Category Archives: Jordan Peterson

Theres no doubt that federal student loan programs were created with good intentions. Advocates wanted to help more young Americans pursue a college education and achieve social mobility. But the unintended consequences of short-sighted federal intervention into the higher education market are growing ever more apparent by the day.

Ample research already documents the way that federal subsidization of student loans has led to rampant tuition price inflation.

Per CNBC, private colleges have seen 129 percent price inflation since 1988 in inflation-adjusted dollars. At public colleges, prices have more than doubled over the same period. By handing out student loans like candy on Halloween, the federal government artificially inflated demandthus encouraging and enabling tuition hikes.

For instance, research published by the New York Federal Reserve found that every dollar the government gave out in subsidized loans led to a 60 cent rise in tuition rates. And a Harvard study comparing higher education programs that accepted federal aid to those that did not found that tuition at aid-accepting programs grew much faster.

But new reporting reveals another giant problem plaguing the federal student loan regime. The Wall Street Journal reports that the government is set to lose nearly half a trillion in taxpayer dollars from student loans that wont be repaid. This gaping hole in the budget is nearly as much as banks lost from subprime mortgages in the 2008 financial crisis.

The Education Department, with the help of two private consultants, looked at $1.37 trillion in student loans held by the government at the start of the year, the Journal reports. "Their conclusion: Borrowers will pay back $935 billion in principal and interest. That would leave taxpayers on the hook for $435 billion.

After decades of no-questions-asked lending, the government is realizing that it has a pile of toxic debt on its books, the report continues. The government lends more than $100 billion each year to students to cover tuition at more than 6,000 colleges and universities. It ignores factors such as credit scores and field of study, and it doesnt analyze whether students will earn enough after graduating to cover their debt.

Think about it like this. In the free market, banks do their best to ensure they lend money to prospective borrowers likely to repay the loan, yielding a net positive return on their investment. Banks that do this successfully stay in business, while those who repeatedly misjudge their borrowers go bust.

As the Journals Josh Mitchell explains, Since the financial crisis, private lenders typically originate loans only to borrowers with clean credit and require cosigners, and default rates are far lower than on federal loans.

Government student loan programs simply have none of the right incentives. Economic analysts from across the political perspective have noted this reality.

Theres no market discipline here, former Obama official Constantine Yannelis told the Journal. In 2007-2008, we saw a lot of lenders who were making risky bets going under. Theres no force like that in the student-loan market.

We make no attempt to evaluate the quality of the borrower, the ability to repay, the effectiveness of the loans, American Action Forum president and right-leaning economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin noted. The taxpayer ends up picking up the tab.

And its going to be quite the bomb in the federal budget when the loan program implodes. Taxpayers like you and me are going to be stuck with the $435 billion bill for the federal government's reckless financial decisions. To put this figure in context, its roughly $3,000 out of the pocket of every federal taxpayer.

This is just the impending financial burden of the status quo. It does not take into account various proposals to cancel student debt, all of which would further increase the burden taxpayers will have to pick up.

Theres a clear lesson we can take away from this dysfunctional outcome. Government programs and initiatives will always lack the profit motive that drives efficiency in the private sector. The lack of market forces will inevitably lead to waste and reckless spending.

Economist Ludwig von Mises wrote about this phenomenon in his work Bureaucracy.

A bureaucracy is missing the feedback so essential to capitalist success, Sheldon Richman wrote in summary of Misess argument. It gets its revenue not through the free choices of consumers, but rather from coerced taxpayers who must pay for services whether they use them or not, or like them or not.

As a result, a bureaucracy has no need to please consumers and faces no profit-and-loss test, he continued. It cannot calculate as a business can.

Misess warning is timeless, and it applies here perfectly. The implosion of the federal student loan program does offer yet another reminder why bureaucratic government interventions are always less efficient than free markets.

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The Government's Reckless Student Lending is Creating a Budget Hole Akin to the 2008 Crisis, New Analysis Shows | Brad Polumbo - Foundation for...

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The world was on this brink of this fiery hell when Jordan Peterson read Solzhenitsyn and began to turn from despair toward hope.

It was Solzhenitsyn who most crucially made the case that the terrible excesses of Communism could not be conveniently blamed on the corruption of the Soviet leadership, the cult of personality surrounding Stalin, or the failure to put the otherwise stellar and admirable utopian principles of Marxism into proper practice. It was Solzhenitsyn who demonstrated that the death of millions and the devastation of many more were, instead, a direct causal consequence of the philosophy (worse, perhaps: the theology) driving the Communist system. The hypothetically egalitarian, universalist doctrines of Karl Marx contained hidden within them sufficient hatred, resentment, envy and denial of individual culpability and responsibility to produce nothing but poison and death when manifested in the world

An excerpt from Jordan Petersons foreword to the 50th Anniversary edition of Solzhenitsyns The Gulag Archipelago

Make no mistake, thems fightin words. This fierce sermon about the gospel written by one of mankinds greatest uncanonized saints, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, was an impetus for naming my biography of Dr. Peterson Savage Messiah. Under the guise of a mild-mannered college professor, Peterson preached the scripture of the prophets: bloody, accusatory, inflammatory, unflinching writings revolting to non-believers but manna to the faithful.

