Tag: mailvox

An Australian reader informs us that you can submit questions for Jordan Peterson to answer during his upcoming appearance on QANDA, an Australian panel show where audience members can ask questions via a video upload.

Ask a Question

Do you have a question for the Q&A panel?

Q&A is our national conversation. We want questions from every corner of Australia.

Send us the text of your question on this web form or by using your ABC account.

Include your contact details and if we shortlist your question, we’ll get in touch to show you how to ask your question by Skype, video or web.

Have fun, if you are so inclined. In the meantime, the New Zealand media is deciding that Jordan Peterson is more tedious than a threat of any kind:

On Wednesday, the crowd can hardly contain their excitement. As we wait for Peterson, someone brings a couple of water bottles on the stage and applause breaks out. When Peterson enters, people stand up and roar with delight. He sits down, opens his laptop and starts talking.

Soon, tired self-help advice comes: “Look for beauty during dark times”; “Wake up at the same time every day”. Peterson says if you want to achieve anything in life, you need to make sacrifices. When he was a PHd student and trying to write a book, he used to party and drink a lot. He realised that in order to achieve his goals, he had to sacrifice his drinking. Wow, what triumph of the will. What a brave tale of conquest against all odds.

After about half an hour, he finally says something I don’t know. When we dream, our body is paralysed so we don’t act out our dreams and only our eyes are moving. Sometimes we don’t quite wake up and we can’t move and that’s when people hear voices and see aliens. Well, I have experienced this half-awake state without realising it was perfectly normal to be paralysed for a few seconds, and it was terrifying. I feel a bit like that now – the room is hot, the guy next to me is manspreading and I am in the middle of the row so I can’t move. I feel trapped in Peterson’s interminable stream of consciousness. My chaotic brain is lost and wishing for some male order. I keep yawning uncontrollably. The thought of getting an ice cream after the show keeps me awake.

I was expecting sensational insights, or at least controversial thoughts, but most of what we are getting is self-help gibberish. Maybe Peterson is not so such a threat to humankind after all.

From a UK observer of the Brexit shenanigans:

The EU is prepared to offer Britain an extension to the Article 50 period. The offer is from 29 March 2019 to 18 April 2019, a total of 14 working days. Theresa May has wasted more time than this repeatedly since November. In return for agreeing to the extension, the EU wants £7bn. i.e. £500m per working day. Whilst there is probably a majority in Westminster for an extension to Article 50, such a financial penalty could be sufficient to extinguish that majority and deliver Brexit on time.

It is notable that they are making this offer before we have asked for it. Previously they said they would only make an offer if we asked. They are clearly worried about the economic contraction of the Eurozone currency economies. In particular, the EU estimates that Germany will lose 100,000 jobs in a ‘no deal’ scenario.

One of the things which the EU was adamant that Britain should pay for as part of its departure was the cost of offices in London which would no longer be used for European agencies. Mr Justice Smith ruled this week that the 25 year office lease of European Medicines Agency, signed in 2014, is not legally frustrated by Brexit. There is no legal obstacle to the EU continuing to run its affairs from Britain, and therefore the EU is liable for the full 25 year lease of £500m. There talk of appealing to the European Court of Justice, however, the law and the contract is very clear. There is a reason that international companies choose English Common Law as the basis for their deals, even when neither of the parties is actually English.

As part of Brexit, the German government has considered setting up English language courts in order to attract international business. They have completely missed the point that what attracts contractual parties to London is English Common Law, not the English language. It is the same thing that keeps the financial industry here, together with the fact that the banker’s wives get bored in Frankfurt, Paris and Geneva. Don’t underestimate the attractions of London’s social life. Places like Frankfurt don’t even have the quantity and quality of office accommodation to attract anything other than minimal “post office box” offices to establish a legal presence. Similarly, most of the European Medicines Agency staff will remain in London to seek other healthcare jobs and the Agency will need to be re-staffed with new people.

When the £39bn EU financial demand was first mooted, several groups of lawyers took a look at the basis for this demand and concluded that the EU did not have a legal basis for its demands. Ensuring that the EU does not get a penny to which it isn’t legally entitled is part of demonstrating responsible behaviour to the EU. Today the EU is saying that any discussion of future relationship after a ‘no deal’ scenario would be prefixed by a demand for the money. Britain should not attempt to strike a deal with an organisation which is clearly behaving outwith the law. How could we possibly trust an agreement with them? They are not “agreement capable”.

