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by mitthrowaway2 894 days ago
This is the first I'm hearing about this, but "opposition to women's suffrage" seems like a significant misreading.

The attitude of "I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it", certainly can apply to voting too, and seems to be at work in this case.
1 comments
jmopp 894 days ago
That's the slippery slope people who want to take away rights exploit. Sure, you can believe women shouldn't vote. You can even go around telling people you believe women shouldn't vote. But just because you can say something, doesn't mean you should. If you say you don't believe freedom and democracy are incompatible, I am absolutely going to judge you for it because it's a stupid belief for which there is no evidence. There are several free democratic nations, a much larger number of unfree democratic nations, but there are no free undemocratic nations. And it doesn't take a degree in sociology to figure out why that is the case.
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mitthrowaway2 893 days ago
I don't think it's a slippery slope.

I'll put it another way: I'm anti-Trump. By extension, I think people who vote for Trump exert a negative influence on society by casting their votes in his favor. It also happens that these voters are predominantly rural. I also don't think rural voters should be disenfranchised, and if Trump wins the election, so be it.

Part of the idea of democracy is that you do want your preferred party to win, but that doesn't automatically mean you're against all the other teams having the right to vote. It certainly can be the case that a demographic or rules change makes it harder for your team to win. That doesn't mean you are against that change, whether it's universal suffrage, proportional representation, etc.

Support for fair and legitimate elections are usually a stronger foundational principle than one's support for their own favorite party. Especially because their party's victory would be empty if it wasn't won legitimately.

As for whether libertarianism and democracy are at odds, I really don't know myself. I think it's fine for Thiel to have his own opinion on that.

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