> In 1996, Turner admitted, "For the 10 years I ran [the team], it was a disaster. ... As I relinquished control of the Braves and gave somebody else the responsibility, it did well."
When's the last time you heard a billionaire say something like that?
> "We're the only first-world country that doesn't have universal healthcare and it's a disgrace."
> Iran's nuclear position: "They're a sovereign state. We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10? We don't say anything about Israel — they've got 100 of them approximately — or India or Pakistan or Russia."
> dubbed opponents of abortion "bozos"
> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror
> in 2008, Turner asserted on PBS's Charlie Rose that if steps are not taken to address global warming, most people would die and "the rest of us will be cannibals".
There's more than wikipedia covers, but you get the idea.
That's a funny thing to mark as "progressive" as I don't think that'd have been considered progressive until fairly recently. Plus, he walked it back.
> In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror: "The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism." He apologized for that and the remarks in 2011 about the 9/11 hijackers, but also defended himself: "Look, I'm a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word ... I mean, I don't type my speeches, then sit up there and read them off the teleprompter, you know. I wing it.
He was also uncomfortably concerned with population growth.
> Turner also said in the interview that he advocated Americans having no more than two children. In 2010, he stated that the People's Republic of China's one-child policy should be implemented.
I'm not sure I'd call him progressive. Thinking Iran should have nuclear weapons doesn't seem to make sense from any perspective unless you want them to use them.
Frankly, he seems like pretty standard anti-natalist environmentalist to me.
Maybe the point is that the logic applies to literally every country having them, including the US, but that doesn't imply that starting a war to try to stop one of them from getting them will end up with a better situation.
That was kind of my point. I doesn't belong on that axis at all, especially trying to transpose a comment from decades ago onto the current political dividing lines between "left" and "right" when so many ideologies have shifted sides over that period.
> Worrying about overpopulation means worrying about the quality of life of future generations, whereas "natalism" à la Musk is basically worrying about how they can keep making themselves richer, while not giving a damn about what happens to the world or humanity afterwards.
One can be natalist or anti-natalist for a variety of reasons. There's no one ideology that leads a person to each conclusion. People have come to (anti-)natalism from both humanist and anti-humanist arguments (and a variety of other arguments).
> So Turner's concern about population growth, if not necessarily progressive, strikes me as very fitting and in line with the humanist, philanthropic positions shown by the other points mentioned about him.
Again, avoiding the left/right/conservative/progressive labeling as those terms are dynamic over time. He's essentially a Malthusian for humanitarian and environmental reasons. Which makes sense, given his age. He'd have been in his mid 20's through the 60s and that was a fairly popular viewpoint at the time.