According to CatholicAnarchist Bear, Jordan Peterson is still going on about me in New Zealand.

Pretty funny how JP is giving you free publicity on live NZ live TV, this time he said you are a man completely in love with his own intelligence.

Jordan Peterson: I think the tactics to describe what I’m doing are generally reprehensible, but that’s not surprising, it’s part and parcel of the way political discourse is conducted today. A lot of epithets and namecalling, none of which is justified in my estimation.

Hayley Holt:  And a lot of pendulum-swinging. You’re not a friend of the radical left, so people may assume you are a friend of the radical right, but that’s not true is it?

Jordan Peterson: No the radical right is not very fond of me. There is a book written recently by a man named Vox Day called Jordanetics which is a criticism of what I’m doing from the radical right perspective. It’s a particularly low-blow book, I would say, written by someone who is dreadfully in love with his own intelligence, um, but its fine as far as I’m concerned. It’s a good thing because I’m not a fan of collectivists on the right either. I think it’s a mistake to make your primary identity your group, it doesn’t matter if it’s a nationalist perspective, or an ethnic or racial perspective, or a sexual perspective, it’s a fundamental error and an extraordinarily dangerous one.

That’s like saying Owen Benjamin is a man who is dreadfully in love with his own height. I may enjoy being highly intelligent, and I may rely upon having more cognitive firepower at my disposal than most on a not-infrequent basis, but this is the sort of comment that is made by someone who knows nothing of the experience himself. What those of lesser intelligence fail to realize about the UHIQ or the subject savant is that we actually have a tendency to take our intellectual gifts for granted; we are far less obsessed with them than our observers and critics are.

In other words, it’s not that we think we are so special, it’s that we find it very hard to believe that other people can’t do what we do. My father, the designer of various military and aeronautic technologies who did his doctoral work at MIT, genuinely could not believe that anyone was even remotely puzzled by math. “What’s there to be confused about?” he would ask in disbelief. “It’s all literally right there!” It’s like imagining a Frenchman to be impressed by the fact that he speaks French. Of course he does, it’s part of what makes him who and what he is!

Anyhow, it’s clear that Peterson is attempting to accomplish two things here. First, he’s trying to rhetorically disqualify a book that is significantly damaging him with his fan club by discrediting the author with epithets and namecalling. Second, he’s attempting to use my criticism as a way of positioning himself as a centrist and a victim. And, of course, because he is a habitual liar, he doesn’t even hesitate to lie about the book, about the author, and about himself.

All you really need to know about Peterson can be seen in this one interview, especially the way he so readily resorts to the rhetorical tactics he declares to be reprehensible in lieu of substantive responses? I invite you to count the number of lies and deceptions he tells in that last paragraph alone. Without bothering to do so myself and based only on an initial read, I’ll put the over/under at seven.

Deceivers are always going to attempt to deceive. Especially after they find themselves getting caught out. A reader emails to note that Richard Spencer is still trying to dig himself out.

At 1 hour and 49 minutes in this video Richard Spencer claims he misused a term , and you jumped on him, but he claims he didn’t mean what you thought he did. He goes on to explain his vision of pan nationalism and says omni-nationalism is naive and wouldn’t work because larger powers would easily control them.

Sounds to me exactly what you said he said but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know what he is talking about half the time. Not very articulate and sounds, like you said, a leftist. I thought I would pass this on to you so next time his name or position comes up, you would have his “clarified” current statement on his stance.

Richard Spencer is a midwit leftist and racial imperialist who is totally incapable of articulating a coherent case for any political program going forward, let alone a credible one. He’s a fame whore about as intellectually serious as Ben Shapiro.

Pan-nationalism did not work for Arabs or Africans. It will not work for Europeans or for US whites. The high-water mark of civic nationalism, a very artificial, watered-down, and surreptitious form of pan-nationalism, was the 1950s in the USA, and as we have witnessed, it carried within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

A Canadian reader writes to let us know about the way Canadian law is converging:

I’m sure you’re not surprised. I shouldn’t be either; I read SJWs Always Lie and SJWs Always Double Down. What amazes me is how brazen this infestation is, so maybe you’ll find it interesting.

