Category Archives: Jordan Peterson

Last summer, I wrote about how Portnoys particular brand of transgressive boorishness served as an inspiration to Republican politicians eager to capitalize on the backlash to newly established progressive social norms around things like gender pronoun usage and diversity, equity and inclusion practices. But that alliance was never ideological it was aesthetic. To a certain kind of secular, mostly apolitical Barstool bro, the party of evangelical pro-lifers might not have been an ideal fit, but it was certainly more appealing than the party of woke scolds and stuffy bosses across the aisle.

Now that the Supreme Court has handed social conservatives their most significant ideological victory of the modern political era, those voters will have to choose: Is it worth giving sanction to an overtly religious, mostly unpopular political project simply to own the libs? Portnoy himself explicitly says no. But cultural backlash is as unpredictable as it is powerful, and its place at the heart of the modern GOP means that how a particular type of independent, attitudinally conservative voter responds could shape America for years to come.

To look at the empirical evidence in so much as it exists around opinion on abortion rights, one might think that Republicans victory over Roe is somewhat Pyrrhic. The most recent data from the Pew Research Center, collected at the beginning of July after the Dobbs decision, shows that 57 percent of the population disagrees with the decision itself (including a not-insignificant 29 percent of Republicans); the only group expressing overwhelmingly strong approval is white evangelicals. Sixty-two percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in most or all cases.

But dig deeper into the data and youll find that support for abortion varies considerably based on the duration of pregnancy, especially taking into account voters geographic distribution. There are also, of course, the inherent limitations of public opinion polling, as well as the relative rarity of single-issue voters (among whom anti-abortion voters outnumber their counterparts). Its not quite accurate to say the GOP has summarily alienated an electorate that otherwise seemed prime to embrace it in this falls midterms.

So one might look to another indicator, albeit one lacking the veneer of empiricism that polling maintains: The opinions of thinkers and leaders in the conservative movement. What actual politicians say is unreliable, as beholden as they are to pesky primary voters and wealthy, ideological donors. What about those responsible for curating the vibes of the modern conservative movement?

At the beginning of June, the National Review fellow and social-conservative wunderkind Nate Hochman wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled What Comes After the Religious Right? In it, he expanded on the somewhat declinist view of the conservative Catholic writer Matthew Walther, who coined the term Barstool conservative in a 2021 op-ed for The Week writing that, While the old religious right will see much to like in the new cultural conservatism, they are partners, rather than leaders, in the coalition. Hochman argues that although a figure as non-pious as Trump (who could plausibly claim the mantle of the Barstool president) might have empowered social conservatives, theyre too much of an electoral minority to succeed without their comparatively libertine coalitional partners.

Hochmans insight invites a similar reflection from the other side of the aisle. Once upon a time, as the writer Matt Yglesias recently pointed out in response to Portnoys pro-Roe stance, chauvinistic bros were reliable Democratic voters, who made common cause with realpolitik-ing feminists willing to overlook the Clinton-era partys affective cultural conservatism in exchange for political wins. Both were opposed to the Moral Majority-era sanctimony of the Reagan-Bush GOP, the ethos of the alliance perhaps best summed up by a notorious quote regarding Clinton from the former Time White House reporter Nina Burleigh: Id be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.

For various reasons beyond the scope of this essay, the salience of cultural politics has increased in American life to an extent that makes that alliance impossible. Conservative thought leaders now find themselves at the same crossroads liberals once did: What price are they willing to pay what are they willing to sacrifice, or excuse to keep such fickle, secular, Portnoy-like independent voters in the fold?

What are conservative thought leaders willing to sacrifice, or excuse to keep such fickle, secular, Dave Portnoy-like independent voters in the fold?|Michael Reaves/Getty Images

As the GOPs most reliable and motivated voting bloc, the anti-abortion movement is clearly not going anywhere. To the chagrin and fear of liberals, and the hope of the would-be New Right, theres some evidence that they might not have to. Looking at the replies to Portnoys initial post-Roe tweet, alongside the criticism from hard-right figures like Dan Bongino (as well as Hochman himself), one can see a slew of comments from average, non-blue-check-sporting Barstool fans, protesting that all the Supreme Court did was let it be a state issue, or that he should simply stick to sports.

This is where Barstool per se ceases to be a useful framework through which to understand the shifts occurring in American politics today. (As with any brand with as massive a reach as Portnoys, its fans are more ideologically diverse than a liberals snap judgment would assume.) The angst inspired by Portnoys pro-abortion rights turn reflects a much broader phenomenon: Just as secular and religious GOP voters are split, theres an even narrower division among those who are simply alienated by the modern left and those who are outright anti-feminists, especially among young voters.

The anti-feminism of todays young conservatives takes a few different forms. There is, of course, the outright hate spread on forums like 4chan and by trolls like Nick Fuentes; the casual, fratty misogyny of more mainstream figures like Trump White House aide Garrett Ziegler, who in a live streamed rant after his Jan. 6 committee testimony called his female former coworkers thots and hoes; and the faux-erudition of New Right leaders like Sen. Josh Hawley, who in a keynote address to the National Conservatism Conference decried the lefts attack on men in America. (Its not just America, either: In South Korea, youth anti-feminism helped propel a conservative president to the Blue House.) Young anti-feminists see a world where women are at least notionally more empowered than ever, yet no one seems to be happy about it. They look to the past for solutions in lieu of inventing new ones for the moment.

And there are plenty of historical examples, both religious and secular, to draw from. In her 1991 book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, the feminist writer Susan Faludi described a taxonomy of anti-feminist reaction to the advances of the Equal Rights Amendment era, from Christian leaders like Paul Weyrich who promised to overturn the present power structure of the country to the quasi-paganism of the poet Robert Bly, who encouraged real men to reclaim their cultural birthright by psychologically isolating themselves from women. Faludi sums up their shared philosophy as the belief that the very steps that have elevated womens position have actually led to their downfall.

One might wonder what Faludi, in an era where Weyrich and Bly have inspired successors in figures like the (now-disgraced) megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll and the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, would have to say about the backlash to womens more recent advances. To borrow a rhetorical move from Woody Allen, whom Bly especially hated, we dont have to wonder; I happen to have Ms. Faludi right here: Writing in the New York Times in response to Roes overturning, she argues that feminisms growing entwinement with celebrity culture is a primary culprit in making it more vulnerable than ever to a more pernicious backlash, one that has never relented, one that has brought us the calamity of the Alito draft opinion.

This is why social conservatives find themselves at a moment of not just dog-that-caught-the-car peril, but potential promise. The Courts ruling was only made possible by the combined forces of secular conservatism, via Trumps mass heterodox appeal, and the decades of concentrated effort by a minority of religious activists. Like with Weyrich and Bly, or Driscoll and Peterson, anti-feminism can take many forms and have many motivations, but the basic ressentiment it taps into transcends religion, class or partisanship, and is stubbornly persistent. By subsuming life-or-death social issues under the auspices of Lean In moments and social media slap downs over whether Taylor Swift is or isnt a feminist, as Faludi wrote, liberals and feminists have risked erasing the distinction in the publics mind between serious material outcomes and such symbological slap-fights.

That possibility conjures a world where arguments about womens health outcomes, or whether theres a feminist case against abortion, or over pro-family Republican economic policies might become immaterial as abortion becomes an entirely different, more recognizably modern kind of culture-war issue. We simply dont know yet whether the Barstool cohort of the modern GOP will look around at a post-Roe world and decide their party has gone too far. But if they dont, and Trumps coalition holds, it will be the most powerful symbol yet of Americas transition to a symbolic mass politics of cultural grievance.

Those politics still can have very real policy consequences, as millions of women in red states are now discovering. Improbable as it might seem, whether or not said consequences endure or even spread might depend on what occurs in the hearts and minds, and on the ballots, of men like Dave Portnoy.

