Hegemony

 

I subscribe to email-supported publications from Chris Rufo. I received one, titled Harvard and Hegemony, on 12/14/2023, which I will selectively quote from and comment on below.

 

Rufo (R after this): “Higher education’s ideological rot has been exposed for Americans to see—but the elites who adhere to such thinking retain control of these institutions.”

 

My response: The public should deprive them of tax dollars, contribute no more as donations, tax their endowments, send kids to private, conservative colleges, take over public institutions as Rufo and DeSantis led the legislature to do in Florida, urge kids not to go to college, and get degrees from colleges online like the one Jordan Peterson is starting. If we cut of their funding, then they will atrophy and come back to be more reasonable and less relevant.

 

R: “The struggle for Harvard’s presidency is ostensibly about anti-Semitism, freedom of speech, and a rapidly unfolding plagiarism scandal. A group of challengers—most notably, New York representative Elise Stefanik, hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, and journalists Christopher Brunet, Aaron Sibarium and myself—has contested the leadership of Claudine Gay, arguing that she epitomizes the moral and intellectual rot within the institution.

 

Despite the firestorm, the Harvard Corporation has stubbornly defended Gay. And it appears that, for now, the outsider offensive has failed to remove her from power.

 

Why? To answer that question, one might consult the twentieth-century Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, who outlined the distinction between the ‘war of maneuver,’ in which a political actor can quickly topple a centralized, weakly structured regime, and the ‘war of position,’ in which a political actor must wage a protracted fight against an entrenched hierarchy that protects itself via a dispersed yet hegemonic ideology.”

 

My response: Rufo is right: some bad or foolish leaders can be easily toppled by Gay is protected unjustly by powerful, entrenched elites and their hegemonic ideology.

 

R: “At Harvard, the war of maneuver has failed, but there is a silver lining: the institution’s ruling ideology is exposed to the public. The university has sacrificed its academic integrity to retain a president who minimized genocidal rhetoric against Jews, oversaw discriminatory admission systems, ensnared herself in multiple personnel scandals, and lifted sections of at least four academic papers—all because she is the living embodiment and administrative enforcer of DEI ideology.

 

What should the critics of Harvard and other elite institutions do now? As Gramsci warns, they must prepare for a war of position: a long, grueling form of conflict in which ideological opponents contest the ruling regime at each part of the front lines. In practice, the means continuing to uncover the ideological corruption within America’s institutions and building a counter-elite capable of challenging these institutions.”

 

My response: She needs to go and coming up with and Rufo’s suggestion of producing a  counter-elite is a good idea, but I have another way to hurt corrupt, ideological elites wrecking America and its institutions, and my recommendation goes deeper and is a more permanent counter-revolution.

 

If we teach the young, as a majority of their generation, to believe that they can make a difference, that they should accept a life of self-realization chasing after what they love and will be creative and brilliant at doing, as committed, acting self-realizers, then we create anarchist-individuator supercitizens; these heroic citizens are half average people--the masses that are politically very involved, well-informed, principled, independent thinking—and are half powerful, very educated, informed and wise intellectuals, each in her own right. This elite-acting, elite caliber of supercitizens render it impossible for actual elites or would-be elites to run society or its institutions any longer. The supercitizenized masses will tolerate no one to tyrannize, indoctrinate, brainwash, command, subjugate or exploit them anymore, and they will not allow their own generation of supercitizens to become replace, ruling elites, as Marxist and fascist revolutionaries always if secretly aspire to bring about.

 

R: “This work has already begun. Recent campaigns against critical race theory, gender ideology, and DEI have eroded trust in educational institutions. Elites in tech and finance, such as hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, have become increasingly comfortable criticizing left-wing orthodoxy. Meantime, the Left’s rhetorical magic—smearing critics as ‘racist,’ ‘sexist,’ and ‘homophobic’—has lost its power, due to years of unjustified use.

 

But critics of the current regime should not  be too sanguine. The surface-level ideology is merely the outer shell of cultural hegemony. The Left’s deeper power is institutionally embedded: left-wing administrators hold the key to power: left-wing faculty have consolidated control over academic departments; left-wing ideas have been shaped into rules, regulations, manners, and mores. Gay may have been revealed as a fraud, but the institution will continue to protect her, confirming that the ideology trumps older notions of academic honor. Harvard’s motto, Veritas, is now subordinate to the principles of DEI.”

 

My response: Rufo is wise to warn that the rot and ideology go all the way down in these education and other governmental and even corporate institutions. It will be tough to eradicate let alone mitigate but fight it we must. By deinstitutionalizing higher education, and teaching the young to maverize, these reforms will work overtime.

 

R: “A century ago, Gramsci made clear that all politics is elite politics. This is even more true today, as our institutions have expanded in size, scope, and complexity. If conservatives are to have any hope of recapturing the culture, they must work, not to enlist what Gramsci called the ‘traditional intellectuals’ of the previous era, but to recruit, cultivate and co-opt the ‘organic intellectuals’ of our modern technological society. More bluntly, conservatives cannot rely on a populist, blue-collar coalition alone but must also elevate a new class of professionals with the capacity to wield power within complex institutions.”

