Category Archives: Jordan Peterson

You can say whatever you want were on Spotify.

Those were Joe Rogans words of reassurance to a podcast guest when she paused to joke that she would be arrested for what she said next. Like, YouTubes not gonna pull it, he went on, prompting her laughter. Were in a weird realm.

The remarks, made during Rogans interview with Canadian anti-transgender writer Meghan Murphy last August, reflects a difficult truth for the worlds largest music streaming platform as it seeks to extend its dominance, and becomes a media company in its own right.

Under heavy political pressure tech giants like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have increased efforts to tackle misinformation on their platforms during the pandemic, tightening their rules and hiring third-party fact-checkers (albeit with limited success).

Audio streaming platforms like Spotify have so far escaped a similar level of scrutiny. But the Swedish-based, public company is now being forced to grapple with questions of its responsibility over misinformation and pseudoscience as it makes exclusive multimillion-dollar deals with popular podcasters.

Its flagship grab is undoubtedly The Joe Rogan Experience, Spotifys number one podcast, whose colourful and free-wheeling host was paid a reported $100m in early 2020 for exclusive rights to his show.

This week, Rogan once again proved the tricky balancing act for Spotify. In a four-hour interview, broadcast on Tuesday, he gave the self-help author and anti-feminist mystic, Dr Jordan Peterson, a platform to claim without evidence that climate science has no basis in reality, and that solar power kills more people than nuclear.

Its the latest example of Rogan and his guests appearing to have free rein to spread false claims and conspiracy theories, which in the past have spanned topics from the coronavirus vaccine and Dr Anthony Fauci to transgender people.

In some instances, Rogans words appeared to break with what Spotify has said publicly about Covid-19 misinformation.

The streaming service has previously told news outlets that it bans false or dangerous deceptive content about COVID-19, which may cause offline harm and/or pose a direct threat to public health.

It also claims to have removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

Yet no misinformation policy is listed in Spotifys user guidelines or in summaries of prohibited content on the company website. Spotify did not respond to a list of questions from The Independent seeking clarity on its policies surrounding misinformation.

Spotify has a hate speech policy on its website banning content that expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against people based on characteristics such as race, sex, and sexual orientation.

Rogan has showed time and time and again that he will misinform his audience on Spotify and wont face any repercussions for doing so, says Alex Paterson, a senior researcher with the left-wing campaign group Media Matters for America, who listened to over 300 hours of the podcast in 2021.

Spotifys complete failure to mitigate Rogans harmful rhetoric about the pandemic demonstrates clearly that when it comes to their top podcast host [the stated] policy is just a hollow PR strategy.

Theres no such thing as climate

Rogan, who is also a stand-up comedian and a combat sports commentator, was Spotifys most-listened podcaster in both 2020 and 2021.

Before his deal with the company he had an estimated 11 million downloads per episode, although that figure likely included some automatic downloads that were never listened to. According to Chartmetrics and Viberate, two analytics companies, his audience is mostly young men aged 18-35 in English-speaking countries.

That is a familiar audience to Dr Peterson, who is not a climate scientist but a clinical psychologist who became famous for his anti-political correctness views, attacks on the trans community, arguments that white privilege isnt real, and defence of the patriarchy.

Climate is about everything, okay, says Dr Peterson on the episode. But your models arent based on everything. Your models are based on a set number of variables. So that means youve reduced the variables which are everything to that set.

Well, how did you decide which set of variables to include in the equation if its about everything? [...] Because your models do not and cannot model everything.

At one point, Rogan acknowledges that his guest went on these rants but continues the conversation on climate change. Dr Peterson then alleges, with zero factual basis, that more people die every year from solar energy than die from nuclear.

Asked what he means, Dr Peterson laughs and says: No, you fall off the roof when youre installing it ... gravity! He describes this as a good example of unintended consequences.

Dr Petersons claims were widely panned as "climate denial", "wackadoo" and "completely wrong". John Cook, who studies climate change denial narratives at the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub in Melbourne, Australia, toldThe Independent that they were very old, debunked arguments that Ive seen a million times over the last decade and a half.

Dr Cook added: He talks as if hes saying something insightful, but its a complete misunderstanding of how science works.

Dr Peterson did not respond to a request to comment from The Independent.

Joe Rogan guest claims pandemic is just a money grab, they are trying to kill us

Climate denial is nothing new, and has been around for as long as scientists have been sounding the alarm on the fact that humans are causing the steep rise in global temperatures, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. Its less common, however, for climate myths to be pumped into the auditory canals of millions with only a glancing, credulous attempt at being challenged.

Podcasts are very intimate, says Dr Cook. Its like youre listening in on a conversation.

Rogans just asking questions style in which he seeks out fringe figures with unusual perspectives and mostly listens non-judgmentally actually plays into a highly common climate denial tactic, Dr Cook notes, that of spuriously casting doubt on scientific conclusions.

Joe Rogan vs Neil Young

Rogans statements about Covid-19 and its vaccines have attracted anger, as has his choice of guests to discuss the pandemic.

One recent interview was with Dr Robert Malone, an infectious disease specialist banned from Twitter for spreading misinformation. Dr Malone has questioned the Covid jabs effectiveness and falsely suggested that millions of people had been hypnotised into believing that the vaccines work to prevent serious disease.

Rogan has claimed that young people and children should not get the vaccine and inaccurately stated they are gene therapy. He has promoted the anti-parasite drug Ivermectin, whose effect on coronavirus remains unclear, and suggested that prolific conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was right to worry about microchips being hidden in Covid vaccines.

On the other hand, Rogan has also given a platform to an authoritative medical figure, Dr Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon and chief medical correspondent for CNN.

Still, Mr Paterson of Media Matters for America says: [Rogan] plays a crucial role in the right-wing echo chamber by amplifying vaccine sceptics and coronavirus conspiracy theorists, says Mr Paterson, of Media Matters for America.

Dr Malones appearance prompted a group of doctors and scientists to sign an online petition calling on Spotify to adopt policies to prevent the spread of misinformation on its platform.

By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals, the letter read. It had been signed by more than 1,300 people as of Friday.

The veteran rocker Neil Young took issue with Rogans coronavirus misinformation and asked Spotify to remove his music this week.

They can have Rogan or Young. Not both, he wrote on his website.

Neil Young on stage in Quebec in 2018

(Alice Cliche / AFP via Getty Images)

Spotify has removed Youngs music from the platform, saying: We regret Neils decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.

The Joe Rogan episode with Dr Malone remains available.

Announcing his Spotify deal in 2020, Rogan stressed to his audience that it will be exactly the same show and that Spotify wont have any creative control.

Since then, he has repeatedly boasted about his freedom. Spotify has given me no pushback whatsoever. Its been amazing, he said in September. And in May, he said: Theyre f***ing great. They dont say s***.

He added: I tested it, too like when I brought Alex Jones on? I was like lets see! You guys talk a lot of s***, lets see! That f***ing guy is right way more than hes wrong.

Taking the biggest bite

All this comes as Spotify colonises the podcasting industry at breakneck pace.

Having launched in 2008, it is already the worlds largest music streaming service, according to Midia Research, controlling one-third of the market compared to 15 per cent for its next largest competitor, Apple music.

The company reports that it has 381 million users, including 172 million subscribers, across 184 markets and hosts 70 million tracks, including more than 3.2 million podcast titles. Some estimates now suggest it has a bigger podcast audience than Apple, the free app that comes pre-installed on every iPhone.

Joe Rogan continues to ignore covid science even as he reads it out loud

Among the 20,000 podcast episodes that Spotify claims to have removed due to vaccine misinformation include that of Australian anti-vaxxer and celebrity chef Pete Evans.

The policy applies to music too: Spotify reportedly nixed a controversial anti-lockdown song by Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown last March.

In 2018, it deleted several episodes of Infowars, a radio show hosted by Alex Jones, for hate speech. The interview with Mr Jones on The Joe Rogan Experience, is still available.

Spotify has not left Rogan completely alone. It has removed as many as 42 episodes dating from before his exclusive deal with the streaming service, including interviews with far right figures such as activist Milo Yiannopolous and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes.

Spotifys chief executive, Daniel Ek, has said that he does not believe Spotify has any editorial responsibility over its podcasts.

"We have a lot of really well-paid rappers too that make tens of millions of dollars, if not more, each year from Spotify, Mr Ek told Axios last year. And we dont dictate what theyre putting in their songs, either."

Audio misinformation is harder to challenge

Until recently misinformation on Spotify has flown under the radar compared to social networks such as Facebook, Dr Cook says.

One reason is because audio content is more difficult to search through and scrutinise compared to the short snippets of text, often tied to a URL, found on other platforms.

In the past, Dr Cooks team has used artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse data from blogs and think-tank publications, but he says that would be much harder to do with podcasts.

That makes it more difficult to track and challenge the reach of climate misinformation on Spotify even as the company boasts about its own green credentials and says it is listening to the science.

This is a really massive problem, says Dr Valerie Wirtschafter, a senior data analyst at the Brookings Institution, who has studied how disinformation spread through podcasts on the Big Lie that victory had been stolen from Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Dr Wirtschafter and her colleague Dr Chris Meserole, director of research for Brookings AI and Emerging Technology Initiative, are undertaking new research which will analyse 79 podcasts and 37,000 episodes for verifiable falsehoods on the Covid pandemic, while also exploring broader disinformation including climate denial.

Figuring out the reach of audio disinformation is critical due to how listeners respond to the medium.

The [podcast hosts] are in your ear, youre often listening to them alone, you choose when to start these episodes, Dr Wirtschafter says, noting that research has shown that people are more likely to incorporate information they hear from podcasts into their beliefs.

