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Jordan Peterson saved my life. The shortest way I can explain the phenomenon is he appeals to those whose compass is spinning. After losing my business, most of my friends, and almost my marriage I was questioning everything. Peterson provided a framework for how to see the obvious chaos and injustice in the world as the reason to live with purpose, not as the reason to give up. It gave me something to hold onto and stop my free fall. But once I stabilized, his magic wore off, and I get why those not currently seeking don’t get the appeal.
I did but it wasn’t the book that had the impact. It was his lectures from the book tour available on his podcast feed. It wasn’t one thing. His ideas aren’t one thing. But if I had to put my finger on it, he was speaking directly about suffering and meaning, not as a prophet, but as a scientist.
I won't defend Rufo or Lindsey (Although in interviews he has interesting things to say - specifically the one with Thad Russell). Twitter is noxious and audience capture is real and I don't think I had a word for it before, but when you see it, you know it e.g Dave Rubin.
I will defend JP however. I don't know what his motivations are, and I find some of his ramblings to be just that. However, I think he taps into a conservative sentiment that is anathema in public discourse. And as Kmele mentioned, the bravery with which he expresses it might be most of the reason why he is so popular. But he is speaking to the almost Hayekian notion that stories, like the bible, and even Disney stories that resonate, are deeply rooted in our collective psychology. He explains the deeper meaning that he reads in these stories and helps those that listen understand the crazy, inexplicable, difficult but amazing thing we all live through called the human experience. I think when he hits this note, he is singing. I find him and Chloe Valdery to be singing a similar tune and it is beautiful.
I'd also point out that he is outwardly pro-religious, but not in a "Only Jesus will save you and gays go to hell" way that turns people off, but in a "this is so old and so common across cultures that maybe we should pay attention." I think religion is a black box phenomenon that we (Hayek again) attempt to disassemble and throw out the parts we don't like at our own peril. Similarly, there is nothing earth shattering in his book, but there are no new ideas, and the force with which he tells people to actually take on responsibility in a way that was forced on us for millenia, that is now practically discouraged in some circles is a breath of fresh air for those of us that believe meaning and value as a human can come from little things like being a good parent and a good neighbor which are impossibly hard but equally important.
Lastly, I'd also point out that his depressions and drug use should encourage us to pay attention more. Michael, I listen to your advice on anxiety because you live it and battle it. I listen to those in AA that have gotten clean because they know it is an everyday struggle and backslides happen. I will listen to Peterson despite his faults and perhaps more so because of them. We should take him at his word and dispute them on the merits. His personal flaws do not discount their validity. Maybe it is all bullshit, but tell me why and not that he is flawed because we all are
Most people with large platforms would probably be better off sticking to being confident with their opinions on things that they know well. That sounds obvious and maybe mean, but it’s more of a criticism of social media. I think he has been consumed by social media and is more often than not just playing the role of the east to trigger/reactionary person.
He’s best when he is in teacher mode and then also using his clinical psychologist experience to relate the academic stuff to peoples lives.
Couldn't agree more. His psychological readings of the Bible stories is definitely his strong suit. Once he wanders off the reservation into partisan territory it gets very cringey very quickly. His affiliation with Daily Wire has me face palming. Plus, his YouTube input since that move has descended into trolling clickbait.
I'm also a little annoyed that Moynihan of all people (the one who talks about snorting coke all the time) is mocking Jordan Peterson for being addicted to prescription anxiolytics (one that can cause an actual physical dependency). Not very nice of him
Wouldn't you rather a lecture on "how to avoid fucking up" from someone who has, in fact, fucked up and knows what pitfalls are lurking out there? Getting the same lecture from someone who's led a perfect, charmed, flawless life and never put a foot wrong would feel like all those celebrities singing "Imagine" as they urged everyone to lock down from the comfort of their mansions.
Rufo is like Andy Ngo in that he's not the most honest or trustworthy source, but he's filling a niche that the mainstream media would rather you didn't know about.
You can definitely see "audience capture" at work among some #NeverTrump commentators and outlets, who have pretty much abandoned any pretense at being conservative. Now, it could be that the rise of Trump and the GOP falling into line behind him made them re-evaluate their beliefs, but the complete 180 some of them did was startling.
This is a really eloquent take, and I think you're right on almost all of it. I also agree with Moynihan that '12 Rules For Life' was meandering, obtuse, and not enjoyable.
Such an impressive, serious guy who avoids the standard talking points and genuinely tries to think his arguments through. He and David Frum are two commentators I always learn from. Also can't listen to French without thinking what an utter jerk Sohrab Ahmari must be.
There’s consistently an element of derision and grating elitism to how the hosts (though particularly Matt and Moynihan) speak about populists, particularly right-leaning ones. To me it always sparks the realization of how hard it is to not have one’s mind colonized by one’s contemporaries and neighbors; after all, both have been living in wealthy, deep-blue areas for a while it appears.
Don’t get me wrong - I have zero love for the Proud Boys, MAGA crowd, or anything like that, but they often seem to be waved away by two of the hosts with a condescending attitude or allusions to their being fat white cosplayers. Um, the head of the Proud Boys is an Afro-Cuban. Is that not kind of interesting, and does it not inspire some kind of deeper questions about who exactly composes these groups, and how or why they appeal to people? Again, I absolutely despise those groups on principle based on what they stand for and how they behave, but I hate them *because* I understand them; I don’t hate them because they’re fat hillbillies and it’s fashionable to do so or voguish to sneer at them. Deep discussions are insightful and interesting; garden variety insults aren’t.
