Daily Archives: June 28, 2021

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Leftist hatred for the Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson is really something to behold. He stands as an example of what happens to someone who strays from the crazy line of thinking by modern campus bigots.

Mr. Peterson is the canary in the toxic coal mine of political correctness and petty thought police.

Lets start with the professors crime.

Simply put, Mr. Peterson does not share the monolithic, prevailing liberal orthodoxy on university campuses dictating that Western White males are the worlds evil oppressors and anyone who does not belong to that evil race is a victim trapped in circumstances beyond his or her control.

Consider for a moment the leftist premise to which the radical Mr. Peterson objects.

On its face, it is blatantly racist. Divvying up, defining and punishing groups of people based on their race (or gender) was racist 200 years ago during slavery times. It was racist 75 years ago. It is still racist today.

Yet, astonishingly, this reborn racism is widely embraced by the racists who dominate college campuses today.

The second obvious flaw in this racist orthodoxy is the message it sends to non-White, non-males.

Any challenges, failures or misery you face in life are not your fault. And, even worse, there is nothing you can do to change your circumstances. So, just stew in your bitterness and hatred for White males along with the rest of us, goes the leftist campus orthodoxy of the day.

Is there any more destructive and devious lie that could be sold to young people? Is there anything more dystopian or hopeless?

Mr. Peterson has become something of a rock star among beleaguered youth suffocating in the coal mine of modern academia with speeches, lectures, podcasts and a book titled, The Twelve Rules of Life: An Antidote to Chaos. His message has been particularly devoured among young men many of them White who have been vilified and emasculated by crazy university teachings.

Find meaning in life. Take responsibility for yourself. Surround yourself with good people who want the best for you.

Pretty nasty stuff, huh?

The chapter titles of his book include radical instructions such as: Stand up straight with your shoulders back, Tell the truth or, at least, dont lie, and Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

These lessons have earned Mr. Peterson a level of blinding hatred that is normally reserved for former President Donald Trump.

So it has been with considerable glee that the leftist media the Revolutionary Guard of modern academia hunted down Mr. Peterson as he suffered from a pestilence of personal maladies that no decent human would wish on his worst enemy.

Over the past year, Mr. Peterson has suffered physical illness and serious mental disease including suicidal thoughts. His wife was diagnosed with cancer. As his life spiraled out of control, Mr. Peterson developed a near-fatal drug addiction.

Actual humans read those lines and are struck with pangs of angst and sorrow for Mr. Peterson and his family. They mutter a prayer for them.

But not the campus bigots and the jackals in the media. Every bleak detail is catnip to them. Their desperate war to destroy all who disagree never sleeps.

When the story of Mr. Petersons troubles emerged about a year ago, a creature named Amir Attaran, a professor of both law and medicine, began his public hot take on Mr. Petersons travails: #KARMA.

Jordan Peterson, oracle to gullible young men, preacher of macho toughness, and hectoring bully to snowflakes, is addicted to strong drugs and his brain is riddled with neurological damage. He deserves as much sympathy as he showed others.

Says the law professor.

A new interview with the Sunday Times of London about his tribulations sparked yet another avalanche of glee and gloating over the unimaginable pain Mr. Peterson has been through.

Introducing her interview, reporter Decca Aitkenhead opines openly referring to herself no fewer than three times in the lead paragraph that she is unable to diagnose the root of Mr. Petersons problems.

I dont know if this is a story about drug dependency, or doctors, or Peterson family dynamics or a parable about toxic masculinity, she sneers.

If these are the purveyors of social justice, we are truly doomed.

Charles Hurt is opinion editor of The Washington Times. He can be reached at churt@washingtontimes.com.

Link:

The war on Jordan Peterson - Washington Times

Jordan Peterson in a new interview described his spiral into drug addiction and suicidal thoughts and then undergoing a controversial Russian treatment that placed him into an induced coma for eight days.

The controversial Canadian psychology professor, who has spent much of his career railing against political correctness, spoke to the Sunday Times, along with his podcast host daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, about his downward spiral.

I dont remember anything. From Dec. 16 of 2019 to Feb. 5, 2020, the self-help author said of period he was sent Russia for treatment. I dont remember anything at all, Peterson told the British newspaper.

Peterson gained international fame for blasting academic safe spaces and feminism, as well as his refusal to use transgender peoples preferred pronouns.

He penned the international bestseller, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, in 2018, but was struggling with an addiction to benzodiazepines prescribed to him after a violent reaction to a strict meat and greens diet.

Mikhaila, 28, her Russian husband and Peterson began the diet in 2016, but all three had a violent sodium metabisulphite response, she said. It was really awful but it hit him hardest, Mikhaila told the Times. He couldnt stand up without blacking out. He had this impending sense of doom. He wasnt sleeping.

Peterson has previously claimed that he didnt sleep for 25 days during this time, but the longest period of human sleep deprivation ever recorded is only 11 days, the paper notes.

He was prescribed a low dose of antidepressants, which helped him recover, but the dosage was increased after Peterson sunk into depression following his wife Tammys cancer diagnosis.

And things just fell apart insanely with Tammy. Every day was life and death and crisis for five months, Peterson told the paper. The doctors said, Well, shes contracted this cancer thats so rare theres virtually no literature on it, and the one-year fatality rate is 100 per cent. So endless nights sleeping on the floor in emergency, and continual surgical complications So I took the benzodiazepines.

Tammy Roberts recovered from complications with a kidney surgery, but Petersons drug dependency worsened.

Dad started to get super-weird. It manifested as extreme anxiety, and suicidality, Mikhaila, who the Times reports seems to have assumed full charge of his affairs, said.

The anti-political-correctness crusader went to a Toronto clinic, where he was reportedly taken off benzodiazepine and prescribed ketamine, before checking himself into a New York rehab in 2019.

TheTimes reported that he wasdiagnosed with schizophrenia around this time.But Peterson subsequently released full audio of the interview to show thatMikhaila said he wasmisdiagnosedwith several conditions, including schizophrenia.

Well, I went to the best treatment clinic in North America. And all they did was make it worse. So we were out of options, Peterson said to the Times regarding the decision to undergo a controversial treatment in Moscow.

I had put myself in the hands of the medical profession. And the consequence of that was that I was going to die. So it wasnt that [the evidence from Moscow] was compelling. It was that we were out of other options.

In Russia, Peterson was intubated for undiagnosed pneumonia and administered propofol so that he could be induced into a coma for more than a week while medics cleared his system of drugs.

When he emerged from the treatment, Peterson had lost the ability to walk, along with large parts of his memory, according to the report.

He was catatonic. Really, really bad. And then he was delirious, his daughter told the paper.

After making some progress, Peterson was flown to Florida in February, where his pain and suicidal thoughts returned.

Mikhaila then flew her father to a private hospital in Belgrade, Serbia, where he was diagnosed with akathisia a restlessness condition linked with withdrawals of benzos.

Peterson, who also contracted the coronavirus during his time overseas, returned home to Canada to recover from akathisia. He told the Sunday Times that being labeled an icon of white supremacy and hate speech, by employees at his books publisher affected his mental health.

I was at the epicenter of this incredible controversy, and there were journalists around me constantly, and students demonstrating. Its really emotionally hard to be attacked publicly like that. And that happened to me continually for, like, three years, Peterson told the paper.

I was concerned for my family. I was concerned for my reputation. I was concerned for my occupation. And other things were happening. The Canadian equivalent of the Inland Revenue service was after me, making my life miserable, for something they admitted was a mistake three months later, but they were just torturing me to death.

When asked about the apparent of irony of turning to drugs after telling his followers that life is about battling through pain and suffering, the author deflected.

No, Ive never said that. Look, if youre a viable clinician you encourage people to take psychiatric medication when its appropriate. What I really encourage in people is to understand that it isnt useful to allow your suffering to make you resentful. And, believe me, Ive had plenty of temptation to become resentful about whats happened to me in the last two years, Peterson told the paper.

During the ordeal, Peterson wrote a sequel to his best-selling book dubbed Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. Its expected to be published in the spring.

See the original post:

Jordan Peterson says he was suicidal, addicted to benzos

This article was published online on March 2, 2021.

