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In just a few years, Jordan Peterson has risen from little-known psychology professor at the University of Toronto to pop cultural icon and bestselling author, boasting millions of followers and just as many haters. His book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, which claimed the masculine spirit is under assault and espoused basic tenets such as clean up your room and get your house in order, became a sensation in 2018, particularly among young men who flocked to hear his lectures worldwide.

In an age dominated by political correctness, Peterson has taken contrarian stances on topics such as white privilege, the gender pay gap, and the enforced use of gender-neutral pronouns. Hes been deified as an intellectual superhero by his fans and demonized as an alt-right villain by the left. Just this week, it emerged that the progressive writer Ta-Nehisi Coates may have used Peterson as the inspiration for Nazi supervillain Red Skull in his new Captain America comic book. (Peterson called the likeness smears and urged his followers to buy a limited edition poster featuring Red Skull paired with something I actually said and added that 100 percent of the proceeds would go to charity.)

His latest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, weaves together a diverse range of ideas, including from Nietzsche, the Bible and Harry Potter, and was an instant No. 1 New York Times bestseller when it came out last month.

And yet, in the past year, Peterson has faced one of the biggest trials of his own life. After his wife Tammy was diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer, he was prescribed sedatives to calm his anxiety, only to find himself dependent and experiencing the horrifying side effect known as akathisia, which causes an inability to stop moving along with a sense of doom, panic and suicidal thoughts.

Peterson disappeared for a year as he went to Russia, then Serbia, for treatment. (The Sunday Times wrongly claimed he had schizophrenia.) Last summer, he returned to his regular self on his daughter Mikhailas podcast, where he was welcomed back by millions of fans.

A couple of weeks ago, I met with Peterson, 58, for almost three hours on Zoom, where he appeared in top form, speaking about ideology, our modern culture, spirituality and his own continuous struggle with mental illness. What follows is an edited and abridged Q&A from that session ...

Many people on the left have critiqued your re-emergence and new book release as fraudulent and hypocritical given the degradation of your own life. How do you respond to the criticism?

Yes, right. Believe me, Ive tortured myself about that plenty and constantly ... I was very apprehensive about writing this book or certainly about releasing it ... But everyone is susceptible to [being] cut off at the knees at any moment ... You can protect yourself against that, to some degree, by putting your life in order, and by living properly, but that doesnt mean that youre fully protected from it. We all die, we all get sick. If we cant communicate with anyone who doesnt get sick or die, then we cant communicate with anyone. Does that mean ... that we have nothing to offer? No, it means were also radically imperfect, that we should be careful, but were stuck with our inadequacies. I have my inadequacies.

A healthy dose of self-criticism is a common theme in your work. Have you come to realize any bad decisions you may have made which exacerbated your illness?

Yes, Ive looked at my contribution to it ... I took benzodiazepines, and that seems to have been ill-advised. Im very sensitive to benzodiazepine withdrawal. When I took them, I was really sick. I was insomniac for a long time, weeks, three weeks, I was freezing, I couldnt get enough clothes on. My blood pressure was so low I couldnt stand up. I was in absolute terror. I have no idea what happened. Then I went to the doctor and was prescribed this medication. I slept, and I felt better. I didnt think much of it. My life was very stressful at that point. That turned out to be a very bad decision. I wasnt aware of how dangerous this could be for some people.

Im curious how your suffering shaped your outlook on life and human existence.

The last chapter of my new book is be grateful in spite of your suffering. Its the right thing to do, to be grateful. Im not claiming this for myself. Its tightly allied with a kind of existential courage. Its a decision.

Im bitter, Im angry, Im resentful. (But) thats all victimhood. Its not helpful.

If you fall prey to resentment, and anger, and hostility, not even however rationalized, but however justified ... its not helpful.

Many, many days in the last two years, I truly believed that I would die before the end of the day. I just couldnt see how I could possibly be that impaired and live. It turns out youre a lot tougher than you even want to be sometimes ... Youre not that easy to kill.

One of the things one can do in a time of great hardship is to adapt a victimhood mindset. How have you dealt with the temptation to wallow in victimhood?