In Solzhenitsyn, Peterson found an eyewitness to the prophecy that hell on earth would reign in the 20th century as prophesied by Friedrich Nietzsche, another tormented and unsung saint of the Peterson catechism. When Nietzsche proclaimed God is Dead in 1882, he actually wrote:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us. What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

Nietzsche was not gloating over the death of God as so many atheists celebrated. It was a warning, a curse. His vision accurately foreshadowed the coming 20th centurys depravities of Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Nazism, fascism, nihilism, world wars, race wars, mustard gas, Zyklon B, race lynchings, killing fields, concentration camps and gulags. All of them were creations of the 20th century when hate flourished, when haters found a place to hang their hate. Solzhenitsyn suffered through some of them personally. He survived to see all of them happen in his lifetime and refused to look away.

Solzhenitsyn eventually found solace and redemption in Christianity. He took crucified humanity down from its cross, laid it in a proper grave and carved its headstone. He identified the source of evil for a new generation and proclaimed it as the evil that runs through every human heart. For Nietzsche, the Enlightenment had killed God, supplanting his grace and wisdom with human pride and arrogance. Solzhenitsyn personally paid the price for this.

In Solzhenitsyns footsteps, young Jordan Peterson found the path that led away from the coming, ultimate human folly of the 20th century: mutually assured destruction, nuclear global annihilation. This pinnacle of fatal human arrogance finally revealed that hell was, indeed, now on earthand even admitted in its name that insanity was now official policy.

This terror had tormented young Peterson since grade school in the 1970s. He suffered nightmares of charred bodies, ravenous dogs, and a vaporized world of eternal winter. In 1974, Solzhenitsyns The Gulag Archipelago was published in the West. It had already been circulated hand-to-hand in secret, mimeographed copies, a death warrant if discovered. It corroded the foundations of the tottering Marxist Soviet Union with every new pair of hands that touched it. Eventually, it was instrumental in collapsing the Evil Empire. And like the prophet Jeremiahs Old Testament Book of Lamentations, it showed how Gods people had forsaken him, how they now worshipped idols like Joseph Stalin, and how they were prepared to burn their children in an offering to Moloch, the idol of child sacrifice.

The world was on this brink of this fiery hell when Jordan Peterson read Solzhenitsyn and began to turn from despair toward hope. Peterson had found the true enemy. It was not Russia. It was the inherent evil that ran through every human heart, as Solzhenitsyn said. With the help of Solzhenitsyn, Nietzsche, Carl Jung, child psychologist Jean Piaget and many others, Peterson began to crack the code that revealed the enemys strategy.

Stepping back from his own brink of hellish insanity, Peterson committed his life to healing human hearts and minds that had become infected with evil. He became a psychologist and social scientist. As he grew in his experience with severely mentally ill patients, he found ways of strengthening them against the many types of purposeful and random evil in the world. To university students, he began to teach what he had learned from these great prophets of the human struggle. He started with the ancient archetypes of good and evil that populated mankinds collective unconscious discovered by Carl Jung.

Then, following Solzhenitsyn more closely, Peterson began to use the Jewish and Christian Bible as the library of archetypes from our collective unconscious. He began at the beginning with the Book of Genesis and the logos, the word of God that went out over the waters and created order from chaos. Then, in the Garden of Eden, he saw the warning against the tempting snake of moral corruption, the resulting arrogance before God and its product, the fall of mankind. But, unlike Solzhenitsyn, Peterson continued to maintain his distance from a personal belief in God. In summary, he has said that he did not yet feel he had the personal understanding to believe in God. He just could not accept that God existed based on faith alone. He had not resolved the mystery of God for himself. But he was close.

Perhaps it is the level of suffering that eventually drives one to his knees in submission, in pleading for guidance from God. One suspects that was the case with Solzhenitsyn. New revelations point to the possibility that Peterson may have recently suffered enough to again follow closely in the footsteps of Solzhenitsyn, this time into the mystery of God.

For the past year and some months, Peterson has suffered the horrendous side-effects from the long-term prescribed use of benzodiazepines. Common trade names for this drug began with Librium, later became Valium, then Xanax. Now, there are nearly 100 other names. It is one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the world and is considered to be a safe, minor tranquilizer. Yet, prescribed benzodiazepines might also be consideredas in Petersons own casean example of the random, inexplicable malevolence of life, like natural disasters, that stalk human beings along with human-generated evil.

Peterson has recently announced on YouTube that he is sufficiently healthy now to return to public life. In that video, he speaks of Gods grace and mercy that allowed him to survive and regain most of his mental and physical abilities. Again, we see that Solzhenitsyn may have been pivotal in leading Peterson away from madness and self-destruction, first as a young man rescued from nihilism and despair in the contemplation of nuclear holocaust and now as a grandfather redeemed from soul-destroying drug addiction.

