Shikha dalmia husband quotes
And so to me, we are at this moment where both the ends and the means are wrong, and there are many ends of the progressives that I can agree with. But I think their means are wrong and they are too impatient. They are not interested in changing hearts and minds and bringing people to their cause by making a case. Because I think we do have a fundamental disagreement about whether the ends of all parts of progressive spectrum really are ones that I share.
So there are many people who consider themselves progressive. In some ways, I consider myself progressive. Certainly I consider myself on the left. But I do think that there is a rejection of a universalist vision of society, a rejection of a vision of society that says that we are working towards a future in which certain categories of religion and ethnicity and sexual orientation become less important rather than more important.
And that to me is anathema to our intellectual friendship and the kind of society that I want to build. And I worry that there is actually a way in which the vision of those parts of the left and of the right end up being more aligned than it seems. Dalmia : Yeah, I guess we do. I mean, I moved in a much more progressive direction. So I consider myself like a Burkean progressive, where I accept certain progressive ends, but I want to accomplish them in an incremental way and in a way that does not tear down liberal democratic institutions.
Look—I see progressives as inherently pluralistic and tolerant. And what they are fighting is the intolerance of the other side. And that I share with them. What the best of them are saying is essentially that when societies are set up, there are structures, and there are always dominant groups who manage to bias the structures that are set up.
And I think that experiment still has to run a little further. To give you an example, I used to write a lot about affirmative action, and I was on the right on this because I came from India where I had seen how this quota system it was an outright quota system had really corrupted the politics in India. And when I came to the United States, I was reflexively opposed to any kind of minority preferences.
When the University of Michigan affirmative action lawsuit was going on—I was actually writing for the conservative editorial page at that time—and the case at that time was whether minorities should get a little extra bonus points when they apply to make up for the disadvantages that they have faced. And I wrote against the University of Michigan and the plus points minorities received.
And then I actually started examining university admissions practices. And it turned out that all kinds of other preferences are far more entrenched in university admissions: legacy preferences, development preferences, athletic preferences, all kinds of preferences are woven in that cut against a meritocratic system. And yet there we were: because dominant groups always have some advantage in setting the political conversation, this one set of preferences regarding minorities became a major political movement.
And that to me is a problem. That sort of superstructure just exists. I think our assessment of the progressive left differs a little bit. I have a few disagreements with what you said, but I think my listeners probably know roughly what they would be. I will just remind people that, on affirmative action, my stance is one that I have about very few other areas of political life, which is just to burn the whole damn system down.
Dalmia : No, but I agree with you there, Yascha. My point was that if you want to get rid of preferences, get rid of all of them. So we do agree on that. Sign up for The Good Fight to hear similar conversations with Yascha. Isn't Elon Musk the spitting image of John Galt? Libertarians always seem fascinated by the idea of "making your own law".
Share this post. The UnPopulist. Copy link. Yascha Mounk. Nov 12, May 24, Read full story. August 8, Subscribe to Yascha. Discussion about this post Comments Restacks. Robert Bradley. Expand full comment. And here he is, quite willing to do business with Trump. But when Trump wanted to overturn the election, Bill Barr still stood up to him.
This man who had this expansive understanding of executive power still had some lines he was going to draw. Now you have Pam Bondi, who is auditioning for the role of attorney general in front of Congress, and she refuses to say that the election was not stolen, that Biden is a legitimate president. Pam Bondi, as bad as she is, is actually a level up from what we could have had: Matt Gaetz, someone without qualifications, but someone Trump knows would go after his political enemies like a bulldog.
I agree with a lot of these points about why our expectations should reasonably be that we will be getting a second term that is a lot worse than the first term. But the intelligence committees are legitimately important. And these are institutions that Congress does take seriously. I think the Supreme Court is worse than it was. He threatened to put Zuckerberg in prison for the rest of his life.
That kind of corrosive miasma permeating civil society and private sector institutions has a dramatic effect on how effective opposition can be. They might launch an investigation, which is its own kind of intimidation and retaliation and very serious. Just today, 10 Senate Democrats joined the Republicans to pass this terrible immigration bill, the Laken Riley Act, that really opens things up for a lot of worse unilateral executive actions.
