participating in YC is assenting to American capitalism and working to enrich YC investors, which is a political act. Cooperating with Peter Thiel is a political act. Expanding the labor supply in markets with unions is a political act. Disrupting healthcare is a political act. Employment under H1B visas is political.
YC can admit [your candidate here] supporters and say 'we won't discriminate based upon your political affiliations or your vote' but they will absolutely discriminate against each other's political aims because of the political ramifications of the any work done by technologists.
> Participating in YC is assenting to American capitalism and working to enrich YC investors, which is a political act.
With a number of layers of indirection, maybe. Capitalism is a system of economic organisation and is not inherently political. The wide variety of both left-leaning and right-leaning capitalist countries speaks to that.
what I mean when I say political is overt politics. You can argue that "the personal is political" or "everything is political" but there's a considerable difference in granularity between agreeing to work with a libertarian or trying to improve the healthcare industry, and donating money to an anti-Trump cause. Donating to the ACLU is an act of political affiliation given their recent spotlight, whereas simply agreeing to work with Thiel or employing a H1B worker is an economic act in the frame of capitalism.
If capitalism is not political because it's just a system of economic organization, then it's not political to dismantle capitalism and institute a socialist economy.
Economic systems are SO radically political that people used 'socialist' as a slur against Obama. McCarthyism. CIA overthrow of democratically-elected socialist governments. Not political?
Not to pick on Peter Thiel, but he's a convenient and recent example. He donated $1.25M to Trump. He wouldn't have had $1.25M to donate to Trump if people didn't earn that money for him. You can cast it as wishy-washy, indirect, etc. but at the end of the day that check cleared.
socialism is a political system that demands a particular economic system - a planned economy. A planned economy in itself is not political, in that it's a specific way of organising labour. A barter or gift economy are also economic models, neither of which are inherently tied to a political system.
"Socialist" as a slur for Obama was in reference to the political act of taxation and wealth redistribution. Neither of these things are capitalist, and the term "socialist" has a somewhat different meaning to the original political system, when it comes to American politics. American "socialism" is more akin to social democracy i.e. a capitalism-driven welfare state. At least, that's my understanding.
McCarthyism was political, nothing to do with economics. The CIA interfered with other countries' political process (i.e. staging a coup).
The whole idea of capitalism is that people join together in free association to trade for mutual benefit. The responsibility ends there. If I buy your goods and then somewhere down the line you decide to use that cash to buy a weapon and kill someone, I am in no way responsible for that because it is a separate transaction that I did not enter into. Ergo, trading with Thiel is not a political act that can somehow be ratified retrospectively. It is an economic act. If your agreement was "I'll trade with you on the condition that you donate the profits to Trump", then it becomes political. From my perspective, the distinction is pretty clear to be honest.
> If I buy your goods and then somewhere down the line you decide to use that cash to buy a weapon and kill someone, I am in no way responsible for that because it is a separate transaction that I did not enter into.
That argument might work until you try to convince any other person. If you're buying cocaine from FARC, what did you expect them to do?
Similarly all the profound libertarian arguments on this thread will last up until they need $500k for cancer treatment and end up an indentured servant to a future billionaire hedge-fund AI.
> That argument might work until you try to convince any other person. If you're buying cocaine from FARC, what did you expect them to do?
even throwing FARC or cocaine into that equation muddies the water because cocaine is illegal (and thus inherently a political purchase) and FARC are known for their violent tactics and thus when you purchase from them you are wilfully accepting that your money may be used for violence (unless you aren't aware of what FARC does when you enter the transaction).
If you want to get into the ambiguities of terrorism and drugs, then what about your average joe buying some weed from their local dealer? If you know that dealer works with a cartel then by buying from him you are knowingly funding the cartel. If you have no idea whether he works with a cartel or not, then you can't be said to be knowingly funding the cartel - you are just participating in a transaction. The alternative as I see it is to suggest that everyone who smokes marijuana illegally is pro-cartel or pro-terror, or at least is OK with the idea that their money may be used for violence.
> Similarly all the profound libertarian arguments on this thread will last up until they need $500k for cancer treatment and end up an indentured servant to a future billionaire hedge-fund AI.
this is literally the entire point of the insurance industry - to absorb black swan risks. Do you think that insurance would not exist in a libertarian society? Plus, by reintroducing supply and demand into the medical industry you would likely see those obscene costs fall drastically when no-one can afford $500k for treatment, especially with reduced government bureaucracy and regulation increasing costs.
> McCarthy hunted down communists (supposed and actual).
yes, and communism is a political belief. Political persecution is a political action, not an economic one.
> It appears to me that you are conflating 'socialism' with 'planned economy' and 'capitalism' with 'free market'.
I don't believe I am. The premise of capitalism is mutually beneficial trade of privately owned and produced goods. I think you are confusing capitalism and social democracy, in that social democracy adds burdens onto the capitalist economy (for example, taxes and regulations) for the benefit of society at large and to counteract the problems that free-market capitalism can create (exploitation, the tragedy of the commons, etc).
I think neither PG's tweets nor this ACLU post are actually against the broad ideas of conservatism.
If you believe in individual freedom, small government, low taxes, and heavy use of market solutions, I haven't seen anything from YC that runs against those ideas.
The issues YC seems to oppose are nativism/xenophobia and authoritarianism. Opposition to the former is a wholly rational decision to preserve YC's access to the best international founders, and authoritarianism presents slightly more round-about problems for YC in reduced press freedom and tighter relationships between large corporations and government, both of which make life more difficult for startups.
Lastly, there exists a wing of American conservatism which is significantly more racist, sexist, and homophobic than the national average. I think you're right, that group would not feel welcome at YC nor should they. Their exclusion is based on their personal views, which they are capable of changing. Their inclusion would make others feel excluded on the basis of immutable traits, which is far worse in my opinion.
I don't think that's a significant issue. Ycombinator's political positioning goes beyond a one line statement "We oppose nativism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism."
The partners in their individual capacities largely stick to statements on specific issues, and YC itself mostly promotes specific organizations and policies, eg permissive immigration rules for entrepreneurs. There's little ambiguity in those statements and actions, so it's up to every individual applicant to determine whether the sum indicates an overall culture they could enjoy.
If you have a specific YC action/statement which you think runs counter to a conservative position outside of nativism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, the HN readers would probably enjoy reading it so they can weigh its meaning for themselves.
> Lastly, there exists a wing of American conservatism which is significantly more racist, sexist, and homophobic than the national average. I think you're right, that group would not feel welcome at YC nor should they. Their exclusion is based on their personal views, which they are capable of changing. Their inclusion would make others feel excluded on the basis of immutable traits, which is far worse in my opinion.
I'm not sure which "wing" of conservatism you are speaking of but I'm neither "alt-right" but my views are likely to be labeled as something like "homophobic." I get the feeling that national average you speak of isn't really average so much as it's left-leaning and acceptable in your views.
I do agree that there are people who are vehemently and dangerously bigoted and I gladly condemn them. However, there are people who have extremely reasoned yet different beliefs than most people you'd likely find at YC.
If the left is going to continue to preach "inclusivity" and "diversity" then it would behoove them to actually ensure that there are those things rather than limited everyone to a particular worldview that makes people feel comfortable.
"I'm not sure which 'wing' of conservatism you are speaking of but I'm neither 'alt-right' but my views are likely to be labeled as something like 'homophobic'....If the left is going to continue to preach 'inclusivity' and 'diversity' then it would behoove them to actually ensure that there are those things rather than limited everyone to a particular worldview that makes people feel comfortable."
The leader of YC is a gay man. A number of YC founders are also gay.
I bring this up not because it comes up a lot, but because you seem to view homophobia as an "opinion" that should be respected by gay people as "inclusive" and "diverse". You can certainly believe that, but you're not likely to get anywhere with it.
The issue I have is that what some people consider "homophobic" isn't really homophobic at all. For example:
Not homophobic:
* Having a deeply held belief that homosexuality is wrong.
* Being for laws that provide freedom of conscience.
* Being against laws that elevate people to a protected class.
Actually Homophobic:
* Conspiring against, starting rumors about, or otherwise attempting to defame someone simply because they are gay.
* Verbally or physically assaulting someone simply because they "look gay".
* Believing that anyone who claims to be LGBT isn't really a person (or is somehow lesser) because they aren't like you.
I'm not getting caught up in semantics. If you have a "deeply held belief that homosexuality is wrong", then you probably shouldn't be surprised if a group of people that includes homosexuals doesn't want to include you if you express that view, and/or act on your belief.
But sure, obviously, anything you want to think in your own head and not express publicly is fairly immune to labels. I'm thinking things right now, for example.
So you're OK with blatant discrimination by a certain group of people against one or more people with deeply held beliefs? Are you saying that if a group of Muslims or Christians came to YC that they "shouldn't be surprised" if they were rejected because they made a point to express that they held orthodox beliefs?
I'm failing to see how that isn't blatantly hypocritical.
Homosexuality in other members of the YC community doesn't affect you. Their private actions don't affect their peers at all, and the fact of their attraction to the same sex doesn't preclude anyone else from participating in YC.
If you think homosexuality is wrong but you keep that to yourself and don't let it influence your business decisions, your private beliefs will also have no effect on other YC founders, and you'll be welcome in the community.
If a gay man said "I believe heterosexuality is wrong and I reserve the right to not do business with heterosexuals to keep my conscience free" they wouldn't be included because that's blatantly discriminatory.
A gay man saying "I don't want to work with people who believe my sexuality is wrong and reserve the right not to do business with me because of it" that's just a rational choice to avoid people who want to punish them for something that only matters to them and their partners.
Mutual tolerance isn't a hard concept. Tolerating others' intolerance of you is not part of it.
* Much of pg's writing leans libertarian or even conservative.
* Many conservatives do not support Trump's policies. Conservativism is traditionally about preserving stable society and carefully evaluating changes before radically changing society.
I think many took a wait-and-see approach to Trump. Sure, he was bombastic during the campaign and said a lot of bad things, but he's a screwd businessman. Surely he will get some decent advisors and not breaks things.
The last week has made it clear that is not the case. Trump and Bannon are determined to reshape society in their own image, and that is really scary. It is clear Trump's executive orders have not been run past anyone sensible, and they make no attempts to limit unnecessary damage to people's lives.
> I think many took a wait-and-see approach to Trump. Sure, he was bombastic during the campaign and said a lot of bad things, but he's a screwed businessman. Surely he will get some decent advisors and not breaks things.
There are like two dozen actual "conservative" true believers in America, and most of them (Bill Kristol, David Frum, etc) hold some pretty odious views about things like war and torture.
They are; the party loyals use softer language (like John McCain), but there are plenty who owe trump nothing and are a bit louder (like the Koch Brothers)
We'll see how much the Koch brothers care in the mid-terms; if they're not pressuring senators and congressmen to oppose trump at the risk of primary challenges, we'll see that either their loudness is only about his tone, or that they are powerless to fight Trump's base.
The ACLU didn't have $24m burning a hole in their pocket four months ago.
Also, conservatives need to get off their "persecuted" high horse for a second and take a look around themselves. Donald Trump is the one butt-fumbling his way into empowering organizations like the ACLU by scaring the shit out of right-minded people. As these groups experience spikes in popularity and cash, they're going to reach out and start working on new initiatives.
Many conservatives, from traditional big government conservatives like John McCain and Dick Cheney to small government advocates like the Koch brothers are coming out against this change. It is not a clean partisan divide.
Don't let the people kissing up because they have to work with him fool you. This is broadly alarming in many conservative circles too.
Did any president before a few days ago denied the entry to green card residents? No? Well they may think it's a sign of things to come so it's rational to start supporting the ACLU now; and sure there are another million problems they turned a blind eye before, doesn't mean they have to turn a blind eye to all the problems forever
> Combined with the outspoken politics of Paul Graham1, I get the feeling people who identify as conservatives may not feel welcome at YC.
Peter Thiel is still a partner at YC. So there is someone high-profile openly allied with Trump at YC, YC is not as radical left-wing as some people try to paint it.
Yes, they are. The thing that really put them on the map was decades ago, when they defended the right of Nazis to march in the heavily Jewish community of Skokie, IL.
Nominally, but so are other organizations that are clearly partisan in practice. I don't think anyone disputes that members of the ACLU are overwhelmingly democrats.
It's hard to imagine this doesn't have real-world consequences, e.g., strategically choosing to not defend right-leaning speech as vigorously as left-leaning speech.
What would that meaningfully look like? Can you come up with an example? The majority of the ACLU cases are filed against a government or individual representing the government, so perhaps you can find one where it's against a Democratic administration or official.
An example: Forbes argues that the ACLU explicitly refused to take a position against free-speech infinging anti-religious-defamation resolution at the UN, even though they have taken public stances on many international resolutions more aligned with the left.
Another example: Techdirt argues that ACLU fails to defend free speech of wedding photographer who violated equal protection legislation by refusing photograph gay wedding.
Right off, I want to clearly state that I'm not a lawyer, so my ability to judge the merits of these cases is very suspect. To the point where I'm hesitant to attempt to address them at all for fear of appearing exceedingly ignorant.
With the UN resolution, I see the inconsistency between their avowed reason for not joining the other groups (we don't get involved in international issues). The rest of the article is speculation as to the real reason why, on which I think reasonable people can disagree on. It's not clear to me that this is a clear-cut case of consistent anti-conservative bias. For example, I can imagine without too much difficulty American religious conservatives wanting protection from defamation of religion.
For the wedding photography case, I don't think it's a free speech issue: I think it's a protected-class issue which falls under the Civil Rights Act and its extensions, as in this instance the wedding photographer is acting as a business providing a service, and depending on the jurisdiction, the couple may be a protected class. I'm exceedingly unsure about this whole area of law, though, I'd defer to just about anyone. I don't know how judges decide the balance between free speech and the Civil Rights Act, though I'm sure there's precedent and guidelines.
Yea, I don't know nearly enough about these cases to have an opinion. But this is what strategic differential vigor would look like: lots of cases like that, slanted toward one party, with each case having a plausible justification, yet in aggregate being hard to defend. But I have no idea if there actually is such a slant (rather than there being a similar number of cases in the opposite direction).
Exactly. I meant to include exactly this. Thanks again for the links. I did see that the author of one of the articles, Wendy Kaminer, used to work at the ACLU and does make claims of ethical decline at the ACLU.
Her 2009 book Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity and the ACLU critiques what she regards as the ACLU’s ethical decline, ideological hypocrisy, and descent into groupthink.
> In 2003, during her tenure on the national board, she became a strong critic of the ACLU leadership and was centrally involved in a series of controversies that culminated in a highly publicized effort to prohibit board members from criticizing the ACLU.
Yea, I don't know nearly enough about these cases to have an opinion. But this is what strategic differential vigor would look like: lots of cases like that, slanted toward one party, with each case having a plausible justification, yet in aggregate being hard to defend. But I have no idea if there actually is such a slant (rather than there being a similar number of cases in the opposite direction).
The ACLU tries pretty hard to stick to their values, even when it puts them in opposition to Democrats. They've sued the Obama administration several times and have frequently defended groups (ex. Nazis) which liberals find repugnant.
For example, the ACLU supports the SCOTUS decision in Citizens United even though the majority of liberals and democrats strongly oppose it.
The ACLU has not defended the Nazi cause; the ACLU has defended the cause of free speech and peaceable assembly, even when those speaking and assembling peaceably are themselves Nazis.
They defend the KKK's rights to free speech, not their abhorrent views. Protecting freedom of speech and the press is increasingly necessary in today's world, given how vocal Trump and his staffers are about shutting down dissenting views.
Also, I see that you are a new account. You should read up on the standards for discussion here on Hackernews.
You have a right to free speech, and these websites have a right to publish whatever they want. You are free to type things or to say things, there's no obligation for anyone else to host them or transmit them for you.
It's not hypocrisy, it's just their point of view on the 2nd amendment differs from your view.
ACLU position:
Given the reference to "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State," the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right.
And the Supreme Court has ruled, again and again, that it is an individual right. How is it that the ACLU is an originalist when it comes to every amendment except the Second?
>In a report issued in February, the Texas affiliate of the National Rifle Association joined the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition “to spotlight unlawful, unnecessary governmental encroachment on average law-abiding citizens.”
Not defending the 2nd amendment is different than opposing it. You could consider donating to the ACLU and also to an organization that defends the 2nd amendment; assuming there's no blanket organization to your liking. There are many organizations specializing in the 2nd amendment, so it makes some amount of sense for the ACLU to let them do that work, while it's more of a generalist.
>Not defending the 2nd amendment is different than opposing it.
That's not how it works, at least not in my mind. When dealing with something that is assailed as frequently as gun rights, lack of support is the same as opposition.
I want an organization that supports the Constitution, completely and fully.
ACLU is not that organization, and doesn't claim to be.
But then I hope you're not sending a single cent of your money to NRA, either? I mean, they also don't "support the Constitution, completely and fully", right?
Or is that okay because they're explicitly scoped to the Second Amendment?
If so, then ACLU is in the same exact boat, being explicitly scoped to everything other than the Second. And then some: ACLU is the American Civil Liberties Union, not American Constitutional Liberties Union - US Constitution to them is a tool to aid in protecting the civil rights they care about, it's not a definitive list of rights that are worth defending.
No, I don't think you are right. Even a brief perusal of the history of the ACLU is one of liberals defending the Constitution. The Scopes trial, Pentagon Papers, Japanese internment, segregation, interracial marriage, McCarthyism, Patriot Act, etc. So liberals have supported the ACLU to defend the Constitution throughout its history, and not just for liberal issues. ACLU supports Citizens United and defended Rush Limbaugh's right to privacy.
ACLU is not in the business of protecting the Second Amendment, and they're upfront about it.
NRA is not in the business of protecting the First Amendment, and they're upfront about it.
Why do you have a different standard for ACLU compared to NRA? You're saying that you're unwilling to financially supporting them, not based on what they do, but based on what they do not. How does what they do not diminish the utility of what they do?
ACLU is not in the business of protecting the Second Amendment, and they're upfront about it.
The ACLU claims to be in the business of protecting the constitution, not only the parts that people with left of center politics like.
They're liars.
NRA is not in the business of protecting the First Amendment, and they're upfront about it.
The NRA is a gun owner's lobbying organization. Their primary activity is the promotion of the second amendment but they have fought for the first amendment. The NRA Civil Defense Fund has taken up First Amendment cases too.
Why do you have a different standard for ACLU compared to NRA?
I don't. The ACLU lies.
You're saying that you're unwilling to financially supporting them, not based on what they do, but based on what they do not. How does what they do not diminish the utility of what they do?
Because the ACLU doesn't defend the Constitution, they have weaponized it.
The actions of some groups defended by the ACLU are pretty unsavory (like the Westboro Baptist Church), but if anything that shows how true they are to their mission of fighting to protect our rights, regardless of ideology, and that's nothing but commendable.
The ACLU sometimes supports a worthy cause, but it's basically just a left-leaning political organization. I understand that's particularly trendy right now, and anyone who supports Trump is a pariah in Silicon Valley... but come on.
Would YC be donating directly to the Democratic party if that got the same favorable tax treatment?
> And yes they don't defend the 2nd amendment because there are already two large organizations focused on that.
I think it's accurate to say that the lawyers at ACLU have a position on the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment (viewable on their website) which is not consistent with the views commonly offered by the NRA. The ACLU would only go to court to help fight a 2nd Amendment violation where they believed one existed, so that's part of the difference.
I'd argue that today neither organization has a view of the 2nd consistent with current case law, which is interesting. They're both advocacy organizations, among other things, so it isn't a shocking situation.
Trump (and Clinton) had record-breaking unfavorable ratings during the campaign. Your point about "less-bad" carries a lot of weight, in my opinion (and would have been the case regardless of who won the election). And step back and think of it: half think bad, half think good. Is that a situation you'd like to consider "not bad" in the grand scheme of things? Mediocre sounds like a fairer assessment, on average. And frankly I think we'd all prefer a solid "good" rather than an ambiguous "not bad".
This has been decreasingly true in recent years, in fairness. They've still been standing up for the principles of a liberal society consistently, but it's gotten polarized like everything else.
It's actually the other way around. ACLU didn't change their positions in any significant way in several decades now. But the parties and their platforms have changed such that the set of rights and liberties that ACLU promotes now has a "liberal bias", in a sense that it coincides more with the Democratic party platform than it does with the Republican party platform.
But what this tells you is that GOP platform is hostile to civil rights, not that ACLU became partisan.
Some "left-leaning" stances they take where I'm hard-pressed to see how they are defending civil rights, if not outright violating those of one party for the benefit of another:
religious liberty (an employer engages in voluntary exchange... not much of a stretch to see it as a violation of rights to force them to pay for something which they consider blasphemous): https://action.aclu.org/secure/your-boss-has-no-business-you...
abortion (Roe v Wade federal overreach vs States' Rights... this and other issues like marijuana laws can be left to the States but "leftists" generally prefer a stronger central government over States as "laboratories of democracy"): https://www.aclu.org/issues/reproductive-freedom/abortion
ACA/"Obamacare": I couldn't find anything about their position on this issue but, if they were only defending civil rights rather than also being a "left-leaning political organization", I think they'd actively oppose forcing people to pay corporations for products they don't want.
I feel like you could have a good argument about most of those, but the affirmative action one is pretty damning. That's blatantly political and in no way related to constitutional protections.
There are plenty of good civil liberties related ways to look at race, but affirmative action is not one of them.
I agree that "a good argument" can be made about some of them but it appears to me that ACLU always goes "left" with such nuanced issues. If I knew of examples of them going "right" to balance things out, I'd see them differently.
For example, I tried to find out if they took a position in Kelo v City of New London to defend property rights but my searches came up empty.
The supreme court agrees that affirmative action is constitutional (within certain bounds), see the recent Fisher v. UT case, or Bakke for the original example.
I'm not saying it's not constitutional, just that it is unrelated to civil liberties and should probably be outside their purview if they're to be a politically neutral organization.
Regarding voter ID. "All those other countries" generally uniformly issue IDs to everyone, so there's no issue like there is here in US, where there are significant minorities that don't have any form of ID. For example, I'm from Russia, and I have the government-issued ID that I need to show to vote; but that ID was issued to me for free (and is in fact mandatory to have).
A voter ID is not discriminatory in principle, provided that it's free (since otherwise it'd be a poll tax), and does not place undue burden on the citizen to obtain - like, say, traveling several hours to the only nearby place that issues them, and then waiting for several more hours in a line because it's understaffed to serve all the people that need to get their IDs from it.
The problem is that pretty much all voter ID laws promoted or passed in US to date fail these requirements, and thus effectively constitute voter suppression.
On the subject of abortion and drugs, it's fairly straightforward. ACLU is not a "states' rights" organization. It is an "individual rights" organization. It sues states for infringing people's rights as much as it sues the feds. So from their perspective, if they can enshrine the protection of a right at a federal level, they'll go for it, because it's easier than forcing all 50 states to do the same.
Yes, it may be "easier" for the ACLU to abuse/"reinterpret" the Constitution rather than work to amend it or work within its strict framework... but doing so makes things worse for more people in the longterm.
States' Rights limit the Federal Government from being so powerful that it can more easily violate civil rights... a bigger picture which ACLU should take into account.
Likewise, "legislating from the bench" may have protected some rights of individuals... but, far more often, it has "enshrined", as you say, new Federal powers at the cost of individual liberties.
Cause states rights weren't used to shield Jim Crow for a hundred years... oh, right. States just as easily trample individual rights as the federal government.
Most work that ACLU does on the federal level involves strengthening the 14th Amendment, such that it is the judicial branch of the federal government that grows stronger, specifically with respect to its power to limit infringement of individual rights by the states. That's narrow enough in scope to not be worrisome.
I had great respect for them when they were doing that kind of thing and standing up for everyone's right to speech. Do they still engage in that? If I recall correctly they haven't had cases like that in decades.
All their recent cases in my memory are left-leaning at least, which, while they do represent many good goals in my opinion, is understandably a political slant.
* The ACLU filed a motion in Michigan state court challenging the constitutionality of a subpoena issued to the website PubPeer demanding that it turn over the identities of anonymous commenters
* The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s mass interception and searching of Americans’ international communications.
* Whether a cause of action is available under the Constitution for violations of prisoners’ due process and equal protection rights when the prisoners were abused in immigration custody and when the government.
* Whether North Carolina can prohibit individuals who are registered sex offenders from “accessing” any social media websites.
* In a Freedom of Information Act request filed on January 13, 2010, the ACLU asked the government to disclose the legal and factual basis for its use of predator drones to conduct "targeted killings" overseas.
They definitely do, but I was speaking in particular to their more controversial actions. They've done many good defenses of politically left or fairly neutral things, but I can't think of any on the right side of the spectrum in recent memory and as someone with fairly moderate political views, that does concern me a bit.
There are also some things you could debate about religious freedom there too, but I'm generally in agreement.
However I'm not just talking about that, I'm also talking about them defending civil rights for everyone, not just those on the left. They used to be very good about this, standing up for protesters on both sides for example, but now I'm not so sure.
