The article The Diversity Myth is by Peter Thiel in The New Criterion in June of this year. It is based on his remarks at their annual gala last April, at which he was awarded the tenth Edmund Burke award for service to culture and society.
A thought experiment might flesh this crazy theory out just a little bit more. If you were sitting here in Manhattan back in 2007, or in San Francisco, and you told me the average rent would double in the next sixteen years, I would say that’s completely impossible. People would just move. They’d figure out some other place to go. But maybe you countered, well, let’s say rent is going to double anyways—and then asked, how would that be possible?
It would be inexplicable without recourse to a kind of ideological superstructure, inflicting some version of Stockholm syndrome. If you’re a gay person, you might be told that if you ever move from Manhattan to Hoboken you’ll be beaten up by bat-wielding thugs right away. If you’re a woman living in a rat-infested apartment in San Francisco, where the rent is going up and up while you fantasize about a nice suburban house in Reno, Nevada, you might hear that, well, if you ever dare to move to Reno, you are going to be chained to your bed and forced to carry a baby to term. The only logical explanation is that a crazed, ideological intensification has distracted us from what’s really going on.
Every time I read The New Criterion I wonder why I do not read it more. It is more thoughtful and clear than other magazines on the internet, including what I am already reading. I should probably put it on my sidebar - as a reminder to myself as much as to the rest of you.
I subscribed to the New Criterion for years, along with First Things and a highbrow conservative magazine out of Britain called Salisbury Review. I let that all go when the internet came along, partly, at least, because subscriptions cost money and the internet is free. But I was also disillusioned with these sober stylists and their long-form articles because they had no apparent effect on the world. As a literary effort, First Things was often very impressive. As a political actor in the "public square" it had no discernible affect.
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