As was noted at the beginning of this piece, Peterson wrote the foreword to the 50th anniversary authorized and abridged version of The Gulag Archipelago. As perhaps a testament to Petersons lifelong commitment to teaching the text and principles of Solzhenitsyns masterpiece, he received, the greatest honor of my life in being invited to write the foreword. It seems like the evil that runs through every human heart has mysteriously bound these two great minds together. What they have witnessed individuallyfrom the corrupted morality in human evil to the random malevolence extant in the world at-largehas brought them together in their private ways before God. May God and every human heart bless and cherish their lives, their memory, and our future together, thanks in part to them.

Jim Proseris the author of Savage Messiah: How Dr. Jordan Peterson Is Saving Western Civilization and No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy: The Life of General James Mattis.

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Jordan Peterson and the Return of Solzhenitsyn - Merion West

In a new video released late Monday, renowned author, professor, and clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson announced his return home after months of touch and go treatment, and gave some hints as to what work he is planning next.

I wanted to tell you Im back in Toronto. Im in much better health, though I am still severely impaired, the professor said in the eight-minute video. With Gods grace and mercy, Ill be able to start generating original material again, and pick up where I left off.

The video discusses in personal terms the difficulties the professor has experienced over the last year. According to the video, and prior interviews with his family members, Peterson developed a physical dependence on a benzodiazepine prescribed to him in 2017 as an anti-anxiety medication. The issues worsened after his wife of 30 years, Tammy, was diagnosed with a severe case of cancer. While Tammy did recover, her husbands condition worsened.

Thats put me in and out of hospitals for much of the last year, in Connecticut in the United States, in Toronto in Canada, in Moscow in Russia, and in Belgrade, Serbia as my family searched for specialists who could aid me in the severe, post-use withdrawal and neurological-damage related consequences of both the benzodiazepines use and its cessation.

Peterson also spoke of the people who helped him through the ordeal.

Ive learned some things during that trying time, I suppose. I can tell you what kept me going, during what was certainly the worst period of my life: family, thats for sure. Friends. And the work that I was able to continue doing.

The psychologist went on to describe some of work he has been doing while recovering, and what hell be writing on in the coming months. This included discussion of a previously unmentioned book he has been creating, although he declined to give any details on the works subject matter yet.

Peterson also discussed two new video series he plans on releasing about the Bible, following up on his popular 2017 series of video essays on the the book of Genesis. The original series, which is more than 30 hours long, has accumulated around 30 million views on YouTube since publication.

Im going to start working on the next book, in the Old Testament, which is Exodus, which will take a while, but in the interim Im going to start producing vidoes on the Book of Proverbs, the book of wisdom, or a book of wisdom rather, he said. I think the analysis of those [proverbs], which can be done in a relatively short period of time, will prove of benefit to me and perhaps to those who are inclined to watch or listen to my analysis.

You can watch the Jordan Petersons full update here, and his previous lecture series here.

Jonah Gottschalk is an intern at the Federalist. He studies Modern History and International Relations at the University of St Andrews.

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Jordan Peterson Back Home, 'With God's Grace and Mercy' Resumes Life - The Federalist

By DAN FAGAN

Suzanne LaFrance sits on the Anchorage Assembly. She leans hard-left and enabled disgraced former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and his unprecedented tyrannical assault on the citys private sector.

Berkowitz, LaFrance, and several other power-drunk Assembly members left behind a wake of economic destruction with their unreasonable and punitive lockdown mandates.

The pain and hardship they caused are so deep and wide, they are difficult to measure.

Now, LaFrance wants to take her dismal record as an Assembly member and move on up to the Alaska Legislature. Shes running as a Democrat challenging James Kaufman, who beat the incumbent Jennifer Johnson in the Republican primary for District 28.

LaFrance obviously cant run on her record of economic carnage as an Assembly member, so shes attempting to reinvent herself as a conservative. Big Labor is sending out a mailer featuring LaFrance sandwiched between Congressman Don Young and U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan. The goal of the flyer is to trick the voter into believing LaFrance is ideologically aligned to the conservative Young and Sullivan. Nothing could be more untrue.

The flyer is an obvious attempt to deceive voters. LaFrance is playing her constituents for the fool.

Some may argue, Thats politics. All politicians lie. But do they?

If one were to encapsulate the strength and formidability of President Donald Trump, it would be this: He tells the truth.

Trump may very well be the most straight-shooting man, next to honest Abe Lincoln and I cannot tell a lie George Washington, to ever hold the office of the presidency.

Its true the media consistently labels Trump a liar. But most of what the media says is the opposite of whats real and true.

LaFrance blatantly lying to voters about her political leanings may work in the short term, but its far from a solid play long term.

We know many Leftists like LaFrance dont believe in the concept of truth or absolutes. You often hear people of her persuasion say things like speak your truth. But there is no your truth or my truth. Theres only the truth and it does not bend to anyones opinion or perspective.

