As a born NZ citizen I welcome people like Thiel. He may have bought his citizenship, but we could do with more like him.
Also, the idea of rich people/foundations/etc supporting lawsuits for ideological reasons is hardly new. Do you similarly oppose the Southern Poverty Law Center, who successfully filed (valid) lawsuits against the Aryan Nations with the goal of shutting them down? Or the Conservation Law Foundation, and all their donors?
https://www.splcenter.org/seeking-justice/case-docket/keenan...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/exxonmobil-lawsuit-conse...
I'm asking whether you actually object to funding valid lawsuits against people due to speech you object to, or whether that's simply a cheap attack line.
If I made a similar factual statement - say "white people were more likely to support Trump" - does that imply I'm biased against white people?
But rich people I have nothing against, I welcome wealth coming into the country. And suing a private company, well let the case stand on its merits, I don't take issue with that.
Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.[0]
This seems similar to the claim "if white people didn't vote, Trump would have lost in a landslide", which almost nobody takes to mean white people shouldn't vote.
[0] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
> Since 1920 the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.
If you read the original essay[1] you will see that he is making a descriptive and not a proscriptive point. He is not saying "we should not let women vote, because then we could have capitalist democracy". He is saying "women are not attracted to libertarian politics, and they have the franchise, therefore capitalist democracy is not going to happen. Therefore, we should go beyond politics to make it happen". He suggests three ways of making it happen: Cyberspace, outerspace, seasteading.
[1] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
He has already demonstrated his willingness and ability to do this. Why do you trust him?
Imagine that you own a pizzeria in a small town of 2,000 people. Imagine that you hold social beliefs that, 50 years ago, would have been considered not just banal, but so unremarkable that the alternative is not even seriously considered by anyone. 30 years ago, that alternative was not actually legal in any country in the world. Today, it's still (barely) a minority belief.
Now imagine someone asks you to violate that social belief, and you say no. And as a result, a gigantic media firestorm erupts. The President of the USA makes fun of you. The CEO of the world's largest public corporation writes an op-ed decrying your beliefs. People trash your online reputation. Anonymous people threaten to burn down your restaurant. Eventually you're forced to close because there has been such a tremendous backlash.
The system in power in the USA has already demonstrated its willingness and ability to do this. Why would people who disagree with these things trust it to have that kind of power? Why wouldn't they try to burn it all down or replace it?
You described the holdouts of the 1950s era of American culture. Suppose there was a holdout from the 1850s era of American culture. Should we give deference to their cultural preferences which include all of the following: ownership of human beings as property (only if they have dark skin, though), subjugation of women who are legally disenfranchised, and enthusiasm for genocidal military actions against indigenous people.
so...where do you draw the line? by what means do we determine by what means, and under what circumstances, people might express their cultural preferences? I think there is a difference between a "media firestorm" (emergent phenomenon) and the directed effort of an eccentric billionaire.
We do give deference to that, as long as they are our allies and not actually within our borders.
More seriously though, there is no means by which we can determine how people might express their cultural preferences. I simply believe (unprovable) that the elite / bourgeois / urban class overreached (by creating a situation allowing those emergent phenomena to happen), and there was a reaction. If there were a critical mass of people who did believe in slavery, then I guess there would have to be a civil war or something to settle the issue. There is no way around the fact that public morality is enforced socially / by other people.