Theres an intimacy factor, she added. These hosts often develop identities, personalities that people gravitate toward. Thats really important in this conversation. On the flip side of that intimacy, theres this implicit level of trust that gets built. But that podcaster could be anybody.

Why Spotify needs Joe Rogan

The big question is: will Spotify ever part ways with its number one podcasting star? According to John Sullivan, a professor at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania who studies podcasting and tech industries, that is not likely.

Spotify honestly couldnt have cared less about Joe Rogan; what they wanted was Joe Rogans audience, says Professor Sullivan.

He argues that Spotify should not be seen as a media company, because its game plan is simply to suck as much of the podcast industry into its platform as possible, with each exclusive content deal a means to that end.

Traditionally, podcasts have been distributed via web links that made it hard to measure their audience and almost impossible to censor them.

By contrast, Spotify is a very sophisticated surveillance machine that tracks every second of its users listening, helping it develop recommendation algorithms that keep subscribers on board and sell targeted adverts aimed at non-subscribers.

As such, Prof Sullivan says the company needs to grow as big as possible as quickly as it can so that it can become dominant before regulators and politicians grow restive.

If it can get to that point, then, like Facebook, it will be rich enough to resist or adapt to whatever new regulations come its way.

At the moment its fair to say that Spotify needs [Rogan] more than the other way around, says Prof Sullivan. Its in a moment now where its trying to maximise its growth as quickly as possible. Someone like Joe Rogan is in an ideal position, because he holds the keys to that growth so that probably gives him a level of confidence about saying and doing whatever he would like.

He adds that Spotifys reported $100m investment in Mr Rogan will make it harder to give him up, to say nothing of the public firestorm it could ignite by deplatforming him.

The current approach may already be bearing fruit. According to Chartmetrics, Joe Rogans followers on Instagram are posting about Spotify more often over time, having started out less interested in it than the average user.

However, musicians might be able to force its hand if they follow the path of Young and pull their content from the service. A big enough boycott, Prof Sullivan says, would bite into Spotifys core revenue.

In the meantime, Dr Cook believes that Spotifys supposed rules against dangerous Covid-19 misinformation should be extended to other kinds.

While many tech giants put false Covid claims in a different category, saying they can directly cause harm to life and limb, Dr Cook says this is short-sighted.

Covid misinformation is much more immediate, says Dr Cook. People will hear something, and then theyll step outside and not wear a mask, or they wont get vaccinated, or they wont socially distance.

Climate misinformation is more complicated, because its such a holistic issue. Its long-term, its global. Its harder to get our head around, but the threat is actually much greater than Covid misinformation because its this existential problem on a global scale, decades and centuries into the future.

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He can do what he likes: Inside Spotifys love affair with Joe Rogans misinformation - The Independent

Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson has claimed on Joe Rogans podcast that being transgender is a result of a contagion and similar to satanic ritual abuse.

The controversial host appeared to endorse Petersons theory when he suggested that acceptance of the trans community is a sign of civilizations collapsing during the Jan. 25 episode of Spotifys The Joe Rogan Experience.

Critics once again are calling out the podcast host for having peddled harmful anti-trans rhetoric.

Rogan, 54, implored the controversial pundit and author to share his thoughts on what made an individual trans.

Peterson, 59, described it as a sociological contagion, comparing it to the satanic ritual abuse accusations that emerged in day cares in the 1980s.

The former University of Toronto psychology professor also used his time on Rogans popular platform to oppose Canadian federal Bill C-16, which amended the countrys human rights protections to cover trans and nonbinary citizens. Instead, the former academic made the unsubstantiated claim that opening the boundaries of sex categories would fatally confuse thousands of young girls.

Rogan then referred back to his conversation with British columnist Douglas Murray of the Spectator in September, in which the writer said that trans issues will be seen to be a late-empire, a bad sign of things falling apart.

He had an amazing point about civilizations collapsing, and that when they start collapsing, they become obsessed with gender. And he was saying that you could trace it back to the ancient Romans, the Greeks, said Rogan.

He continued, I think probably its not so much an obsession with gender, its a disintegration of categories as a precursor like so its a marker for if categories just dissolve, especially fundamental ones, the culture is dissolving because the culture is a structure of category.

Rogan concluded by drawing connections to Christian scripture. So, in fact, culture is a structure of category that we all share, so we see things the same way not exactly the same way, because then we would have nothing to talk about, but roughly speaking, we have a bedrock of agreement. Thats the Bible, by the way.

Watchdog group Media Matters has since spoken out about Rogans recent broadcast.

Spotifys Joe Rogan once again peddled harmful anti-trans rhetoric, Media Matters proclaimed Wednesday on its blog, suggesting that social acceptance of trans people is a sign of civilizations collapsing.

This bizarre theory has been an ongoing fixation for Rogan, Media Matters continued, and listed four additional episodes in which the host raised the subject.

Such views have landed Rogan in hot water with his host, Spotify, which took arrows in support of the entertainers freedom of speech as its own staff railed over his transphobic comments.

While Rogan has espoused controversial ideologies regarding the LGBTQIA+ community for years, his controversy du jour has been his COVID-19 denial. Rogan was recently referred to as a menace to public health by one doctor, who co-signed an open letter alongside hundreds of other health care experts decrying the dangerous podcaster last week. Rogan, they pointed out, enjoys an audience of some 11 million listeners.

Mass-misinformation events of this scale have extraordinarily dangerous ramifications, they wrote in their letter.

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Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan show: Being trans is like satanic ritual abuse - New York Post

Content warning: This article discusses transphobia and misogyny.

Controversial U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson has announced that he is no longer a tenured professor at U of T. By 2017, he had stopped teaching courses at U of T, but retained a tenured position.

In an article in the National Post, Peterson explained the reasons for his retirement. He claimed that equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives at the university created career barriers for supremely trained heterosexual white male graduate students and made faculty positions less of a meritocracy.

Since 2016, Peterson has become a major media figure famous for his conservative political views. He has made a number of high-profile appearances on television and podcasts. He has also published a number of books, a podcast, and some online courses. He has often said that contemporary university departments and society at large are overly influenced by identity politics. This stance has attracted a large number of both supporters and critics.

In a statement to The Varsity, U of T confirmed that Professor Jordan Peterson retired in the fall and now holds the rank of Professor, Emeritus.

Timeline of events

Peterson has long been a controversial figure. In 2016, he posted a series of YouTube videos where he spoke against political correctness and Bill C-16, an amendment to both the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) and the Criminal Code, which introduced gender expression and gender identity as protected under the CHRA. The videos were initially reported on by The Varsity in 2016 and drew attention from the media and the world at large, with many students and academics at U of T speaking against Peterson.

Peterson alleged that the bill curbed free speech because it forced people to use certain pronouns for others against their will for example, using the gender-neutral pronoun they for transgender and nonbinary people who prefer it over gendered pronouns like he and she. He continued to publicly denounce the bill for months in television appearances and YouTube videos, which gained significant media attention.

A number of faculty and student groups spoke against Peterson, with hundreds signing an open letter calling on U of T to fire him. Members of the university administration sent a letter to Peterson asking that he respect students pronouns and urged him to stop speaking on the topic on the grounds that using someones incorrect pronouns is a form of discrimination. At the time, Peterson was critical of the letter, describing it as an attempt to silence him.

Protests were held at the university both in support of and against Peterson, including an event called UofT Rally for Free Speech at which Peterson spoke. Reports of multiple threats against trans and nonbinary students on campus followed the protests.

Cassandra Williams vice-president, university affairs of the University Toronto Students Union at the time, and a vocal critic of Peterson said the anti-Peterson protests aimed to call out the university for supporting and enabling people who are causing harm to trans people. Debates were also held on campus discussing the subject of free speech and trans rights.

Since 2016, Petersons profile has extended far beyond the university. His media appearances, debates, and bestselling book, 12 Rules for Life, have created his reputation as a right-leaning public figure and have drawn supporters worldwide. Some of his supporters have harassed and doxxed his critics. He has made vigorous attacks on identity politics, which he often calls postmodern neo-Marxism. Critics have described his various beliefs as transphobic, misogynistic, conspiracy theories, and a dangerous influence on others.

Retirement

In his National Post article, Peterson explained the reason for his retirement. He wrote that he had hoped to be an academic forever but, among other reasons, he was unable to reconcile his beliefs with the appalling ideology of diversity, inclusion and equity at U of T. These facts rendered my job morally untenable, wrote Peterson.

Peterson further claimed that heterosexual, white graduate students who are men face a negligible chance of getting research positions due to the existence of EDI initiatives, and that there arent a sufficient number of qualified candidates that belong to minoritized groups for universities to be able to fill diversity targets.

He also railed against other equity initiatives in higher education, such as mandatory equity training for teaching faculty, which he claimed is ineffective.

In response to Petersons article, a spokesperson for the university pointed to the universitys employment equity reports, which found that between 2019 and 2020, the proportion of appointed faculty who identified as men remained constant.

The spokesperson also highlighted the universitys Statement on Equity, Diversity, and Excellence, which asserts that An equitable and inclusive working and learning environment creates the conditions for our diverse staff and student body to maximize their creativity and their contributions, thereby supporting excellence in all dimensions of the institution.

Criticisms of Petersons claims

In an email to The Varsity, U of T Professor A.W. Peet, who has frequently criticized Peterson and has debated him in a widely seen television appearance in 2016, responded to his claims. They wrote that Peterson was a poisonous presence on campus, pointing to research that has identified Petersons rhetoric as a radicalization pathway for social media users, which has harmed U of Ts reputation.

