Chris Rufo sent me an email (I am on his public email route, there is not a personal touch.) yesterday titled, A RESPONSE TO JORDAN PETERSON: Why it is necessary to abolish DEI and reform higher education.
Christ includes a 16-minute video in which he verbally lays out his response to Jordan’s criticism of DeSantis and Rufo and their introduced Floridian legislation to ban DEI. I am taking notes on the video that are my paraphrase of what Rufo is saying, and then I will comment on his remarks, as I understood and worded them.
My response: It is necessary to abolish DEI and reform higher education (and all levels of education). They are not teaching but are doing social justice? But how is educational reform to be achieved? Do Rufo and DeSantis do so in ways that grow tyranny, by passing laws officially designating what is good speech and bad speech? If so, that would be undemocratic, and a dangerous precedent, though Progressive social justice preaching and ideological monopoly pervasive in Academia is dangerous, pervasive and totalitarian.
We do not want the cure to be more authoritarian than the disease, illegal, unconstitutional, unprecedented. Peterson seems to hint that Republican educational reforms in Florida could turn authoritarian. There must be legal, non-authoritarian, democratic ways the governor and Rufo can propose anti-DEI legislation without running afoul of the state and federal constitution. What would the States Attorney or Lawyer, The Great One, Mark Levin conclude after reviewing the proposed legislation.? How can these conservative reformers curb the excesses of Florida’s educational institutions without destroying or politicizing them?
As a lawful anarchist, I have long supported the deinstitutionalization, the devolution, the deschooling and decentralizing educational institutions on all levels but it must be done slowly, scientifically, gradually, carefully, and legally to minimize the pain and disruption to society and the young requiring educating.
My best solution is to create students, citizens, parents, school board members, instructors, professors, staff, administrators, professors, functionaries, and college presidents that personally, in the majority, are sell-actualizing individuators-anarchist supercitizens. No hierarchy can turn corrupt, ideologically pure of mind, voice and action, a pure orthodoxy, tyrannical, when its halls are populated by such fearless, feisty independent thinkers.
Here are my notes and comments on Chris video, A RESPONSE TO JORDAN PETERSON: “ . . . This week, I helped unveil Governor Ron Desantis’ proposal to abolish DEI departments in Florida’s public universities. Dr. Jordan Peterson pushed back, arguing that these proposals might go too far.
With this video, I hope to persuade Peterson that it’s time to move from the intellectual to the political—and take a substantive stand against left-wing-radicalism and ideological capture.
They are dividing people by skin color, making 2 separate standards of judgment. It is going to far in the wrong direction. Jordan was on Joe Rogan, complaining about we reformers in Florida that we are misguidedly seeking to ban CRT when it cannot even be defined, implying our efforts will create a mess, something worse, or something undemocratic.”
My response: I applaud what the reformers intend as long as their reform is productive and legal. I disagree with Jordan: CRT and DEI can be defined clearly enough to be identified as evil, and in need of actual abolishing.
Chris: “Jordan does not want these educational reformers to control what they cannot define. To define it is to censor it. He wants the war against conservative thought and DEI ideology just to be fought out in the marketplace of ideas. To define the indefinable and then criminalize it is to be tyrannical and to limit free speech. That is Jordan’s fear. Jordan does not want legal restraints brought in to regulate what educational systems are doing. “
My response: Let teachers, professors, students speak freely, whether they promote racialism and social justice or not. That allows free speech on campus, but DeSantis and the legislature should be able to regulate the bureaucrats surrounding the educators and educated: they are not entitled to complete free speech and espousing their ideology at work anymore than I can at my two current jobs. My employer has a legal right to curb and limit my free speech, within reason, at work. These surrounding functionaries and administrators serve the governor, the legislature and the voting public paying the bills and running the state.