You could do what I do and perform a search to check the validity of your opinion with evidence before posting. You'd be amazed how many of my own comments I delete unfinished because a little research causes me to reconsider my first reaction.
Well said. Thank you, not only for doing the research, but for admitting that you don't always find clear support for your opinion. It takes courage and honesty. I strive to do the same, and hope that I continue to maintain that level of commitment to integrity you describe. Unashamedly plagiarizing another comment, I regret I have but one upvote to give.
Their recent (as in, last 5 years) cases include defending a Confederate veteran group, Washington Redskins, KKK, Chick-fil-A, and the Westboro Baptist Church.
The ACLU has a foundation that can accept tax-deductible contributions, but it's limited in what it can do. Donations to the main ACLU, like my monthly contribution, are not tax-deductible. YC, did you give to the foundation or to the main ACLU?
Which is something that can be found with a straightforward Google search, I must add, so the sheer number of comments here that are asking this question makes me conclude that most of you doing that believe the question to be rhetorical. As in, you assume that ACLU does no such thing, because "everybody knows that".
The murder of innocent children in or out of the womb is neither civil nor American; nor is it an expression of liberty in terms of doing what is right. But if the ACLU calls this "liberty", that is terrifying.
"There is a healthy and an unhealthy love of animals: and the nearest definition of the difference is that the unhealthy love of animals is serious. I am quite prepared to love a rhinoceros, with reasonable precautions: he is, doubtless, a delightful father to the young rhinoceroses. But I will not promise not to laugh at a rhinoceros. . . . I will not worship an animal. That is, I will not take an animal quite seriously: and I know why. Wherever there is Animal Worship there is Human Sacrifice. That is, both symbolically and literally, a real truth of historical experience."
Downvoted because of the false implication of favorable tax treatment. Donations to the ACLU are not deductible, though they have an associated foundation you can donate to instead: https://action.aclu.org/what-difference
Although I think the American Civil Liberties Union is incredibly valuable and I'm glad they have a lot more money now to fight for the American people, I'm questioning all of this.
Where was the outpouring of funding when black people were being gunned down by cops from West Coast organizations? Where has YCombinator been as our own impoverished African-Americans are getting slaughtered in the streets of Chicago? Why weren't we funding the ACLU to help these people? I haven't seen Google talk about this, or AirBnB offer support to widows of veterans whose spouse commits suicide and has left them with nothing.
I feel for immigrants from war-torn countries, especially having been there myself. Maybe I'm too cynical and look at these moves (AirBnB, Uber, Google, etc...) as marketing moves. I wish we cared more about homeless people, people in West Virginia and Kentucky who have lost their jobs and got drenched in opiates without any protests from anybody, or veterans who can't pay their VA bills. Idk.
I know this comment will be unpopular, and that's ok. I tend to care more about those who I feel (whether true or not) are being left behind because that's who I am.
By coincidence I made a site to direct people to various charities on HN when this post came up - it went nowhere of course.
If you're looking for an option to support other charities w/o feeling like you're actually just buttressing a corporation's branding --> https://helpsavetheusa.com/
The best time to plant a tree was yesterday. I can personally forgive them, but we need to hold these players accountable in the future. If marketing moves is what incentives them, we need to make it impossible to move us without extended action.
The best time to plant a tree was yesterday, the second best time to plant a tree is today. Being proactive is better than being reactive, but we shouldn't poohoo the value of being at least reactive now and maybe proactive in the future.
> The best time to plant a tree was yesterday. I can personally forgive them, but we need to hold these players accountable in the future. If marketing moves is what incentives them, we need to make it impossible to move us without extended action.
I feel like I hear that line on a daily basis but it doesn't factor in reality.
To stretch the metaphor further (for illustration), if the lot where you'll be planting the tree is being bulldozed today, yesterday is the worst day to plant a tree.
and applying that stretched metaphor back to its original context, we shouldn't support civil liberties if they're a lost cause. but what have we actually achieved with all this metaphor stretching?
The point was that yesterday and/or today isn't always the best choice. In the case of sama/YC, it feels like one knee jerk reaction after another without any connective thought:
"Hey the ACLU is suing Trump ... let's add them as a non-profit in the next batch!"
"Yah that'll show em'!"
I don't agree with most of sama's election related comments and am unabashedly pro-Trump, but I mean this objectively: If you're going to pick a battle at least put some thought into it first.
Otherwise this all just looks a silly excuse to demonstrate YC (and particularly sama's) political biases.
I think this is the most pragmatic approach. Quite frankly, these players' intent is irrelevant. It's the results of their actions that matter. However, it is useful to understand the incentives that they respond to, particularly when we have the ability to use those incentives to elicit further good acts in the future.
Many 'activists' seem to think that simply having good intentions and beliefs makes one a 'good' person (and many seem to stop at that point). But as it turns out, a starving person derives no nourishment from your internal happy feelings. I'm glad to see YCombinator understands this very basic fact and is taking action to better society, rather than just sitting around thinking lofty thoughts and feeling good about itself.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Or, in the alternate form: "Hell is full of good meanings, but Heaven is full of good works."
I find this sort of thing chilling when Steve Bannon talks about the alt-right being in power for 50 years and has been (pre election) doing 3 small town speeches per week telling people (by my guess including border control, the police, the Sarah Palin supporters of this world) that they are the thin blue line as society falls apart.
One other comment: I'll add that criticism of Trump is not just coming from the "hipster" left. I've noticed, for instance, that the Cato Institute, a very well notable libertarian think tank, is taking a hostile stance towards the Trump EO (https://www.cato.org/). This isn't a surprising stance frankly, but in a nation where politics is often thought of as binary (Cato is sometimes incorrectly generalized in this binary as "right wing"), sometimes the subtle nuances are missed.
As far as I have observed, the only thing people consistently respond to is pain. This can be done through the introduction / removal / or threat of pain. It'd be nice if we all empathized more with other people's pain, but that doesn't appear to be the culture that we live in. Maybe there are cultures that do elsewhere, but I am unaware of them.
But I do have a question for you, when the interests of those with influence align with the ignored, why would your initial reaction be a negative one?
People often support the ACLU because they believe that threats to free speech and free assembly are systemic and have potentially catastrophic future consequences. Doing so does not imply an absence of action in other arenas, and IMO it's dangerous to assume that.
The timing for this is peculiar. I'll give my hypothesis. Liberals didn't care about the Snowden leaks because it was "their guy" in office. This huge revelation that our constitutional rights were being systematically violated didn't register because of cognitive dissonance.
Liberals are finally piecing the puzzle together. The executive branch with dragnet surveillance, infinite military capabilities, the right to detain and torture anyone including US citizens is the recipe for disaster.
As a libertarian I welcome anyone joining the fight for our constitutional rights regardless of what triggers them.
Yes, lots of them did. In fact, it was liberals that organized around the information in the leaks, liberal groups that sponsors the lawsuits based on the leaks that got at least one program revealed by the leaks ruled to be illegal by the courts, liberals who kept calling for a pardon, and liberal media personalities that reached out to Snowden in Russia and broadcast his views to the positive reception from their liberal audiences.
Quite a lot of liberals criticized Obama throughout his Presidency on national security and civil liberties, and equal rights issues, including Guantanamo (even though the closure was blocked by Congress), surveillance, drone strikes, the treatment of Manning and Snowden, the initial feet dragging on DADT, the administration's failure to intervene as timely as critics on the left would have liked in various state and local law enforcement issues, issues surrounding the DAPL protests, etc.
I'm not disputing that, but my point is there wasn't the current sense of urgency to reign in the executive branch. HN didn't partner with the ACLU and unicorns didn't use the situation as a PR piece.
But what's changed? The president decided to restrict travel and "enhance" screening from muslim countries? Ok.. Yet Obama's drone usage in Islamic countries wasn't good enough to get this response? Or maybe the American citizens Obama decided to assassinate without due process, that didn't raise any eyebrows?
I think my point stands. Obama was so damn charismatic that only he could have pulled that off without major backlash. The vast majority of voting democrats just didn't care about constitutional rights when Obama was in office, and the renewed interest is politically motivated. And for that, I'm thankful to have this clown in office.
> Liberals didn't care about the Snowden leaks because it was "their guy" in office.
You're painting with a very broad brush there, smokeyj. Plenty of us were either anticipating (but unable to verify) the sorts of things he leaked or on the side of the leak once it happened. Liberal is not equal to `not libertarian`. Perhaps to `not Libertarian`. Notice the capital there. Little-l libertarianism has long been a major part of the liberal perspective, particularly relating to free speech, press, religion, and privacy rights, and due process.
A lot of people believe that we are in the midst of a fascist takeover of the United States government. The most terrifying part is that this can't simply be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, given the actions that have taken place so far.
I don't see how "the current outcry" can possibly be dismissed in this context, or how anything else could be more important.
I'm all for doing what's right now, but let's try and address the root of the problem instead of continuing to have partisan, knee-jerk reactions. There's way too many Democrats calling out Trump who have STILL not said a peep about the weapons we funnel into these civil wars or the bombs we drop ourselves, or the rest of the screwed up immigration process, none of which Obama did much to slow down. I began and finished the process of immigration to the US under well-established Democrat presidencies, and all of the things that people are saying is evil on principle about Trump's plan are things I had to go through. My citizenship interview was almost entirely an ignorant interrogation about my religious and reproductive choices. There's a lot of things in my documentation that should be a yellow flag to someone screening immigrants, and none of it got brought up. Only my religion and number of kids. My family members had to return back to our country and retry multiple times because of ridiculous bureaucracy, also fleeing a civil war. But now that Trump does it, we're marching? Great. But when a Democrat gets back into office I'll be pissed if everyone forgets their principles and keeps funneling power to the executive because it suits them at the time.
It's good to be skeptical and this may very well be a good marketing strategy. But at the moment, we're facing an fast-moving onslaught of authoritarianism, and the ACLU is one of the only legal defenses we have against it. If YCombinator, right now, wants to help stop it, I support them in doing so. We can cross other bridges of criticism when we come to them.
Just because ACLU is late along with most of the communities and people in realizing things they could have done better that does not mean we need to question their every future step for the betterment of the society. Along with your positive critique, you can donate to them or any other org. of your choice and make sure your voice is heard. Oh btw ACLU was always active with whatever limited funds they had. . Please try researching on them.
Because it's virtue signalling. Nevermind that Chicago had more murders in 2016 than New York and Los Angeles combined, or that there's a rampant opiate epidemic across wide swaths of the country - this is a cause with visibility among the well heeled coastal elites. Where were these same people when we undermined and bombed the governments of the countries these immigrants are fleeing from?
I thought "virtue signaling" meant loudly expressing sentiments to enhance your perceived moral standing. If you actually put your money where you mouth is, a) is it still virtue signaling, and b) what's wrong with it?
seems like the meaning is shifting from "non-sacrificial action taken solely to signify virtue" with "any action taken in the name of virtues I don't embrace"
In tandem with the gag order, though, there's the angle of entirely halting the work of government agencies.
'Virtue signaling' is a criticism of people who put social approval before productive work. Someone who 'virtue signals' isn't opposed to a cause, though they exploit it out of narcissism.
But in this case, the entire point of these EOs is that they are specifically crafted to interfere with gov't agencies, while appearing to cut through red tape. It's red meat for the base, but that's just a bonus.
Accusing someone of "virtue signalling" instantly ends any possibility for reasonable discussion, because it's a stark violation of the Principle of Charity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
On a meta-level, invoking "virtue signalling" is itself a signal that you want to ad-hominem the human subject rather than discuss and resolve the issues.
It is the opposite of rationality, and it's a bit weird that so many People Who Think They Are Rational are into the idea.
I'm avoiding wading into these debates on HN but wanted to thank you for articulating something that has been bugging me as well. This is a point that I wish more people on the internet would stop to consider.
It's entirely irrational to give this level of attention and resource to an issue with such relatively little impact, particularly when noting the contributing events that led up to this issue were largely ignored (and directed by the same presidential candidate many of these organizations openly supported). Virtue signalling is the correct description. This is more about image than substantive change.
Relatively little impact on you perhaps. Many people are impacted, and what particularly scares people is that the order seems deliberately cruel in detaining people who were in transit, has green cards or dual citizenship. There are some 22 million non-citizens in the U.S. and many of them are now very unsure about their future. I bet there are many YC founders among them.
I am disappointed by these kind of comments. Being contrarian just for the sake of it doesn't get us anywhere. We cannot anytime someone does something good ask why something we consider better wasn't previously done.
I don't think he is being contrarian just for the sake of it. He is just using the platform to raise awareness about issues which are serious but don't make the same impact into public discussions and don't get similar levels of support. There is nothing bad in bringing more issues to light, and now seems the perfect time for this when the public appetite is ready for such issues.
I see your point but isn't easy to understand that the reason tech companies and YC try to help the ACLU is because charity begins at home? Preventing engineers from working at these companies because of their national origin affects them more than police violence against black people. There surely are other causes more worthy of support outside the US that he did not mention.
There's plenty of evidence pointing towards liberal opposition to Trump's policies being purely contrarian despite their merit. Will you speak up then? Will you point out the hypocrisy and double-standards?
I'm pretty sure such cases will come. But, so far? Which ones would that be? All the meaningful EOs etc that get feedback seem to be quite validly being criticised from a liberal POV. The criticism about the conflicts of interest and inexperience of pending nominations is understandable, even if you probably can disagree reasonably on some.
The pettiest so far seems to be ~5 dems voting against Chao - but that was more about get husband and without consequence.
No, asking why things were done in the past is a useful exercise to uncover deficiencies in reasoning, process and other areas which can be acted upon for present and future action.
Your argument is essentially "don't ask why my favored party/people/orgs did bad things, just pay attention to the rhetoric they're using now." It's an incredibly cynical position to take, in my opinion.
No argument on that specifically. I do take note, and exception, when very vocal supporters of Hillary have a "come to Jesus" moment over Trump's actions. Part of that "critically consider past actions" thing.
It's cyclical to be constantly looking back and holding every group to this impossible standard we've constructed for today that is constantly changing. This is the only argument I ever see from Trump supporters: Clinton or Obama or the Democrats did it/would have done it or worse, so it's all okay and you aren't allowed to complain. Never is the argument presented that what is currently being done is right, because it's indefensible.
Why not talk about what is right and talk about doing that? When we read 'all men are created equal' we don't say 'well, the founding fathers hated women so it's okay for me to' or 'the founding fathers had no good ideas and they are trash' we talk about what parts of their ideas had merit and try to improve upon them and do the right thing /today/, from this moment forward.
What makes you think I support Trump? My criticism comes from the left, not the right. The difference between Hillary and Trump has always been one of style and in some areas depth, not substance. Suddenly Hillary's supporters decide to protest and support anti-Trump action, when the entire Democratic establishment supported the very things that have set Trump up for years without a peep. I'm deeply skeptical and do not trust them. Period.
A bit of historical context: America was founded in white supremacy. [1] It did better after the Civil War in the Reconstruction [2], and then things got worse again, with Jim Crow [3] in the south and ethnic cleansing everywhere else [4]. The Civil Rights Act [5] marked an era of improvement (sometimes called the Second Reconstruction [6]), but things have recently gotten worse, to the extent that many see us as needing a third Reconstruction [7].
This does not happen mostly through planned racial injustice. It mainly happens through ignorance and a convenient blindness to uncomfortable facts. We help people familiar and dear to us, and ignore the ones who aren't.
I think it's great that Silicon Valley came out strongly in favor of immigrants. They're familiar to us, and we'd be monsters to ignore our neighbors, our co-workers, our ancestors. But muninn_'s right, we have been ignoring some other pretty big injustices. And the ones muninn_ mentioned are groups historically underrepresented in tech. It's no coincidence that we started here.
As we boldly support immigrants, it's a good time to ask, "Oh, who might we have forgotten?" Companies are communities, embedded in a society. This week, we are stepping up to that responsibility. There's nothing wrong with thinking a little about what that really means.
Sometimes people do plan things, although a lot of the stuff I mention was relatively spontaneous. But what sustains it isn't careful planning. It's most people going along with systems they don't understand, impulses they've never considered.
E.g., the impulse where they protect people like them and people familiar to them before people unfamiliar to them. That very rarely comes from a considered plan of "let's screw over black people". But that's often the effect.
> Maybe I'm too cynical and look at these moves (AirBnB, Uber, Google, etc...) as marketing moves.
I strongly disagree that this is purely for marketing. As someone working for one of the aforementioned companies, we are all aghast at how quickly this administration has jumped to eroding everything we believe in. These companies' moves are motivated by very real horror at the US going down a dark path.
The worst you could say about these actions is that they are self-interested, as the Muslim ban affects a lot of my coworkers in a very negative way that, say, inner city violence in Chicago does not. But it's definitely not so cynical as to be mere marketing moves.
"This temporary hold on people entering the country from one of 7 countries for 90 days affects a lot of my coworkers"
And then "I don't care about the dozens of black people gunned down every day"
Seems a little selfish no? This is exactly the same mentality that Trump supporters had, just exchange Americans with coworkers and refugees with black people.
Maybe they aren't purely marketing moves, but I just have a hard time with it. Why can't Sergey show solidarity with our black community, who make up a large percentage of Americans, but can show up to protest in person for a temporary restriction on new people entering the US on top of the 120 day restriction that already exists?
You're constructing a strawman. Nobody has said they don't care about black people. The absence of protest attendance or action does not mean people don't care – it may mean they've judged that their talents are best suited to another cause, or that their potential to do good in a different arena is greater.
It is a sad cynical state of affairs when people attempting to do good for one cause are berated for not participating in every other cause under the sun. People have finite resources and differing abilities.
What have you done to combat heroin addiction? What have you done to reduce environmental destruction? What have you done for Jewish causes? What have you done to improve oversight at the FDA? One could play this game forever.
I mean, yea, it would be great if tech CEOs started showing up at a Black Lives Matter marches. America's institutional racism is certainly an issue no less deserving of attention and work towards alleviating it.
But the reason for the differential in responses is pretty clear to me: American racism didn't just get instituted with the stroke of a pen last week, nor could it be reversed as easily (or struck down in court). It sucks, but it's a kind of cruelty we're accustomed to (victims, active perpetrators and passive perpetrators alike), and have been living with for centuries. The immigration order, on the other hand, is a newly instituted policy of cruelty, which can potentially be defeated directly with sufficiently urgent action.
> Maybe they aren't purely marketing moves, but I just have a hard time with it.
You have a hard time with companies supporting worthy causes because they don't support enough of them to the extent that you demand them to? That's what's generally known as cutting off your nose to spite your face.
The difference isn't entirely rational, it's that one is a sudden shock and one is (a horrifying) normal.
When something is new and shocking, immediate extensive resistance can blunt the impact of new policies. That would work in the case of horrifying normal situations too, but there's no universal focal point, and focal points around which people can gather matter a lot. Given the existence of a focal point, it becomes rational to protest since others will join you.
This logic (people should do nothing today because they did nothing yesterday) doesn't make any sense, and I don't get why it keeps coming up every time something related to Trump's policy comes up.
Not to speak for the OP, but at least for me, I'm seeing a lot of my friends all of a sudden up in arms over policies that Obama (and Bush, and in some cases earlier than that even) got crickets for.
Admittedly, I'm not trying to compare apples to apples, and I'm the furthest thing from a Trump supporter, and it's absolutely amazing that the media have finally grown into their role of a check and balance against the government, but all too often, that means that they do so with carelessly chosen words that misrepresent the issue, and they act like it's new.
The problem with acting like it's new and giving a pass to handsomer / more liked / partisan presidents of yore is that once Trump is out of office, everyone will start to be complacent again.
Standing up for your rights is the job of the citizenry no matter who is president, and holding our elected officials' collective feet to the fire is what we're supposed to be doing all the time. If it took electing Trump to get people engaged, so be it, but let's not pretend that passing what effectively amounts to law with "a pen and a phone" is Trump's idea, or that people weren't cheering on the last president when he chose to do so, or that it's in any way a good thing to remove the checks and balances branches of the government are supposed to be providing against their co-equal branches.
When we're done evaluating the motives of individual Internet commenters and ensuring that the evils of hypocritical rhetoric are forever banished from the fair shores of our message boards, can we acknowledge that children with American citizenship and their green card parents are being detained or even deported at our borders, without access to counsel, in flagrant violation of both the law and standing court orders?
I'm on board for the tribunal where we evaluate everything anyone ever wrote in an Internet comment. Twenty lashes for me, I'm sure. I'll submit willingly, if we can put that aside for a year and a half and work on resisting the current threat to the rule of law.
Moreover, it's been reported in several places that Steve Bannon overruled DHS to ensure that green card holders would be impacted by the ban. In addition to being flagrantly unconstitutional, that was an act of distilled cruelty.
People keep bringing up the Obama thing in response to the immigration ban.
Obama suspended visas from Iraq for six months, and gave plenty of warning beforehand so people could prepare.
Trump suspended all immigration from seven countries on a Friday without warning, ordered the detention of people from those countries at the border, prevented them from seeking legal representation, and deported some of them. Including green card holders.
If you don't understand the massive difference between these two things than I don't know what to tell you.
I'm well aware of the difference, which is why I specifically did not reference any particular event for which Obama may have been responsible, except to illustrate that civil rights abuses have been going on for far longer than Trump has been president, and the comparative outcry has been infinitesimal.
Apologies if my deliberate ambiguity was hard to parse.
I have a couple of questions here if you'll allow me to play devil's advocate.
1) Given that what Trump is doing is allowed by law - what circumstances can one imagine in which this kind of travel ban would be okay (since it's legal) or is the law itself a problem?
2) I'm curious about (1) because there are legitimate reasons why Trump's ban is more draconian than Obama's, all of which are rooted in various screw-ups by the previous administration. Those are:
a) Last year, the vetting process somehow managed to grant visas to 9500 terror linked individuals, all of whom are missing. When the visas were revoked, there was no way to locate them. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~ 2015 / 2016)
b) DHS has 40 staff members currently handling 51000 applications for credible threat to life asylum requests. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~2015)
c) Top intelligence officials have named the refugee program as a high risk attack vector (Source: CNN, ~ 2015/2016)
Under those 3 criteria alone, if you are taking over as President and you see this kind of track record from the administration, and you get this advice from the intelligence agencies, would you really be comfortable with the visas issued thus far?
I sort of agree with the principle in theory that if the government has granted someone the right to enter, they ought to be allowed to enter, but that's never really been an airtight thing either. Your final entry is always conditioned upon being interviewed at the airport and getting your passport stamped, and answering various questions - where will you be staying, for how long, etc. etc. I suspect it would have been more principled to have a comprehensive screening process for people when they landed, but that may be an operational nightmare.
Given that there are plenty of PhD students, guest workers, etc. from Iran mostly, who are immensely inconvenienced by this kind of draconian rule, I am not entirely in favor of the policy. At the same time I'm curious as to whether a President is really dutybound to stand by the visas issued by the previous administration when there is proof of this sort of incompetence / error in the process at this magnitude (i.e. nearly ten thousand).
If we grant those legitimate reasons (none of which are quoted in the stated justifications for the EO given to date by the White House, but which are, if true, certainly reasonable grounds for executive action) - If the concern is with visas issued in a given time period, from particular offices, via particular channels, then direct CBP to stop people for additional screening or refusal to enter if they present a visa issued in that time period, from those particular offices, via particular channels. Every US visa has all those details printed on it. You get all the benefits you want - time to rescreen those visa holders whose visas may not have received adequate screening - without causing massive confusion and inconvenience to travelers whose visas don't need to be called into question.
Such action would be fully backed up by the precedent of what Obama did in suspending the Iraqi asylum application process for 6 months in reaction to specific risks that had been highlighted in that process.
>Last year, the vetting process somehow managed to grant visas to 9500 terror linked individuals, all of whom are missing. When the visas were revoked, there was no way to locate them. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~ 2015 / 2016)
No, since 2001, 9500 "terror linked individuals" were given visas. Unfortunately, I can't find any explanation of what "terror linked" means in this context. Each year, the US grants approximately 8-9 million visas. So, in 15 years, across over 100 million issued visas, approximately 10,000 may have been given to individuals who were "terror linked", where that could mean "confirmed terrorist", or it could mean "their uncle once went to a market that we believe is a known terrorist hotspot". Again, there's no explanation, anywhere, of what "terror linked individual" means in this context.
Trumps entire campaign was predicated on heavily disrupting the status quo. He promised chaos in Washington and now he's delivering on that promise. Obama pushed policies in baby steps to avoid heavily disrupting peoples lives, so of course they were never up in arms over it.
I think that's not an accurate portrayal of their position. They're not saying one should continue doing nothing, they're instead trying to be gatekeepers of virtue. They're saying "You shouldn't get to have good publicity from this when it's convenient for you."
Which is open to a completely different criticism, but is emphatically not saying people should continue doing nothing.
I don't think the argument is "people should do nothing today because they did nothing yesterday." I think the argument is "Just because you're doing something today, doesn't mean your organization doesn't have issues, and the fact that you didn't do something yesterday is useful data about your priorities."