Read the original here:

The Barstool Bros' Split Over Abortion Could Determine the Future of the GOP - POLITICO

Believe me, I hear you loud and clear about the awful new comments policy, which has pretty much shut down this blog's comments. I believe the Mothership is working in some way to fix this. In the meantime, if you have something substantive you would like to say, email me at rod -- at -- amconmag -- dot -- com, and I'll consider posting your words. I won't use your name unless you explicitly ask me to. Be sure to leave clear instructions if you want me to edit out anything.

A reader writes:

Just back from a week at summer camp as an adult leader for my son's scout troop. My kids live in sort of a conservative catholic cocoon, we do a few things "beyond the pale" (in the sense of the old border with Scotland). For many years scouts has been like baseball: kept safe more by inertia than by anything else.

Now that "scouts BSA" (formerly the Boy Scouts) also has girls, cross-dressing can actually be harder to see at first glance. Someone walks past, girl or boy? Maybe it's a good thing there are girls, my son is often oblivious to these things.

So, I know I'm not reporting anything crazy, nor unexpected. Of course, now that American youth are on a trans / genderbender kick, of course that streak will infect the scouts. How could it not? Years ago,scouts BSA was officially unwelcoming to LGBT scouts and leaders, so there were some constraints - that's all to the wayside now. Now the only thing holding it back is who runs scouting... moms and dads mostly. But you know how that is. If there's no express counter-cultural rule, you know which way this goes.

So among the camp counselors this year, there were a good 2-4 who didn't, shall we say, dress according to their biology.

What do you do as a parent? Do you say something on the survey? As if that would accomplish anything (other than labeling you as a hater).Do you seek after authority, to try to rein this in? But could you do it, even if you tried?

Do you encourage your son to be a counselor when he gets older? Would you send your kid off to room with folks like that for a couple months? Sacrifice your son on that alter-altar? A really good boy from our troop is there this summer as a counselor... I will pray for him.

So another institution is taken over, kids lose one more place where they can be a kid, and you have (sadly) one more example of why we need a Benedict Option.

Here's a letter from a Reformed pastor:

I read your blog today about the feminization of Christianity and the need to man up.Thought provoking for sure.Then I read your Substack about the Reformed Church in the Netherlands and I was surprised to see that my thoughts were somewhat tracking yoursHere are some observations in no particular order.1. Hyper masculine church leadership often results in catastrophic disasters. Men who cant control their sex drives, (Ravi long list here Canadas Bruxy Cavey is the most recent addition to this hall of shame) or their need for power (James MacDonald) or their competitive spirit (Driscoll) destroy what they build in the most fantastic ways. Jesus is aware of this as he commands the path of cross bearing, suffering and models rhetorical poise in the face of intense attack. Be ready to die for God, for truth, and for your neighbour. But first, you die to yourself. 1.5 Hyper masculine Christianity is Islam. Rules, oppression of women, violence, strict discipline, little to no grace. Hyper masculine Islam is ever waiting in the wings and is actively recruiting. They will tell a man to fight and shed the blood of the enemy. The Christian idea that the fight is against powers and principalities and ultimately against the evil within is in competition with those eager to find warriors to battle external foes who can only kill the body. 2. When I grew up all the men went to Mass on Saturday nights. We were Protestant and my dad would often note that the Catholics had the most men in church. Why? Maybe it was the ritual. Maybe it was the fact that the church with its huge bloody Christ painted on the wall, the focal point for all to see, created the sense of death, and with it the sense of adventure the spurs a man to be the best. Or maybe thats just me, from a strict Calvinist iconoclastic upbringing being shocked by such an image. I can still see that Christ arms out stretched with a grey bearded God the father above him holding up his arms with his and a dove above them both. Blood and water being collected from his side into a communion chalice. No mystery here when it came to theology. Blood, death, God, Christ. A church that still could pack the place at 11:30pm on Christmas Eve. When we Protestants lost the visual arts, we started to lose everyone.3. Bible study with a group of young men the other night. Our discussion of the Virgin Birth devolved into a discussion about the mysterious birth of Anakin Skywalker. They knew more about George Lucas and his parody of the virgin birth than the story in Matt 2 and its theological implications. You are right on about Myth, men crave myth, and when they cant find it at church they will settle for light sabres in a universe far far away. 4. Protestants kept the Bible though. A Protestant understands what is going on. The Orthodox have the liturgy, the Catholics the dogma, the Protestants insist on the Bible to keep the others honest. :). But we are losing the Bible now. My denominational seminary continues to weaken its Greek and Hebrew requirements. Apparently you dont have to sweat and struggle through difficult course work to be a pastor anymore. Men looking for a challenge need not apply. Makes me mad. I chose Calvin Seminary because an old professor of Old Testament looked at me over his glasses and said Seminary is school and it is difficult. As it should be, my 25 year old self thought. I wish I could say that my seminary education was almost as rigorous as an MD, should be more rigorous. The doctor can only kill the body, a bad pastor wrecks a lot of souls. My seminary also actively recruits women, an odd thing since our 30 some years of women in office has yet to yield much more than 10% of pulpits as actually being available to women. The congregations, not a bishop, choose and they tend to be conservative. 5. That said, do I want to fight the trans issue? In some ways we are like King Theodon when Gandalf says War is upon you. There isnt a choice anymore. Ive got public school teachers telling me they have to lie to parents to hide a kids trans identity. Ive got members who work for large organizations that have to promote the June agenda, as part of their jobs. I meet with them, we talk about it. Is this fighting? I am not sure. People dont come to church to hear what is blasted at them 24 hours a day everywhere else. I hate having the culture dictate what I have to talk about. But, the war is upon me and an enemy gets a vote. It is foolish to ignore an enemy. What does fighting look like? -I have a Bible study for broken drug addicted young men.-our church keeps men at the upper levels of leadership, even though not all agree with this.-we have an explosion of little children and growing young families. Where will we be in five years? StrategyI am not sure how to fight.6. Many people dont get it. Things that are obvious to me are not obvious. We are masters at adapting to bad circumstances, and often blind to how bad those circumstances really are. Iniquity is probably the right word, avon in Hebrew, crooked path, lost way, falling in the pit one dug, exchanging truth for lies and losing all sense of truth its the same problem.7. Why did Jordan Peterson succeed? I wish I knew.

Another reader writing about men in the church:

This is in regard to your second "men in the church" post.That article you wrote about Anna, the young Catholic woman who had been struggling to find a husband, has stuck with me since you published it in 2019. I am an evangelical man living in a "seminary town" who attended the seminary off and on over the past eight years, finally graduating last year. The seminary environment had a similar gender imbalance to what Anna speaks of in her complaint, but reversed -- there were far more men than women at the seminary. This was to be expected, it being the flagship seminary of a theologically conservative evangelical denomination who believes only men should be ordained as pastors. But I found it to be the worst possible environment to try to date in. The deck was stacked against me. I was "competing" against hundreds of men far more godly (and handsome, charming, intelligent, etc.) than myself, and the attractive single women at the seminary had their pick of the litter.The churches, on the other hand, were a bit different. As with most evangelical churches, the ones I attended did have more single women than single men. However, I now, like the reader you quote at the beginning of this post, attend an ACNA church. What drew me to the Anglican tradition is what draws most young men to more liturgical traditions -- the beauty and seriousness of the liturgy and the gift of an actualpath to walkin terms of spiritual discipline. Unfortunately (but also fortunately, because I love my church!), I now attend a church where there are currently preciselyzerosingle women in attendance, apart from one or two who appear to be straight out of high school, which is a bit too young for this 32-year-old.I actually asked my pastor about this when I first met with him after beginning to attend the ACNA church. I noted semi-jokingly that I was concerned about never finding a wife if I stopped attending a baptistic evangelical church, since most of the single Christian women in town were of that ilk. He assured me there were plenty of Anglican women, and even joked that maybe I could get a Catholic girl to make the jump to Anglicanism! Well, these Anglican women must be in other congregations in other cities, because after six months of attending, I haven't seen any at my church. I say this not out of bitterness or discontent. I am merely noting a curious fact.(There is a saving grace for me, though, because I work at a fairly large classical Christian school, which sees an influx of young, single female teachers each year. There's the awkwardness of navigating workplace romance, but at least there are options. I tried the online dating thing and found it to be largely a waste of time, and the platforms designed to be addictive. I can't see myself ever doing online dating again, though I know it works well for some people.)