One day in early 2020, Jordan B. Peterson rose from the dead. The Canadian academic, then 57, had been placed in a nine-day coma by doctors in a Russian clinic, after becoming addicted to benzodiazepines, a class of drug that includes Xanax and Valium. The coma kept him unconscious as his body went through the terrible effects of withdrawal; he awoke strapped to the bed, having tried to rip out the catheters in his arms and leave the intensive-care unit.

When the story of his detox became public, in February 2020, it provided an answer to a mystery: Whatever happened to Jordan Peterson? In the three years before he disappeared from view in the summer of 2019, this formerly obscure psychology professors name had been a constant presence in op-ed columns, internet forums, and culture-war arguments. His book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, published in 2018, sold millions of copies, and he had conducted a 160-city speaking tour, drawing crowds of up to 3,000 a night; premium tickets included the chance to be photographed with him. For $90, his website offered an online course to better understand your unique personality. An official merchandise store sold Peterson paraphernalia: mugs, stickers, posters, phone cases, tote bags. He had created an entirely new model of the public intellectual, halfway between Marcus Aurelius and Martha Stewart.

The price of these rewards was living in a maelstrom of other peoples opinions. Peterson was, depending on whom you believed, either a stern but kindly shepherd to a generation of lost young men, or a reactionary loudmouth whose ideas fueled the alt-right and a backlash to feminism. He was revered as a guru, condemned as a dangerous charlatan, adored and reviled by millions. Peterson has now returned to the public sphere, and the psyche-splitting ordeal of modern celebrity, with a new book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Lifean intriguing title, in light of his recent experiences. The mystery deepens: What really happened to Jordan Peterson, and why has he come back for more?

Growing up in Fairview, Alberta, Peterson was small for his age, which fostered both a quick wit and a fascination with the power and violence of traditional masculinity. He once recounted in a Facebook post how hed overheard a neighbor named Tammy Roberts joking with another girl that she wanted to keep her surname, so she would have to marry some wimp. Then she turned around and proposed to the teenage Jordan. He spent a youthful summer working on a railroad in Saskatchewan, with an all-male group that nicknamed him Howdy Doody, after the freckle-faced puppet. As a student, he visited a maximum-security prison, where he was particularly struck by a convict with a vicious scar right down his chest, which he surmised might have come from surgery or an ax wound: The injury would have killed a lesser man, anywaysomeone like me.

How to be a greater man was very much on Petersons mind. Raised in a mildly Christian household, he decided as a teenager that religion was for the ignorant, weak and superstitious. He yearned for a left-wing revolution, an urge that lasted until he met some left-wing activists in college. Then, rejecting all ideology, he decided that the threat of the Cold War made it vital to understand the human impulse toward destruction. He began to study psychology.

Alongside pursuing his doctorate, teaching at Harvard and then the University of Toronto, and raising a familyhe married Tammy in 1989, and yes, she took his surnamePeterson started work on his first book, a survey of the origins of belief. Its ambition was nothing less than to explain, well, everythingin essence, how the story of humanity has been shaped by humanitys love of stories. Maps of Meaning, published in 1999, built on the work of academics like Joseph Campbell, the literature and religion scholar who argued that all mythic narratives are variations of a single archetypal quest. (Campbells monomyth inspired the arc of Star Wars.) On this heros journey, a young man sets out from his humdrum life, confronts monsters, resists temptation, stares into the abyss, and claims a great victory. Returning home with what Campbell calls the power to bestow boons on his fellow men, the hero can also claim the freedom to live at peace with himself.

In the fall of 2016, Peterson seized the chance to embark on his own quest. A Canadian Parliament bill called C-16 proposed adding gender identity or expression to the list of protected characteristics in the countrys Human Rights Act, alongside sex, race, religion, and so on. For Peterson, the bill was proof that the cultural left had captured public-policy making and was imposing its fashionable diktats by law. In a YouTube video titled Professor Against Political Correctness, he claimed that he could be brought before a government tribunal if he refused to use recently coined pronouns such as zhe. In the first of several appearances on Joe Rogans blockbuster podcast, he made clear that he was prepared to become a martyr for his principles, if necessary. His intensity won over Rogana former mixed-martial-arts commentator with a huge young male fan base and eclectic political views (a frequent critic of the left, he endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020). You are one of the very few academics, Rogan told Peterson, who have fought against some of these ideas that are not just being promoted but are being enforced.

The fight over C-16, which became law in 2017, was a paradigmatic culture-war battle. Each side overstated the other sides argument to bolster its own: Either you hated transgender people, or you hated free speech. In Petersons view, the bill exposed the larger agenda of postmodernism, which he portrayed as an ideology that, in denying the existence of objective truth, leaves its practitioners without an ethic. (This is not how theorists of postmodernism define it, and if you have a few hours to spare, do ask one of them to explain.) He was on the side of science and rationality, he proclaimed, and against identity politics. Feminists were wrong to argue that traditional gender roles were limiting and outdated, because centuries of evolution had turned men into strong, able providers and women into warm, emotionally sensitive nurturers. The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they dont want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence is how he later phrased it. (This was during Donald Trumps presidency.) The founding stories of the worlds great religions backed him up, as did the heros journey: It is men who fight monsters, while women are temptresses or helpmates.

The mainstream media began to pay attention. Peterson had posted some advice on the Q&A site Quora, which he turned into his second book, 12 Rules for Life, a mashup of folksy wisdom, evolutionary biology, and digressions on the evils of Soviet Communism. (His daughter, Mikhaila, is named after Mikhail Gorbachev.) It stresses the conservative principles of self-reliance and responsibility, encouraging readers to tidy their bedrooms and smarten themselves up to compete for female attentiona message reinforced by a questionable analogy involving lobsters, which fight by squirting urine from their faces to establish their place in the mating hierarchy. Parents, universities and the elders of society have utterly failed to give many young men realistic and demanding practical wisdom on how to live, David Brooks wrote in a New York Times column. Peterson has filled the gap. He offered self-help for a demographic that wouldnt dream of reading Goop.

Yet the relentless demands of modern celebritymore content, more access, more authenticitywere already tearing the psychologists public persona in two. One Peterson was the father figure beloved by the normie readers of 12 Rules, who stood in long lines to hear him speak and left touching messages on internet forums, testifying that he had turned their lives around. The other Peterson was a fearsome debater, the gladiator who crowed Gotcha! at the British television interviewer Cathy Newman after a series of testy exchanges about the gender pay gap and the freedom to give offense. His debates were clipped and remixed, then posted on YouTube with titles announcing that he had DESTROYED his interlocutors.

I know this because one of them was me: Our interview for British GQ, which has garnered more than 23 million views, is easily the most viral moment Ive ever had. While dozens of acquaintances emailed and texted me to praise my performance and compare Petersons stern affect to Hannibal Lecter with a Ph.D., mean comments piled up like a snowdrift below the video itself. I was biased and utterly intellectually bankrupt, dishonest and malicious, and like a petulant child who walked into an adult conversation. What kind of man, several wondered, would marry a dumb, whiny, shrill feminist like this? (Quite a nice one, thanks for asking.)

Peterson lived in this split-screen reality all the time. Even as he basked in adoration, a thousand internet piranhas ripped through his every utterance, looking for evidence against him. One week, Bari Weiss anointed him a leading culture warrior, including him in a New York Times feature as a member of the Intellectual Dark Web. Ten days later, the newspaper published a mocking profile of him, reporting that his house was decorated with Soviet propaganda and quoting him speculating about the benefits of enforced monogamy in controlling young mens animal instincts. After he was accused of pining after Margaret Atwoods Gilead, he quickly posted a note on his website arguing that he meant only the social enforcement of monogamy.

The negative publicity affected him deeply, and it was endless. After the Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra charged him with peddling fascist mysticism, Peterson tweeted that Mishra was an arrogant, racist son of a bitch and a sanctimonious prick. He added: If you were in my room at the moment, Id slap you happily. Even sleep brought no relief. Peterson is a believer in dream analysis, and after one particularly ill-tempered interview in October 2018, he blogged about a nightmare that followed. In his dream, he met a man who simply would not shut up. The man reminded him, he wrote, of an acquaintance at university in Canada he calls Sam, who drove around in a Mercedes with swastikas on the doors, saying the worst things he could, unable to resist inviting attacks. I cant help myself, Sam had told Peterson. I have a target drawn on my back. Eventually, at a party, Sam overstepped the line; he was about to be assaulted by a mob until another acquaintance felled him with a single punch. Peterson never saw Sam again. In his dream, the Sam-like man talked and talked and finally pushed me beyond my limit of tolerance I bent his wrists to force his knuckles into his mouth. His arms bent like rubber and, even though I managed the task, he did not stop babbling. I woke up.