The Law Society of Ontario has been manipulated, through the threat of imaginary racism, to compel lawyers in that Canadian province to declare their virtue. Under the Law Society’s new rules the sanctions are nebulous for any lawyer who fails to adequately demonstrate right-think.

One of the listed recommendations was that the Law Society should “require every licensee to adopt and to abide by a statement of principles acknowledging their obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally, and in their behaviour towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public.”

It sounds like any lawyers who don’t follow this prescription will be suspended and not permitted to practice law, at a minimum. Of course, as you have pointed out many times, the goal posts will be in constant motion and the SJWs will never be satisfied with the ‘purity’ of the province’s lawyers.

If Ontario’s legal profession is compromised the rest of Canada’s law societies won’t be far behind.

Unless and until the core concepts of “civil rights” and “equality” and “civic nationalism” are entirely rejected, the convergence towards the complete submission of every institution and individual to the social justice narrative will continue almost entirely unresisted. Which means that the society that rises from the ashes of equalitarianism is almost certainly going to be shockingly “ist” by every current standard.

A British expert who knows CONSIDERABLY more than I do about British law and the unwritten British constitution shares his opinion on the likelihood of Brexit being delayed past 29 March:

Something which doesn’t seem to be considered by those proposing an extension is that the EU parliament is prorogued for election on 18 April. The EU parliament would resume, with its newly elected members on 2 July.

Therefore if Her Majesty’s Government did ask for an extension to the Article 50 period, something to which all 27 EU governments would need to agree, a 3-month extension really only buys 14 working days in which to come up with a deal and have it ratified by the EU parliament. Since Theresa May has repeatedly postponed votes, and has only notionally cancelled the half-term break for Westminster, she has already wasted more time since December than a 3-month extension could buy her.

If the extension was longer, say 9 months as proposed by Boles-Cooper and voted down by a majority of 23 votes, it would mean that the new Faragiste Brexit Party would contend the EU elections, with predictable results. Despite threats of resignation from Remainer ministers for the purposes of voting for a new Boles-Cooper, there is no indication that the arithmetic in the House of Commons would return a majority for a 9-month delay, or the 21-month version suggested by Civil Service negotiator Olly Robbins in a bar in Brussels last night. One of the senior Conservative Brexiteer MPs suggested that Mr Robbins should be delivered to the Tower of London by river (implicitly through the “Traitor’s Gate”).

The British version of Maxine Waters, capable of causing Guam to capsize by her mere presence, has publically stated that she knows that the Brexiteers would win a second referendum. The Conservative Party local government leaders have told the party chairman that they are facing a wipe-out in May’s municipal and county elections because of the Prime Minister’s handling of Brexit.

Soros and others are already lamenting the possibility of 33{13f7cd41d75ad26df9f677947736378fee6e9e6bdea39ae580d95ac2edeca384} populist and eurosceptic EU parliament, which could gum up the works in EU parliamentary committee. This would be a higher percentage if Britain returns MEPs to Strasbourg due to a long Article 50 extension. It doesn’t seem likely that any Withdrawal Agreement that would be approved by the EU parliament in such circumstances would bear much resemblance to that currently on the table. Most of the British MEP’s would vote against any agreement to preserve Britain’s independence via “No Deal”.

It is also worth noting that Republic of Ireland opinion polls show 80{13f7cd41d75ad26df9f677947736378fee6e9e6bdea39ae580d95ac2edeca384} for Prime Minister Varadkar taking a hard line against Westminster. The Belgian Prime Minister has also voiced a preference for the certainty of “No Deal” today rather than reopening the Withdrawal Agreement.

On the other hand, Italy has a £10bn trade surplus with Britain, mostly in agriculture, which it is desperate to avoid losing. They lost the Russian market to the Turks and Russian domestic product substitution and know that they aren’t going to get it back. British Mozzarella has been rated by Italian chefs as being on a par with their own product, but currently can’t compete because of EU localisation rules, so losing the British market would likely also be permanent. Therefore the Italians are proposing a bilateral deal, bypassing the EU. Whether such a thing would actually happen remains to be seen, but it does indicate considerable concern.

