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An evening with Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin

January 23, 2019 by Bookworm Leave a Comment

Jordan Peterson continues to delight for he eschews trite pop culture and politics and, instead, speaks about deep truths that go to the human condition.

I have wonderful friends. So wonderful that one of them invited me to join her and her family to see Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin last night. It was a delightful evening from start to finish. I could tell you all about the enjoyable conversations in the car (lots of driving), but I won’t. Instead, let me tell you about the main event.

As some of you may recall, I attended a Rubin/Peterson evening in San Francisco last year, so I knew the general outlines of what was to come. I knew that the crowd would be large (the auditorium was filled); that I would see a broad spectrum of people, covering all ages (including teens), races, and sexual orientations; that Dave Rubin would be witty, charming, and accessible (there’s a deep sweetness to that man); and that Jordan Peterson would be intellectually dazzling. The evening met each of those expectations.

As before, Rubin opened the show with some light humor and with an homage to the Intellectual Dark Web, which sees intelligent people of good will, and markedly different beliefs, come together to celebrate true intellectual diversity and free speech. Then he introduced Peterson. The crowd, predictably, went wild.

Peterson takes the stage almost hesitantly. He has no script and no shtick. Instead, he pauses to ruminate a bit and then, drawing from his capacious brain, announces that he thinks he’ll start the talk by looking at the centuries’ long struggle between science and religion. He speaks hesitantly at first. There are long pauses during which he plays an invisible piano while he gathers his thoughts.

For the first ten minutes or so, it’s easy to believe that, after last year’s grueling schedule (100 touring days, more than 100 talks), Peterson has burned out. Then, he slowly starts gathering speed. The words come faster, the literary, psychological, sociological, and scientific data flows in an unending stream of fascinating data. As he gains momentum, Peterson balances the data and in-depth analysis with merely funny asides, which he follows with profoundly funny asides and conclusions. [Read more…]

Is Jordan Peterson the avatar of a 21st century Great Awakening?

May 10, 2018 by Bookworm Leave a Comment

The Jordan Peterson event I attended was a “happening” that made me think Americans are craving a spiritual Great Awakening that will bind us as a nation.

For some time now I have had running through my brain the thought that America needs a Great Awakening along the lines of the First Great Awakening in 1730s and 1740s. Large segments of America are suffering from spiritual malaise.

America’s inner cities are in a state of despair and disrepair, plagued by high crime, high poverty, missing fathers, and a general sense of apocalyptic failure. The inner cities, though, are only the most visible symptom of a nationwide disease of the soul.

In small cities across America’s heartland, people who watched their jobs vanish, their communities disintegrate, and their status as worthwhile individuals dribble away have turned to drink and drugs. Once shiny little town are now squalid ghettos.

Although they are dressed better and have more money, many of America’s youth show the same signs of moral and spiritual decay. Both males and white people are told that they are inherently evil, making redemption impossible. Across the spectrum of genders, colors, and socio-economic status, young people are relentlessly indoctrinated into believing that their country is a greedy, oppressive place, guilty of sins past and present, and that the world is facing an apocalyptic ending as boiling seas rise and inundate parched land.

This darkness in the American soul is the inevitable end point of 50 years of cultural Marxism pounding relentlessly away in all of our institutions. We’re currently in free-fall mode, but the bottom is getting rapidly closer — and if you want to get a glimpse into this bottom, look to Europe, which is years ahead of us when it comes to surrendering its institutions over to the cultural Marxists.

England, which gave us the ideas of individual liberty and free speech has become an Orwellian nation in which speech is tightly policed, honest citizens are disarmed (and “disknifed,” although the acid still flows freely), the borders are opened to people whose values are antithetical to traditional British notions about freedom, and the cultural institutions have allied themselves with the most oppressive ideologies, whether Islam or Marxism.

England is not alone, although it’s the most interesting to watch given that our Bill of Rights is a direct descendant of England’s 1689 Bill of Rights. The cultural Marxist claim that western civilization is inherently flawed thanks to colonialism, racism, and sexism (all of which are the poisonous fruit of the Judeo-Christian tradition), has battered Western European nations into a suicidal level of intellectual submission.