Renowned clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson writes a lot on the concept of telling the truth. In his book, 12 Rules for Life, the 8thrule is always tell the truth or at least never lie.

Peterson argues you have reality on your side when you tell the truth.

If reality is against you, youre not going to win, youre going to get flattened, writes Peterson.

Petersons philosophy can be summed up this way: Do what is meaningful, not what is expedient.

Telling the truth is hard because you have to know the truth, writes Peterson. But you can know when you are lying. Lying makes you weak. You can feel it. You put yourself in disharmony with reality. If you act in truth, then the order you produce is good.

Peterson points out no parent is ever pleased when they catch their children in a lie. He says when you go into a situation, if you tell the truth as carefully as you can, then, whatever happens, is the best that could have happened in that situation no matter how it looks.

Dont underestimate the power of truth. There is nothing more powerful, writes Peterson. Im going to state what I think as clearly as I can and Im going to live with the consequences no matter what they may be.

Weve learned a lot from Trump but nothing more important than freely and confidently speak your mind.

Unfortunately, for Leftists like LaFrance, telling the truth is not an option. LaFrance knows her radical ideology is not palatable with most voters. If she would run on what she wants to do as a legislator, she wouldnt stand a chance of getting elected.

Former Senate President Cathy Giessel understood this. Its why four years ago she lied when she promised to work with Gov. Mike Dunleavy to provide a full Permanent Fund dividend check. Instead, she did the opposite. The lie that got her elected is also what caused voters to reject her four years later.

LaFrances blatant attempt to fool voters may work for her in the short term and fool enough voters into believing shes a conservative. But when she runs again, shell have to bank on voters having a short memory.

In many ways, we should feel sorry for LaFrance and other lying politicians. Imagine knowing the only way to get where you want to go in life is to fool as many people as you can. Thats hardly a meaningful existence.

Truth is like surgery. It hurts but it cures. A lie is like a pain killer. It gives instant relief but has side effects. Unknown philosopher.

Dan Fagan hosts the number one rated morning drive radio show on Newsradio 650 KENI. He splits his time between Anchorage and New Orleans.

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Fagan: LaFrance weaves a tangled web; deception her only path to victory - Must Read Alaska

IN July I wrote about Jordan Petersons sudden disappearancefrom public life. Until then the controversial University of Toronto psychology professor and self-help guru had rarely been out of the news in his battlefor free speech and for reason over ideology.

The reason for his absence was that this foremostpublic intellectualhad been very ill. In a moving interview with his daughterMikhaila,which we showed,Peterson revealed that he was recovering from addiction to the prescription tranquilliser benzodiazepine, meant to be given only for the short-term relief of severe or disabling anxiety.*He developed a severe physical dependency when his dose was increased after his wifes terminal cancer diagnosis.

Now, ina video in which he speaks directly to camera for the first time in a year, he gives further details of what happened to him and his plans for the future. It is both moving and honest. He pays tribute to the help given to him, particularly by his family, but for whom he doubts he could have managed the brutal and painful process that is benzodiazepine recovery.

His honesty and humility this man is very hard on himself is painful to watch. Bowed but not broken,I would say.This episode will have made him no less extraordinary a man, but more.

Commentingon the new video, Douglas Murray notes the failure of Petersons criticsto contend with his points and arguments:You would have thought that if any Canadian professor who had previously been obscure rose to prominence across the world, with audiences of thousands rising to their feet to welcome him every night, then whatever their ideological stance people including critics would try to work out what it was that he was on to.Yet Petersons critics, from Cathy Newman to theNew York Timesand the BBC, consistently failed to see any interest in the bigger story.

Indeed so. The idea of a prophet is one that the Left are unable to get to grips with. It is outside their radar. And a prophet is what Peterson is, of ourmodern times. I do not think the description is out of place.

It is hard not to believe that some discoveryof Christian faith has helped him. He signs off the video saying that with Gods grace and mercy he hopes to complete some of the tasks which he lays out in it.

In 2017, Peterson released a set of online videos about the Old Testament Book of Genesis, and it had long been his hope that he would find the time to prepare another set of lectures on Exodus. For now, though, he hopes to devotehimself to Proverbs, which he calls the Book of Wisdom. In this age of Covid hysteria, when were we more in want of wisdom?

I for one cant wait. As Douglas Murray says, the world needs Jordan Peterson more than ever.

* Update

The Benzodiazepine Information Coalition have questioned my use of the term addiction in this context. They say, I quote, Jordan Peterson is struggling with physical dependence not addiction . . . Mikhaila Peterson says that its not an addiction, and even posted an update on her twitter to make this clear . . . but physical dependence. These terms arent interchangeable.

They point to the FDA Guidance for Industry on page 9 which states:

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Welcome back, Jordan Peterson we need you more than ever - The Conservative Woman

WHAT the Meteorettes managed to do on the road at the weekend cannot be overstated.

To even the basketball layman, the numbers paint a compelling picture.

Those are 22 and 28 - the margins of victory over rivals Bundaberg and Gladstone.

Also 623 and 186 - kilometres covered in a bus, just to be there.

