Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro join Dave Rubin for a live discussion about postmodernism, Trump, conservatism, free speech, and rules for life.
Well, they say it’s a live discussion but it is actually recorded, although I am sure that at the time it took place, it was really them talking to each other.
And now a bit more of the same.
Even though he had written 25 books, I had never heard of John Jay Chapman until I found him quoted the other day by Janet Fiamengo. But 25 books and not one known to me. All is most certainly vanity. Here’s the quote:
“Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose … Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don’t be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.”
And this is one I particularly like which is an important reminder to those who write for a living:
People who love soft methods and hate iniquity forget this,—that reform consists in taking a bone from a dog. Philosophy will not do it.
There is also this which has a pointed message for today, but if one reads it right, has a pointed message for every day ending with the letter “y”.
A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.
Here are others, each as relevant today as the moment they were first written down:
All progress is experimental.
When a man talks with absolute sincerity and freedom he goes on a voyage of discovery. The whole company has shares in the enterprise.
Every generation is a secret society and has incommunicable enthusiasms, tastes and interests which are a mystery both to its predecessors and to posterity.
It is just as impossible to help reform by conciliating prejudice as it is by buying votes. Prejudice is the enemy. Whoever is not for you is against you.
Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same—hardihood. Give them raw truth.
The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy.
Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation.
Good government is the outcome of private virtue.
A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.
Too much agreement kills the chat.
And this is from The Two Philosophers: A Quaint, Sad Comedy (1892)
Act I
I’ve studied every science round,
And many a doctrine have I found;
Greek and German roots of thought
In years of labor have I sought;
And every gnarled and eyed potato
Out of Zoroaster and Plato
Do I plant in your young heads,
And watch ’em sprout as in hot-bedsAct II
And since we speak of culture,
What is culture, do you think?
FIRST SCHOLAR.
Culture is spiritual food
And intellectual drink.
REGIUS.
A petty saying, — I confess
Not quite what I expected.
Let some one make another guess,Act III
Notice is hereby given that one
Of your professors in your college
Has made a scurvy attack upon
The American school of knowledge,
Which said attack is couched in words
Unmeasured and profane,
And seems to show, conclusively,
The writer is insane.
But sane or mad, the writer is
Grossly devoid of truth,
And wickedly incompetent
To have the charge of youth.
Maybe nothing really ever changes after all.
My two favourite writers at one and the same time – both, as it happens Canadian, I think only by coincidence but perhaps not – in which one, David Solway, discusses the other, Jordan Peterson, with the title, The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon. My only observation is that David Solway is less astonished at the emergence of Jordan Peterson because they have been friends for a long time and therefore he is used to hearing Peterson, and no doubt others of a similar cast of mind, such as his wife, the equally brave and articulate Janice Fiamengo. He may therefore be less aware than someone such as myself, who has no such close associates, how absolutely rare a Jordan Peterson is. I have only once or twice personally met up with someone anywhere near holding the kinds of views Peterson has expressed so accurately, who is reaching a vast audience that has been hungering for this kind of sustained and intelligent articulation of our values that today can be found virtually nowhere else. Partly this is because few understand these issues even half so well, and partly because very few are willing to stand up in public and make the case to others. Career death is a common phenomenon for those who do.
But Peterson has done something else as well. What he did was transcend discussion of the politics of the day, which is what most of us do. Most of us anchor our observations on some piece of current events that we use as a basis for saying whatever it is we say. He has, instead, stepped out of time and place, into the rarefied atmosphere of the ancient and historical traditions of our own cultural past, placing them within an evolutionary progression as they have developed literally since the Stone Age. It is in part because he is a psychologist, and therefore used to ideas which are philosophically grounded, but also because he has been able to draw down on a vast array of our own literary and religious traditions to explain, at a very deep level, the basis for the ideas each of us has, which allow those of us who come across his work to see past and through the post-modernist, cultural-Marxist conceptions that are doing so much to ruin Western civilisation at the present time, and indeed, almost all of the ancient civilisations of the world. He has explained in unusually accessible terms what the West has stood for, and why preserving this tradition is so crucial. Let me take you to this passage from David Solway to help explain what I mean:
Peterson’s message is not new to anyone who has read and pondered his sources; yet it is new in the sense that he has performed an act of synthesis for a largely illiterate, politically indoctrinated and under-educated generation. As John Dale Dunn writes in American Thinker, Peterson’s “great accomplishment is teaching, counseling, and coaching people to urge them to live the good life, the virtuous life … The only way he might be ambushed is [by being targeted] by the destroyers of the left with their name calling and politics of personal destruction,” deploying tactics straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
I may well be part of that “largely illiterate, politically indoctrinated and under-educated generation” but in that case we all are. Many of us have fought over this same terrain but have made no breakthroughs on the Western Civilisation Front in the ongoing Culture Wars. Jordan Peterson has, and he may have established a new salient that we need to do everything we can to reinforce, defend and expand.
