Gregory Salmieri
@GSalmieri
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I teach philosophy and related subjects at The University of Texas, Austin. I'm also co-editor of *Foundations of a Free Society* & *A Companion to Ayn Rand*.
Austin, TX
Joined July 2009
All of these four quadrant political graphs (going back to Nolan) are bad for the same reason: they treat contemporary political concepts (many if which are package-deals) as representing coherent quantities that could be independent variables.
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What are they called when they build a life for themselves despite the circumstances in which they find themselves? . Such people don’t fit anyone’s narrative so they get sacrificed to the grievance mongering that’s emmiserated this population for generations.
When Palestinians resist, they are called terrorists. When they cry, they are called actors. When they die, they are called collateral. And when they survive, they are called a threat. This is not a security doctrine. It is a theology of supremacy, enforced with U.S. weapons.
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In this, as in so many other instances, long as people try to live by this immoral moral code, everyone will suffer, and the most dehumanizing of this suffering will continue to be borne by the poor and week who are the alleged beneficiaries of this code—the people who are.
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The ultimate cause of this whole horror is altruism—specifically: the idea that because the Palestinians are weaker than the Israelis, it is wrong for the Israelis to defeat them in the decades-long war they’ve been fighting and noble for the Palestinians to continue indefinitely.
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It’s because they’ve sacrificed their own lives to their grievances for decades that the Palestinians remain in misery as a persistent threat to their (not just Israeli) neighbors. And this horror has been able to persist for decades only because so many in the rest of the rest.
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The answer to what the Palestinians should have done in the months, years, and decades prior to 10/7 is simple: Prioritize making a good life for yourself and your loved ones over rectifying the injustices you think you’ve suffered, and try to redress those injustices only in.
A much better question than "What was Israel supposed to do in response to October 7?" is "What were Palestinians supposed to do in response to all of Israel's abuses prior to October 7?" . Nobody's ever been able to give me a serious response to this question which doesn't.
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RT @BenBayer: Imagine escaping an unfree country to learn that in a free country you are still not free to work, and that you can get by on….
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All this said, I’m glad to see Ackman get his 90-day pause. It’s not a good outcome. But it’s probably less bad than most of the alternatives.
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And if someone averts the immediate catastrophe by helping Trump to juggle reality in this way, this will just enable the irrationality and set the stage for other disasters in the future. That’s how we got to our present predicament—by better people juggling reality for him (and.
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If anyone gets him Trump to abandon his course re tariffs, it will be by helping him to pretend that he's already won some sort of victory, rather than by pointing out some miscalculation or some more efficient means to his professed ends. That's what it's like to deal with the.
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This gets it all wrong. The idea of a "mistake" implies that the person is *trying* to get at the truth and failing. But Trump's never been interested in truth. What motivates him is protecting his fragile self-image as a great man. For decades, this self-image has been invested.
The formula used by the administration to calculate tariffs made other nations’ tariffs appear four times larger than they actually are. President @realDonaldTrump is not an economist and therefore relies on his advisors to do these calculations so he can determine policy.
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Anyone who cares about life and freedom who isn’t already reading @PNikmand’s substack, should start reading it. You’ll find inspiring and harrowing stories of what real dedication to life looks like, of the evils that stand in its way, and of what means to us overcome them.
My name is Pouya. I’m twenty-five years old, and I live in Austin, Texas. I escaped Iran by myself when I was eighteen. It took me seven years to reach freedom, four of which I was forced to live as a slave.
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One sign that we will get that is if they hire people with a record of caring (and thinking) about liberty in a way that isn’t in lockstep with any major political faction. Of people writing for mainstream outlets @conor64 would be particularly well suited to this. And, of.
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I'm cautiously pleased by this announcement. But time will tell whether the editorial page actually advocates for freedom or just mouths a few platitudes about it while carrying water for politicians working to curtail free trade, free speech, and reproductive freedom. I'm.
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RT @BenBayer: The latest chapter from Pouya Nikimand (@metheliving) on the lengths he went to escape from Iran. Reminds me of Ayn Rand's li….
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Yes, and this same rot is at the heart of the religions that these movements secularized. The alternative is valuing one’s mind and one’s life; the alternative is self-esteem and taking real thought for the morrow.
The moral rot at the heart of EA, utilitarianism, and communism. You must live in a permanent state of abstract, all-consuming guilt. You must slave yourself for people you’ll never meet. You must not care about the people and things around you. You are an anonymous cog.
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I want to recommend a fantastic, new (two part) essay on the American Revolution by Mohamed Ali (@Philosophic_Ali). (Links in comments). In addition to being perceptive about this specific historical episode, Mohamed makes important points about the philosophy of history.
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Many “midwit” meme posts are just copes by posters who are using what intelligence they have to BS themselves into maintaining beliefs that they know people they look down on can tell are false.
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Earlier in the term I was posting some argument maps that I use in my intro to philosophy class. I got out of the habit, but I think this map of Kant's argument for for the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative is useful for understanding how his ethics works, so I
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