I am tremendously relieved that he is no longer a professor at UofT. He harmed a lot of members of our community in recent years, including me, wrote Peet.

In an email to The Varsity, U of T Professor Emeritus Ronald de Sousa, who criticized Petersons original comments about Bill C-16 in 2017, also criticized Petersons article, writing that he wrongly portrayed people who are women, racialized, or LGBTQ+ as utterly unqualified.

Over half a century ago, when I was myself appointed to the University of Toronto, heterosexual, white male graduate students such as myself faced virtually no competition, wrote de Sousa. Pointing out that historically, academia has largely been dominated by white, heterosexual men, he mentioned that his graduate universitys policies dictated that no women were to be enrolled. If there simply is not enough qualified BIPOC people in the pipeline, shouldnt we support efforts to change that? wrote de Sousa.

I think [Peterson] should have had the decency to resign sooner, Peet added.

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Controversial professor Jordan Peterson retires from tenured position at U of T - Varsity

I am sitting on the front bench in the Oxford Union chamber. Next to me, laptops are open.

Who do you write for?, asks the boy on my left. This boy is my friend for the next hour. We shake our heads at the same things, he thinks my notes about lobsters are funny (he was looking at my laptop screen. Thank God I never broke character).

Im independent, I say.

Okay.

I certainly am independent independent from the world of amateur journalism entirely. The boy on my right is in on the whole thing he saw me come in late and sneak onto the front bench.

Just open your laptop and do an essay or something, says boy-on-the-right.

I oblige, and title a document: Professor Jordan Peterson Oxford Union 25th November 2021. There is excitement in the room, and I am in the world of journalists now. It feels great.

The front rows of the benches ahead of me are for Petersons guests. This is what friend-on-the left and I infer, anyway, since theyre dressed much better than anyone else. Lots of shirts and brogues. I spy a fur hat. I spy

Jordan Peterson. There he is outside the glass door. We have all stood in the cold, in a line, for some considerable time to see this man. But why? A happy boy outside told me that Peterson had been incredibly helpful for him; in fact, I really had the sense that he might have changed his life. But otherwise, the Oxford position seems to be one of curiosity garnished with scepticism. This is certainly my own. Perhaps being a Jordan Peterson stan an overzealous or obsessive fan lacks the sort of nuance that these scholars might purport to possess.

Peterson limps into the room. From the front, he is handsome and thin. His hair is dark grey at the forehead and fades into silver at the collar. He walks up to the platform and there is a standing ovation. I look around and cant see any of the sceptics I met outside they must have transformed into stans. Boy-on-the right joins them. Friend-on-the-left and I stay seated besides, I committed to journalistic neutrality just five minutes ago. There are some booers but theyre nowhere to be seen amongst the standing-stans. I feel very confused.

From the back, Peterson is an old man. At the pub that night someone will remind me of the First Rule for Life: stand up straight with your shoulders back (see 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, 2018). His body is angled, and the way he hunches pushes his frame through his clothes. Something has changed. But, he moves with grace. Jordan Peterson is well dressed and dignified. There is a special elegance in the way he twists his hands as he speaks.

The title of the talk is Imitation of the Divine Ideal, he says, and he tells us about perception, truth, artificial intelligence, the problem of interpretation, cybernetics and robots. I try, but I really cant follow. This isnt the Jordan Peterson I (sort of) know. Ive read the first few chapters of his book, Ive seen the iek debate and Ive watched him own and be owned. Im sure something is different, and this isnt surprising: the Professor has recently overcome a clonazepam addiction and survived a coma, and he now lives by an all-meat diet. Peterson faces the room like a man talking to himself. His gaze hovers at floor-line; the upper chamber is all but invisible. There is an inwardness about the whole address. Richard Dawkins, who is sitting ahead of me, nods along. Some latecomers enter the hall and the bench opposite squeeze up. A girl with perfect hair sits down with the boys in boat shoes.

Peterson tells a story about a child who is scared when he sees a dog on his way to kindergarten. In the first version, he has a panic attack, spurring a lifetime of panic attacks, enabled by what Peterson calls the Oedipal sacrifice of his mother. In the second, the mother tells him to be brave and he walks past the dog to school, and he is fine. Here is some familiar Peterson-style argument I can follow. He talks about metafictional narratives, and I am reminded, with sadness, that I am not a real journalist after all. I make my pretend journalist notes anyway.

He loses me again. Now Peterson is talking about chimpanzees, rats and dogs (lots of dogs). He hasnt mentioned lobsters yet (friend-on-the-left laughs).

Do your controversies overshadow the subtler parts of your work?, someone asks. Peterson pauses for a long second.

No, he says. People always hate when I tell them that, on average, women are shorter than men. Thats not a social construct, and its not controversial: its just a fact.

Everyone laughs, including me. Boy-on-the-right looks up from his computer screen. He shakes his head in disgust. Hes researching for an assignment, and he hasnt listened to a word of the talk. This is his first sign of engagement since the standing ovation (this, being at odds with the rest of his behaviour, leads me to believe that he is deeply confused).

Are you okay?, he asks me.

Yes!;

he thinks I am crying.

I laugh even harder.

Its not that funny, its just absurd.

I know how this goes: we, as (supposedly) rational thinkers, subscribe to the first step of Petersons argument. But now we are on board the Peterson train, and if we stay aboard, we will soon pass under rough skies.

But dont be scared, boy-on-the-right! You should get on the train with us what no one has told you yet is that you can get off wherever you like! Get on with me, and Ill stay with you so long as the sky is flat.

I am not telepathising hard enough, and boy-on-the-right is still staring at his screen. Think about John Stuart Mill, boy-on-the-right! You just cannot be sure that a silenced opinion doesnt contain some element of the truth

Nope.

Were getting to the end of the talk, and finally! Peterson pushes me too far. I climb off the train with friend-on-the-left. We sigh and feel the sweet validation of arriving where we had expected.

What a total waste of an hour, says a girl at the end of the bench. Its true, Peterson was incoherent; but I know much more than I did before, and I am glad. I have been in the belly of the beast, and I have taken its temperature.

I have learnt more about boy-on-the-right than the Imitation of the Divine Ideal: I have seen the people who truly wont listen. Peterson is right about that. Even face-to-face with the enemy, he wont look up from his screen. Why had he even come? He must have been curious like me; and then he must have been afraid. I imagine dead dogmas whizzing around his brain; theyre pastel pink and green because theyre actually Instagram infographics. I know Im right! They are saying. I just dont know why!

Jordan Peterson is burning in a fire of his own making bowing under the pressure of the twenty-four rules he has stacked upon himself. It feels like his career will not continue as before. I think I understand why he believes in God, because he believes in big ideas, and because it all seems to be too much for this man. I do not hate him.

The talk finishes and there is another standing ovation. A head of bright red hair pops up and I recognise the Jordan-Peterson-changed-my-life boy from outside.

I remember a Tweet by bad-bitch Democrat A.O.C (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) from November 2020

Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings [and] photos

and look again at the ambivalent ones cheering all around me.

The students in this room are probably not Trump supporters, but this rhetoric of surveillance has filtered into their consciousness, nonetheless. If A.O.C doesnt scare people out of the wrong ideas, it seems like she just scares them out of expressing them: and I can see that all we have done is force stans to adopt a faade of scepticism. The truth of their feelings has simply been pushed one layer deeper, and all it takes is a round of applause to lift it right up to the surface; the curtain raises for just a moment.

What happens when people are alone, or online? How does suppressed desire express itself then? And what will happen in the polling booth when no one is watching? Many in this room of young men (they make up ninety percent of us) will believe that they are subject to a culture of conformism and hyper-vigilance, and we should diffuse their fears by acknowledging them, not silencing them lest we risk alienating people further (and even pushing them further to the Right). Listening more attentively, and even gently, could invalidate Petersons and A.O.Cs narratives of hostility, and we may find that this is a conflict that we no longer need, and that there is no Culture War without its student soldiers. In some ways, the Jordan-Peterson-spectacle is funny; and we can laugh. But we cannot dismiss these people. Perhaps instead we might look a hunched Professor in the face and ask ourselves: whats it all about?

What do you think youll submit?, asks friend-on-the-left as we close our laptops.

Probably a poem, I say.

Bibliography

@AOC. 6th Nov 2020. Twitter.

Full tweet: Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future

URL: https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1324807776510595078?lang=en

Image Credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0

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In the belly of Jordan Peterson: Ambivalence in question with the ersatz journalist - Cherwell Online

Prominent conservatives have discovered Hungary and its twenty-first century dictator, Viktor Orbn. This week, Tucker Carlson will be relocating his top-rated show to Hungary, as he did for a week last August, bringing Orbn into the homes of hundreds of thousands of Fox viewers.

Carlson may be the most high-profile conservative to alight on Hungary, but hes far from the first. Christopher Caldwell profiled Orbn in the Claremont Review of Books in 2019; former National Review editor John OSullivan moved to Budapest, where he has run the Danube Institute, a think tank funded by Orbns government, since 2017; the American Conservatives Rod Dreher spent four months last year in Budapest under the auspices of the Danube Institute, largely singing its praises; while a number of others, including Patrick Deneen, Chris DeMuth, Sohrab Ahmari, Yoram Hazony, and Jordan Peterson have made pilgrimages, in several cases meeting with Orbn himself. Early this year, Donald Trump endorsed Orbn for re-election.

Hungarys appeal to the American right is straightforward. Among the worlds leaders, Tucker Carlson pronounced, only Orbn identifies as a Western conservative. He takes pride in standing athwart European Union integration, internationalism, immigration, and wokeism. He champions the Hungarian nation and the Christian West.