 

My response: We can do all the Rufo recommends, but he wants to use a counter-elite of self-appointed intellectuals that are professional to replace the entrenched, Leftist, ideological professional running and ruining the huge, bloated institutions. That needs to happen, but I have two reservations about Rufo’s solution.

 

 First, it does not go far enough. We need elite level leadership, credentialed education, intelligence, competence, expertise to replace the Marxist elite running the universities, but that elite must be populistic, maverizing millions of supercitizens to capture elitism and give it to the average person in society, to protect society against elites sickened by their power-gathering schemes, addicted to centralized control of the masses.

 

We need to downsize, right-size and devolve bureuacrcies of all types with the power, money, say and intelligence given back to the anarchist supercitizens running things with real power and say and liberty in the hands of each citizen willing to wiled his share of the power, and to take up his burden to run society.

 

We need tens of millions of amateur, self-educated, self-realizing capitalists, farmers, blue-collar skilled and unskilled workers (from factories, transportation and the service industry) to deinstitutionalize (right-size institutions and government), defund (largely not entirely) these bureaucracies, and to serve as the organized, driving, controlling, populist masses, that as anarchist-individuator supercitizens, topple elites and institutions peacefully, and give power, liberty and operation to the people for the first time in human history. This is the only counter-revolution that will work.

 

Eric Hoffer is now forgotten, but his message is that elites are corrupted by their aristocratic self-conception that they have the right and duty to rule society and run the lives of the people. This self-delusion corrupts them to the core, and they cannot help being sickened by their drive to gather all power unto themselves. This delusion makes them stupid, ignorant, cruel, inefficient, incompetent, feckless but arrogant and supremely confident that they are noble and effective at ruling the masses.

 

We need institutions, elites, professional, credentialed experts, and leadership for society to survive and thrive but only if elitism and the right to rule is imparted and embedded in the political and bureaucratic roles played by each individual anarchist-individuator supercitizen. When elitism is wedded into being an average person in the personality and role that each supercitizen plays privately and publicly, then elitism is relatively incorruptible, and control is dispersed among the people as it should be.

 

R: “Conservatives, who have in recent years focused on heaping scorn on ‘elites,’ should begin educating and organizing a counter-elite of their own. Then they can begin to answer the key questions: What would this counter-elite look like? How should it wield political power? And what is its vision for American institutions? Without answers to these questions, the prospects for successfully disrupting left-wing hegemony at Harvard and beyond will always be dim.”

 

My response: We need our own elite as conservatives, but not a new class of rulers or autocrats, the intellectual philosopher kings to tell the masses how to live, and these professionally educated rulers of the masses crack the whip and push around the little people from their lofty offices in the high rises of these various institutions.

 

Rather, the masses must be the new elite, for leadership is required for anything to work, but the people can lead themselves and society as a cooperative, negotiated, compromising party of the masses running America for, by and of the people, each of whom is an anarchist-individuator supercitizen.

My Moral System

 

Below I will contrast my current version or brand of ethical egoism versus a traditional and also modern altruistic system of morality, popular and common in both current religious circles and among today’s irreligious, often anti-religious, leftist, secular humanists.

 

Before embarking on laying out this rival moral theories, it would be useful to lay out, compare and contrast the presuppositions that I hold as underwriting my egoism versus the presuppositions, I generalize, are consciously or implicitly held by my opposition. I also realize that there may be more applicable, existent presuppositions, held by me and my opponents, that I am currently unaware, that would come to light at a future date.

 

Presupposition 1 for egoism: God is good and loving, and any ethical system is good--—if it promotes human goodness and wellness, and, it is not demonic, working to grow human evil and hurt—if emanating from God or any benevolent deity. I presuppose that God is the origin of spiritual goodness, and moral goodness is behaving or acting in the world in ways consonant with behaviors and choices that cohere with the essence of spiritual goodness.

 

Presupposition 1 for altruism: For Christian altruists, God is loving, and good, and moral goodness is caused or is derivative from spiritual goodness.

 

Secular humanists, agnostics and atheists would argue that the source of moral goodness is the naturally benevolent or sympathetic feeling and good will that humans feel towards others. The source of moral goodness is a biological trait and given to us by spontaneously occurring nature.

 

Presupposition 2 for egoism: I am an essentialist, believing in a fixed human nature. That essential nature is global in people, and historically and pre-historically unchanging across thousands of years into the past. Most of that essential nature is genetically fixed in stone, but from the beginning, when God made the world, each human also had an innate, ineradicable part of their will or soul that was good, open-ended, and free willing, and could be developed by each willing agent, through training and personal, conscious determination to self-improve.

 

As an essentialist about human nature, I believe that human natural is naturally, primarily but not totally bestial, sinful, or fallen, that we are say 55% wicked and 45% good at birth. As a yet to be defined compatibilist of some sort, I believe we have free will at all levels of personal conscious development, but that our wills become freer and better as we consciously and rationally work at self-improvement over the years of our lives, if that is a goal that we have set for our adult selves.

 

Presupposition 2 for altruism: Christian altruists, the traditional kind, did not believe we were born good, but we were free enough and good enough, that if we asked Jesus for forgiveness of our sins, we could be saved. Modern Christians and secularists likely believe we are naturally, morally neutral, or even good from birth.