All of this is to say that more and more young men are going to realize, when they jump ship to more liturgical churches, that their pool of potential mates rapidly shrinks. (Although perhaps this is not true for Catholic churches, if Anna's Australian experience is anything to go by.) If they are coming out of evangelical circles, they might be able to find a woman willing to make the jump with them (especially if, like my ACNA church, their church allows them to be a member and still hold to believer's baptism). But they need to prepare for that reality. I think, too, that pastors and other leaders in these liturgical churches need to be prepared to play matchmaker across their networks to find these eager young men wives who are similarly committed to liturgical Christian living and serious discipleship. It's an old-school approach, but what other option is there, especially for men unlike myself who don't also work in a Christian environment?

Reader Joan in Mass. writes:

for the first "Where Are The Men?" postFor all the digging Podles does into the beginning of the feminization of Western Christian congregations in the High Middle Ages, I'm surprised that he didn't mention the most famous change from that time, the one still being debated: mandatory priestly celibacy. It altered the appeal of the priesthood, ensuring that a very different sort of individual would choose that path. I don't know much about organizational dynamics, but I do know one thing from my years as an employee: the personality of the individual in charge sets the tone, both the CEO for the organization as a whole and the first-level supervisor for the team or sub-unit. At the top of the church, elite families still placed their younger sons in positions of power, tolerating mistresses and secret families, but at the parish level, the priest was more and more likely to be the sort who had never fit in with his male peers and who still couldn't relate to them. Thus, without changing anything else, the church became less welcoming to normal men, simply because the guy in charge was not one of them. And then the divide was baked into the culture and endured even after Protestants restored marriage for the clergy.

In response to your correspondent in the ACNA, I have heard before that religious groups oriented around addiction recovery tend to be overwhelmingly male because addiction is an overwhelmingly male problem. Unfortunately, a history of addiction, especially addiction to something illegal, is a huge red flag for large numbers of women, especially women who have never struggled with addiction themselves. A guy has to get a long, long way from a past like that before law-abiding women will start to trust him.

Here is a letter Harvard's diversocrats sent to faculty and staff:

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"Additional demographic categories"! Well, never let it be said that these people working these bullshit jobs are just laying around.

Originally posted here:

From The Mailbag - The American Conservative

In response to the stifling atmosphere of many American universities, a group of academics, journalists, artists, philanthropists, and public intellectuals recently united to found a new institution: The University of Austin. This experiment in higher education is intended to foster an environment of open debate and the fearless pursuit of truth.

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In June, UATX offered its inaugural Forbidden Courses, a noncredit summer program intended to cultivate spirited discussion about provocative questions. It featured instructors and workshop leaders including author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, historian Niall Ferguson, economist Deirdre McCloskey, playwright and filmmaker David Mamet, as well as others who object to the increasingly censorious culture in higher education.

I was selected to be an instructor for this program, because of my own unusual background and experience in higher education.

I was born into poverty and grew up in foster homes in Los Angeles and all around California. At 17, I fled, enlisting in the military right after high school. In 2015, I entered Yale on the GI Bill, and discovered that college was much different than what Id anticipated. Hundreds of campus demonstrators demanded that two professors, Erika and Nicholas Christakis, be fired for defending freedom of expression. Maybe, I thought, that was just a one-off incident. But then I arrived at Cambridge University as a PhD student, and, in 2019, observed as protesters succeeded in disinviting Jordan Peterson as a visiting fellow from the university.

I described these experiences to my class at UATX, and several students slowly nodded their heads in recognition of the prevailing campus culture. I then asked the 10 students: How many of you have withheld a social or political opinion at your campus for fear of ostracism or retribution? Nine raised their hands.

It was apparent that, like me, these young students desired an academic environment that prioritizes freedom of expression and open inquiry. The course I taught centered on social class and the role of money, education, and culture in Americas status system. I tried to foster the kind of environment I wished Id had as an undergraduate.

During a discussion about social class, I posed a simple question to my students that I would never have uttered at Yale or Cambridge: Do some poor people deserve to be poor? This sparked immediate pushback from students, who replied that nobody deserves deprivation.

I then rephrased by asking, Are some people more responsible for their own economic misfortunes than others? Even this I would not ask students during a seminar in an elite college.

I asked this question about responsibility to my students whose home institutions included Stanford, the University of Chicago, and Columbia, among others to help them understand their role as future leaders. Research indicates that graduates of such colleges are the most responsible for shaping politics and culture and customs. As Pano Kanelos, the president of UATX, has written, Universities are places where society does its thinking, where the habits and mores of our citizens are shaped.

I explained to my class that if those who sit at or near the apex of society ignore the importance of individual agency, then this undercuts the dignity of people in deprived and dysfunctional environments who are trying to improve their lives.

One student responded, What about people who try to desperately improve their lives but are arrested for it, like drug dealers?

An excellent question. I explained that the majority of poor people do not commit crimes and are never arrested. I was disheartened to see that the students were surprised by this fact. The students and I spoke about how the people who influence culture and shape policies oftentimes come from elite educational backgrounds and seldom have contact with people who dont attend selective colleges like themselves.

We discussed how, oftentimes, the only impoverished individuals who educated people are exposed to are those who break the law, whether in the media or in pop culture. TV shows often expose affluent viewers to low-income people who turn to crime, because that makes for a more interesting story than characters who work steady jobs to take care of their loved ones, which is how most poor and working class people live. One student observed that those who write and portray lawbreaking characters tend to come from relatively affluent backgrounds.

My goal in asking this provocative question wasnt to pressure students to agree with me. It was to get them thinking critically about a point of view they might not ordinarily encounter. In the end, they might come to a different conclusion than I have and that would be perfectly fine.

Id never seen a class so intellectually engaged in a conversation before. At the end of the program, one student stated, Our discussions didnt get heated, in the emotional sense. They were very critical, in the best possible way. We were genuinely engaging with each others ideas even while disagreeing.

For a fledgling university, testimonials dont get much better than that. Eager to obtain intellectual nourishment, those involved in UATX most notably its students have already begun to cultivate the atmosphere of truth-seeking that older institutions promised. After years of self-censoring at Yale and Cambridge, I have renewed hope for the future of higher education.

Rob Henderson is a founding faculty fellow at the University of Austin and a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Follow him on Twitter @robkhenderson.

More here:

A welcome alternative to the lack of academic freedom on college campuses - The Boston Globe

Heres my prediction. The Tories will lose the next election. There will be an almighty battle for the soul of the Conservative party. Kemi Badenoch will win. Hows that for an opening paragraph?

To take a few steps back, this leadership campaign is a dud. The broadcast media calls it bitter and personal, but its neither: its polite, its dull, it features two competent administrators who disagree over one, albeit profound, point about taxes. Rishi would balance the books, then cut taxes; Liz would cut them now, unleashing growth that balances the books down the road. Im with her, but its hardly Hillary v Trump, is it?

The broadcasters talk about blue on blue warfare because it gets ratings, but also because they dont understand Tories, who they assume are Neanderthals. The phrase, its up to the Conservative Party to decide, is delivered in a tone that suggests our next PM will be chosen by a grand council of the Ku Klux Klan.

