Recently I was having a twitter conversation with Kevin Zelnio and Eric Michael Johnson about the fact that I define myself as "right-wing." Kevin kind of implied that I was poseur in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. I don't wear my political beliefs on my sleeve too much in this space because 1) I find talking about politics kind of boring (though data analysis less so) 2) My own views are somewhat idiosyncratic, as I am socially liberal on many "hot button" issues 3) Science is more interesting than politics, and we can have a real conversation about it. If I started offering my stupid uninformed opinions on politics I'd have to open up the floor to my liberal readers to offer their stupid uninformed opinions on politics. There's a lot of that on the web, so I don't see where that's in anyone's interest. But I am sincere. I don't consider myself liberal, and that has to do with particular socially conservative tendencies which I have. Robin Hanson might call me a "farmer," and I'm also accurately described as having a bourgeois sensibility. More concretely I have little sympathy with liberal diversity talk, and oppose multiculturalism. I'm not a neoconservative or liberal internationalist who believers in eternal war and imperialism to homogenize the values of all humans, but, I do believe in nation-states with distinctive cultural values which unify them. The nation-states of the West have Western values, which are a contingent product of their particular histories. I believe in the perpetuation of those values. The geometric aspect of Florence's Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore make it a relatively conceivable mosque at some point in the future,
but I don't want the Duomo of Florence to become a mosque.
It's an aesthetic preference, and culturally biased, but I'm at peace with this. It is a fundamentally illiberal attitude, and I am not particularly shy about it, even with family members who are nominally affiliated with "Team Islam." It isn't as if Islamic architecture is under threat, there are 57 nations which are members of an organization of states affiliated with that religion. Since I'm not a neocon I obviously don't have much truck with the "War on Terror," and am moderately skeptical of our close relations with Israel (and honestly, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well). But, I also do not share the reflexive defense which Western Left-liberals exhibit toward the large Muslim minorities which now reside in Europe. Consider the real evidence of discrimination against Muslims which Ed Yong reported a few weeks back. I grant the reality of this, but one of the dimensions that is important to note is that