 

There are secular exceptions: Atheist primatologist Robert Sapolsky thinks we are all self-interested even when we convince ourselves we are being noble and kind, and Bernard Mandeville believed the same. Atheist Thomas Hobbes was a psychological egoist.

 

It seems that biologists that study primates are realists based upon endless hours of observing psychological egoism motivating primates, including humans. This is a perfect segue into Presuppostion 3.

 

Presupposition 3 for egoism: I agree that people are naturally selfish or self-interested and this is psychological egoism. But I turn this upside down right away. People are naturally, mostly but not totally, selfish, because they are naturally selfless. They are not much naturally selfish or self-interested. People are altruist, groupist, running in packs, serving the interest of the group above their personal needs, and, this is how their social selfishness is manifested as short-term, dog-eat-dog, power-acquiring, narcissistic, in bouts of competitive, interpersonal misbehavior. It is based in selfless self-hating and self-abuse, and that ripples through the family, community and society. It is evil through and through.

 

Some of people’s altruism is generous and kind, but most of it is selfish and misbehaving.

 

Ethics are needed to give people good values. If we teach people to be and act as rational egoists that maverize, their self-esteem and self-love will make them will good, loving and godly, and that love will allow self-loving egoists to be kind to and cooperate with others.

 

I assume selfishness is good or loving, and selflessness is hate or evil; thus people are born as psychological altruists, but must be civilizes to live as if psychological egoism was their moral motive, where they have learned to do other-care through self-care and enlightened self-interest.

 

In sum selfishness is good and the selfish are generous, while selflessness is bad, and the selfless groupists, group-living and nonindividuating, are selfish, a bad and undesirable trait, neglecting uplifting self-care and other-care.

 

Presupposition 3 for altruism. Traditional Christians believed we were born psychological egoists and were naturally selfish or evil, and needed to be taught to be selfless, to serve others and sacrifice ourselves to the needs of the collective. Modern Christians and secular humanists likely assume we are psychologically neutral (part egoist and part altruist in nature), or even naturally altruistic or benevolent in impulse and motivation.

 

Proposition 4 for egoism: We need moral training so that we can be good and loving.

 

Proposition 4 for altruists, Christian and secular: We need moral training to be good and loving, or to stay good and loving.

 

Proposition 5 for egoism: In the middle is virtue: I urge that people do self-care more than other-care for the most part, but that other-care or altruism is a secondary but vital moral imperative for every egoist to commit to and fulfill. These egoists will be temperate and sensible, logical about laying out options, and how to proceed.

 

Proposition 5 for both sacred and secular altruists: Excess is virtue. I regard altruists as emotional more than rational, so this makes them splitters—those false-dilemma producing, black-and-white moralists or fanatics that insist that other-care is all that matters, that self-care should be minimal at best, or at worst, totally ignored as one is a hero and saint, going to superhuman lengths to deny the self in generous service to humanity.

 

Proposition 6 for egoism: Collectivists assume morally serving that which is objective is good and noble, and the ethical chasing after what is subjective, parochial, local, selfish, petty, and trivial is selfish and immoral.

 

They are correct is concluding that what is morally praiseworthy is linked to long-term benefits for the self but also for the community. This is the objective moral orientation.

 

The less desirable and more blameworthy moral orientation is linked to short-sighted, hedonic indulgence in immediate gratification of the self and the group-concerns, and this subjective over-concentration on the local leads to sin and lawlessness.

 

For both the altruists/collectivists and the egoists/individualists, to chase after objective ends is opting for self-discipline and delayed, immediate self-sacrifice and delayed gratification for the long run’s sake of improving the self or serving the needs of others.

 

The egoist knows that the egoist, as a rational egoist driven by considerations of enlightened self-interest, is the objective state of mind that connects the individual, the agent, to the eternal, necessary good, the beautiful, the truthful. It is the small, isolated, individual-living, individuators that is objective.

 

Proposition 6 for altruism: The collective is objective, and the single individual is solipsistic and short-sighted, unhealthily self-referential.

 

The joiner, the group-liver, the selfless altruist, group-oriented and nonindividuating, though running in packs from three or four in number, all the way to potentially billions of connected joiners on social media—the issues and tastes of the masses are to be met as the common good of paramount importance.

 

This herd of joiners, local and few in number, or global and in the thousands or millions of participants, is subjective, narcissistic, emotional more than logical, passionate more than serene, hating of self and others more than loving the self and others, more evil than good, energized by power struggles to gather power to the self, an endless social battle to grow the self and group at the expense of those next door and rival groups or tribes. That all could self-realize and yet coexist peacefully and lawfully with other self-actualized neighbors is alien to altruists and collectivist.

 

Here is my ethical system. We should be rational egoists, more driven by self-care than other care.

 

I am a psychological altruist: people are driven by other-interest more than self-interest, but they’re naturally egoistic enough to learn to be loving if taught positive values of rational self-interest, and if they voluntarily adopt such a program and apply it in their own lives, and in their relations with others.

 

Roughly, ethical altruism suggests that we should sacrifice ourselves in service to others and humankind; other-care has higher moral standing that chasing after self-care.