While Republican politicians like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley muse that the left hates America and its grand ambition is to deconstruct the United States of America, Hungary suggests another pathone where the right, apparently harnessing popular energies, wields the state against the cultural left, evidenced by Hungarys anti-LGBTQ law and its defunding of gender studies programs in Hungarian universities. For American national conservatives already abandoning small-government positions, Orbn fuels dreams of an American right brandishing the power of the federal government. Others may see in Hungary a hint of integralismthe possibility of a Christian state integrated under the governance of the Catholic Church.

Sometimes Orbnphilia on the American right is accompanied by modest finger-wagging about his corruption or overreach, such as his use of surveillance technology against journalists. But the American right is at minimum anti-anti-Orbn, and frequently celebratory. His admirers contrast his use of Hungarian state power positively with the perceived coercive power of progressivism. If we are going to mount an effective political resistance to the soft totalitarianism taking over our country, writes Dreher,

then we are going to have to have aggressive, competent, national conservative leadership, one that is not averse to intervening in the economy for the sake of the common good. The best example of that now on the world stage is Viktor Orbn.

Despite his obvious enthusiasm, Dreher played somewhat coy when interviewed for an October New York Times magazine article on Orbn and his American admirers. Dreher portrayed his interest in Hungary as intellectual or journalistic, assessing the extent politics can be a bulwark against cultural disintegration, asking what is the cost, and is the cost worth it?

Since these questions coincide with a recent broader curiosity about historic right-wing strongmen, it is worth taking a moment to reflect on the American rights relationship with another dictatorshipa story that has largely been forgotten with the passing of the generations.

For a relative European backwater, Francoist Spain figures prominently in the history of American intellectual conservatism. National Review, the conservative journal of ideas that emerged from both right-wing and Catholic circles in the mid-1950s, reflexively defended both the Franco of the contemporary 1950s and the victory of the Nationalists over the secular Republican government in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

With their own Spanish-language skills, and with Spains low cost of living, Catholic culture, and right-wing government, important conservative writersL. Brent Bozell, Willmoore Kendall, and Frederick Wilhelmsenlived in Spain during critical periods of intellectual development. Likewise, conservative luminaries William F. Buckley, Jeffrey Hart, James Burnham, Erik Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and Russell Kirk all ventured to the dictatorship. Buckleys brother Reid spent fifteen years in Spain writing novels as well as romantic accounts of life in Madrid for National Review under the pseudonym Peter Crumpet.

These intellectuals were never as close to Franco as contemporary conservatives are to Orbn. In fact, hardly born democrats, they frequently called for a restored monarchy to succeed Franco, scoffing at the idea of democracy in Spain.

Nevertheless, there are striking parallels. As with the current relationship with Hungary, the conservative experience of Spain was characterized by celebrations of the Nationalist victory against leftist aggression, anti-anti-Franco apologia, and rethinking conservative dogmas in the shade of Spanish cathedrals.

General Franco is an authentic national hero, William F. Buckley wrote from Spain in 1957. Franco wrested the country from the hands of the visionaries, ideologues, Marxists, and nihilists that were imposing upon her, in the thirties, a regime so grotesque as to do violence to the Spanish soul, to deny, even, Spains historical identity. Unsurprising sentiment from the devout Buckley. But he criticized the Franco regime for outliving its welcome and failing to establish true legitimacy.

National Review walked a careful line of critiquing and justifying Franco, while celebrating the conservative Spanish character and the wartime Nationalists.

The stark terms of the Cold War overshadowed everything. Conservatives understood the Spanish Civil Warthe defining question for Francos legacyas an existential conflict between communism and Christendom. What would have happened had Communism won in Spain? asked one pro-Nationalist writer in National Review, reducing the complex conflict to a binary choice. Another concluded in the mid-1960s that, however much Franco lacked in magnanimity, the Communist coup would mean the merciless, imposed rigidity of another neo-Stalinist state. It was better that Franco won.

Others tightly linked Spanish liberalism with communism. Francis Wilson endorsed the thought of a Spanish rightist intellectual who argued that liberalism inevitably paved the way to communism. Russell Kirk wrote that one cannot really understand the Spanish Civil War without knowing something about liberalism. Numinously, Buckley updated a medieval myth: Rumors in Spain claimed its patron saint, James the Apostle, had manned a Nationalist gun post as the Republican juggernaut sought to relieve the siege of Madrid. Less piously, hardnosed editor Jeffrey Hart in 1966 described Spains Civil War as the prototype of a new style of internationalized civil war that saw Yugoslavia, Greece, Cuba, and Vietnamand American responses to themdivide along the same cultural and intellectual lines.

Likewise, National Review defended Francos Spain from World Opinion (merely the expression of the dogmas of the Libintern, the international apparatus of the Establishment, joked historian Jefferson Davis Futch III). Elsewhere, the magazine cheered Francos foreign minister Fernando Mara Castiellas 1960 visit to America where the Spaniard shot down media critics. NR waved away Castiellas service in the Blue Legiona Spanish volunteer force fighting alongside Nazi Germany in the Second World Waras a disquieting partnership, heaven knows. But, wrote the editors, he acquitted himself well in New York, reminding the press that more than half my generation died in Spain twenty years ago defending the ideas of the Christian Faith in a Civil War which to us was a Crusade.

It wasnt just Francos Spain itself that conservatives lauded, but even glowing depictions of it. Russell Kirk in 1964 depicted the popular Spanish Pavilion at the New York Worlds Fair as a triumph of traditionalism alive in the modern age and a symbol of Liberalisms decay.

More broadly, NR routinely rejected charges of Francoist fascism, touted Spain as a NATO ally, and responded to criticism of the regime. Could Spain catch a break, NR wondered, for the sin of opposing a Communist takeover a quarter century earlier?

Like todays right and Hungary, the conservative mainstream had criticisms of Franco and his government, while remaining anti-anti-Franco. Spain has the most elaborate system of social security outside of New Zealand, chided NRs roving European contributor Erik Kuehnelt-Leddihn. Like Orbn, Franco permitted enormous corruption; the biggest threat to Francos rule was his misgovernment, his laziness, his socialistic paternalism, his indifference not to freedom but to corruption, reported Buckley. The New Conservative Francis Wilson suggested that the Francoist Falange Party had become more Tammany Hall than transformative.

To be sure, these were conservative critiques, focused on Spains economics, foreign policy, and corruption. In 1959, Kuehnelt-Leddihn bemoaned Francos insufficient appreciation of the free economy, calling him rightist in politics but leftist in economics. But NR happily touted Spains economic liberalization and modernizationled by the Catholic conservative lay group Opus Deias its economy boomed in the 1960s, only passingly worrying about the subtle danger of economic growth to the Spanish soul.

Likewise conservatives downplayed Francos repression and the possibility of Spanish democracy. Kuehnelt-Leddihn repeatedly highlighted Spains relative freedom. Franco, personally a pious man, conducted a dictatorship under which anything was possibleshort of anti-Catholicism. Kuehnelt-Leddihn also praised Franco for emancipating women and allowing the masses to achieve a modicum of well-being. On the contrary, as historians have documented, Francos Nationalists considerably reversed womens rights and violently reasserted the viciously unequal oligarchy of pre-Republican Spain. Ultimately, tourism and aid money lifted landless farmers out of poverty under Franco, but that disruption to the ancien economic rgime was hardly intentional.

The next step, more freedom of expression, will come unless the organized Left makes a last, desperate attempt to unbalance the liberalizing process, remarked the aristocratic Kuehnelt-Leddihn. Anti-democratic fears and monarchist sympathies ran through conservatives analysis of Spain from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s. Would free elections truly benefit the cause of liberty? Or would they set the country backback to 1936? Kuehnelt-Leddihn asked rhetorically. In the traditionalist journal Modern Age, Francis Wilson claimed, It seems impossible to introduce the more extreme form of parliamentary democracy into Spain. Instead, Spain is a monarchy. Another National Review writer concluded that political freedom, American style, is not, in Spain, compatible with order. It is Spains authoritarian monarchists who alone can create order in Spain. In the mid-1970s, Buckley, partly walking back earlier criticism of Franco, claimed to understand the Generalissimos reluctance to give up the dictatorship, and praised how his intuitive grasp of the incompatibility of Spanish culture and John Stuart Mill democracy had tempered his successors.

What American conservative intellectuals thought they understood was the traditionalist heart of the Spanish character. They applauded it against leftism of all kinds. Reid Buckley described how 781 years of uninterrupted fighting for ones land and faith does something to a people. The Spanish became fierce followers of Christ with a racial and religious self-consciousness forged by Moorish domination. He waxed that Spain is an idea, a dream andalwaysa crusade.

In Francoist terms, it was a struggle of Spain against Anti-Spain (language echoed in present-day America by both the Claremont Institute and National Conservatives). In 1961, Lev Lednak acknowledged in National Review that these terms were not conciliatory, and that Francoists overstated the claim all liberals were Reds. But still he concluded the Anti-Spain side destabilized the nation by refusing to accept their defeat. Managing, impressively, to mangle both Spanish and American history, Lednak claimed It isnt that the Spanish victors since the Civil War have behaved so differently from the American victors [in the American Civil War], but that the Spanish vanquished have behaved so differently from the Southerners by not accepting Nationalist victory. In the conservative view, left-wing refusal to pack up and concede all to Franco made democracy untenable in Spain.