Before November 2016 it was easy to be complacent- there was a sense that people with more power than us were doing the right thing to fix any given problem, so our own contribution felt less urgent. We don't have that now.
My take on this: I'm glad that the "right thing" to do is the popular thing to do. In the past, there have been trends of conspicuous consumption, bigger as better, etc., to convey social status and desirability. Mainstream culture has been moving in a direction where inconspicuous consumption, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility, and companies have been following.
Whether we do things because it looks good or is right is an interesting question. But to me, it is similar to the question of "are we kind because it makes us feel better? or because its right?".
You can be cynical about us bringing in the ACLU, but in the words of Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Another factor is to consider framing: you can view this cynically as "only getting involved when it might impact their bottom line", or more favorably in that "it was bad before, but now it's finally hit their breaking point." I prefer to reduce my cynicism as much as possible, giving people the benefit of the doubt. It's also good for my overall happiness.
In that case, I fully expect to see continued activity on this front even after the next Democratic adminstration and congress continues the Bush-Obama-Trump programs that are (finally) meeting resistance.
I won't hold my breath waiting for that, though. Usually what happens is that when one's favored party regains power the criticism suddenly disappears.
I wasn't calling out the ACLU. I am rather skeptical of the commitment of certain folks who are just now finding their voice.
This is from long experience, at least on the left end of the pond, where the mainstream Democratic partisans attempt to shout down any protest when Democratic politicians do something but encourage it when Republicans do equivalent things.
As with most such sayings their relevance isn't universal.
You should care, as should anyone who is aligned with these protestors' views. That's because if (or when, if history is a guide) the protests subside because "we elected not-Trump/Democrat-X/whatever", the gains will be eroded or erased as Trump's policies are continued by the new "savior."
Well, we're not there now, so the best we can do is do what we can do now, and promise ourselves to do what we can then. Maybe we will, maybe we'll fail, but there's literally nothing we can do about that now, so why let cynicism about a potential future erode our resolve to do what is right now?
It isn't cynicism about a potential future. It's recognition of a pattern that has played out time and again. This isn't new or uncharted territory here.
The problem is that as soon as a democrat gets elected to president, these "supporters" will disappear because it is "their" candidate bombing brown people or attacking your rights.
Yes, Obama did some bad stuff, and organizations like the ACLU and EFF did push back on it — you can Google "ACLU slams Obama" for a few examples — but Trump is shaping up to be way past the norm, so you shouldn't expect just a normal amount of resistance.
The only thing "past the norm" here is that Trump isn't hiding behind "the process" or rhetoric. All of the stuff Trump is doing had been either set up by or done, before, by past administrations. It's just that there hasn't been this level of scrutiny or opposition to it.
No, much of it hasn't been done by past administrations, which is why whenever someone tries to trot out a supposed concrete example, it's usually a wildly different act than the one Trump did that is supposedly similar to, either in substance or relevant context or, most often, both.
My description is a rebuttal of an "all" claim, and is expressly a "much" not an "all" claim itself. So that not all Trump acts.meet it is acknowledged from the beginning and not relevant to its accuracy or its point.
The things that are receiving the heavy protests, however, are the things that do match it.
You need to stop, just for a second, and not look at this as a Democrat/Republican thing. When you have tens of thousands of people protesting it in countries outside the US (massive protests in London and around the UK yesterday) it's clearly beyond partisan politics and just about the issue. It's not red vs blue and it's certainly not left vs right considering our right is only about as right as your left.
I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and don't view it through that lense. I'm viewing this (support for the ACLU) with a skeptical eye, the same way I'd view a Trump protest started by Hillary campaign staffers.
I like what New Story is doing. I was born in Haiti. But I'm asking about San Francisco. Seems like a lot of companies talk about helping poor countries, but here in America it's a different thing. Living in a different country you would think homelessness is non-existent in America.
I think there is a danger when powerful companies start going all political and throwing money at a problem instead of talking and discussions. You get 2 sides that keep pulling against each other and it becomes a matter of who has the most money!
Liberals don't actually care about anyone. How many of those protesting the refugee ban donated even $1 to their cause in the prior year? This is liberalism 101 -- cultivation of the /appearance/ of sweet, sweet, ego-stroking self righteousness. The PR stunt aspect is just the icing on the cake.
I agree with you that we should all cast a wider net WRT the charities we pick, but I'll play devils advocate because that's what I do.
There are too many worthy issues. An organization like ycombinator or like its investments (Airbnb, Uber, etc) aren't altruistic by design, but can choose to be when they see fit. That's not bad. Right now it fits because there's either some PR to be gained (like Lyft) or some looming threat to fight (H1B visas and immigration). A tactical move like this is still good for everyone even if its motivation isn't philanthropic. It's a win-win. We should look at it more as a strategic investment for the common good.
Not trolling, but I don't think those required the same magnitude of capital. Your examples didn't involve going up against the federal government. The ACLU got something like 24 million dollars in the last week, but the Koch brothers pledged to spend $300-400 million in the run-up to the 2018 elections. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/jan/28/koch-political-netw... (Worth noting the Koch network actually disagrees with Trump over the immigration ban https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01...)
There are plenty of people who are trying to become American, as well. My wife came here from Iran to study at an American University, and her conditional green card is set to expire next year. We want her to get her citizenship as fast as possible. Now it seems that USCIS has put all that on pause though, so we're sweating bullets over whether they'll actually let us file the petition to have the conditional aspect removed in a year's time. If they don't, we're fucked and all of the work and money(read: thousands of dollars) we put into putting her through the system properly will have been all for nothing. FYI I'm an American citizen.
married to a citizen doesn't magically grant you anything. It makes you eligible for a K1 visa, and from there you join the same path from greencard to citizenship as everyone else.
Specifically, there's a minimum residency period before you can apply - usually 5 years, 3 if you're married. The conditional greencard is the first 18(? 24?) months, before you get the 10yr card - so if they're still conditional, there's no way they meet any minimums.
The path from marriage to citizenship is not automatic (nor inalienable).
See Soneil's response. She does qualify for it, but it's not instant. You have to be on a conditional green card for two years, then on a regular green card(which lasts ten years). We have to wait another year before we can have the conditional aspect of her green card removed. But with USCIS allegedly pausing it, even if we try to get it removed, nothing will move forward, but the clock will keep ticking till it expires.
There are per-nation limits on the number of green card holders that can become citizens every year. Maybe they want to be citizens, but aren't allowed to be?
Meanwhile, a lawyer friend of mine had to advise a client of his not to go home to visit his dying father, because he might not be allowed back in. He's lived in the US for twenty years. He owns a business that employs six US citizens. He won't get to see his father again, and a father won't get to see his eldest son on his deathbed.
Do you have any idea what's involved in an immigrant from a Muslim country becoming a citizen? Without some sense of the requirements, you're assuming he doesn't want to be a citizen, when it's quite possible that he does, but hasn't been able to due to quotas.
>half the people on these boards step over a homeless person to get to work every morning.
But don't you think half the people on these boards would also support a vast overhaul of the tax system that prioritizes the military/war over services for the homeless? Currently 60+% of our taxes go towards the military. That's unbelievable. Why not chop that in half and redirect it towards welfare services? Or is that too hard? What possibly can 1 X HN-user do when passing said homeless person? Create a homeless shelter? OR: better to demand the government to stop _squandering_ the thousands in taxes he gives a year and to redirect it to the poor man she/has passes every weekday morning?
I think the issue is more complex than you make it out to be, IMHO.
Come on... The budget for military spending in 2016 was 15-17%.
What you're regurgitating was actually a hoax/misleading meme photo that propagated that number in order to paint Republicans as war mongers. All it took was one Google search to confirm.
Ok, going purely by 2015 numbers, we spend 609.3Billion on Military. Only 16% of the budget, right?
Then how can China (our next biggest competitor) get away with spending only 150-200 Billion? Why are we spending more than three times the amount China is spending on military? How can Russia (our perceived biggest threat right now in the media zeitgeist)...only get by with threatening us with a paltry 66 Billion? Think about that: we as a nation have collectively decided to outmatch Russia by ten fold. This way of spending is out of control, and I'm not sure how else I can get this very simple point across.
I think it's clear to anyone that we could easily assuage some of the real problems of homelessness if we just cut our Military budget in half.
That would still put us ahead of China, far ahead of Russia, _and_ we'd help those who cannot help themselves immensely.
But I know what the response is going to be: "Big Stick" and all that oft-repeated Military-Industrial justification.
I'm sorry but there's no excuse no matter how you slice it, even if my initial numbers are wrong (which I concede) it's still a terrible situation.
It's unbelievable because it's false. Total governmental spending is around $7 trillion. Only about 12% of that is the military, which is 4% of GDP or so. Healthcare, pensions, and education are almost 60%, though.
Although I agree that there's been a frustrating lack of response to those issues, I think at least part of that muted response was a sense that these incidents were an aberration from a general trend of progress.
The reality that many people are waking up to is that social progress is not guaranteed and a passive approach is not enough.
I share your cynicism regarding many of the marketing moves by the companies you mentioned. At the same time, the fact that doing the right thing builds goodwill with a hopefully-majority highlights the importance of making our views and voices heard.
I might wish for a more high-minded motive form these companies. I also wish that it hadn't taken shock events to make the loss of rights feel real for most of America (though to be honest, I'm guilty of this too.)
But I'm excited to see people mobilizing, and will take the good outcomes where I can find them these days. Progress here could require an uneasy coalition.
The ACLU has been fighting the good fight for impoverished black people as well. They happen to be in the spotlight at the moment due to the Trump immigration executive order, but it's not as though 100% of the funds raised by YC will go towards fighting the immigration ban. It will support their countless other ongoing legal battles as well.
They are an unqualified, categorically "good" organization that is deserving of your donations. I'm personally of the opinion that a charitable act should not be diminished or castigated because one picked this time to donate and not other times.
Put another way, if a guy shows up to volunteer at a soup kitchen, I'm going to thank him for his time, not shout at him, "Where were you when we had the flood of Katrina refugees to feed!"
> They are an unqualified, categorically "good" organization
The ACLU is wonderful, no doubt about that. But I think some people do put an asterisk next to the group because of their (obviously somewhat strange) categorization of the protections of the 2nd amendment as outside the scope of American civil liberties.
That all seems pretty clear to me. It's not up to you to interpret the 2nd Amendment for them.
Not to mention that orgs like the NRA have many times more funding than the ACLU and dedicate every action to that one issue.
Or the fact that you're dealing with a organization that has been one of the biggest and best defenders of oppressed groups in recent history and you're cranky that they're not gonna help you own a handgun like most of congress is.
Any time I read "friend" in this context I feel like you can replace it with just about any word someone wouldn't say in any professional context, and it's more true to the intent.
I am cranky that they aren't willing to make simple statements of support for it.
If an organization that was instrumental in protecting your right to a fair and speedy trial, was against opposed to the idea of free speech, I would still condemn that org for holding that specific position, while still recognizing that they have done good in other areas.
I think their reasoning on 2nd amendment work is sound. The NRA and affiliates have ~4x the ACLU's budget to spend on that one single issue, and they have shown themselves to be ruthlessly effective on that front.
But that's not really the point. SSDP and DPA, as specialized, wide-reaching, grassroots organizations, are more effective at drug policy reform, but this doesn't stop the ACLU from recognizing the threats that drug prohibition poses to civil liberties.
Similarly, the fact that there are larger and more specialized organizations doesn't prevent the ACLU from making statements in favor of advances in the rights guaranteed by the second amendment.
The fact that there are larger and more specialized organizations doesn't prevent the ACLU from making a simple statement in favor of advances in this particular civil liberty.
There are some aspects where 2A intersects with other rights, where NRA and others are unwilling to go.
One sticking point right now is drugs. Per federal law, any "user of an unlawful substance" is prohibited from firearm ownership, period. This includes anyone in states that legalized marijuana, including medical users. And the feds have been trying to maintain state records for medical marijuana card holders.
NRA, SAF and the rest of the bunch are unwilling to not just do anything about it, but to even speak out at all. I'm a SAF member, and I actually wrote to them about this several times, with no response. Ironically, the only gun rights org that has been consistently speaking out on this is the otherwise extremely right wing GOA.
And recently, both NRA and SAF organizations have enthusiastically endorsed Jeff Sessions, which is a huge middle finger to anyone concerned about this law...
That said, ACLU generally does get involved in cases which are centered on 2A, but involve other rights. So my hope is that they'd get involved in this as well, if a suitable case came up.
I see the ACLU as an organization that isn't blind to all constitutional entitlements, and I don't believe they have any responsibility to be that. I see them as particularly interested in civil rights defense for the powerless against the powerful and untouchable, who are particularly antagonistic at the moment.
Firearms interests have their own highly influential advocacy already from more than one entity, so it puts this argument in the "all lives matter" category of flawed defenses.
A portion of the the First Amendment is protected by media litigators. It's got more than a few important protections that deserve defense. Besides, are you really complaining that there are too many organizations working to protect our civil liberties. Seems an odd complaint. If Second Amendment rights matter to you then, by all means, donate to the NRA or others fighting to protect that right. Doesn't mean the ACLU and others don't do important work as well.
I donate to a state-level 2nd Amendment rights organization, GeorgiaCarry.org, rather than the NRA. Why? Because GeorgiaCarry stands strongly against racial discrimination and is working hard to end Jim Crow era Georgia laws that to this day attempt to thwart non-white citizens voting and asserting their 1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendment rights. By contrast, the NRA has a consistent record of remaining silent on race issues when they intersect with 2nd Amendment challenges.
The ACLU doesn't have a problem with 2A, but they see gun ownership as a collective right rather than an individual right. They have stood up for 2A rights in the past, but compared to the NRA and other 2A advocates, they have very limited resources, so they let the NRA / et. al. handle them.
> The ACLU doesn't have a problem with 2A, but they see gun ownership as a collective right rather than an individual right
To be specific - they disagree with one specific SCOTUS ruling that is less than a decade old (DC v. Heller). They do agree with the pro-gun arguments put forth by US v. Miller.
They have devoted (to my knowledge) no material resources towards fighting DC v. Heller despite their disagreement with it, and they explicitly leave most 2nd Amendment cases to other advocacy groups (namely the NRA) because those are much more well-funded and focused solely on the 2nd Amendment. The ACLU prefers to spend its much smaller and limited budget on cases which aren't really supported by many (if any) other advocacy groups.
Actually, the NRA themselves didn't want pursue Heller in the SCOTUS. They are not an effective watchdog.
They are, IMHO, far more interested in pursuing their own agenda, which only partially intersects with the right to self defense. More important to them, it seems, is acting as stooges for the GOP. I came to that conclusion after a local election in which the NRA endorsed the GOP candidate, who had a C rating, as I recall, while turning up their noses at his challenger who was an A.
I believe that their reticence to litigate Heller was for their own self-preservation. They can make a better case for donation when they're able to sow FUD about taking away our guns. Having a definitive answer to the question from Heller (and later McDonald, to get it incorporated under the 14th Amendment) impairs how much fear they can inspire in gun owners.
> I believe that their reticence to litigate Heller was for their own self-preservation.
As I recall, it's because they didn't believe a priori that it was the strongest case. They definitely do support the decision and defend it in subsequent cases. It's not unusual for an advocacy group to pick and choose its legal battles based on what it thinks is most likely to advance its long-term agenda - each case is a legal risk, and with a it's possible to end up losing ground instead of gaining it. There's a lot of strategic calculation that goes into it, which doesn't mean that it's always successful or correct, but it's not unusual or suspicious when it happens.
This is similar to how Rosa Parks was chosen as the figurehead for the legal battles surrounding bus boycotts, even though she was not the first Black woman to refuse to give up her seat (and she wasn't even the one whose case made it to the Supreme Court). She was believed to be the most sympathetic and favorable candidate for challenging the law. (Ultimately, Claudette Colvin's case was the one that was actually upheld by the Supreme Court.)
> I believe that their reticence to litigate Heller was for their own self-preservation. They can make a better case for donation when they're able to sow FUD about taking away our guns. Having a definitive answer to the question from Heller (and later McDonald, to get it incorporated under the 14th Amendment) impairs how much fear they can inspire in gun owners.
There are a lot of criticisms I could enumerate about the NRA's inconsistency with how it pursues Second Amendment battles, but if you're concerned with the broad right to self-defense, I don't think they apply. I definitely would not say that they oppose clear constitutional protections for gun ownership (such as the Heller outcome) simply to line their own pockets, which is what you are implying.
More specifically, I think the NRA regards the GOP as extremely useful. They actually stooge for the gun manufacturers. If somehow the Republicans and the Democrats flipped sides, the NRA would flip, too. LaPierre and his crew would have to go, but that's business.
The ACLU doesn't have a problem with 2A, but they see gun ownership as a collective right rather than an individual right.
And that's a problem. It betrays either a gross misunderstanding on their part of the purpose of the Bill of Rights, which is unlikely, or other less transparent motivations, which aren't. There are other civil liberties organizations that don't argue for a state monopoly on the right to self defense. Consider helping them out instead.
It's ridiculous to talk about how misguided, dangerous, or outright evil the government is, only to turn around and argue that they should own all the guns.
I appreciate your concern, but I also think it's misguided to dismiss the ACLU because of this single issue: it's not something they focus resources on. They're not actively campaigning against an individual's rights to bear arms. They're not even vocal about it. Gun rights or anti-gun rights are not what many people think of when they think of gun rights issues. You gotta pick your battles, and find allies where you can.
ACLU doesn't argue that "they should own all the guns". They don't defend the individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment, but they don't argue against it, either. So, in effect, they're completely neutral on this.
They're also upfront about this position, so you can't claim that they're misleading you when they take your money.
When you donate money to ACLU, you do so in the knowledge that not go towards defending 2A rights[1]. But this is also the case for EFF, for example. Does that preclude you from donating to EFF, or any other organization? If not, then why do you demand that ACLU does something out of their declared scope.
[1] ACLU does actually defend 2A rights in contexts where they intersect with other rights. For example, they have collaborated with SAF to defend the rights of non-citizens to keep and bear arms - some states explicitly ban non-citizens from their shall-issue carry licensing provisions, or even firearm possession in general.
They explicitly interpret 2A as a "collective right," whatever that is. They also state their disagreement with Heller and presumably any number of lower court decisions in line with it.
Organizations like the EFF never claimed to be broad-based "civil liberties unions," so that's why I feel it's appropriate to hold them to different standards.
They interpret 2A as a collective right for the purposes of explaining why they (and note that this specifically refers to the national ACLU organization!) do not step in to defend it.
However, they never argue in court against 2A. Nor do they prohibit their member state organizations from taking a different position - and many do.
Yes, ACLU is a broad "civil liberties" organization. But there's no definitive list of civil liberties, and different people have different opinions on this. The fact that SCOTUS ruled on it doesn't change matters - SCOTUS rules on whether something is a constitutional right or not, not on whether something is a civil right or not. The latter is inherently a subjective assessment.
I am an ardent supporter of the individual right to gun ownership but you can't fault the ACLU for having a slightly different interpretation of 2A while still believing in the right.
And has others have stated, I'd much rather have the ACLU focus on things like 1A, 4A, etc. Leave 2A to the NRA and other 2A-specific advocacy groups.
I'm not so sure of that. It may be that their willingness to look at 2A in a completely different framework, claiming that the meaning of "the people" is different in just this case, will eventually undermine their defense of the rest of the Bill of Rights as well.
While I value my second amendment rights I will not allow that to prevent me from supporting the ACLU. I also can't stomach supporting the NRA. It's a challenging position to be in because I do care about my rights but I'm not sure where to turn to support my second amendment rights specifically.
There are a few other groups that aren't as heavy on deep-South cultural baggage (https://www.saf.org/).
Whether or not they're sufficiently dissociated is another matter entirely, though.
For what it's worth, CCRKBA - which is essentially to SAF what NRA-ILA is to NRA (involves most the same people, in particular, Alan Gottlieb; but is a political campaigning counterpart to the non-profit) - endorsed Jeff Sessions. And how!
“Senate confirmation of Jeff Sessions as our next Attorney General will bring about much-needed change at the Department of Justice. Instead of promoting or defending schemes that impact law-abiding Americans, his track record shows that he will go after genuine criminals.”
“The nation is in serious need of an attorney general who knows the difference between civil rights and criminal wrongs”
For those who are aware of the track record of Sessions as attorney, the highlighted bit especially is appalling.
This is the problem for me. I want an organization that will fight for my second amendment rights but that also isn't advancing a secondary agenda that I disagree with.
I don't think my city's tax on gun and ammo sales is an effective or constitutional measure and I want to support organizations that will fight that type of measure.
I did not support Obama's "common sense" ban on gun sales to people on the no-fly list because I don't believe the no-fly list itself is constitutional.
I do want to take steps to reduce gun violence in America but my current choices on the political front are either ineffective and/or unconstitutional laws from the left or a complete unwillingness to even try from the right.
I do not support Jeff Sessions for Attorney General because I think the entire bill of rights is valuable and applies to everyone and I don't think he will uphold it effectively.
For the time being, I have compromised by remaining a SAF member, since they haven't formally endorsed Sessions (and they can't, as a 501(c)3), and are not involved in any court cases that do not pertain to gun rights. Meanwhile, I have terminated my CCRKBA membership, and called them and explained why I did so.
That said, it is still a very uneasy compromise, because the person who uttered all the things I consider despicable on behalf of CCRKBA is also the person who is the founder and the most prominent spokesperson of SAF, and my conscience only permits so much ability to distinguish their opinions depending on which "hat" they wear.
My takeaway from all this is that there's no bipartisan gun rights organization in US, and there probably cannot be in the current political climate. Thus, pro-gun liberals have to establish their own, that would be the left-wing counterpart to NRA and SAF.
The good thing is that with all the tumult that the Democratic party is going through right now, with a massive grassroots platform rewrite going on, this is the time to speak up about this sort of thing. Pay attention to new left-wing groups that spring up promising to upend the status quo on the left. Check their platform and issues. If they do speak about gun control (most do), and you see something there that you believe is wrong, get in touch with them, and let them know that 1) you're on their side in general, but 2) you do not agree with them on this, and here's why.
To give a specific example, here's Justice Democrats (essentially an attempt to formally organize a "Sanders wing" of the party):
If you scroll down, you'll see "Enact common-sense gun regulation" bullet point, and a bunch of stuff underneath. If you find anything disagreeable, email them, with a polite and well-reasoned refutation. I did that, and they actually replied and told me that they're still in the process of hashing the platform out, and are listening to all feedback.
In the meantime, a good way to get left-wing politicians to notice us is via the Liberal Gun Club. It's not a political organization, and it isn't involved in legal fights, so it's not an NRA/SAF replacement. But it is a focal point to assemble forces; and if it has enough members, it can be used as a foundation to build future organizations, and to draw attention in intraparty politics.
Keep in mind that there are actually many ACLUs - the national body, and a lot of local chapters. The chapters are pretty independent, and occasionally do things that I personally disagree with.
The distinction is frequently omitted, and used to paint the national group with the sins of local ones, and vice-versa.
And that's not the view of the national ACLU, at all. Perhaps they don't place the emphasis on it you'd like to see, but that's quite different than considering the 2nd "outside the scope".
Sure, but "not doing anything to improve the state of 2A" is not the same as "fighting to impose a degraded view of 2A".
The ACLU has nothing to gain by promoting any particular 2A view, because that's the only right that's not universally a political sinkhole.
The inconvenient truth is that all civil rights (that aren't gun rights) have opposition nearly everywhere in America.
The only difference is incidentals- if you're in coastal California or urban New England, your subculture wants "hate speech" banned; whereas Arkansas has a more traditional version of obscenity (depictions of sex and promotion of other vices) it wants to eliminate.
So civil rights (in the traditional sense) has no defenders in legislature or society at large. Gun rights, on the other hand, still do in many areas of the country (coastal California and urban New England are the two big exceptions, of course), and as such I can't fault the ACLU's 'default' stance on a right that's not universally contested.
I probably should have said 'Northeast' rather than 'urban New England' specifically.
I mis-remembered; that area encompasses fewer states than I thought it did (and NH is a good counterexample- gun laws there are great, if I remember correctly).
Anyways, in the Northeast, the states with less liberal gun laws (NY/MD/CT/Mass./NJ) also happen to contain most of that area's population, especially in the larger cities like NYC/Boston/Baltimore. NH is good, but it's a very small piece of that region.
It's more like, in a world with exactly eight soup kitchens, the "soup kitchen support union" specifically excluding one from its support network and issuing a statement that, despite its soup having similar origins and ingredients, doesn't qualify as soup in to today's palette unless consumed collectively by all of society.
I don't see the problem there, when that one particular soup kitchen, for various reasons, has several other support unions which are dedicated exclusively to supporting that soup kitchen, and ignore all the other ones.
It makes perfect sense that the "soup kitchen support union" would then concentrate all their efforts on the other 7 soup kitchens which don't get nearly as much support.
They're not the American Bill of Rights Union. They have a conception of what "civil liberties" amounts to which many sympathize with, and they fight for that.