It is hard to resist reading the subtext like this: Peterson had spent months being casually described as a Nazi and associated with the alt-right, labels he always rejected. He had metaphorical swastikas on his car door. He couldnt resist putting a target on his own back, and he, too, couldnt stop talking. Indeed, in May 2019, after railing against left-wing censoriousnessnow widely called cancel culturehe met with Viktor Orbn, the proudly illiberal prime minister of Hungary, whose government has closed gender-studies programs, waged a campaign to evict Central European University from the country, and harassed independent journalists. Orbns state-backed version of cancel cultureor, to use the correct word, authoritarianismapparently didnt come up in their meeting. Peterson had previously told an interviewer to describe politicians like Orbn not as strongmen, but as dictator wannabes. Nonetheless, the visitand the posed photograph of the men in conversation, released to friendly media outletsgave intellectual cover to Orbns repressive government.

All that time, the two Petersons were pulling away from each other. As the arguments over his message raged across YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and traditional media, he became an avatar of our polarized media climate. People were consuming completely different Petersons, depending on their news sources. When I saw him on his speaking tour at a theater on Long Island, the first question he was asked was not about pronouns or the decline of Western civilization; it was When was the last time you got drunk? The second was a heartfelt plea that will be familiar to any new parent: How can I get my baby to sleep?

The past two years have clearly been hell for Peterson. In a June 2020 video interview with his daughter, he looked gaunt and restless as he described his struggle with drug dependency, a torment that he revisits in the Overture to Beyond Order, his new book. As he describes it, an allergic reaction during the 2016 Christmas holiday manifested as intense anxiety, leading his family doctor to prescribe benzodiazepines. He also started following what Mikhaila calls the lion diet, consuming only meat, salt, and water. In 2019, the tumultuous reality of [being] a public figure was exacerbated by a series of family health crises culminating in his wifes diagnosis, in April, of what was thought to be terminal cancer. (She has since recovered.) Petersonwho notes that he had been plagued for years by a tendency toward depressionhad his tranquilizer dosage upped, only to experience rising anxiety, followed by the ravages of attempted withdrawal. He was at the edge of the abyssanxiety far beyond what I had ever experienced, an uncontrollable restlessness and need to move overwhelming thoughts of self-destruction, and the complete absence of any happiness whatsoever.

Throughout this turbulent time, Peterson was working on Beyond Order. He makes no claims that his suffering provided a teachable moment (particularly, he notes, when a pandemic has upended lives everywhere). He also declines the opportunity to place his addiction in the context of the prescription-drug-abuse crisis. Peterson seems to have softened his disdain for religion, and as for Tammy, passing so near to death motivated my wife to attend to some issues regarding her own spiritual and creative development. Notably, Peterson is not ready to give up on the heros journey, despite the terror he has endured. All of that misfortune is only the bitter half of the tale of existence, he writes, without taking note of the heroic element of redemption or the nobility of the human spirit requiring a certain responsibility to shoulder.

This book is humbler than its predecessor, and more balanced between liberalism and conservatismbut it offers a similar blend of the highbrow and the banal. Readers get a few glimpses of the fiery online polemicist, but the Peterson of Beyond Order tends instead to two other modes. The first is a grounded clinician, describing his clients troubles and the tough-love counsel he gives them. The other is a stoned college freshman telling you that the Golden Snitch is, like, a metaphor for round chaos the initial container of the primordial element. Some sentences beg to be prefaced with Dude, like these: If Queen Elizabeth II suddenly turned into a giant fire-breathing lizard in the midst of one of her endless galas, a certain amount of consternation would be both appropriate and expected But if it happens within the context of a story, then we accept it. Reading Peterson the clinician can be illuminating; reading his mystic twin is like slogging through wet sand. His fans love the former; his critics mock the latter.

The prose swirls like mist, and his great insight appears to be little more than the unthreatening observation that life is complicated. (If the first book hadnt been written like this too, youd guess that he was trying to escape the butterfly pins of his harshest detractors.) After nearly 400 pages, we learn that married people should have sex at least once a week, that heat and pressure turn coal into diamonds, that having a social life is good for your mental health, and that, for a man in his 50s, Peterson knows a surprising amount about Quidditch. The chapter inviting readers to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible is typically discursive, but unusually enjoyable: Peterson knows his Wordsworth. (It is not free from weirdness, however. At one point, he claims to have looked at 1.2 million paintings on eBay while selecting his living-room decor.) His prose also lights up when he describes the wonder of watching his granddaughter encounter the world.

On the rare occasion that Beyond Order strays overtly into politics, Peterson still cant resist fighting straw men. What Peterson sees as healthy ambition needs to be encouraged in every possible manner, he writes.

But who is reflexively identifying all male ambition as innately harmful? If any mainstream feminist writers are in fact arguing that the West is a patriarchal tyrannyas opposed to simply a patriarchy or male-dominated societyhe should do the reader the favor of citing them. Is he arguing with Gloria Steinem or princess_sparklehorse99 on Tumblr? A tenured professor should embrace academic rigor.

Peterson writes an entire chapter against ideologiesfeminism, anti-capitalism, environmentalism, basically anything ending in ismdeclaring that life is too complex to be described by such intellectual frameworks. Funny story: Theres an academic movement devoted to skepticism of grand historical narratives. Its called postmodernism. That chapter concludes by advising readers to put their own lives in order before trying to change the world. This is not only a rehash of one of the previous 12 rulesClean up your bedroom, he writes, because fans love it when you play the hitsbut also ferocious chutzpah coming from a man who was on a lecture tour well after he should have gone to rehab.

The Peterson of Beyond Order, that preacher of personal responsibility, dances around the question of whether his own behavior might have contributed to his breakdown. Was it really wise to agree to all those brutal interviews, drag himself to all those international speaking events, send all those tweets that set the internet on fire? Like a rock star spiraling into burnout, he was consumed by the pyramid scheme of fame, parceling himself out, faster and faster, to everyone who wanted a piece. Perhaps he didnt want to let people down, and he loved to feel needed. Perhaps he enjoyed having an online army glorying in his triumphs and pursuing his enemies. In our frenzied media culture, can a hero ever return home victorious and resume his normal life, or does the lure of another adventure, another dragon to slay, another lib to own always call out to him?

Either way, he gazed into the culture-war abyss, and the abyss stared right back at him. He is every one of us who couldnt resist that pointless Facebook argument, who felt the sugar rush of the self-righteous Twitter dunk, who exulted in the defeat of an opposing political tribe, or even an adjacent portion of our own. That kind of unhealthy behavior, furiously lashing out while knowing that counterattacks will follow, is a very modern form of self-harm. And yet in Beyond Order, the blame is placed solely on the hypothetically safe but truly dangerous benzodiazepine anti-anxiety medication he was prescribed by his family doctor. The book leaves you wishing that Peterson the tough therapist would ask hard questions of Peterson the public intellectual.

To imagine that Peterson is popular in spite of his contradictions and human frailtiesthe things that drive his critics madis a mistake: He is popular because of them. For a generation that has lost its faith in religion and politics, he is one of notably few prominent figures willing to confront the most fundamental questions of existence: Whats the point of being alive? What kind of personal journey endows our existence with meaning? He is, in many ways, countercultural. He doesnt offer get-rich-quick schemes, or pickup techniques. He is not libertine or libertarian. He promises that life is a struggle, but that it is ultimately worthwhile.

Yet Petersons elevation to guru status has come at great personal cost, a cascade of suffering you wouldnt wish on anybody. It has made him rich and famous, but not happy. We compete for attention, personally, socially, and economically, he writes in Beyond Order. No currency has a value that exceeds it. But attention is a perilous drug: The more we receive, the more we desire. It is the culture wars greatest reward, yet it started Jordan Peterson on a journey that turned a respected but unknown professor into the man strapped into the Russian hospital bed, ripping the tubes from his arms, desperate for another fix.