Meanwhile, much of Westminster is apathetic. Some MPs suspect Boris will be missed; others are furious at the treatment of Penny Mordaunt, the only candidate whose character was truly assassinated. Government has largely stopped functioning: Putin could ring ahead to say hes about to invade and hed get an answer phone.

Tories are asking themselves what theyve actually achieved in office (inflation, welfare and immigration are out of control) and theres a widespread expectation that theyre going to lose to Labour - hence intelligences greater than our own are already trying to figure out who will make the biggest splash in opposition. Theres probably greater interest in the men and women who *lost* the leadership election than for the brave kids who made the final round. Weve our eye on one in particular.

The names Badenoch, Kemi Badenoch. Thats Bay-denock, by the way, not Bad-ee-nock as I keep hearing on TV (Barack and Kamala had to be pronounced correctly, but no one bothers when the subject is a Tory).

Look, if Special K goes all the way to leader of the Tories, itll be because of her ideas and her talent for putting them across. But she is a black woman and, of course, there are going to be a billion think pieces written about it. All Ill say for now is what she has said: she is proudly Nigerian; growing up in an unstable country for 16 years can make you appreciate what weve built in Britain; and Nigerians tend to be, contrary to what the Left presumes, quite right-wing.

Millennial conservatives are comfortably globalised; they are also into truth-telling. Badenochs voice rings with the impatience of a cohort that has fallen so far behind that it doesnt have time to waste on lying, so expect the Tory Party of the future to say that you cant spend what you dont earn, that the Lefts obsession with race is divisive and that a trans-woman is not a woman.

Moreover, the coming conservatism will be aggressively civilisational. Rishi and Liz are the last gasp of Thatcher; the goal of their politics is to help people make more money, to live independently.

The new conservatives dislike taxes, too, but they sense that the Right has been wrong to shy away from cultural issues on the false assumption that they are a fringe debate. In reality, if youre not fighting the culture war, youre losing it, and you cant have a good economy if your society is decadent. The way that lockdown has transformed popular attitudes towards work risks becoming a case in point.

If you dont make a compelling case for markets, family, church or nation, support for all these will die and the West will weaken - while other systems, Russian or Chinese, dominate the globe.

Kemi Badenoch speaks for conservatives who think Britain is in serious danger of cracking up. They read Douglas Murray and Jordan Peterson; they watch Thomas Sowell on YouTube. I like to bench-press to Malcolm Muggeridge, which is the most right-wing thing youll read all day.

The belief that the culture war is not incidental but central is going to be resisted by party elites, which is why I imagine the battle for opposition leader will be far more interesting than this contest, for there will be those who will argue that a confrontational style of conservatism isnt conservative at all. Is it not the Tory mission to build consensus? they will ask. And a lot of MPs simply wont like being told they are wrong.

Last week, Michael Gove, explaining his support for Badenoch, said that working with her: I had the experience that I must imagine that cabinet ministers had in the early 1980s, in finding that some of the verities that they had held dear were being taken apart brick by brick by a young woman who was easily their intellectual superior.

Thats quite an endorsement. Its also a warning. Just as the wets had to give way to Thatcherism, anyone who wants to be on the Badenoch bus, or compete with her, has to embrace a more muscular politics.

For myself, I rather enjoyed Boriss style of government, lazy and arch, the Roger Moore-era of Toryism. But the Kemites would have us put down our Martinis and cigars, saying that if we want to keep em, well have to fight for them; lose some weight, punch below the belt. Its all about to go a bit Daniel Craig in the world of conservatism.

Originally posted here:

Kemi Badenoch is the future of conservatism - The Telegraph

I was lined up in a mall outside a jungle gym, braving the closed-circuit plumes of COVID to tire out my kids on a glorified cat scratch tower, when I heard the child behind us ask, Daddy, why do those kids have masks? Do I need one?

The child was talking about my kids.

Oh, no sweetie, the father said, masks dont do anything, some people just wear them to feel good about themselves.

He pointed the dickish remark at my back, at my tatty leggings, my halo of unfoiled roots, but also at my children, running in circles, the only victims of the Liberal Mask Agenda in the whole place.

Adrienne Rich, among others, impelled me to turn around. The man wore his toddler about his shoulders like a pelt, the spoils of war. Also cargo shorts.

Whats your problem with masks, man? I asked as calmly as I could in my mask.

I dont have a problem, youre the ones making it a thing, he replied.

You brought it up, buddy. Im just standing in line for a jungle gym.

Here, the mass paused, gripping the shins of the child on his shoulders, then shouted, You dont have permission to talk to me! He turned toward his wife, who was holding the shopping bags, and fixed his gaze over her head, waiting for me to turn back around.

As I fumed and prepared to drop $50 on entry and specialized socks, I listened to him jostling his son behind me. I can do what I want with you, youre mine, he said in a kind of joking tone, certain once again that he was king of the place at the mall with the giant bumblebee mascot.

So often in literature, parenthood appears on the male as a kind of pelt thrown over like a prize. Something has been given to the fathersome knowledge or form of powerbut he has trouble decoding it, except maybe as an author.

Paul, the divorced intellectual Park Slope dad at the center of Teddy Waynes The Great Man Theory, has long wanted to teach his daughter something. When Mabel was small, he read to her: Often she fell asleep as he read, and the moment she succumbed, curled up on him like a shrimp, had always made him feel most like a parent. She has clearly come into her own, but he continues to see her as an extension of his own ego: Mabel is his little baby girl whose vulnerability had given him a sense of mission beyond himself.

Paul is an academic, if one demoted from staff to adjunct in the opening pages of the novel, and his daughter, now a tween, has begun to distance herself from her clueless dad who is soon living with his own mother in the Bronx. Paul tries to muscle through the disconnect with his powers of analysis, casting back to her birth: When Mabel was delivered and thrust into his unpracticed arms, he supposed he felt something, thought it was more an acknowledgement of the moments historical import rather than overwhelming love for this wizened homunculus of a stranger who was about to upend his heretofore streamlined life. You can see how great Paul might have been to have around in the difficult early days of parenting.

Ten years later, his ex-wife Jane has a new partner (she has also betrayed their values by getting Botox), and his daughter spends weekends with Paul, for whom the raw magic of her existence hadnt faded. Parenthood had opened up his frigid soul, creating a Mabel-sized space in his heart, an unexpected warm spot in an ice-cold lake. And she continued to give him a reason, in his newly destitute adjunct state, to make something of himself, so he redoubles his efforts on his book, The Luddite Manifesto; something that will disrupt the status quo in ailing Americait will rail against anti-intellectual cable pap, against Trump, and against the dumbing down of children by social mediaand something, like 99 percent of manifestos, that no one wants to read. It will be published by a university press.

Wayne specializes in this kind of alienated, troubling man. In Loner, his unreliable narrator, a smart, awkward Harvard undergraduate, took just a few chapters to go from social miscues to incel predation (Loner came out the year before Cat Person). The Love Song of Johnny Valentine followed an over-managed Bieberesque child star doomed by his industry and was published the year before Biebers entitlement culminated in his being hoisted up the Great Wall of China on his bodygurds shoulders.

The Great Man Theory leaps ahead of the parenting discourse, lets call it, to ask what dads are bringing to the table, and to explore the undercurrent of panic about the End of Men. Paul is smart enough to know men are a problem, and sensate enough to get a whiff of toxic masculinity, but convinced that he, center of the universe, is the only person who can fix it: He is a man writing to ward off global and personal crises; he needed to prove to his family that he had the stability and gravity of a sun.

The psychology professor Jordan Shapiro observed in his book Father Figure: How To Be A Feminist Dad that men are brought up to see themselves as the dominant narrative in a household; protagonists on a heros journey, as in popular man-texts like Robert Blys Iron John: A Book About Men and the work of Jordan Peterson.