“the head of the Proud Boys is an Afro-Cuban. Is that not kind of interesting, and does it not inspire some kind of deeper questions about who exactly composes these groups, and how or why they appeal to people?”
FYI, the guys know about Enrique Tarrio (he was mentioned in Episode 361), and they all know Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys.
Oh, I know - I’ve listed to that and previous episodes. It was more of a rhetorical question and a quibble. McInnes is a Brit who grew up in Canada and lives in one of the toniest and most expensive NYC exurbs; why associate that guy with a “backwoods hillbilly” trope? These groups (which are, again, reprehensible) shouldn’t be casually dismissed by cramming a diverse set of people into a patrician “fat cosplayer” narrative, partly because that makes them too easy to ignore and downplay.
The leaders seem to be savvy outsiders, in many cases, who’ve found a way to arbitrage culture war BS and use it to make themselves wealthy (similar to what Eminem did selling hip-hop to the suburban prep school crowd, according to one of his lyrics…). How’d they manage to hack that, and how can we build guardrails to protect ourselves from that? That could potentially be the start of an interesting discussion, but “hurrrrrr dumb fat people like stuff and they’re stupid for it but I’m not” rarely is.
I understand the allure of the legal and constitutional parsing of the abortion issue, but to me there’s an equally interesting discussion to be had regarding the moral and philosophical aspects of the debate. We also have no shortage of examples of people who, months ago, were screeching about how the government needed to lock people in their homes and bar people from public life if they didn’t make certain medical choices, and are now yelling from the rooftops about the primacy of individual rights, free association, and bodily autonomy. What’s up with that? How’d that switch happen so quickly, let alone at all?
1) Abortion is a clear exercise of the right to bodily autonomy up to the point that one thinks rights attach to child (whenever that happens to be). Prior to that point there is no other person whose rights need to be considered. But during a pandemic bodily autonomy has to be balanced against the risk of hurting others by spreading disease, so restrictions may be justified.
2) Even after one thinks rights attach to a child, they have to balanced against a woman's right to bodily autonomy, and some people think that pregnancy is enough of a burden that the woman's rights outweigh the child's, OR they simply don't feel comfortable making that choice for someone else. But during the pandemic the burden of disease outweighed the burden of the restrictions, and people felt comfortable enough in that position to enforce those restrictions through force of law.
Oh I completely understand how one *could* arrive at the facile idea that emergencies justify extraordinary breaches of personal freedom; I just think that a lot of the people who landed there would also never allow, under any circumstances, one to say that isolating perceived foreign enemies in camps during wartime was a good idea.
The same justifications were trotted out back in WWI and WWII (and, to some degree, in late 2001) to abridge rights for large groups in the service of the aggregation fallacy that is “the greater good” and those overreactions are now viewed as shameful (rightfully so, I believe) by many of the people who align with the pro-choice movement.
Not all breaches of personal freedom are equally extraordinary. Internment camps are worse than pandemic restrictions, just as pandemic restrictions are worse than laws against drunk driving. All three try to prevent harm by taking preemptive action against people who are seen as posing an unacceptably high risk to those around them, but that commonality doesn't make them morally or intellectually equivalent. And so it is with abortion restrictions and pandemic restrictions. It might seem like people are holding contradictory positions, but context matters.
“Internment camps are worse than pandemic restrictions, just as pandemic restrictions are worse than laws against drunk driving”
This is an entirely subjective claim, and wholly incommensurable - there’s no mathematical way to arrive at some kind of Schelling Point where we can all agree *exactly* which freedoms can and should be abridged and a spectrum of when rights violations are acceptable. No human could possibly have the knowledgeable to make those decisions, and therefore no human can attempt to do so without grossly overestimating their abilities and inviting in all sorts of negative second-order effects.
I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say here. I mean, all value judgements are subjective and ill-suited to quantitative analysis, and all decisions are made with uncertainty about the future. We do the best we can -- consensus forms, people act, and I think (personally, subjectively) that on the timescale of years to decades, life gets better, even if it is often two steps forward and one step back.
But never mind all that. Your earlier posts seemed to express some confusion about how people can argue against abortion restrictions and internment camps but for pandemic restrictions. All I was trying to say is that the context of each is sufficiently different that they aren't necessarily apples to apples comparisons, even if they all involve restricting personal freedom.
(For the record, I'm in favor of fairly strict abortion restrictions, I think the pandemic responses were and continue to be a shit show on many levels but were also mostly well-intentioned (at least at first), I hate interment camps, and I'm fine with laws against drunk driving. Context!)