See more here:

Review: Beyond Order, by Jordan B. Peterson - The Atlantic

Beyond Order

12 More Rules for Life

By Jordan Peterson

Penguin, 2021

432 pages, $29

To order: amazon.com

During an April 2021 podcast with Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron entitled, Christianity and the Modern World, Jordan Peterson marked the striking exodus of many young Catholics from their cradle faith and offered his own diagnosis of the problem: The Church did not ask enough of them, and so it had failed to make the adventure of faith challenging and thus appealing.

Bishop Barron took Petersons judgment seriously. Afterall, the best-selling author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (5 million copies sold in English and translated into 50 languages) has attracted a vast global audience by exhorting his youthful followers to embrace responsibility, resist a culture of victimization, and engage with faith traditions and classic texts that uphold inconvenient moral truths.

Some parts of 12 Rules for Life are the stuff of self-help literature (Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back). Others are rather whimsical (Do Not Bother Children While They Are Skateboarding). And a few are profoundly anti-woke (Set Your House in Order Before You Criticize the World).

Taken as a whole, they reflect the authors belief that many young adults who have failed to launch did not receive a strong practical or philosophical framework from their families and schools and are in desperate need of help.

Bishop Barron, reviewing the Churchs mixed record of catechetical and moral formation, agreed that Catholic lite had failed to tap the imagination and idealism of the next generation. In contrast, he said, the Canadian psychologist had a particular gift for biblical exegesis, bringing the Old and New Testament stories to life in a way that spoke to millennials.

Petersons new book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, returns to the familiar terrain of his first best-seller. But chapters that address the interplay of order and chaos are less structured and punctuated by digressions and occasional banalities. Likewise, readers who savored the authors fresh, illuminating interpretation of Bible stories in 12 Rules for Life may be disappointed with his treatment of the text less memorable this time around.

Nevertheless, Beyond Order offers timely principles for readers who are just emerging from a pandemic that cost lives and livelihoods, stirring fear and alienation.

In the wake of violent political protests and the random vandalization of public statues commemorating historic figures, Rule I: Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievements and Rule XII: Be grateful in spite of your suffering bookend this spirited defense of organized religion, democratic practices and plain common sense.

Like many other conservative public intellectuals, Peterson believes that the decline of organized religion has made totalizing ideologies more appealing. Readers are warned to be wary of this path (Rule VI: Abandon Ideology). And those seeking an integrated vision of life are directed to the worlds great faiths as a starting point.

The core idea is this: subjugate yourself voluntarily to a set of socially determined rules those with some tradition in their formulation and a unity that transcends the rules will emerge, he writes. That unity constitutes what you could be if you concentrate on a particular goal and see it through.

A related theme in Petersons arsenal is the moral and curative power of gratitude.

This virtue has deep spiritual roots, and the author turns to the Bibles seminal account of Gods creation of the world, observing that the goodness of creation reflected the fact that Truth, Courage, and Love were united in his creative action. Thus there is an ethical claim deeply embedded in the Genesis account of creation: Everything that emerges from the realm of possibility in the act of creation (arguably either divine or human) is good insofar as the motive for its creation is good. I do not believe there is a more daring argument in all of philosophy or in theology than this: To believe this, to act it out, is the fundamental act of faith.

But as an experienced therapist, Peterson also knows that childhood trauma, or some other brush with adversity or injustice, can destroy a persons belief in the essential goodness of the Creator, and by extension faith-based values and institutions. For this reason, many of his readers must consciously nurture an appreciation for what they have received.

Shockingly, the author is counseling gratitude at the very time that Americas racial reckoning has badly damaged the moral credibility of its social and political order. Nevertheless, he believes that gratitude is an essential element of human flourishing and posits it as a precondition for fruitful reform, at both the personal and societal level, with the example of Jesus Christ (I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it) as a model for emulation. To be clear: This is not a blind, nave endorsement of tradition. Rather, his argument is grounded in a highly realistic approach fully alive to both the stubborn existence of sin in the world and the tragic outcome of atheistic systems that sought and failed to eradicate it.

Beyond Orders most distinctive contribution, however, arises from the authors expertise as a clinical psychologist.

In several fascinating case studies of former patients, he shows how the particularly modern problem of overly protective parents leaves their adult children ill-equipped to navigate tough times and call out bad acters. Another chapter examines the hold that inaccurate and unexamined memories can have over our present-day choices and relationships. We must recollect ourselves or suffer in direct proportion to our ignorance and avoidance, he writes.

Compared with the more basic guidance of 12 Rules for Life, which famously admonished readers to make their bed every day, Beyond Order is an attempt to nudge readers to the next level. Now that they have achieved a measure of stability, with a job and a relationship, how do they hold onto both while continuing to learn and grow? Much of his guidance has a practical bent (Rule II: Imagine who you can be and then aim single-mindedly at that or Rule VII: Work as hard as you possibly can on one thing and see what happens).

More broadly, Petersons work is driven by a deeply personal quest to unlock the mysteries at the very core of the Churchs response to the human condition: the meaning of suffering, Gods toleration of evil in the world, and Christs redemptive act on the cross.

The father of a beloved daughter diagnosed in her childhood with a painful debilitating condition, he spent two decades at her side during almost 20 surgeries. This grueling trial is surely a key to Petersons appeal, for his firsthand experience with suffering gives his voice real authenticity and makes his tough-love solutions more palatable.

During the three years since 12 Rules for Life became an international best-seller, Peterson has suffered through many more trials. In the Overture of Beyond Order, he describes the cascading series of medical and psychological crises, including an addiction to the sedative benzodiazepine, that resulted in his physical collapse. He has since regained his health, but recent YouTube videos reveal that his characteristically gaunt face has aged significantly during this period.

The authors deteriorating condition had been global news, so the revelations in the Overture will not come as a shock to his supporters. But his predicament points to the enormous burden this curious modern prophet carries on his shoulders as he goes against the grain of contemporary mores and touches millions of lives in the process.

Peterson preaches the practical and psychological value of faith, but he does not have it, and thus he is cut off from this wellspring of hope. Many of his Catholic friends, including, no doubt, Bishop Barron, are prepared to accompany him on his idiosyncratic pilgrimage.

But the weight of the responsibility he carries should also provoke deep soul-searching among Church leaders and educators. Why are his efforts so necessary and urgent? And why have so many Catholic pastors, teachers and parents failed to make the faith matter in the lives of young Catholics?

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Jordan Peterson Preaches the Practical Value of a Faith He Doesn't Have: Hope Is the Missing Link - National Catholic Register

One day in 2019 while sitting in my LA home, I received a call from a familiar voice who said Bill could meet us at the Polo Lounge on Friday after his show.

Bill, who? I asked.

Bill Maher, responded Ann Coulter. Remember our discussion earlier in the week?

I had forgotten she mentioned us having dinner with him.

As we waited for Maher to arrive, I already felt a rush of excitement from the robust conversation I knew we would have. And robust it was. If you could have been a fly on the wall and heard this conversation, you may have been shocked to learn how reasonable Maher is on some issues.

I know what you are probably thinking: Bill Maher is reasonable?

After all, this is the guy who has made a career of beating up on Republicans weekly, not to mention questioning values like faith in God.

Yet, despite all this, it appears Maher, host of HBOs Real Time with Bill Maher, has become the most prominent voice of reason on the left at a time when there doesnt seem to be many reasonable voices on the left at all.

Recently Maher spoke out against those who allege America has made no progress toward racial reconciliation. He used the term progressophobia, calling it a brain disorder that strikes liberals and makes them incapable of recognizing progress. Its like situational blindness, only what you cant see is that your dorm in 2021 is better than the South before the Civil War.

Maher is absolutely correct. The notion that America has made no progress toward a more perfect union is an absurd, false narrative. Yet the left, especially the Democratic Party, continues to push this poison on the American people. It seems the Democrats would, contrary to their rhetoric, rather keep the lie going to lock in a permanent base of African-American voters than tell the truth and seek national unity.