 

Altruists are likely classical psychological egoists (people pursue their own interests first and foremost.) Some may think we are driven innately by an equal measure of primally and instinctively by self-care and other care.

 

Moral optimists, assuming humans are naturally good and kind, would be psychological altruists of the kind that think unselfish devotion to humankind is the natural human impulse, consistent with human nature being good, and that ethical altruism would reinforce this generous, natural, and social impulse that society may suppress or distort rendering adults ruthless, selfish and competitive.

 

 

 

 

Political Correctness

 

I came across a fascinating podcast video put out online on 1/25/2023 by conservative host, Jake Julius of rattlesnaketv. I took notes on this 30-minute snippet from a two-hour debate on political correctness held on 5/5/2018; the debaters defending political correctness were Michael Eric Dyson and Michelle Goldberg; Stephen Fry and Jordan Peterson were opposing political correctness. I will respond to noted content.

 

To make it more complicated, Jake Julius interrupts the snippet periodically to make brief remarks clarifying what the debaters are saying. He is moderate and fair and does not strain to make Peterson and Fry seems smarter or morally superior to Dyson and Goldberg.

 

What pleases me and give me hope is that Jake Julius completely understands Peterson’s moderate, pro-Western, conservative point of view: if Julius gets it, then the 2.9 million viewer are getting it, and perhaps Westerners and Americans are finally waking up to the lethal dangers of cultural Marxism, so that we can yet save America and ultimately the world.

 

Jake Julius (Jake after this) makes some entry remarks before running the video: “Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and British actor and activist Stephen Fry take on blogger Michelle Goldberg and American political commentator Michael Eric Dyson in a free debate about political correctness in modern society.

 

Jordan Peterson and Stephen Fry destroy an angry intellectual (This is Mike Dyson, Ed Notes.)”

 

 This is not a debate between left and right but a debate between critical thinking and activism.”

 

My response: Jake is sensible: neither the left or the right hold a monopoly on critical thinking nor on foolish activism. I like the way he uses these words and he implicitly defines, and openly ascribes these terms in accurate, objective, fair ways—referring to Goldberg and Dyson as activists and to Peterson and Fry as critical thinkers.

 

 My interpretation of Jake’s implicit definition of critical thinking is that the critical thinker, conservative or liberal, has a moderate, logical lens through which he characterizes ideologies, noting  their good points and their bad points. The moderate or impartial critical thinker would size up and treat a liberal as a person worthy of praise or blame when warranted by personal behavior, not their ideological stances.

 

My interpretation of his implicit definition of an activist is that the activist (These two happen to be cultural Marxists, woke, social justice warriors and ideologues, but this definition would also apply to an identitarian true believer on the alt-right or fascist end of the spectrum.) is an extremist, an ideologue, a subjective, emotional enthusiast, a black and white thinker who regards his ideology and its supporters as always right, always morally perfect, and the opposition as fanatical, unreasonable, always wrong, and rotten to the core without redemption, probably born that way, so horrible and foolish.

 

Michael Dyson (M after this) is the first speaker: “There are no bigger snowflakes than white males that complain, ‘Mommy, Mommy, they won’t let us play and have everything we used to have, back when we were right, racist, patriarchal, and dominant: we hated gays, lesbians, transexuals. You have to share. This ain’t your world. It is everybody’s world.

 

Let me tell you the story of the fish in the water. The fish did not know they were swimming in water, and the dominant did not know they were dominant. (Ed Note: the dominant just assume that they are dominant because that is the natural order of things, that is how it is and that is how it should always be, but the Leftists are challenging that ‘presumption of permanent privilege’.).

 

The best thing the devil did was to make people believe that he did not exist, and that is how it is with white racism. (Ed Note: Yes, the devil is most effective by working in secret; if we do not know he exists, and how he works, we cannot stop him from taking over the world. Dyson is equating whites with being blue-eyed devils, the epitome of evil on earth, and that we own the world, and our cruel unjust dominance, if we can just deny it exists, cannot be challenged or overturned, so we whites can continue to be racist, unjust and evil, and we can even feel virtuous though that it is a total lie and fraud as are we, from Dyson’s point of view.)”

 

Jake: “If you are white and have a problem with the cultural Marxist narrative (Ed Note: Jake is offering this statement as representing how Dyson is characterizing and chiding white listeners offended by his accusing whites of being systemic, innate, unchangeable, total racists.) going on in our society, the only reason for that is you want to go back to the old days of suppression of minority groups.

 

Behind your façade you are not just for living and let living; that you do not care what is the color of someone’s skin, who they sleep with: under that façade is a cunning plan, and Mike Tyson has your number.

 

If you watched this video (Ed Note: without foreknowledge about cultural Marxism) Dyson would make a lot of sense to you. The audience were pro-Dyson at the beginning but by the end of the debate Jordan Peterson and Stephen Fry had won them over.”

 

Jordan Peterson speaks (J after this): “I think this is one of the primordial sins of identity politics players—on both the Left and the Right—let us be clear about that. I’m no fan of identitarian politics. Playing the group identity game runs the risk of tribalism, on the Left or Right.”

