Bennedetti defends Jordan Peterson

Vincent J. Curtis

31 July 2018

RE: Taking the kids out (written by Paul Bennedetti, published in the Hamilton Spectator on 28 July 2018.  Bennedetti attended Jordan Peterson's lecture in Hamilton with his children.  He reported that Peterson seemed perfectly normal and reasonable, and so were the other members of the audience.  Progressives denounce Peterson as a fascist/sexist/misogynist/transphobe/Islamophobe deplorable to discredit what sounds perfectly sensible and reasonable coming from his mouth.)

Paul Bennedetti performed a highly useful service by providing us with his impressions of the Jordan Peterson lecture given in Hamilton the other week.  He reports that Peterson is common sensical and not at all like the alt-right fascist monster he had been made out to be by many public figures.  Nor does he attract such people.

The next step in the analysis is to compare one’s actual impressions with those he was told he would experience by those public figures.  Bennedetti commented on the wide discrepancy between the actual and the advertised.

Now, what does that discrepancy tell you about the judgement of those who were so wide of the mark?  Ought their judgement be trusted in other matters?  (Supposing they said the police department was racist?)  Did they pass judgement on Peterson without hearing him out?  What agenda have they exposed in condemning Peterson’s common sense conclusions and presentation as the product of fascist thinking?  Did you notice the technique of condemning the man rather than his argument?

The public figures who condemned Peterson as a fascist are in office and are running for office.  They are the ones who get to vote on city council, and in provincial and federal parliament.  Given what we just learned about their agenda and their judgment, should they be allowed to touch the levers of power again?

-30-

Hunter attacks Jordan Peterson

Vincent J. Curtis

30 July 2018

RE: Jordon Peterson’s intellectual hucksterism

(by Latham Hunter, Ph.D. The Hamilton Spectator of this date.  Hunter is described as a professor of cultural studies and communications )

A reply:

Speaking of intellectual hucksterism, what the hell is “cultural studies and communications” anyway?

On cue, the progressive movement is reacting to a sensible alternative to its intellectual pretensions -  by accusing a dangerous antagonist of being a racist and misogynist.  How tiresome!

By racist is meant, not a person who “demonstrates prejudice against persons of other races,” but a person who doesn’t buy into that recently minted concept of racial privilege.  By misogynist is not meant a person who “despises or is strongly prejudiced against women,” but a man who makes observations about women, as a clinical psychologist makes observations about his practice.

In short, racist and misogynist mean “a person I disagree with and wish to smear.”

The Marxist roots of post-modernism is not an invention of Jordan Peterson.  It is admitted by those who espouse it.  Its aim is to demoralize, confuse, and bring low those liberal western democracies with free-market economies that exposed the fraud of communism and destroyed the Soviet Union.  

“White privilege” and what Latham Hunter calls misogyny and racism are inventions of post-modernism with that aim in mind, and Peterson is not wrong in naming them and in attacking them, since he believes in, what was called in the mid-twentieth century, liberalism. 

Hunter’s own discipline of “cultural-studies” and the continuing invention and proliferation of fill-in-the-blank-studies courses are products of post-modernism, and came at the expense of what used to be called liberal-arts programs. (Victor Davis Hanson has said a lot about this.)

Hence, Hunter’s criticism of Peterson amounts to a predatory assault, in characteristic manner, of post-modernism upon main-line liberal arts, and its views and conclusions.

Hunter’s critique of Peterson is another sorry example of a losing progressive losing her mind.

-30-

Andrea Horwath proves me right!

Vincent J. Curtis

25 July 2018

On Monday, July 23, the Spectator saw fit to publish a letter of mind, penned a week earlier.  It ran as follows:

Having taken a week off for vacation, I returned to peruse the last week of Spectator issues.  The most striking thing was the level and the quantity of hysteria both in opinion pieces and even in alleged news pieces.

We read that Trump is a fascist.  Trump is Putin’s poodle.  Trump doesn’t deserve to be treated fairly or honestly.  Ford is Trump.  The use of the 1998-2015 Sex-Ed curricula endangers our students.  Social conservatives are inherently evil.  Jordon Peterson is a fascist, and so must be the guy who rents him a hall to speak in.

People need to get a grip.  One reason why Trump has an unshakeable hold on a large core of supporters, is the hysteria that comes from his opponents.  Anti-Trumpers are dismissed as simply finding new ways of venting their hysteria.  The little-leaguers go after Ford with an obviousness that is tedious.

It must be that the progressives realize that they are losing, and are losing their minds over it.

                               *                                  *                                                  *

It didn’t take Andrea Horwath, leader on the Ontario NDP, long to validate my claim that progressives were losing their minds after she attacked Premier Ford that very day in the legislature on the Sex-Ed issue.  He’s a radical extremist, beholden to his wicked, social conservative base, and regression in Sex-Ed was their payoff, she says.