I discuss such hypocrisy of the Democratic Party regarding race in America with NFL Super Bowl winner and Republican Rep. Burgess Owens on a recent episode of my podcast, Outloud with Gianno Caldwell.

In his important diatribe against progressivism run amok, Maher even goes after fellow comedian Kevin Hart, who is arguably the biggest star in the business.

Theres a recurrent theme on the far left that things have never been worse! Maher exclaimed. Kevin Hart expressed a view many hold when he told the New York Times, Youre witnessing white power and white privilege at an all-time high.

This is one of the big problems with wokeness, Maher continued, that what you say doesnt have to make sense or jive with the facts or even be challenged lest the challenge be conflated with racism.

This wasnt the first time Maher attacked his own side. Back in April, Maher shocked people when he defended Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, from the media and the Democratic Party. In a segment on his HBO talk show, Maher said DeSantis is a voracious consumer of the scientific literature who got it right on COVID.

And maybe thats why he protected his most vulnerable population, the elderly, way better than did the governor of New York, Maher added, knocking New Yorks Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo. Those are just facts; I know its irresponsible of me to say them.

Maher may be a staunch liberal, but hes a voice of reason on the left, unafraid to call out wokeness run amok. If the above moments dont convince you, check out his take on progressives push for free college.

I know that free college is a left-wing thing, but is it really liberal for someone who doesnt go to college and makes less money to pay for people who do go and make more? Maher asked. Especially since colleges have turned into giant luxury day care centers with overpaid babysitters anxious to indulge every student whim.

You may wonder why Maher has taken such a turn against his party and the media. Heres one answer: Hes staunchly politically incorrect. Indeed, in an interview with Jordan Peterson, Maher said political correctness is the elevation of sensitivity over truth. Hes right again.

I hope the left is listening, because Maher seems to be the only major voice on the left that still believes in common sense on several issues even in the face of cancel culture, which he rightly views as ridiculous and stupid.

Last weekend Maher made another excellent point about director Lin-Manuel Miranda. Miranda, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, was slammed on Twitter because the cast of his movie, In the Heights, about the Washington Heights area of New York City, did not represent the Afro-Latinx community. After Miranda issued a long, agonized apology, Maher clapped back: Youre the guy who made the founding fathers black and Hispanic! I dont think you have to apologize to Twitter. Maher said he doesnt think Miranda really believes an apology is in order but he just wants to avoid the news cycle, and I dont blame him, adding, This is why people hate Democrats; Its cringey. Once again, Maher couldnt be more correct in his assertion.

To be clear, Maher gets it wrong plenty of times, from Russiagate to his criticism of Sen. Joe Manchin, who is apparently the only Democrat in the Senate who believes bipartisanship should be more than a talking point.

But looking at the big picture, I have concluded that Bill Maher is the only person who can save the left from itself. Whether Democrats heed Mahers warnings or continue their descent into woke madness remains an open question.

Gianno Caldwell is a Fox News Political Analyst and the author of Taken for Granted: How Conservatism Can Win Back the Americans That Liberalism Failed (Crown Forum), out now.

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Bill Maher may be the only person who can save the left from itself - New York Post

Iowa State quarterback Brock Purdy is anxious to play on Saturday

Iowa State quarterback Brock Purdy provides honesty about emotional highs and lows during the past seven months

Iowa State athletic department

Well have had a lot thrown at us, by the time Iowa State opens the football season against Northern Iowa on Sept. 4 at Jack Trice Stadium. The grand re-opening of stadiums, a return of the wonderful smells that go along with tailgating, and players taking advantage their pandemic-allowed Super Senior season.

By then, the player opportunity for name, image and likeness compensation that the NCAA should have figured out at least a year ago, finally will be a thing. And by the time we hear the sweet sound of foot kicking football at the start of a game, plans will be moving even more steadily toward the 12-team playoff thats going to make college richer, while also adding a layer of teams to the Alabama-Clemson-Ohio State trio that seem to always headline the college football playoffs.

More: Name, image, likeness compensation: It's a revolution, but NCAA, Congress, Iowa Legislature leave coaches, athletes in limbo

Theyre game-changers that could have been pushed forward last year, until the focus rightfully shifted to figuring out how best to safely play sports amid a coronavirus pandemic that rocked everyones world.

I looked back on stuff that was in the news a year ago around this time:

My initial reaction?

See ya, Cy-Hawk 2020, a reality that followed by 24 hours the cancellation of the 2020 Iowa State Fair.

Talk about a one-two punch to the gut, former Iowa State coach and Iowa player Dan McCarney said a year ago about a game that had been played consecutively since 1977. Those are fabrics of the State of Iowa. Even non-football fans look toward that special Saturday every season, that special fall tradition of the Iowa-Iowa State football game.

No State Fair. No Cy-Hawk. No trash talking among fans that I vowed I would never miss.

More: Peterson: Cy-Hawk TV flap annoys you? Plan ahead, or you might miss the biggest game of the series

Whats changed? Cy-Hawk lives again. Sept. 11. Jack Trice Stadium at 2:30 p.m. Cyclones athletics director Jamie Pollard said about a month ago that the stadium will be back to 100 percent capacity. Tailgating for all six home games will be allowed. Kinnick Stadium is open for business, too. Fans are ready to rock again. Business establishments like restaurants and hotels cant wait to greet fans. For many of us, the season cannot get here quick enough.

Some players even threatened to opt out of the 2020 football season, if demands for protection such as long-term medical coverage wasnt addressed. Players were vocal. Iowa football players brought up disturbing issues that eventually led to longtime strength coach Chris Doyles departure.

Whats changed? Administrators not only are listening, theyre acting. Sometime in July, student-athletes everywhere will have an opportunity to cash in on their name, image and likeness in whats being hailed as a revolutionary decision that could alter athletes lives.

Would it be surprising to see recognizable mugs of Iowa State quarterback Brock Purdy and running back Breece Hall plastered on a billboard between Des Moines and Ames? Absolutely not. Id be surprised if Iowa basketball player Jordan Bohannons podcast doesnt soon include a money-paying sponsor or two.

Its long past time college athletes have an opportunity to at least see what their brand might be worth on the open market.

The nitty-gritty of that discussion obviously became overshadowed last year. Administrators had a tough enough time figuring out a 2020 playoff field among schools that didnt play the same number of games or comparable competition, than how to add eight more teams to the mix.

Whats changed? Momentum for a 12-team playoff not only increased in recent weeks, its likely happening.

More: Iowa Poll: Iowans support name, image, likeness compensation for college athletes, but split along generational lines

"The four-team format has been very popular and is a big success, a four-person working group within the College Football Playoffs, combined to say in a statement. "But it's important that we consider the opportunity for more teams and more student-athletes to participate in the playoff.

After reviewing numerous options, we believe this proposal is the best option to increase participation, enhance the regular season and grow the national excitement of college football.

Opinion: College Football Playoff's expansion to 12 teams is long overdue and complicated

More discussion will lead to more discussion and eventually, possibly in five years, the playoffs will be increased to 12 teams.

No fans. Only families from players and staff were admitted. Its a picture I never again want to see. Fall is about stadiums full of fans, not what transpired on the Cyclones Opening Day. Fall also is about experiences outside the stadium pre-game traffic jams and mingling. Fans were robbed of that last in 2020.

Whats changed? College football is open for business again.

Iowa State columnist Randy Peterson has been writingfor the Des Moines Register for parts of sixdecades. Reach him at rpeterson@dmreg.com, 515-284-8132, and on Twitter at @RandyPete.

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Peterson: Thankful for college sports game-changers, even though they could have started long ago - Des Moines Register

In the slew of rightist culture-war bogeymen, from cultural Marxism to critical race theory, one of the most surprising candidates for obloquy is postmodernism.

In December 2020, the women and equalities minister Liz Trussbewailedpostmodernist philosophy pioneered by Foucault that put societal power structures and labels ahead of individuals and their endeavours. The malign influence of postmodernism, she suggested, had reached directly into working-class Leeds communities in the 1980s, where children were taught about racism and sexism but not how to read and write. Remarkably, then, the putative failures of education policy, above all the supposed failings of local authorities, weredown to20th-century French philosopher Michel Foucault.

