I am not up to date on all details, but how exactly is it overreach? It's a good question whether government should give money (9bn but I could be wrong) for research, but lets put that aside for now. (who determines what "research" is this? it could be quantum mechanics, or it could be "gender studies")
Curious as to why do you think this is an overreach.
"By August 2025, the University must adopt and implement
merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices among faculty, staff, and leadership. Such adoption and implementation must be durable and demonstrated through structural and personnel changes. All existing and prospective faculty
shall be reviewed for plagiarism and Harvard’s plagiarism policy consistently enforced. All hiring and related data shall be shared with the federal government and subjected to a comprehensive audit by the federal government during the period in which reforms are being implemented, which shall be at least until the end of 2028."
Trump administration is now the defacto HR department for Harvard, and eventually all universities.
> cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
But! Also! "The University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse."
Cease all DEI programs, but we require 'viewpoint diversity'...
"Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity. If the review finds that the existing faculty in the relevant department or field are not capable of hiring for viewpoint diversity, or that the relevant teaching unit is not capable of admitting a critical mass of students with diverse viewpoints, hiring or admissions within that department, field, or teaching unit shall be transferred to the closest cognate department, field, or teaching unit that is capable of achieving viewpoint diversity."
You say that they are "demands". As if the taxpayers should automatically give billions to Harvard, no matter what Harvard does. That's insanity (to me at least).
"Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment."
"The United States has invested in Harvard University’s operations because of the value to the
country of scholarly discovery and academic excellence. But an investment is not an entitlement. "
So basically, they are claiming that the Federal government will not invest money until Harvard gets rid of the communist/socialist rhetoric. As far as I can see, they are free to burn their money to fund communist ideals. Who says that they deserve taxpayers money by default?
It's amazing how communist problems always end with: "you eventually run out of other people's money"
> they are claiming that the Federal government will not invest money until Harvard gets rid of the communist/socialist rhetoric
They're changing the terms of the trade after a contract was signed. At the very least, this is the U.S. defaulting on commitments.
That said, I broadly agree with you--the U.S. shouldn't be funding Harvard. And the public shouldn't have a say--or continuing economic stake, the way we do with publicly-funded research--in what Harvard does and produces.
This is Trump's trademark move, writ large. We've all read the reports of him refusing to pay contractors after work is done, ignoring the contracts and saying "sue me". This is who he is, and he's just bringing this playbook (back) to the federal government, cheered on by people until they're personally and directly affected by this behaviour.
Research grants come with stipulations on how research is conducted, these grants were already granted so this is essentially breaking their contract. So there is no by default grant, generally the grants also don't delve into what the school can teach and hire for teaching which is very much protected by first amendment rights.
Considering a private university rights to hire and teach as they wish as communism is definitely an odd definition of communism I've rarely seen.
As if the taxpayers should automatically give billions to Harvard, no matter what Harvard does. That's insanity (to me at least).
AFAIK, Harvard doesn't get money for nothing -- it's primarily for research. The demands are orthogonal to what Harvard provides: top tier talent for whatever the government sees fit to fund.
It's amazing how communist problems always end with: "you eventually run out of other people's money"
It's always someone else's money. Roads suck? You probably have too many roads for other people's money to fix. The list goes on. Libertarian dreams of self-sufficiently die when their money has to pay for things. Unless you meant feudalism or plutocracy, where wealth primarily flows away from the working class.
Humans are creatures of community. There will always be taxes for any sufficiently developed people, the only hope is they serve the public good and aren't funneled into the oligarchs' pockets.
Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter. They didn't seem to have a problem with this. It's interesting how the brainwashing works: they always find a reason for whatever they do. "Empathy", "sympathy", "compassion" for whatever evil they do. "We are protecting innocent people from the Dangerous Thoughts".
When other groups do it to them, then they cry in the media in which they control.
The solution is simple: we should not censor free speech. IT WILL be turned against you. This should be a principled position, not one that depends on whether you like one party or another party...