Chris: “There are 5 problems with Jordan’s line of argument
1. Jordan did not read the legislative text. Jordan counters that you can’t define CRT (its meaning is fuzzy.), so you can’t ban it. CRT is not defined but is named as CRT, as discriminatory, and divisive so they cannot do it anymore. They cannot blame students as guilty of blood guilt for what an ancestor did. They say one race is superior to the other. This reform is common sense because children are compelled by the government to attend school. Children are a captive audience forced to hear that they are evil due to their race or ancestry. This legislation is consistent with civil rights legislation. Either Jordan Peterson can call those laws censorship against CRT, which is not hard to define or articulate. Or free speech along Peterson’s libertarian stance allows kids are oppressors due to their white skin color.”
My response: It seems that the racialist, DIE agenda violates civil rights legislation, so abolishing those bureaucracies would seem to be legal, moral, and desirable. Let the students and professors enjoy radical free speech, but the school employees are state employees with the same workplace limitations as the rest of us put up with.
Chris: “2. Give the debate over CRT to the free marketplace of ideas (Ed: we should everywhere and including for teachers and students, but not educational employees at work) but 90% of K-12 schools are public and 75% of colleges are public, and these schools are government owned and are not free marketplaces of ideas. They are government-run monopolies pushing a progressive, social justice agenda. They are not open places of debate. They are dominated completely by left-wing activists and run by left-wing ideologues. “
My response: None by I have concluded that the monolithic orthodoxy and glacier-like size and power of the Leftist ideology advancing slowly all across our land, in very corner of our public and private lives—its adherents are so enthusiastic and united, that it is not because they are principled and cooperating. They are true believers, and their mass movement is marching across the developed world. The entire Academic world and public school system are infected with this one-dimensional, mind-rotting, soul-raping groupthink. Seen this way, we understand why their reach is so deep, so wide. People love to run in packs and escape from freedom. They like easy emotional answers that smothers their fear, their inadequacy, their sense of self-loathing, loneliness, despair, meaningless and emptiness. To be purely collectivized nonindividuators, myrmidons, is to feel powerful, invincible, and filled with meaning. All one can think of and dream of is spreading the cause everywhere as fast and thoroughly as possible. All these campus-dwelling, radicalized social justice warriors speak with one voice, vote with one voice, and move in unison and unanimity. Their radicalized groupism, their love of their station in the hierarchy, whatever level is completely fulfilling and satisfying. Postmodernist Marxism is their cult, their ism, their cause. Taking over the world with it is their only aim.
Chris: “Colleges are governmental institutions, not a free marketplace of ideas. All their speak with one voice. Even if some procedural academic freedom, the dominant orthodoxy is a silencer. There is procedural free speech but not substantive free speech. The public pays the bills, so they get to decide what goes on campus, and Floridians elected DeSantis and he has popular support for educational reforms to curb DEI excesses. The governor needs to reform these public institutions.
3. These institutions are misunderstood, Jordan fears, and he does not want them politicized. But the Academy is already politicized and weaponized and Peterson implies that voters should not be able to influence this bad outcome.
The Academy is ruled by bureaucrats, DEI staff or Professors---all public employees. Or should the campuses be ruled by the people? With their elected representatives and the Governor reforming these colleges? They want to eliminate DEI bureaucracies, push back against Leftist ideological capture. The people want more political debate and more conservative professors.
If Leftists are tyrannical on campus, it is normal, but if conservatives seek to address this it is objectionable because conservatives are fascist and verboten.”
My response: I do not mind if these legal reforms abolish DEI bureaucracies, as long as professors and students—even Communists and social justice racialists—enjoy almost pure freedom of thought and speech verbal and written) that is academic neutrality at its traditional finest, and I want DeSantis and Rufo to lead us back to that, nothing like fascist censorship.
Chris: “These DEI bureaucrats thumb their noses at the public and demand no interference at all, and no oversight but demand a blank check and no say about whatever we are doing. No way does that continue. The people of Florida need some say about their campuses.”
