Who is Peter Thiel?
As Catholic Phoenix has reported earlier, there is evidence to suggest that the finances at First Things have been a mess over the past few years, and that this could have played a role in the apparent dismissal of senior editor Joseph Bottum, about which FT remains gagged.
(Reports from our source in Denver tell us that now free-as-a-bird Bottum gave a talk there on 11/1 and mentioned in passing that he had voluntarily departed First Things “to work on a book.”)
The expensive new website with a host of paid editors and contributors would be a drain on any modest print publication, and the major magazine re-design for FT could easily have caused two problems: first, a glossy mag with color photos and original cover art is always going to be more expensive to produce, and second, at least based upon anecdotes I’ve heard, longtime subscribers were generally unhappy with the change in format (and content), and were letting their subscriptions lapse at an alarming rate, with little to no replacement from Bottum’s desired new readers, excited by the crossword puzzle or something.
Look at the magazine’s masthead, either online or in the print edition, and you will see listed as a member of the “finance committee” someone named Peter Thiel. Next to names like Robert George and George Weigel, what exactly is it that Thiel brings to a publication dedicated to “advancing a religiously informed public philosophy”?
Peter Thiel is a mega-billionaire entrepreneur best known as the founder of PayPal, which was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. With some of the loose change he had in the cup-holder of his Ferrari after this deal, Thiel invested a measly $500k for a 5% share in Facebook in 2004—which would be worth about $1.65 billion today if he’s still holding on to it.
So is Thiel just another billionaire whose occasional interests in libertarian issues make him a kind of second-cousin-once-removed to Richard John Neuhaus’ and First Things’ brand of Christian humanism?
Merely the most cursory web-trolling suggests that Mr. Thiel’s cultural interests and “public philosophy” have not a jot to do with any form of Christianity, or any religion other than science fiction, and no recognizable “humanism” of any sort.
Aubrey de Grey, Recipient of Peter Thiel's Money
ITEM: Thiel’s major contributions to the “Methuselah Foundation”, something that describes itself innocuously enough on its own website as “extending healthy human life,” but which the progressive San Francisco Chronicle, taking a closer look at its founder Aubrey de Grey, portrays as a sci-fi-like effort to “radically postpone aging, giving indefinite life spans.” The Chronicle piece also contains an interesting photo of de Grey, showing that whatever kinds of advances he has made in human longevity, he has at least discovered a thing or two about growing radically extended facial hair.
ITEM: Thiel’s 2008 comments in Reason magazine, revealing a view of life and death that have absolutely nothing at all to do with Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion that First Things would like to see inform American “public philosophy.” Read for yourself, as Thiel suggests that the label “transhumanism” isn’t radical enough to describe his own outlook:
Thiel: The problem with the label (of ‘transhumanist’) is that it suggests that we should run away from being human. Take the question of aging. If you define that as the essence of being human, then transhumanists are anti-aging and therefore you try to transcend this human limitation. I don’t think that death and life are inextricably interconnected in some sort of Eastern mystical sense in which for everything white there’s something black and there’s always a yin/yang type of thing. Every myth on this planet tells us the purpose of life is death, and I don’t think that’s true. I think the purpose of life is life.
This sounds like the type of tripe that the late Fr. Neuhaus, author of the wonderful Christian reflection As I Lay Dying, would lambast in his monthly “Public Square” column. The interview in Reason contains several other gems from the radical techno-ideologue Thiel, including his scoffing at Leon Kass, the distinguished and humane bioethicist (“Criticizing Kass always feels like shooting fish in a barrel,”), and Thiel’s own powerfully self-centered reflections on why he resents federal restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research:
It may be the case that the work being done on life extension is going to benefit people 100 or 200 years from now, but I think it still is a good thing to do it. My own guess is that I will live to age 100 to 120, so I’m frustrated that the technologies aren’t going as quickly as they should because of government interference.
So Peter Thiel is only going to live to age 120, and he’s pissed at the government. That’s a very strange combination of a) personal narcissism, b) a completely unmoored denial of the finite and temporal nature of human existence, and c) adolescent resentment of any authority that would deny him the opportunity to live for a thousand years. What exactly is it that is informing Thiel’s personal philosophy?
Oh, look:
ITEM: Thiel is a prominent “homocon”, a supporter of “GOProud”, which describes itself as the Gay Tea Party, a more radical and hip and stylish alternative to the old homosexual “Log Cabin Republicans.” Thiel recently hosted a GOProud fundraiser in his NYC home, which featured Ann Coulter as the headline speaker (a kind of a right-wing Barbara Streisand, if you think about it) and counted gay porn director Michael Lucas among its attendees. (Yes, Coulter did get into a shouting match about gay “marriage.”)
So Peter Thiel is a lot of things, and a phenomenally successful entrepreneur and investor is one of them. A gay libertarian who wants to build ocean colonies outside the reach of state authority is another. A death-denying “transhumanist” is one more.
A kindred spirit of Richard John Neuhaus he is decidedly not.
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