It amounted to two wins, from 120 gruelling minutes played, all inside 24 hours.

With just seven players to choose from.

In this era of competition, what Scott McKenzie's team achieved at the weekend should not have been possible.

While their rivals welcomed some temporary imports from the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane to bolster their ranks, the Meteorettes were forced to make do with a skeleton crew.

Their young guns travelled in the opposition direction, to Townsville, for U18 representative duties.

It left the senior Meteorettes with just two on the bench for their toughest road trip on the ConocoPhillips CQ Cup calendar.

And yet somehow, the Meteorettes got through unscathed. Not only that, but they dominated once again.

They defied the odds and expectation to again prove Mackay deserves to be considered one of the best female basketball programs in Queensland.

Jordan Peterson overcame an ankle injury to play a key role in the Meteorettes win over Gladstone on Sunday. Photo: Callum Dick

Read more:

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Gamblin thriving as 'the man' in new Meteors set-up

"I was extremely nervous. I thought it was going to be a tough weekend for us," McKenzie admitted.

"We knew Bundaberg had brought in a player and Gladstone another couple. We only had seven."

Then Jordan Peterson went over on her ankle on Saturday night and the Meteorettes faced the very real prospect of rotating just one off the bench on Sunday.

"I asked on Sunday 'are you any good?' and she said 'I've strapped it up tight - I'm ready to go'," McKenzie recalled.

"When we were in a bit of a run on Sunday, she came in and made a difference for us.

"I was really proud of her effort this weekend."

Peterson's selfless act was one of a long line of gutsy performances from the seven-strong squad which flew the flag for Mackay at the weekend.

Not only will the winning road double be a big boost to the team's confidence, it should also strike fear in their rivals.

With the deck stacked against them, the Meteorettes proved too good.

It has the group well poised to continue toward its "ultimate goal", which is an inaugural CQ Cup crown and confirmation as the best.

"That's obviously the ultimate goal and we've put ourselves in a position now to do that," McKenzie said.

"Realistically if we come out next week and win at home, we'll sew up top spot. That gives us a home semi - win that, and it's a home grand final. That's always been the goal."

The Meteors and Meteorettes will enjoy a well-deserved bye this weekend, before returning to The Crater on November 7.

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The numbers that prove Meteorettes are something special - Daily Mercury

HPMS 7A 46

Boerne South 19

Peterson 7As Colin Rose ran for touchdowns of 20, 30 and 40 yards, and the Spikes ran their unbeaten season record to 7-0 by blasting Boerne South, 46-19, Tuesday in middle school action at Antler Stadium.

Petersons Davis Caraway added a 40-yard TD run, Anthony Falcon scored on a 45-yard jaunt, and George Eastland reached the end zone on a 10-yard run.

Jake Zirkel booted five 2-point kicks for the Spikes.

Falcon led Petersons defensive effort with an interception, Mikkel Pieper had a fumble recovery and Guy Flores a sack, and Lawrence Sanchez logged a tackle for a loss.

Boerne South 25

HPMS 7B 0

Boerne South snapped Peterson 7Bs four-game win streak by topping the Spikes, 25-0, in more middle school action Tuesday at Antler Stadium.

Petersons Kaeden Rodriguez intercepted a Boerne South pass, and Samuel Baker, Zair Zapata and Braedon Thibodeaux all recorded a tackle for a loss.

On the offensive side of the ball, Tait Sonnenberg logged runs of 35, 27, 16 and 19 yards for the Spikes, and Samuel Baker had a run of 17 yards.

The Spikes 7B team is now 4-2-1 for the season.

HPMS 8A 46

Boerne South 0

Peterson 8As Cade Jones ran for two touchdowns and passed for a third, and the Spikes blew past Boerne South, 46-0, Tuesday in Boerne.

Jones scored on runs of 31 and 40 yards and threw a 45-yard touchdown pass to Dominyk Vasquez, all in the first half. Wiley Landrum booted three 2-point kicks to put Peterson ahead 24-0 at the break.

Vasquez raced 72 yards for a score in the third quarter, and Myles Jordans 15-yard TD run, plus two more Landrum PAT kicks, upped the Spikes edge to 40-0 going into the fourth quarter.

Petersons Aiden Irvin capped the night with a 3-yard scoring run in the fourth quarter, but the PAT failed.

Helping out the Spikes offense with a pass reception was Irvin hauling in a 17-yard pass from Jordan.

On the defensive side of the ball, tackles for losses were made by Irvin, Jaykwon Benson and Cole Dendy. A fumble was forced by Caleb Lopez, and fumble recoveries were made by Jones, Andrew Valderez and Rocky Deleon.

Mikey Nelson blocked punt for Petersons special teams.

HPMS 8B 18

Boerne South 6

Peterson 8Bs James Montrose ran for touchdowns of 9 and 3 yards to lead the Spikes past host Boerne South, 18-6, in more middle school action Tuesday.

Peyton Middleton added a 10-yard touchdown run for Peterson.