Many countries have voiced pro-British views, but it is notable that all have unanimously approved the EU’s negotiating guidelines of 28 March 2017, which we could never accept. That was the moment when I first said there would be no deal. All subsequent decisions by the EU Council of ministers (heads of member state governments) have also been unanimous. So, frankly, we’re not placing any store by favourable remarks from EU member governments or politicians.

So to summarise, I can’t see a delay of 3, 9 or 21 months producing a deal, and therefore any delay seems unlikely to be granted. The arithmetic at Westminster hasn’t significantly changed. So we’re going to be out on 29 March with the “No Deal” necessary to recover our independence.

I certainly hope that he is right. There is no question that No Deal is much better than any deal that will win the approval of the Eurocrats.

You don’t have to be completely ignorant to be a Jordan Peterson fan. But it obviously helps. A lot. A discussion of the importance of evil and how the recognition of evil tends to lead the rational man in the direction of good and God.

The recognition of evil thing is all over Christian works

Nope. This is a very specific argument, it’s nuance, it’s direction and flow, was not at all common, or all-over, before Peterson’s rise to prominence. Its entire nuance is directed at modern materialist atheists, moral relativists, and nihilsm. The flow generally describes how the acceptance of true evil requires “something more” “beyond rationality”. It describes how the recognition of evil can help get someone closer to accepting metaphysical moral framework. Then ultimately intimates how you might be able to logically go from an acceptance of metaphysical Evil to metaphysical Good to metaphysical God.

I highly doubt you will find that on copies of that detailed argument on the cover of the watchtower. There’s likely somewhat similar arguments have been made somewhere at some time, but that is beside the point. Peterson made this largely unique and detailed argument and it was not common or mainstream before that. Vox’s whole flow and direction of the argument is directly analogous to Peterson’s… Further, Peterson isn’t the one claiming its “his” argument. Vox and Owen are.

I’ll eat crow if you can find Vox making this argument before Peterson blew up with Bill C-16.

First, Jordan Peterson is totally incapable of producing any ideas that are both a) new and b) coherent. I grant that he is observably able to produce hitherto unknown incoherencies that have never been bafflegarbled before.

Second, I recommend that the gentleman try Tapatío on his crow.

• Letter to Common Sense Atheism I 
• Letter to Commen Sense Atheism II

They are hardly the only references to my Argument from Evil that can be found on this blog or in my books, but they should suffice to demonstrate that Jordan Peterson is not, has never been, and will never be, any sort of intellectual influence on me.

And concomitant condemnation of globalist imperialism by an Australian minister:

There is a wide spread antagonism towards nationalism in the modern Western world today. We see this especially present in the mainstream media. Often those who describe themselves as nationalists are spoken about as though they are racists or at the very least xenophobic. To be fair some who call themselves nationalists are also racists and xenophobic, but nationalism and racism are not synonyms. Even in the Church, whether Protestant or non-Protestant, nationalism is often spoken about in suspicious tones. The accepted biblical stance is that nationalistic pride is antithetical to the Christian faith, and therefore many pastors and theologians will steer their people away from thinking in nationalistic terms.

But nationalism isn’t antithetical to Christian faith, and it definitely is not in opposition to Biblical teaching.

Biblically, nationalism is something that God gave the world as a gift to protect it from globalism, which is really just imperialism dressed up in modern clothing. Those who know their Bible well will know I am referring to the Tower of Babel. In this biblical account God is concerned about the evil that humanity can fulfil while they are unified as one people. “And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is on the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them. Come let us go down and confuse their language, so that they might not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:6-7). In his mercy God dispersed the people into nations, different groups of people, to limit their ability to commit evil.

We tend to think of humanity uniting together to be a base line good thing, a united humanity brings to mind for many the world of Star Trek, a utopian war free almost heaven like existence. But really everything depends on why humanity unites.

The scriptures teach that humanity is sinful, and that people want power; no one, atheist, Muslim, Jew, or Buddhist, or whatever, will disagree with these two facts: that humanity is sinful (imperfect) and desires after power. The tower of Babel is an episode where all of humanity united together to seek to lift themselves up to be as great as the gods. This is what it means when it says they wanted to make a name for themselves. Think of every conquering emperor, or would be emperor, in history, what was his goal? To increase power and to make a name for himself. From Nebuchadnezzar, to Alexander the Great, to Napoleon to Hitler, all of these men and more sought to subject multiple nations into their empires, to extend their power over people, and in doing so they all did great evil.

