Craig Newmark says he just supports doing what needs to get done to move the country forward.

Newmark:    The term ideology has been pretty badly abused.  One take an ideology as this Liberal-Conservative spectrum which is purely destructive these days.  There’s ideology implicit in American values.  Again, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and I pretty much go with that, along with the notion, again, that you want to treat people like you want to be treated.  You want to get stuff done, you want to figure out what works.  You want to alleviate suffering when you can.  That’s a kind of ideology.  I have fully bought into that.  That seems to be the ideology, if you want to call that, of the new administration.  The idea is to forget, to some extent, about political parties to get done what people need in this country to be done, and I’m onboard.

Question: Are you an activist?

Newmark:    I’m not an activist, I’m just a guy, from my point of view, who is standing up for other people.  This is a new and exciting time and, remember I do customer service at Craigslist [IB] and I’ve been doing that for almost 14 years now, and that’s kind of routine.  But now and then I have this time machine fantasy, what would life be if I was around during the war for independence, maybe World War II, maybe [the beat] era?  Right now, we’re in the middle of an era kind of like all that and more.  The course of human history is changing right now, and we’re all part of that to the extent we want to be, and I guess I’m playing a, oh, a microscopic role, but it’s something.