So let's dig into this argument re: anti-CRT legislation a little bit further. One argument that David French is making is that these laws are a distraction and unnecessary because there's already legislation in place, e.g. civil rights legislation and the like, that covers the areas of concern that anti-CRT laws purport to address. French seems to characterize these laws as a distraction from other possible legislative avenues, such as school choice. I don't think I necessarily disagree with that contention. However, he seems to argument that the entire idea of addressing these problems legislatively is impossible and a fool's errand. However, I find that argument highly unpersuasive, especially since he points to existing civil rights legislation as one of the tools in the toolbox for combating the current crop of bad actors pushing, for lack of a more nuanced phrasing, woke propaganda on little children who are ill equipped to be able to argue against it (as an aside, this idea of elementary school children 'hashing out ideas' in the classroom is absurd; there is definitely such a thing as age appropriateness for certain content). I would counter, why was that civil rights legislation enacted in the first place? Was it not because of noxious ideas of the inferiority of certain members of our society? Clearly we all agree it was necessary to enact those laws because people with the ability to leverage power over others would do so without them, no? And the history of those laws that are being referenced are themselves fraught with bad phrasing, placed there by activists, that was very quickly leveraged for financial gain (I'm thinking in particular of lawyers making fortunes off of poorly constructed disability rights laws). Those laws were then challenged in the courts and refined into better laws, not completely stricken from the record, because they were good ideas with slightly flawed implementations. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like a lot of the antipathy towards these laws is more a product of the individuals involved with them, and not the core concept, because I do think the fundamentals of using legislation to combat the proliferation of discriminatory ideas are sound. I find it frustrating that often when the hosts veer into this topic, and talk disparagingly of folks like Chris Rufo, I look to my inbox and news feeds and have example after example of new exposés of public funds being used to push DEI bullshit on employees, teach children to hate themselves because of their abundance/lack of melanin, and pay consultants to draft land acknowledgement statements. Meanwhile, the best example French can give of how these laws are problematic is a group of crackpots of Tennessee, whose complaint was rejected out of hand anyway! It's like the oncologist telling you about the dangerous side effects of chemotherapy, and them him telling you about the effectiveness of Flintstone vitamins in fighting your (institutional) cancer.
"I do think the fundamentals of using legislation to combat the proliferation of discriminatory ideas are sound"
And I think the guys fundamentally disagree with you on that. I think they would argue that it's only appropriate to use legislation to combat the proliferation of discriminatory *actions*. And even then, I suspect Kmele, and maybe the others, would only apply those laws to the State, while exempting private actors (although I suspect none of them want to die on that hill).
And this is where I think they and people like French are getting way too pedantic. "They're trying to ban ideas!" Well, at the legislative level, they're trying to *ban* the use of public institutions, paid for by the taxpayers, to disseminate ideas that are anathema to what we're striving to accomplish when our founding documents reference "all men are created equal" and "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". All progress that has been made in the history of this country from the standpoint of civil rights has been made by appealing to those two statements and pointing out where certain people are being excluded from those ideals, and then drafting legislation to attempt to progress in the right direction. To phrase it differently, the culture identifies various shortcomings, and then appeals to the legislature to put together a framework/law that makes sure that public resources are being directed properly to inch closer to the (impossible) ideals laid out by those statements made by the founders. We then rely on the justice system to interpret the legislation, and in that process, refine it such that the loopholes that Kmele, French, etcetera find objectionable are closed. To go back to my metaphor, I would rather we treat the patient with chemo and then give him vitamins AFTER we've knocked the tumor that's killing the patient back a couple levels. Throwing a hissy fit because a group of moms in Tennessee try to (unsuccessfully) get a book banned from a library while taxpayer money is being squandered to the tune of billions of dollars to promote division amongst our citizens doesn't seem to me to be the trump card/mic drop/whatever-metaphor-you-want-to-use that they seem to believe it is.
I think one thing that needs to be considered is that civil rights legislation, on the whole, did very little to combat issues of racism. Schools could no longer segregate based on race and yet today schools are highly segregated. I don’t mean Deep South schools I mean NYC. Often when I hear of DEI initiatives 99% of the time it is predominantly white schools which I imagine this is most of what Rufo is generating anger over
From the NYT editorial co-written by French, Kmele, and others:
“A wiser response to problematic elements of what is being labeled critical race theory would be twofold: propose better curriculums and enforce existing civil rights laws. Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, and they are rooted in a considerable body of case law that provides administrators with far more concrete guidance on how to proceed. In fact, there is already an Education Department Office of Civil Rights complaint and a federal lawsuit aimed at programs that allegedly attempt to place students or teachers into racial affinity groups.”
I am going to generously assume Moynihan's smug snark about Bret Weinstein was due to his low blood sugar.
Bret and Heather are both PhD's in biology. They work in the area of Evolutionary Biology. It is probable they understood Covid & the response, better than captured expert virologists.
They are not anti-vaxxers. They are anti-mRNA vaccination and justified the opinion in actual science.
For the record, I am vaxxed, boosted and managed to get Covid 2x. I have no clue what effect the vaccines had because we have no RCT research. We just have modelling & observational research by various entities who are all incentivized to amplify the positive effects of the mRNA vaccines.
As for what they are doing, see their best selling book from last year, and this appearance:
Perhaps invite Heather and Bret on the pod to discuss their recent work and describe their views on the mRNA vaccines. If one is looking for examples of logical & critical reasoning skill set's, one need look no further than Heather & Bret. One doesn't have to agree, just listen and debate.
I came here to defend JBP but you all have beaten me to it and done a far better job. Him, Eric Weinstein and the IDW generally broadened me and kept me *on* the rails during the early Trump days.