The video comes at an opportune time since this is a large part of where our next election will be fought: Business faces world’s highest minimum wage under Bill Shorten. I will also mention that the Card and Krueger study mentioned in the vid for many years played a large part in our own wage cases where I had to spend an inordinate amount of time demonstrating how inane the notion is that higher minimum wages do not cost jobs. They do. Unless productivity goes up, the only possible outcome of raising minimum wages is a fall in employment. The vid makes the case, while also establishing how out to lunch the economic establishment is in yet one more area. Thinking you can create jobs by raising the minimum wage is as stupid as believing you can increase employment through unproductive public spending. Modern economics has almost entirely lost its way, but if that’s the advice people want, there will be plenty of advisors to provide it.
The chart below is from that same article, showing the drop in the minimum wage as a proportion of the median wage which coincided with the GFC and may even have preceded it. A very old sequence, a downturn that decimates industry changes the employment pattern along with the underlying wage structure. Using averages as a measurable reality that can be adjusted by some kind of administrative policy will never ever work. If you want to raise the real wage or the minimum wage you can only do it by raising the level of real value added per employed person. That’s called leaving things to the market, a very old idea that has always worked when it has been applied, but another one of those notions economists in general have long ignored and is now all but forgotten.
Suppose we start with this simple question: Is it appropriate for a president to use the powers of government to spy on the opposition party during an election?
No one will say yes to that. So let us move on to another question: Is it a form of intolerable corruption to find that a president has actually used the powers of government to spy on the opposition party during an election?
To that question, everyone will say yes. It is absolutely an intolerable form of corruption. So let us ask one further question: If there is evidence that a president has used the powers of government to spy on the opposition party during an election, do you think such a claim should be investigated?
To this question, the answer is unfortunately becoming quite quite clear, but it is not the same answer for everyone. For parties of the left, along with the media, this is the answer: if the president who is accused of spying on the opposition is from a party of the right, then the answer is yes, it should be looked into as deeply and relentlessly as our forensic tools allow; but if it is a president from a party of the left, then the answer is no, absolutely not. For everyone else, of course, the answer is yes, this should be investigated as thoroughly as possible because protecting our constitutional democratic order must be our highest priority.
And that, I am afraid, that division between left and right, is the largest most intractable problem in politics today.
When I heard PDT say that the actions by the FBI and Department of Justice were that “people should be ashamed” my first thought was that shame was too weak. But then while I was thinking about the release of the memo, the thought that came into my head was that those who see nothing in all this worth worrying about, even as an abstract proposition, really were a disgrace and ought to feel genuine shame at their inability to understand what has been done and for which they are more than willing to give the all clear. The Democrats in collusion with the FBI and others were actively attempting to undermine and subvert the democratic process, the only process that gives a community its political freedom. Anyone not scandalised by such actions have shown themselves willing to let others take and hold power without the consent of the governed. They are fascists, Nazis, totalitarians. And to what purpose? In support of the most corrupt person ever to have run for president, to permit Hillary Clinton to continue the ruin Barack Obama had done so much to create.
This is the post I wrote a year ago that was recalled to life by Dr Fred Lenin. It was written on January 12, 2017, that is, even before the inauguration, even then titled, The Deep State, which must therefore have been a phrase already in use. The anti-democratic political instincts and actions of such people should deeply worry if not actually terrify anyone who values freedom and prosperity, which these people clearly do not. I am unable to discover where any compensating good for those who not just ignore these actions but actually condemn efforts to bring them to light, who are unable to see the crisis they have created by endorsing the actions of a sitting president to employ the powers a president has to destroy the democratic processes he was elected to protect. Here is the post I wrote then.
MEDIA AND CIA FALL FOR ‘GOLDEN SHOWER’ HOAX…
TAPPER, BLITZER RATTLED…
YOU’RE ACTING LIKE NAZIS, TRUMP TELLS SPY CHIEFS…
Russian tech expert named in report never even contacted!
GREENWALD: ‘Deep State’ Sabotage…The last of these comes with the actual title, “The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer”. Here is the opening text, but I have to say this is terrifying and in no sense politics as usual, unless this really is politics as usual, although we have never before seen it revealed so openly.
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
“Morally bankrupt” it most certainly is and then some. “Certain to backfire on those doing it” is very optimistic. If this is how things are, Nazi is not going too far in describing what is going on. If the evidence were not before our eyes of the way in which the media and the CIA have worked with the Democrats to undermine Trump’s authority you would think all of this is impossible.