If you think they do good work in that arena, great!
If you think they do good work in that arena and others do good work elsewhere, hey, you know what? That's still great!
(And if you think they do poor work, or work on the wrong goals or whatever, well, of course that's your prerogative.)
You're stretching the metaphor beyond its breaking point. There's no limit on the number of civil rights organizations out there; the ACLU does not have any exclusive right to sue over certain issues or coordinate other groups, it's just particularly old, effective, and respected.
If you're particularly worried about the 2nd amendment there are organizations (extremely powerful and effective organizations at that) to sue on your behalf.
> They happen to be in the spotlight at the moment due to the Trump immigration executive order, but it's not as though 100% of the funds raised by YC will go towards fighting the immigration ban. It will support their countless other ongoing legal battles as well
On that note - do we actually know that the YC funds are generally available to the ACLU? Oftentimes when non-profits receive large donations, the donor specifies the usage of the funds (usually by specifying a general area that the non-profit is working on, or donating to a specific fund)[0]. These restrictions are legally binding.
I'm not opining on the use of funds here - I'm just curious if YC donated to a specific fund in the ACLU.
[0] Those who went to colleges will know this firsthand - the donation solicitations you receive usually give options like "for financial aid", or "for the $BUILDING_NAME construction project"
The amount of money the ACLU would get as a consequence of being accepted into a YC batch is a triviality compared to the amount of money they pull in from direct fundraising. Presumably, the benefit to ACLU of being directly engaged with YC is acceleration of their technical and outreach work, and perhaps improved access to wealthy donors in Silicon Valley.
Equally worth knowing: individual ACLU chapters receive funding from the national ACLU, but are also on the hook for raising some of their own funding.
> The amount of money the ACLU would get as a consequence of being accepted into a YC batch is a triviality compared to the amount of money they pull in from direct fundraising
Yes, I agree . I'm pretty sure the ACLU matched donation offers I saw flying around Twitter yesterday already exceed the amount YC gives to nonprofits.
I'm more just curious if YC specified their intended target with this decision, or if they decided to leave the allocation decisions up to the ACLU. My guess is the latter, because the nonprofits YC normally funds are much younger and smaller, but maybe YC had a specific goal in mind.
> Equally worth knowing: individual ACLU chapters receive funding from the national ACLU, but are also on the hook for raising some of their own funding.
While I think white bias is still an issue - seems like this is what you're pointing at exclusively, right? - I think a possibly bigger issue here - and the answer you're looking for - is that Obama was a classy face for progressives to look at when these government encroachments (and - in many cases - outright killings) came up.
Now that Trump is the face of this disease, there is no pretense. The face lines up with the actions. This allows everyone to freely mobilize on their issues without feeling like they are stepping on toes. Classy, wingtip toes, that is.
Now, I'm not a Trump hater - I don't think he's Hitler. In fact, I do thank him - he did drop the pretense on his own. But I also am enjoying seeing America radicalized in a way that I hoped would happen with the Snowden disclosures fell.
I'm not 100% sure what all the ACLU does so correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought they were a bunch of lawyers? What can they do for Chicago or people shot by police? Who could they sue and for what to fix those problems?
Isn't this like complaining about Habitat for Humanity not doing enough to prevent forest fires?
Not exactly. THe ACLU actually does work in the area being discussed [0]. I believe the criticism is that people did not donate for that reason, not that the ACLU doesn't do anything about it; the ACLU does quite a bit.
I think it's pretty easy to see the answer to your question. Black people and cops violence don't hurt their interests. If black people will be killed then the effect on Google/AirBnB/Ycombinator will be low. However seeing that the ban on foreign countries visa (I expect a lot more countries to be added). It would be harder for tech companies that rely basically on technical talent from outside US.
You will always be able to come up with another problem to use in a "where were you all when..." scenario, because any given organization's resources are finite and cannot address all problems.
Further, the ACLU is a civil liberties advocacy organization and is not well-equipped to handle complex socioeconomic issues such as gun violence or homelessness or health care. It is outside the stated mission.
Of course you know the answer: The ACLU is a political organization.
Edit: Not a peep out of the ACLU when the Obama administration permanently ended the Cuban refugee program and many refugees in Mexico are now being deported back to Cuba because there is no chance of them being accepted in the US. 60 day pause on refugees from seven middle-eastern countries identified and signed into law by the Obama administration? MELTDOWN.
With a stated intent to ban Muslims. Donald Trump and his advisors have gone on record for months stating that their intent is to ban Muslims. Many of his staff have asked publicly if there was a legal way to ban Muslims, and stated that they were seeking a way. This is well-documented in the US mainstream press, with video evidence of Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani stating this in their own words.
The rationale given for banning these Muslim majority countries by Mr. Trump included 9/11. Not a single 9/11 attacker came from these countries. Claiming a material connection is a lie. They claim Obama is responsible for picking them – yet he never banned an entire country in a fit of collective punishment, merely ordered additional monitoring and procedures. Last weekend, valid green cards were cancelled without a documented or individualized reason. This is a vast difference in policy.
People resent Mr. Trump because he lies. He repeatedly lies to Americans. He presents suspect reasoning, misrepresents documented facts, and then claims he didn't in the presence of video evidence. That is a far more critical flaw than any policy error could bring.
> Not a peep out of the ACLU when the Obama administration permanently ended the Cuban refugee program...
This is an odd complaint. The Obama administration ended Cuba's special, weird immigration status where touching land magically bypassed most of the immigration process. Cuban refugees now have to go through the same process as any other refugee - they have the same rights as any other asylum seeker would.
By your reckoning everybody that was standing by the sidelines should forever do so. Better to turn late than not at all, and YC and immigration policies are quite strongly linked, YC and people being gunned down in the streets less so.
Hopefully, people are setting up recurring payments that continue to show support for organizations like the ACLU. Then when the next travesty inevitably occurs, they are already supporting the good fight.
Because although many terrible things occur every day, President Trump/Bannon are the most serious internal threats to the freedoms, safety, and security of Americans since WWII, and perhaps even earlier. Moreover, the threats they pose extend far beyond America's borders. The possibility of autocracy, illiberalism, and kleptocracy are real, and the many donors understand this. Liberal democracy is the foundation of human freedoms. I normally disagree with some prominent positions of the ACLU, but we're in an "all hands on deck" situation. It's different.
My guess is that up until now, the cause for these events has been hard to quantify and identify. Like your example of people in West Virginia and Kentucky who have lost their jobs and got drenched in opiates. Who do we rally against for that? You could argue that it's caused by automation, outsourcing, globalism, capitalism, local policy, state policy, federal policy, and at least a dozen other things. People don't band together against something that has just happened. Boiling the frog and all that.
Companies are throwing their hat into the ring on this issue because there is a clear and present threat with an immense amount of power. You can point to it and say "look, this is going to cause things that I'm not okay with, and I will stand against it". It's finally cut and dry. Evil exists and it can be fought.
Screw cynicism, that's the easy way to deal with these events.
And those are also issues that everybody agreed are issues; it's the solutions where there was disagreement.
Trump's platform was that bribing corporations to keep jobs in America, loosening environmental regulation and tearing up TPP & NAFTA were the solutions for lost factory jobs.
Clinton's platform was that education, a social safety net and withdrawing from the TPP were the best solutions.
Fighting to build awareness of problems is a lot easier than agreeing on a solution.
"Do Not Listen to What They Say, Look at What They Do" - simply treat it as evidence that yes, really, despite what some people might want, large parts of the society actually do care more about immigrants like the tech industry green card holders who got stuck in the airports than local homeless people or "people in West Virginia and Kentucky who have lost their jobs and got drenched in opiates".
It's obvious that this is the case. It's also obvious that some people are angry at this, they want America to clearly put their interests above the interests of immigrants, and that's part of why they voted for Trump.
I notice most non-liberal points of view get down-voted to oblivion in this circle jerk named Hacker News. Commence the down-voting of this comment please.
> Where was the outpouring of funding when black people were being gunned down by cops from West Coast organizations? Where has YCombinator been as our own impoverished African-Americans are getting slaughtered in the streets of Chicago? Why weren't we funding the ACLU to help these people?
They can show their intentions by not just stopping with their support of the ACLU. They can move to support other organizations, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, Earth Justice, Planned Parenthood, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, National Immigration Law Center, EFF, RAINN, and so many more.
Here are a few efforts from the Y Combinator and broader tech communities that help with those goals.
On veterans, several YC alumni, after working on the healthcare.gov rescue team, went on to help start the US Digital Service (https://www.usds.gov/) and Nava (navahq.com), which are working on the VA backlog. Both organizations are hiring.
Within the broader tech community, companies like Nuna are working on Medicaid and the VA backlog. On policing, DJ Patil--former Greylock Data Scientist and one of the founders of Color, FFS--launched an initiative around police data and criminal justice during his time at the White House: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/dj-patil-criminal-justice/
And, of course, Code for America in SOMA does lots of work with local governments and you can apply to be a Fellow: https://www.codeforamerica.org/
There's a lot more to do, and not all of these efforts are as well-known as they should be. But if you're looking to help, people in tech are working on these problems.
Saving democracy isn't Pitchfork; nobody should be looking down on people just because they liked this band before it was cool. Just welcome them to the fan club -- and do what you can to make sure they keep their membership current after this rush of buzz wears off.
When you say "Where was the outpouring of funding when black people were being gunned down by cops" - what exactly do you imply by asking that question? That the parties involved are morally compromised such that they should not fund the ACLU and hire immigrants?
In politics, I believe it's important to use the philosophy of "better late than never". Memes take time to diffuse into the population. It is better to encourage more participation in the future by accepting late arrivals. Attacking people that finally decided to participate can easily drive them away.
I think the major difference is this a new, chilling shift of civil liberties enacted by a political administration - whereas the issues surrounding race/homelessness in this country are pre-existing are having an increasing light shown on them.
When you've convinced people to come to your side and donate money to it, demanding an apology for not coming sooner is a great strategy for revenge, but not a great one for your cause.
From an activist friend:
"Hearing leftists be like "ugh these protesters are so passionate about protesting now but I didn't see them protesting at BLM marches three years ago!" is one of those things that makes me wonder whether the left has been infiltrated by the CIA or whether the death-wish is native."
Given that the leftist death-wish showed up in revolutionary Russia, revolutionary France, and civil war Spain... we should seriously consider that it might be native.
We're not meant to sit here stroking our chins and purring about the good deeds of our favorite companies. YC has an incredible position in Silicon Valley, built over a decade with the help and influence of people like us.
To whom much is given, much is required. I'm glad YC is helping ACLU out this winter. But ACLU took in more money in 1 day last week than NILC, the National Immigration Law Center, spends in a year. After they get done patting themselves on the back for the ACLU win, they should start figuring out how to help the smaller organizations that don't have ACLU's built-in advantages.
We're not here to feel sympathy for Y Combinator or Sam Altman. Most of us will never meet any of these people and, candidly, can't fathom the amount of financial success and security their position has brought them. More power to them! But they exist to us as abstractions, and rightly so, and any pressure we can bring to bear to more fully enlist them in the cause of shoring up our institutions and the rule of law is legitimate.
I think these are all good questions. I can only answer for myself. The latest spate of racism and bigotry are what finally prompted me to commit to funding the ACLU on a regular basis. Prior to this election season I was more passive in my outlook, especially since neither major political party here in the U.S. aligns with my personal beliefs. Now I realize that was naive, and I don't want to wait, like Martin Niemöller did, to stand with my fellows against injustice and bigotry while we still have a chance to change things for the better.
So because this didn't happen earlier, when you wish it did, it can't be celebrated as a step in the right direction? Progress, by its very nature, takes time and is incremental. By this logic, no one should ever bother with anything like this, because it will just be seen as cynical "marketing."
I agree, but it's not just a vague sense of unease that bothers me. It's actually very real and very concrete.
I am probably in the very far left-wing on this website in many regards, and what I see in a lot of this effusive and reflexive anti-Trumpism, is a lot of dubious and easily rolled-back gains. At climax radical right-wing activity, the GOP can just throw Donald Trump under the bus, and I think this would completely destroy any of the coalitions currently being built up against him, because the agreement on everything else is vague.
A lot of people really and deeply want to believe that the problem is Donald Trump himself, not the entire institution that props him up. I've seen numerous liberals (as opposed to leftists) on the internet openly and effusively embrace John McCain in his fashionable and phony role of maverick, the man who sang "Bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys. It's bewildering.
Another example is the Women's March. A friend of mine mentioned to a fellow protestor how important it was for her to fight for reproductive rights, and this woman's response was that it wasn't even about that, it's mostly just about Trump's disrespect towards women. And if you go on the movement's website, it's true. It doesn't mention planned parenthood or reproductive rights at all. Some people see it as a virtue, I think it is a strategic error.
Moreover, I think everyone on the broad left clearly understood Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" as a dogwhistle for bygone years largely characterized by white supremacy and a vision of the ideal normal nuclear family. The real surprising thing is that a lot of the impassioned, patriotic rallying cries against Trump today, by celebrities who describe themselves as patriots who were proud up until yesterday, are exactly the same: "Make America Great Again". It's just that they pine for the great Obama years instead.
There is almost zero mea-culpa about how it was possible that Trump got elected in the first place, and it's become so important to "stop Trump" that criticizing allies is a huge faux-pas. I don't see this building into a healthy strong movement.
Just because somebody or an organization failed to do something charitable in the past is no reason to criticize them for doing it in the future. I see this argument everywhere these days. Business change and their priorities change, just like people.
Your concern/question is akin to a fallacy of relative privation. Another name for this style of argument is the "not as bad as"-argument.
To answer/satisfy your concern/question is impossible without inaction. The cases you mentioned already happened and are in the past. In essence you are proposing that YC does not act to help solve this current issue, because worse issues happened in the past, and YC did not act then, so it does not deserve to act now (at least, without being accused of hypocrisy and selective outrage). This mode of argumentation results in nothing happening to solve the current issue, just by virtue of there existing past worse issues. I don't think you are really in favor of this.
As for the marketing argument, sure, I can agree this playing a minor role in this decision. But not a major one. There is not much evidence I am aware of, or that you pointed out, signaling that YC does not act in good faith. Though absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence, this alone is not a solid basis for posing that any action that YC takes is purely profit/PR-driven.
Likely, this decision was not instigated out of marketing motives, but like any good decision for a for-profit company: it aligns with marketing motives.
Another angle to look at motives for problem solving: Is the crime of having a less than glamorous motive worse than the outcome of solving the problem? Donating to non-profits makes me feel good. Is this egocentrism worse enough to stop donating?
> Maybe I'm too cynical and look at these moves (AirBnB, Uber, Google, etc...) as marketing moves.
Of course they're marketing moves. Corporations, especially the three you listed, do not do anything that doesn't generate profit or open the window to future profit.
Of course it's the case. Corporations are by law amoral and only allowed to pursue profit for their shareholders. Not to mention all the people who run corporations are billionaires, and billionaires are basically all monsters (if they weren't, they wouldn't still be billionaires.)
And even if it's true, so what? If we have created an environment in which this kind of activism is a profitable marketing move, why, that's awesome, and let's keep it up! I trust the profit motive more than I would trust altruism, when it comes to corporations. It's our job as a society to make sure that doing the right thing is also the profitable thing (and vice versa).
So...what examples are there of blacks being gunned down and slaughtered? I think you do not know what the words you are using actually mean or you are doing it on purpose - which when you line your comments up with the facts; is very disingenuous.
There wasn't as much money coming in because far fewer people were aware of the problem. But some people here have been banging on about such issues for years. The fact that economics outweighs justice is an unfortunate truth about human psychology.
Meantime, don't worry about it. It's normal to feel disoriented when the crowd stampedes where a few had previously blazed a lonely trail, but that's just how people are. Make the most of all this undirected energy.
The reason is that there has been progress or at worst stagnation on these issues. Moreover, what is happening now seems to be damaging the process of government itself. Whilst the things you mention are horrible, they are the result of bad government rather than an attack on the idea of government.
The above does ignore the rather obvious 'which issue affects affluent people more?' question.
I don't care whether google, ycombinator, airbnb, etc acted out of their own self-interest or not (for marketing, as you say). I don't think anyone should. I'm not naive enough to think they would act altruistically, all I can hope for is that our interests align at least temporarily and they help.
Perhaps they could've done more in the situations you're describing, but it seems odd to chastise them now that they are. Would you rather they didn't ever help?
Nice concern trolling. The answer, as I'm sure you well know since you're arguing in bad faith, is that now is always the right time to do something good (like provide financial assistance to the ACLU). The argument that a good deed shouldn't be done now because it should have been done earlier instead is a ridiculous non sequitur.
Not only that but these companies could provide vocational training to adult poor, as well as a conduit to tech education for both poor young blacks as well as poor whites as well as other poor Americans, but that's not sexy. However it is a very big problem for people who earn minimum wage or thereabouts and the unemployed.
If only they got as much enthusiastic and monetary support, we'd be a little more equal amongst ourselves.
There's one big difference to note. This defiance from the general public is less about one single issue (immigration) and more about a pattern of general disregard to law that the elected leader has shown. Instead of upholding the law, he's displayed a willingness to bend or even violate it to his own liking. The one thing that sets America apart economically is the predictability and uniform applicability of the rule of law. The moment this certainty disappears, which is what Trump is driving towards, no company can have a meaningful plan or strategy. From backing out of the TPP to violating privacy agreements with the EU, with every whimsical stroke of his pen he's thrusting America towards economic uncertainty.
The ACLU will hold his actions accountable to the law, and backing it is in the best economic and social interests of the US
The ACLU is not an anti-crime organization is why. Nor is the ACLU a pro-immigration organization. They have repeatedly defended racism when it pertains to first amendment protections. Protecting constitutional rights is their mission and they do it very well. Solving gang violence is extremely difficult and there isn't a non-profit out there that has a clearly-defined path to solving it that can be supported with investment.
Why don't you google "black lives matter ACLU". They have fought data collection about BLM protesters as well as defended people unlawfully detained at protests.
And we have been funding the ACLU individually. I like that YCombinator is now trying to help them as a org.
This comment is unpopular because you're just being a troll.
Edit: I get you are complaining about the recent swell of funding. And YCombinator probably skews immigrant. So I retract my troll comment. But know there are some white devs here who have supported ACLU and BLM. There's no easy answer. Racism is deep in the US (and actually most countries). It's not a zero sum game. Fighting Muslim racism (I know it's a religion) doesn't mean that we forget about other people of color. People have to unlearn the racism that their parents taught them.
Edit2: But black voters didn't turn out to vote for Hillary in support of Mexicans and Muslims. Why should we now help you? Serious question.
In response to your second edit; the vast majority of black voters voted for Hillary, a significantly greater proportion than any other race. Hillary ended up with 88%[1] of the black vote. Furthermore turnout was down across all demographics in 2016.
Your link only talks about early voting in South Carolina. I haven't been able to find a source on black voter turnout numbers nationwide in 2016. As I said in my previous comment, voter turnout was down across all demographics[1]. It's very difficult to vote more loyally to the democratic party than black people have over the past two decades or so.
I posted this later[1]. I think overall voter turnout was slightly down. Also, I am not blaming Hillary's loss on specific demographics. Just let's not start fighting with each other. We all need to step up and get in the game for all.
Look, we're not fighting about some abstract %. Can we agree to fight together? My whole point in this thread was that AA should join the anti-ban movement.
>But black voters didn't turn out to vote for Hillary in support of Mexicans and Muslims. Why should we now help you?
Seemed like the opposite of coming together. My reading of it is; you're accusing black people of being unsupportive of the democratic candidate, and that consequently black people aren't owed the same unity you seem to be arguing for in later comments.
What makes you think Hillary supported or supports Mexicans or Muslims? I mean, granted she used those groups as a foil to beat up on Trump with but as a rule her past actions (e.g. as Sec. Of State) indicate at best a casual (and in my view cruel) indifference to those communities.
OK. Are you saying Clinton = Trump? All I have to say here is I thought Gore = Bush. But 200k people died. So electing a president gets a little more nuanced.
No, I'm saying the differences, especially on immigration, aren't that great. They're far more alike than not. And to see Hillary supporters suddenly take an active protest-level interest in politics just smacks of partisanship.
Yes, I understand the argument is "so what if they're motivated by partisanship?" That's a facile argument, though, because movements like this require sincere dedication for the goal of the movement. If the partisans' goals aren't aligned with the movement's goals, then the partisans can do more damage than if they simply shut up and sat it out.
Hillary never called for a ban on Muslims. Trump has many times. You can argue about the ban being a "muslim ban" or not, but the previous statement is fact.
She's called for doing much worse than banning, under the euphemism of the war on terror. Trump's ban pales in comparison and it's just a terrible bit of partisan hypocrisy to focus on the ban and how important it is to respect Muslims.
OK, again you're saying Clinton = Trump. Or Clinton < Trump. She for sure was a war monger. That concerned me. But she never called for banning muslims.
I feel this is an argument between two people that generally agree but are arguing about some small point.
I'm completely sympathetic to your point. Part of the problem is that the examples you give were, sadly, not enough of a deviation from the status quo to shock people into large scale action/donation. Trump's actions are, and he/Bannon/et al. also built up an ever increasing antagonism during the election cycle that wants an outlet.
My question is, what would you like to see happen? They can't go back in time and donate earlier. Pulling funding now would satisfy the desire for consistency, but doesn't seem like a good outcome.
I don't think I've ever seen a more egregious case of concern trolling.
Here's a tip for you: Complaining about people taking action because you think they should have taken action is stupid. The ACLU is not a be-all end-all shield for everything you don't like and randomly picking your person moral crusades and demanding answers for why the ACLU isn't your personal army is naive and childish.
The ACLU is getting involved now and people are getting involved with the ACLU are doing so because they believe this administration represents an existential threat to the existence of the United States. They don't think that your personal crusades represent as much of a threat.
I'm sorry if you don't like that, but you are contributing the problem of the left. "You want to make the world better? Fuck you, I think this stuff is more important!" is insanity.
I UPVOTE you, even though I do not expect to discuss political issues at HN and I think HN was not encouraging that either,it somehow has the power to push its own political views such as ACLU to a developer like me.
There are so many super-RICH Muslim countries nearby, why don't they take in refugees who share the same ideology first?
Agnostic here so ideology means religion to me to some extent. Muslim is banned not because of its religion, but because of the terrorism it incurred,yes many of them are nice guys, but you do not need a lot to cause massive damages here, no safety, no democracy, it is that simple.
I do not save a snake from frozen for the purpose to show my great love to all beings, as it might kill me afterwards, very old story. Now let us save those inner cities innocent people in this land, and those homeless people first, be it a Muslim or not.
> Now let us save those inner cities innocent people in this land, and those homeless people first,
Doing this prevents you from helping refuges? Why can other, smaller and poorer countries take 100 times as much as the US and their societies don't break together?
The overwhelming majority of the terrorist attacks committed on US soil since 9/11 have been by white dudes who are Christian (or sometimes atheist). Should we ban them?
I'm getting tired of seeing this sentiment. It's popped up constantly over the last few days. Just because people don't protest or support every single cause doesn't take anything away from support of this cause. In fact, people getting outraged enough to get involved for a change may be a good thing for other causes as if people see results they will be more likely to mobilise for other causes in the future.
Likely because people are emboldened to action when they see themselves in those who are being unjustly treated. It's no secret that Silicon Valley is not terribly representative of black people, veterans, and so on. If this is a fault of the folks at YC, I'd wager it's a fault of many many other people as well--so while I feel it is valuable to point out that issues, I don't think it's constructive at all to point at a good deed and ask, "Why not sooner?"
Where were you when all these things were happening? Were you asking YCombinator to address these issues? Are they supposed to address every social justice issue by anyone who thinks it should be addressed?
Be glad they're addressing anything, because they're a tech blog that should focus on tech issues, not every social justice issue on the planet, which there are already many blogs and campaigns and donation sites for.
I know, it is hard to take anything at face value these days.
And asking the question why there is so much support now might not be popular, mainly because the answer is not really pretty.
I do, however, believe that there are some objective reasons for the current wave of support. Some I can think of:
- The events currently unfolding affect a lot more people directly.
- The threat has changed from being systemic but disorganized to intentionally organized. The official stance has shifted as well from being apologetic to "damn fucking right, we're going to eradicate you". (sorry about the language)
- People feel utterly helpless regarding politics in general. They might tell themselves (rightfully or not) that they can talk themselves out of trouble (if they even get into trouble being a good citizen and all). But they feel there's nothing they can personally do to stop DC from messing with their lives, so they put their trust into the hands of organizations like ACLU.
Also, I can personally say, my stance (as a European) went from an amused, uneasy "geez, America, get your shit together" to being actually concerned about western civilization.
It's sad that less people we're inspired to donate earlier, but IMO the whole "you're just realizing this now?" thing is unproductive.
Every person has a moment when they wake up and decided to step up, usually several. Litigating their decision process after he fact does nothing to help. Just say "thanks and welcome, now let's go wake up some others."
Momentum is important and true or not this kind of stuff serves only as a speedbump.