Im bitter, Im angry, Im resentful, all of those things. I shake my fist at God. Whats the justice in this? Trying to scour my conscience to see what Ive done wrong. Thats all victim. Thats all victimhood, but its not helpful. Im doing my best to drop that ... None of the victim responses have been productive for me. Ive tried to fight them off.

Why is victimhood status so attractive in our culture right now?

The first part of it is people dont necessarily regard themselves as victims. The activist types, they tend to regard themselves as spokespeople for the victims. They see an altruistic ethical motivation in that and regard it as admirable. To some degree, it is ... but those are important constraints ...

First of all, what makes you think that youre a spokesperson for the oppressed? What makes you think that you have that right? Why should anyone take you seriously? How do you know youve got the message right? Why do you think you have the solution at hand? How do you know youre not more dangerous than the problem itself? How do you know that your dark and unexamined motivations arent blinding you? ...

If you can just be a good person because you believe the right three things, how convenient is that? ...

You dont have to look at yourself and you have an enemy. Thats the part that scares me the most ... Now you have an enemy and that enemy is the cause of everything you hate. Now you have all moral justification to go after them, to hurt them, to stop them because theyre evil, and to elevate yourself morally as a consequence.

You have this unearned pathway to moral superiority thats actually dependent on your willingness to unfairly persecute based on your ignorance. Its terrible. Universities promote this, Well, you should be an activist. Thats essentially what every 19-year-old is taught. Its like, no, you shouldnt be an activist. You should get your own house in order, and then you should cautiously proceed to more difficult things if you dare.

Victimhood culture is most pronounced along the racial dimension. This is why perceptions like white privilege and oppressed minorities are so popular.

This is something that really bothers me about the radical left, you get your privilege, and you get to be morally superior because youre standing up for the victim. Its like you get to be privileged and a victim at the same time.

Its terribly socially divisive and its unbelievably hypocritical.

Anybody who stands up and says, Im a professor, the system that produced me was so racist or was so prejudiced that its racist, you just admitted [that] you have no moral claim to your position. Resign now.

If ... the system that produced you say, as a professor, is so systemically prejudiced, you dont have a valid claim. Youre actually an incompetent fraud.

We say that culture has no capacity for forgiveness. Yet, people have forgiven me. Im amazed.

Why do you think people in positions of influence are so quick to call our society as oppressive and bigoted when our society is one of the most free, liberal, open-minded, inclusive societies that has ever existed?

A lot of its ignorance. People dont know, for example, that up until 1880, 95 percent of the Western world lived below todays UN-established poverty line. We have no idea how much dramatic improvement has been made in the last 150 years and how absolutely godawful things were before that. We dont know that because weve never been hungry, for example, not for one day.

You look around and you see, well, things could be better, so theyre bad ... Well, bad compared to what? Certainly bad compared to a hypothetical ideal, but not bad compared to all extent historical comparisons.

Why is religion increasingly unpopular in society, particularly among the young?

Lets say youre an ideologue, and youve decided that the patriarchy needs to be smashed. What do you do? You go to protests. Thats smoke and fire. Its dramatic. If youre a young Christian, what should you do? Be good. Its a little vague ...

Theres danger in confusing your political beliefs and your religious beliefs, not noting that theres a difference between them.

What are the biggest ways your life has transformed over the past few years?

Its funny because since Ive been launched into the public eye, lets say, or launched myself or whatever, since Ive become notorious, my life has been very complex. The levity has declined, the playfulness has declined, and its really unfortunate. Im a very playful person. All I did with my kids was play with them, and laugh with them, and joke with them ... but since 2016, things have been complicated. To say the least. My daughter was extremely ill, my wife was extremely ill, and we thought for sure she was going to die. She had a cancer that only 200 people, only 200 cases have ever been reported, and every single one of those people died ... She lived on the edge of life and death for five months.

This is something that really bothers me about the radical left, you get your privilege, and you get to be morally superior because youre standing up for the victim. Its like you get to be privileged and a victim at the same time.

At the same time, I had this meteoric rise to public notoriety, fame, which hasnt slowed down at all. In fact, it seems, in some sense, to be accelerating ... My reputation was on the line in an international way, dozens of times. Generally, what Ive observed in peoples lives is if something like that happens to them once on a local scale, thats enough to traumatize them. That happened to me like every week. Its happened to me every week essentially, in multiple countries, for like five years.