My response: I think it would help building the Mavellonialist-influenced high society of tomorrow in America if most adults would maverize and have huge public and private social media platforms, dialogue, lectures, classes, seminars and debates on all kinds of issues in a a radically open, uncensored free marketplace of ideas where hate speech is irrelevant and disinformation is liberally allowed to flow as the clearer, more conscientious, honest brokers begin to separate the wheat from the chaff Millions of anarchist-individuator supercitizens would begin to form unified compromises and agendas on how to run every aspect of society, and colleges and public schools would again be dedicated to researching, teaching and acquiring more knowledge, not centers of activism, social justice indoctrination and change agents to overthrow society. Let the students and professors enjoy radical free speech there, and the rest of the public school and higher educational institutions run the place but keep their ideology and free speech ideas for after work on their own favorite platforms for opinion sharing and venting.
Chris: “4. Temperamental types like Jordan, that populate the IDW (Intellectual Dark Web) question the move from intellectual talk about ideas to moving to political solutions like DEI must DIE.
DEI bureaucrats are hostile to all inquiry and their ideology corrupts all higher education. The IDW is wrong to hint at no political action. They debated DEI and won the debate, and the American public wants it put down by a 70% to 30% margin. Now action politically is imperative—the people have spoken. Get rid of it. These revolutionary bureaucrats receive 100s of millions of dollars in Florida to push their DEI orthodoxy and to blazes with the public will. They act like elite dictators running the country as they see fit, the public be damned. We won the debate. We won the state of Florida, so we have a mandate and duty to destroy DEI. The Left for 50 years have been using bureaucratic authority in Academia to undemocratically force students and professors and employees to conform to their uniform ideoo9gy of racialism, radicalism and social justice to overthrow society. We are curbing them now.
The IDW intellectuals and Leftists insist that we are to accept the status quo Progressive campus orthodoxy as actually free and fair debate, which it is not. Neutrality, the ideal, is free and fair debate.”
My response: I like the idea of Neutrality, a Moderate Stance of almost completely free speech.
Chris: “5. Many IDW types have an aversion to conservatism and actual, conservatives. IDW Centrism is the moral high ground.”
My response: IDW Centrism is the moral high ground, and it is but only I know how to define it, though Peterson and his ilk at IDW come close. It is hard to describe. My fuzzy, provisional formulation is rather unclear, imprecise and still evolving, but here goes. Moderation is individual freedom as a maverizing citizen, thinker, speaker, worker, believer, entrepreneur, as self-realizing anarchist-individuator supercitizens.
Moderates want no big anything, a vast centralized institutional hierarchy whose elite are true believers and their mass movement is their hold on all society and the people are robots and true believers and the elite belong to some mega party like the Communist Party that dominates every aspect of Red Chinese life. Fanaticism and absolutist ideology or ideal turned into an ism, a holy cause. This is roughly how to avoid view point extremism. Which is evil, tyrannical, violent and a lie.
Chris: “The intellectuals as exemplified by the clerisy on the IDW are theoretically against Leftist excesses but are horrified by rightist educational reforms for conservatives are uncouth, uncultured.”
My response: If I can read between the lines, its sounds like IDW intellectuals are snobs, that rebuffed Rufo, a smart, assertive, original, principled thinker that will not be overawed by any wrong-thinking intellectual giant like perhaps Jordan Peterson.. I sense that Rufo is a strong Christian and his moral enthusiasm and desire to act on his convictions might horrify and seem crude and old-fashioned and simplistic to them or seem fanatical to them. It can be but need not be. We need to have the debate that he invites Jordan to have with him: intellectuals must come down from their IDW ivory tower podcasting and mix with the masses and keep the Modernist/Neo-Enlightenment/Counter-Reformation from being fanatical or authoritarian or fascist, but America needs some fighting back to halt the Communist cultural overthrow of our whole society. Talk is not enough action is required and Rufo is spot on doing something: if conservatives do not fight back, we will lose America for sure and soon.
My Mavellnialism and ethical and political moderation would contribute much help for the coming Counter-Reformation from becoming fascist. We have to try. We should be getting the public awakened and smartened up about cultural Leftism being the palatable front for old fashioned Marxism.
Chris: “We have to live in the real world, America is a two party system so must choose to be a republican or democrat. Democrats will not stand up to DEI. You IDW ( dreamers and non-fighters I add) need to get off the sidelines of your podcast Utopia.
My response: We must act now to stop this revolutionary Progressive program of nihilism.
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