“Democracy is the worst form of government - apart from all those other forms that have been tried from time to time,” said Churchill.
How many Muslims must a democratic country absorb before democracy stops being the ‘least worst’ system? When voters who oppose democracy outnumber those who support it? Surely, then it will be democratically voted out. Can we just vote democracy out? If not, why not?
If- (when - not if! ) the majority of voting citizens are ideologically predisposed towards alternative systems, say, Socialism, Fascism, Fundamental Islamism, then surely the very qualities of democracy can only bring about its own demise. Bound to.
Demographics. Mass immigration. Then your precious democracy starts to look shaky. “Events dear boy, events,” said Harold Macmillan. Tipping point *Point Of No Return*.
That rant was brought to you by someone who doesn’t always stick to this blog’s specific remit. Me!
Similarly, the next item is also strictly off-topic. If you haven’t already, feel free to scroll past.
This is a conversation between Jordan Peterson and David Friedman, the US Ambassador to Israel during the Donald Trump era. I’m putting it here because Friedman sets the scene with remarkable clarity and without digressing or going into too much detail. No rabbit holes
I am not an avid follower of Prof Peterson - 'let’s say' it’s a curate’s egg type of thing. I’ll try not to digress or go into detail either, but his painstaking avoidance of imprecision can be distracting.Always inserting “let’s say” as if to hedge his bets and cover himself against possible misinterpretation or misrepresentation must be a sort of insurance policy.
Would he take sides on this issue?Yes. It was good. Most of the commenters were pleasantly surprised, but naturally, some of them complained that “the other side” needed to be aired. Hmm!
While I'm waiting (anxiously, and with sweated brow) for Samira to reveal whether it's Roger Waters or David Coverdale or some other hard rock singer who's been complaining to the BBC about Arron Banks being 'platformed' on the Andrew Marr show, I'll just blurt out another thought (as you do on a Friday night, especially with some red wine at hand)...
I rarely ever watch it these days, but the prospect of Diane Abbott and Dr. Jordan Peterson appearing on the same programme was too much for me not to at least half-scan it.
Interestingly, this didn't turn out to be the pile-in-upon-the-extremist spectacular I expected (pace Nick Griffin). Far-left Diane was largely left alone.
As for Dr. Jordan Peterson, well, he got lots of applause - at least until the free speech question approached the Nazi-saluting pug video. He stood alone over that one, with a small fair bit of piling-in from his fellow panellists.
(I think he failed to explain his position properly on the specifics here but was sound on the general issue).
Here, for the record, was David Dimbleby's intro:
With me tonight: Kwasi Kwarteng, part of the Treasury team under Philip Hammond, a Brexiteer, he won't like me saying this, seen by some as a future leader of the Tory party; Diane Abbott, Shadow Home Secretary and MP for more than 30 years, one of Jeremy Corbyn's closest advisers; Mairead McGuinness, the first Vice President of the European Parliament since 2017, she has been in that job, MEP for the Irish Fine Gael party since 2004; David Aaronovitch, writer, broadcaster, columnist for the Times newspaper, and the Canadian psychologist whose self-help book has sold 2 million copies and whose speaking tour excites controversy wherever he goes, Jordan Peterson.
Quite an introduction for the Canadian professor there!
Anyhow David, Jordan Peterson didn't "excite controversy" last night.
Will the team behind Question Time be disappointed by that? Were there too few sparks flying for them?
Yesterday During QT, whilst announcing the list of panelists for the next programme Dimbleby, with the usual dimbebyesque smirk described Jordan Peterson as the Professor of piffle. Of course he qualified it with standard BBC “some say”, but I have never in all the years I have watched QT heard a guest disrespected in such a blatant manner. I am by no means an uncritical supporter of Peterson. I agree with a lot of what he has to say, but certainly not all. I also find the cultish nature of his following a bit disturbing, but from the BBC this is beneath unprofessional. Who does Dimbleby think he is? He is not even a proper journalist.
And here are the very words of David Dimbleby:
Next Thursday we're going to be in Dulwich in south London, and there we're going to be joined by a man who's been described as "the most influential public intellectual in the Western world" and equally as a "Professor of piffle" [small ripple of audience laughter] - the campaigner against political correctness, Jordan Peterson.