National Review and American conservative intellectuals broadly celebrated the Nationalists and sympathetically, if sometimes critically, covered for Franco. They reported Royalist gossip and occasional scoops, including a bizarre claim that President Kennedy met with Spanish dissidents. Conservative sympathy for Francoist Spain was clear not only in how many conservatives lived in or visited Spain, but also in the personnel Buckley published on the subjectlike Sir Arnold Lunn, an English fascist sympathizer and Franco supporter who wrote several articles on Spain for the magazine. But as with Hungary and the American right today, for some of these writers Spain offered much more: a chance to reimagine right-wing politics.

The American Right has shown itself alarmingly nave of conservatism outside the Anglo-Saxon diaspora of Western civilization, noted Detroit native Frederick Fritz Wilhelmsen in National Review in 1966. This sentiment is echoed today as traditionalist conservatives, buffeted by changing social mores and laws, look abroad for something more robust than free markets, originalist jurisprudence, and small government.

Like todays conspicuously Roman Catholic (or Eastern Orthodox, in Drehers case) pro-Orbn crowd, what attracted traditionalists to Spain in the 1960s was, above all, religion. Figures like Wilhelmsen, Francis Wilson, and Buckleys brother-in-law Brent Bozell approved of Spains state-backed religiosity. To Bozell, Spain came to represent an ideal, integral Catholicism; to Wilhelmsen, a tantalizing glimpse of a res publica Christiana.

Catholicism appeared richly embedded in Spain. Francis Wilson, a political scientist at the University of Illinois and convert to the Catholic Church, became fascinated by the commitments of the Latin mindmore profound and its conflicts more demanding than those of Anglo-American conservatives. He admired the rightist thinker Ramiro di Maeztu, co-founder of the far-right monarchist journal Accin Espaola and theorist of Hispanidad, the belief that Catholicism and the Spanish language were the core of a colonizing achievement of historical proportions. Wilson hoped to blend the thick commitments of the Spanish right with the best elements of Anglo-American conservatism.

More romantic than Wilson, Wilhelmsen became enamored of Carlism, what he called the most purely lyrical and militant response to Liberalism that has come out of Catholic Europe. Carlism began as a dynastic dispute among Spains monarchs in the 1830s, but became intertwined with ultratraditionalist politics. Under the slogan Dios, Patria, Fueros, Rey, Carlism was a latent, alternative right to the oligarchic constitutional monarchy. It seemed to have slipped into terminal decline during the early twentieth century before the anti-clericalism of the Spanish Republic revivified it. Tens of thousands of men joined its red-bereted militia, the Requet, especially in northeastern Spain, and received training from Fascist Italy and fought as Nationalist shock troops. The anti-modernist Wilhelmsen took a summer professorship in Pamplona, the heart of Carlist country, and embraced the permanent protest to the Revolution.

Likewise, the politics of Bozell, who was also a convert to Catholicism, transformed in Spain from run-of-the-mill, if hardline, Republican conservatism into something far more mystical. Living by El Escorial, the palace-monastery symbolic of Spanish imperial grandeur, informed Bozells vision of a magnified Christian West. Returning stateside to speak at a Young Americans for Freedom rally at Madison Square Garden in March 1962, Bozell gave a stirringand esotericaddress on Western Civilization to 18,000 conservative youth. He began by proclaiming, We of the Christian West owe our identity to the central fact of historythe entry of God onto the human stage and concluded with an unequivocal defense of colonialism and a call to cleanse the West of secularizing elements and a roll back communism.

Back in Spain two months later, Wilhelmsen took Bozell and his family to an enormous Carlist celebration in Montejurrathe site of a historic battle. Bozells biographer, quoting Bozells wife, notes that this kind of thingsimple peasants with improvised weapons defending their religion and their way of lifealways got Brent and Fritz going. At the celebration, the Requets national secretary celebrated the crusading ideals of the Nationalist alliance between Carlism, the Falange, and Francos army.

Finally, in September, Bozell took part in a foundational debate over the nature of conservatism. Sounding like todays Hungary fans, Bozell doubted whether a libertarian right could be responsive to the root causes of Western disintegration. At best, freedom was a secondary principle to something greater.

Bozell dismissed libertarian claims that virtuous acts only counted if they were freely chosen. To demonstrate, he contrasted American and Spanish divorce laws, sarcastically suggesting that Spains traditions interfered with freedom, but that American divorce laws should also be made freer, the stigma removed and divorces financially subsidized to maximize moral heroism. Instead, Bozell wanted to establish temporal conditions conducive to human virtuethat is, to build a Christian civilization. This meant families, schools, and the government were subject to a public orthodoxy patterned on a transcendent order.

At the time, Bozells long essay seemed to some seemed like a possible framework for intellectual conservatism. It became very much a minority report. Bozell rightly perceived modern conservatism invariably consists in borrowing from the libertarians their principles and programs, and from the traditionalists the divine imprimatur.

Against this tendency, he and Wilhelmsen founded a traditionalist Catholic journal, Triumph. They began hosting a summer school in Spain for American students bored with Western education, and founded a small youth movementthe Sons of Thunderwho wore Carlist uniforms and protested abortion clinics.

Bozells pronouncements became increasingly radical. American conservatism had failed with Goldwater in 1964, he charged. Conservatism and liberalism were fundamentally the same, and politics would not survive the death of God. Hence, Bozell predicted, conservatives would swell the ranks of a proto-fascist reaction to the collapse of secular liberalism. Bozell even rejected his earlier view the West was a Christian society. He prayed instead for a Politics of the Poor, combining economic redistribution with Christian cultural orthodoxy, cautioning there were no short cuts to making a new Christendom.

Admittedly a poor politician, Bozell alienated friends and allies, becoming estranged from the American right as his health failed. He faded into relative obscurity. (One of his sons, L. Brent Bozell III, hewed closer to the conservative mainstream as a Conservatism, Inc. career apparatchik. His son, in turn, Brent Bozell IV, has been charged for his involvement in January 6.)

Francos conservative defenders fell prey to many myths. He was repressive; Spain successfully democratized after his death, while the institutional prestige of the Church collapsed. The Spanish Republic had been anti-clerical, but the government sought to moderate against opposition and prevent anti-clerical violence. Instead, the catastrophist right instigated violence to destabilize the Republic. Francos conduct in Spains Civil War, which began as a right-wing coup, was not heroic but brutal and methodical and supported by Mussolini and Hitler. They overstated the crimes of the Republicans, and buried the far greater crimes of the Nationalists, and misunderstood the role of the Soviet Union.

The fact that American conservatives were willing to overlook all this in a sympathetic strongman should give todays Hungary enthusiasts pause.

The parallels are inexact, of course. Franco was a twentieth-century dictator, Orbn is a twenty-first, with all that entails. The Cold War-footing of the 1960s distorted judgement. Notwithstanding what talk radio might say, Spanish communism and modern progressivism are not the same. Yet the right-wingand especially traditionalisttemptation toward dictatorship remains.

Deep down, Rod Dreher knows the answer to the question he poseswhat is the cost of using politics as a bulwark? As he put it in response to his Catholic integralist critics, If outward obedience to the law was sufficient to guarantee a Christian society, Spanish Catholicism wouldnt have collapsed shortly after Franco died in 1975.

Traditionalism is the most fantastical of right-wing outlooks. How can one force an imagined past into reality? Spainand conservative enthusiasm for itteaches that state-imposed traditionalism is a mirage. It is at best utopian, and more likely, repressive and self-defeating. Todays admirers of Orbns Hungary should take note.

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Long Before Hungary, the Right Was Fixated on Another Country - The Bulwark

George Lopez

Most venues are still following COVID-19 guidelines, including reduced capacity, social distancing and masks. Several shows require proof of the vaccine or a negative test.

FRIDAY

Elton John: Pop icon returns for two shows. 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Toyota Center, 1510 Polk; 866-446-8849.

George Lopez: Comedy superstar. 8 p.m. at Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land, 18111 Lexington, Sugar Land; 281-207-6278.

Pecos Hank: Roots. 7 p.m. at McGonigels Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk; 713-528-5999.

Max Flinn: Country. 9:30 p.m. at McGonigels Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk; 713-528-5999.

Robert DeLong : House. 7:30 p.m. at House of Blues, 1204 Caroline; 888-402-5837.

Kalo and Brown Sugar: Rolling Stones tribute. 9 p.m. at the Continental Club, 3700 Main; 713-529-9899.

Dale Watson: Country. 8:30 p.m. at the Dosey Doe Big Barn, 25911 Interstate 45 N., The Woodlands; 281-367-3774.

James Kennedy: Vanderpump Rules star. 10 p.m. at Rise Rooftop, 2600 Travis; 832-767-0513.

The Meteors: Punk. 7:30 p.m. at Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel; 713-225-5483.

Shake Russell: Americana. 8 p.m. at the Dosey Doe Breakfast, BBQ and Whiskey Bar, 2626-B Research Forest, The Woodlands; 832-823-4414.

Mahalo, Zookeeper and Party With Ray: House. 10 p.m. at Stereo Live, 6400 Richmond; 832-251-9600.

Ishi: Dance-pop. 8 p.m. at White Oak Music Hall, upstairs, 2915 N. Main; 713-237-0370.

The Garden: Rock. 8 p.m. at White Oak Music Hall, downstairs, 2915 N. Main; 713-237-0370.

SATURDAY

Borgeous: House. 10 p.m. at Stereo Live, 6400 Richmond; 832-251-9600.

Oak Ridge Boys: Country. 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Grand 1894 Opera House, 2020 Postoffice, Galveston; 409-765-1894.

The War on Drugs: Rock. 7 p.m. at White Oak Music Hall Lawn, 2915 N. Main; 713-237-0370.

Samantha Fish: Blues. 8 p.m. at The Heights Theater, 339 W. 19th; 214-272-8346.