Ken Paxton, the worst state attorney general, had new powers and legal standings under this. And that was Democrats rolling over. I do think we need to confront the fact that, for all the rightful fears we have and viewing him as the major threat, the Democratic Party is deeply unfit for its purpose in this moment. Both wings of the Democratic Party are wrong.
We have this kind of centrist technocrat inclination to roll over and compromise, and then we have the leftist wing that wants to revive half-baked Marxist ideas from last century that are unpopular and wrong on the merits. I think it was a deep shame and a very bad sign that Senate Democrats reelected Chuck Schumer unopposed to be their Senate leader.
So, yeah, across the board, there are a lot of dangerous threats, and a lot of the checks on what he can do and what opposition levers are available are in pretty grim shape. More terrified. Like, instead of seeing the kind of resistance we saw the first time, whatever resistance is there is just holding back because within the executive branch people are afraid.
Where I think the opportunities are going to be is when Trump overreaches. These are TV personalities. So he will want to showcase certain things. So that will open up new avenues for resistance. What would an actual retribution agenda against these people look like that we can start telling the public about so that when these things happen, when the overt things happen, people can start connecting the dots?
But being the subject of a federal investigation, either by a U. And having that example made will very much send a message. Of course, what this rationalization gets so wrong is that Trump is far more corrupt, far more ethically compromised, far more inclined to illegal actions, than any of his presidential rivals have been. In the end, this rationalization is just a pretext.
The whole edifice of you came after me with lawfare, so I can now use the same system against you has a rot at the core of it, which is that he actually does the stuff that the law should hold accountable. Will they actually try to bring bogus charges? How will the courts handle this? But one of the things about it is the courts have very little leeway over the executive branch merely conducting investigations and doing subpoenas and all those preparatory things to actually filing criminal charges against somebody.
Dalmia: Or you have congressional committees. Like Jim Jordan. They are in control of all the congressional committees and they can subpoena anybody and haul in people before them. Craig: Yeah, Jim Jordan is already very good at this. So there are all kinds of ways they can exercise their power. Jim Jordan has been out of control for a while with his congressional hearings.
One reason Mark Zuckerberg bent the knee was that he was hauled before the committee and basically asked to admit that Joe Biden censored him. Craig: I do think the more insidious, harder to see, and more damaging thing is going to be actual and threatened retaliation against businesses, against non-profit orgs. Ken Paxton in Texas, who set the tone for a lot of what we can look forward to on this, now from the federal level opened an actual criminal investigation of Media Matters for publishing an article about how ads on Twitter were running next to neo-Nazi stuff.
And similarly for media organizations and advocacy groups. So I think those are the two avenues to really keep an eye on. One is the quieter institutional intimidation of key parts of our society outside of the government. And the other is the making an example of specific individuals. Or Jack Smith And I think the message is going to be heard loud and clear.
A constitutional crisis is when the system is thrown into contradictions where something has to break—like maybe the military defying orders if he tries to send them into the streets. Something is seriously breaking about how our Constitution works either way these things go. The entirety of the right-wing universe believes Trump has been the victim of partisan lawfare and rhetorical attacks that have culminated in assassination attempts and threats of imprisonment.
I agree, Andy, with your critique of the Democratic Party and how they are not meeting the moment. But have they done plainly illegal things? Well, Trump has. And so Trump was held accountable by the law because he was, first of all, reasonably believed to be in violation of it. I mean, Hillary misused an email server. So the whole edifice of you came after me with lawfare, so I can now use the same system against you has a rot at the core of it, which is that he actually does the stuff that the law should hold accountable.
Dalmia: In India, when Modi wanted to intimidate his opponents or crackdown on dissent, he would actually send an income tax raid. Jacob Sullum. Liberal interventionism makes a comeback. Greg Beato. Why are airlines sounding the alarm against one of their favorite activities? Katherine Mangu-Ward. Nanny State. Mike Riggs. Radley Balko. Adrian Moore.
Lisa Snell. Nick Gillespie. Reason Staff. Evan Wright.
Shikha dalmia husband quotes
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