People can look at that and think, He should have managed it better. Its like, OK, fair enough, you try it. See how you do. I dont even want to say that, because I wouldnt wish this on anyone. Im not complaining. You might also ask, Why do you think you have the right to continue? Because really, thats the question, Why do you think you have the right to continue?

I certainly doubted it profoundly. I thought, Ill get back on my feet, so I did some podcasts first. Its like, do people find this useful? Will they find it useful? How will they respond? Positively. OK, Ill do another one. How will they respond? Positively, so I think, Im either going to curl up and die, or Im going to continue, and so Im continuing.

Despite all your mental and physical struggles, how have you managed to return? What has helped you pull through?

That I was forgiven by my audience. Here I am this guy, Im a clinical psychologist, I got tangled up with benzodiazepines. Im talking to people about getting their house in order, and things collapse around me. The irony, its almost unbearable.

That was part of what made this so difficult ... not only the physical pain, but this absurd paradox. Yet, people have forgiven me. Im amazed. We say that culture has no capacity for forgiveness. You hear that about cancel culture and about people being eradicated for making one mistake ...

Ive been attacked in the press when people have gone after my reputation with all guns blazing ... being compared to Hitler, etcetera, etcetera. Yet, the support that Ive received has been continuous. Why that is, I have a hypothesis: I include myself in the audience of reprobates to whom Im lecturing. I dont assume that I abide by all these rules. There are targets for attainment, and hopefully, that has protected me at least to some degree, against the perception of undue moral superiority ...

The general public my viewers, readers, and listeners, lets say have been unbelievably loyal and supportive. Ive seen this outpouring of love at the micro-level within my family, and from my friends, and from people I dont know, but who I communicate with. It saved my life for sure.

Read more from the original source:
Jordan Peterson: Deadly effects of prescription drugs left me bitter, but I refuse to be a victim - New York Post

In the 25th issue of Ta-Nehisi Coates run as the writer on Captain America, a side story follows the main event where the titular superhero speaks at the funeral of a Korean immigrant lawyer named Sung Jin Jeong. The story of the humble lawyer falls somewhat afoul of stereotypes, leaning rather heavily on the antiquated overqualified immigrant trope and not really using an appropriate ethnicity for that kind of story besides, given that South Korea is a developed democracy with an infamously byzantine legal code.

But for this brief story, Coates nevertheless does a good job staking out his ideal vision of what the United States is and should be. Then, a mere three issues later, we get the surreal visual of Red Skull corrupting the youth with a Jordan Peterson-style media empire.

Such is the great irony of our social media moment, when Peterson reacted with bewilderment on Twitter when a fan informed him of the comic in question. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jordan Peterson were two of the more important political thought leaders of the teens, but no one would have expected their names to come up simultaneously in this, of all contexts. The shock would be particularly harsh for those who havent been paying attention to them for the last few years. Coates went from meditating on race in The Atlantic to writing superhero comic books. Peterson went from a conscientious objector on the topic of referred pronouns to a self-help guru. So why are they having a spat now?

The answer is more intuitive than you might expect. Both men are still hard at work in the culture war, theyre just doing so from a passive angle now. Coates works in comics because of the abiding belief in liberal circles that pop culture is a direct influence on proper culture, and that social-justice-oriented themes can trickle down to the masses. Peterson has a more direct approach. He observes that people in the United States, and young people in particular, are quite depressed. So he puts out motivational videos and encourages his fans to build up their self-esteem.

His famed 12 steps involve such harmless platitudes as trying to be articulate, making supportive friends, and telling the truth. This aspect of Petersons career is quite unobjectionable on its own. To liberals, the main charge that can be leveled against Peterson is that he uses his genuinely good life advice as a Trojan horse to infect the masses with objectionable right-wing beliefs.

So its easy to see how Coates ended up concluding that turning Red Skull into a Peterson-esque figure was socially relevant, absurd though that idea may seem out of context. But even in the context of his Captain America series, which has visited this theme previously in less bombastic ways, the delivery has fallen flat. With Red Skull previously in the background, Selena Gallio had emerged as the previous high-profile politically themed villain. A nigh-immortal psychic with vampiric abilities, her master plan involved building a cult styled on the old America and farming the gullible humans who joined up for their life energy.