As parables attempting to explain our existence go, Iron John is cuckoo bananas. The base story (Im paraphrasing) is that all men have in them a child who must steal a golden key from under his mothers pillow, unlock a cage containing a wild, hairy man to retrieve a golden ball, then journey out into the jungle where he can become a warrior and awaken his inner Wild Manthe missing piece of himself that will trigger healing from the absent father and give him Zeus energy. Think men howling around campfires in the mid-90s.

Bly, part of the mythopoetic movementthe New Age but just for menbelieved that separation from the mother is a key rite of passage for boys, though something moms get in the way of under our current societal structure: A clean break from the mother is crucial, but its simply not happening. Bly warns of female tripod rage and of the she-wolves a boy may encounter in the woods, and takes some strange turns in issuing warnings about the mother-child relationship:

A mans moustache may stand for his pubic hair. A friend once grew a moustache when he was around thirty. The next time he visited his mother, she looked into the corners of the room as she talked to him, and would not look at his face, no matter what they talked about. Hair, then, can represent sexual energy.

Still, Blys ideas were a stepping stone from the patriarchal alpha prototype to something better, and a response to Feminism; he believed that men had female and male energy inside of them, and made a case for the expressive mens movement. Had Paul been a Park Slope dad in the 90s, you could see Iron John appealing to his intellectual sensibilities.

From the distance of an additional quarter century, though, a new kind of fragility runs through manhood: a fear of cancel culture, to extinguish the men who mess things up. And Paul is quite far from unleashing his Wild Manhis 80-something mother is having more sex than he, and Paul finds himself mopping someone elses semen out of the backseat of her car that he uses for his work as a rideshare driver. The key is back under the mothers pillow.

Paul is painted as an Encino Man dug up from an earlier age when mens ideas were deemed important and their place in society unshakeable. You do feel a bit bad for him, just barely grasping the most rudimentary shapes of a typical parents existential awakening: His baby. Strange that after thirty-five years of independent selfhood, with relatives reaching backward in fixed history, he was now permanently linked with a human hurtling toward an undefined future.

Needless to say, mothers are light years ahead in charting this territory. I have created a death, chimes Samantha Hunt, whose ghost story and journey through the woods Mr. Splitfoot is profoundly successful where Iron John is mostly confusing. How can I become a god? the hero of Rachel Yoders Nightbitch asks, skipping to the heart of the matter. For Nightbitch, birth and motherhood bring a terrifying and complicated shift in power: She had that freedom when she gave birth, had screamed and shat and sworn and would have killed had she needed to.

How can men compete with that?

Just before The Great Man Theory came Raising Raffi, Keith Gessens memoir of early parenthood. There were quite a few moments that leapt out at me, including this recollection of his wifes (the writer Emily Gould) home birth: At one point, when Emily was on the bed, just before the babys head started coming out, a geyser of blood shot out from her vagina.

In this, I do indeed see a case for men as witnesses to birth, with access to an angle women cant see, unless, I regret, with a hand mirror. Gessen has written an examination of the fatherhood condition, plumbing his own aggression and impotence, revising coarser Jungian ideas about the father-child situation as he goes:

Raffi did not want to kill me and marry Emily. It was more complicated and difficult than that. What he wanted was all her attention even as he also wanted to be his own person. He wanted to re-create the relationship theyd once had, when he was smaller, but in a way that it could no longer be re-created.

It is a proper reckoning. Understanding that the breastfeeding dyad can be hard for a dad to crack, he works to occupy a larger and more positive role as Raffi reaches toddlerdom, and grapples with his own eventual uselessness: I think now that there is no tragedy like the tragedy of parenthood, writes Gessen. There is no other thing you do in life only so that the person you do it for can leave you. Here, he hits on what I understand as key themes of writing about motherhood: the figurative death that takes place, the invisible work of care, the confrontation with your own shadow in your childs personality, the knowledge that you arent writing the story in the end. Gessen is welcome at my witchy mom bonfire anytime.

When I otherwise think of the literature of good fathers, it often concerns surrogate fathers (Goodnight Mr. Tom, Heidi, The Box Car Children), or grief for a lost father (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, the wonderful H Is For Hawk). All of Shakespeares dads are terrible, likewise those of Steinbeck and Woolf. I guess we have Doctor Manette and Atticus Finch, proto-Brooklyn dad (whose outsized presence covered for the absence of Harper Lees abusive mother), Jaysons Greenes Once More We Saw Stars, and the work of Karl Ove Knausgaard and for good and wrenching and complicated dad thoughts. There are also a slew of dad manifestosBetween The World and Me, Dreams From My Fatherwhich nevertheless get us back to dad as author.

If Paul doesnt, in fact, have anything particularly worthwhile to say as an academic, or as a dad granted a cosmic glimpse of himself as a speck in the wider universe of humanity, you have to ask yourself what the point of him is. How many generations of women had delayed their greatness only to have time extinguish it completely? How many women had run out of time while the men didnt know what to do with theirs? asked Rachel Yoder. How easyhow wrong but easy nonethelessit would be to walk away from it all, thinks the hero of Lydia Kieslings Golden State, who is trying to help her Turkish partner gain access to the U.S., but otherwise spends the novel with their child Honey, traversing the state of motherhood:

a warren of beautiful rooms, something like Topkap, something like the Alhambra on a winter morning, some well-trod but magnificent place youre allowed to sit in for a minute and snap a photo before you are ushered out and youll never remember every individual jewel of a room but if youre lucky you go through another and another and another and another until they turn out the lights.

The sadness of Pauls irrelevance comes late in the book when he, touchingly, delivers the terrarium he has built and tended with Mabel to Mabels stepdad Steve, a seemingly great dad, the kind you or I might know:

Contained in his arms was the small world theyd created over the years: new bugs, new worms, new soil, but the same pebbles that theyd first collected together in the park when Mabel was a little girl.

Its better off with you, he told Steve, and handed over the tank.

Lauren, the cable news producer he is seeing, informs him that she will be having a child by donor, but is happy to date in the meantime. By this point he has been fully cut loose from the university, after a female student reported him for being a creep.

After he carries out his last bad idea, his ex-wife and daughter will find it quite easyif wrongto walk away from him, and thats the real tragedy, one he might not even understand.

Link:

A Great Man Is Hard to Find: On the Literature of Contemporary Fatherhood - Literary Hub

Jordan Peterson has reportedly been suspended from Twitter following a post about transgender actor Elliot Page that violated the platforms rules against hateful conduct.

Screenshots posted online show the tweet in question from the Canadian clinical psychologists account, which reads: Remember when pride was a sin? And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician.

Page came out as transgender in 2020, announcing he would now be known as Elliot. Peterson, 60, is guilty of deadnaming the 25-year-old Umbrella Academy star, a source close to the Oscar-nominated actor told The Post.

Peterson, who joined the staff of conservative podcast outlet Daily Wire on Thursday, is infamous for his anti-trans stance. He once claimed on Joe Rogans podcast that being transgender is a result of a contagion and similar to satanic ritual abuse.

Conservative political commentator Dave Rubin posted screenshots of the removed tweet online, writing, The insanity continues at Twitter, and claiming that Peterson just told me he will never delete the tweet. Paging @elonmusk.

Petersons daughter, Mikhaila, also posted screenshots of the tweets online, taking aim at Twitter and Elon Musk, who has been working to acquire the social media platform.

Wow. @jordanbpeterson got a twitter strike. No more twitter until he deletes the tweet. Definitely not a free speech platform at the moment @elonmusk, she wrote.

The Post has reached out to Twitter reps for comment.

This is the latest in a string of beefs the 60-year-old has had with the little blue bird social media platform. In May, Peterson boldly announced he was quitting the platform after he was called out for shamingSports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue model Yumi Nu, writing of the plus-size posers cover debut: Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.