With respect to David, I can't get past how bad of a category "abortion" is. I share his religious belief in life at conception but practically speaking lumping an 8 week abortion in with a 20 week is just wrong. Ending abortions after 1st trimester, even if they were merely shifted to before is an unambiguous good.
Probably one of the best conversations ever recorded on the subject of abortion. The complexities of the issue are so thoughtfully and generously explored, in the way in which David and the guys talked about how bad citizens and elected officials on both sides are in making arguments for and against. The two things I have always been so frustrated about, the pro-choice people who seem to think that all of the arguments against abortion are based upon religious beliefs, which are totally unnecessary to the discussion, when it is only necessary to resort to the basic human and civil rights concerns that belong to the woman and also necessarily must attach to the child at some point during gestation. And on the other side the pro-life people who seek to end the practice completely, and don’t ever engage with the reality that there is no way to do that, who never seem to learn that there is no difference with this issue than there is with the numerous other things that the government attempts to prohibit. Why is it so hard to understand this? We have had 50 years to codify the unconstitutional gobbledygook, yet sensible and practical upside to Roe, but we just can’t seem to do it. American politics is complete garbage. I feel the same mix of exhilaration and frustration listening to this as I do to the conversations that we have on so many other issues. it’s hard to hear the obvious stated so clearly, and yet have it be so far from our grasp. But I don’t care,  this is what I ask for from the TFC, the greatest podcast of all time. How do I send more money. Yes, it’s almost midnight and I have been drinking. Peace.
David French is one of the few social conservatives - actually, one of the few commentators from any perspective - who seems to make an effort to understand opposing viewpoints, call out his own side, and discuss how to deal with the implications of his own preferred policies being put into place.
Hi fellas - Long time listener, first time commenter here. Love the pod but small critique.
Jordan Peterson pretty frequently finds his way into your conversations and most of the Fifthdom Triumvirate remain willfully incurious (excepting Matt who has read and written about his work nicely.) The conversations usually go like this: "I don't read his book, I don't read his columns, I don't listen to his pod, I actually avoid his content, BUT..." All this throat clearing is inevitably followed by some conclusion you've most certainly drawn about him anyway. What gives? It's like three or four times now. Isn't this the type of commentary (if you can even call it that) that you'd take to task had it shown up on, say, CNN or FOXNews? How about, like, try to get him on the pod. Read some of his work. FISK it, if you may. But engage with the man's ideas and work rather than a caricature of him. I admit I've been a Peterson stan on and off during my young adult life. He's not without fault, but when he's in his wheelhouse, he's very, very good, particularly on the atrocities of European totalitarianism and how it relates to the psychology of the individual. Moynihan, in particular, would be a helluva interlocutor with JP, but alas here we are making flippant cracks at the man's addiction instead. As if that's original or useful. Oh, well. A listener can hope...
I’m a little confused. I’m half way through the casting and Roe V Wade has been covered and I completely missed Mr. French’s defense of the Court’s ruling. I listen to him agreeing with disparaging comments of conservatives and chastising those idiots nominally on his side, but little voicing of solutions or even mildly moderating suggestions. How can the question not be asked,”What would you do, Mr. French, to improve these poorly conceived laws of which you fear?”
I found myself nodding in agreement to the early discussion about how certain folks (I think James Lindsey might be the most glaring example) wound up as culture warriors whose personas have become deformed due to the fact that their occupation morphed from <insert occupation here> to professional polemicist, and that in order to remain employed as such, they have to take on ever more ridiculous positions. Yet I see this exact thing happening with David French. "I don't want to play offense, blah blah blah, here's a piece in the [Atlantic, NYT, Dispatch, Reason] with a bunch of tortured logic explaining why I'm right and everyone else is trash."
It must be odd and nerve racking, in a way. I recall a conversation Ben Shapiro had with Jordan Peterson at the start of Peterson ascendency when he said something to the effect that he was constantly scared that he was going say or do the wrong thing and discredit everything he is trying to do. This doesn’t strike me as healthy. I think that one the whole, we are all better that he and his views are not left in deep obscurity.
It is truly bonkers how angry people get when faced with the statistical reality that vanishingly few trans people in North America are murdered for the sake of being trans people. Isn’t that a good thing?
Build an ideology to fight oppression, and you accidentally incentivize people to regard physical progress as moral degradation - after all, people worth protecting and supporting are the oppressed ones; therefore if someone is not oppressed, they're not worth supporting. Just goes to show there's always, always, always gonna be unintended consequences that bite you in the ass.
Jordan Peterson saved my life. The shortest way I can explain the phenomenon is he appeals to those whose compass is spinning. After losing my business, most of my friends, and almost my marriage I was questioning everything. Peterson provided a framework for how to see the obvious chaos and injustice in the world as the reason to live with purpose, not as the reason to give up. It gave me something to hold onto and stop my free fall. But once I stabilized, his magic wore off, and I get why those not currently seeking don’t get the appeal.
This was what I was getting at in my comment. You are one of the many people I was referring too.
At his best JBP is a motivating voice. At his worst, he’s very much “old man yells at cloud.”
Thank you for weighing in! It’s very interesting to hear from people like you.
Did you read his book? Is that what helped? I'm genuinely interested.
I did but it wasn’t the book that had the impact. It was his lectures from the book tour available on his podcast feed. It wasn’t one thing. His ideas aren’t one thing. But if I had to put my finger on it, he was speaking directly about suffering and meaning, not as a prophet, but as a scientist.