The people who populate this outland village are an obvious template for economic anxiety. They bemoan their lack of opportunities and are grateful for having the chance to just do hard work in a larger community. All of the various normal people who have been turned against their own interests by the villains in Coates Captain America run are like this. The closest Coates gets to convincingly representing them as bad people is via obvious toxic masculinity. They resent the fact that they cant protect their women, or that women have to do the fighting for them, and can even be seen attempting to beat women up.

Coates likely wrote this ambiguity intentionally, to try and avoid overly demonizing his subjects. The problem is, as the absurd Red Skull Peterson climax demonstrates, this has created a world where encouraging people to try and take their life in their own hands and show initiative is evil. Captain America and his superhero co-stars are both incapable of and apparently completely disinterested in trying to push a competing vision.

In all fairness, given that Captain America came out as a Nazi prior to Coates run, their incompetence in this regard is understandable. This too can work at cross purposes. One economically anxious character cites watching helplessly as HYDRA marched through the streets to show his frustrations with the apparent impotence of modern American culture. Its clear that whatever supervillain people end up rallying behind, the chief motivation is less the charisma of the supervillain and more the general despair of everyday life.

Despite framing the ideas these people have for self-improvement as based on displaced nostalgia, Coates himself engages in far greater whitewashing of the past crimes of the United States than the antagonists of his own comic book. Coates introduces the Daughters of Liberty, a group of women from the eighteen century inspired by Enlightenment ideals to fight for freedom. This also includes freedom for slaves, with Harriet Tubman appearing as a member.

Coates should know better than to suggest that liberal thought of the 18th century was conducive to anti-slavery, given how the practice flourished under the watchful eyes of its biggest proponents. Harriet Tubmans own sense of purpose widely understood to derive from her religious conviction, with the Underground Railroad relying heavily on people with more loyalty to God than the United States government.

While Coates is comfortable calling certain idealogues wrong and even expressing sympathy for them, hes frustratingly vague as to what is right. At one moment Captain America shows sympathy with disaffected young Americans, comparing himself with a young man who was unable to join his elder brothers in the NYPD. There is obvious irony in citing the police as a bedrock for solidarity, given the scrutiny they are under both in the real world as well as in the comic universe.

The story of Sung Jin Jeong sticks out chiefly because its the closest Coates Captain America comes to endorsing a certain kind of behavior. But even then, the story is about Sung Jin Jeong rather than Captain America, with the title character coming off as a bit of an afterthought even in the main story. When Red Skull accuses Captain America of standing for an amorphous dream of nothing, the critique hits far harder than it should. Captain America is, literally and figuratively, a fetishization of patriotic World War II era propaganda. Hes just not relevant to our daily lives.

Yet rather incredibly, Peterson is. Hes the whole reason were talking about the Coates run on Captain America at all. Considering that Coates just got a deal to write a new Superman movie and Peterson is still recovering from severe pneumonia, maybe Coates is right to see Peterson as such an ideological threat to his vision of America. Unluckily for Coates, the real Peterson isnt a Nazi, and cant be discredited by just applying red makeup to make him look more evil.

Read the original:
Jordan Peterson is the Red Skull: Secret Wars - Book and Film Globe

A careless comparison meant to skewer Jordan Peterson is backfiring in a big way.

The psychology professor expressed astonishment when Twitter followers alerted him to obvious parallels between him and the Red Skull, the supervillain in Marvel Comics Captain America franchise.

In the comics latest edition, published March 31, the masked evildoer leads men astray through online lectures. One panel shows the Red Skull promoting 10 rules for life and references chaos and order, apparent allusions to Petersons bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and its sequel, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.

Writer and social commentator Ta-Nehisi Coates, whom Marvel hired in 2015 to write the Black Panther comics, is the current Captain America series author. While Coates hasnt acknowledged Peterson as the inspiration for Caps nemesis, the similarities are too on-the-nose to be mere coincidence.