I think it's less about the immigrant situation in particular, and more about the way the new President is wielding his power blatantly in front of a nation who is _extremely_ divided when it comes to their opinion of him. It's not that those other issues are less or more important, but that they have a much less identifiable perpetrator. A prominent cause is more easily reducible.
It's a cry for someone or some organization to help guide us back to center. The ACLU just happens to be one of the best positioned organizations to fit this situation.
While every issue you mentioned is important, the very discussion we're having starts with a base assumption that we live in a society governed by the rule of law. Coupled with the reality that YCombinator is not the Gates Foundation and has a finite amount of money and resources with which to attack problems, helping the ACLU seems to me a brilliant move by YC, to make the largest positive difference possible.
This is why people say all lives matter. Because nowadays the black thing is priority. no matter how serious other people's problems are, other people just get ignored because blacks always get attentions.
That is most definitely not why most people say all lives matter. They say all lives matter because it allows them to point at someone saying Black Lives Matter and make a moral judgement about them. Maybe some of the people saying All Lives Matter mean well but the vast majority of those saying it most definitely do not.
>Where has YCombinator been as our own impoverished African-Americans are getting slaughtered in the streets of Chicago?
Please stop with the hyperbole about Chicago. Yes, it has a problem, but it's beaten by St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland, Newark, and Memphis for per 100k murder rate in 2016. Also, while the national per 100k murder rate has been trending upward lately, it is still lower than approximately 1965 to approximately 2007. [0]
Probably because top SV companies recruit PHDs from the Levant at an order of magnitude more than they recruit from inner city Chicago?
How is this not obvious to the people here on HN? How do the people on here who constantly get holier than thou about demographics in tech not see the obvious machinations? Seriously, look around your office right now and then ask yourself again why top tech companies care more about immigrants than other oppressed groups.
What do you think is more likely, that Google genuinely cares about the immigration of farmers from Libya, or that they have a couple physics PHDs from Iran driving huge amounts of search revenue?
Corporations don't have morality, they have profit motives. YC doesn't give a shit about immigrant rights any more than the unjust deaths of african americans around the US, they care about attracting certain demographics to apply as founders.
> What do you think is more likely, that Google genuinely cares about the immigration of farmers from Libya, or that they have a couple physics PHDs from Iran driving huge amounts of search revenue?
Why not both? If Sergey Brin joining the airport protest is any indication, the leadership genuinely cares about the injustice of the ban - but they're more inclined to act when issues affect them directly.
Nonetheless, Google did support Black Lives Matter, if not quite as loudly. For example, in November 2015, Google.org donated $2 million in grants for racial justice, part of which was supposed to "fund a tech-savvy, grassroots solution to end police violence against communities of color":
> Corporations don't have morality, they have profit motives. YC doesn't give a shit about immigrant rights any more than the unjust deaths of african americans around the US, they care about attracting certain demographics to apply as founders.
I see no evidence this is the case, or that the founders of YC aren't human beings who also make decisions out of legitimate concern for the betterment of the world.
One difference between current events and previous ones is that the current problems run all the way up to the president and Congress, whereas the previous ones did not. I suspect if Obama was the one ordering blacks to be gunned down and Congress was behind him the situation would've changed dramatically.
The ACLU is always active and protecting our rights, I do get the crying wolf fatigue and impression that a lot of this might seem questionable, but right now I think a lot of people are more motivated as this is not an issue of one specific group being targeted/needing help, but the very idea of democracy in America that is under attack by this administration. It is something they have publicly said (trump and bannon), everyone who believes in the constitution should be very worried at what is going on.
Hopefully we are all wrong and overreacting, but if trump has shown one thing it is that you should take what he says literally, and if you pay attention to what he and bannon have said you should be worried, no matter your political leaning or origin.
And that to me means we can't afford to get cynical on people's motives that are reacting to what is going on. So good on YC for doing this now.
Also keep in mind that they have to use very little funding to fight innumerable injustices that have already happened and those that will potentially happen. Its incredibly tough as others have said on other fronts, but from a fiscal perspective its amazing they are able to do as much as they have.
The ACLU does what it can, when it can, with the resources it has.
The answer you're looking for is that now the white-middle class is feeling the possibility of impending disaster, so of course now it's an emergency, and the floodgates of funding have opened.
> Where was the outpouring of funding when black people were being gunned down by cops from West Coast organizations? Where has YCombinator been as our own impoverished African-Americans are getting slaughtered in the streets of Chicago?
The tech community/industry thinks that it is a meritocracy, where race (and hence racism) doesn't exist.
>Where was the outpouring of funding when black people were being gunned down by cops from West Coast organizations? Where has YCombinator been as our own impoverished African-Americans are getting slaughtered in the streets of Chicago? Why weren't we funding the ACLU to help these people? I haven't seen Google talk about this, or AirBnB offer support to widows of veterans whose spouse commits suicide and has left them with nothing.
Thank you for your comment. Trump is anti-establishment (sort of: he's reshaping the establishment with his own insiders, I'm not saying he's any less corrupt) and he's anti-globalism. Don't lie to yourself: that's what this is about. The police state and surveillance state abuses are out of control, Obama dropped over 100,000 bombs on 7 countries, we're consistently throwing constitutional and human rights under the bus, Wall Street and the Fed are permitted to loan each other 16 trillion in secret loans and when it was revealed, the worst that happened was a finger wave from Bernie Sanders, 20 trillion in debt and a necessary, impending economic correction due to overspending (in the same exact way if you were spending way more than you earned for years and years, there's no getting away from that)... and I could go on and on. Please give me a break about Trump, he's a deeply flawed character but I'd like people to start being more honest and respectful to the realities we live with as our civil liberties and constitutional rights are consistently eroding as average, humble people are struggling to afford a middle class lifestyle, and it is magnificently disingenuous to pay lip service to the, and let us be honest, mainstream media which is owned by a small group of over-sized corporations, who play Trump out to be the Devil on Earth. But the real problems existed before and without Trump.
This will be entirely unpopular but I really don't care anymore about what being liberal has become. I care about the fact that we have a torture camp in Cuba, about what I mentioned above and more like it. I care about constitutional rights. Equal opportunity. Human rights. World peace. Environmentalism. Nobody in mainstream politics is actually for those things and it's really bothering me. If someone wrote this during the lead-up to Nazi Germany--you'd look back in retrospect and say they were right--I hope that is not the case for me. But I see just a few good people out there: Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard, Edward Snowden, etc., who really hang out on the fringes of the mainstream consciousness of political thought in America, only once in a while coming into view for moments at a time.
You're committing the classic fallacy of castigating people for trying to fix a problem when they don't fix all problems.
Would you prefer that the wealthy tech companies didn't donate to the ACLU? That they refused to ever support any good causes?
This is a pernicious idea and should be put to death. Trying to step up and do something should not make you a target. Reserve your wrath for the many billionaires who don't do anything about any issue.
I read an article about this phenomenon a while ago, but I can't find the link. It's essentially the fallacy that trying to fix a problem makes you responsible for it—so if you can't completely fix it, you shouldn't try at all.
This is absurd. Following this, no one should ever do anything since they could have just done some other thing sooner.
Now maybe I'm wrong and you're a Nobel Peace laureate, but it looks a lot to me like someone claiming to care but only criticizing in an unproductive manner.
"You should have engaged in this other thing earlier" is a bullshit criticism. And then the holier-than-thou nonsense at the end about just caring oh so much. Unbelievable.
Back then, we had a attorney general who had an interest in dealing with the problem, under an administration that could help deploy the government to deal with bad actors. That's all changed now, and the populous saw the gap, with the ACLU being well equipped to advocate for the same issues.
To the credit of Starbucks, who you didn't mention but could be criticised for the same reasons, they did implement a plan to hire 10,000 veterans in 2013 (https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229828).
I see an error message. But it's actually interesting enough:
"Apache/2.2.24 (Unix) mod_hive/5.5 mod_ssl/2.2.24 OpenSSL/1.0.0-fips mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_fastcgi/2.4.6 mod_fcgid/2.3.6 Server at blog.ycombinator.com Port 443"
This is all widely outdated. OpenSSL 1.0.0 support has ended in 2014. Running mod_fcgid and mod_fastcgi in the same server process doesn't seem to make any sense (as they are basically competitioners for the same functionality).
People who want to use their tech and coding skills to enable and enact progressive change should consider getting involved in the ProgressiveCodersNetwork (Progcode)[0]. They are a dedicated organization that is all about facilitating and organizing efforts, not dictating projects.
1,121 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 458 ms ] threadThe concern about HN becoming too political or not political enough is as old as HN. There are at least as many users complaining that we're suppressing all the political stories and what not. I wrote more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13516969 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13522433 if anyone's interested.
I'm a hn user since at least 9.8 years ago (my first HN handle was different than current, which is 7 years old).
To my impression as a relatively apolitical person, the site has become MUCH more political in the past year. I may be wrong in that though.
It's an election year.
Some of the policies and statements on display are extremely divisive.
Divisiveness breeds discontent at all levels, discussion, intimidation, outright violence.
Now, it is clear that YC leadership has taken a highly liberal stand. I won't make a judgement on liberal or republican, but it feels more and more extreme. When an organization leans either direction too hard, it loses its purity. YC is becoming the liberal version of the Koche Brothers. HN is reflecting that in YC's movement.
I'm sure that Sam Altman and the rest of your team feel that it is worth it, but in my opinion, overt political support by an organization feels like a losing long-term strategy.
I guess we will see
How do you figure? It seems more that the GOP has driven off of a sanity cliff, and the "liberal" party is the only party left for sane people to join.
I would be very afraid of anyone who thinks that protecting the rights guaranteed by the Constitution is "highly liberal". You do realize that the ACUL has been known to defend the rights of KKK and Nazi party members too, right? They stand up for everyone's rights, not just liberals.
There were lots of civil liberties eroded during Obama's presidency, but YC & Sam Altman at no point in time stood up and said anything or did anything like they are doing now.
Donald Trump's order is not conservative, and opposing it is not liberal. The order is authoritarian. This is not a conservative vs liberal fight in any way and the ACLU is not a liberal organization. If you want to be cynical about it, this is a business move. They didn't stand up in the past because Obama's policies didn't threaten their business model like Trump's do.
The rest of your comment is too political for me to comment on.
I think it's uncontroversial that there are likely a large number of HN members who have favorable opinions of Y Combinator. That said, I don't see evidence of Y Combinator exercising any kind of persuasion or manipulation of the members where one can reasonably say that HN members are following Y Combinator's lead. And there's enough vociferous, contentious, argumentative political discussion on HN that it's clear to me that HN doesn't represent a single bloc of anything other than all participating in the HN forums.
As for YC becoming the liberal version of the Koch brothers, I think it's hard to underestimate the difference in scale. In January 2015, the Koch brothers budge for the 2016 campaign was nearly $900 million.[0] Along with Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers largely bankrolled the Tea Party into national government[1] in 2010.
Another significant difference, in my opinion, is that the Koch brothers themselves are not very vocal or public. They operate largely behind the scenes. Y Combinator has been much more vocal about what they're doing.
And it bears keeping in mind that YC has kept Peter Thiel on as a part-time partner: if YC's motivations were purely political, I think it's fair to say they'd have cut ties with Thiel just as so many have been clamoring for them to do.
All said, I don't think the comparison has much merit.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/kochs-plan-to...
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html
I do appreciate your comment
From the hundreds of Big 4 employees who now can't return home or travel overseas, to the 110,000 answers submitted to StackOverflow from the now banned countries, this affects the industry.
Discussing politics is not the same as having an agenda.
> Right or wrong, this used to be mainly about startups.
I don't recall such a time and I've been here quite long.
> Now its become a highly political message board
This is most likely a reaction to real world developments involving a large number of HN participants.
Just like HN isn't a San Francisco local affair and yet when BART has issues you can expect it to be upvoted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7774764
It might not be a secret or pernicious agenda, but it seems people forget what agenda means.
Yes, that's an excellent point. It amounts to a denial of service attack on informed discourse.
I was very happy to see YC do their part in what will be a 4-8 year (at least) battle of attrition and will. The ACLU is one of the best advocates for the people, in a country where corporate and religious lobbying trumps most.
There are no vacuums anymore, if there ever were (which I doubt). If something is 'about' startups then it is by necessity also about the politics those companies are involved in, especially considering in the US companies are persons with certain rights of expression.
Thanks to the intertwining of capitalism with our representative democracy by way of lobbying, our everyday lives are politicized. Should we suppress these notions or engage with them?
I set up a monthly donation to the ACLU last year, and encourage everyone who can afford to do so to join in.
EDIT: Clarify wording.
Of course, it's perfectly consistent to believe that the government of the United States of America does not sufficiently respect the civil liberties of non citizens.
If American liberties are a concept to apply over the whole world, the ACLU should be encouraging the whole world to a adopt the Bill of Rights and our Constitution.
Isn't it reasonable that we should seek to limit the actions of our government towards non citizens to those actions that are necessary or beneficial (either to US interests or to both parties)?
So for example, it may be reasonable to investigate the backgrounds of people that would like to visit the United States. But after such a reasonable investigation, I personally don't think the government should then be allowed to use those people as political props.
Our Constitution contemplates the arrival of immigrants and indeed specifies that their should be 'uniform rules' for their naturalization. It also distinguishes between citizens and persons, granting some rights to the latter group and limiting others to the former.
We are delighted to be funding the ACLU as a non-profit[0] in our Winter 2017 batch.
The ACLU has always been important, but has a particularly important role[1] right now. We are honored to be able to help, and we will send some of our team to New York for the rest of the batch to assist.
The ACLU will have full access to the Y Combinator network and community, and they will present at Demo Day in March.
We are hopeful that the YC community will join us in supporting this important work. In particular, if you’re an engineer and want to spend some time helping them out, let us know.[2] We’ll keep you updated on opportunities.
Also, please consider donating to the ACLU.[3]
[0] http://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/
[1] https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/president-trumps-firs...
[2] https://ycombinatorevents.wufoo.com/forms/q42uszl19i1mu6/
[3] https://action.aclu.org/secure/donate-to-aclu
That's insane.
Also I'm happy that this is happening and did not realize such a thing was possible. Does ACLU count as an early stage startup?
PS: no need to downvote, jeez, I'm just pointing out a curious observation
I think it's a pretty damn good thing when it's needed, so let's cool it with the "everyone on the planet thinks" business.
https://www.aclu.org/issues/reproductive-freedom/abortion
I'm a strange mix of conservative and liberal views, but I find myself strongly agreeing with "whole life" groups like Democrats for Life of America.
https://www.facebook.com/Dems4Life/
There are lots of pro-life women out there.
http://www.pewforum.org/2017/01/11/public-opinion-on-abortio...
Get your religion out of here, please.
https://www.thefire.org/
The mission of FIRE is to defend and sustain individual rights at America's colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience — the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE's core mission is to protect the unprotected and to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them.
This is why you lost btw.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Your phrasing as "I believe in the civil rights for all people, outside the womb, and inside" carries the implicit assumption that pro-abortion people do not, in fact, believe in the civil rights for all people. The reality is that the down-voters likely do believe in the civil rights for all people, but do not believe that a fetus is a person yet. Since that is generally the debate between those who are for and against abortion, the feeling of passive-aggression from your comment stems from entirely disregarding the other side's point of view and instead simply implying that they don't care about civil liberties.
FWIW, I think just saying "I am pro-life" wouldn't have gotten you down-voted to oblivion.
While I don't object to many of these organizations, I take my privacy very seriously and I wasn't aware when I donated that my personal information would be given/sold out the way it has been.
At least now it seems like they let you opt out.
This is a problem in the non-profit industry that should get addressed, especially given younger generations are less likely to respond to mailers anyways.
Our organization struggles to unsubscribe people from mailing lists. It's kind of ridiculous.
- YC would undoubtedly like to ensure there are no barriers to immigrant founded startups that they would like to invest in
- ensuring that there are fewer barriers to employment by immigrants in invested startups
- generally trying to build a better more open world (which is in line with the UBI initiative [0] as well as the stated interest in investigating new concepts for city design [1])
[0] - https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/31/y-combinator-announces-bas...
[1] - https://www.wired.com/2016/07/y-combinators-plan-build-new-c...
You don't speak for me. I favor a world without closed borders where labor can move as freely as capital does and transactional and jurisdictional burdens are coordinated so as to be minimal. I'm very impressed by the EU's Schengen agreement permitting free movement between all EU states, and I doubt any Americans would favor interstate border restrictions despite the sometimes huge differences between individual states.
You're welcome to hold a different opinion, but that's all it is.
No idea how accurate these figures are, but: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00003147...
Separately, a 501(c)3 is allowed to engage in lobbying - they are just subject to restrictions on how much time and money than can spend (last I checked, it's up to 10% of time and 10% of money).
"Peter is a part-time partner at YC, meaning he spends a small fraction of his time advising YC companies, does not have a vote in how YC is run, and in his case waives the equity part-time partners normally get."
The ACLU probably isn't, and I think the parent's question is whether YC has funded any other companies of the same type.
Increasingly - and assuringly IMO - it's difficult to coherently distinguish "groups involved in politics" from other groups (ie, there is no other type of group).
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/20/president-obama-will-headl...
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2017/01/28/peter-thiel-s...
[2] http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316726-giuliani-t...
* Indonesia 204,847,000 (87.2%)
* Pakistan 178,097,000 (96.4%)
* India 172,245,158 (14.2%)
* Bangladesh 145,312,000 (90%)
* Nigeria 75,728,000 (47.9%)
If Indonesia suddenly became plagued by radical Islamic terrorism then it would be on the list too.
The seven countries targeted by the immigration ban have been either failed states or antagonistic to the US for the past 30 years, it is quite plain to say that it makes sense for Trump's companies -- and various other companies across a wide swath of industries -- to refrain from conducting business there. To say that other Muslim-majority countries aren't on the list due to conflict of interest is to deny this simple logic.
Plenty of other Muslim-majority countries have kept a lid on their populace by maintaining adequate internal security within their borders and providing valuable counter-terrorism intelligence to to the US, meanwhile the seven "countries of concern" have not.
[1] https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e...
2. Pakistan = the only way US troops can get into Afghanistan.
Looking for "justice" in US foreign policy (or any country's foreign policy) is naive.
Edit: I'm not making comments about Trump's actions (specifically, I'm not defending what he did). As for whether this particular list stands up to scrutiny, that question should have been asked a long time ago.
http://www.snopes.com/trump-immigration-order-obama/
What happened was Obama signed the bill imposing exceptions to the Visa Waiver Program in December 2015, and then his own DHS added the current list of middle eastern nations in February 2016.
It is the most tenuous argument to act like that was the work of the GOP.
Bannon is a genius. The fact that he can co-opt partisans in the deflection of criticism with facile ideas like "Obama did it" is terrifying.
That was taken directly from a bill Hillary Clinton co-sponsored years earlier (though obviously with far less context or nuance).
They're very mindful to use some sort of liberal precedent when fanning their flames, giving them (and their flock) plenty of retaliatory talking points.
One reason this is interesting is that there there were some very widely-circulated - and of course false - claims on social media that the choice of countries was somehow influenced by Trump's business interests, and that the fact no-one from countries on the list had killed in the US proved Trump was inspired by racism or even an outright fascist. https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/825473088758374400 was typical of the genre. Snopes decided to show an uncharacteristic lack of interest in online rumours by not mentioning them. Naturally, the same people who were spreading those claims are now spreading the debunkings about how no, Trump's ban is nothing like Obama's.
I think you're hearing echoes in your "sound mind."
Six of the seven countries are failed states and the other openly calls for the US' destruction.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks
That's your definition of "keeping a lid" and "maintaining internal security"?
Saudi-Arabian nationals provide the ideological standing that IS leaders use, and Saudi-Arabian money financed the rise of IS. And I believe that there's a large number of SA-origin IS fighters, but can't remember where I read that, so take it with a grain of salt.
Maybe somebody should ask Obama's DHS head?
It's entirely possible for a leader to be simultaneously corrupt and motivated by hate.
so its places where there are currently insurgent wars going on
or places that are considered state sponsors of terrorism
------
both situations complicate the ability to do background checks,
neither situation applies to most of the countries brought up when wondering why those places were left off the list
But considering the existing bullshit rollercoaster, you ask why MORE countries weren't banned ?
This video presents all points of hypocrisy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNu4xU9qOEM
http://www.snopes.com/trump-immigration-order-obama/
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1187
See section (12) Not present in Iraq, Syria, or any other country or area of concern
It is unbelievable how bad the media is now at doing their job of informing the public.
Your ad hominem attacks are not welcome here.
And if that's true, either the DHS is doing a spectacularly awful job, or we're not hearing the full story of what they did and did not recommend.
Of the 7 nations on the list, Iran has the only functioning government, but is a huge state sponsor of terrorism against our allies in the region and we are not allied with them.
To claim this is a bigoted move by Trump because of Islam is a simple and narrow minded view and shows a clear lack of factual information and first rate thinking.
9/11 commission report documented the terrorists meeting with Saudi intelligence officers on US soil and they were partly funded by Saudi royalty. Also lets look at Pakistan. They were harboring Osama Bin Laden.
We deal with a lot of countries around the world that do things we don't like, we don't have to like it, but diplomacy and politics are messy and require compromise in situations where it's a better choice versus the alternative.
The nations on the list have vast regions of lawlessness and they've lost control of their populations.
Egypt, Tunisia, Kuwait etc. have functioning governments that are very actively engaged against terrorism.
Remember that ISIS/AlQueda wants to take out the House of Saud before they go after the USA :)
The 'Islamic countries not on the list' are much more afraid of terrorism than the US is.
Just today a Saudi ship was hit by a missile from Iranian backed terrorists in Yemen, off the coast.
The only country that is on the list that has a 'sound government' is Iran - but they are state-sponsors of terror, and are actively trying to destabilize the region - and pushing hard to topple Saudi, as well as supporting Assad. I suggest that one is a little more political because Iran does not itself produce terrorists of the kind we are afraid are going to come and 'bomb America'.
I don't agree with Trumps policy - but 'the list' is quite rational.
They were the homes for Osama bin Laden(s), weren't they?
(1) this could be just a trial balloon
(2) there are no other war torn countries on the list (and there are many)
(3) many of the stated reasons for this ban appear to be total nonsense, so people will start looking for alternative explanations.
Trump tried to find a way to institute this ban such that it wasn't blatantly a muslim ban. He decided that if he used a country list from the Obama administration, he could use that as a defense. This is generally how people try to create racist laws in modern times. The Voting Rights Act wasn't created because states created laws saying "minorities should be discouraged from voting". It was created because politicians came up with laws that targeted minorities without explicitly naming them.
Thiel went to Stanford Law, he knows this, he is just trying to recover because he still doesn't know what to do about the fact that Trump was talking literally, despite Thiel's insistence repeatedly that Trump was talking symbolically. If this isn't a muslim ban, Thiel can continue to insist that Trump's promise of such a ban was not literal.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
The "logic" for the countries selected is that they were already "countries of concern." [1] However, the executive order is written in such a way as to allow religious minorities in, even though they're from a "country of concern." The implication is that what makes the countries, "of concern," is their Muslim majorities. Otherwise, it would be unsafe to let in other religious groups as well.
There are all kinds of explanations for this, of course. The administration may have wanted to ban everyone, but didn't want the heat from the Christian right. They may have wanted to specify Christians instead of minorities, but they would look even more anti-semitic than they already do [2]. They may have written a sloppy executive order and not forseen how it would play.
They may also have used a list of countries from the Obama era as cover and written the order such that it would focus on Muslims with plausible deniability about that focus. They've already said they can add more countries to the list.
I think pointing out that the executive order could have banned more Muslims is worth saying but somewhat misses the point. The people who wrote this clearly think adherents to Islam are more dangerous than other believers. The fact that most Muslims can still get to the US does not change the nature of the order.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/29/politics/how-the-trump-adminis... [2] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/28/team_trump...
I think it would be more exact to say that the writers believe some self-identified Muslims are sufficiently dangerous that it justifies temporarily banning anyone associated with certain Muslim-majority countries from coming into the US until we can distinguish those who wish to cause harm from those who do not. And since it's difficult to imagine how one could ever distinguish between these groups perfectly, and since other countries can be added to the list, it seems possible that this will lead to a permanent ban on Muslims entering the US.
I find their precept reasonable: there are individuals from these countries who claim to be Muslim and who intend to enter the US and cause us harm --- possibly because we bombed their cousin's wedding, killing half their relatives and maiming half the rest. It seems likely that our current approach to immigration is not sufficient to prevent these harmful individuals from entering the US.
So what should we do? Personally, I think we should stop killing people with drones, since I can't see how this is actually helping the situation. But given that previous administrations have killed a lot of people, and given that some of their surviving relatives are likely to seek revenge, is there anything we can do to protect ourselves? Or is the threat overblown, and any attempt at mitigation is worse than the damage the these (potentially non-existent) terrorists can do to us?
If someone wishes to come to the US, we'll need to ask if they're a religious minority. I'm sure that anyone wishing to attack the US (Muslim or otherwise) would be willing to lie to the US so they appear to fit the requirements.