I won't defend Rufo or Lindsey (Although in interviews he has interesting things to say - specifically the one with Thad Russell). Twitter is noxious and audience capture is real and I don't think I had a word for it before, but when you see it, you know it e.g Dave Rubin.
I will defend JP however. I don't know what his motivations are, and I find some of his ramblings to be just that. However, I think he taps into a conservative sentiment that is anathema in public discourse. And as Kmele mentioned, the bravery with which he expresses it might be most of the reason why he is so popular. But he is speaking to the almost Hayekian notion that stories, like the bible, and even Disney stories that resonate, are deeply rooted in our collective psychology. He explains the deeper meaning that he reads in these stories and helps those that listen understand the crazy, inexplicable, difficult but amazing thing we all live through called the human experience. I think when he hits this note, he is singing. I find him and Chloe Valdery to be singing a similar tune and it is beautiful.
I'd also point out that he is outwardly pro-religious, but not in a "Only Jesus will save you and gays go to hell" way that turns people off, but in a "this is so old and so common across cultures that maybe we should pay attention." I think religion is a black box phenomenon that we (Hayek again) attempt to disassemble and throw out the parts we don't like at our own peril. Similarly, there is nothing earth shattering in his book, but there are no new ideas, and the force with which he tells people to actually take on responsibility in a way that was forced on us for millenia, that is now practically discouraged in some circles is a breath of fresh air for those of us that believe meaning and value as a human can come from little things like being a good parent and a good neighbor which are impossibly hard but equally important.
Lastly, I'd also point out that his depressions and drug use should encourage us to pay attention more. Michael, I listen to your advice on anxiety because you live it and battle it. I listen to those in AA that have gotten clean because they know it is an everyday struggle and backslides happen. I will listen to Peterson despite his faults and perhaps more so because of them. We should take him at his word and dispute them on the merits. His personal flaws do not discount their validity. Maybe it is all bullshit, but tell me why and not that he is flawed because we all are
Most people with large platforms would probably be better off sticking to being confident with their opinions on things that they know well. That sounds obvious and maybe mean, but it’s more of a criticism of social media. I think he has been consumed by social media and is more often than not just playing the role of the east to trigger/reactionary person.
He’s best when he is in teacher mode and then also using his clinical psychologist experience to relate the academic stuff to peoples lives.
Couldn't agree more. His psychological readings of the Bible stories is definitely his strong suit. Once he wanders off the reservation into partisan territory it gets very cringey very quickly. His affiliation with Daily Wire has me face palming. Plus, his YouTube input since that move has descended into trolling clickbait.
I would add that his drug addiction manifested after his wife’s cancer diagnosis.
I'm also a little annoyed that Moynihan of all people (the one who talks about snorting coke all the time) is mocking Jordan Peterson for being addicted to prescription anxiolytics (one that can cause an actual physical dependency). Not very nice of him
In fairness, MM has never done a tour lecturing people on how to live their lives.
Wouldn't you rather a lecture on "how to avoid fucking up" from someone who has, in fact, fucked up and knows what pitfalls are lurking out there? Getting the same lecture from someone who's led a perfect, charmed, flawless life and never put a foot wrong would feel like all those celebrities singing "Imagine" as they urged everyone to lock down from the comfort of their mansions.
Rufo is like Andy Ngo in that he's not the most honest or trustworthy source, but he's filling a niche that the mainstream media would rather you didn't know about.
You can definitely see "audience capture" at work among some #NeverTrump commentators and outlets, who have pretty much abandoned any pretense at being conservative. Now, it could be that the rise of Trump and the GOP falling into line behind him made them re-evaluate their beliefs, but the complete 180 some of them did was startling.
This is a really eloquent take, and I think you're right on almost all of it. I also agree with Moynihan that '12 Rules For Life' was meandering, obtuse, and not enjoyable.
Sorry to micturate in your Muesli, but my comment was actually directed to the original poster 🙂
That makes more sense. Im usually not known for eloquent phrasing of the noises in my head. (-:
My point still stands i guess regardless.
Also, David French is the best human being ever
Such an impressive, serious guy who avoids the standard talking points and genuinely tries to think his arguments through. He and David Frum are two commentators I always learn from. Also can't listen to French without thinking what an utter jerk Sohrab Ahmari must be.
I think he should have explained better his issue with JP.
Not only has the pronunciation of kerfuffle been ravaged the spelling now too it seems
The correct spelling has yet to be cowoborated
Kûwæberītœd, surely
Qirflüfl
Cyrphaphel?
I had an ex who passed that to me after she dated Moynihan.
But you can't even catch that from giving blowjobs.
I pronounced that like ser-falafel
It was in one of the NYT crossword puzzles recently!
There’s consistently an element of derision and grating elitism to how the hosts (though particularly Matt and Moynihan) speak about populists, particularly right-leaning ones. To me it always sparks the realization of how hard it is to not have one’s mind colonized by one’s contemporaries and neighbors; after all, both have been living in wealthy, deep-blue areas for a while it appears.