 

My response: Jordan Peterson implies but never mentions that the individual, the critical thinker, the reasonable, impartial observer are moderate or good and that the group, the fanatic, the zealous ideologue and activist, the enthusiastic partisan peddling his holy cause are extreme, immoderate and evil, but these appear to be his presuppositions and mine, through which we want people to avoid becoming extremists, passionate devotees of their holy cause, their ism and sacred ideology, the mass movement that they have joined and are shoving down the throats of everyone across the whole earth.

 

Peterson often decries tribalism—group versus group, and warns that identitarian politics and the group identity game wholeheartedly adopted and engaged in by the woke Left and alt-right white supremacists (very few in number and without followers or prospects), as the source of the murderous regimes and genocides of the 20^th century.

 

Peterson also alerted me to the fact that the postmodernist Marxist view the world as only group versus group and the ontological substrata of all life and reality is an eternal battle between quarreling tribes for raw power and supremacy.

 

Peterson regards that worldview as false, cynical, dangerous, and evil. There are always such forces at work in the world, but people can also be lawful, civil towards each other, cooperate and build a peaceful, free, civilized, lawful democracy where all gain wealth and happiness, and that is the society we must work towards. The West provides us with that world better than anyone else, and the Leftist and Alt-Right identitarians hate all that is good, and they seek wipe it out, and replace it with their Utopian hells on earth.

 

J: “Group rights is problematic. It is the obverse of individual rights is individual responsibility. You can hold an individual responsible and the individual can be responsible. How do you hold groups responsible? First of all, it flies in the face of Western justice predicated on the idea of individual innocence and individual guilt. You cannot assign group guilt.

 

We saw many times in the 20^th century what happened when the concept of group guilt gained hold in polities and their justice systems. It was catastrophic.

 

Okay, you want group rights. Where is the group responsibility? How do you hold your group responsible? We don’t want to talk about that. We are too busy rectifying historical injustices hypothetical and otherwise. That is not to say there were not plenty of horrible historical injustices. How to resolve those injustice is not by group rights with an absolutely catastrophic historical record in my opinion.”

 

My response: Identitarians on the Left hide behind love, compassion, reforming and seeking to rectify historical injustices by assigning group rights as the noble downtrodden to be elevated at the expense of identified opposing groups assigned group guilt, to be punished, discriminated against, subjugated, and perhaps liquidated.

 

The purveyors and leaders of group rights radical or revolutionary movements—or fascist reactionary movements—disguise their true objective, immoral gathering of absolute power and wealth unto themselves—behind their holy cause.

 

Assigning group guilt does not move us away from dark altruism, groupism and collectivism towards genuine reform of historical injustice. We can assign to groups, of any sort, be they in the alleged or actual role of being the oppressing groups or the oppressed groups, group responsibility for going too far in their censoring free speech and free thought, in their use of violence, war, terrorism, rioting and violence to swarm societies and grab control.

 

Jordan is reminding the audience that only as sovereign individuals can reform be brought to a people. We may execute a few leaders and imprison a few of the worst psychopaths—like done with the Nazis after World War II—but we leave the German people alone, though their collective guilt and individual guilt for letting Hitler stay in power is factual.

 

We do not want the new, victorious group or party, and its ruler, like Franco in Spain, when triumphant in the late 30s, to execute thousands or tens of thousands of the defeated Leftist opposition, as he did.

 

Peterson is for Western individualism, for individual rights as opposed to true believers on the Left and Right that see the problems of the world in terms of collectivism, group rights, group-living, group morality (altruism-collectivism), group identity. These Communist and Fascist radicals view solutions as workable only in terms of collectivism, group rights, group-living, group morality (altruism-collectivism), group-living, group identity, and a strong man or dictatorship of the proletariat to win and hold the country subject to its ideology and values, as a totalitarian polity and police state.

 

I go farther than Peterson, the Christian and scientist. He is for individual rights and individual responsibility as citizens in a capitalist democracy, parliamentarian or congressional like US: that is a good, necessary start but is morally and politically insufficient to bring about the Western counterrevolution to cultural Marxism, espoused by Jordan, Chris Rufo, et. al.

 

I am for individual morality (egoism-individualism) but Peterson is for modified individual morality more altruist than Ayn-Randian (altruism-individualism).

 

I support individual identity as the primary emphasis with group identity as the secondary emphasis. Jordan supports group identity as the primary emphasis with individual identity as the secondary ethical, cultural, economic, and political emphasis.

 

I favor individual rights over group rights, but Jordan seems more conservative now, likely weighing individual rights and group rights as of equal emphasis as is typical of altruistic Christians—by contrast, I am an egoist Christian and egoistic polytheist.

 

I favor individual-living as the primary mode of social existing and group-living as the minority emphasis in social arrangements. Individual-living is socially and familially optimal for  teaching the young that their life-long, personal telos or obligation from the good deities, one of which it is advisable that they worship and converse with, is to self-realize as cooperating, law-abiding, peaceful seeking their interests in happiness, plenty and liberty, empowered by the self, by God, by natural law, and by the Constitution to live as anarchist individuators supercitizens in this free market constitutional republic. That is the only way to rectify historical injustices.