El Ten Eleven: Post-rock. 7 p.m. at White Oak Music Hall, upstairs, 2915 N. Main; 713-237-0370.

Southern Slang: Rock. 9 p.m. at the Continental Club, 3700 Main; 713-529-9899.

Sebastian Leger: House. 10 p.m. at Rise Rooftop, 2600 Travis; 832-767-0513.

Kym Warner and Warren Hood: Americana. 7 p.m. at McGonigels Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk; 713-528-5999.

Opie Hendrix: Pop/rock. 9:30 p.m. at McGonigels Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk; 713-528-5999.

Kristen Kelly: Country. 8 p.m. at the Dosey Doe Breakfast, BBQ and Whiskey Bar, 2626-B Research Forest, The Woodlands; 832-823-4414.

Phil Vassar: Acoustic country. 8:30 p.m. at the Dosey Doe Big Barn, 25911 Interstate 45 N., The Woodlands; 281-367-3774.

MONDAY

Current Joys: Singer-songwriter. 7 p.m. at White Oak Music Hall, upstairs, 2915 N. Main; 713-237-0370.

Gene Watson: Country. 7 p.m. at the Dosey Doe Big Barn, 25911 Interstate 45 N., The Woodlands; 281-367-3774.

TUESDAY

Giulia Millanta and Amanda Pascali: Singer-songwriters. 7 p.m. at McGonigels Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk; 713-528-5999.

Martin Barre: Fifty years of Jethro Tull. 8:30 p.m. at the Dosey Doe Big Barn, 25911 Interstate 45 N., The Woodlands; 281-367-3774.

Fit for an Autopsy: Deathcore. 6:30 p.m. at Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel; 713-225-5483.

WEDNESDAY

Sports: Dream pop. 8 p.m. at Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel; 713-225-5483.

THURSDAY

Beetle: Beatles covers. 7 p.m. at the Continental Club, 3700 Main; 713-529-9899.

Dr. Jordan Peterson: Author/lecturer. 7:30 p.m. at Bayou Music Center, 520 Texas; 713-230-1600.

Kurt Travis: Rock. 6 p.m. at White Oak Music Hall, upstairs, 2915 N. Main; 713-237-0370.

Jordi Baizan: Singer-songwriter. 7 p.m. at McGonigels Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk; 713-528-5999.

10 Years: Metal. 7 p.m. at Rise Rooftop, 2600 Travis; 832-767-0513.

Statesboro Revue: Country. 8 p.m. at the Dosey Doe Breakfast, BBQ and Whiskey Bar, 2626-B Research Forest, The Woodlands; 832-823-4414.

Bijou, Nostaglix and Michael Sparks: House. 10 p.m. at Stereo Live, 6400 Richmond; 832-251-9600.

joey.guerra@chron.com

Joey Guerra is the music critic for the Houston Chronicle. He also covers various aspects of pop culture. He has reviewed hundreds of concerts and interviewed hundreds of celebrities, from Justin Bieber to Dolly Parton to Beyonce. He's appeared as a regular correspondent on Fox26 and was head judge and director of the Pride Superstar singing competition for a decade. He has been named journalist of the year multiple times by both OutSmart Magazine and the FACE Awards. He also covers various aspects of pop culture, including the local drag scene and "RuPaul's Drag Race."

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Elton John, George Lopez and the top 35+ shows in Houston - Houston Chronicle

Dave Ramsey, a personal finance expert for Christians, came under fire last week. On his radio show The Ramsey Show he spent some time arguing that Christian landlords are not at fault if tenants become unable to afford rent:

Okay, I own rental property, single family homes, among many other properties that we own. And if I raised my rent to be market rate that does not make me a bad Christian. I did not displace the person out of that house if they can no longer afford it.

Many accused Ramsey of engaging in mental gymnastics to avoid his moral responsibility to his tenants:

As a Christian interested in economics, Ramseys comments and the surrounding controversy piqued my interest. Ive never been a Dave Ramsey follower. I wont get into particular disagreements I have, but, put simply, I dont believe his money management philosophy will lead to the best financial results for many. At the same time, I dont deny his program has been helpful to some.

But, disagreements on personal finance aside, is Ramsey right or wrong here? Are critics correct or are they reaching? As with most answers, some nuance is required here.

First, lets begin with what the critics have right. Even though changes in supply and demand lead to changes in market prices, individual business owners are free to charge different prices. An owner need not passively set prices where everyone else does.

Second, the Bible does tell Christians be charitable and help the poor. At this point it needs to be stated that the Bible, and the words of Jesus in particular, is often twisted when it comes to matters of money. But even with this in mind, its unambiguous that the Bible calls giving a righteous act. Consider 1 John 3:17 which says, But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

So are Christian landlords called to be charitable to their tenants? I think the answer is a pretty straightforward yes. In that sense, I believe some criticism of the above statement is warranted.

Its imaginable that a Christian landlord could be generous and keep prices lower than the market price to help the destitute. In fact, in the context of the full video, Ramsey does explain situations where hes made exceptions to help his tenants on a case-by-case basis. And there are likely many cases where this would be the loving thing to do.

At the same time, Ramseys statement about market forces cant be ignored. Consider a market for housing that experiences a sudden increase in demand. When demand increases for housing, people are willing to pay more for it. This drives the price of housing up and makes it more profitable to rent houses. But the story doesnt end here.

Those higher profits draw more suppliers into the housing market. When there are more people providing housing, the cost of providing housing goes up.

To see why, consider the cost of a landlord repairing an HVAC system. When the amount of landlords is relatively small, they dont have much competition hiring HVAC repairmen. In this case, the price is low.

When a larger quantity of rental suppliers (landlords) enter the housing market, however, there is more competition to hire contractors to come fix HVAC systems. With this increased competition, the price of HVAC repair is bid up. In other words, an increase in the demand for housing causes an increase in demand for contractors which increases the cost of being a landlord.

HVAC repair is only one example. All of the factors used in running a housing rental business increase in demand and price as more landlords enter. And so long as landlords can make a profit by entering the rental market, they will enter. This drives up costs until all the profits created by the increase in demand dry up. At the new, higher price, the economic profit tends to zero.

Notice what this means for a landlord who doesnt raise prices. If rental companies charging higher prices are tending toward zero profit, maintaining a lower price means tending toward a loss. The housing is being rented for the same price, but now the cost is higher. This means losses.

If a landlord had lower costs than competitors, the business may still be able to operate profitably. But the higher the market price goes relative to the price the landlord charges, the closer the landlord is to making a loss, everything else held constant.

The result of the logic is clear. If the price of housing goes up and a landlord chooses not to increase the rent, there is some point where they will start making a loss.

At this point critics may say, so what? After all, charity means you lose wealth right? I agree with this too. If we expected people to be materially better off from charity, wed all be giving to get rich quick.

But heres the final problem. Losses arent sustainable forever. If a landlord freezes rent today, and prices and costs continue to increase, at some point the landlord will go out of business.

And a Christian cant be generous with tenants if they dont have a business to produce wealth in the first place.

Heres where critics get into really weird territory. Christians involved in any kind of business can always be charitable to the point of going out of business. Christian grocery store? Give away all your food for free. Christian school? Hire the best teachers and don't charge any tuition. Christian landlord? Buy more houses and let people stay in them for free. If you arent out of money, you can always donate more.

This logical conclusion seems unambiguously bad. If Christian businesses are obligated to give until they go out of business, there wont be Christian businesses. And if there arent Christian businesses, there wont be any more charity from Christian businesses.

My claim isnt that Christian business-people should never be generous. As I already stated, I believe they should. But ignoring market forces entirely only guarantees there wont be Christian businesses.

This logic extends into our personal lives too. Once your LLC is out of business, you still have personal wealth to give away. And here we come to a final conclusion.

Unless your interpretation of the Bible is that you have to maintain zero worldly possessions, you recognize implicitly that some amount of charity in the present is imprudent, if for no other reason than it will prevent future charity or fulfillment of obligations (to family for example).

If your standard is never having earthly possessions, you have a consistent criticism of Ramsey, though Im unsure how youre reading this article without any possessions.

Charging below market price is effectively giving money to charity. You make a loss, and in exchange someone is better off. Christians can choose to do this. In many cases I believe we are called to. But perpetual losses mean you will run out of money. Market changes can be ignored, but their consequences cannot.

So if Christians are called to give, but they arent called to give everything in the immediate present, when are we called to give our wealth away and to whom? Should a landlord forgive the rent of a fourth tenant even if it means going out of business in a year and forsaking the other three getting a break? How much savings should landlords with family have on hand?

There isnt a flowchart to answer all these questions. The details of specific circumstances are where the answers lie. However, I think Christians are given a straightforward rule of thumb. Our security should be found in Christ, not in the things of this world. If the decision to not be charitable at a particular time is based on our desire for things of the world, our heart is in the wrong place.

If charity is forgone because Christians believe their resources can be better stewarded for the love of God and others elsewhere, we have a different story.

Its possible that Ramseys own philosophy is to give to charity mainly outside of his business. Should someone diminish their giving to one cause in order to be able to accept losses in their business? The less income you have, the less you can give, after all. Again, I think the answer here depends on the situation.

Im not sure if Ramsey does this or not. I dont know his finances. But this manner of giving isnt uncommon for capitalists in the US, as it lines up well with the fact that the US has been the most charitable country in the world for a decade now.

My guess is that, on balance, most Christians in and outside of business could be more generous. No one is without sin. But pretending like market forces are irrelevant to our decisions as stewards doesnt help others or our mission any more than ignoring the laws of physics helps our ability to aid someone whos falling out of a building.