To an extraordinary degree, postmodernism has become the universal scapegoat of the era, thebte noirof Resistance liberals, reactionaries, New Atheists and trademarked defenders of Reason. The irrational and incoherent fear of the pomo, or pomophobia, has claimed minds from across the political spectrum. According to the American literary critic Michiko Kakutani, postmodernism is responsible for the assault on knowledge and reason that allowed Donald Trump to lie his way into the White House.

The journalist Matthew DAncona claims that postmodern intellectuals have encouraged a toxic relativism by treating everything as a social construct, and so allowing fake news to thrive. YouTuber and clinical psychologist Jordan Petersonarguesthat postmodernism is the new skin for an old Marxism that seeks to subvert the West. In Petersons account, postmodernism is essentially the claim that all truths are relative, and all truth-claims are instruments of the struggle for power: Peterson calls this bastardised Nietzscheanism the resentful pathology of Marxism.

For New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins, postmodernism is aninsidious assault on reason and the scientific method, led by academic careerists. There was even a time, now passed, when muscular liberals such as Christopher Hitchens and David Aaronovitch blamed postmodern relativism for the lefts apparent softness towards dictators and Islamic fundamentalism, manifest in its opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. While postmodernism peaked as a cultural trend in the early 1990s, it has now come to symbolise something corrosive, insidious and threatening to the social order.

***

Before asking what postmodernism is, it is worth clarifying what it isnt. Michel Foucault (1926-1984) did not pioneer postmodernism. He would not even have described himself as a postmodernist. In its post-Second World War inception, postmodern was principally an aesthetic category, referring to literary and architectural forms that superseded the formal ambition of modernism. Only in the 1970s did postmodernity acquire social and political content, inasmuch as the postmodern world was thought to be post-industrial, beyond class conflict, and increasingly beyond left and right. Far from exhorting a militant confrontation with societal power structures, early postmodernists tended to be sceptical of left-wing politics.

Nor did the postmodern style become more militant over time. The first major work using the term was Jean-Franois LyotardsThe Postmodern Condition(1979), the main concern of which was the collapse, in a post-industrial economy, of modernitys grand narratives of history. Lyotard celebrated this because he feared that these narratives, above all Marxism, were totalitarian. Lyotards sense of how meta-narratives were collapsing resonated with many left-wing intellectuals who had been formed by the uprisings of 1968 and their subsequent retreat.

In the ensuing faddish uptake of postmodernism, the work of philosophers such as Foucault and Jacques Derrida, and sometimes the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, was often cited as its intellectual antecedent because of the ways in which it challenged conventional views of the Enlightenment. Specifically, their work drew attention to the often subtle forms of power that were concealed in the trappings of reason and scientific advancement, and the ways in which colonialism, racism, sexism and class shaped the European idea of reason.

[see also:Deconstructing Jackie: How Jacques Derrida became one of the most influential thinkers in the world]

But the category of postmodernism was almost completely vacuous. It did not describe a single philosophical enterprise, political agenda or sociological outlook which could be identified and pilloried. At most, it described azeitgeist, an intellectual sensibility arising from the decline of industry, the rise of knowledge economies, mass consumerism and the crisis of Marxism. A sensibility that was pluralist, sceptical, resistant to any form of essentialism or reductivism, and in most cases politically accommodating.

This was particularly the case on Pariss Left Bank, where postmodern intellectuals such as Lyotard were likely to have been swayed by the violently anti-Marxist new philosophers who campaigned to stop the election of a union of the left French government that brought together the Socialist and Communist parties: a campaign that reached its hysterical zenith in the 1978 legislative elections. And as it filtered into US academia, postmodernism was far more likely to be associated with pragmatic left-liberals such as Richard Rorty than any militant tendency.

What, then, of the postmodern assault on reason? Whatever political direction the attack comes from, all seem to agree that postmodernism is essentially the claim that everything is relative, and everything is a social construct. Even the scientific method isnt politically neutral, and even reality is linguistically constructed.

This is not a wholly unreasonable conclusion to reach, owing to the way postmodernism aligned with two other intellectual trends that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. The first was a pronounced culturalism, in which various philosophers and social scientists laid extraordinary emphasis on the organising role of culture and language in all areas of life, including our inherited notions of science, experimentation and truth. The second was scientific anti-realism. In the philosophy of science, realists assert that scientific theories are not just workable explanations for the data but are likely to be approximately true. And, as scientific endeavour progresses, these theories get ever closer to the truth.

Anti-realists, such as the US philosopher Hilary Putnam, dispute this. They argue that all scientific theories are underdetermined by the data, particularly when they relate to non-observable objects such asgenes, so there is no good reason to assume they are correct. Moreover, they draw a pessimistic inference from the fact that past scientific theories have usually been in some important ways false, to suggest that current theories are probably false too. Far from being an inherently unreasonable view, this position is usually grounded in empiricism and ahistoricist reading of scientific practices.

***

This is all academic and far from exciting, so anyone wanting to wage a culture war against postmodernism has to find an emotionally potent oversimplification that cuts through the complexity. Emblematic of the pomophobes approach is the enormous fuss they have made about a minor scandal in 1996 known as the Sokal hoax. Alan Sokal, a mathematician and physicist, used his authority as a scientist to get a hoax opinion article published in the cultural journalSocial Text. The premise of the hoax was that American academics were so intoxicated by trendy postmodern relativism that they would publish anything that expressed scepticism towards reality and the scientific method, no matter how absurd.

Since the hoax was revealed, the ersatz defenders of reason havent stopped guffawing. But the hoax was meaningless.Social Textwas not a postmodernist publication. The editors mistake was not being seduced by the articles pomo affectations it seems that they asked Sokal to remove most of this material, and he refused but their willingness to trust a credentialled expert to know his field and deal with them honestly. Even if the worst were true, it would tell us little about postmodernism. One lousy parody published in a small journal proves nothing. If it were a scientific experiment, it would be a dud.

It is, however, the titillation of scandal, of pointing out the emperors nudity, that licenses the cheerful ignorance and philistinism of the pomophobic backlash. For as little as the Sokal hoax did to advance knowledge, it became the basis of a book Sokalco-wrotewith the Belgian physicist Jean Bricmont, published in English asFashionable Nonsense(1997), attacking what they saw as the impostures of postmodern intellectuals. This was no better than yobbish jeering about inscrutable texts. In presenting examples of what it claimed as intellectual pretensionwhether Luce Irigarays feminist reading of science or Jacques Lacans use of mathemes in exposing his psychoanalytic methodthe book made minimal effort to understand them.

Yet while Sokal and Bricmont at least engaged with their opponents ideas at some level, many critics no longer feel the need to do so. It is sufficient for Kakutani, Peterson or Truss to knowingly mention the term postmodernism, for many people to assume they know what they are talking about. Recently, a number of right-wing culture war entrepreneurs have engaged in a similar credential-building exploitation of slightly obscure references. Consider conservative documentarian Christopher Rufo,who appeared on Fox Newsin September lastyear claiming to possess insider knowledge about the dangers posed by critical race theory, a gambit that worked because of his audiences clickbait-driven appetite for scandal. One might call it disinfotainment. The overall effect of this is to tranquillise thought, stifling curiosity with bullying appeals to the obvious. And as mathematician Gabriel Stolzenberg warned in the wake of Sokal, sometimes the obvious is the enemy of the true.

Most worrying of all, however, is the countersubversive edge of contemporary pomo-bashing. As with the attack on critical race theory, there is an element of shooting the messenger: blaming critical theory for the social problems it diagnoses. Where postmodern intellectuals such asJean Baudrillard have described a collapse of the reality principle as socialisation is measured by the exposure to media messages, pomophobes like DAncona have accused them of hastening this process.

The culture war against postmodernism is conducted in the spirit of inquisition, whether postmodernism is deemed an obscurantist attack on truth, or a neo-Marxist attempt to deconstruct the West (as right-wing Australian news anchor Chris Uhlmann once complained). The logic appears to be that these left-wing intellectuals are always complaining, criticising, dividing people and undermining our self-confidence. Theyre always doing us down. The crises in political trust, in traditional gender norms, in scientific consensus, and in the historical self-image and self-belief of modern states, are all the fault of these postmodernists, critical race theorists and cultural Marxists. If only something could be done about them.