Don’t get me wrong - I have zero love for the Proud Boys, MAGA crowd, or anything like that, but they often seem to be waved away by two of the hosts with a condescending attitude or allusions to their being fat white cosplayers. Um, the head of the Proud Boys is an Afro-Cuban. Is that not kind of interesting, and does it not inspire some kind of deeper questions about who exactly composes these groups, and how or why they appeal to people? Again, I absolutely despise those groups on principle based on what they stand for and how they behave, but I hate them *because* I understand them; I don’t hate them because they’re fat hillbillies and it’s fashionable to do so or voguish to sneer at them. Deep discussions are insightful and interesting; garden variety insults aren’t.
“the head of the Proud Boys is an Afro-Cuban. Is that not kind of interesting, and does it not inspire some kind of deeper questions about who exactly composes these groups, and how or why they appeal to people?”
FYI, the guys know about Enrique Tarrio (he was mentioned in Episode 361), and they all know Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys.
Oh, I know - I’ve listed to that and previous episodes. It was more of a rhetorical question and a quibble. McInnes is a Brit who grew up in Canada and lives in one of the toniest and most expensive NYC exurbs; why associate that guy with a “backwoods hillbilly” trope? These groups (which are, again, reprehensible) shouldn’t be casually dismissed by cramming a diverse set of people into a patrician “fat cosplayer” narrative, partly because that makes them too easy to ignore and downplay.
The leaders seem to be savvy outsiders, in many cases, who’ve found a way to arbitrage culture war BS and use it to make themselves wealthy (similar to what Eminem did selling hip-hop to the suburban prep school crowd, according to one of his lyrics…). How’d they manage to hack that, and how can we build guardrails to protect ourselves from that? That could potentially be the start of an interesting discussion, but “hurrrrrr dumb fat people like stuff and they’re stupid for it but I’m not” rarely is.
I understand the allure of the legal and constitutional parsing of the abortion issue, but to me there’s an equally interesting discussion to be had regarding the moral and philosophical aspects of the debate. We also have no shortage of examples of people who, months ago, were screeching about how the government needed to lock people in their homes and bar people from public life if they didn’t make certain medical choices, and are now yelling from the rooftops about the primacy of individual rights, free association, and bodily autonomy. What’s up with that? How’d that switch happen so quickly, let alone at all?
I can steel man this one of two ways.
1) Abortion is a clear exercise of the right to bodily autonomy up to the point that one thinks rights attach to child (whenever that happens to be). Prior to that point there is no other person whose rights need to be considered. But during a pandemic bodily autonomy has to be balanced against the risk of hurting others by spreading disease, so restrictions may be justified.
2) Even after one thinks rights attach to a child, they have to balanced against a woman's right to bodily autonomy, and some people think that pregnancy is enough of a burden that the woman's rights outweigh the child's, OR they simply don't feel comfortable making that choice for someone else. But during the pandemic the burden of disease outweighed the burden of the restrictions, and people felt comfortable enough in that position to enforce those restrictions through force of law.
Oh I completely understand how one *could* arrive at the facile idea that emergencies justify extraordinary breaches of personal freedom; I just think that a lot of the people who landed there would also never allow, under any circumstances, one to say that isolating perceived foreign enemies in camps during wartime was a good idea.
The same justifications were trotted out back in WWI and WWII (and, to some degree, in late 2001) to abridge rights for large groups in the service of the aggregation fallacy that is “the greater good” and those overreactions are now viewed as shameful (rightfully so, I believe) by many of the people who align with the pro-choice movement.
Not all breaches of personal freedom are equally extraordinary. Internment camps are worse than pandemic restrictions, just as pandemic restrictions are worse than laws against drunk driving. All three try to prevent harm by taking preemptive action against people who are seen as posing an unacceptably high risk to those around them, but that commonality doesn't make them morally or intellectually equivalent. And so it is with abortion restrictions and pandemic restrictions. It might seem like people are holding contradictory positions, but context matters.
“Internment camps are worse than pandemic restrictions, just as pandemic restrictions are worse than laws against drunk driving”
This is an entirely subjective claim, and wholly incommensurable - there’s no mathematical way to arrive at some kind of Schelling Point where we can all agree *exactly* which freedoms can and should be abridged and a spectrum of when rights violations are acceptable. No human could possibly have the knowledgeable to make those decisions, and therefore no human can attempt to do so without grossly overestimating their abilities and inviting in all sorts of negative second-order effects.
I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say here. I mean, all value judgements are subjective and ill-suited to quantitative analysis, and all decisions are made with uncertainty about the future. We do the best we can -- consensus forms, people act, and I think (personally, subjectively) that on the timescale of years to decades, life gets better, even if it is often two steps forward and one step back.
But never mind all that. Your earlier posts seemed to express some confusion about how people can argue against abortion restrictions and internment camps but for pandemic restrictions. All I was trying to say is that the context of each is sufficiently different that they aren't necessarily apples to apples comparisons, even if they all involve restricting personal freedom.
(For the record, I'm in favor of fairly strict abortion restrictions, I think the pandemic responses were and continue to be a shit show on many levels but were also mostly well-intentioned (at least at first), I hate interment camps, and I'm fine with laws against drunk driving. Context!)
As Wittgenstein allegedly said to Russell and Moore: I didn’t expect you to understand.