From January 12, 2017, that is, from even before the inauguration, even then titled, The Deep State.
If you are not spooked by all of this then you are made of tougher stuff than I am.
MEDIA AND CIA FALL FOR ‘GOLDEN SHOWER’ HOAX…
TAPPER, BLITZER RATTLED…
YOU’RE ACTING LIKE NAZIS, TRUMP TELLS SPY CHIEFS…
Russian tech expert named in report never even contacted!
GREENWALD: ‘Deep State’ Sabotage…
The last of these comes with the actual title, “The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer”. Here is the opening text, but I have to say this is terrifying and in no sense politics as usual, unless this really is politics as usual, although we have never before seen it revealed so openly.
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
“Morally bankrupt” it most certainly is and then some. “Certain to backfire on those doing it” is very optimistic. If this is how things are, Nazi is not going too far in describing what is going on. If the evidence were not before our eyes of the way in which the media and the CIA have worked with the Democrats to undermine Trump’s authority you would think all of this is impossible.
The above is Jordan Peterson refuting utilitarian philosophy whose core principle is that happiness is life’s aim. As much as I am an admirer of John Stuart Mill, this part of his philosophy has always left me cold. Peterson explains why in just two minutes. And below is an interview by Dennis Prager, no mean philosopher himself.
And then this about finding the right woman rather than roaming the field, assuming you can roam the field.
The details are below. The main point is that the Democrats used an obviously nonsense piece of spyware as a justification to listen in on private conversations among the Republicans both before the election and after. You care if you are worried that large bureaucratic organisations such as the FBI can be used to take down an opposition party. You don’t care if any means necessary is all the justification one needs to subvert the Constitution to ensure Democrats always win presidential elections. Sure it’s worse than Watergate. It is not just corrupt to its core by any standard but also frightening if freedom and constitutional government are to have any meaning. But that is of no concern to the Democratic Party nor the media if being done by Democrats, so where will this all go? Nowhere, my guess, but we shall see. These are the details from Breitbart. The actual memo released today is found at the link at the end.
The House Intelligence Committee released its classified memo detailing alleged abuse by senior FBI and Justice Department officials on Friday, after the president approved its release.
Among the memo’s findings are:
- The anti-Trump dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee formed an “essential” part of the initial and all three renewal surveillance applications against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page;
- The political origins of the dossier were “known to senior DOJ and FBI officials,” but those origins were not included in applications to obtain the warrant;
- Also used to justify the surveillance warrants against Page was a news story supposedly corroborating the dossier, that was pushed by the dossier author Christopher Steele himself — yet the FISA application incorrectly says Steele did not provide the information in the article;
- Perkins Coie — the law firm for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hosted a meeting with Steele, Fusion GPS and media (this revelation makes it harder for the Clinton campaign and the DNC to deny they knew about the dossier, though Clinton and other top DNC officials at that time have denied knowing about it);
- Steele was “suspended and then terminated” as an FBI source, after the FBI learned that he made an authorized disclosure of his relationship with the FBI to liberal media magazine Mother Jones, and he lied to the FBI about his previous media contacts with Yahoo! and other outlets;
- Steele — although portrayed as a “boy scout” by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson — had personal bias against candidate Donald Trump, telling senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr that he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president”;
- Ohr’s wife Nellie Ohr assisted with the dossier, but the FBI or the DOJ did not disclose this connection in the application for the FISA warrant, even though Bruce Ohr worked “closely” with Deputy Attorney Generals Sally Yates and then Rod Rosenstein;
- At the time that the FBI used the dossier to obtain the spy warrant on Page in October 2016, head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division Bill Priestap had assessed that the corroboration of the dossier was still in its “infancy,” and after Steele was terminated as a source, an FBI unit assessed his reporting as only “minimally corroborated”;
- FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017 that no warrant would have been sought without the dossier;
- The FISA warrant also mentioned information related to another Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, even though there was no evidence of cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos;
- The memo does not state what the information about Papadopoulos was, but said that information was the trigger to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation on Russian meddling and collusion in late July 2016 (he had told an Australian diplomat at a London bar that a Maltese professor connected to Russia had told him he had dirt on Clinton in the form of emails);
- Peter Strzok, the No. 2 at the FBI’s counterintelligence division opened the bureau’s investigation on Russian meddling and collusion (text messages between him and fellow FBI official and lover Lisa Page show that he held an anti-Trump bias).
The memo was released without any of the redactions sought by the FBI and the DOJ.
Picked up at The Other McCain: A few headlines from Breitbart.com.