Turnovers on defense were produced by DJ Rodarte and Jakob Clark with interceptions, and Jesse Montrose with a fumble recovery. Mason Gore and Daniel Rodriguez both recorded sacks, and James Montrose logged a tackle for lost yardage.

Running and catching the ball to help out Petersons offense were Jesse Montrose, Diego Benevidez and Peyton Bailey.

Eli Dent starred on special teams with a big hit on a kickoff.

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Peterson takes three games from Boerne South | Other Sports - Community journal

Whatever Clara Kraebbe may do with the rest of her life, the 20-year-old Rice University student wont outdo the publicity shes received since her recent arrest by the NYPD for felony vandalism. Reading in the New York Post about young Clara, who lives with her father, a child psychiatrist, and her mother, an architect, in a $1.8 million Upper East Side luxury condo and a pre-Revolutionary War Connecticut mansion, I asked myself: Whom does this girl remind me of?

And then it came to me. Of course: shes a modern-day Jane Fonda.

While Clara is a Manhattan princess, Jane was Hollywood royalty, daughter of one of the great actors of the movies golden age. While Jane was a poster girl for the hordes of well-off kids who protested the Vietnam War and looked down their noses at hardhats, Clara is the face of BLM/Antifa rioters who sneer at cops and other inferiors.

Raised in privilege, the beneficiaries of capitalist success, both these young women turned against the system that had given them so much. Clara trashed downtown Manhattan businesses and, according to reports, wanted to commandeer upper-class New York apartments of the sort she lives in and hand them over to the poor. Its not quite up there with climbing on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, as Jane did back in 1972, but itll do for these days of diminished expectations.

What motivates such extreme acts of rebellion? To ask the question is, at once, to challenge it. For neither Clara nor Jane is a real rebel. Clara might want to play Robin Hood with other peoples properties, but not, I suspect, with her familys. The same goes for Jane, who, while singing the praises of Communism in North Vietnam, had no intention of staying there and living under the system; she had, after all, just won an Oscar for Klute and had a career in pictures to get back to.

Not that either Clara or Jane was entirely play-acting. A charitable interpretation of their conduct would be that both womenraised in wealth but innocent of the laws of economics, and perhaps insufficiently conscious of just how exceptional their own lives weresimply found it unfair that everybody couldnt live the way they did. Having, presumably, been pampered since infancy, moreover, perhaps neither possessed sufficient humility to recognize that her efforts to undermine the American system of government might be immodest, if not ill-advised. (As Jordan Peterson would say, learn to make your bed before you try to change the world.)

The parallel with Fonda occurred to me in part because she has been in the news a lot latelynot for acting, but for activism. Jane has not given up the fight. Indeed, you cant really call Clara the young Jane Fonda because the old Jane Fondashes 82 nowis still, in heart and mind, the young Jane Fonda. Which is to say that she hasnt learned a damn thing.

This has come through clearly in the interviews shes done to promote her new book, What Can I Do? My Path from Climate Despair to Action. Uniformly, she has been treated like an oracle. Timothy Noah told her: Youve been causing . . . good trouble for the better part of fifty years. Howard Stern praised her level of commitment.

But for first-class superstar slathering, you had to turn to Maureen Dowds 4,500-word puff piece in the New York Times Magazine. Though Dowd is a purportedly serious political columnist for what was once considered the nations Paper of Record, she, like Noah and Stern and others, refused to engage seriously with Fondas lifetime of politically themed performance art.

On the contrary, Dowd piled on the superlatives, describing Fonda, in her opening sentences, as a glam Forrest Gump who has popped up on the front lines of culture, fitness, politics and Hollywood for more than half a century. Dowd held out to readers the tantalizing prospect of a full-bore profile of Fonda, from bad vibes over Hanoi Jane to good vibrators.

The North Vietnam episode, in this formulation, is simply a matter of bad vibes and is, in some way, of a piece with the octogenarians current battery-fueled sex life. Unlike Henry Fondawho, we learn here, told Jane, to his credit, If I ever find out youre a Communist, Ill be the first to turn you inDowd gives every impression of viewing even the most appalling chapters of Fondas life, from her gushing praise of Ho Chi Minh to her calumnies against U.S. troops, from her involvement with the Black Panthers to her friendship with Angela Davis (the judge-killing conspirator and Lenin Prize winner), as a series of colorful escapades in the life of this ever-fascinating intergalactic sexpot.

Living in a cultural bubble in which screaming about climate change is a mark of virtue, Fonda considered herself an environmentalist before this year, but she hadnt, in her own words, really put my body on the line for it. Then she heard Greta Thunberg speak and read a book by Naomi Kleinand devised a stratagem. Shed stride into the Oval Office with Pam Anderson, Sharon Stone, and a few other beautiful, sexy, smart, climate-interested women, and kneel and . . . plead and beg Donald Trump to change his environmental policies. Hed be so popeyed by the sight of these luscious dames on their knees that hed rewrite the laws right then and there.

She even proposed the idea to Ivanka Trump, who laughed.