To deal with that possiblitiy, the US would have to do research on that person's background. If it can conclude with satisfaction they actually are of that religion, they can come. Otherwise, the US denies the application with "not enough evidence."
If the US can do the research on their religious background, why can't the US do research on their political affiliations? On their views on the US?
Even from a, "damn the morals, let's be practical," perspective religious belief strikes me as a very weak indicator. Its confounded by all kinds of personal factors. Especially in muslim majority nations.
To your question: A mix of both. I think one of the "disadvantages" of a free society is that it's easier to commit terrorism. Yet we have few attacks. I think it's sensible to check that someone is not an active member of a group that wishes a country harm, but I think we need to consider the cost in lives to that filtering. If we double the time spent checking someone's background and they die after the halfway point, is that moral? If we half the number of people we can process to lower the risks, is that moral?
If nothing else, I think the executive order is totally divorced from a reasonable and adult conversation about risk and morality.
Did you really mean to say that?
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-...
1/28/16/ Spicer: “Trump is doing what he said he would do”
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316730-spicer-tru...
(also, Trump retweeting various people saying he's keeping all his promises in this regard)
1/29/16 Trump: “This is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting.”
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/29/14432362/tr...
Sure, it's not targeted at Muslims, it's a ban for people from certain Muslim-majority countries with exceptions for non-Muslims.
And then you have Giuliani saying Trump asked him how to do a Muslim ban legally, and Flynn Jr. calling it a necessary Muslim ban
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9GKL6i38pI
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/michael-g-flynn-delete...
Gonna go out on a limb and say anyone 'of sound mind' as you say would say, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on. [...]
It's entirely reasonable to consider a politician's stated aspirations as well as their more limited actions in office, since the latter are often incremental steps towards a larger goal.
Please don't argue but trying to bury people in irrelevant facts. That tactic is called a Gish Gallop and makes you look like you're arguing in bad faith. Considering the administration's on-again off-again relationship with basic concepts of truth and fact, nitpicking arguments are best avoided.
It cannot be that the administration gets to decide when to cite facts and figures or when to make sweeping and inaccurate generalizations; if critics are to be held to a different standard of truth from the administration, then we have a government that asserts exclusive domain over the notion of truth itself. Are you sure that's something you want to support?
What do you feel about the argument that we've "figured out" that Muslims coming from these larger countries are not a significant threat, but that our visa and refugee policies are not yet sufficiently reliable for us to say this about the countries that we've recently been bombing?
Do you think there is a legitimate threat, but the measures in the executive order are insufficient to prevent it? That there is a threat, but that there are no positive steps we can take to mitigate it? That the best way of countering the threat is to embrace potentially dangerous immigrants from these countries? Or that there is no particular threat and there is no need to change the current system?
If you don't mind legal reading, most large cities have law libraries and most large law libraries keep copies of Bender's Immigration bulletin or Interpreter Releases, two professional journals which chronicle legal proceedings in immigration cases. You may find it instructive to study some in order to get a better idea of the quality and weight of evidence offered in such proceedings.
Our Visa and refugee policies are the product of over a century of operational and historical experience. It's not as if we've never been faced with such complexities before and can't figure out where to begin. The claim that we can't figure this out right now is literally an appeal to ignorance. The reality is that we have tough and elaborate screening procedures in place already, and abundant data on the risk factors.
If the government wants to do some bad or unethical, they won't be straight about it. They will use euphemisms and "newspeak" to disguise their intentions (e.g. "enhanced interrogation").
It's akin to parallel construction. Start with the party that is presumed guilty, then work backwards to change your actions and arguments so that you can still persecute the party but without obviously breaking any laws.
So between Peter Thiel and the ACLU, I think we have some 1st rate minds at YC.
1 http://twitter.com/paulg
EDIT: I changed "conservatives" to "people who identify as conservatives" to clarify. Some replies below referred to the philosophical conservatism, which is somewhat different.
Some good evidence against your interpretation of YC's actions here as simple partisan attack:
* YC did not partner with the ACLU on election day, or on inauguration day, but only after a partial Muslim ban became the law of the land.
* YC quasi-defended Peter Thiel and allowed him to remain as a partner in the face of pretty strong pushback from the left.
Hence the attacks on Dukakis for being a member of the ACLU during his election campaign, and his joking self-labeling as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU" (in reference to McCarthy's references to "card-carrying Communists").
EDIT: And for yet more historical background - it was originally founded (as the Civil Liberties Bureau) to defend anti-war speech and conscientious objection during World War I, which were mostly left-wing and far-left-wing phenomena. Post-war, in addition to serving as an ethnically-neutral counterpart to ethnic civil-liberties organizations such as the ADL (Jewish) and the NAACP (African-American), it spent a lot of time defending free political speech. And the free political speech that was most under attack through its seminal period in the 1920s was labor organizing and socialist politics. (Because of the phenomenon of white-supremacist Southern Democrats, minority-rights issues did not necessarily line up with party politics, but they were indeed perceived as left-right issues in the sense that racial equality was considered a far-left position.)
``` The ACLU has been criticized by liberals, such as when it excluded Communists from its leadership ranks, when it defended Neo-Nazis, when it declined to defend Paul Robeson, or when it opposed the passage of the National Labor Relations Act.[62][63] Conversely, it has been criticized by conservatives, such as when it argued against official prayer in public schools, or when it opposed the Patriot Act.[64] The ACLU has supported conservative figures such as Rush Limbaugh, George Wallace, Henry Ford, and Oliver North; and it has supported liberal figures such as Dick Gregory, Rockwell Kent, and Dr. Benjamin Spock.[18][65][66][67][68][69][70][71] A major source of criticism are legal cases in which the ACLU represents an individual or organization that promotes offensive or unpopular viewpoints, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, Nation of Islam, North American Man/Boy Love Association, or Westboro Baptist Church. The ACLU responded to these criticisms by stating "It is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something many people find at least reasonable. But the defense of freedom of speech is most critical when the message is one most people find repulsive."[72] ```
Also I found this article: http://www.aclufightsforchristians.com/
Seems like ACLU historically has not cared about partisan politics, left vs right, and care most about their mission of defending civil liberties, and individual rights.
Says something about the as state of (particularly right-wing) American politics, IMO.
That's a joke, right? The ACLU has been a prominent critic of Obama's executive overreach and even Muslim profiling.
as far as I've seen, a global job market has resulted in more exploitation than prosperity. Most of the profit seems to go to international businesses that have little interest in giving back to their host nation in the form of jobs or taxes.
Now there is a term I never expected to see.
That's not entirely a coherent combination of labels; the closest thing in the real USA to that seems to be bog-standard conservatives who selectively deploy libertarian rhetoric against programs they oppose.
what is incoherent about it? Both libertarianism and nationalism are vast repositories of political thought that can be combined in any number of ways. Libertarianism at its core does not require forfeiting national interests, nor do national interests require forfeiting a global economy founded on capitalist principles.
The reaction to Trump's executive order actually seems to personify the inherent conflict between the two sides -- while a lot of conservatives (including, I would say, those with more nationalistic viewpoints) approve of the executive order, the libertarian side so far seems to be pretty vocal about their disapproval.
I think the assent/dissent situation around Trump is a lot more complex than "conservatives for, libertarians against", precisely because his platform consists of a mix of ideological positions. He has almost nothing in common with neoconservatives (which seems to have been a big hitter for public appeal), and both conservatives and libertarians seem to differ depending on their concern for specific libertarian policies. Hence the fracturing of the GOP, with as many representatives condemning him as supporting him. After all, the GOP is nothing if not a grab-bag of varying political positions.
Compare Donald Trump to Ron and Rand Paul, which are the prime examples of what libertarianism is (unlike Gary Johnson), there is a lot of overlap: free market healthcare, strong borders, deportation of illegal aliens, deregulations, tax cuts and tax code simplifications. There are disagreements on free trade (and please note that TPP is "free trade", not free trade) and NSA spying.
As for Pauls being conservative, as long as they are not using government power to force you to be like them it's all fine in my books.
Among most people with an education conservatives are not really welcome right now. If you feel welcome, people are being polite, but we are all really really mad at you right now.
-honest feelings.
-Honest feelings, sorry.
> Among most people with an education conservatives are not really welcome right now
is untrue.
I don't think that most educated people lump Trumpian ignorance and the politics of idiocy with conservatism; the two traditions have completely different origin stories and share relatively little philosophical or political underpinnings. It is precisely people in the academic community who are most keen to recognize this.
"Tolerance"
What we are seeing over the last week and what is expected to be coming from the Trump administration in the near future have little to do with liberal vs. conservative. I know many conservatives who are outright horrified by what they are seeing.
Sounds like a personal problem. "Oh no, an organization that defends people's liberties is making me feel uncomfortable!"
Opposing a border wall defends no one's civil liberties.
A lot of conservative landowners on the border are very much against the idea, and private property ownership is part of the reason the current fence has gaps in it.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/17/texas-border-w...
Cash talks and bullshit walks. Tell me, if you're a free-market conservative, why YC or the ACLU should disregard such a resonating and clear message from the market.
If YC wants to be politically oriented, they can and should, but it strikes me as something they should be open about.
Participating in YC is assenting to American capitalism and working to enrich YC investors, which is a political act. Cooperating with Peter Thiel is a political act. Expanding the labor supply in markets with unions is a political act. Disrupting healthcare is a political act. Employment under H1B visas is political.
YC can admit [your candidate here] supporters and say 'we won't discriminate based upon your political affiliations or your vote' but they will absolutely discriminate against each other's political aims because of the political ramifications of the any work done by technologists.
With a number of layers of indirection, maybe. Capitalism is a system of economic organisation and is not inherently political. The wide variety of both left-leaning and right-leaning capitalist countries speaks to that.
what I mean when I say political is overt politics. You can argue that "the personal is political" or "everything is political" but there's a considerable difference in granularity between agreeing to work with a libertarian or trying to improve the healthcare industry, and donating money to an anti-Trump cause. Donating to the ACLU is an act of political affiliation given their recent spotlight, whereas simply agreeing to work with Thiel or employing a H1B worker is an economic act in the frame of capitalism.
Economic systems are SO radically political that people used 'socialist' as a slur against Obama. McCarthyism. CIA overthrow of democratically-elected socialist governments. Not political?
Not to pick on Peter Thiel, but he's a convenient and recent example. He donated $1.25M to Trump. He wouldn't have had $1.25M to donate to Trump if people didn't earn that money for him. You can cast it as wishy-washy, indirect, etc. but at the end of the day that check cleared.
"Socialist" as a slur for Obama was in reference to the political act of taxation and wealth redistribution. Neither of these things are capitalist, and the term "socialist" has a somewhat different meaning to the original political system, when it comes to American politics. American "socialism" is more akin to social democracy i.e. a capitalism-driven welfare state. At least, that's my understanding.
McCarthyism was political, nothing to do with economics. The CIA interfered with other countries' political process (i.e. staging a coup).
The whole idea of capitalism is that people join together in free association to trade for mutual benefit. The responsibility ends there. If I buy your goods and then somewhere down the line you decide to use that cash to buy a weapon and kill someone, I am in no way responsible for that because it is a separate transaction that I did not enter into. Ergo, trading with Thiel is not a political act that can somehow be ratified retrospectively. It is an economic act. If your agreement was "I'll trade with you on the condition that you donate the profits to Trump", then it becomes political. From my perspective, the distinction is pretty clear to be honest.
That argument might work until you try to convince any other person. If you're buying cocaine from FARC, what did you expect them to do?
Similarly all the profound libertarian arguments on this thread will last up until they need $500k for cancer treatment and end up an indentured servant to a future billionaire hedge-fund AI.
even throwing FARC or cocaine into that equation muddies the water because cocaine is illegal (and thus inherently a political purchase) and FARC are known for their violent tactics and thus when you purchase from them you are wilfully accepting that your money may be used for violence (unless you aren't aware of what FARC does when you enter the transaction).
If you want to get into the ambiguities of terrorism and drugs, then what about your average joe buying some weed from their local dealer? If you know that dealer works with a cartel then by buying from him you are knowingly funding the cartel. If you have no idea whether he works with a cartel or not, then you can't be said to be knowingly funding the cartel - you are just participating in a transaction. The alternative as I see it is to suggest that everyone who smokes marijuana illegally is pro-cartel or pro-terror, or at least is OK with the idea that their money may be used for violence.
> Similarly all the profound libertarian arguments on this thread will last up until they need $500k for cancer treatment and end up an indentured servant to a future billionaire hedge-fund AI.
this is literally the entire point of the insurance industry - to absorb black swan risks. Do you think that insurance would not exist in a libertarian society? Plus, by reintroducing supply and demand into the medical industry you would likely see those obscene costs fall drastically when no-one can afford $500k for treatment, especially with reduced government bureaucracy and regulation increasing costs.
McCarthy hunted down communists (supposed and actual).
> The whole idea of capitalism is that people join together in free association to trade for mutual benefit. The responsibility ends there.
It appears to me that you are conflating 'socialism' with 'planned economy' and 'capitalism' with 'free market'.
yes, and communism is a political belief. Political persecution is a political action, not an economic one.
> It appears to me that you are conflating 'socialism' with 'planned economy' and 'capitalism' with 'free market'.
I don't believe I am. The premise of capitalism is mutually beneficial trade of privately owned and produced goods. I think you are confusing capitalism and social democracy, in that social democracy adds burdens onto the capitalist economy (for example, taxes and regulations) for the benefit of society at large and to counteract the problems that free-market capitalism can create (exploitation, the tragedy of the commons, etc).
That's pretty depressing.
Really makes you think...
If you believe in individual freedom, small government, low taxes, and heavy use of market solutions, I haven't seen anything from YC that runs against those ideas.
The issues YC seems to oppose are nativism/xenophobia and authoritarianism. Opposition to the former is a wholly rational decision to preserve YC's access to the best international founders, and authoritarianism presents slightly more round-about problems for YC in reduced press freedom and tighter relationships between large corporations and government, both of which make life more difficult for startups.
Lastly, there exists a wing of American conservatism which is significantly more racist, sexist, and homophobic than the national average. I think you're right, that group would not feel welcome at YC nor should they. Their exclusion is based on their personal views, which they are capable of changing. Their inclusion would make others feel excluded on the basis of immutable traits, which is far worse in my opinion.
The partners in their individual capacities largely stick to statements on specific issues, and YC itself mostly promotes specific organizations and policies, eg permissive immigration rules for entrepreneurs. There's little ambiguity in those statements and actions, so it's up to every individual applicant to determine whether the sum indicates an overall culture they could enjoy.
If you have a specific YC action/statement which you think runs counter to a conservative position outside of nativism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, the HN readers would probably enjoy reading it so they can weigh its meaning for themselves.
I'm not sure which "wing" of conservatism you are speaking of but I'm neither "alt-right" but my views are likely to be labeled as something like "homophobic." I get the feeling that national average you speak of isn't really average so much as it's left-leaning and acceptable in your views.
I do agree that there are people who are vehemently and dangerously bigoted and I gladly condemn them. However, there are people who have extremely reasoned yet different beliefs than most people you'd likely find at YC.
If the left is going to continue to preach "inclusivity" and "diversity" then it would behoove them to actually ensure that there are those things rather than limited everyone to a particular worldview that makes people feel comfortable.
The leader of YC is a gay man. A number of YC founders are also gay.
I bring this up not because it comes up a lot, but because you seem to view homophobia as an "opinion" that should be respected by gay people as "inclusive" and "diverse". You can certainly believe that, but you're not likely to get anywhere with it.
The issue I have is that what some people consider "homophobic" isn't really homophobic at all. For example:
Not homophobic: * Having a deeply held belief that homosexuality is wrong. * Being for laws that provide freedom of conscience. * Being against laws that elevate people to a protected class.
Actually Homophobic: * Conspiring against, starting rumors about, or otherwise attempting to defame someone simply because they are gay. * Verbally or physically assaulting someone simply because they "look gay". * Believing that anyone who claims to be LGBT isn't really a person (or is somehow lesser) because they aren't like you.
But sure, obviously, anything you want to think in your own head and not express publicly is fairly immune to labels. I'm thinking things right now, for example.
I'm failing to see how that isn't blatantly hypocritical.
If you think homosexuality is wrong but you keep that to yourself and don't let it influence your business decisions, your private beliefs will also have no effect on other YC founders, and you'll be welcome in the community.
If a gay man said "I believe heterosexuality is wrong and I reserve the right to not do business with heterosexuals to keep my conscience free" they wouldn't be included because that's blatantly discriminatory.
A gay man saying "I don't want to work with people who believe my sexuality is wrong and reserve the right not to do business with me because of it" that's just a rational choice to avoid people who want to punish them for something that only matters to them and their partners.
Mutual tolerance isn't a hard concept. Tolerating others' intolerance of you is not part of it.
* Many conservatives do not support Trump's policies. Conservativism is traditionally about preserving stable society and carefully evaluating changes before radically changing society.
I think many took a wait-and-see approach to Trump. Sure, he was bombastic during the campaign and said a lot of bad things, but he's a screwd businessman. Surely he will get some decent advisors and not breaks things.
The last week has made it clear that is not the case. Trump and Bannon are determined to reshape society in their own image, and that is really scary. It is clear Trump's executive orders have not been run past anyone sensible, and they make no attempts to limit unnecessary damage to people's lives.
> I think many took a wait-and-see approach to Trump. Sure, he was bombastic during the campaign and said a lot of bad things, but he's a screwed businessman. Surely he will get some decent advisors and not breaks things.
Intentional, typo ("shrewd"), or Freudian slip?
Also, conservatives need to get off their "persecuted" high horse for a second and take a look around themselves. Donald Trump is the one butt-fumbling his way into empowering organizations like the ACLU by scaring the shit out of right-minded people. As these groups experience spikes in popularity and cash, they're going to reach out and start working on new initiatives.
Don't let the people kissing up because they have to work with him fool you. This is broadly alarming in many conservative circles too.
https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/id...
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4652905/koch...
Peter Thiel is still a partner at YC. So there is someone high-profile openly allied with Trump at YC, YC is not as radical left-wing as some people try to paint it.
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-sp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union...
It's hard to imagine this doesn't have real-world consequences, e.g., strategically choosing to not defend right-leaning speech as vigorously as left-leaning speech.
https://www.aclu.org/defending-our-rights/court-battles
Can you see anything there that would be representative of what you're saying?
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/20/aclu-free-speech-opinions-c...
Another example: Techdirt argues that ACLU fails to defend free speech of wedding photographer who violated equal protection legislation by refusing photograph gay wedding.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131121/02445825319/unfor...
Right off, I want to clearly state that I'm not a lawyer, so my ability to judge the merits of these cases is very suspect. To the point where I'm hesitant to attempt to address them at all for fear of appearing exceedingly ignorant.
With the UN resolution, I see the inconsistency between their avowed reason for not joining the other groups (we don't get involved in international issues). The rest of the article is speculation as to the real reason why, on which I think reasonable people can disagree on. It's not clear to me that this is a clear-cut case of consistent anti-conservative bias. For example, I can imagine without too much difficulty American religious conservatives wanting protection from defamation of religion.
For the wedding photography case, I don't think it's a free speech issue: I think it's a protected-class issue which falls under the Civil Rights Act and its extensions, as in this instance the wedding photographer is acting as a business providing a service, and depending on the jurisdiction, the couple may be a protected class. I'm exceedingly unsure about this whole area of law, though, I'd defer to just about anyone. I don't know how judges decide the balance between free speech and the Civil Rights Act, though I'm sure there's precedent and guidelines.
Her 2009 book Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity and the ACLU critiques what she regards as the ACLU’s ethical decline, ideological hypocrisy, and descent into groupthink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Kaminer
Wow, that's shameful.
For example, the ACLU supports the SCOTUS decision in Citizens United even though the majority of liberals and democrats strongly oppose it.
The distinction is quite critical.
Also, I see that you are a new account. You should read up on the standards for discussion here on Hackernews.
ACLU position: Given the reference to "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State," the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right.
They protect civil rights, not whatever people who wrote the Constitution 200 years go thought civil rights should be.
It's my position that that ACLU is wrong and will never see a penny from me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/politics/05guns.html
That's not how it works, at least not in my mind. When dealing with something that is assailed as frequently as gun rights, lack of support is the same as opposition.
I want an organization that supports the Constitution, completely and fully.
But then I hope you're not sending a single cent of your money to NRA, either? I mean, they also don't "support the Constitution, completely and fully", right?
Or is that okay because they're explicitly scoped to the Second Amendment?
If so, then ACLU is in the same exact boat, being explicitly scoped to everything other than the Second. And then some: ACLU is the American Civil Liberties Union, not American Constitutional Liberties Union - US Constitution to them is a tool to aid in protecting the civil rights they care about, it's not a definitive list of rights that are worth defending.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union
Neo-Nazis get denied a permit to march through a black neighborhood and the ACLU is there.
Washington DC violates the second amendment for decades and the ACLU is silent.
NRA is not in the business of protecting the First Amendment, and they're upfront about it.
Why do you have a different standard for ACLU compared to NRA? You're saying that you're unwilling to financially supporting them, not based on what they do, but based on what they do not. How does what they do not diminish the utility of what they do?
The ACLU claims to be in the business of protecting the constitution, not only the parts that people with left of center politics like.
They're liars.
NRA is not in the business of protecting the First Amendment, and they're upfront about it.
The NRA is a gun owner's lobbying organization. Their primary activity is the promotion of the second amendment but they have fought for the first amendment. The NRA Civil Defense Fund has taken up First Amendment cases too.
Why do you have a different standard for ACLU compared to NRA?
I don't. The ACLU lies.
You're saying that you're unwilling to financially supporting them, not based on what they do, but based on what they do not. How does what they do not diminish the utility of what they do?
Because the ACLU doesn't defend the Constitution, they have weaponized it.
Would YC be donating directly to the Democratic party if that got the same favorable tax treatment?
Supporting the Constitution is left-leaning? Sign me up!
And yes they don't defend the 2nd amendment because there are already two large organizations focused on that.
I think it's accurate to say that the lawyers at ACLU have a position on the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment (viewable on their website) which is not consistent with the views commonly offered by the NRA. The ACLU would only go to court to help fight a 2nd Amendment violation where they believed one existed, so that's part of the difference.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/20/president-obama-will-headl...
I tend to stay out of politics, and don't really label people as such, but Trump is a bad guy. I'm happy to donate engineering time to the ACLU.
That's your political opinion. Half the country disagrees (or at least found him less-bad than the alternative).
You think it is a "right" for foreign nationals to enter the United States?
But what this tells you is that GOP platform is hostile to civil rights, not that ACLU became partisan.
Which only appears to be "extreme left" if you're coming from a, well... (nevermind) perspective.
The point is, yeah, everyone has a perspective (and yes, biases). Which is a good thing, by and large.
affirmative action: https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice/affirmative-actio...
voter id (are all the other countries that have this violating their citizens' civil rights?): https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...
religious liberty (an employer engages in voluntary exchange... not much of a stretch to see it as a violation of rights to force them to pay for something which they consider blasphemous): https://action.aclu.org/secure/your-boss-has-no-business-you...
abortion (Roe v Wade federal overreach vs States' Rights... this and other issues like marijuana laws can be left to the States but "leftists" generally prefer a stronger central government over States as "laboratories of democracy"): https://www.aclu.org/issues/reproductive-freedom/abortion
ACA/"Obamacare": I couldn't find anything about their position on this issue but, if they were only defending civil rights rather than also being a "left-leaning political organization", I think they'd actively oppose forcing people to pay corporations for products they don't want.
There are plenty of good civil liberties related ways to look at race, but affirmative action is not one of them.
For example, I tried to find out if they took a position in Kelo v City of New London to defend property rights but my searches came up empty.
The supreme court agrees that affirmative action is constitutional (within certain bounds), see the recent Fisher v. UT case, or Bakke for the original example.
Almost all laws are constitutional, but very few pertain to civil liberties.
It isn't a matter of civil liberty.
A voter ID is not discriminatory in principle, provided that it's free (since otherwise it'd be a poll tax), and does not place undue burden on the citizen to obtain - like, say, traveling several hours to the only nearby place that issues them, and then waiting for several more hours in a line because it's understaffed to serve all the people that need to get their IDs from it.
The problem is that pretty much all voter ID laws promoted or passed in US to date fail these requirements, and thus effectively constitute voter suppression.
States' Rights limit the Federal Government from being so powerful that it can more easily violate civil rights... a bigger picture which ACLU should take into account.
Likewise, "legislating from the bench" may have protected some rights of individuals... but, far more often, it has "enshrined", as you say, new Federal powers at the cost of individual liberties.
That's not how most "just a left-leaning political organization"s behave.
All their recent cases in my memory are left-leaning at least, which, while they do represent many good goals in my opinion, is understandably a political slant.
From: https://www.aclu.org/defending-our-rights/court-battles
Some recent cases;
* The ACLU filed a motion in Michigan state court challenging the constitutionality of a subpoena issued to the website PubPeer demanding that it turn over the identities of anonymous commenters
* The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s mass interception and searching of Americans’ international communications.