 

I suspect that Jordan is for group-living. He and Dennis Prager have taught me so much, and that debt is huge and significant, but now, though I follow them still, my Mavellonialist morality and philosophy offers more than they do.

 

Stephen Fry (F after this): “The reason that Brexit in Britain and Trump and national movements all over Europe, now energized, are not a turn to the right (Ed Note: Leftists accuse any turn to the right as being nativist, white supremacist, white nationalist, and fascist. Those positions exist but the people are being democratic and will stay democratic and that is what Fry is bring up and agrees with.) but due to a catastrophic failure on the Left.

 

 I am still a Leftist (Ed Note: Fry is a gay atheist.) but I promote my cause politically through the right channels, not through the channels of education (Ed Note: Activist academics brainwashing youths.) or political correctness.

 

Fight openly for what you believe. Political correctness is not working, and it offends the masses that are turning to the right. You are recruiting agents for the right.”

 

Jake: “Fry is an atheist and a Leftie, but he is absolutely brilliant, not afraid to disagree and have a conversation. He is introspective and notes when the Left has gone too far. Jordan and Fry attack the opposition’s ideas not the opposing people as people.”

 

My response: Jordan and Fry attack oppositional ideas, but Mike Dyson attacks not only the ideas of the opposition, but uses ad hominem attacks against them too, hitting below the belt.

 

We need to recognize that true believers, ideologues, and postmodernists seek to win by using every tactic, fair or foul, to gain the upper hand and win an argument.

 

M; “I agree with you about individualism. (Ed Note: I doubt that seriously. For Leftists, the  individual is a mere avatar of his group identity, and he finds liberty only in serving the collective.). What I am saying to you we have not been permitted to be individuals. We have not been allowed to express our personalities and autonomy.  When a cop rolls up onto me in a park and shoots me, while not at the same time shooting a white kid just because he is white, we black and other minorities are not being treated as individuals.

 

Women too as a group are treated with misogyny by sexist, patriarchal men and that discrimination is a group dynamism, not treated as individuals. If we get beyond the unfair benefits of those on the right have gotten from their group identity than we can move beyond it (Ed Note: Group identity as the problem of oppressor groups versus oppressed groups required legal protection of oppressed groups by legislating limits on the ‘oppressor groups’ in the name of justice, equality, righting things, all interpreted through group identities.).

 

America is so racist says the great American philosopher Beyonce Knowles that if you challenge its racism, you are challenging America. We are instead challenging inequality, the refusal to seem me as an individual. After you see me as an individual, we will see.”

 

Jake: “Dyson is a postmodernist. He speaks loud and fast and uses big words. He pulls the victim card and makes everything about power and oppression. He puts all these things together. Peterson and Fry are smarter than him and see through this postmodernist rhetoric.”

 

J: “Let us assume for a minute that I have gained benefit from my white privilege. That is fine. What percent of my present level of attainment is due to my white privilege? Do you mean 5%, 15%. 75% and what do you propose that I do about it? How about a tax on my privilege?”

 

My response: Dyson is accusing Jordan of being quite successful due to his white privilege, not due to his individual effort and hard work. Jordan is for individual identity, that each individual is responsible for his success or failure, and group identity is not causal. Jordan is denying that his personal identity has much to do with his group identities.

 

Ideologues like Dyson push group identity as the problem and group identity solutions. They talk justice and compassion, but deep down they are out for raw power, and seek to take the world back to feudalism is 1463 where group identity was all, all were collective and ruled by a king or lord as serfs. The intellectual elites like Dyson would rule the masses again, while bowing to the king or lord to stay in power as part of the ruling elite. This is their only, and fundamental objective; intellectuals do not mean the masses well at all—they are not nice people.

 

M: “You talking great shit right now.”

 

J: “Let us be precise. How would you on the Left define going too far for you didn’t like equality of outcome. You tell me how to dispense with my white privilege and exchange me when the Left has gone too far and they clearly can. This debate is not about political correctness. It is about the Left going too far so we can identify that so the reasonable Left can be ascendant again.”

 

My response: I hope to mix Eric Hoffer’s rich understanding of mass movements, fanaticism, and collectivism with the implied preference in Hoffer’s resorting to individual movement, moderation and individual enterprise and undertaking as the ideal way to solve social problem.

 

I would like to introduce Hoffer’s rich understanding and Mavellonialist morality to serve as a bulwark against the Left going to far, as it is now a mass movement, with Marx as God, Communism as the religion or holy cause, and the totalitarian state as the secular Vatican set up to run the victorious revolution, once it is instantiated.

 

Jordan does not label the Left going to far as the behavior of adherents of a holy cause on the march in their current mass movement, but I believe that is what he is referring to.

 

Jake: “Jordan points to Fry as an example of the reasonable Left, drowned out by louder militants.

 

How does Peterson’s white privilege bias block him from being allowed to see or debate, to get an equal voice?”

 

M: “That is terminologically implicit in the problem, beginning at the point of your question: how does Jordan Peterson get his equality back? Really? Jordan Peterson #1 on Twitter. Number 1 best seller. This is what I am talking about. Why the rage, bro? You have done well but you are a mad, mean white man and you are going to get us right. I have never heard so much whining as I hear from snowflakes on this stage. There is so much whining you could start a vineyard.

