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What's past is prologue -- Lachlan Murdoch now oversees Fox News but in 1994 he was a Princeton student whose senior thesis was titled, "A Study of Freedom and Morality in Kant's Practical Philosophy." His intellectual journey to the white nationalism of Fox is intriguing. 
Lachlan Murdoch is just as conservative/rightwing as his father Rupert (see my recent story on them, link below) but in 1994 he seemed uncertain about who he was or what he would become. Here's the epigraph of his thesis, from the Romantic poet Lord Byron. theintercept.com/2019/03/30/lac…
In the introduction to the 57-page thesis, Lachlan wrote about the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Sanskrit scripture generally understood as a call for living selflessly. He was interested in its contrast of renunciation and discipline.
Yes, it might seem peculiar -- the overseer of the far-right Fox News studying Hindu mythology and metaphysics in college. But here we are. Lachlan was also interested in Jean-Paul Sartre's ideas about transcendence.
Lachlan even emphasized the importance of making moral choices and assuming responsibility for them (irony alert, yes). As he wrote, "What is morality if not a human ideal by which we can measure our human actions?"
He included love as one of the factors to be taken into consideration when judging moral action; the hypotheticals he referenced included preventing someone from stealing from his family, and lying to his girlfriend.
One of the aims of his thesis is to "create a system that helps us to understand human action, not simply a rhetorical and 'lofty' freedom."
A quarter century before his billionaire father put him in charge of Fox News, Lachlan Murdoch concluded his thesis with this line from the Bhagavad Gita: "The man of discipline has joy, delight, and light within; becoming the infinite spirit, he finds the pure calm of infinity."
Here's the article I wrote (published a few days ago) about Lachlan Murdoch and his strange journey from Princeton University to Fox News. theintercept.com/2019/03/30/lac…