Coates Red Skull is an information-age pied piper for disaffected young men whose mind-warping viral videos convert a legion of disciples ready to wreak havoc upon his command. Thats not a far cry from the bad-faith critiques of Petersons work that persist despite thorough debunkings.

Writing for online magazine Slates Brow Beat culture blog, Matthew Dessem describes Peterson as a self-help guru to the alt-right. In fact, Peterson is a steadfast opponent of that movement, who eschews the identity politics of the far right and the woke left with equal vigor and aplomb.

I think the whole group identity thing is seriously pathological, Peterson said during an August 2017 question-and-answer exchange.

Progressives bristle when he traces intersectionality to its inevitable conclusion: The process of differentiating people by their disadvantages and privileges can only be repeated so many times before you reach the irreducible number of one.

Regarding the individual as the ultimate minority may be anathema to the modern left, but it also obliterates collectivist canards on the right wings outer fringes. The Southern Poverty Law Center says alt-right adherents embrace white ethnonationalism as a fundamental value. Thats incompatible with Petersons appeals to personal responsibility.

Pundits who caricature Peterson as a gateway drug to white supremacy only beclown themselves, and Coates jumps into this trap with both feet, suggesting the self-help author or his supposed comic book alter ego is assembling an army of like-minded sycophants. In reality, Peterson addresses a diverse amalgam of readers and viewers who dont march to the same drumbeat.

Hot takes on the Captain America kerfuffle were similarly sloppy. A Daily Mail article reported that Peterson was angry to learn of the resemblance, while entertainment website Uproxx said he was downright pissed. Red Skull, thin skin, tech blog Boing Boing crowed.

While Petersons initial tweets expressed surprise at the discovery, hes clearly bemused rather than upset. Instead of objecting to the idea of Coates casting him as a villain whose Marvel origin story is head of Nazi terrorist activities trained by Hitler himself, Peterson took ownership of the character and promptly put him through reform school.

In memes shared on his Twitter page, the Red Skull now parrots Petersons philosophy of self-improvement. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth, one reads.

The contrast between exaggerated comic book imagery of a red-faced, glowering menace and practical advice for leading a fulfilling life underscores the absurdity of painting Peterson as a malign influence better than a sober YouTube lecture or an exhaustive written rebuttal ever could. If Coates meant to make the professor a cautionary tale, Peterson turned the tables with pitch-perfect parody.

Twitter followers are in on the joke, too. One imagined Peterson as Lobsterman, a reference to the first chapter in 12 Rules that compares humans and lobsters physical response to defeat, noting that the mood-regulating hormone serotonin affects dominance hierarchies in both species.

Peterson embraced the lobster motif, tweeting an illustration of a red-and-black shield featuring a stylized six-legged crustacean fit for display on a caped crusaders chest.

Coates overlooked the downside to writing a rival into a timeless tale, rendering him immortal in a narrative sense. A villain can always become a hero; redemption arcs, after all, are as much a comic book trope as the heel turn.

Corey Friedman is an opinion journalist who explores solutions to political conflicts from an independent perspective. Follow him on Twitter @coreywrites.

Read more here:
Comic villain just needed some therapy | Opinion | jonesborosun.com - Jonesboro Sun

In my last piece, I took the Left to task for relying on esoteric approaches to social problems and institutions. Meanwhile, tradition, the family and the sacred foundations for a classical liberal culture are seriously challenged, but not by the forces usually identified as the threat. North American advocates of tradition and by extension an idea of something called the West, on the one hand, maybe the only ones who can redeem a coherent social view out of the current mess of bad ideas now in circulation. On the other hand, the crew of thinkers and writers that form the classical liberal caucus needlessly carry around dead weight; amidst them are arrogant weak links that undermine the appeal of tradition and freedom in the larger discourse.

The Captains of Culture

Progressives today are committed to laying bare the supposed latent meaning of things. Social institutions, according to this worldview, are not what they claim to be, but perpetrators of inequality. For example, if our education system claims to edify in a plain and relatively objective way, progressives might argue that education actually obscures and serves the interests of a particular class or group of people at the expense of most. In other words, progressives argue we are not who we claim to be and there is merit to this view.