See more here:

Was Dave Ramsey Right or Wrong about the Responsibilities (or Lack Thereof) of Christian Capitalists? | Peter Jacobsen - Foundation for Economic...

On Wednesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided new research showing that, during the recent Delta wave, individuals who had previously contracted COVID-19 had more protection against the virus than those who had been vaccinated.

Before the Delta variant, Covid-19 vaccination resulted in better protection against a subsequent infection than surviving a previous infection, CDC epidemiologist Benjamin Silk told the Wall Street Journal. When looking at the summer and fall of 2021, when Delta became predominant in this country, however, surviving a previous infection now provided greater protection.

Both vaccinated individuals and those who had recovered from the virus showed significant defense, scientists added. (The CDC released its findings to reporters, but its research was not yet available online as of Thursday morning.)

Previous research suggests receiving vaccination after a COVID infection can offer additional protection against the virus.

Recent research, the Mayo Clinic says, suggests that people who got COVID-19 in 2020 and then received mRNA vaccines produce very high levels of antibodies that are likely effective against current and, possibly, future variants. Some scientists call this hybrid immunity.

The findings are significant and dovetail with recent scientific research out of Israel that showed previous infection from COVID-19 conferred longer-lasting and more robust protection than vaccines against the Delta variant.

Following the Israel study, prominent scientists argued that the fact that natural immunity offered more protection than vaccines made mandatory vaccination unscientific and unethical.

Prior COVID disease (many working class) provides better immunity than vaccines (many professionals), so vaccine mandates are not only scientific nonsense, they are also discriminatory and unethical, wrote Harvard Medical School professor Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist and biostatistician.

The CDCs findings were released days after the Supreme Court ruled that President Joe Bidens vaccinate-or-test requirement for businesses with more than 100 employees was unconstitutional.

The high courts decision prompted some businesses, including Starbucks, to scrap their vaccine mandates for employees.

"We respect the Court's ruling and will comply," John Culver, COO and group president for North America at Starbucks, told employees on Tuesday.

Despite the protection offered by previous COVID infection, many public officials and countries have been reluctant to recognize natural immunity.

Novak Djokovic, the worlds top-ranked tennis player, recently had his visa seized by Australian authorities when he arrived (unvaccinated) to play in the Australian Open, even though he was initially granted a medical exemption because of a recent COVID infection. Meanwhile, Austrias conservative government recently announced it will make vaccination compulsory for adults, who will face steep finesup to 3600 eurosif they fail to comply, even if they have already had the virus.

In the United States, universities have been inclined to expel students not considered fully vaccinated, which in some cases reportedly includes students whove had multiple vaccine shots, have previously had COVID, and have received a medical exemption from a physician.

Recent evidence, however, suggests the reluctance to treat individuals whove had COVID as fully vaccinated may be waning. The NCAA, for example, recently announced in its winter guidelines that athletes who previously had COVID will be considered fully vaccinated if the infection took place within three months.

The CDCs announcement that previous infection offered more protection than vaccination against the Delta variant is likely to fuel calls to end vaccine mandates, particularly for individuals whove already been infected.

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CDC: Natural Immunity Offered Stronger Protection Against COVID Than Vaccines During Delta Wave | Jon Miltimore - Foundation for Economic Education

In recent years, college campuses have become increasingly radical, illiberal, and intolerant of dissenting opinions. Students, too scared to voice their true thoughts and feelings, often conform. They fear they will face ridicule or, worse, total exclusion via cancel culture. But a few brave students are fighting against the tide, including these five, who all come from different backgrounds but are united in their desire for a true liberal arts education, where all ideas are shared and respected. They told The Post why they refuse to be silenced.

ABIGAIL ANTHONY

College: Princeton University

Age: 21

Major: Politics

Year : Junior

Hometown: Moved frequently

Growing up, my family moved about every other year for my dads job asa legal consultant inthe pharmaceutical industry, and we lived in mainly bluestates,like Michigan, California, and New Jersey. I was relatively apolitical before attending college because my ballet training at the Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia was from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, so I never had the time to engage in politics.

When I entered university, however, I was genuinely shocked by the pervasiveness of wokeness on campus. Our freshman orientation mandated attendance at what were essentially indoctrination sessions. The SaferSexpo, for example, gave out condoms and sex toys to students and informed us where we could obtain abortion pills.

I felt uncomfortable discussing intimacy and sex with other freshmen I had just met, and, as a Catholic, I was disappointed that a more conservative approach to sexuality was fully ignored. But, as a brand-new arrival on campus, I chose not to say anything.

Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, virtually all student organizations adopted an anti-racist mission with an emphasis on inclusivity.Im a member of the recreational ballet club, and the elected officers sent an email, stating that our perceptions of ballet have been shaped by white supremacist standards.Though I found the statement objectionable, I didnt say anything publicly at the time and remained a member.

As a Catholic, I was disappointed that a more conservative approach to sexuality was fully ignored. But, as a brand-new arrival on campus, I chose not to say anything.

But many of these experiences eventually led me to be outspoken on campus. I am now President of our Federalist Society Chapter. I work on The Princeton Tory, our conservative publication. Ive also co-authored statements for the PrincetonOpen Campus Coalition, including one defending academic freedom.

Ive received messages from peers saying that they agreed with my comments in class about my pro-life stance, but they felt uncomfortable vocalizing their support.I know students who refrain from sharing their personal beliefs because they fear the social, academic and professional consequences.

Unfortunately, these concerns are valid. Ive seen friends lose club leadership positions, like a friend of mine who lost her post as captain of a campus sports team for expressing support for the police. Others havelost summer internship positions for signing an open letter defending academic freedom.

Its difficult to believe Im a political outsider, because Im inclined to think that my ideological stances are moderate. A majority of my views were completely anodyne only five years ago. I struggle to understand how opposition to modern gender ideology or support for free speech is partisan or controversial, but I will not abandon reason and self-evident truths to satisfy my peers feelings.

CHRISTOPHER WELLS

College: University of British Columbia

Age: 21

Year: Junior

Major: Classical Studies

Hometown: Arlington, Virginia

Growing up in the Beltway, from as early as I can recall progressive politics had a strong influence on my life. In high school, I was the president of Young Democrats and volunteered for a variety of progressive candidates. By the time I arrived at UBC, I was skeptical of social justice ideology but still thought of myself as a progressive. I saw identity politics as a distraction from class issues, and ultimately a threat to the one value I thought all Americans held paramount: free speech.

When I got to campus, however, I found the core tenets of social justice are taken as objective truths, not viewpoints that should be vigorously debated. I quickly learned not to write papers going against the established narrative for fear of being marked down. As a classics major, for example, Id love to frame Western tradition in a positive light, though most of my professors prefer to bash it. The mostpressing issues of our time from gender ideology and COVID restrictions to the geopolitical threat of China cant even be askedwithout walking on eggshells. In my freshman year in 2019, a philosophy professoreven once apologized for using gendered language while reading a quote from Plato.

A prominent campus activist took to social media to accuse me of being racist and even went as far as to threaten the reputations of those who lived and associated themselves with me.

In an art class my freshman year, we were told to make a politically provocative sign. My sign featured Justin Trudeau putting his hand over Jordan Petersons mouth with the heading Free Speech is Un-Canadian. My TA promptly interrupted my presentation to tell the class about how I was platforming bigotry and transphobia. I failed the assignment.

During the George Floyd protests in 2020, I responded to the unrest on Instagram with what I saw as a unifying message, The greatest revolutionary act you can commit right now is the refusal to hate your fellow Americans. I was already known for being outspoken on campus, but even so, I was shocked by the reaction to the post. A prominent campus activist took to socialmedia to accuse me of being racist and even went as far as to threaten the reputations of those who lived and associated themselves with me.

Although I stand up for my principles, I now tend to be far less provocative when doing so. Encouragingly, Ive been able tocross the political divide with some open-minded people, but I still feel a large shift in my interactions when people are aware of my beliefs, even though I identify as a political independent. Theres no room for forgiveness whatsoever. Thats the most pernicious element of the ideology.

ARYAAN MISRA

College: Alma College

Age: 21

Year: Junior

Major: Philosophy

Hometown: Delhi, India

I had a very normal middle-class childhood in India. I was raised in a right-wing Hindu family and was staunchly religious with very conservative beliefs. But in high school I reconsidered the values I was raised with. I became agnostic, realizing I was way too closed-minded with different people, and began to recognize my own prejudices.

Within Indias cultural context I was seen as a liberal, so when I came to America for college it was instinctive for me to identify with liberals there, too. But, when I got to campus, I realized wokeness was vastly different from my classical liberal values. Progressives back home fight for women to have fundamental rights, while progressives on my campus hang pictures of Mao in their dorm room.

I remember being handed a 15 page list of words I can and cannot use during a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion orientation for a campus job as a biology teaching assistant.I couldnt say born male, I had to say sex assigned at birth male. Ladies and gentlemen should be replaced with folks, and opposite sexes should be changed to all genders.

In a mandatory orientation program, I was told that a professor complimenting an international students English would be racist. Incidentally, this happened to me in the past, and I took it as a compliment rather than an insult.

In another mandatory orientation program, I was told that a professor complimenting an international students English would be racist.Incidentally, this happened to me in the past, and I took it as a compliment rather than an insult. In moments like these, Ive seen just how much the woke worldview can trivialize actual bigotry. Back home, bigotry manifests in serious forms even physically, like rape culture. Seeing that be conflated with relatively benign inconveniences on college campuses is hard for me to swallow.