 

Empirically and precisely, I say, what about white privilege. Your question is pseudoscientific, dismissive, non-empirical and without justification. The truth is: White privilege does not act according to quantifiable segments. It is about the degree to which we as a society are willing to grapple with ideals of freedom, justice and equality upon which this nation is based.

 

We are talking about a collective identity. Are you Canadian? Or are you that by yourself or are you part of a group? When America formed its union, it did so against another group.

 

The reality is those that are part of a group identity and group politics that denied the legitimacy of the (Ed Note: oppressed groups) other groups. The (Ed Note: oppressor groups resent the oppressed groups, Dyson insists, for the oppressed stirring the pot.) group resents these other groups. All I am asking is equality of opportunity and equal outcomes, along with the hackneyed ideas of the halcyon Civil Rights days, seeking real equality of opportunity or equality of outcome.

 

The oppressed were once enslaved, now free, now liberated into oppression with no means or skills to compete. LBJ said blacks started 100 years behind. I think Jordan Peterson is not suffering anything but his sense of entitlement and resentment, and his own privilege is invisible to him. It is on display with intensity and ferocity on this stage.”

 

J: The Left goes too far when it engages in violence: that is not a sufficient response. The Left needs to admit (Ed Note: My words, needs to admit added for clarification.) that their set of ideas led to a catastrophes of the 20^th century.”

 

My response: The mass movements of the 20^th century grew out of dangerous group identity (The individual only exists as a member of a group and as an oppressed, exploited, enslaved peon, reverent and deferential to the king or dictator, ruling all a head of an all-powerful state.) politics, altruist-collectivist morality, and a willingness to let the government tell the people how to live.

 

We need to limit how far the Left and the Right can go, to save future generations.

 

J: “Leftist ideas led to genocide in the 20^th century. It is not enough just to be against violence and for justice. Decent people do not want violence and they do want justice.  I’ve had advantages and disadvantages. You know nothing about my background because I am a mean white man.

 

Let me repeat: I have no answer yet for (1) when does the Left go too far? (2) It is conceivable that I am a mean man meaner than some then less mean than others but that is how race got dragged into that remark. It is a better exemplar of what is wrong with the Left than anything else that could have happened.”

 

M: “I imagine the hurt, anxiety and insult that you feel.”

 

J: “I am not a victim. I do not feel hurt. I feel appalled.”

 

M: “You are a racist.”

 

Jake: “Here we see critical thinking versus activism. Peterson and Fry are more than willing to accept the flaws on their side. Look at the activists: they can’t admit any fault on their side.”

 

My response: Peterson and Fry are critical thinkers. They rate people as individuals. They see ideas as good or bad based on their content, not within the context of applied ideological purity They see flaws on the Right as well as on the Left.

 

Dyson and Goldberg are ideological activists, fanatical, true-believing Marxists. There are no flaws in their movement: its members, presuppositions and doctrines are infallible and without fault. The adherents of opposing views are without merit and lack all truth and virtue.

 

Goldberg: “Political correctness is for social change, but you want me to define when the Left goes too far. Do you want me to deny Marxist categories?”

 

J: It is up to you.”

 

Goldberg: “The Left goes too far when it is violent or censorious, shutting people down and denying them a platform. What do you want?

 

J: I want you to go deeper. I want to contend with the set of Left-wing ideas that produced all the Left-wing pathologies of the 20^th century, and to define how you think Left-wing thinking has gone too far and it obviously has.”

 

M: “Has the right-wing gone too far?”

 

J: “Of course, Auschwitz.”

 

M: How about more recent examples?”

 

J: “I do not like identity politics and have been against it for 30 years.”

 

Jake: “Dyson was not answering Peterson to explain where the Left has gone too far. Instead, he keeps pushing Peterson to produce examples of right-wing excess.”

 

My response: Dyson will not admit to murderous Left-wing, implying there are none, but he is only too willing to get Jordan to confess to right-wing excesses, but Jordan sees through this ploy and will counter.

 

Neither Dyson nor Goldberg come forward with strong, specific examples of the Left going too far. Goldberg did not want to renounce her Marxist categories. She cannot do that.

 

Jordan is pointing out that bad ideas are upstream from demagogues, dictators and spellbinding gurus peddling doctrines that animate energized masses serving as the adherents of mass movements. These lead to violence, suppression, censorship, war, revolution and the installation of totalitarian governments, and the rights and perhaps lives of millions of subject are threatened or harmed. Bad ideas lead to bad behavior, and good ideas lead to better human behavior.

 

Jake: “If talking to Leftists and they don’t understand that ideas of socialism and Communism inherently bad, and we have receipts for it, you know you are dealing with an ideologue. The same applies to ideologues in favor of ethnonationalism, racial supremacy or fascism, and we have the receipts for them too.”

 

F: “This has been a fascinating mixture of cultures. I know huckstering, snake-oil, pulpit talk when I hear it. We need not take ourselves so seriously. We should not feel so certain. We should exchange passionate ideas but feel some doubt about the ideas.”

 

Jake: “Fry and Peterson use big words but make what they say understandable to the public. Dyson uses big words to obscure, to confuse and to intimidate.”