Meanwhile, folks that defend tradition and freedom insist that our values should be taken at face value and that those values are good; there is a certain literalism to this take. And notice I am not referring to conservatives per se, but the popular band of classical liberals who inveigh against the decline of culture: Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, Ben Shapiro and the like. Though these thinkers are very different, they have in common epistemological assumptions and most importantly, enemies.

The first value they share is that contemporary western values are good and they should be treated according to their manifest purpose, not some latent purpose; the latter approach to values that they represent the interests of only a particular group of people, while claiming otherwise, for example is often foundational to the Left. Secondly, these thinkers value culture as a wisdom tradition, inimitable in guiding us and endowing us with purpose, goals and roles. In other words, culture is fulfilling and life without a coherent culture of enduring resonance leaves the individual bewildered and depressed.

Ben Shapiro is an ideologue, openly and unapologetically committed to Judaism and perhaps the larger Judeo-Christian or should I say Western canon. I refer to Shapiro as an ideologue, not to disparage but to highlight that this is a perfectly reasonable position to take. He values some things on the basis of reason and other things on the basis of faith, and he feels these things are good for humanity. But you cannot, I doubt, change Shapiros mind on Judaism nor should one try. Naturally I do not agree with Shapiro on all things and politically we would be at odds, but that does not make his worldview unreasonable.

Bret Weinstein brings a bio-evolutionary analytical frame to his take on culture. As such, he sees culture as having inherent value; culture is not arbitrary or necessarily oppressive, but evolves according to its utility to us, human beings. The irony of Weinsteins view is that he values culture as having innate value due to its origins and impetus, but the fact that culture changes actually increases the value of the original source materials from which these changes emerged. If you want to change the world for the better, you do not do it by throwing out the baby with the bath water; it is ineffective to tear down culture whole cloth, while ostensibly and failingly trying to articulate new cultural values sui generis.

Jordan Petersons greatest appeal is his indefatigable and relentless defense of the concept of the sacred, at least in my mind. And the sacred is passed on and expounded upon by and through culture. But in addition to their varied defenses of culture, these thinkers also value freedom, at least now and in so far as they may invoke freedom as an almost transcendental western norm, against the rising tide of politically correct authoritarianism that threatens to trample critical thinking. And on this point, I agree with them.

We need culture, the meta-institution that guides our behavior and more importantly allows us to inhabit a common world. The decline of culture today is directly proportionate to the break down of discourse and the inability to agree to a common reality. I have never seen a people more divided, in peacetime, than Americans. If you supported Trump, Biden stole the election. If you supported Biden, Trump stole the election four years before with the help of Russia, even though there is no evidence for either proposition. So, in effect, disagreeing on reality leaves all parties delusional.

The captains of culture rely on a certain faith in the perpetual purpose of institutions that we inherited from our past and in this case those institutions happen to be of Western provenance. But what I have found is that the over emphasis on the Western, unnecessarily and illogically, quite frankly alienates many people who might otherwise sympathize with their views. The sacred, tradition, the family are not only Western concepts.

The insistence on the Western nature of enlightened tradition is even more problematic when one admits that the world is getting smaller through technology and globalization. Capitalism, the global free-market is a driving force of a shrinking world of more concentrated diversity. One might add that the immigration scare so often invoked by the larger Right is driven by the demands of capital as well, not neo-Marxism. These seeming contradictions are always unaddressed by conservatives.

There is nothing inherent in the thinking of the three men that I listed, which makes me feel as if their projects are inherently racist or ethno-centric (yes, I say this even of Shapiro, as an Arab man, regardless of some of his now-apologized-for comments in the past). In their respective defenses of tradition, the family unit or the sacred, one would think they could accommodate, quite comfortably, a diverse world wherein peoples of Asia, Africa and South America also, by and large, value tradition, the family and the sacred. But for some inexplicable reason there seems to be impermeability to the classical liberal caucus. They evangelize the virtues of freedom and tradition outward, but cannot integrate the diverse world inward; a dead weight of unnecessary western-centrism surrounds them insulating them into a self-referential and dead-end discourse.