Twitter and Facebook locked Trump's account because he committed policy violations while actively inciting an insurrection after having lost the presidential election. Regardless of the actions of private companies, I also believe that inciting violent treason is not covered under the First Amendment.
I'm not sure what similar argument can be made about the #Democrat hashtag, though. As far as I know, nothing actually happened that would warrant any restrictions on the hashtag.
If Democrats can incite violence and post information with impunity, yet Republicans get fact-checked out the wazoo (by Democrats, no less!) ... it's very hard for us to take the claim that this wasn't "because of his politics".
I didn't agree with the Trump ban and a lot of other "content moderation" (which affected the left wing too).
But in the case of Trump he was banned due to the incitement of violence/revolt in the Capitol Hill incident and the attempts to overturn election results.
Look at Clinton and Pelosi’s tweets when Trump won the first term. They also challenged the result and claimed it was a manipulated election.
May 16th 2017 Nancy Pelosi tweeted to her massive following “ Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts.”
Does that mean she was removed from social media for “inciting revolt”? No, of course not.
Trump’s tweets on the day of the Capitol riot were to demand people behave peacefully and respect the rule of law.
First off, it's now clear from the evidence that the "insurrection" was the FBI working hard to entrap all the people they could, after everything was done to limit security on the day of the protest.
Secondly, the riots in Washington DC on Trump's first inauguration are rather pretty, the way the fires of businesses glowed in the night.
I'm really tired of pretending that somehow the Republicans are the "uncivil" ones, while the Democrats are perfectly innocent, and wouldn't harm a fly.
Pelosi didn't question the election results or call for their overturning. It was about the claims about foreign influence, which was later used to build the narrative for impeachment.
I have no dog in this fight and I want to see all ideas surface. Then people will be able to judge for themselves. I do not want any kind of filtration by either communists or conservatives.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. Jean-Paul Sartre
For starters, the Sieg Heil salute that Elon did was exactly the same as Hitler did it [1] and modern-day white nationalists do it [2].
Secondly, anyone who refers to Nazism as the "the National-Socialist party of the German working class" is clearly attempting to make an utterly specious claim that Nazism is really about Socialism and not about Fascism.
> You believe Elon Musk is somehow showing support for the National-Socialist party of the German working class?
That's a bizarre comparison. Are you deliberately trying to build a straw-man and associate a known extreme right-wing, Nazi salute with socialism? You do realise that the Nazi party were not at all socialist - they called themselves that to trick and lie to the Germans.
I am not building anything. Perhaps you need to study history and see what happened. There is no distinction of evil between the communists in USSR and NAZI Germany. They were both clear evil. I thank God they are both history now and we should not forget it, ever.
What? One moment, you're defending Musk's Nazi salute and the next you're stating that "we should not forget"?
Not forgetting implies that we must NEVER tolerate Nazi sympathisers and Nazi ideology. Musk has been promoting Nazi/extreme right-wing ideologies for quite a while now and his latest stunt is to perform a Nazi salute which insults the memories of everyone that fought against the Nazis in WWII.
What specific part of history are you alluding to? I'm reasonably knowledgable but not an expert in European history and I certainly found it very frightening when I visited the Holocaust Museum in Berlin and saw that the exact same methods were being employed by the Republicans/Trump.
Can you be more specific as it seems that you're just trying to obfuscate.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
> You believe Elon Musk is somehow showing support for the National-Socialist party of the German working class?
No, which is why nobody but people who want to downplay say this stuff. This is the second comment of this kind I saw.
He's doing the Hitler salute, with a snarl, once to the crowd and once to Trump. He has no clue who Hitler is or what he did, just like he has no clue what RPC are, or what item level requirements in Path of Exile 2 mean, but that doesn't change what we see with our own eyes.