Meanwhile, Twitter has a history of booting individuals and evenentire organizations, including the Babylon Bee, off the platformfor not respecting trans peoples identities, Fox News reported.

A majority of Americans believe a persons gender cannot be changed, according to a new poll released this week, which underscores the publics complicated view oftransgender issues.

The Pew Research Centersurvey found that 60% of adults say a persons gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth. Thats a four-point increase from the previous year 56% in 2021 and a six-point spike from 54% in 2017.

No single demographic group is driving this change, and patterns in who is more likely to say this is similar to what they were in past years, according to the research team.

The poll also found that 86% of Republicans and those leaning right believe gender is determined by the sex assigned at birth, compared to 38% of Democrats and those leaning more left.

However, the survey stated that 64 percent of respondents would support legislation to protect transgender people fromdiscrimination in jobs, housing, and public spaces. And it noted that roughly eight-in-ten U.S. adults say there is at least some discrimination against transgender people in our society.

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Twitter suspends Jordan Peterson for Elliot Page trans tweet

With every passing year, traditional religious belief continues its trend of steady decline in the United States. According to the latest Gallup Values and Beliefs poll, a record low of 81 percent of American adults believe in God. Thats a slip of 6 percentage points since 2017, the last time Gallup conducted the poll, which found 87 percent of respondents affirming belief in God. As traditional beliefs wane and a new generation increasingly makes its way in the world without them, a new American religious landscape is becoming visibleand it has features both familiar and unexpected.

What is changing profoundly is the decline of traditional, denominational religious organizations, especially among young adults, Notre Dame sociologist and author Christian Smith wrote in an email about the poll results. Within Christianity, the decline affects both liberal and conservative denominations. Scholars, journalists, and sociologists of religion have offered a range of explanations for the drop. While simple demographics account for part of the changeas young Nones come of age, they are beginning to have children of their own, whereas religious couples are having fewer children than their parents and grandparents didpolitics have also played a role, especially for those on the left. According to Gallups report, Democrats have seen the sharpest decline in belief in God while Republican rates of belief remain extremely high:

The groups with the largest declines are also the groups that are currently least likely to believe in God, including liberals (62%), young adults (68%) and Democrats (72%). Belief in God is highest among political conservatives (94%) and Republicans (92%), reflecting that religiosity is a major determinant of political divisions in the U.S.

David Campbell, coauthor of Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics, says that Many Americansespecially young peoplesee religion as bound up with political conservatism, and the Republican party specifically. . . . Young people are especially allergic to the perception that manybut by no means allAmerican religions are hostile to LGBTQ rights.

But while the Religious Right has played a role in the waning of traditional Christianity in the United States, the disillusioned young scions of conservative Catholic and Protestant families arent emptying the pews at home to fill them in more progressive church spaces. Liberal Christians traditions are in a faster freefall than conservative ones.

Notwithstanding the Episcopal Churchs progressive stances on a number of issues that align with the mores of liberal young Americansthe denomination ordains trans people, blesses same-sex marriages, and supports abortion rightsits membership and Sunday attendance have plummeted. Far from picking up large numbers of disaffected post-evangelicals during the Trump years, the church experienced a net loss of almost 170,000 members between 2016 and 2020. These numbers reflect a decades-long trend: In October 2020, the denominations own news service reported that membership is down 17.4 [percent] over the last 10 years. The average age of the average Episcopalian and the lack of generational replacement have contributed to an overall picture that prompted one scholar to say, The Episcopal Church will be dead in the next 20 years. (He later wrote to clarify and mildly soften his position: They will very likely be on life support.) Its been a steep slope: The denomination has produced more American presidents than any other, a reminder of the prestige and power it enjoyed as recently as one or two generations ago.

The story of decline is consistent across denominations with similarly liberal theological views on gender and sexuality, such as the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the United Church of Christ. Likewise, liberal seminaries and divinity schools across the country have also faced tough times, with some shutting down and others downsizing or even merging to avoid closure.

Progressive social stances and liberal beliefs do not appear to have helped these churches to attract younger people with similar convictions to join them in significant numbers. In attempting to explain the mainlines troubles with declining membership, economist Laurence Iannaccone arguedin 1994, when the longer trend had already been apparent for many yearsthat part of the problem for the liberal churches is low expectations for members: They require little in the way of time, resources, and support, and are hesitant to place strong moral expectations or theological boundaries on them. In Iannaccones view, Strictness makes organizations stronger and more attractive because it reduces free riding. It screens out members who lack commitment and stimulates participation among those who remain. Likewise, more conservative critics have long argued that the key problem for liberal churches is that they lack a religious reason for [their] own existence; combining this feature with their emphasis on social causes leaves them looking nigh-indistinguishable from any other advocacy group, let alone one another.

The urgency with which mainline churches pursue social justice does not extend to traditional missionary work, which could be another factor in their waning memberships. In his study of early twentieth-century foreign missionaries and their children, UC Berkeleys David Hollinger writes that one of the unintended consequences of liberal Protestantisms embrace of multiculturalism was a concomitant abandonment of proselytizing. In his view, the religious tolerance of the mainline advanced the larger process of religious liberalization and the attendant growth of post-Protestant secularism. It could be said that the commitment to inclusivity with respect to other faiths, traditions, and points of view became so total within the mainline that it resulted in a final self-abnegation.

Younger Americans are leaving their churches at a faster rate than has been recorded in similar polls previouslybut the question of where theyre ending up is complicated.

The U.S. is not undergoing secularization of a type that leads to hard-core rationalist, materialist, disenchanted atheism, at least in the near term, Smith, the Notre Dame sociologist, wrote. If anything, the broader culture has become re-enchanted. Everybody and their cousin now wants to be spiritual and to practice mindfulness.

Polls of American religiosity give unaffiliated participants more options than simply Atheist and Agnostic. On the question of religious preference, Pew offers Nothing in particular, and Gallups question about religious affiliation includes the option of selecting Nonethe negation that gave rise to a new sociological category.

But Nones are not simply agnostics or atheists by another name. A growing subsection of Americans positively identifies as spiritual but not religious, a catch-all of personal religious orientations that can entail anything from cultivating private Christian faith apart from an ecclesial tradition to an open agnosticism inflected with principles derived from the practice of yogaand much more besides. So although explicit atheism has made modest gains among Americans in recent years, it is not the philosophical upshot for most Americans who are leaving their churches, and its wrong to assume that a person who identifies as a None is a person bereft of religious conviction.

The decline into irreligion of a nation of natural believers has a strange and unpredictable character. In fact, some observers have argued that what we are witnessing is not the decline of American religion at all, but rather a remix.

Tara Isabella Burton, in her book Strange Rites, argues that the decline of confessional Christianity in America has been taken to imply the waning of religion in the country more generally. But religion is as strong as ever, in Burtons view; you just wont find it in church. Rather, comic book conventions, yoga studios, cyberspace, and a myriad of similar destinations have become the essential sites of a new American religious culture. Carrying forward some of the ideas of nineteenth-century French sociological thinker mile Durkheim, Burton takes religion to be less about creeds and dogma than community and meaning making. This religiosity finds its expression through the collective energy of its adherents, a process [Durkheim] calls collective effervescence, a shared intoxication participants experience when they join together in a symbolically significant, socially cohesive action.