So instead of leading a cougar assault on the White House, Fonda started taking part in Fire Drill Fridays, a weekly climate protest at the Capitol. She racked up five arrests. (Think of it: two Oscars, two BAFTAs, and now five arrests!)

Jane detects a feeling of love in the BLM protests. At this late date, is she really so obtuse? How does she square this view with the vandalism, arson, beatings, and killings committed by BLM rioters? Did she learn nothing from her enthusiasm for a Communist regime whose victory eventuated in genocide? Dowd doesnt ask.

Now an environmental heroine, Fonda boasts that these days she has only two closets full of clothes, including clothes that I wore 30 years ago. This, she notes, is a far cry from life during her 1990s marriage to CNN mogul Ted Turner, when they had 23 homes, with clothes at each place. This state of affairs obliged her to buy in bulk, so that very often at Saks Fifth Avenue, the sales girl would say Are these gifts? And Id say, No, theyre all for me.

What was she thinking back then? How did she manage to reconcile that life of cartoonish luxury with her professed radical convictions? Did it ever occur to her, as she took private jets from one Turner spread to another, that she was living a life of greater waste and self-indulgence than pretty much anyone else on the planet? Does it occur to her now, given her personal history, to be even slightly embarrassed to be preaching to anyone about consumption?

Or could it be that todays Jane Fonda, the newly minted climate queen, is, quite consciously, doing penance for her previous behavior? It doesnt seem so. Theres not a word here that even hints at such. Throughout the Dowd interview and others that shes done for her book, Fonda presents herself as a woman who, throughout her life, has been a selfless crusader for the greater good. The problem is always elsewhere.

Maureen Dowd doesnt ask about any of this, either. You dont ask Jane Fonda about such things. Nor do you hold a mirror up to the hypocrisies of Al Gore or Laurie David (Larry Davids fanatically eco-conscious ex) or any of the other rich climate scolds whose carbon footprints exceed that of a small town. To be a certain kind of child of privilege, like Jane Fonda or Clara Kraebbethat is, to be less than gifted with self-knowledge and the capacity for shameis to be above such petty calculations.

Bruce Bawer is the author of several books, including The Victims Revolution, While Europe Slept, and the novel The Alhambra.

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

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Heiresses on the Barricades - City Journal

Pain will come, he is saying, and when it does, nobody wants to hear about it. Why should your pain be any more deserving of our attention than anybody elses? Bear your pain, he says in one lecture, so when your father dies you are not whining away in the corner and you can help plan the funeral.

At my fathers funeral, I sat in the front row with my hands folded on my lap. Later, at the burial site, I watched them lower the coffin into the ground. On the trip home, I sat with my head against the car window, just the way you used to do on long trips. After a few days, I went back to school and pretended that nothing had happened. I got through it. I didnt whine.

Having tried Petersons method for most of my life, I can tell you it works only as a tourniquet. You may get through the moment, the day, the week. Eventually, though, the blood stops flowing altogether, and something in you falls away.

For years, I cultivated an entire comedic persona based on withdrawal. If you ever want to see what that looks like, go watch me on one of those VH1 I Love the shows, in which talking heads reminisce about decades gone by. My segments are all totally deadpan, unsmiling, sarcastic. They were funny (if I do say so myself), but sarcasm is a form of withdrawal. I was good at it because by that point in my life, I had invested years in learning how to act as if I didnt care about anything. What you see on TV is an exaggeration of the way I lived my life, but only a little. Back then, I had so much anger that I didnt know what to do with, so I clamped down. My release was jokes. They escaped like occasional steam puffs, shaking the lid from a boiling pot.

The more successful I became doing that, the less satisfied I felt, because I knew there was something fundamentally dishonest about it. That stone-faced person wasnt me anymore. I was recently married. I had a newborn son. Within a couple of years, I would have a daughter. The person I saw on-screen, the one who never cracked a smile, didnt seem like he was ready to be a husband and a father. Maybe he wasnt ready. I began feeling a conflict between the person I found myself portraying on television and the man I was trying to become in real life. Maybe that shouldnt have mattered; after all, actors and comedians pretend. Thats the job. But it mattered to me.

I wanted to be more open and honest in my life and in my work, which meant I had to change. Which meant I had to start asking myself some hard questions about who I was and what I valued. I had to pry apart the careful persona Id constructed. I wanted to be a better husband and father. I wanted to be a better man.

I cannot recall the number of times I wiped tears from your face when you were little. I can remember the feeling of your pudgy arms around my neck as I knelt down to you, listening to you stammer out the reasons for your pain, holding you until you felt better, wiping your snot off my shirt. Coming to me for comfort was one of the greatest gifts you ever gave to me, because it allowed me to be your dad. A dad instructs and reprimands and plays. Ive done all those things too, but comforting you felt special, the gift of extending empathy. You sharing your pain with me relieved my own terror of fathering a son. In allowing me to comfort you, you comforted me.

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To My Son: Men Have to Allow Ourselves to Be Loved - The Atlantic

Cultural Marxism is a term favoured by those on the right who argue the humanities are hopelessly out of touch with ordinary Australia.