The European ruling classes believe that their nations can redeem themselves only through catastrophically destructive immigration policies. This same ruling class also believes that, when the knives flash and the blood flows, no matter the carnage on the streets, the leaders will be protected behind the high walls they’ve erected for themselves in their mansions and elite enclaves. They’re wrong, of course, but that false sense of security is what allows them to use their people as a human sacrifice on the altar of cultural Marxism.

Keep in mind that we in America know that immigration is not inherently bad. For centuries, we successfully invited into our country people who valued our institutions and wanted to assimilate so that they could experience all the blessings a free citizenry can enjoy.

Today, though, both at home and abroad, too many new immigrants have a different attitude. Many have been infected with Marxism, so they seek Western benefits without contributing to Western weal. Especially in Europe, many immigrants are coming as conquerors, not seekers. The millions who are flooding that continent, whether legally or illegally, despise the very culture that is welcoming them and intend to destroy it. Talk about using fire to purify past sins.

Having had 50 years to wreak havoc on the Western tradition, the cultural Marxists are very close to bringing our institutions to dangerous tipping points. Now that our systems face imminent collapse, we do not have 50 years to fix the problem. We need to fix it now. [Read more…]

Like Thomas Sowell, it was life facts that made me conservative

April 20, 2018 by Bookworm 1 Comment

Thomas Sowell telling said that facts — real world, life facts — ended his Marxist phase. I’ve compiled a list of life facts that made me conservative.

Dave Rubin interviewed Thomas Sowell, who has a new book out called Discrimination and Disparities. I will get myself a copy as soon as I’m finished with Dennis Prager’s The Rational Bible: Exodus. Reading the latter, incidentally, makes me want to me a more moral and just person.

I’ve been listening to the Sowell interview over the past couple of days while I cook and do other household chores. You can find it as a Dave Rubin podcast or watch the YouTube video. Sowell may be in his very high 80s, but he is totally on the ball and well worth listening to. For this post, though, I’d like to focus on a single, short exchange he and Rubin had, in which Sowell mentioned that many of the most rigorous conservative economists, such as Friedman and Hayek, like Sowell himself, started off as Leftists — although Sowell was a Marxist, putting him at the extreme Left. Rubin, who also made a journey from Left to right, asked Sowell about his own journey. I’ve queued the video up at that point:

RUBIN: Do you remember sort of what you were thinking, what appealed to you at that time about Marxism?

SOWELL: Yes. I mean there was no alternative being discussed. My first job was as a Western Union messenger and I would come home. On some nights I would take the Fifth Avenue bus — which cost all of 15 cents in those days. But I figured I’d splurge now and then and I would drive. . . . It would go all the up Fifth Avenue, past all these Lord and Taylor and all these fancy places, and then it would across 57th Street past Carnegie Hall and down Riverside Drive. Now it’s sort of the Gold Coast area and then I came across this long viaduct and it turned into 135th Street. Suddenly there were the tenements and I wondered “Why is this?” I mean it’s so different. And then nothing in schools or most of the books seemed to deal with that and Marx dealt with that. So it’s like winning in an election when there’s only one person running.

RUBIN: So then what was your wake up to what was wrong with that line of thinking?

SOWELL: Facts.

RUBIN: Well. We could probably end the interview right there.

Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things. Listening to Sowell, I started thinking about the facts my years on earth have taught me, all of which have led me to my current conservative world view. Here are the ones I could think of off-hand. They are not in any particular order: [Read more…]

[VIDEO] Charlie Kirk on Rubin Report is must-see TV

February 17, 2018 by Bookworm 2 Comments

Charlie Kirk, who brings patriotism, free market ideology, and respect for individual liberty to American colleges, is a must-see guest on the Rubin Report.

Not quite two years ago, I had the tremendous privilege to meet Charlie Kirk when he came to speak to a speakers group in Marin. I wrote about him then, summarizing as best as I could the remarkable cascade of brilliant insights this 22-year-old was reeling off.

At the time, I opened my post by writing “Oh. My. God. Charlie is a human dynamo: incredible intelligence and moral decency wrapped up in pure energy and passion, presented through the medium of a riveting presence.” I concluded that same post by saying “If you have the chance to attend a Charlie Kirk speech — take it. He is a genuine phenomenon.”

