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Comment by e5india | Hacker News Reader

It's so interesting how these surveillance/data-gathering companies (Palantir, Banjo, Anduril) are founded by right-wing types. Professed small government libertarians building that very same government's intelligence apparatus for profit. It's exactly this double-speak on government and individual liberty that makes minorities distrustful of conservatives.

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Small-government libertarians in my experience are really ok with big-defense. They are the sort who fund NSA and it's incessant attempts to vacuum up all internet data, spy on all people, etc. They rarely understand that those same powers might be turned against us all as easily as flipping a switch. It is a blindness that has always baffled me, especially since we have more proof everyday that that switch has already been flipped.

> It is a blindness

It's very much not a blindness. They just look out for n.1 first and foremost; everything else is a philosophical veneer to justify their instincts.

Because what small government really means is eliminating social safety nets and publicly beneficial programs, and focusing on protecting corporate profits above all else.

This exactly.

> Small-government libertarians in my experience are really ok with big-defense.

I don't know who you're talking to, but the national Libertarian Party has always been against domestic surveillance and foreign wars. Unlike the Democrats or Republicans, it is the official position of the Libertarian Party that FISA courts should be ended[1] and that the CIA should be abolished.[2] The Libertarian Party also wants to pardon Snowden[3] and Ulbricht[4].

1. https://www.lp.org/libertarians-congress-stop-government-spy...

2. https://www.lp.org/news-press-releases-libertarian-party-cal...

3. https://twitter.com/lpnational/status/1037392054559690753

4. https://www.lp.org/free_ross/

> right-wing types

What you perceive to be the right wing, possibly. Some would call these types 'Neocons' or 'RHINOs' implying they're not actually conservative, they're authoritarian statists. This is why there was the 'tea party' deal a few years ago.

Many people actually do believe in smaller government and individual liberty, but the media likes to point out the crazies and the statists as proof that all 'conservatives' are bad, immoral people. So far, their propaganda is working.

Edit: Spelling

Whenever I see someone publicly talking about smaller government, I look at their actions and see that they are really talking about eliminating public welfare and expanding corporate welfare. Fiscally, every R in DC is a neoconservative. They hold their traditionally conservative social positions simply to secure voters who would otherwise have no reason to vote for neoconservative policies that are often against their own economic interests. I doubt Mitch McConnell actually believes in any of his social policy stances, they just exist to drum up votes to keep Rs in office to pass neoconservative economic bills.

For example, when Republicans have DC strangled, they still don't make serious efforts to ban abortion despite their rhetoric over the past 50 years. Why would they? That's one of their best wedges to divide the voting block of the working class. If they actually banned abortion, they would lose a talking point at best, and swaths of single issue voters at worst. The tea party movement is another great example. Funded by conservative groups like the Koch brothers under the guise of a grass roots movement. It strengthened support among the R base, some new faces appeared in DC, but the overall economic ideology of the republican party did not change. The Republican party is powerful in this country, most of all because it is a single beast where every member from the highest to the lowest office tows the party line.

> The Republican party is powerful in this country, most of all because it is a single beast where every member from the highest to the lowest office tows the party line.

I know of another party that operates in a similar fashion.

> Fiscally, every R in DC is a neoconservative

No argument here. But we were talking about 'conservatives' rather than a particular political party. Parties have done a great job at branding themselves towards different viewpoints, even if their actions don't match the branding.

I'm a one issue voter. I will never vote or support someone that voted for the Iraq war, I will never vote for someone that supports any ongoing foreign military intervention of any kind. My options, as you might imagine, are quite limited.

Strangely, killing people overseas is not the #1 issue in the US when it comes to politics. People are selfish, immoral idiots that don't actually care about others.

Here's a political platform I could get behind: States decide what's best for themselves when it comes to social and economic issues, end all wars, remove military from all foreign outposts, keep all warships within our international waters.

I'm with you on the military. I think its the biggest waste of budget we have, personally. Vietnam should have been the death knell of an overinflated military seeing as we failed to subdue farmers with rusty weapons, and continue to fail against farmers with 50 year old weaponry today. At least with the democrats there is a lot more heterogeneity in political opinion, although I'm jaded by the lack of imagination from the national office.

California is a great example of the heterogeneity of the democratic party. Most state and local politicians are democrats in name only. Sure, they support democratic social platforms like not being discriminatory to marginalized groups, who wouldn't? But looking at policy positions regarding land use and the role of public government, many hold very conservative positions. This is still the land of Reagan, and his politics never really went away even if the Rs seemed to disappear from ballots.

I think it's interesting to look at the different types of democratic voters in CA. Nationally, Bloomberg was sort of a DINO candidate. Take a look at the vote breakdown (1). I know LA so I'll give an overview for that city. Sanders held working class areas including neighborhoods with the highest population density in all of LA county, the region along Vermont Ave. from the 10 freeway to the hollywood hills. Biden was a mixed bag, drawing a lot of support from predominantly Black areas due to the association with Obama, but also from upper class white areas in the south bay such as manhattan beach, hermosa beach, and redondo beach. Support for Bloomberg only was found in some of the wealthiest zip codes like Brentwood and Beverly Hills, as you might expect given his positions.

1. https://www.latimes.com/projects/2020-california-primaries-p...

While spending is an important part of being against war, it's not really the leading reason. Vietnam did change a lot. No more graphic reporting, no more hard hitting journalism after that. The Pentagon approves which reporters get to embed and how the story is going to go. The only real reporting now is from leaked footage of war crimes that we through someone in prison for.

> Nationally, Bloomberg was sort of a DINO candidate.

I don't agree. I think he's the prototypical national Democrat. Rich, well connected, wants to expand state powers. Supports well fare and broad taxation, supports war.

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