“…prevent kids from learning about consent, cyberbullying, gender identity, and LGBTQ families” she said.

(Poor progressive Andrea is not educated enough herself to understand the intellectual farce that is gender-identity theory.  Teaching gender-identity as fact is like teaching the discredited caloric theory of heat or the phlogiston theory of combustion as fact.)

Year Zero fanaticism was identified during the French Revolution.  The revolutionaries were going to create a new man and a new society from scratch, disregarding all common sense.  Year Zero was the date of the Revolution.  The experience with this led to the French saying, “drive away Nature, and she returns at a gallop.”

The fact that a Sex-Ed program last used in 2014 is beyond the pale, and only the 2015 program is sufficient is a sign of Year Zero fanaticism.  What about the Ontario students who went through school in the 1960s, when there was no sex-ed program to speak of?  How did they figure out how to produce Gen X and Gen Y without 2015 approved instruction?  How did mankind make it through the last 40,000 years without there even being an Ontario Ministry of Education?!

The implication is that Andrea Horwath holds the millennial generation in utter contempt, believing them unable, without detailed instruction, to figure out how to reproduce.

If I were more charitable, I would think that Andrea’s real objection is not the education, but the morality that is transmitted through the new program.  That is entirely Marxist in orientation, and explains her concern for the satisfaction of social conservatives.  What defines social conservativism except a position on moral rectitude and propriety?  Andrea finds these people inherently evil, and I’m sure, given the chance, she would deprive them of the right to vote and the right to free expression.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, Marxism was exposed as an utter failure.  Committed Marxists turned their attention to the criticism, the undermining, and the bringing low of successful, western democracies that have free-market economies.  The Global Warming hysteria is of a piece with this.  Breaking down social morals and encouraging division based on race and class are other targets of this underground Marxian criticism.

What progressive-Marxist Andrea wants to preserve in the 2015 program is the moral code, because it is much more destructive of Judeo-Christian morality and of Western values than the 2014 program was.  And this is entirely in keeping with modern Marxism.

Of course, I could be giving Andrea more credit than she deserves.  She could be simply be giving an utterly knee-jerk, opportunistic reaction to change.

-30-

Can Ontario stop Global Warming?

Vincent J. Curtis

1 July 2018

RE:  Ford’s Doctrine of Short Term Gain (Hamilton Spectator 30 June 18)

Dr. Winfield’s article perpetuates the myth that Canada, and even Ontario, has the means of stopping the critical amount of world carbon dioxide production - the production that will send the earth into overheating hyperdrive.  They would have us believe that Ontario needs to cripple its economy in order to save the world.

The facts say otherwise.  Canada’s proportion of world carbon dioxide emission is 1.54 percent.  Canada ranks below International Shipping (at 1.78 %) and above International Aviation (1.39 %) on the list of emitters.  If world trade and international travel increase, Canada’s proportion of world emissions would drop, while a world-wide recession would see Canada's proportion increase.  Canada’s contribution to world carbon dioxide emissions is so small, that factors far outside her control have greater impact than anything Canada is capable of doing.

Of Canada’s contribution, Ontario’s is about a third of the total – about 0.5 percent of the world’s total emissions.  Now, a third of nothing isn’t very much and half of that is even less.  If the world is going to hell because of carbon dioxide, the sacrifice of Ontario’s economy now isn’t going to stop it.

Strangely, those measures that are demanded of Ontario to save the world track closely with the progressive view of the good and wholesome: “renewables”, public transit, higher gasoline taxes, cap-and-trade, “efficiency”, and in general more government control and taxation.  Nuclear power is bad, despite being completely reliable and not emitting carbon dioxide.

In February, 1996, the Spectator published an article of mine that held that only nuclear and hydro-electric generation could meet North America’s growing need for cheap electricity.  Solar and wind were too expensive and too unreliable to meet Ontario's needs.  The Ontario Liberals’ madcap fifteen years proved that forecast true.

I said then [i.e. 6 Jan 96] and it is still true, that the progressive view is that the economic and cultural success of the western world is an evil and needs to be humbled.  The shaming of western societies and the crippling of western economies has been progressive’s constant policy, and Dr. Winfield’s article is just one more little raindrop in that thunderstorm.

The people who have been affected by two decades of shaming and economic humbling are starting to react, and are voting in governments that are going to pay attention to their needs, not to the chest-thumping of the comfortable moralizers.

-30-

Fiddling Ford

Vincent J. Curtis

21 June 2018

In response to an editorial from the Hamilton Spectator of this date.

Ford fiddles while the earth’s atmosphere burns?