So what did God do to limit empire? He confused the language of the peoples and split them up into nations. On our own, humans can achieve evil. Together we can achieve much evil. We can at times achieve some good things, but if you look across the history of empire, you will see many evils committed in its name.

Nationalism is Christian. Imperialism, particularly in its globalist form, is openly and avowedly hostile to God and is intrinsically satanic. It doesn’t get much more clear than that.

In response to last night’s Darkstream on the inevitable failure of conservatism, a Voxiversity supporter observes that the duty of the immigrant to refrain from interfering in the affairs of his new residence dates back to the days of ancient Rome.

I’ve been reading Quintus Curtius’ translation of Cicero’s On Duties.  Cicero devotes just one sentence to the duties of foreigners, and he gets right to the heart of the matter: “But the business of the foreigner or the foreign-resident of a country is to keep to his own concerns; he has no reason to probe into things beyond this and by no means should inject himself into the affairs of his host nation.”

The significance of this wise advice can be seen in way that the failure of the United States to impose this duty of non-interference in its affairs on its foreign residents, particularly the Jewish and Irish immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries, has proven fatal to both its place in the world and its future prospects.

A failure to learn from the past is a near-guarantee of failure in the future. Imagine how much better off the American people would be if those it permitted to immigrate had simply refrained from injecting themselves into the affairs of their host nation.

Not being an expert in the unwritten British constitution, I have no idea if what this emailer writes is actually true or not, but it would certainly be a good thing if it were true that the Queen’s apparent willingness to Refuse Assent to legislation if necessary has guaranteed no-deal Brexit despite the machinations of pro-Remain parliamentarians.

The Brexit ‘No Deal’ (a clean break from the EU) was cemented yesterday, but almost no one has noticed.

The existence of the monarchy is often simply considered to be a quaint tourist attraction, but it has real constitutional consequences. Sovereignty is often said to reside in Parliament, but that is intellectual laziness. The sovereignty of the United Kingdom resides in “the Crown in Parliament”.

There is not US-style separation of powers in Britain. The supreme judicial function used to reside with the Law Lords sitting on the wool sack, who would sit in the House of Lords alongside all the other hereditary and non-hereditary aristocracy. The analogous position would be for Roberts, Ginsberg, Kavanaugh et al to be sitting senators with a vote on legislation in addition to being judges ruling on cases brought before them regarding that legislation. The Law Lords were replaced with a Supreme Court by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who also excluded the hereditary aristocracy.

The hereditary aristocracy functioned to represent interests in a similar way to US senators prior to the 17th amendment. By allowing only the non-hereditary aristocracy to vote in the House of Lords, Blair turned the chamber into a pension system for failed elected politicians and government flunkies that carried water for the establishment. Imagine Lord Eric Cantor, Lord John Boehner, Lord Paul Ryan, Lord Eric Holder, Lady Lois Lerner, and the future Lord Robert Mueller being appointed senators for life after they had been removed from their previous positions. Fortunately, the Parliament Act of 1949 precludes the House of Lords from preventing the passage of budget legislation and also enables the House of Commons to force the passage of legislation in support of the official manifesto upon which the governing party was elected.

There is no Marbury v. Madison (1803), so the UK Supreme Court cannot strike down primary legislation in judicial decisions. But they can declare primary legislation incompatible with the Human Rights Act of 1998. We have our own Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Lady Hale is the Chief Justice.

The British constitution worked much better in its traditional configuration: Law Lords on the wool sack, hereditary aristocracy voting on legislation, and generally with the way things worked prior to 1997. A huge amount of damage was done by Blair. It is worth noting that Blair’s landslide victories (1997, 2001, 2005) were achieved with less votes from the population than Kinnock’s defeats (1987, 1992). This is because Conservative voters simply stayed home because the party gave them nothing to vote for.