No one exemplifies this dead weight more than Ayaan Husri Ali and Sam Harris, famous members of the crew. Ali and Harris offer absolutely nothing to the greater discussion of culture, the sacred and the shared values of all humanity. Further, their worldviews are internally and demonstrably incoherent. Harris is no Christopher Hitchens; he lacks the intellect, wit and knowledge of his late predecessor. And Ali is simply ill equipped: She is not trained as an academic or scholar. She cannot even maintain a coherent conversation. Her analysis is always anecdotal and I cannot think of any reason why Peterson or others would seek her expertise on Islam, when she is no such expert by any standard measure.

The Weak Links of Popular Classical Liberalism

The Harris/Ali problem is not one of simple disagreement, their inclusion into the defenders of tradition or the intellectual dark web, as Weiss referred to them, in a somewhat self-congratulatory manner, threatens to undermine the whole project. One cannot value freedom and yet scoff at non-westerners exercising freedom in western society. Ali, in her new book, basically advocates for the authoritarian state in relation to western Muslims; she argues they should be surveilled and compelled to believe things by the state. She clearly never read Lockes A Letter Concerning Toleration, but I find that unsurprising, since when I listen to her speak it becomes difficult to believe she has ever read anything at all.

Harris is an even more insidious writer, with a PhD in neuroscience, he is simply obsessed with Islam, regardless of what he claims, as he speaks out of both sides of his mouth all the time. If I were to pile up the contradictory statements, bad faith arguments and double standards that Harris spews, the Tower of Babel would be envious of its height. He is simply full of shit, to address him otherwise would be an insult to the dozens or hundreds of experts in the fields of history, anthropology, religious studies or even political science who actually know things about Islam and the Muslim world.

Strangely, actual experts are also rarely invited to the stage. I recently came across a talk featuring Harris, Peterson and Weinstein; they discussed Islam at length and though Peterson and Weinstein were more cautious, Harris opined, unchallenged on the uniquely problematic nature of Islam. Neither Peterson nor Weinstein objected by saying hey, what a minute, as academics it sure would be nice to have an actual expert on Islam or Islamic history here to discuss this. (Weinstein recently hosted Irshad Manji on a welcomed discussion, so credit is due, but again Manji is not an expert.)

I can think of no other field where novices, frauds and amateurs can pontificate on the nature of something and be celebrated for it by actual academics and experts in other fields. These frauds are celebrated, of course, because their highly racialized, politicized views on Islam are useful; they are useful to war, to the security state and to the politics of Judeo-Christian fundamentalists. It is no coincidence that Harris real fame was directly aligned with the invasion of Iraq, where the image of a ubiquitous Muslim boogeyman sustained by the likes of Harris was strategically deployed to convince America to go to war with a Muslim country that had nothing to do with 9/11. It is difficult to decipher what Harris position on the war was, because he always talks out of both sides of his mouth, just like when he says we might need to preemptively nuke Muslim countries.

Harris and Ali offer these highly pseudo-structural approaches to Muslims, where they concentrate heavily on doctrines in Islam, taken out of context. They then impose those doctrines on Muslims in ways that Muslims rarely do themselves. Or, Harris and Ali focus exclusively on outliers that prove their point of view. The Islam they argue with is one made up in their own minds (the same with the concept of God in Harris case) and they need this imaginary Islam, otherwise they would have no significance at all. When these guys speak, they speak as if Edward Said never existed; these are not blind spots, they are blinds. When Harris and Ali present their views, they want you in the dark on the issue of Islam, otherwise they are exposed. And they offer nothing to the larger discussion of family, the sacred and tradition.

These dispositions for sophistry bleed into conversations on race in America as well; an issue of central importance, yet most middle class blacks that might sympathize with classical liberalism turn away because Harris and some associates are more obsessed with questions of race and IQ. I am not saying Harris is the cause of our current race crisis, obviously, but the disposition he exemplifies is one reason why Democrats can claim a near monopoly on black votes in America, which is not good for anyone, especially American blacks. Though Harris opposed Trump and is probably a liberal, his views are typical amongst Republicans.

