Which claim? That Jobs was not a monster or pedophile? I'm on absolutely solid ground there.
Assuming you mean whether Jobs would intensely dislike Trump, then -- what can I say? You clearly don't know anything about the guy and that's fine. But if you doubt it, you're wrong.
We were far from personal confidantes, but I had several candid conversations with him over the decades. His personal politics were never in doubt, or far from the surface. He held a special revulsion for warmongering, dishonest, scapegoating, and authoritarian-leaning US candidates and administrations.
He was always at least a bit frustrated with US economic policy. He would abhor Trump for all of the above reasons and more.
If memory serves, the trial was covered in a sidebar in _Pen Computing Magazine_ as well as _The Marine Corps Times_, and the whole thing was discussed on comp.sys.newton a bit, with SJ not wanting to be a defense contractor being put forward as one reason among many (not profitable, not working well, bad publicity ("Eat up Martha"), pet project of Sculley, &c.)
Germany is free to exit NATO and close Ramstein. I believe it only requires a 1-2 year notice period.
The defense budget required to operate without US assistance is another matter entirely; you’re looking at doubling existing spending, plus hundreds of billions in one-off procurement costs — and that assumes ongoing access to US weapons systems.
The US subsidizes the massive weapons development programs you currently rely on; cost sharing agreements and unit purchases do not come close to offsetting the full sunk R&D costs the US covers.
Replacing those weapons programs, and the existing US industrial base and supply chain they depend on, would run into the trillions of dollars.
Just the R&D portion of the US defense budget is $150B a year — the entire EU’s aggregate defense R&D spending is only ~€15B/year.
A truly independent EU that did not depend on the US for its security would be a very different place.
Hitler was literally banned from public speaking for two years.
The Nazis came to power through widespread normalized political violence, not speech, and banning Hitler from speaking did nothing but further undermine the legitimacy of the government’s mandate to rule.
The point was how they gained absolute power, and I would also say that there were multiple factors at work, and I doubt that the GP meant that “abusing free speech” was the only method or reason, but was it not a factor at all? There is often so much “not this but that”, folks should consider “both-and”.
When the Enabling Act was deliberated and passed, giving Hitler effectively absolute power, Sturmabteilung paramilitary members were positioned both inside and outside the chamber.
That period of history was fraught with political violence enacted by people who claimed a moral imperative to curtail the freedoms of others.
The law might be a bad one (and probably is) but on balance better that police investigate suspected illegality than don’t. Overall I’d rather be somewhere where even a former royal can be arrested than somewhere the rule of law is optional.
>"[...] But we should claim the right to suppress them [intolerant ideologies] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
The paradox of tolerance is not about censoring others. If anything, censorship lands on the side of the intolerant of this paradox.
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