[see also:The UK is immersed in a class-culture war and Labour is incapable of winning it]

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How postmodernism became the universal scapegoat of the era - New Statesman

There was something dramatically overwrought about first the publication and then the pulping of Blake Baileys Philip Roth: The Biography. The themes, the moral issues and the ironies involved in the rise and fall of both the book and its author were all so conspicuously pointed, as if they had been conceived by a hack writer seeking to pay homage to a more skilled documenter of cultural conflict like, say, Roth himself.

First there was Baileys all-too-evident pride, bordering on hubris, at having landed the Roth gig. The last giant of American letters, Roth was in many respects a biographers dream a semi-reclusive enigma with a rich and disputed private life, a trove of disguised autobiographical fiction to unpack, and a genuine literary celebrity who was revered as a genius and reviled as a misogynist.

The problem was, like many novelists before him, Roth all too aware of the divergent opinions wanted to control his legacy. So he first recruited as his biographer a friend he thought pliable, Ross Miller, nephew of the playwright Arthur, but the arrangement twice came to an end after Roth criticised his research methods.

Roth even wrote a full-length book entitled Notes for My Biographer, mostly devoted to rebutting the allegations made by Roths former wife Claire Bloom in her incendiary memoir Leaving A Dolls House. He considered publishing the book then decided to keep it as an aid for his biographer. Roth offered the vacant role to several other friends, including the respected biographers Hermione Lee and Judith Thurman, neither of whom were available. In 2012, Bailey entered the picture. He didnt know Roth, but hed written three highly praised literary biographies, including works on Richard Yates and John Cheever.

Roth quizzed Bailey on why he should entrust his life, as it were, to a gentile from Oklahoma. According to the biographer, what sealed the deal was that, when Roth showed him a photograph album of his old girlfriends, Bailey mentioned Ali MacGraw, who starred in the film adaptation of Roths Goodbye, Columbus. Roth told the younger man that he could have dated her. When Bailey demanded to know why he hadnt, Roth replied: Youre hired.

Such anecdotal details would later take on smoking gun significance.

Baileys 900-page study was finally published earlier this year, three years after Roths death, and it garnered largely laudatory reviews Cynthia Ozick called it a narrative masterwork in the New York Times. The biographer couldnt hide his elation, appearing in interviews like a man who was joyfully in awe of his own achievement.

But there were ominous clouds gathering. A review in the New Republic depicted Roth as a bully, especially towards women, and a spiteful obsessive. Although the target was Roth, the reviewer, the magazines literary editor, Laura Marsh, noted that In Bailey, Roth found a biographer who is exceptionally attuned to his grievances and rarely challenges his moral accounting.

Ruth Franklin, biographer of the gothic horror writer Shirley Jackson, agrees. She was admonished by Bailey for being too feminist in her treatment of Jackson. As a result she declined to review the Roth biography, but she told me: The way that Bailey treats both of his [Roths] wives in the narrative is blatantly one-sided.

Again, if it had been in a novel, narrative alarm bells would have been loudly ringing. A month later, WW Norton, publisher of the biography in the US, announced that it was temporarily suspending the books shipping and promotion, as it emerged that Bailey faced allegations of sexual harassment and abuse, which he denies. A week later Norton confirmed that it was withdrawing the book from sale and pulping remaining copies. And Baileys representation was also terminated by his agency, the Story Factory.

Like almost everyone else involved, Norton does not want to discuss its decision. Franklin, who is herself published by Norton, remains confused by the move. I am not sure what they were trying to accomplish with this, she says.

Laura Marsh was also surprised by Norton.

I dont know if its unprecedented, she says, but certainly there arent a lot of other examples I can think of of a publisher doing that. And none of the people who spoke to the newspapers called [for the books withdrawal].

But she doesnt necessarily think the publisher was wrong. It is probably too soon to have an opinion on whether it was the right decision, she says.

The man who had originally commissioned Bailey, the vice-president of Norton, Matt Weiland, wrote to me that he was leaving it to others to speak about these matters.

The book was then snapped up in America by Skyhorse Publishing, which is also the publisher of Woody Allens autobiography, Apropos of Nothing, which was dropped by Hachette in the US after a staff walkout. Baileys UK publisher, Vintage, announced that it was not withdrawing the book but would continue assessing the situation closely.

No one at Vintage or its parent company Penguin Random House wants to say any more than that. Editors and publishers at PRH, including one who has left, wont even speak off the record. One agent told me that shed heard that the decision was announced to staff in an online meeting that came with a trigger warning.

Whats clear from the silence is that withdrawing the book, and also not withdrawing it, are hugely sensitive issues. They plug into a range of contemporary debates about censorship, moral responsibility, freedom of expression, corporate governance, social justice, due process, workplace safety, and the ongoing critique of so-called toxic masculinity, among others.

Its for these reasons, says a leading agent, that the books withdrawal has put everyone [in the industry] on edge. It sets a precedent and adds increased pressure in an already fraught atmosphere around issues of cancellation.

One publisher, who asked to remain anonymous, describes a climate in which younger members of publishing staff, emboldened by social justice campaigns and their own sense of responsibility and power, are driving organisations to make symbolic stands.

Its an absolute intergenerational conflict in media organisations between the under-40s and the over-40s, he says. The distinction really is between social media natives who dont really treasure free speech because theyve had a lifetimes worth and think its overrated, and people of an older generation who didnt have access to the means of cultural production and needed the patronage of newspapers and publishing houses to get their voices heard.

He believes that these factors played a part in Allens book cancellation at Hachette, and led Simon & Schuster to be accused of perpetuating white supremacy for striking a deal to publish former vice-president Mike Pence. Simon & Schuster successfully resisted internal pressure to drop Pence, just as Penguin in the UK did not give into demands by some of its staff to tear up its contract with the controversial academic and author Jordan Peterson.

In Allens case the picture was complicated by the fact that Hachette was also the publisher of his son and most outspoken critic, Ronan Farrow, something of a hero to millennials for his work on exposing sexual abuse in the film industry. But what does Baileys story tell us about the battle lines and what kind of benchmark does the books withdrawal establish?

Many, including Laura Marsh, espouse the theory that the withdrawal was Nortons belated attempt to overcompensate for an earlier error. The most serious accusation against Bailey is one of rape, and it stems from a meeting between Bailey, who is 57, and a publishing executive named Valentina Rice, 47, that took place at the home of the New York Times literary critic Dwight Garner in 2015. Both Bailey and Rice stayed over and, according to Rices account, Bailey entered her room and had non-consensual sex with her. The biographer has strenuously denied this version of events.

Rice decided not to report the incident but three years later, galvanised by the #MeToo movement, she sent an email, under a pseudonym, to the president of Norton, Julia Reidhead, accusing Bailey of rape. Reidhead did not respond, but a week later Bailey wrote to Rice, having been forwarded the pseudonymous email, and rebutted her allegations while pleading with her to think of his wife and young daughter, because such a rumour, he wrote, even untrue, would destroy them.

It seems that Norton did ask Bailey about the allegations but he said they were false, and they left it there, without getting back to the woman who claimed to be the victim.

Norton made a big mistake there, says another agent. They should have written back [to the woman] in the first instance, clearly stating that it was a criminal matter which needed to be investigated by the appropriate authorities.

So when the rape accusation surfaced after the Roth biographys publication, along with multiple claims that Bailey had inappropriate relations with his students when he was a schoolteacher, and the allegation that he raped his former student Eve Crawford Peyton in 2003, Norton reacted.

There is obviously an important principle of due process and innocence until proven guilty at stake here. Even if the accusations relating to Bailey were all true and he has denied that they are should that affect our appreciation of his work, and whether or not it ought to be withdrawn from sale? If, for example, the designer of a vacuum cleaner was discovered to have a history of sexual abuse, would that vacuum cleaner be taken off the shelves?

Of course a book is a different kind of object or artefact from a domestic appliance, but does it occupy a category that is indivisible from its creator? Its not as though Baileys book was a memoir about his sexual conquests, but it was a book that discusses someone elses sexual conquests Roths and in terms that might often seem loaded in Roths favour. Would the book have been withdrawn had its subject been Henry James or Emily Dickinson, to name two famously sexually restrained authors?