What is there to downplay? This is why engagement hunters on Twitter/X.com made a side by side comparison of "Democrats doing Nazi salute" over the years, and there are like 10 pictures there doing the same exact thing. It would be as bizarre to say those people were supporting NAZI Germany, too.
> It would be as bizarre to say those people were supporting NAZI Germany, too.
The person you replied to said "nazi salute". In context, it's clear the gesture is meant. Everything else comes solely from you.
And far-right groups everywhere are totally celebrating it by the way, you're aware of that, right? In a way they never did and wouldn't celebrate some random "gotcha" photo of a Democrat that has nothing to do with them. So you're just underlining the point.
You have the opinion that Musk's gesture was perfectly innocent. Others don't think so. It's your opinion, and it's a valid hypothesis. But the other opinions are as valid as yours. They are implying that Musk is not nice and don't give him the benefice of the doubt. You are implying that people criticizing Musk are not nice, and don't give them the benefice of the doubt.
The parallel with "democrats doing Nazi salute" is pretty poor: of course people will not assume it was the intention for someone who has, by the ideas they defend and by their acts, demonstrated they are strongly opposed to the Nazi ideas. But it is not the case here.
On my side, I think it is very difficult to believe that Musk has done it 100% innocently. Musk is a troll, and it was a perfect opportunity to "trigger" people while pretending he did it innocently. I'm not sure how sympathetic he is with Nazi ideas (but I would not be surprised he would be sympathetic to the core concepts, he is promoting the same family of ideas grounded in the same roots), but I think it is very much plausible that he don't consider the Nazi salute dirty enough, so that he can use it to troll with despite the consequences (think of the message it sends to real Nazi sympathizers), which is already pretty bad. The views he has expressed otherwise (support to AfD, conspiracy theory, ...) just reinforce the idea that "100% innocently" is unlikely.
> The parallel with "democrats doing Nazi salute" is pretty poor: of course people will not assume it was the intention for someone who has, by the ideas they defend and by their acts, demonstrated they are strongly opposed to the Nazi ideas. But it is not the case here.
You have to prove that. You cannot just randomly keep saying it as a starting position because you hope nobody will call that out. He has shown support for free markets, reducing regulations, reducing taxes/gov. spending (within budget and small at that) and for limited government in general. How is that support for the National-Socialists?
> I'm not sure how sympathetic he is with Nazi ideas (but I would not be surprised he would be sympathetic to the core concepts, he is promoting the same family of ideas grounded in the same roots),
Again, you have to prove this. Be concrete: which ideas precisely? Which "concepts", which "family"?
I had this kind of discussions before but unfortunately it is usually a waste of time, as any consensus amongst experts is waved away.
> He has shown support for free markets, reducing regulations, reducing taxes/gov. spending (within budget and small at that) and for limited government in general. How is that support for the National-Socialists?
I think this sentence already is quite telling. For example, Nazi privatized the German industry massively in the 30s, and there was a full wing of the Nazi party defending free markets and low government, with people like for example Walther Funk. They also had the support of big private industry leaders like Friedrich Thyssen. The opposed wing of the party, containing for example Göring, who were advocating for a deeper control by the state on economy in order to build up the army, got the favor of Hitler just before the war. But it does not mean that the Nazi ideology was incompatible with pro free market, low regulations and low government ideals: there were plenty of proper Nazi that were openly defending these ideals.
> Which "concepts", which "family"?
Well, that is usually where the well is poisoned. For example, AfD in Germany is widely recognised as grounded in Nazi values (the fact that it is the relevant party that attracts the most people who consider themselves as proper Nazi is a very good clue: why the self-recognized Nazi likes this party so much if this party does not share any of their values?). But then, it is easy to just say "na-ah, they have nothing to do with Nazi values", even if it does not correspond to the simple facts. Yet, Musk has recently openly supported this party. There are plenty of political party in Germany and in Europe. He could have not supported any party, the same way he did not in France, in Spain, in Italy, ... or he could have defended values, or he could have defended other parties that are basically pushing for the same economic policies that Musk is probably interested in. It is difficult to understand why Musk is suddenly entering the debate JUST to defend parties with strong nationalistic and xenophobic roots (not used as an insult, it's just a fact of what their policies are) if Musk does not share these values, and these values are indeed the values shared by the Nazi party.