Personally I do not get the appeal of the race/IQ question, but Harris insists, in useless positivist fashion, that if we know the facts on the issue that will somehow yield greater knowledge. How exactly? Are we to discover that African-Americans score lower on IQ tests than White-Americans? And then we can finally conclude, Hey, maybe American history has something to do with it! Well Sam, most of us already know that because we apply a humanistic frame, whereas you, like the Left I criticized in my last article, engage in esotericism presented as social science.

Ayaan Husri Ali and Sam Harris association with the Petersons, Weinsteins and Shapiros of the world is not innocuous. It undermines the appeal otherwise decent ideas might have in terms of more common grounds than imagined amongst minorities, immigrants and others we interact with more frequently amidst our shrinking, diverse world. Jordan Peterson recently lamented criticisms directed at Ali as simply reactions to her break with the progressive orthodoxy. It is so ironic to hear someone like Peterson, a white man who defends tradition and the sacred in the west, complain about the orthodox media. Brother, if you think you have stories about media orthodoxies and causes de jour, I look forward to telling you mine. Try being a man who also happens to be an Arab/Muslim in the United States in the years 2001-2003; I saw Harris all over the place, those of us who opposed the war were systematically shut out, regardless of our expertise. I am sure African-Americans have similar stories.

But, again, I prefer to see commonality rather than exclusivity. I currently believe that mainstream media in the west is too quickly and recklessly characterizing white conservatives as potential domestic terrorists. I recognize the pattern, it is the same pattern that Harris and Ali apply to Muslims, focus narrowly on anecdotal cases that support your point and zealously edit out every thing else. This is why Harris, Ali and their likes must be dropped from the circle of classical liberals, their methods have come back to haunt them, the chickens have come home to roost. The world is shrinking and diversity is a fundamental fact of life, fearing the other is an asset to no one. And the litigious nature of Harris and Ali, who are determined to win debates is useless and increasingly boring. There needs to be more true conversation between different human beings and less debate between positions, if you want more of the latter, go on Twitter. In my next piece I will offer solutions to this problem we now all face, by placing more emphasis on the personal, the local and conversation, as opposed to debate. Humanism opposed to social science.

The views expressed are those held by the author and do not necessarily reflect those ofThe Chicago Monitor.

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The Captains of Culture: Peterson, Weinstein and Shapiro - Chicago Monitor - The Chicago Monitor

FLINT League champion Flushing put five players on the All-Flint Metro League Stripes Division girls basketball team selected by the coaches.

Larry Ford was named Coach of the Year after leading the Raiders to a 9-0 record.

Despite finishing third in the standings, Fenton put two players on the first team.

Here is the team selected by the coaches.

Korryn Smith (left) as one of two Fenton players named to the All-Flint Metro League Stripes Division first team. (Jake May | MLive.com)Jake May

Alex Long, Flushing, senior

Korryn Smith, Fenton, senior

Emma Tooley, Holly, senior

Saniaa Walker, Kearsley, senior

Adrie Straib, Fenton, sophomore

Paige Leedle helped Linden finish second in the Flint Metro League Stripes Division standings. (Cody Scanlan | MLive.com)

Sarah Rambus, Flushing, sophomore

Paige Leedle, Linden, junior

Keeli Lindstrom, Flushing, senior

Hunter Weeder, Holly, senior

Kelsey McLennan, Linden, sophomore

Flushing's Larry Ford was named 2021 Flint Metro League Stripes Division Coach of the Year. (Cody Scanlan | MLive.com)

Brooklyn Grissom, Flushing, senior

Kyla Lynch, Fenton, senior

Fabie Andre, Swartz Creek, junior

Jordan Peterson, Linden, senior

Kaleigh Shaker, Fenton, junior

Linnearia Richards, Kearsley, junior

Olivia Mawhinney, Linden, freshman

Mallory Lehmann, Fenton, senior

Lauren Brokaw, Flushing, junior

Alyssa Johnson, Kearsley, senior

Delanie Prince, Linden, senior

Ashley Hubbard, Swartz Creek, junior

Larry Ford, Flushing

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MORE:

All-Metro Stars Division girls basketball team

All-Saginaw Valley boys basketball team

All-Saginaw Valley girls basketball team

All-Saginaw Valley hockey team

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Meet the 2021 All-Flint Metro League Stripes Division girls basketball team - MLive.com