It looks as though theyve got two for one here, says British novelist Howard Jacobson. In a curious kind of way its been a means of censoring Philip Roth while not censoring Philip Roth.

Though a longtime admirer of Roths writing, Jacobson has no wish to read the biography, having spent too much time in Roths head over the past 50 years.

I met him a couple of times, he says. He was horrible the whole time. Everything I ever heard about him suggests he was a thoroughly horrible man.

But about Nortons decision to respond to the accusations against Bailey by withdrawing the book, Jacobson is adamant: I dont care what he is accused of, the man could be rotting in prison for having committed every crime under the sun, including going on anti-Israel marches which of course is the worst crime of all in my book, and theyre still entitled to write a book and theyre still entitled to have that book read. And its not the job of the publisher to censor the life of the person who writes the book.

Jacobsons position is a version of the traditional free speech case, in which the art and the artist are never conflated, and the moral judgment of the latter is not placed on the former. The merits of this argument are not hard to see. It means that students of history can read Mein Kampf without it meaning that they are supporters of Adolf Hitler. And the bookshelves dont have to be filleted of books by various disreputable, unpleasant, criminal or, by todays standards, morally reproachable people.

To take just one example, Darkness At Noon is seen as a classic work of fiction, hauntingly capturing the terror of the Soviet purges. Its author, Arthur Koestler, was accused of being a serial rapist whose victims included Jill Craigie, the feminist film-maker and wife of former Labour leader Michael Foot. It shows how times have changed that when Craigies accusation surfaced at the turn of the century in David Cesaranis study of Koestler, the author Frederic Raphael argued that Craigie knew the novelists character, and may have been excited by the risk[s] she was taking.

The abuse of women was (if it is not still) a certificate of virility in many great men, wrote Raphael, concluding: If we dispraise famous men, who is to be spared?

The latter sentiment was echoed by another British novelist, who reserved his real ire for Cesaranis prurience and biographical opportunism. Such attitudes foreshadowed Roths own growing preoccupation with posthumous reassessment, which he fictionalised in 2007s Exit Ghost. His alter ego Nathan Zuckerman takes a sensationalist biographer to task for exposing a novelist named Lonoffs incestuous affair with his half-sister:

So youre going to redeem Lonoffs reputation as a writer by ruining it as a man. Replace the genius of the genius with the secret of the genius.

A bust of Koestler was removed from display at Edinburgh University, but no one considered then or now removing his books. The truth is that any kind of retrospective moral inventory of authors would leave libraries and backlists with a lot of empty spaces. In philosophy, Martin Heidegger was a Nazi and Louis Althusser killed his wife. In American literature, William Burroughs killed his wife and Norman Mailer stabbed his second wife, almost killing her, at a party.

The implication in the Vintage statement about assessing the situation was that if the story developed, its stance might change, and Baileys book could be withdrawn.

Im told by a number of people in publishing that this would be a popular move with many of those under 40 in the industry, who often feel underrepresented in corporate decisions. But if that is the case, I could find no young publisher who was prepared to voice that opinion, even anonymously, and I approached half a dozen radical voices as well as the Society of Young Publishers. A typical response I received read: While I have my own opinions on this, I do not feel it is my place to comment.

Its as if these supposed would-be book censors are said to be everywhere and yet, like a chimera, on closer inspection vanish into thin air. Nonetheless one agent is so despairing of the censorial attitudes she regularly encounters that she told me that, along with unconscious bias training, she would like to see young recruits given training in civil liberties.

You know, she says, freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas. They dont seem to have any respect for these things.

Toby Mundy is a former publisher who now runs his own agency. He lets out a knowing laugh when I mention this suggestion.

Our industry has been right to promote diversity, he says, not just within organisations but also in terms of the voices being heard. The mistake has been not to combine diversity with pluralism.

The counterargument is that any kind of pluralism that involves white supremacy and misogyny is unacceptable but, of course, who defines what constitutes these terms? In any case, surely a publishing house isnt under obligation to buy books by people of whose opinions and character it disapproves. Thats not censorship; its simply the exercise of discriminating taste.

Jacobson agrees, but argues that if the taste is shaped by a monotonous chorus of young people then its unlikely to allow for anything but the most tightly prescribed viewpoints.

If I was a publisher now, he says, I would say the whole lot of you need a course. This is what literature does. If it displeases you, good. Its job is not to make you feel better or to appeal to you. The fact that you dont like it is 100% irrelevant.

Thats probably not a message that is going to be widely adopted as policy. Ruth Franklin suggests that the most egregious problem with cancellation is the arbitrariness of its enforcement. Theres no way to flush out every writer whos committed a wrongdoing or a crime, so the people who are getting punished for it are those who are unfortunate enough to get caught.

Thats often the way with crime and punishment, but Franklin believes that it really comes down to economics, and the potential comeback. I think its a fear of reprisals for supporting somebody who does not appear to be worthy of our support.

Indeed the key factor in publishing decisions when it comes to controversy, as elsewhere in life, is often money. Had Peterson been a mid-ranking author rather than a bestseller, the internal protests against him at PRH would probably have had much more chance of success. The same can be said of JK Rowling, whose tweeting habits regarding transgender and gender critical issues have led to her being denounced by a generation of appalled fans, including some of the actors shed helped make famous.

But her publisher, Hachette, which had swiftly dropped Allen, told its staff that it could not refuse to work on her books, because it would run contrary to their belief in free speech. As one publisher put it: Theres always a commercial decision to be made at the bottom of every publication. Youre always measuring the cost, not just the financial cost of producing a book, paying in advance, promoting it, distributing it, but also the cost to your staff of servicing the author and the difficulty of that.

In theory, rejected or dropped authors can always go somewhere else. There is the plurality, after all, of the marketplace. In America, there is a wide political spectrum of publishing houses, although the most esteemed tend to be liberal. In the UK, its a slightly narrower environment, and the choice is more often between well-known publishers and obscure outfits just a step up from self-publishing. The freedom to step outside the liberal mainstream is curtailed only by the desire to be noticed and, perhaps, paid.

Will all the allegations affect Baileys ability to find a major publisher for whatever his next work is? As another publisher said to me: If he sent in a proposal tomorrow for a biography of Don DeLillo, I dont think many publishers would be rushing to buy it.

Bailey has apparently returned to Oklahoma, the state in which he grew up and about which he wrote, rather unfavourably, in his memoir The Splendid Things We Planned, which Norton has also withdrawn. In that book he detailed a difficult relationship he had with his brother, Scott, an alcoholic and heroin user, who rebelled against his bourgeois background and set out on an increasingly dysfunctional path, leading eventually to suicide.

Youre gonna be just like me, a drunken Scott warned his younger brother at one point. Youre gonna be worse.

Bailey has always had the humility to refer to himself as a flawed person, though what the flaws refer to beyond his own youthful tendency to get drunk and misbehave, he hasnt spelled out. He has told friends that, whatever his faults, he is avowedly not a rapist.

Somewhere behind all the accusations and denials, there remains a 900-page biography of Philip Roth. Its a fascinating if depressing read, because despite Baileys obvious admiration for his subject, Roth comes across as a vain, prickly and ultimately lonely man. Having devoted himself first to literature and second to the sexual pursuit of women, he ended up being terrified of what his posthumous reputation would be.

I dont want you to rehabilitate me, he told Bailey. Just make me interesting.

The pitch-black irony is that its the biographer who is in need of rehabilitation, and all his considerable literary efforts to do justice to Roth as a brilliant and complicated human being have been somewhat undermined by the allegations about his own behaviour towards women. Roths writerly injunction to himself was to let the repellent in, by which he meant not to avoid the dark side of human nature. The accusation against Bailey is that he let the repellent out.

One effect of this strange blurring or complicity between biographer and subject is to make the book compelling evidence in the case that says Roth, notwithstanding his respectful friendships with and generosity towards a number of formidable females, was a man who was cruel and controlling to rather too many women.

Its a book, in other words, that for many reasons, not all of them edifying, deserves to be read rather than withdrawn. One of them is that it tells us a great deal about its subject but also quite a lot about its author too.

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Philip Roth, Blake Bailey and publishing in the post-#MeToo era - The Guardian