Remember that the Conservative party had replaced Thatcher with Major to enable the Maastricht treaty, but so close to the general election that the impact hadn’t sunk in yet and the Conservative voters were prepared to give Major the benefit of the doubt. Those voters came back in 2015 to ensure that Cameron couldn’t negotiate away his promise to hold a Brexit referendum. Also, this week, Donald Tusk confirmed my assertions last week that David Cameron only made the promise with the idea that he could dispense with it in coalition negotiations with the Liberal Democrats. We voters have played our hand very carefully. These are not accidents or momentary rushes of blood to the head.

Her Majesty’s Government controls the legislative agenda through the Leader of the House in conjunction with the Speaker of the House. The Leader of the House is a cabinet minister, currently Andrea Leadsom, a Brexiteer and Theresa May’s last rival for the leadership in 2016 after Cameron resigned because he lost the referendum. Theresa May won by default because Leadsom withdrew when journalists started door-stepping her relatives. The final two leadership candidates are supposed to be put to the ordinary party membership around the country for a vote, a membership which is overwhelmingly Brexiteer, and whose most favoured outcome is a tungsten-tipped Brexit.

There was much talk last week of Conservative Remain members of parliament, in particular former ministers Nick Boles (junior minister under Cameron) and Dominic Grieve (attorney general under Cameron) taking control of the legislative agenda despite the fact that the agenda is at the control of the Government under Royal Prerogative. This would be subverting the authority of the Crown by removing the right to set the agenda from the Leader of the House.

Seizing control of the legislative agenda, for the purposes of preventing a ‘no deal’ Brexit, would require the assent of the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. When he was first elected to that position, he was described as Caligula’s Horse, and has lived down to that description throughout his tenure. Bercow is a Remain supporter.

On Monday, Sir Stephen Laws, the government’s retired head of constitutional law, warned that the usurpation of the legislative agenda from the Government of the Crown could necessitate the refusal of Royal Assent for the first time since the reign of Queen Anne, a time before the Act of Union with Scotland, more than 300 years ago. This is where you get the concept of a Presidential veto from. However, there is no parliamentary override vote. Having the warning issued by Sir Stephen was a discreet way of warning the Speaker, analogously to having a former Chief of the Defence Staff speak to the press to warn politicians of things that a serving military officer cannot say.

Because Monday’s warning was clearly insufficient to deter the Speaker from the proposed usurpation of the legislative agenda, it was repeated on Tuesday by a spokesman of Her Majesty’s Government. That seems to have had the effect, because all of the amendments presented to the Speaker by the members of parliament yesterday are amendments to motions, not amendments to legislation. In other words, they are merely opportunities for meaningless bloviating with no force of law. This avoids the Queen having to refuse Royal Assent to legislation.

If Parliament had attempted to hold an override vote, then it is likely that the troops that are normally seen by the tourists in full ceremonial uniforms would have been sent directly to the chamber of the Commons to arrest the speaker, seize the mace (the legal authority of parliament), and throw the offenders in the Tower of London (that’s what it’s there for). The Queen would then have prorogued parliament pending fresh elections. The last time such things happened, there was a civil war of Parliament against the King. The King lost his head in Whitehall, and Parliament made such a mess of things that his son was invited to restore the monarchy. Charles the First had been particularly feckless, which must have been surprising because his father, James the First had been one of our best monarchs.

It is worth noting that the Queen allowed herself to be caught on an open microphone during her robing in the Victoria Tower for the State Opening of Parliament, prior to the referendum, voicing her support for Brexit. That didn’t happen by accident. The Victoria Tower is where all the Acts of Parliament are all held on vellum scrolls.

So, the position now is that the House of Commons will not manage to pass any legislation to change the already legislated default position of ‘no deal’ with the EU. On the matter of Brexit, we have crushed our enemies, seen them driven before us, and what we are now hearing is the lamentation of their women.

What will happen now is that Theresa May will consult with absolutely everyone in an alleged effort to put together some type of workable deal. This is simply a displacement activity, like a hamster washing itself when threatened. The consultations will assume an ever more feverish intensity the closer we get to 29 March. But the fact is that the alignment of interests of all groups involved in Brexit is such that no coherent position can be established for a deal to be made. She is now, as some have alleged, simply running down the clock to ‘no deal’. But of course that this is now government policy must be denied to the last breath.