Burton cites Harry Potter as a paradigmatic example of this collective effervescence. Children born to Potter fans are being christened Albus and Hermione in honor of Rowlings characters; their Hogwarts-tattoo-sleeved parents derive moral teachings, ethical notions, and a larger message from the books, which amount to a foundational text for their livesjust as scripture may have been to their own parents. This quasi-religious devotion to the imaginative universe of Harry Potter helps explain the otherwise unaccountable ferocity of the backlash to J.K. Rowling: Her controversial public statements about trans women have elicited something akin to a crisis of faith among devotees who may have first learned about the importance of inclusion and acceptance in the Potter novels. Fans of the fantasy series are not unique in the degree to which they give themselves over to their enthusiasm. Yale religion scholar Kathryn Lofton has long argued that the obsessive fervor generated by celebrities like Oprah, Britney Spears, and BTS has elements of organization and function that appear far more similar to those of religious communities than of more pedestrian fandoms.

But these tendencies offer a brief glimpse of a much larger emerging religious landscape. Thanks to TikTok, Instagram, and the pandemic that kept everyone inside and on their phones, astrology has made a significant apparent comeback with Millennials and Zoomers. Promising a more authentic and spiritually attuned feminism, Wicca and Neopaganism have grown from 134,000 [adherents] in 2001 to nearly 2 million [in 2021]. Young men, some of them nervous about any kind of feminism, have elevated Canadian psychologist and self-help writer Jordan Peterson to the status of a mystical guru. There is the cult of Peloton, known for its collective affirmations and liturgical calls to fitness. Followers of QAnon could be described as initiates because of the relationship they develop to an esoteric body of beliefs. The Disney community treats a visit to Disney World as a secular pilgrimage. And the dominant contemporary form of progressive social consciousnesswokeness, as critics call ithas features that resemble Burtons notion of remixed religion. From calls to atone for unearned privilege (original sin, if you squint), to chants and kneeling as forms of protest, to the targeting of dissenting opinions for conveying heretical forms of thought, the parallels with elements of Christian history, theology, and practice are suggestive. Columbia University linguist John McWhorter is a well-known proponent of this view, arguing that an anthropologist would see no difference in type between Pentecostalism and this new form of antiracism.

The predominance of remixed religion, religion-substitutes, religion-alternatives, and spiritualized hobbies among younger Americans attests to a basic truth about our countrys culture: We are natural believers. While scholars may debate the meaning and significance of any of these examplesand deeper questions about what constitutes religion as a unique form of social lifethe durably high level of spiritual enthusiasm is a feature of the culture of the United States that sets it apart from that of secular Europe. In its many new forms, American religion may very well turn out to be with us always, even unto the end of the age.

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America, Land of Unbelieving Believers - The Bulwark

The corn fields adjacent to John Deere headquarters in Silvis, Illinois, typically are knee-high by the 4th of July. Thats how Webb Simpson remembers them as he returns to this northwestern corner of the Land of Lincoln for the first time in a dozen years to play at TPC Deere Run in the PGA Tours John Deere Classic, which is celebrating its 50th edition.

Simpson, winner of the 2012 U.S. Open among his seven Tour titles, is back in Americas Heartland to pay a debt of gratitude to longtime tournament director Clair Peterson, who is retiring this year, and gave him a sponsors exemption in 2008.

I was elated because theres so many uncertainties when you turn pro as a young player, said Simpson, who graduate from Wake Forest that summer. You dont know which tour youre going to be playing on, if any tour.

The John Deere Classic grew in meaning to Simpson when he returned to the Quad Cities to compete a year later as a rookie and proposed to his wife, Dowd, the mother of his five children, the night before the final round.

She knew the question was coming in the next few months, so I thought Im going to get her when she least expects it, he said. Decided right by the rivers a beautiful area, I can take her to dinner, I can surprise her.

Simpsons caddie secured the ring and he dropped to one knee on a dock along the Mississippi River, which divides Bettencourt and Davenport, Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island, Illinois.

I was more nervous about dropping it than her saying yes, said Simpson, who claimed to be 99 percent sure she would say yes.

Fast forward to March at the Valspar Championship and Simpson told Peterson to count him in for his farewell tournament. With the pre-tournament withdrawal of Daniel Berger due to injury, Simpson, at No. 58 in the Official World Golf Ranking, represents the highest-ranked player in the field, but he downplayed any talk that he should be the favorite.

A hundred guys could win this week, Simpson said. Just because the field isnt as strong as other weeks its still going to take a really low number(to win).

John Deere: Thursday tee times, TV info | PGA Tour on ESPN+ | Best bets

With the tournament going up against the second event of LIV Golf, the upstart league that has wooed the likes of Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and former JDC champion Bryson DeChambeau, and scheduled between the U.S. Open and British Open, Peterson knew his event would be a tough draw.

How many major winners do you have here compared to John Deere? Its not even close, said Pat Perez, a defector to the renegade LIV Golf. The Tour wants to keep talking about strength of field and all that kind of stuff, the strength of field is here.

To make matters worse for Peterson and the John Deere, several of the biggest stars in the game are heading next week to the Genesis Scottish Open, an event co-sanctioned between the PGA Tour and DP World Tour for the first time, which certainly had a detrimental effect, too. But none of this is new for an event that has rolled with the punches.

Ilike to say we hit for the cycle, Peterson said. Weve been opposite the British Open, weve been opposite the Olympics, weve been opposite the Ryder Cup and weve been opposite the Presidents Cup. So, our history is not always to have the top-10 players in the world here.

What Peterson has excelled at is finding the stars of tomorrow and offering them sponsor exemptions into the field.

Ive kind of compared it, I guess, to an IPO, where theres an initial public offering of this new product and theres no promise that theres going to be success, Peterson said, but you try to do your homework and identify guys in this case that were going to be successful as athletes, but quite honestly we also were really focused on young men that we liked and respected and had a lot of regard for.

Among those who benefited from a JDC invite include defending champion Lucas Glover, Jon Rahm and DeChambeau, who all later won U.S. Opens; past champ Jordan Spieth (three majors in all), Zach Johnson (two majors) and Patrick Reed, who all won green jackets; Justin Thomas, who just won his second PGA Championship, and Jason Day, who also won the Wanamaker, and is in the field this week.

We gave him a spot as a 17-year old. He made his first check here, Peterson said of Day, who returned five times. Then he becomes No. 1 in the world. And its tough, once youre getting into all the majors and the World Golf Championships, you can play all over the world, its tough to build a schedule and include our eventBut here he is this year to come back and recognize that we gave him a spot, its exciting to have him here and thats the value of the relationships, I think. Theres no expiration date on em.

Peterson pointed out that for all his success with sponsor invites, his record isnt perfect.

Im going to give you a true confession right now, because people have said, Oh, wow, you know, you do a great job picking exemptions. I said no to Scottie Scheffler, OK? So dont give me too much credit. Thats one that really kind of was a whiff. But I think hes going to do OK.

This year the list of those Peterson awarded golden tickets to includes Chris Gotterup, the Haskins Award winner as mens college golfer of the year, fellow newly minted-pro Quinn Riley, a 21-year-old graduate of Duke, and Patrick Flavin, an Illinois native who grew up attending the tournament.

Its a dream come true, Flavin said. The John Deere Classic to me was always a major. It was a really big deal. Watching guys like Zach Johnson and Steve Stricker win, guys from the Midwest who arent overpowering people and Im kind of a small guy, it was really inspiring to me.

So is the local support for the tournament and the charity dollars it has raised $145 million.

To me thats a success, Peterson said.You cant judge the success of the tournament just by the strength of the field.

Continue reading here:

Jordan Spieth, Bryson DeChambeau, Zach Johnson all made a name for themselves at John Deere Classic. How one tournament director wooed top young...

A photo of Roddy Ricch in the desert.

Social media has been a mixed bag since it came on the scene; it has been a force for immense good and a home for some of the most harmful interactions.

Process exposure refers to social media activities where influencers and users consistently reveal the creative process behind their successes and outcomes to their audience.

Social media has frequently been used by millions of influencers and celebrities as a way to show off the good life and flaunt their successes. While celebrities flaunted their Grammys and Oscars, their followers were usually left with an insatiable hunger for the same results without understanding the process behind it.