Twenty-two is pretty young and a lot can happen to a 22-year-old in a short time. If you’re Charlie Kirk, you get better. That is, you raise a high bar and then easily vault over it to set new standards for intellectual honesty, intelligent analysis, and fluent discourse. Don’t believe me? Watch him speaking last month to Dave Rubin, of the Rubin Report:

It’s a long video (Rubin works in long form, so he can develop his guests’ ideas), and it’s worth watching in its entirety. Not only do Charlie and Dave expound on core American ideas and genuine intellectual diversity, they also discuss a quiet revolution taking place on America’s college campuses. [Read more…]

VIDEO: Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro on the Rubin Report

February 13, 2018 by Bookworm 13 Comments

If you want to experience an unusually scintillating 100 minutes, watch or listen to the Rubin Report with guests Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson.

I’ve finally accepted that I’ll never do martial arts again, I’ve decided to use walking my dog as my primary form of exercise. To stave off the boredom I feel doing any exercise that’s not martial arts, I’ve started listening to podcasts as I go. I started by subscribing to Dennis Prager, whom I love so much I pay for Pragertopia, just so I can ensure access to his moral clarity.

Once I got the hang of the podcast thing, though, I branched out. In addition to Dennis Prager, I also subscribe to:

I know there are many other excellent podcasts out there, but the ones I listed more than fill the previously deadly dull time I used to spend cooking, folding laundry, and walking the dog. As it is, I have to cherry-pick those podcasts that seem most appealing, because there’s no way I can listen to all of them.

What I’ve been listening to for today’s iterations of household tasks is a podcast so good I have to share it with you. It’s the Rubin Report with Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro as guests, and it’s also available as a YouTube video: [Read more…]

Introducing Candace Owens (aka Red Pill Black), a young conservative

October 25, 2017 by Bookworm 15 Comments

While we old folk are focused on the MSM, Red Pill Black (aka Candace Owens) and other young people are spreading the conservative gospel via lively videos.

A few months ago, I wrote about some heartening information: There is a very large population of young conservatives in their twenties and thirties, who are invisible to older folks because their medium is videos, rather than the written word.

We older folk see Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Crowder, because they use the written word, but the energy is with these vloggers. As my young friend told me, they’re putting out videos that get hundreds of thousands of hits. Meanwhile, cable news thinks it’s a big thing when it gets a couple of million viewers each night (which is highest number Rachel Maddow has ever achieved on her best day).

One of the most charming and interesting conservative vloggers is Candace Owens, aka Red Pill Black, a young black woman who is funny, thoughtful, and very, very interesting. No wonder, then, that Owens has 147,000 subscribers — and that subscriber list came about as a result of only 14 videos to date.

Think about that: With almost no overhead, and a fairly limited inventory, Owens has 147,000 people who want to hear her talk on important subjects both delighting and vexing Americans today. Moreover, if you check out the Red Pill Black video line-up, you’ll see that between 250,000 and 500,000 people, on average, take the time to listen to what Owens has to say. WOW! I would kill to have even a small percentage of her audience. Rachel Maddow would probably kill for that too.

I’ve included in this post a few representative Red Pill Black videos, more of which can be found here: [Read more…]

[VIDEO] Finally recognizing Leftism is regressive, not progressive

February 6, 2017 by Bookworm 3 Comments

Prager U has another good video out, about those regressive Progressives. This video comes from Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report. He’s a one-time Progressive who finally figured out that Progressivism is yet another Orwellian misnomer from the Left. I agree completely and will only add (because if I don’t toot my own horn, who will?) that I figured this one out almost a decade ago.

Back in 2007, I followed a slightly different line of argument because the Progressives hadn’t reached their ascendancy under Obama yet. We hadn’t yet had attacks on nuns, the purification of radical Islam, triggers, microaggressions, and the insanity of the Trump era protests.

That is, the Progressives’ fascist, authoritarian conduct hadn’t yet come to the fore. In 2007, we were still addressing the world of ideas. That’s how it came about that, I argued that the Regressives were endlessly fighting battles that actually ended decades ago, battles such as abortion, race relations, unions, and anti-war stances — and that they could keep their troops excited and engaged only by telling lies about both the past and the present.

Anyway, here’s the Prager U video, which is very good. You might also want to check out my old American Thinker article about those Regressives. The battles have shifted, but the mentality remains the same:

[Read more…]