The criticism is that radical voices have captured the humanities, stifling free speech on campuses.

The term has been used widely over the past decade. Most infamously, in former senator Fraser Annings 2018 final solution speech to parliament he denounced cultural Marxism as not a throwaway line, but a literal truth.

But is cultural Marxism actually taking over our universities and academic thinking? Using a leading academic database, I crunched some numbers to find out.

The term cultural Marxism moved into the media mainstream around 2016, when psychologist Jordan Peterson was protesting a Canadian bill prohibiting discrimination based on gender. Peterson blamed cultural Marxism for phenomena like the movement to respect gender-neutral pronouns which, in his view, undermines freedom of speech.

But the term is much older. It seems first to have been used by writer Michael Minnicino in his 1992 essay The New Dark Age, published by the Schiller Institute, a group associated with the fringe right wing figure Lyndon LaRouche.

Around the turn of the century, the phrase was adopted by influential American conservatives. Commentator and three time presidential candidate Pat Buchanan targeted cultural Marxism for many perceived ills facing America, from womens rights and gay activism to the decline of traditional education.

The term has since gone global, sadly making its way into Norwegian terrorist Anders Breviks justificatory screed. Andrew Bolt used it as early as 2002. In 2013, Cory Bernardi was warning against cultural Marxism as one of the most corrosive influences on society.

By 2016, the year the Peterson affair unfolded, Nick Cater and Chris Uhlmann were blaming it for undermining free speech in The Australian. The idea has since been adopted by Mark Latham and Malcolm Roberts.

Insofar as it goes beyond a fairly broad term of enmity, the accusers of cultural Marxism point to two main protagonists behind this ideology.

The first is Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Writing under imprisonment by the fascists in the 1920s, Gramsci argued the left needed to capture the bureaucracy, universities and media-cultural institutions if it wished to hold power.

The second alleged culprits are neo-Marxist theorists associated with the Frankfurt School of Social Research. These critical theorists drew on psychoanalysis, social theory, aesthetics and political economy to understand modern societies. They became especially concerned with how fascism could win the allegiance of ordinary people, despite its appeals to aversive prejudice, hatred and militarism.

When Hitler came to power, the Frankfurt School was quickly shut down, and its key members forced into exile. Then, as Uhlmann has narrated, Frankfurt School academics [] transmitted the intellectual virus to the US and set about systematically destroying the culture of the society that gave them sanctuary.

While Soviet communism faltered, the story continues, the cultural Marxist campaign to commandeer our culture was marching triumphantly through the humanities departments of Western universities and outwards into wider society.

Today, critics argue it shapes the political correctness that promotes minority causes and polices public debate on issues like the environment, gender and immigration posing a grave threat to liberal values.

If the conservative anxieties about cultural Marxism reflected reality, we would expect to see academic publications on Marx, Gramsci and critical theorists crowding out libertarian, liberal and conservative voices.

To test this, I conducted quantitative research on the academic database JStor, tracking the frequency of names and key ideas in all academic article and chapter titles published globally between 1980 and 2019.

In 1987, Karl Marx himself ceded the laurel as the most written about thinker in academic humanities, replaced by Friedrich Nietzsche revered by many fascists including Benito Mussolini and Martin Heidegger, another figure whose far-right politics were hardly progressive.

Over the past 40 years, the alleged mastermind of cultural Marxism, Gramsci, attracted 480 articles. This compares with the 407 publications on Friedrich Hayek, arguably the leading influence on the neoliberal free market reforms of the last decades.

The Frankfurt School featured in less than 200 titles, and critical theorist Herbert Marcuse (identified by Uhlmann as a key transmitter of the cultural Marxist virus in the US) was the subject of just over 220.

Over the last decade, the most written about thinker was the neo-Nietzschean theorist, Giles Deleuze, featuring in 770 titles over 2010-19.

But the notoriously esoteric ideas of Deleuze and his language of machinic assemblages, strata, flows and intensities are hardly Marxist. His ideas have been a significant influence on the right-wing Neoreactionary or dark enlightenment movement.

The last four decades have seen a relative decline of Marxist thought in academia. Its influence has been superseded by post-structuralist (or postmodernist) thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Deleuze.

Post-structuralism is primarily indebted to thinkers of the European conservative revolution led by Nietzsche and Heidegger.

Where Marxism is built on hopes for reason, revolution and social progress, post-structuralist thinkers roundly reject such optimistic grand narratives.

Post-structuralists are as preoccupied with culture as our conservative news columnists. But their analyses of identity and difference challenge the primacy Marxism affords to economics as much as they oppose liberal or conservative ideas.

Quantitative research bears out the idea that cultural Marxism is indeed a post-factual dog whistle and an intellectual confusion masquerading as higher insight.

A spectre of Marxism has survived the cold war. It now haunts the culture wars.

Matthew Sharpe is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Deakin University.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

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What is cultural Marxism and is it really taking over universities everywhere? - Scroll.in