So let's dig into this argument re: anti-CRT legislation a little bit further. One argument that David French is making is that these laws are a distraction and unnecessary because there's already legislation in place, e.g. civil rights legislation and the like, that covers the areas of concern that anti-CRT laws purport to address. French seems to characterize these laws as a distraction from other possible legislative avenues, such as school choice. I don't think I necessarily disagree with that contention. However, he seems to argument that the entire idea of addressing these problems legislatively is impossible and a fool's errand. However, I find that argument highly unpersuasive, especially since he points to existing civil rights legislation as one of the tools in the toolbox for combating the current crop of bad actors pushing, for lack of a more nuanced phrasing, woke propaganda on little children who are ill equipped to be able to argue against it (as an aside, this idea of elementary school children 'hashing out ideas' in the classroom is absurd; there is definitely such a thing as age appropriateness for certain content). I would counter, why was that civil rights legislation enacted in the first place? Was it not because of noxious ideas of the inferiority of certain members of our society? Clearly we all agree it was necessary to enact those laws because people with the ability to leverage power over others would do so without them, no? And the history of those laws that are being referenced are themselves fraught with bad phrasing, placed there by activists, that was very quickly leveraged for financial gain (I'm thinking in particular of lawyers making fortunes off of poorly constructed disability rights laws). Those laws were then challenged in the courts and refined into better laws, not completely stricken from the record, because they were good ideas with slightly flawed implementations. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like a lot of the antipathy towards these laws is more a product of the individuals involved with them, and not the core concept, because I do think the fundamentals of using legislation to combat the proliferation of discriminatory ideas are sound. I find it frustrating that often when the hosts veer into this topic, and talk disparagingly of folks like Chris Rufo, I look to my inbox and news feeds and have example after example of new exposés of public funds being used to push DEI bullshit on employees, teach children to hate themselves because of their abundance/lack of melanin, and pay consultants to draft land acknowledgement statements. Meanwhile, the best example French can give of how these laws are problematic is a group of crackpots of Tennessee, whose complaint was rejected out of hand anyway! It's like the oncologist telling you about the dangerous side effects of chemotherapy, and them him telling you about the effectiveness of Flintstone vitamins in fighting your (institutional) cancer.
"I do think the fundamentals of using legislation to combat the proliferation of discriminatory ideas are sound"
And I think the guys fundamentally disagree with you on that. I think they would argue that it's only appropriate to use legislation to combat the proliferation of discriminatory *actions*. And even then, I suspect Kmele, and maybe the others, would only apply those laws to the State, while exempting private actors (although I suspect none of them want to die on that hill).
And this is where I think they and people like French are getting way too pedantic. "They're trying to ban ideas!" Well, at the legislative level, they're trying to *ban* the use of public institutions, paid for by the taxpayers, to disseminate ideas that are anathema to what we're striving to accomplish when our founding documents reference "all men are created equal" and "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". All progress that has been made in the history of this country from the standpoint of civil rights has been made by appealing to those two statements and pointing out where certain people are being excluded from those ideals, and then drafting legislation to attempt to progress in the right direction. To phrase it differently, the culture identifies various shortcomings, and then appeals to the legislature to put together a framework/law that makes sure that public resources are being directed properly to inch closer to the (impossible) ideals laid out by those statements made by the founders. We then rely on the justice system to interpret the legislation, and in that process, refine it such that the loopholes that Kmele, French, etcetera find objectionable are closed. To go back to my metaphor, I would rather we treat the patient with chemo and then give him vitamins AFTER we've knocked the tumor that's killing the patient back a couple levels. Throwing a hissy fit because a group of moms in Tennessee try to (unsuccessfully) get a book banned from a library while taxpayer money is being squandered to the tune of billions of dollars to promote division amongst our citizens doesn't seem to me to be the trump card/mic drop/whatever-metaphor-you-want-to-use that they seem to believe it is.
I think one thing that needs to be considered is that civil rights legislation, on the whole, did very little to combat issues of racism. Schools could no longer segregate based on race and yet today schools are highly segregated. I don’t mean Deep South schools I mean NYC. Often when I hear of DEI initiatives 99% of the time it is predominantly white schools which I imagine this is most of what Rufo is generating anger over
From the NYT editorial co-written by French, Kmele, and others:
“A wiser response to problematic elements of what is being labeled critical race theory would be twofold: propose better curriculums and enforce existing civil rights laws. Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, and they are rooted in a considerable body of case law that provides administrators with far more concrete guidance on how to proceed. In fact, there is already an Education Department Office of Civil Rights complaint and a federal lawsuit aimed at programs that allegedly attempt to place students or teachers into racial affinity groups.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/opinion/we-disagree-on-a-lot-of-things-except-the-danger-of-anti-critical-race-theory-laws.html
I am going to generously assume Moynihan's smug snark about Bret Weinstein was due to his low blood sugar.
Bret and Heather are both PhD's in biology. They work in the area of Evolutionary Biology. It is probable they understood Covid & the response, better than captured expert virologists.
They are not anti-vaxxers. They are anti-mRNA vaccination and justified the opinion in actual science.
For the record, I am vaxxed, boosted and managed to get Covid 2x. I have no clue what effect the vaccines had because we have no RCT research. We just have modelling & observational research by various entities who are all incentivized to amplify the positive effects of the mRNA vaccines.