Democrats Bringing More Than Two Dozen Illegal Aliens to Trump’s SOTU
New York Times: Immigrants Are Superior to Americans and Their Kids
‘Dreamers’ Arrested for Human Smuggling —Twice in Two Days
11 Democrats to Boycott Trump’s State of the Union Address — 49 Fewer than Snubbed Inauguration
But what is most depressing is that the Democrats know their constituency, which is made up of rusted-on fools plus any so-called independents who can be gulled into voting their way because of some issue of the moment driven by their media allies. I also liked this comment from DeadMessenger:
(1) Isn’t it weird that in America, our flag and our culture offend so many people, but our benefits don’t?
(2) How can the federal government ask U.S. citizens to pay back student loans, when illegal aliens are receiving a free education?
(3) Only in America are legal citizens labeled “racists” and “Nazis,” but illegal aliens are called “Dreamers”.
(4) Liberals say, “If confiscating all guns saves just one life, it’s worth it”. Well then, if deporting all illegals saves just one life, wouldn’t that be worth it?
(5) I can’t quite figure out how you can proudly wave the flag of another country, but consider it punishment to be sent back there.
(6) The Constitution: It doesn’t need to be rewritten, it needs to be reread.
(7) William F. Buckley said: “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other points of view, and are then shocked and offended when they discover there are other points of view.”
(8) Joseph Sobran said: “‘Need’ now means wanting someone else’s money. ‘Greed’ means wanting to keep your own. ‘Compassion’ is when a politician arranges the transfer.”
All good, but playing to the base, that is, mostly us. But his enemies are his enemies not because of what he does or doesn’t do but because they are filled with hatreds and envy. None of that will disappear and all will be in play come the elections in 2018 and 2020.
Here’s the question: Do economists understand what’s happening to the American economy? And here’s the answer: no, they don’t. So when I see the American economy picking up, I am excited to see how accurately classical economic theory explains what to do with the result right there before your eyes. I also don’t know if this is true – Economy to grow at 5.4% rate in first quarter, Atlanta Fed tracker shows – but no one will be surprised if things turn out that way. The question for the future, however, is different – whether our present growth rates can be sustained, and on whether you can depend on our current economic establishment not to muck things up.
Alas, economists learn not from experience, not from observing the world and what happens, but only via the theories they have been taught and passed examinations to demonstrate their knowledge of. I suppose there’s no other way, but it should make you cautious. Leaving economies in the hands of economists drenched in modern economic theory is not the best long-term strategy. A couple of examples of economic thinking from the very highest reaches of economic theory to help put things into perspective. First this via The Institute of International Monetary Research:
The accompanying video looks at a different topic. In an article in the current issue of The Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Professor Paul Krugman claims that economic theory and analysis have worked well over the last decade. He is a champion of the well-known Keynesian prescription, that an increase in the structural (i.e., cyclically-adjusted) budget deficit boosts aggregate demand and makes above-trend growth (with falling unemployment) more likely. According to Krugman, cheered on by Keynes’ biographer, Lord Skidelsky, in the Project Syndicate blog, these textbook ideas were translated into policy in the USA and went far to check the Great Recession. Krugman and Skidelsky believe that, in this sense, economics worked.
That is, it worked in the sense that the ridiculously exaggerated forecasts of doom never eventuated. But the recovery never occurred either, a recovery that is occurring now based on principles absolutely and completely antithetical to the policies adopted by those who applied a Keynesian stimulus.
So let me also mention this, Should We Reject the Natural Rate Hypothesis?, from the latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. This is the interim conclusion:
To summarize: I read the macroeconomic evidence as suggestive of persistent effects of monetary policy on the natural unemployment rate and potential output. But the evidence is not overwhelming. Moreover, looking just at recessions has its limits: It cannot answer whether there are symmetrical effects of booms and recessions, which is a crucial issue for the design of policy. In this context, a closer look at potential channels of persistence and more microeconomic evidence may help to assess potential nonlinearities or asymmetries between recessions and booms.
And this is the conclusion at the end:
Where does this leave us? . . . The general advice must be that central banks should keep the natural rate hypothesis as their baseline, but keep an open mind and put some weight on the alternatives. For example, given the evidence on labor force participation and on the stickiness of inflation expectations presented earlier, I believe that there is a strong case, although not an overwhelming case, to allow US output to exceed potential for some time, so as to reintegrate some of the workers who left the labor force during the last ten years.
That is, we should keep the theory intact but ignore the theory when it suits us because something else would be preferable even if the theory doesn’t tell you what that is. Indeed, if we are looking at the US economy and trying to explain its astonishing reversal over the past year, there is not a theory found in any modern text [except possibly mine] that will help you understand what is going on or why. These and their students are the people who run the show and make macro and monetary policy decisions while also regulating business. So far so good, but this is now before the economic establishment again gets their claws on the levers of power.
Law of Markets 