Con-servatism, like white nationalism, is hardly native to only the United States. Other forms of extremist far Right ideology span the globe.
I’ve
spent a lot of time discussing the modern American far Right and its
innate anti-democratic, anti-general welfare, anti-regulatory, and anti-tax
positions.
I’ve shown they are against all of these provisions that are embedded into our
Constitution, because none of them adhere to their opinions and world-view.
Yet somehow they
deem themselves to be the only “true” Constitutionalists.
Let’s
step back and take a broader look at a proponent of conservatism from outside
the US, and see how he adheres to, or differs from, his American cousins.
Prominent conservative Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson represents such a respected
voice of conservatism, at least to fellow travelers on both sides of the
border.
He
takes two important positions that conform with the American far Right. He said he
would have voted for Trump, but admitted Hillary was more conservative
regarding the status quo. This moves him beyond the domain of traditional
conservatism.
His other significant ideological position is denial of global
warming. "You can't trust the (global warming) data because too much
ideology is involved".
Interestingly he seems unconcerned with the peer
review process of science, and the political ideology of the Republican Party
and their polluting corporate owners.
Now
we’ve established some similarities in American and Canadian con-servative
beliefs.
Next,
we’ll examine Peterson’s perspective on other ideological positions.
As
I have documented abundantly, the Right loves to define the Left. Often this
requires them to unilaterally define terms. Peterson is no exception.
In
this case we have Peterson’s discussion of:
He knows just what's wrong with our thinking. True
to form he quickly conflates American liberals with Marxist ideologues:
“But the force that’s
driving the activism is mostly the Marxism rather than the post-modernism. It’s
more like an intellectual gloss to hide the fact that a discredited economic
theory is being used to fuel an educational movement and to produce activists.”
In
other words, the same old “Commies control higher education” hysteria.
He employs this tunnel vision to reach the conclusion that “the Left” wants to impose
a Russian or Chinese style communist dictatorship. In fact, the Left strongly supports
voter rights, democracy, and fair representation.
Somehow that is ignored.
He
went so far as to invoke French Marxists from the 1960s as counterparts to
American progressives. Same old same old. Liberals are just commies or commie
wannbes.
There’s so much
evidence that had come pouring in from the former Soviet Union, from the Soviet
Union at that point, and from Maoist China, of the absolutely devastating
consequences of the doctrine that it was impossible to be apologetic for it by
that point in time.
So
the French intellectuals in particular just pulled off a sleight of hand and
transformed Marxism into post-modern identity politics. And we’ve seen the
consequence of that. It’s not good. It’s a devolution into a kind of tribalism
that will tear us apart on the Left and on the Right.”
It’s
interesting how selective he needs be in order to ignore FOX(R) and hate radio’s
responsibility in their own identity politics and tribalism that is tearing us apart.
Damn
those French intellectuals!
Let’s
go with Mirriam-Webster’s definition of Identity Politics: “politics in which
groups of people having a particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or
cultural identity tend to promote their own specific interests or concerns
without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger political group.”
Dare
I suggest the white nationalism of Trump’s base is “identity politics”? Ignoring
this appears to be more selective interpretation. Or is it just simple projection?
Peterson
goes on to suggest the Right has boundaries of decency the Left ignores. Um,
Trump???
Never
mind. He wants to make this point:
On the Right, I think
we’ve identified markers for people who have gone too far in their ideological
presuppositions. And it looks to me like the marker we’ve identified is racial
superiority. I think we’ve known that probably since the end of World War II,
but we saw a pretty good example of it in the 1960s with William Buckley,
because Buckley, when he put out his conservative magazine, the David Duke
types kind of attached themselves to it, and he said, ‘No, here’s the boundary.
You guys are on the wrong side of the boundary. I’m not with you.’ And Ben
Shapiro recently did this, for example, as well in the aftermath of the
Charlottesville incident.
Of
course we’d expect a conservative Jew to condemn Nazis.
So what’s interesting
is that on the conservative side of the spectrum we’ve figured out how to
box-in the radicals and say, “No, you’re outside the domain of acceptable
opinion.”
Right.
Except the racist birther he would have voted for called those in the Tiki
Parade, “very fine people”. Trump denied knowing who David Duke was, and only
after public outcry, he reluctantly “disavowed” him. And that man is supported
by his party and over a third of the country.
And
what about the lack of basic human decency and honesty on the Right? Apparently
Trump’s endless stream of lies and threats to lock up his opponent are not “outside
the domain of acceptable opinion.”
Let’s
look at that projection again:
What is liberal
America's big, and possibly fatal, mistake? Failing to recognize its own
extremists.
Peterson
continues:
Now here’s the issue:
We know that things can go too far on the Right and we know that things can go
too far on the Left. But we don’t know what the markers are for going too far
on the Left.
At
least he admits he doesn’t know, so that’s being honest.
How
difficult would it be for him to find liberals condemning violent protests? How difficult would it be for him to find
liberals condemning Stalinism, Maoism and communist dictators?
Does
he think we advocate for that? Is his field of vision that narrow?
Apparently. “Liberals
are commies” is much easier to suggest to the willfully blind ideologues on the
Right.
And I would say that
it’s ethically incumbent on those who are liberal or Left-leaning to identify
the markers of pathological extremism on the Left and to distinguish themselves
from the people who hold those pathological viewpoints. And I don’t see that
that’s being done. And I think that’s a colossal ethical failure, and it may
doom the liberal-Left project.
Perhaps
he doesn’t WANT to see it. I would suggest that is a “colossal ethical failure”
on his part. And Trump gets a pass...
To
his credit, Peterson does want to show us he “gets it”.
The Lefties have
their point. They’re driven fundamentally by a horror of inequality and the
catastrophes that inequality produces—and fair enough, because inequality is a
massive social force and it does produce, it can produce, catastrophic
consequences. So to be concerned about that politically is reasonable. But we
do know that that concern can go too far... The
doctrine of equality of outcome.
And
where is this “doctrine” proposed? Apparently demanding equal pay for women
doing the same work as men “can go too far”.
You cannot win if you
play identity politics. (Trump did just that.) There’s a bunch of reasons like—here’s one: “Let’s push
for equality of outcome.” All right, who measures it? “A bureaucracy.” You have to
set up a bureaucratic inquisition to ensure that that’s the case...An example
of equality of outcome are attempts being made now to implement the legislative
necessity to eliminate the gender pay gap. You have to set up a bureaucratic
inquisition to ensure that that’s the case.
In
the case of the gender pay gap, a paycheck measures it. As with minimum wages,
simple legislation would ensure it. Nobody I know is advocating “a bureaucracy”
to measure it. In fact it is already measured.
It
seems the word “equality” threatens the Right. As it should, They have a long history
of enforcing voter inequality, income inequality, economic inequality, and social
inequality.
If
“equality of outcome” is limited to equal pay for equal work, we are guilty. It’s
just basic fairness. But propagandists on the Right have gone so far as to
accuse the Left of wanting "equality of outcome" as equal pay across all
occupations.
They’re
dishonest and/or delusional, of course. And that is the fatal flaw in
conservative ideology.
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