* Whether a cause of action is available under the Constitution for violations of prisoners’ due process and equal protection rights when the prisoners were abused in immigration custody and when the government.
* Whether North Carolina can prohibit individuals who are registered sex offenders from “accessing” any social media websites.
* In a Freedom of Information Act request filed on January 13, 2010, the ACLU asked the government to disclose the legal and factual basis for its use of predator drones to conduct "targeted killings" overseas.
They do a lot of good work.
However I'm not just talking about that, I'm also talking about them defending civil rights for everyone, not just those on the left. They used to be very good about this, standing up for protesters on both sides for example, but now I'm not so sure.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/06/19/a-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/06/19/a-...
Which is something that can be found with a straightforward Google search, I must add, so the sheer number of comments here that are asking this question makes me conclude that most of you doing that believe the question to be rhetorical. As in, you assume that ACLU does no such thing, because "everybody knows that".
Well, "everybody" is wrong.
"There is a healthy and an unhealthy love of animals: and the nearest definition of the difference is that the unhealthy love of animals is serious. I am quite prepared to love a rhinoceros, with reasonable precautions: he is, doubtless, a delightful father to the young rhinoceroses. But I will not promise not to laugh at a rhinoceros. . . . I will not worship an animal. That is, I will not take an animal quite seriously: and I know why. Wherever there is Animal Worship there is Human Sacrifice. That is, both symbolically and literally, a real truth of historical experience."
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/421961/wherever-there-a...
https://www.aclu.org/blog/ag-gag-not-just-about-animal-welfa...
Where was the outpouring of funding when black people were being gunned down by cops from West Coast organizations? Where has YCombinator been as our own impoverished African-Americans are getting slaughtered in the streets of Chicago? Why weren't we funding the ACLU to help these people? I haven't seen Google talk about this, or AirBnB offer support to widows of veterans whose spouse commits suicide and has left them with nothing.
I feel for immigrants from war-torn countries, especially having been there myself. Maybe I'm too cynical and look at these moves (AirBnB, Uber, Google, etc...) as marketing moves. I wish we cared more about homeless people, people in West Virginia and Kentucky who have lost their jobs and got drenched in opiates without any protests from anybody, or veterans who can't pay their VA bills. Idk.
I know this comment will be unpopular, and that's ok. I tend to care more about those who I feel (whether true or not) are being left behind because that's who I am.
By coincidence I made a site to direct people to various charities on HN when this post came up - it went nowhere of course.
If you're looking for an option to support other charities w/o feeling like you're actually just buttressing a corporation's branding --> https://helpsavetheusa.com/
Edit: Ya'll are cynical Jedis.
I feel like I hear that line on a daily basis but it doesn't factor in reality.
To stretch the metaphor further (for illustration), if the lot where you'll be planting the tree is being bulldozed today, yesterday is the worst day to plant a tree.
"Hey the ACLU is suing Trump ... let's add them as a non-profit in the next batch!"
"Yah that'll show em'!"
I don't agree with most of sama's election related comments and am unabashedly pro-Trump, but I mean this objectively: If you're going to pick a battle at least put some thought into it first.
Otherwise this all just looks a silly excuse to demonstrate YC (and particularly sama's) political biases.
The second best time is when it becomes hip and trendy to plant trees, apparently.
Many 'activists' seem to think that simply having good intentions and beliefs makes one a 'good' person (and many seem to stop at that point). But as it turns out, a starving person derives no nourishment from your internal happy feelings. I'm glad to see YCombinator understands this very basic fact and is taking action to better society, rather than just sitting around thinking lofty thoughts and feeling good about itself.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Or, in the alternate form: "Hell is full of good meanings, but Heaven is full of good works."
Watch: https://youtu.be/7nTd2ZAX_tc
But that's human nature. Trump has done an awful lot to raise the ACLU's profile recently and ultimately this will be for a better good.
The ACLU has long been a strong advocate against police abuse (one web link of many: https://action.aclu.org/secure/stop-police-killing-communiti...), and the ACLU is participated in combating opiate abuse that emphasize treatment over jail (example: http://www.aclu-wa.org/story/task-force-issues-ground-breaki...). So while Silicon Valley may be reacting mainly to the executive order, support for the ACLU will help address these issues as well.
One other comment: I'll add that criticism of Trump is not just coming from the "hipster" left. I've noticed, for instance, that the Cato Institute, a very well notable libertarian think tank, is taking a hostile stance towards the Trump EO (https://www.cato.org/). This isn't a surprising stance frankly, but in a nation where politics is often thought of as binary (Cato is sometimes incorrectly generalized in this binary as "right wing"), sometimes the subtle nuances are missed.
But I do have a question for you, when the interests of those with influence align with the ignored, why would your initial reaction be a negative one?
Liberals are finally piecing the puzzle together. The executive branch with dragnet surveillance, infinite military capabilities, the right to detain and torture anyone including US citizens is the recipe for disaster.
As a libertarian I welcome anyone joining the fight for our constitutional rights regardless of what triggers them.
Yes, lots of them did. In fact, it was liberals that organized around the information in the leaks, liberal groups that sponsors the lawsuits based on the leaks that got at least one program revealed by the leaks ruled to be illegal by the courts, liberals who kept calling for a pardon, and liberal media personalities that reached out to Snowden in Russia and broadcast his views to the positive reception from their liberal audiences.
Quite a lot of liberals criticized Obama throughout his Presidency on national security and civil liberties, and equal rights issues, including Guantanamo (even though the closure was blocked by Congress), surveillance, drone strikes, the treatment of Manning and Snowden, the initial feet dragging on DADT, the administration's failure to intervene as timely as critics on the left would have liked in various state and local law enforcement issues, issues surrounding the DAPL protests, etc.
I'm not disputing that, but my point is there wasn't the current sense of urgency to reign in the executive branch. HN didn't partner with the ACLU and unicorns didn't use the situation as a PR piece.
But what's changed? The president decided to restrict travel and "enhance" screening from muslim countries? Ok.. Yet Obama's drone usage in Islamic countries wasn't good enough to get this response? Or maybe the American citizens Obama decided to assassinate without due process, that didn't raise any eyebrows?
I think my point stands. Obama was so damn charismatic that only he could have pulled that off without major backlash. The vast majority of voting democrats just didn't care about constitutional rights when Obama was in office, and the renewed interest is politically motivated. And for that, I'm thankful to have this clown in office.
I wonder if anyone said the same thing about emperor Nero's role in raising the profile of fire safety.
You're painting with a very broad brush there, smokeyj. Plenty of us were either anticipating (but unable to verify) the sorts of things he leaked or on the side of the leak once it happened. Liberal is not equal to `not libertarian`. Perhaps to `not Libertarian`. Notice the capital there. Little-l libertarianism has long been a major part of the liberal perspective, particularly relating to free speech, press, religion, and privacy rights, and due process.
I don't see how "the current outcry" can possibly be dismissed in this context, or how anything else could be more important.
Yes it can, and an awful lot of people are doing just that.
What kind of ridiculous designation is that?
"Anarchist" and "Terrorist" are nearly mutually exclusive.
'Virtue signaling' is a criticism of people who put social approval before productive work. Someone who 'virtue signals' isn't opposed to a cause, though they exploit it out of narcissism.
But in this case, the entire point of these EOs is that they are specifically crafted to interfere with gov't agencies, while appearing to cut through red tape. It's red meat for the base, but that's just a bonus.
On a meta-level, invoking "virtue signalling" is itself a signal that you want to ad-hominem the human subject rather than discuss and resolve the issues.
It is the opposite of rationality, and it's a bit weird that so many People Who Think They Are Rational are into the idea.
It's entirely irrational to give this level of attention and resource to an issue with such relatively little impact, particularly when noting the contributing events that led up to this issue were largely ignored (and directed by the same presidential candidate many of these organizations openly supported). Virtue signalling is the correct description. This is more about image than substantive change.
How many are from these 7 countries and do not have a green card? Now how many have been killed in Libya, Syria, or Iraq?
The pettiest so far seems to be ~5 dems voting against Chao - but that was more about get husband and without consequence.
Your argument is essentially "don't ask why my favored party/people/orgs did bad things, just pay attention to the rhetoric they're using now." It's an incredibly cynical position to take, in my opinion.
Why not talk about what is right and talk about doing that? When we read 'all men are created equal' we don't say 'well, the founding fathers hated women so it's okay for me to' or 'the founding fathers had no good ideas and they are trash' we talk about what parts of their ideas had merit and try to improve upon them and do the right thing /today/, from this moment forward.
A bit of historical context: America was founded in white supremacy. [1] It did better after the Civil War in the Reconstruction [2], and then things got worse again, with Jim Crow [3] in the south and ethnic cleansing everywhere else [4]. The Civil Rights Act [5] marked an era of improvement (sometimes called the Second Reconstruction [6]), but things have recently gotten worse, to the extent that many see us as needing a third Reconstruction [7].
This does not happen mostly through planned racial injustice. It mainly happens through ignorance and a convenient blindness to uncomfortable facts. We help people familiar and dear to us, and ignore the ones who aren't.
I think it's great that Silicon Valley came out strongly in favor of immigrants. They're familiar to us, and we'd be monsters to ignore our neighbors, our co-workers, our ancestors. But muninn_'s right, we have been ignoring some other pretty big injustices. And the ones muninn_ mentioned are groups historically underrepresented in tech. It's no coincidence that we started here.
As we boldly support immigrants, it's a good time to ask, "Oh, who might we have forgotten?" Companies are communities, embedded in a society. This week, we are stepping up to that responsibility. There's nothing wrong with thinking a little about what that really means.
[1] e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Era
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Reconstruction
[7] https://thinkprogress.org/rev-barber-moral-change-1ad2776df7...
Yes, it does, as all your examples that don't address positive change away from the problem clearly indicate.
E.g., the impulse where they protect people like them and people familiar to them before people unfamiliar to them. That very rarely comes from a considered plan of "let's screw over black people". But that's often the effect.
I strongly disagree that this is purely for marketing. As someone working for one of the aforementioned companies, we are all aghast at how quickly this administration has jumped to eroding everything we believe in. These companies' moves are motivated by very real horror at the US going down a dark path.
The worst you could say about these actions is that they are self-interested, as the Muslim ban affects a lot of my coworkers in a very negative way that, say, inner city violence in Chicago does not. But it's definitely not so cynical as to be mere marketing moves.
> "the Muslim ban"
This sort of exaggeration probably doesn't help anyone.
And then "I don't care about the dozens of black people gunned down every day"
Seems a little selfish no? This is exactly the same mentality that Trump supporters had, just exchange Americans with coworkers and refugees with black people.
Maybe they aren't purely marketing moves, but I just have a hard time with it. Why can't Sergey show solidarity with our black community, who make up a large percentage of Americans, but can show up to protest in person for a temporary restriction on new people entering the US on top of the 120 day restriction that already exists?
It is a sad cynical state of affairs when people attempting to do good for one cause are berated for not participating in every other cause under the sun. People have finite resources and differing abilities.
What have you done to combat heroin addiction? What have you done to reduce environmental destruction? What have you done for Jewish causes? What have you done to improve oversight at the FDA? One could play this game forever.
They both are causes people care about.
But the reason for the differential in responses is pretty clear to me: American racism didn't just get instituted with the stroke of a pen last week, nor could it be reversed as easily (or struck down in court). It sucks, but it's a kind of cruelty we're accustomed to (victims, active perpetrators and passive perpetrators alike), and have been living with for centuries. The immigration order, on the other hand, is a newly instituted policy of cruelty, which can potentially be defeated directly with sufficiently urgent action.
You have a hard time with companies supporting worthy causes because they don't support enough of them to the extent that you demand them to? That's what's generally known as cutting off your nose to spite your face.
When something is new and shocking, immediate extensive resistance can blunt the impact of new policies. That would work in the case of horrifying normal situations too, but there's no universal focal point, and focal points around which people can gather matter a lot. Given the existence of a focal point, it becomes rational to protest since others will join you.
Admittedly, I'm not trying to compare apples to apples, and I'm the furthest thing from a Trump supporter, and it's absolutely amazing that the media have finally grown into their role of a check and balance against the government, but all too often, that means that they do so with carelessly chosen words that misrepresent the issue, and they act like it's new.
The problem with acting like it's new and giving a pass to handsomer / more liked / partisan presidents of yore is that once Trump is out of office, everyone will start to be complacent again.
Standing up for your rights is the job of the citizenry no matter who is president, and holding our elected officials' collective feet to the fire is what we're supposed to be doing all the time. If it took electing Trump to get people engaged, so be it, but let's not pretend that passing what effectively amounts to law with "a pen and a phone" is Trump's idea, or that people weren't cheering on the last president when he chose to do so, or that it's in any way a good thing to remove the checks and balances branches of the government are supposed to be providing against their co-equal branches.
I'm on board for the tribunal where we evaluate everything anyone ever wrote in an Internet comment. Twenty lashes for me, I'm sure. I'll submit willingly, if we can put that aside for a year and a half and work on resisting the current threat to the rule of law.
Obama suspended visas from Iraq for six months, and gave plenty of warning beforehand so people could prepare.
Trump suspended all immigration from seven countries on a Friday without warning, ordered the detention of people from those countries at the border, prevented them from seeking legal representation, and deported some of them. Including green card holders.
If you don't understand the massive difference between these two things than I don't know what to tell you.
Apologies if my deliberate ambiguity was hard to parse.
1) Given that what Trump is doing is allowed by law - what circumstances can one imagine in which this kind of travel ban would be okay (since it's legal) or is the law itself a problem?
2) I'm curious about (1) because there are legitimate reasons why Trump's ban is more draconian than Obama's, all of which are rooted in various screw-ups by the previous administration. Those are:
a) Last year, the vetting process somehow managed to grant visas to 9500 terror linked individuals, all of whom are missing. When the visas were revoked, there was no way to locate them. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~ 2015 / 2016)
b) DHS has 40 staff members currently handling 51000 applications for credible threat to life asylum requests. (Source: House oversight committee hearings & Mainstream media ~2015)
c) Top intelligence officials have named the refugee program as a high risk attack vector (Source: CNN, ~ 2015/2016)
Under those 3 criteria alone, if you are taking over as President and you see this kind of track record from the administration, and you get this advice from the intelligence agencies, would you really be comfortable with the visas issued thus far?
I sort of agree with the principle in theory that if the government has granted someone the right to enter, they ought to be allowed to enter, but that's never really been an airtight thing either. Your final entry is always conditioned upon being interviewed at the airport and getting your passport stamped, and answering various questions - where will you be staying, for how long, etc. etc. I suspect it would have been more principled to have a comprehensive screening process for people when they landed, but that may be an operational nightmare.
Given that there are plenty of PhD students, guest workers, etc. from Iran mostly, who are immensely inconvenienced by this kind of draconian rule, I am not entirely in favor of the policy. At the same time I'm curious as to whether a President is really dutybound to stand by the visas issued by the previous administration when there is proof of this sort of incompetence / error in the process at this magnitude (i.e. nearly ten thousand).
Such action would be fully backed up by the precedent of what Obama did in suspending the Iraqi asylum application process for 6 months in reaction to specific risks that had been highlighted in that process.
No, since 2001, 9500 "terror linked individuals" were given visas. Unfortunately, I can't find any explanation of what "terror linked" means in this context. Each year, the US grants approximately 8-9 million visas. So, in 15 years, across over 100 million issued visas, approximately 10,000 may have been given to individuals who were "terror linked", where that could mean "confirmed terrorist", or it could mean "their uncle once went to a market that we believe is a known terrorist hotspot". Again, there's no explanation, anywhere, of what "terror linked individual" means in this context.
Please stop editorializing.
both the (now fired) AG and several federal courts don't think it's allowed by law.
Which is open to a completely different criticism, but is emphatically not saying people should continue doing nothing.
Whether we do things because it looks good or is right is an interesting question. But to me, it is similar to the question of "are we kind because it makes us feel better? or because its right?".
Also, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I won't hold my breath waiting for that, though. Usually what happens is that when one's favored party regains power the criticism suddenly disappears.
https://action.aclu.org/secure/president_obama_deportations
This is from long experience, at least on the left end of the pond, where the mainstream Democratic partisans attempt to shout down any protest when Democratic politicians do something but encourage it when Republicans do equivalent things.
Who cares. "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now".
You should care, as should anyone who is aligned with these protestors' views. That's because if (or when, if history is a guide) the protests subside because "we elected not-Trump/Democrat-X/whatever", the gains will be eroded or erased as Trump's policies are continued by the new "savior."
Some examples fit your description. Not all.
The things that are receiving the heavy protests, however, are the things that do match it.
https://blog.ycombinator.com/new-story-yc-s15-crowdfunds-hou...
I think there is a danger when powerful companies start going all political and throwing money at a problem instead of talking and discussions. You get 2 sides that keep pulling against each other and it becomes a matter of who has the most money!
Of all of the things I've seen YC do, this is by far the greatest.
There are too many worthy issues. An organization like ycombinator or like its investments (Airbnb, Uber, etc) aren't altruistic by design, but can choose to be when they see fit. That's not bad. Right now it fits because there's either some PR to be gained (like Lyft) or some looming threat to fight (H1B visas and immigration). A tactical move like this is still good for everyone even if its motivation isn't philanthropic. It's a win-win. We should look at it more as a strategic investment for the common good.
>Why weren't we funding the ACLU to help these people?
Well, I think that's easy to answer. People care more about causes when it affects them personally.
For better or for worse, few of us are strict utilitarian maximizers. I haven't quite settled how I think about it, myself.
This is a spot on comment.
Specifically, there's a minimum residency period before you can apply - usually 5 years, 3 if you're married. The conditional greencard is the first 18(? 24?) months, before you get the 10yr card - so if they're still conditional, there's no way they meet any minimums.
The path from marriage to citizenship is not automatic (nor inalienable).
Meanwhile, a lawyer friend of mine had to advise a client of his not to go home to visit his dying father, because he might not be allowed back in. He's lived in the US for twenty years. He owns a business that employs six US citizens. He won't get to see his father again, and a father won't get to see his eldest son on his deathbed.
So yeah, be smug. Enjoy that.
But don't you think half the people on these boards would also support a vast overhaul of the tax system that prioritizes the military/war over services for the homeless? Currently 60+% of our taxes go towards the military. That's unbelievable. Why not chop that in half and redirect it towards welfare services? Or is that too hard? What possibly can 1 X HN-user do when passing said homeless person? Create a homeless shelter? OR: better to demand the government to stop _squandering_ the thousands in taxes he gives a year and to redirect it to the poor man she/has passes every weekday morning?
I think the issue is more complex than you make it out to be, IMHO.
What you're regurgitating was actually a hoax/misleading meme photo that propagated that number in order to paint Republicans as war mongers. All it took was one Google search to confirm.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/...
Then how can China (our next biggest competitor) get away with spending only 150-200 Billion? Why are we spending more than three times the amount China is spending on military? How can Russia (our perceived biggest threat right now in the media zeitgeist)...only get by with threatening us with a paltry 66 Billion? Think about that: we as a nation have collectively decided to outmatch Russia by ten fold. This way of spending is out of control, and I'm not sure how else I can get this very simple point across.
I think it's clear to anyone that we could easily assuage some of the real problems of homelessness if we just cut our Military budget in half.
That would still put us ahead of China, far ahead of Russia, _and_ we'd help those who cannot help themselves immensely.
But I know what the response is going to be: "Big Stick" and all that oft-repeated Military-Industrial justification.
I'm sorry but there's no excuse no matter how you slice it, even if my initial numbers are wrong (which I concede) it's still a terrible situation.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/percent_gdp
As a Russian saying goes, "it's easy to notice a little chip in someone else's eye, but you won't even notice a log in your own".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_7:5
The reality that many people are waking up to is that social progress is not guaranteed and a passive approach is not enough.
I share your cynicism regarding many of the marketing moves by the companies you mentioned. At the same time, the fact that doing the right thing builds goodwill with a hopefully-majority highlights the importance of making our views and voices heard.
I might wish for a more high-minded motive form these companies. I also wish that it hadn't taken shock events to make the loss of rights feel real for most of America (though to be honest, I'm guilty of this too.)
But I'm excited to see people mobilizing, and will take the good outcomes where I can find them these days. Progress here could require an uneasy coalition.
They are an unqualified, categorically "good" organization that is deserving of your donations. I'm personally of the opinion that a charitable act should not be diminished or castigated because one picked this time to donate and not other times.
Put another way, if a guy shows up to volunteer at a soup kitchen, I'm going to thank him for his time, not shout at him, "Where were you when we had the flood of Katrina refugees to feed!"
The ACLU is wonderful, no doubt about that. But I think some people do put an asterisk next to the group because of their (obviously somewhat strange) categorization of the protections of the 2nd amendment as outside the scope of American civil liberties.
It's well established that the ACLU refuses to defend the individual civil right to armed self defense.
Not to mention that orgs like the NRA have many times more funding than the ACLU and dedicate every action to that one issue.
Or the fact that you're dealing with a organization that has been one of the biggest and best defenders of oppressed groups in recent history and you're cranky that they're not gonna help you own a handgun like most of congress is.
You asked for a cite, I linked you one. That's it.
Please take this in the manner it was intended: Avoiding an unnecessary argument.
If an organization that was instrumental in protecting your right to a fair and speedy trial, was against opposed to the idea of free speech, I would still condemn that org for holding that specific position, while still recognizing that they have done good in other areas.
Similarly, the fact that there are larger and more specialized organizations doesn't prevent the ACLU from making statements in favor of advances in the rights guaranteed by the second amendment.
I don't think the National Association of Realtors has a dog in this race.
[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/lobbying-groups-gop...
One sticking point right now is drugs. Per federal law, any "user of an unlawful substance" is prohibited from firearm ownership, period. This includes anyone in states that legalized marijuana, including medical users. And the feds have been trying to maintain state records for medical marijuana card holders.
NRA, SAF and the rest of the bunch are unwilling to not just do anything about it, but to even speak out at all. I'm a SAF member, and I actually wrote to them about this several times, with no response. Ironically, the only gun rights org that has been consistently speaking out on this is the otherwise extremely right wing GOA.
And recently, both NRA and SAF organizations have enthusiastically endorsed Jeff Sessions, which is a huge middle finger to anyone concerned about this law...
That said, ACLU generally does get involved in cases which are centered on 2A, but involve other rights. So my hope is that they'd get involved in this as well, if a suitable case came up.
Firearms interests have their own highly influential advocacy already from more than one entity, so it puts this argument in the "all lives matter" category of flawed defenses.
To be specific - they disagree with one specific SCOTUS ruling that is less than a decade old (DC v. Heller). They do agree with the pro-gun arguments put forth by US v. Miller.
They have devoted (to my knowledge) no material resources towards fighting DC v. Heller despite their disagreement with it, and they explicitly leave most 2nd Amendment cases to other advocacy groups (namely the NRA) because those are much more well-funded and focused solely on the 2nd Amendment. The ACLU prefers to spend its much smaller and limited budget on cases which aren't really supported by many (if any) other advocacy groups.
This seems to keep coming up, and it's a rather tiresome argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13511964
They are, IMHO, far more interested in pursuing their own agenda, which only partially intersects with the right to self defense. More important to them, it seems, is acting as stooges for the GOP. I came to that conclusion after a local election in which the NRA endorsed the GOP candidate, who had a C rating, as I recall, while turning up their noses at his challenger who was an A.
I believe that their reticence to litigate Heller was for their own self-preservation. They can make a better case for donation when they're able to sow FUD about taking away our guns. Having a definitive answer to the question from Heller (and later McDonald, to get it incorporated under the 14th Amendment) impairs how much fear they can inspire in gun owners.
As I recall, it's because they didn't believe a priori that it was the strongest case. They definitely do support the decision and defend it in subsequent cases. It's not unusual for an advocacy group to pick and choose its legal battles based on what it thinks is most likely to advance its long-term agenda - each case is a legal risk, and with a it's possible to end up losing ground instead of gaining it. There's a lot of strategic calculation that goes into it, which doesn't mean that it's always successful or correct, but it's not unusual or suspicious when it happens.
This is similar to how Rosa Parks was chosen as the figurehead for the legal battles surrounding bus boycotts, even though she was not the first Black woman to refuse to give up her seat (and she wasn't even the one whose case made it to the Supreme Court). She was believed to be the most sympathetic and favorable candidate for challenging the law. (Ultimately, Claudette Colvin's case was the one that was actually upheld by the Supreme Court.)
> I believe that their reticence to litigate Heller was for their own self-preservation. They can make a better case for donation when they're able to sow FUD about taking away our guns. Having a definitive answer to the question from Heller (and later McDonald, to get it incorporated under the 14th Amendment) impairs how much fear they can inspire in gun owners.
There are a lot of criticisms I could enumerate about the NRA's inconsistency with how it pursues Second Amendment battles, but if you're concerned with the broad right to self-defense, I don't think they apply. I definitely would not say that they oppose clear constitutional protections for gun ownership (such as the Heller outcome) simply to line their own pockets, which is what you are implying.