Why can't you discuss sincerely and directly to the point? Why do you start with: "it's a waste of time", "this is telling", "the ExP3rtz said this.."
Stop moving the goal posts - I asked for direct examples, you say why didn't he supported parties in France and Spain.
NAZI Germany had total control over the economy. If you are contesting this point, there is nothing for me to discuss further with you.
They also had total control over the social aspects and any kind of even slight criticism of anything related to their party or the way they rule, was met with
severe penalties. They regularly executed people for treason cause of criticism.
They fully controlled all media and speech without exceptions. Goes without saying that they disarmed anyone that wasn't directly controlled by their party.
This is what the communists did, too. This is why I maintain they are the same evil.
It's unbelievable to read that a grown person thinks that companies in NAZI Germany had any kind of freedom themselves. I disagree with that strongly, as anyone knowing anything remotely about Germany 1933-1945 would.
I am against any censorship of ideas - ideas should be discussed openly. And I am against government interference in private businesses. That is core position of freedom. If Elon or Trump endanger it, I am against that, loud and clear.
This is off topic, but are you going to say the same for what the Democrats did to Zuckerberg? Check the Joe Rogan interview for details. That's just one example, they did much more than this. It doesn't matter how they justify it ("compassion", "empathy", "we protect you from thoughts" etc.)
You keep pretending you know what you are talking about, and yet, you are strongly downvoted.
Your description of the nazi Germany is caricatural, and does not correspond to the reality. Funk was strongly pro-market, and was in disagreement with some of Hitler choices, and yet was not merely executed and was still 100% a nazi, because the reality is not a Disney movie with caricatural villains.
I have given direct example such as he supports for AfD that makes only sense if he adhere to some of their values (as demonstrated, if he does not adhere to some of their values, why did he single them out), and those values are recognized by "the ExP3rtz", aka people who know way better than you (thanks of proving me right that you would behave exactly that way, btw), as following in the tradition of the nazis.
As for the rest, your turn to provide some arguments. But don't worry, I will not answer, as nobody is reading this because you have been massively downvoted, not because of "bad censorship" but because what you say is poor and stupid.
My description of NAZI Germany is downplaying the evil, if anything. They had a lot of power even before 1936 but in 1936 they openly seized the economy (completely) to prepare for direct war with the communists. This is called the Four-Year plan. I will re-iterate that they executed people regularly, for being "dissidents" or any kind of political opponents or "communists".
I am only writing this for comedic effect. One day someone will read this, and they will see a person defending NAZI Germany as a country with free markets, and in the same time blaming Elon of being a nazi because he moved the arm. Remarkable, I have to say.
Don't tell me who is expert and who is not an expert. Use your own brain - how can NAZI Germany have any degree of freedom at all and do what they have done? They could have done that only because they had full power and were brutal with any opposition. This is true for the communists, too. It is the same thing. One uses the Aryans and one uses the Proleteriat.
you can write it as long as you want. Funk WAS a free market proponent and WAS nazi. That's a fact. If you cannot understand that, it's not my fault.
The rest of your "analysis" seems to be written by a 12 year old kid.
Pretending that when we bring the proof, with clear example, that free market proponent can be nazi, it means that we pretend that all policies from a specific nazi government were free market is just very very stupid.
As for the ridiculous rest, just look at Pinochet. He is NOT a nazi (not because he was pro-free-market, just in case you are too stupid to not notice), but he demonstrates that your logic of "if it's a free market, it's impossible to persecute the political opponent". The Pinochet regime was recognized as as-free-market-as-it-can-be by the ones of Thatcher, Friedman and the Chicago Boys, and at the same time, it was a bloodthirsty dictatorship that persecuted people who did not align with the party, organising murders and tortures, to the point of having a squad nick-named the "caravan of death". So, yeah, your argument is just uneducated.