 

D: “You are just saying that blacks are not smart and are without verbal facility, just settling for hucksterism, snake oil and condescension from white males.”

 

Jake: “Dyson is playing the race and victim card.”

 

My response: Ideologues often do not realize that their holy cause is empty, false and cruel, but some of its advocates realize this, but cynically talk the talk of a true-believer, using the cause as a vehicle to gather power and wealth to themselves.

 

Jake: “Dyson sees race, power and oppression everywhere, while the other debaters can talk without race being the center of every conversation. This is a sickness.

 

J: “It is part and parcel of this ideological catastrophe, of political correctness . One is for equality of outcome if one has any sense, even if one is selfish. One is best served by allowing the self access to the multiplicitous talents of all. To discriminate against others for arbitrary reasons unrelated to competence is abhorrent. Historic inequity is the way to address inequity; indeed, it will only make it worse.”

 

 

 

 

 

Exodus 15:22-25

 

I am going to write out and comment on a quote from The New American Bible: “At Marah and Elim. Then Moses led Israel forward from the Red Sea and they marched out to the desert of Shur. After traveling for three days through the desert without finding water, they arrived at Marah, where they could not drink the water, because it was too bitter. Hence this place was called Marah. As the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What are we to drink?’ he appealed to the Lord, who pointed out to him a certain piece of wood. When he threw this into the water, the water became fresh.”

 

My response: This story is very simple and very powerful for two reasons. Think about how almighty God personally rescued them from slavery, parted the Red Sea and drowned the Pharaoh and his army, yet, a few weeks later, the Hebrews were no longer grateful, now jaded, yawning, well, Yahweh, what have you done for us lately.

 

Yahweh worked wondrous, remarkable miracles in front of His chosen people, again and again, but once they were thirsty in the desert, they were no longer grateful, no longer having faith that God will rescue them once more. Their faith was so shallow but should have been deep and abiding because God was so close at hand and had done so much for them so recently. But they became irrationally skeptical, irritated, and ungrateful with little provocation.

 

Our faith is gone is tepid and, on the surface, we so easily abandon God. That is basic flawed human nature at work. The Chosen People were sinners just like the rest of humanity, and their grumbling ingratitude towards Moses and Yahweh is ugly to review, but it is very human for us not to be classy and grateful when we should be.

 

The second reason that this quote is so powerful is that it shows Yahweh and Moses forgiving the people for their lack of faith, their grumbling, their petty ingratitude. Yahweh forgives them their unpleasant shortcomings and provides them with fresh water to quench their thirst in the desert.

 

What we have to love about the Bible is that human failings are openly depicted and laid bare for the world to see. People have free will and often use it to rebel against God and sin, but God often forgives them and helps them anyway.

 

God wants readers, thousands of years later, to realize they too have the same sinful nature, and they too need to not lose faith, curse God in their hour of need, and display such disgraceful, ungrateful whiny complaints.

 

Here is that same passage from the Holy Bible (KJV): “So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur, and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water.

 

And when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.

 

And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?

 

And he cried unto the Lord; and the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet . . .”

 

My response: It is easy to be grateful in times of plenty, and it is easy to keep faith in God when God and astounding miracles occur in front of one. It is much harder to be grateful in times of stress and duress, when we have not seen God or observed De’s displayed miracles ever.

 

God in these passages is reminding us that we need to be grateful and not lose faith in God in hard times as well when the going is easy and plush. It is harder to say than do, but being grateful and not losing faith in hard times would deeply please God.

Exodus 15:18

 

From my The New American Bible I copy this line: “The Lord shall reign forever and ever.”

 

My response: This canticle ends with the line that almighty God will reign forever and ever. Not only is God eternal, but God will reign forever. That sounds like a deity to befriend and ally oneself with!

 

Here is that same quote from the Holy Bible: “The Lord shall reign forever and ever.”

 

My response: The wording from these two quite different Bible are identical, and I have never see that occur before.

Exodus 15:13

 

Here is a biblical quote from The New American Bible: “In your mercy you led the people you redeemed; in your strength you guided them to your holy dwelling.”

 

My response: God is leading the Hebrews that he just saved to His holy dwelling, which I interpret as heaven. This is an indirect proof that Hebrews believed in heaven and hell, an afterlife, and that is the view that Dennis Prager holds.

 

We would need to repent our sins of our own free will, and lead sufficiently good lives spiritually and morally to be allowed into heaven, but God will lead us there if we are willing to follow De’s lead.

 

Here is that same quote from the Holy Bible: “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation.”

Exodus 15:11

Here is a biblical quote from The New American Bible: “Who is like you among the gods, O Lord? Who is like you, magnificent in holiness? O terrible in renown, worker of wonders, when you stretched out your hand, the earth swallowed them!”

 

The singer of this hymn is making the point that Yahweh is the Supreme God, whereas other, minor, pagan deities are actually or relatively without power, or do not actually exist.

 

I am both a monotheist about Fate, the Father and Mother, Jesus, Allah, Buddha and the Holy Spirit, but other, minor deities, some are good and some exist, while some did not exist, were demonic or were weak.

 

Here is the same quote from the Holy Bible (KJV): “Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them.”