And that's a problem. It betrays either a gross misunderstanding on their part of the purpose of the Bill of Rights, which is unlikely, or other less transparent motivations, which aren't. There are other civil liberties organizations that don't argue for a state monopoly on the right to self defense. Consider helping them out instead.
It's ridiculous to talk about how misguided, dangerous, or outright evil the government is, only to turn around and argue that they should own all the guns.
They're also upfront about this position, so you can't claim that they're misleading you when they take your money.
When you donate money to ACLU, you do so in the knowledge that not go towards defending 2A rights[1]. But this is also the case for EFF, for example. Does that preclude you from donating to EFF, or any other organization? If not, then why do you demand that ACLU does something out of their declared scope.
[1] ACLU does actually defend 2A rights in contexts where they intersect with other rights. For example, they have collaborated with SAF to defend the rights of non-citizens to keep and bear arms - some states explicitly ban non-citizens from their shall-issue carry licensing provisions, or even firearm possession in general.
I hear what you're saying, but it's clearly at odds with the position described at https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/heller-decision-and-seco... .
They explicitly interpret 2A as a "collective right," whatever that is. They also state their disagreement with Heller and presumably any number of lower court decisions in line with it.
Organizations like the EFF never claimed to be broad-based "civil liberties unions," so that's why I feel it's appropriate to hold them to different standards.
However, they never argue in court against 2A. Nor do they prohibit their member state organizations from taking a different position - and many do.
Yes, ACLU is a broad "civil liberties" organization. But there's no definitive list of civil liberties, and different people have different opinions on this. The fact that SCOTUS ruled on it doesn't change matters - SCOTUS rules on whether something is a constitutional right or not, not on whether something is a civil right or not. The latter is inherently a subjective assessment.
And has others have stated, I'd much rather have the ACLU focus on things like 1A, 4A, etc. Leave 2A to the NRA and other 2A-specific advocacy groups.
http://www.ccrkba.org/call-your-senators-to-confirm-sessions...
“Senate confirmation of Jeff Sessions as our next Attorney General will bring about much-needed change at the Department of Justice. Instead of promoting or defending schemes that impact law-abiding Americans, his track record shows that he will go after genuine criminals.”
“The nation is in serious need of an attorney general who knows the difference between civil rights and criminal wrongs”
For those who are aware of the track record of Sessions as attorney, the highlighted bit especially is appalling.
I don't think my city's tax on gun and ammo sales is an effective or constitutional measure and I want to support organizations that will fight that type of measure.
I did not support Obama's "common sense" ban on gun sales to people on the no-fly list because I don't believe the no-fly list itself is constitutional.
I do want to take steps to reduce gun violence in America but my current choices on the political front are either ineffective and/or unconstitutional laws from the left or a complete unwillingness to even try from the right.
I do not support Jeff Sessions for Attorney General because I think the entire bill of rights is valuable and applies to everyone and I don't think he will uphold it effectively.
That said, it is still a very uneasy compromise, because the person who uttered all the things I consider despicable on behalf of CCRKBA is also the person who is the founder and the most prominent spokesperson of SAF, and my conscience only permits so much ability to distinguish their opinions depending on which "hat" they wear.
My takeaway from all this is that there's no bipartisan gun rights organization in US, and there probably cannot be in the current political climate. Thus, pro-gun liberals have to establish their own, that would be the left-wing counterpart to NRA and SAF.
The good thing is that with all the tumult that the Democratic party is going through right now, with a massive grassroots platform rewrite going on, this is the time to speak up about this sort of thing. Pay attention to new left-wing groups that spring up promising to upend the status quo on the left. Check their platform and issues. If they do speak about gun control (most do), and you see something there that you believe is wrong, get in touch with them, and let them know that 1) you're on their side in general, but 2) you do not agree with them on this, and here's why.
To give a specific example, here's Justice Democrats (essentially an attempt to formally organize a "Sanders wing" of the party):
https://justicedemocrats.com/platform/
If you scroll down, you'll see "Enact common-sense gun regulation" bullet point, and a bunch of stuff underneath. If you find anything disagreeable, email them, with a polite and well-reasoned refutation. I did that, and they actually replied and told me that they're still in the process of hashing the platform out, and are listening to all feedback.
In the meantime, a good way to get left-wing politicians to notice us is via the Liberal Gun Club. It's not a political organization, and it isn't involved in legal fights, so it's not an NRA/SAF replacement. But it is a focal point to assemble forces; and if it has enough members, it can be used as a foundation to build future organizations, and to draw attention in intraparty politics.
The distinction is frequently omitted, and used to paint the national group with the sins of local ones, and vice-versa.
And that's not the view of the national ACLU, at all. Perhaps they don't place the emphasis on it you'd like to see, but that's quite different than considering the 2nd "outside the scope".
The ACLU has nothing to gain by promoting any particular 2A view, because that's the only right that's not universally a political sinkhole.
The inconvenient truth is that all civil rights (that aren't gun rights) have opposition nearly everywhere in America. The only difference is incidentals- if you're in coastal California or urban New England, your subculture wants "hate speech" banned; whereas Arkansas has a more traditional version of obscenity (depictions of sex and promotion of other vices) it wants to eliminate.
So civil rights (in the traditional sense) has no defenders in legislature or society at large. Gun rights, on the other hand, still do in many areas of the country (coastal California and urban New England are the two big exceptions, of course), and as such I can't fault the ACLU's 'default' stance on a right that's not universally contested.
Been to Manchester, NH lately?
Anyways, in the Northeast, the states with less liberal gun laws (NY/MD/CT/Mass./NJ) also happen to contain most of that area's population, especially in the larger cities like NYC/Boston/Baltimore. NH is good, but it's a very small piece of that region.
It makes perfect sense that the "soup kitchen support union" would then concentrate all their efforts on the other 7 soup kitchens which don't get nearly as much support.
If you think they do good work in that arena, great!
If you think they do good work in that arena and others do good work elsewhere, hey, you know what? That's still great!
(And if you think they do poor work, or work on the wrong goals or whatever, well, of course that's your prerogative.)
If you're particularly worried about the 2nd amendment there are organizations (extremely powerful and effective organizations at that) to sue on your behalf.
On that note - do we actually know that the YC funds are generally available to the ACLU? Oftentimes when non-profits receive large donations, the donor specifies the usage of the funds (usually by specifying a general area that the non-profit is working on, or donating to a specific fund)[0]. These restrictions are legally binding.
I'm not opining on the use of funds here - I'm just curious if YC donated to a specific fund in the ACLU.
[0] Those who went to colleges will know this firsthand - the donation solicitations you receive usually give options like "for financial aid", or "for the $BUILDING_NAME construction project"
Equally worth knowing: individual ACLU chapters receive funding from the national ACLU, but are also on the hook for raising some of their own funding.
Yes, I agree . I'm pretty sure the ACLU matched donation offers I saw flying around Twitter yesterday already exceed the amount YC gives to nonprofits.
I'm more just curious if YC specified their intended target with this decision, or if they decided to leave the allocation decisions up to the ACLU. My guess is the latter, because the nonprofits YC normally funds are much younger and smaller, but maybe YC had a specific goal in mind.
> Equally worth knowing: individual ACLU chapters receive funding from the national ACLU, but are also on the hook for raising some of their own funding.
That I did not know - thanks for mentioning this!
Now that Trump is the face of this disease, there is no pretense. The face lines up with the actions. This allows everyone to freely mobilize on their issues without feeling like they are stepping on toes. Classy, wingtip toes, that is.
Now, I'm not a Trump hater - I don't think he's Hitler. In fact, I do thank him - he did drop the pretense on his own. But I also am enjoying seeing America radicalized in a way that I hoped would happen with the Snowden disclosures fell.
Isn't this like complaining about Habitat for Humanity not doing enough to prevent forest fires?
The NYC division of the ACLU has done work on the illegal and racist stop and frisk law that was in place here, for example.
[0] https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice
Further, the ACLU is a civil liberties advocacy organization and is not well-equipped to handle complex socioeconomic issues such as gun violence or homelessness or health care. It is outside the stated mission.
Edit: Not a peep out of the ACLU when the Obama administration permanently ended the Cuban refugee program and many refugees in Mexico are now being deported back to Cuba because there is no chance of them being accepted in the US. 60 day pause on refugees from seven middle-eastern countries identified and signed into law by the Obama administration? MELTDOWN.
The rationale given for banning these Muslim majority countries by Mr. Trump included 9/11. Not a single 9/11 attacker came from these countries. Claiming a material connection is a lie. They claim Obama is responsible for picking them – yet he never banned an entire country in a fit of collective punishment, merely ordered additional monitoring and procedures. Last weekend, valid green cards were cancelled without a documented or individualized reason. This is a vast difference in policy.
People resent Mr. Trump because he lies. He repeatedly lies to Americans. He presents suspect reasoning, misrepresents documented facts, and then claims he didn't in the presence of video evidence. That is a far more critical flaw than any policy error could bring.
This is an odd complaint. The Obama administration ended Cuba's special, weird immigration status where touching land magically bypassed most of the immigration process. Cuban refugees now have to go through the same process as any other refugee - they have the same rights as any other asylum seeker would.
https://www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-response-ferguson
Ferguson and related issues are important and the ACLU did respond in important ways I referenced above.
However, we're now seeing an umbrella of issues targeting an even larger number of groups of people.
Companies are throwing their hat into the ring on this issue because there is a clear and present threat with an immense amount of power. You can point to it and say "look, this is going to cause things that I'm not okay with, and I will stand against it". It's finally cut and dry. Evil exists and it can be fought.
Screw cynicism, that's the easy way to deal with these events.
And those are also issues that everybody agreed are issues; it's the solutions where there was disagreement.
Trump's platform was that bribing corporations to keep jobs in America, loosening environmental regulation and tearing up TPP & NAFTA were the solutions for lost factory jobs.
Clinton's platform was that education, a social safety net and withdrawing from the TPP were the best solutions.
Fighting to build awareness of problems is a lot easier than agreeing on a solution.
It's obvious that this is the case. It's also obvious that some people are angry at this, they want America to clearly put their interests above the interests of immigrants, and that's part of why they voted for Trump.
What answer are you looking for?
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/10/maa...
On veterans, several YC alumni, after working on the healthcare.gov rescue team, went on to help start the US Digital Service (https://www.usds.gov/) and Nava (navahq.com), which are working on the VA backlog. Both organizations are hiring.
Within the broader tech community, companies like Nuna are working on Medicaid and the VA backlog. On policing, DJ Patil--former Greylock Data Scientist and one of the founders of Color, FFS--launched an initiative around police data and criminal justice during his time at the White House: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/dj-patil-criminal-justice/
And, of course, Code for America in SOMA does lots of work with local governments and you can apply to be a Fellow: https://www.codeforamerica.org/
There's a lot more to do, and not all of these efforts are as well-known as they should be. But if you're looking to help, people in tech are working on these problems.
In politics, I believe it's important to use the philosophy of "better late than never". Memes take time to diffuse into the population. It is better to encourage more participation in the future by accepting late arrivals. Attacking people that finally decided to participate can easily drive them away.
From an activist friend:
"Hearing leftists be like "ugh these protesters are so passionate about protesting now but I didn't see them protesting at BLM marches three years ago!" is one of those things that makes me wonder whether the left has been infiltrated by the CIA or whether the death-wish is native."
We're not meant to sit here stroking our chins and purring about the good deeds of our favorite companies. YC has an incredible position in Silicon Valley, built over a decade with the help and influence of people like us.
To whom much is given, much is required. I'm glad YC is helping ACLU out this winter. But ACLU took in more money in 1 day last week than NILC, the National Immigration Law Center, spends in a year. After they get done patting themselves on the back for the ACLU win, they should start figuring out how to help the smaller organizations that don't have ACLU's built-in advantages.
We're not here to feel sympathy for Y Combinator or Sam Altman. Most of us will never meet any of these people and, candidly, can't fathom the amount of financial success and security their position has brought them. More power to them! But they exist to us as abstractions, and rightly so, and any pressure we can bring to bear to more fully enlist them in the cause of shoring up our institutions and the rule of law is legitimate.
Push harder. Thanks for that comment.
> But ACLU took in more money in 1 day last week than NILC, the National Immigration Law Center, spends in a year.
On the bright side, NILC's national budget went from $5.5MM to $7.5MM in the past few months thanks to increased donations.
Build the thing that needs funding. Then, seek support and apply.
I think when bad cops get off, it's because of bad (or absent) legal prosecution.
I am probably in the very far left-wing on this website in many regards, and what I see in a lot of this effusive and reflexive anti-Trumpism, is a lot of dubious and easily rolled-back gains. At climax radical right-wing activity, the GOP can just throw Donald Trump under the bus, and I think this would completely destroy any of the coalitions currently being built up against him, because the agreement on everything else is vague.
A lot of people really and deeply want to believe that the problem is Donald Trump himself, not the entire institution that props him up. I've seen numerous liberals (as opposed to leftists) on the internet openly and effusively embrace John McCain in his fashionable and phony role of maverick, the man who sang "Bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys. It's bewildering.
Another example is the Women's March. A friend of mine mentioned to a fellow protestor how important it was for her to fight for reproductive rights, and this woman's response was that it wasn't even about that, it's mostly just about Trump's disrespect towards women. And if you go on the movement's website, it's true. It doesn't mention planned parenthood or reproductive rights at all. Some people see it as a virtue, I think it is a strategic error.
Moreover, I think everyone on the broad left clearly understood Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" as a dogwhistle for bygone years largely characterized by white supremacy and a vision of the ideal normal nuclear family. The real surprising thing is that a lot of the impassioned, patriotic rallying cries against Trump today, by celebrities who describe themselves as patriots who were proud up until yesterday, are exactly the same: "Make America Great Again". It's just that they pine for the great Obama years instead.
There is almost zero mea-culpa about how it was possible that Trump got elected in the first place, and it's become so important to "stop Trump" that criticizing allies is a huge faux-pas. I don't see this building into a healthy strong movement.
To answer/satisfy your concern/question is impossible without inaction. The cases you mentioned already happened and are in the past. In essence you are proposing that YC does not act to help solve this current issue, because worse issues happened in the past, and YC did not act then, so it does not deserve to act now (at least, without being accused of hypocrisy and selective outrage). This mode of argumentation results in nothing happening to solve the current issue, just by virtue of there existing past worse issues. I don't think you are really in favor of this.
As for the marketing argument, sure, I can agree this playing a minor role in this decision. But not a major one. There is not much evidence I am aware of, or that you pointed out, signaling that YC does not act in good faith. Though absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence, this alone is not a solid basis for posing that any action that YC takes is purely profit/PR-driven.
Likely, this decision was not instigated out of marketing motives, but like any good decision for a for-profit company: it aligns with marketing motives.
Another angle to look at motives for problem solving: Is the crime of having a less than glamorous motive worse than the outcome of solving the problem? Donating to non-profits makes me feel good. Is this egocentrism worse enough to stop donating?
Of course they're marketing moves. Corporations, especially the three you listed, do not do anything that doesn't generate profit or open the window to future profit.
Meantime, don't worry about it. It's normal to feel disoriented when the crowd stampedes where a few had previously blazed a lonely trail, but that's just how people are. Make the most of all this undirected energy.
The above does ignore the rather obvious 'which issue affects affluent people more?' question.
Perhaps they could've done more in the situations you're describing, but it seems odd to chastise them now that they are. Would you rather they didn't ever help?
If only they got as much enthusiastic and monetary support, we'd be a little more equal amongst ourselves.
The ACLU will hold his actions accountable to the law, and backing it is in the best economic and social interests of the US
And we have been funding the ACLU individually. I like that YCombinator is now trying to help them as a org.
This comment is unpopular because you're just being a troll.
Edit: I get you are complaining about the recent swell of funding. And YCombinator probably skews immigrant. So I retract my troll comment. But know there are some white devs here who have supported ACLU and BLM. There's no easy answer. Racism is deep in the US (and actually most countries). It's not a zero sum game. Fighting Muslim racism (I know it's a religion) doesn't mean that we forget about other people of color. People have to unlearn the racism that their parents taught them.
Edit2: But black voters didn't turn out to vote for Hillary in support of Mexicans and Muslims. Why should we now help you? Serious question.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/e...
[1] http://www.salon.com/2016/11/10/the-real-reason-black-voters...
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-...
black voter turnout 2016 http://www.phillytrib.com/news/black-voter-turnout-a-look-at...
wide look http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/raw-data-turno...
"We all need to step up and get in the game for all"
You answered your own question.
Edit: added not
>But black voters didn't turn out to vote for Hillary in support of Mexicans and Muslims. Why should we now help you?
Seemed like the opposite of coming together. My reading of it is; you're accusing black people of being unsupportive of the democratic candidate, and that consequently black people aren't owed the same unity you seem to be arguing for in later comments.
Are you going to come out for us? I'm coming out for you either way.
Yes, I understand the argument is "so what if they're motivated by partisanship?" That's a facile argument, though, because movements like this require sincere dedication for the goal of the movement. If the partisans' goals aren't aligned with the movement's goals, then the partisans can do more damage than if they simply shut up and sat it out.
Hillary never called for a ban on Muslims. Trump has many times. You can argue about the ban being a "muslim ban" or not, but the previous statement is fact.
I feel this is an argument between two people that generally agree but are arguing about some small point.
Here's a tip for you: Complaining about people taking action because you think they should have taken action is stupid. The ACLU is not a be-all end-all shield for everything you don't like and randomly picking your person moral crusades and demanding answers for why the ACLU isn't your personal army is naive and childish.
The ACLU is getting involved now and people are getting involved with the ACLU are doing so because they believe this administration represents an existential threat to the existence of the United States. They don't think that your personal crusades represent as much of a threat.
I'm sorry if you don't like that, but you are contributing the problem of the left. "You want to make the world better? Fuck you, I think this stuff is more important!" is insanity.
There are so many super-RICH Muslim countries nearby, why don't they take in refugees who share the same ideology first?
Those not so rich muslim countries took about 100x times more then the US.
> .. share the same ideology first.
What kind of ideology you are talking about? Not brave (trumpist) enough to use the word religion?
I do not save a snake from frozen for the purpose to show my great love to all beings, as it might kill me afterwards, very old story. Now let us save those inner cities innocent people in this land, and those homeless people first, be it a Muslim or not.
It's not religion, it is about safety.
Doing this prevents you from helping refuges? Why can other, smaller and poorer countries take 100 times as much as the US and their societies don't break together?
I'm getting tired of seeing this sentiment. It's popped up constantly over the last few days. Just because people don't protest or support every single cause doesn't take anything away from support of this cause. In fact, people getting outraged enough to get involved for a change may be a good thing for other causes as if people see results they will be more likely to mobilise for other causes in the future.
Be glad they're addressing anything, because they're a tech blog that should focus on tech issues, not every social justice issue on the planet, which there are already many blogs and campaigns and donation sites for.
I would just like to say this kind of bait is agains the guidelines
And asking the question why there is so much support now might not be popular, mainly because the answer is not really pretty.
I do, however, believe that there are some objective reasons for the current wave of support. Some I can think of:
- The events currently unfolding affect a lot more people directly.
- The threat has changed from being systemic but disorganized to intentionally organized. The official stance has shifted as well from being apologetic to "damn fucking right, we're going to eradicate you". (sorry about the language)
- People feel utterly helpless regarding politics in general. They might tell themselves (rightfully or not) that they can talk themselves out of trouble (if they even get into trouble being a good citizen and all). But they feel there's nothing they can personally do to stop DC from messing with their lives, so they put their trust into the hands of organizations like ACLU.
Also, I can personally say, my stance (as a European) went from an amused, uneasy "geez, America, get your shit together" to being actually concerned about western civilization.
Every person has a moment when they wake up and decided to step up, usually several. Litigating their decision process after he fact does nothing to help. Just say "thanks and welcome, now let's go wake up some others."
Momentum is important and true or not this kind of stuff serves only as a speedbump.
It's a cry for someone or some organization to help guide us back to center. The ACLU just happens to be one of the best positioned organizations to fit this situation.
Please stop with the hyperbole about Chicago. Yes, it has a problem, but it's beaten by St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland, Newark, and Memphis for per 100k murder rate in 2016. Also, while the national per 100k murder rate has been trending upward lately, it is still lower than approximately 1965 to approximately 2007. [0]
0. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/u-s-cities-experienced-...
How is this not obvious to the people here on HN? How do the people on here who constantly get holier than thou about demographics in tech not see the obvious machinations? Seriously, look around your office right now and then ask yourself again why top tech companies care more about immigrants than other oppressed groups.
What do you think is more likely, that Google genuinely cares about the immigration of farmers from Libya, or that they have a couple physics PHDs from Iran driving huge amounts of search revenue?
Corporations don't have morality, they have profit motives. YC doesn't give a shit about immigrant rights any more than the unjust deaths of african americans around the US, they care about attracting certain demographics to apply as founders.
Why not both? If Sergey Brin joining the airport protest is any indication, the leadership genuinely cares about the injustice of the ban - but they're more inclined to act when issues affect them directly.
Nonetheless, Google did support Black Lives Matter, if not quite as loudly. For example, in November 2015, Google.org donated $2 million in grants for racial justice, part of which was supposed to "fund a tech-savvy, grassroots solution to end police violence against communities of color":
http://ellabakercenter.org/in-the-news/googleorg-invests-235...
Also, @google tweeted in support:
https://www.twitter.com/google/status/751174648855928834
I see no evidence this is the case, or that the founders of YC aren't human beings who also make decisions out of legitimate concern for the betterment of the world.
[1] http://www.phillytrib.com/news/black-voter-turnout-a-look-at...
Hopefully we are all wrong and overreacting, but if trump has shown one thing it is that you should take what he says literally, and if you pay attention to what he and bannon have said you should be worried, no matter your political leaning or origin.
And that to me means we can't afford to get cynical on people's motives that are reacting to what is going on. So good on YC for doing this now.
The answer you're looking for is that now the white-middle class is feeling the possibility of impending disaster, so of course now it's an emergency, and the floodgates of funding have opened.
The tech community/industry thinks that it is a meritocracy, where race (and hence racism) doesn't exist.
Thank you for your comment. Trump is anti-establishment (sort of: he's reshaping the establishment with his own insiders, I'm not saying he's any less corrupt) and he's anti-globalism. Don't lie to yourself: that's what this is about. The police state and surveillance state abuses are out of control, Obama dropped over 100,000 bombs on 7 countries, we're consistently throwing constitutional and human rights under the bus, Wall Street and the Fed are permitted to loan each other 16 trillion in secret loans and when it was revealed, the worst that happened was a finger wave from Bernie Sanders, 20 trillion in debt and a necessary, impending economic correction due to overspending (in the same exact way if you were spending way more than you earned for years and years, there's no getting away from that)... and I could go on and on. Please give me a break about Trump, he's a deeply flawed character but I'd like people to start being more honest and respectful to the realities we live with as our civil liberties and constitutional rights are consistently eroding as average, humble people are struggling to afford a middle class lifestyle, and it is magnificently disingenuous to pay lip service to the, and let us be honest, mainstream media which is owned by a small group of over-sized corporations, who play Trump out to be the Devil on Earth. But the real problems existed before and without Trump.
This will be entirely unpopular but I really don't care anymore about what being liberal has become. I care about the fact that we have a torture camp in Cuba, about what I mentioned above and more like it. I care about constitutional rights. Equal opportunity. Human rights. World peace. Environmentalism. Nobody in mainstream politics is actually for those things and it's really bothering me. If someone wrote this during the lead-up to Nazi Germany--you'd look back in retrospect and say they were right--I hope that is not the case for me. But I see just a few good people out there: Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard, Edward Snowden, etc., who really hang out on the fringes of the mainstream consciousness of political thought in America, only once in a while coming into view for moments at a time.
Would you prefer that the wealthy tech companies didn't donate to the ACLU? That they refused to ever support any good causes?
This is a pernicious idea and should be put to death. Trying to step up and do something should not make you a target. Reserve your wrath for the many billionaires who don't do anything about any issue.
I read an article about this phenomenon a while ago, but I can't find the link. It's essentially the fallacy that trying to fix a problem makes you responsible for it—so if you can't completely fix it, you shouldn't try at all.
Look at me everyone, in the face of something really good happening, I still complain about all our other shortcomings because I am morally superior.
This is a good thing that is happening, get off your high horse.
Now maybe I'm wrong and you're a Nobel Peace laureate, but it looks a lot to me like someone claiming to care but only criticizing in an unproductive manner.
"You should have engaged in this other thing earlier" is a bullshit criticism. And then the holier-than-thou nonsense at the end about just caring oh so much. Unbelievable.
Thank you for writing it out.
The OP is impressive in it's length for managing not to tell me anything about the ACLU at all...
This is all widely outdated. OpenSSL 1.0.0 support has ended in 2014. Running mod_fcgid and mod_fastcgi in the same server process doesn't seem to make any sense (as they are basically competitioners for the same functionality).
[0] http://progcode.co