Musk is too ignorant of it to support or not support "Nazi Germany", flat out. But he's constantly boosting actual Neo-Nazis, agreeing with the white replacement stuff, endorsed the AfD -- again, without knowing what that means -- and now he's snarling, and saluting the audience and Trump.
> Georgios Katidis (Greek: Γεώργιος Κατίδης; born 12 February 1993) is a Greek professional footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder. He is best known for performing a Nazi salute after scoring a game-winning goal in 2013, which led to his permanent suspension from every level of the Greece national team and his suspension from AEK Athens for the remainder of the 2013 season.
Note how the article doesn't even mention what he thinks about "NAZI Germany", because it doesn't matter. It's a Hitler salute.
And that's a soccer player, not someone rambling about fake news on a platform they bought where they also constantly say "hmm, interesting" to the most vile, demented nazi bullshit, and now running a "department of government efficiency". This deserves a LOT more scrutiny, at the inauguration of a President who once said he could shoot people in broad daylight on Times Square, and his supporters wouldn't mind.
> This is one of the many reasons Democrats lost. This type of propaganda will not work anymore.
What "kind of propaganda"? That you keep repeating I claim Elon Musk "supports Nazi Germany", which doesn't exist since 1945? What are you on about? This is why people come to the realization that some people are really just defending this shit on autopilot and we must not wait for their approval to resist fascism.
10 out of context pictures are not the exact same as video of someone doing a full on Nazi salute in 100% form from start to end, twice. Show me a video of a Dem doing that...
It does work, I use it regularly. However, it can hang the whole system in certain cases such as mount that went wrong, connection timeout between the servers (without -o reconect option on sshfs, but even with that sometimes).
>Adams called Black Americans a “hate group” and suggested white Americans “get the hell away from Black people” in response to a conservative organization’s poll purporting to show that many African Americans do not agree with the statement: “It’s OK to be white.”
From the article.
"OK to be white" - is that really racist? What can the white people do, they were born that way?
Other groups of people are doing it. To me, it looks unreasonable to be proud of something you had no input in. This obsession with so called "identity" is insane - you did NOTHING to be black, or white, or anything else. You were just born that way. How can you be proud of that?
Why are people so obsessed with this? Why does the media keep pushing "identity" on everything? People are "identifying" as wolves now, btw. And dragons. No joke.
I have a routine for this scenario: open the windows in the morning for 1-2 hours, then close everything and clean the air internally (I have a 24/7 sensor running and know when the air is good or bad).
That seemed like the easiest thing to do without making much more complicated system. Basically risk 1hour of bad air for 23h of "clean" air.
> All success is simply relative to someone else – usually those around you.
That’s important for spending money, because for so many people the question of whether you’re buying nice things is actually, “are your things nicer than other peoples’ things?” The question of whether your home is big enough is actually, “is your home bigger than your neighbor’s?”
This is pathological behavior. Unfortunately, it's ingrained in humans. We are improving the world in a faster-than-ever rate, and the objective difference between wealth classes was never lower than it is now. Not even remotely close.
(see the book "Factfulness" for some interesting data)
Yet due to the way the world stopped "being huge", due to social networks and everyone being "approachable" (low degree of separation or whatever), the level of envy is at absolute maximum. This problem was always present in humans and is perhaps the primary reason (well, if we can make the jump or at least connect envy to evolutionary pressure for procreation) we have achieved so much in this world. Not knowing when is "enough" is unsolvable problem, even though philosophers wrote thousands of books on this topic.
People cannot stop being envious even if it leads to unhappiness, almost always.
For myself, if I don't have to worry about bills, buying healthy food, having shelter and I don't have to work 14 hours a day, I consider myself on par with anyone in the world money-wise.
Curious as to why do you think this is an overreach.