The breaking the hearts of both English and science teachers must inspire the typist at the editorial desk.  It goes along with the inspiration drawn from wearing a tin foil hat.

In one sentence the editor manages to mangle a well-worn cliché, demonstrate they slept through science, and failed philosophy.

The atmosphere cannot burn.  It provides the oxygen that supports the combustion of other things - no small difference when assuming the pose of superior knowledge.

As premier-designate, Doug Ford cannot act as premier.  Even if inclined to fiddle, he’s off in the wings awaiting his turn with the violin.  It’s that old potential-act thing.

Never mind that Ontario’s contribution to world carbon dioxide production is negligible, and half of nothing isn’t very much.  As for the belief that the earth is going to turn into Venus by the hand of man – the clothes of that emperor are falling off faster than those of a pole dancer.

The editorial amounts to a futile and ultimately embarrassing attempt at posing as a superior in knowledge and morals.

-30-

And so the Cause of Gender Differences is.......

Vincent J. Curtis

20 June 2018

RE: Are sundresses the reason women don’t cycle?  (Hamilton Spectator of that date)

Councillor Lloyd Ferguson of Hamilton City Council was prompted to ask city staff to account for the great gender discrepancy in the riding of bicycles on the city's bike lanes.  In the course of asking, he proffered the answer that women prefer to wear sun-dresses in summer this may inhibit them from riding.

It is amusing to watch progressives wrestle with social questions these days.  Observing a gaping gender difference in the highly progressive sport of cycling, Councillor Lloyd Ferguson asked why that was, offering as a reason women’s preference for wearing sundresses in summer caused them to be uncomfortable riding bikes.

The chattering classes immediately exploded.  Ferguson was being his usual sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic deplorable self, they argued.  However, ad hominem attacks on the questioner are not answers to the question, and, sheepishly, they finally admitted it.  If they hadn’t women’s preference for sundresses was the only reason on offer to explain the disparity.

Finally, the progressives settled on women’s perceptions of safety being different from that of men accounted for the difference in ridership.  Men tend to be more physically reckless than women, and the lack of safe bike paths made women less likely to bike.  That is the answer.

And so, the cause of gender difference in bike riding in Hamilton is due to…….gender differences.  A factor progressives labor mightily to deny either exists or ought to exist.

Progressives, you owe Councillor Ferguson an apology.

-30-

A banner Day for Trump Haters

Vincent J. Curtis

22 June 2018

It was another banner day for the Trump-haters who read the Spectator’s editorial pages.

First up was a piece by Diana Cucuz, Ph.D., who complained about Trump’s habit of ripping up self-serving letters from the likes of Senator Chuck Schumer.  Some poor schmuck is forced to tape these documents back together again to comply with the Presidential Records Act.  Cucuz says Trump’s ripping up documents is illegal.  I guess the only recourse is impeachment.

Next up is “The weakness of cruelty” by Karen Tumulty, of the Washington Post .  Isn’t that clever, associating Trump with weakness?  Anyhow, the picture associated with the article was taken while Obama was president and the Obama administration was treating illegals the same way as Trump, and for the same reason.  You can tell this picture was taken of Obama’s treatment because the kids are wrapped in aluminum foil.  Tumulty and the rest don’t care that America is a nation of laws and that the executive is charged with seeing that the laws be faithfully executed.  Don’t like the operation of the law? Then require congress to change it, but blaming Trump is too tempting for consistency or principles to stop.  Trump is not a legislator, and the likes of Tumulty don’t want him to be.  Obama did the same thing, but that’s okay.

Finally there is an opinion piece under the guise of a news article from AP, headlined “Supporters of Trump steadfast despite immigration uproar.”  In the body of the piece AP reports, “when [Trump and DHS Secretary Nielson] falsely claimed that they had no choice but to enforce an existing law.”  Falsely?  If you hold that Trump can decide to violate his constitutional oath that the laws be faithfully executed, then you can say he had a choice about enforcing the laws.  If you think Trump should be a legislator as well as an executive, then you can say he has a choice.  In other words, you can use the word false if you think the US constitution should be violated by the president.

The mendacity continues, for the same story says that Obama’s policy did not require separation of families.  That’s true – because Obama had the kids locked up with the parents.  It was a court that decided that the kids could only be detained with their parents for twenty days, and then had to be released.  Hence, the separation of parents from children, and this is the current mess that Trump has to manage without congress’s help.

Today it was discovered that the crying child on the cover of Time magazine was in fact never separated from his parents.  But with Photoshop, that little detail can be fixed.

One reason why Trump supporters are so steadfast is that they are sick of the mendacity offered by the left (and right) as reasons to hate him.  The habit of mendacity has created “fake news” and destroyed the credibility of the mainstream media.

-30-