As for what they are doing, see their best selling book from last year, and this appearance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGWLLDSA3c&t=2s
Perhaps invite Heather and Bret on the pod to discuss their recent work and describe their views on the mRNA vaccines. If one is looking for examples of logical & critical reasoning skill set's, one need look no further than Heather & Bret. One doesn't have to agree, just listen and debate.
Behave. They spout the standard anti-vax nonsense and appear alongside notorious anti-vaxxers.
I came here to defend JBP but you all have beaten me to it and done a far better job. Him, Eric Weinstein and the IDW generally broadened me and kept me *on* the rails during the early Trump days.
With respect to David, I can't get past how bad of a category "abortion" is. I share his religious belief in life at conception but practically speaking lumping an 8 week abortion in with a 20 week is just wrong. Ending abortions after 1st trimester, even if they were merely shifted to before is an unambiguous good.
Probably one of the best conversations ever recorded on the subject of abortion. The complexities of the issue are so thoughtfully and generously explored, in the way in which David and the guys talked about how bad citizens and elected officials on both sides are in making arguments for and against. The two things I have always been so frustrated about, the pro-choice people who seem to think that all of the arguments against abortion are based upon religious beliefs, which are totally unnecessary to the discussion, when it is only necessary to resort to the basic human and civil rights concerns that belong to the woman and also necessarily must attach to the child at some point during gestation. And on the other side the pro-life people who seek to end the practice completely, and don’t ever engage with the reality that there is no way to do that, who never seem to learn that there is no difference with this issue than there is with the numerous other things that the government attempts to prohibit. Why is it so hard to understand this? We have had 50 years to codify the unconstitutional gobbledygook, yet sensible and practical upside to Roe, but we just can’t seem to do it. American politics is complete garbage. I feel the same mix of exhilaration and frustration listening to this as I do to the conversations that we have on so many other issues. it’s hard to hear the obvious stated so clearly, and yet have it be so far from our grasp. But I don’t care,  this is what I ask for from the TFC, the greatest podcast of all time. How do I send more money. Yes, it’s almost midnight and I have been drinking. Peace.
David French is one of the few social conservatives - actually, one of the few commentators from any perspective - who seems to make an effort to understand opposing viewpoints, call out his own side, and discuss how to deal with the implications of his own preferred policies being put into place.
Hi fellas - Long time listener, first time commenter here. Love the pod but small critique.
Jordan Peterson pretty frequently finds his way into your conversations and most of the Fifthdom Triumvirate remain willfully incurious (excepting Matt who has read and written about his work nicely.) The conversations usually go like this: "I don't read his book, I don't read his columns, I don't listen to his pod, I actually avoid his content, BUT..." All this throat clearing is inevitably followed by some conclusion you've most certainly drawn about him anyway. What gives? It's like three or four times now. Isn't this the type of commentary (if you can even call it that) that you'd take to task had it shown up on, say, CNN or FOXNews? How about, like, try to get him on the pod. Read some of his work. FISK it, if you may. But engage with the man's ideas and work rather than a caricature of him. I admit I've been a Peterson stan on and off during my young adult life. He's not without fault, but when he's in his wheelhouse, he's very, very good, particularly on the atrocities of European totalitarianism and how it relates to the psychology of the individual. Moynihan, in particular, would be a helluva interlocutor with JP, but alas here we are making flippant cracks at the man's addiction instead. As if that's original or useful. Oh, well. A listener can hope...
Holy shit Moynihan, 47?!?!? My father is a T1D and this gives me great anxiety.
The average man has the capacity for pregnancy like Kmele has the capacity for pronunciation. Facts are facts. No cowoboration necessary.
I’m a little confused. I’m half way through the casting and Roe V Wade has been covered and I completely missed Mr. French’s defense of the Court’s ruling. I listen to him agreeing with disparaging comments of conservatives and chastising those idiots nominally on his side, but little voicing of solutions or even mildly moderating suggestions. How can the question not be asked,”What would you do, Mr. French, to improve these poorly conceived laws of which you fear?”
I found myself nodding in agreement to the early discussion about how certain folks (I think James Lindsey might be the most glaring example) wound up as culture warriors whose personas have become deformed due to the fact that their occupation morphed from <insert occupation here> to professional polemicist, and that in order to remain employed as such, they have to take on ever more ridiculous positions. Yet I see this exact thing happening with David French. "I don't want to play offense, blah blah blah, here's a piece in the [Atlantic, NYT, Dispatch, Reason] with a bunch of tortured logic explaining why I'm right and everyone else is trash."
It must be odd and nerve racking, in a way. I recall a conversation Ben Shapiro had with Jordan Peterson at the start of Peterson ascendency when he said something to the effect that he was constantly scared that he was going say or do the wrong thing and discredit everything he is trying to do. This doesn’t strike me as healthy. I think that one the whole, we are all better that he and his views are not left in deep obscurity.
It is truly bonkers how angry people get when faced with the statistical reality that vanishingly few trans people in North America are murdered for the sake of being trans people. Isn’t that a good thing?
Build an ideology to fight oppression, and you accidentally incentivize people to regard physical progress as moral degradation - after all, people worth protecting and supporting are the oppressed ones; therefore if someone is not oppressed, they're not worth supporting. Just goes to show there's always, always, always gonna be unintended consequences that bite you in the ass.
Moynihan needs to film a reaction to that Peterson video and share it here 😂