Another time, my professor taught the class how to find what triggers them. Growing up on the streets ofDelhi, there are triggers everywhere you look so-called microaggressions are nothing compared to animal carcasses on the streets and malnourished children begging at every red light. I dont know how my peers who treat every minor insult as a microaggression will survive outside the gates of their liberal campus.

Because Ive been outspoken on campus about my disagreements with the woke orthodoxy, Ive beencalled every name in the book on social media ironically, theyre too scared to say it to my face, though. I could play the victim card, but I refuse to. I take solace in the fact Im making a difference by speaking out, and Ive made invaluable connections with like-minded professors and students alike along the way.

CHRISTOPHER REYES

College: Allegheny College

Age: 20

Year: Junior

Major: Economics

Hometown: Norwalk, Connecticut

Im the son of immigrant parents and a first generation college student. My father immigrated from El Salvador and my mother from the Philippines. My parents were always hardworking and did right by me, so I believe in picking yourself up by your bootstraps and working for what you want in life, rather than depending on the government to solve your problems.

Some people ask me, Why are you a Republican? Arent you Hispanic? Yes, I am Hispanic, but that doesnt and shouldnt dictate my personal beliefs.

Ive faced some blowback for being the president of Alleghenys College Republicans chapter. When I participated in a debate my freshman year, for example, some people asked me, Why are you a Republican? Arent you Hispanic? Yes, I am Hispanic, but that doesnt and shouldnt dictate my personal beliefs. I dont believe that coming from a particular ethnic, social, or economic background means you have to conform to what the majority of that group believes politically. Students are supposed to grow as academics and young adults during their college years, but identity politics can cause them to keep a closed mind and keep to what their specific demographic has historically believed.Part of being an American is standing up for what you believe, not what other people tell you to.

JAHMARRI GREEN

College: Friends University

Age: 21

Year: Junior

Major: Psychology and political science

Hometown: Los Angeles

Im your stereotypical kid from LA. I surf, skate, and Im into fashion. I also happen to be the president and founder of my schools Young Americans for Freedom chapter.

Unfortunately, my YAF chapter has faced some challenges on campus. The administration denied us permission to host our 9/11 Never Forget and Freedom Week events. At the 9/11 event we had planned to put up flags representing lives lost on that tragic day, and at Freedom Week we sought to educate students about the perils of communism.

In a sociology class, I disagreed with the professor on the gender wage gap in a paper and provided my sources. When my paper was returned I saw Do not agree, wrong written in red pen.

Ive had professors mark down my grade for disagreeing with them politically. For example, in a sociology class, I expressed disagreement with the professor on the gender wage gap in a paper and provided my sources. When my paper was returned? I saw Do not agree, wrong written in red pen. Although I consistently got As in that class, I received a B on this paper. I was upset, but I realized arguing with the professor wouldnt get me anything but consistent grade markdowns.

Personally, I have gotten some heat for working with YAF. As a person of color, I am seen as a contrarian. Growing up, I was taught that the left cares about us minorities, while anyone who aligns with the right is racist. Some people on campus think this way and see my activism as a betrayal. Ive been called an Uncle Tom, but I dont let it bother me.

Free speech has been pushed to the wayside for political correctness and cancel culture in campuses across America. I started my YAF chapter so students have a place where they can be so comfortable expressing their ideas among their peers, theyre no longer afraid to express them outside of our meetings.

Originally posted here:

Five college students speak out: Were fed up with campus wokeness - New York Post

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The country is growing more authoritarian in response to fear

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I spent more than three hours on the phone this weekend trying to get through to the online security department of one of Canadas major banks. One of my accounts was shut down (because I had the effrontery to sign in from Alberta an event too unexpected for the banks security systems). I was placed on hold interminably, subjected all the while to the corporate worlds idea of music (to soothe me). I was then offered a call-back, which I duly received, 45 minutes later. Then I was placed on hold again, and again, and again. This all occurred after my patience had already been exhausted in the aftermath of trying to fly in Canada.

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Like so many Canadians, I have been unable to see many of the people I love and who are tolerant enough to return the sentiment for nearly two years. Lockdowns. Restrictions. Limits on personal and social gatherings. Precautions. Precautions. Precautions.

But everything had opened enough, in principle, so flights for such purposes were in principle once again possible. My wife and I therefore took the opportunity on the last day of 2021 to fly first to Comox, British Columbia, and then, several days later, to our joint hometown of Fairview, Alberta. However, the airline we had arranged our flights with cancelled/delayed all six flights we had scheduled. Furthermore, they had no staff available in one entire wing of Edmontons airport. This made rescheduling prohibitively difficult. We were delayed by one full day travelling to British Columbia, and then another day travelling to Alberta (and there were further delays on our way home to Toronto). This took quite a chunk out of an eight-day trip. All this from an airline that not so long ago was a model of efficiency.

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Like most people in Canada, and in the broader Western world, my wife and I are accustomed to systems that work. When we booked flights in the past, with rare exceptions, we arrived safely and on time. When we used our banking systems, online, we gained access to our accounts. When we had to phone security, because of a log-in problem, we were able to talk to someone who was able to help. And, because we were spoiled Westerners, we expected that such would always and consistently be the case. Why? Because, by and large, our systems worked. Miraculously well. The power (and the heat its forty below here in northern Alberta, and has been for three weeks) always worked. Planes took off and landed on time. Banks were open and effective and honest.

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But there are empty shelves in the grocery stores here in Fairview. The supply chain that provides our food just in time are severely stressed. While I was here, I spoke with a local restaurateur who operates the pizza place I worked in forty years ago. She is barely hanging on. This is true of most local businesses.

I was on the phone for three hours trying to sort out a minor banking issue, after being delayed for a full day while flying, after having been delayed in a similar way only four days before. And, because I am an entitled Westerner, accustomed to my privileges, I got whiny about it. I have a banker that takes care of my affairs, and I sent him and his associate a string of complaints about the service I was receiving. They wrote back, apologetically, and told me that theyre barely able to function with the COVID restrictions, the attendant staff shortages (also caused by illness) and their inability to attract new employees a problem besetting many industries at the moment.

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I am not accustomed to feeling particularly sympathetic for the travails of large, successful enterprises: banks, airlines, utilities and the like. I expect a certain standard of service, so that I can conduct my own affairs effectively, and am impatient when delays unnecessary in the normal course of things emerge. The letter from the bank stopped me and made me think, however. It wasnt just the bank. It was also the airline. It was the empty shelves in the grocery store in northern Alberta. It was the daughter of the man I once worked for as a cook, back when I was a teenager. It was the shopkeepers and small business-people I have spoken with on this trip.

We are pushing the complex systems upon which we depend and which are miraculously effective and efficient in their often thankless operation to their breaking point. Can you think of anything more unlikely than the fact that we can get instant trouble-free access to our money online, using systems that are virtually graft- and corruption-free? Just imagine how much work, trust and efficiency was and is necessary to make that a reality. Can you think of anything more unlikely than fast, reliable and inexpensive jet air travel, nationally and internationally, in absolute safety? Or the constant provision of almost every consumer good imaginable, in the midst of plentiful, varied and inexpensive food?

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These systems are now shaking. Were compromising them seriously with this unending and unpredictable stream of restrictions, lockdowns, regulations and curfews. Were also undermining our entire monetary system, with the provision of unending largesse from government coffers, to ease the stress of the COVID response. Were playing with fire. Weve demolished two Christmas seasons in a row. Life is short. These are rare occasions. Were stopping kids from attending school. Were sowing mistrust in our institutions in a seriously dangerous manner. Were frightening people to make them comply. Were producing bureaucratic institutions that hypothetically hold public health in the highest regard, but subordinating all our properly political institutions to that end, because we lack leadership, and rely on ultimately unreliable opinion polls to govern broadscale political policy. Ive never seen breakdown in institutional trust on this scale before in my lifetime.

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I was recently in Nashville, Tennessee. No lockdowns. No masks. No COVID regulations to speak of. People are going about their lives. Why can that be the case in Tennessee (and in other U.S. states, such as Florida) when there are curfews (curfews!) in Quebec, two years after the pandemic started, with a vaccination rate of nearly 80 per cent? When BC is still limiting social gatherings? When we are putting tremendous and unsustainable strain on all the complex systems that have served us so well, and made us so comfortable, in the midst of the troubles of our lives?

The cure has become worse than the disease.

I have spoken with senior advisors to provincial governments in Canada. There is no end game in sight. The idea that Canadian policy is or should be governed by the science is not only not true, its also not possible, as there is no simple pathway from the facts of science to the complexities of policy. We are deciding, by opinion poll, to live in fear, and to become increasingly authoritarian in response to that fear. Thats a danger, too, and its increasingly real. How long are we going to flail about, hiding behind our masks, afraid to send our children (who are in no danger more serious than risk of the flu) to school, charging university students full tuition for tenth-rate online education, pitting family member against family member over vaccine policy and, most seriously, compromising the great economic engine upon which our health also depends?

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Until we decide not to.

There are no risk-free paths forward. There is only one risk, or another. Pick your poison: thats the choice life often offers. I am weary of living under the increasingly authoritarian dictates of a polity hyper-concerned with one risk, and oblivious to all others. And things are shaking around us.

Enough, Canadians. Enough, Canadian politicos. Enough masks. Enough social gathering limitations. Enough restaurant closures. Enough undermining of social trust. Make the bloody vaccines available to those who want them. Quit using force to ensure compliance on the part of those who dont. Some of the latter might be crazy but, by and large, they are no crazier than the rest of us.

Set a date. Open the damn country back up, before we wreck something we cant fix.

Time for some courage.

Lets live again.

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Jordan Peterson: Open the damn country back up, before Canadians wreck something we cant fix - National Post