And here he is smirking during that 'small ripple of audience laughter':
Damian Counsell: Jordan Peterson writes some daft things, but they're far less batshit than much written by non-scientific academics. Also unlike them, *millions* of people not only read what he has to say, but act on it. No wonder he infuriates them. Ditto why he infuriates journalists. Including some otherwise-sensible ones. One I admire declared Peterson a "maniac" on the strength of a video of the man expressing enthusiasm for his faddish meat-based diet. Won't somebody call the Perspective Police? Kit Marsden: I honestly despise the expression 'giving [x] a platform'… Damian Counsell: Yup. It just means "Get someone I disagree with off my telly!". If more TV interviewers did their bloody homework and spent more of their downtime with smart people who disagreed with their politics, then they'd fare better when interrogating populists.
Regular readers of ITBB will have read Douglas Murray’s piece in the Spectator “Beware the modern-day heretic hunters”, and very likely they will also have read Sarah AB’s post on H.P. and viewed the video and listened to the secretly recorded audio from “that interview” .
This is about the latest kind of denial. Gender-denial, as espoused by a Canadian uni professor, described by one viewer of the YouTube video as a “bald something-year-old Canadian (who) sounds like a 19-year old girl from California”.
Gender denial is an extreme interpretation of the non-binary, non-gender-specific politically correct pronoun-related dictum. Thou shalt not offend the trans.
Following this dictum to its (il)logical conclusion requires total deconstruction of the conventional structure of language. It requires you to use the plural for the singular, as in 'they / their' instead of the potentially offensive 'he / she' or 'his / hers'.
It also threatens all those languages that ‘gender define’ inanimate objects. No more 'le' and 'la', no more gender specific word endings. Come to think of it - life could be a lot easier. No more need for non essential ante-natal scans, for a start. Is it a boy or a girl? Who cares. It’s a they. And feminism, poof! All gone. No more gender quotas. No more all-wimmin shortlists. Bye now, all you socially constrictive constructs that are put there to trip people up.
Do listen to the video and the audio if you’ve got a spare hour or three.
I might have mentioned this before, but some of our oldest, most established utility companies have already transitioned by stealth from relative sanity to gender-fluid pronoun madness. “Your engineer Neil is on their way”.
May I just say that the clip from Canada’s “The Agenda with Steve Palkin” above is utterly bonkers.
To a Brit like yours truly Canadians speak like Americans, apart from the pronunciation of “ou” as “oo”. Everything’s fine until “about” suddenly becomes “aboot". Then you get the giggles, which interferes with the gravity of the debate and lends a slightly hysterical aspect to it.
Professor Jordan Peterson, who has been cruelly labelled ‘alt-right’ by the new order, seems to be the only sane person present, but he undermines the purity of his eloquence a teeny bit by the nuclear-level fury that he is obviously struggling to keep a lid on. (And who wouldn’t be?)
The only other contributor who had some sensible observations to make, a convincing-looking trans, (man-to-lady) all but obliterated her argument with seductive eyelash flutterings and a very distracting palette of simpering, sexually-suggestive lip-pursing gymnastics.
The rest of the debate was almost other-worldly, I thought.
However there is a side, vis-a-vis no-platforming, that needs to be taken very seriously. One way of approaching this question is to cite prime examples of candidates that deserve, indisputably, to be no-platformed, and discuss. Bringing up topics (or people) that are deemed beyond the pale - Hitler being the most obvious one - immediately shows that it all boils down to a matter of opinion. One man’s terrorist etc etc. We didn’t like it much when the Labour Party fringe debated “The Holocaust, yes or no”? It seemed utterly offensive and beyond the pale.
Would anyone bother getting worked up about a debate called “Flat Earth, yes or no?”
No, because they’d be confident of a reasonable outcome for the simple reason that the foolishness therein would speak for itself.
But these days, we can’t rely on any such thing.
One little thing that surprised me was that the BBC actually reported the undercover recording incident etc. on their 'US and Canada' page. (It has now been displaced.) I didn't expect to find anything, but...
“A Canadian university is being accused of stifling free speech after it scolded a teaching assistant for airing a debate on gender-neutral pronouns. Wilfrid Laurier University chastised Lindsay Shepherd for showing her class a televised debate featuring Jordan Peterson, a transgender-rights critic. Mr Peterson has gained fame online with the alt-right for slamming "PC culture" and the use of gender-neutral pronouns. Many in academia have rallied behind Ms Shepherd and criticised the school.”
....I shouldn’t have been surprised at all, as the BBC is ideologically pro trans. The report is brief but fairly accurate, apart from the dodgy bit about the 'alt-right'. (Should the BBC use such elastic terms without including the customary scare quotes ?) Interestingly, it refers to her as "Ms Shepherd" throughout.
What did surprise me was Sarah AB’s rather pompous criticism of Douglas Murray. I thought he was spot on.