This gross lack of process exposure has tainted the legacy of the biggest social media platforms and made them a purveyor of insecurities rather than a powerful tool for education and inspiration. However, a lot of positive change has gone unnoticed.

Since 2011, when YouTube introduced its live streaming function, Live video has exploded on the scene and become the favorite content consumed by most social media users. Statistics show that people spend three times longer watching a live social video than a prerecorded one.

The unintentional effect of this shift towards live video has been a drastic increase in process exposure. Going live as opposed to creating videos has dramatically increased the ability of content creators, influencers, and celebrities to bring their viewers along through every step of the journey. It has become the reality TV of social media.

Grammy Award-winning, and Forbes 30 Under 30, artist, Roddy Ricch, has not just observed this shift towards live video; he has also observed the craving among the average social media user for more process-inclined content in general.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 26: Roddy Ricch (R) and guest attend the 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards ... [+] at Staples Center on January 26, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

After making his mark in the music industry with his multiple awards ranging from the Grammys, BET, and the American Music Awards, amongst others, Ricch decided to venture into the tech space and build his brand portfolio. Ricchs search for the next big tech disruptor has led him to the team at Roll, a new digital platform that promises a new and unique connection experience between celebrities and their followers.

Ricch explained why he instantly saw the potential in the Roll project; "Being invited to be part of the creative process of developing the Roll app, was a big eureka moment for me, because it put in action, what I have been feeling for so long; people are tired of watching the outcome of all our hard work on social media, they want to see all the steps that led us there. This is the only way people can leave educated and inspired.

There have been far too many aspiring artist who thought they could just jump, pick up a mic, and start rapping because they were inspired by one of my songs, they didn't know the process behind the outcome. That's what Roll is showing".

The digital platform is designed to allow artists, creators and celebrities to share an inside look at their personal lives as well as the process of creating content and music with their fans and followers. With Roll, users can access the insights of making an album, from the late nights to the early mornings, building beats, laying verses, and the music video shoot. Roll's vision speaks to the larger benefits of process exposure.

Ricch is adamant that process-oriented content is the future of social media content. According to Ricch, process exposure will turn followers into leaders by providing direction, education, and inspiration.

Direction

Today's youth are heavily inspired by social media creators, celebrities, and influencers, sometimes more than other influences. However, loving a person or art does not automatically translate to possessing the ability to replicate the person's art or results. As process exposure becomes mainstream, young people will likely make more informed decisions after being exposed to the processes behind what they admire.

Education

From academics like Jordan Peterson to athletes like LeBron James, today's social media users are exposed to a wide gamut of solid influences.As process-inclined videos and content continue to explode, users can gain more step-by-step education in many areas of interest.

CAMBRIDGE, CAMBRIDGESHIRE - NOVEMBER 02: Jordan Peterson addresses students at The Cambridge Union ... [+] on November 02, 2018 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. (Photo by Chris Williamson/Getty Images)

The number of Americans choosing to go to college is steadily declining; perhaps process-inclined content can become a source of quality informal education.

Inspiration

Ricch stated, the most significant impact of the Roll app is its inspirational value. In his words, "It is one thing to know if you should do it, it is another thing to know how to do it, but inspiration is the most powerful part of what we are doing. Exposing an audience to both the highs and the lows of process inspires them to know that the best of men are just men at best and that if anyone can do it, certainly they can too."

It may be impossible to lower the internet's amount of unprofitable content being released, but the gradual push for more process exposure does hold some promise. Perhaps, social media might finally fulfill its true potential.

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How Roddy Ricch Is Impacting The Tech Landscape - Forbes

Dear June,

This November, my son turns 18. For the past 15 years, I have not been in his life due to the choices I made. My most fervent prayer is to be allowed in his life one day.

Over the years, I have tried to initiate communication many times and have not heard a peep. He is living with his mother, and I highly doubt she encourages any contact with me. She has emailed photos of my son to my father.

Of course, there is a lifetime of issues behind all of this. I lived with my mother until I was 6, then with my father until I was 13. To this day, my father and I have a very strained relationship.

I am wondering if I should pay a private investigator to find him when he turns 18? I know it is my fault that I havent been in his life. Can you give me any advice?

An Estranged Father

Dear Estranged Father,

It is very admirable that you want to be in your sons life after so long. Yes, I think you should do everything in your power to reconnect with him. It will be life-changing, strengthening, even healing for both of you.

Once your son is an adult, you have the legal as well as moral right to establish communication. Im sure a good private investigator could do the job, but I wonder if perhaps communication could be established through the family? This way might accomplish more for yourself and your son. Let me explain.

Since you have had almost no contact with your son since he was less than 3 years old, you will be building a relationship almost from scratch. Now it may be that this relationship comes easilylike building a sandcastle, but it also may not be easylike building a medieval fortress. So I think a preparation step is important because you wont be able to build a fortress without some know-how.

It is a truth that when a child doesnt have a father present they are left with questions about how worthy they really are.

Pediatrician and author Meg Meeker says that deep in a childs heart, they need both parents to answer three basic questions about themselves:

Parents also answer these questions with tone and body language.

In a TEDx talk,Meeker said that people who dont have these questions answered by their fathers live in chaos.

Our prisons are filled with men whose spirits are crushed because they never had those questions answered by their dads.

Even successful men struggle if they havent had a father. Meeker said she also works with professional athletes, teaching them how to be fathers and they too struggle with chaos in their souls becausethough they may have achieved the epitome of fame and glory in the worldthey dont know the answer to these questions in a deep part of their hearts. The same is also true for elites in any realm.

You mention that your relationship with your own father is strained, so perhaps its helpful to consider how he answered those questions for you. Possibly he didnt do the best job. If this is the case, if he didnt believe in your potential, in your inherent worth, and didnt tell you so, then this may have set you on a path toward your mistakes.

But, of course, you cant blame him nowhe was probably beaten down by life in some way. The best way forward now is to acknowledge any wounds still unhealed in you, accept that your father had faults, and forgive him for them. I would guess he was doing his best with the hand he was dealtmost of us are.

Your desire to be a present in your sons lifedespite all this timereally speaks to a nobility and strength in you. In my experience, parenting requires a lot of strength because, since we love and care so much for our children, they can bring up deep fears. In those moments when Ive been really challenged by my son, I think back to how I felt when he was a newbornhow I knew he had amazing potential and that I would do and sacrifice so much for him, and this gives me the strength to overcome in myself what is challenging our relationship.

I mention this because it may be that when you meet your son, he might not the person you hoped he would be, or he may have a very distorted view of you (we have no idea what his mother has been telling him) and you may have to prove to him that you are still worthy of being his dad.

Put another way, I think your search for your son is an actual heros quest, and thus you will meet with setbacks, perhaps rejection, perhaps disrespect, and there will be moments in which you will doubt yourself. But its the nature of the quest to be hard.

So as to your question about how to contact him, you could hire a private investigator, but what if you take the path of first easing some of the strain in your relationship with your own father? Then what about your sons mother? Could you become on cordial terms with her? The benefit is that you will start to reweave family bonds around your son, which might naturally lead to a connection with him, and importantly, through this process you gain strength and wisdom.

I think if you reflect, you will know how best to proceed.

My other suggestion would be to consider reading, to help bring you perspective, courage, and wisdom; some works to consider might be hero tales such as Hercules or biographies of great men like George Washington.

Further suggestions for reading and watching would be books or videos by Dr. Meg Meeker, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Dr. Jordan Peterson, which has general principles for keeping on top of life; It Didnt Start With You, by Mark Wolynn, which is about how to heal generational trauma; and Man of Steel and Velvet, by Aubrey Andelin, which is an old-fashioned how-to guide for men on manhood.

You could also reach out to the Fatherless Generation Foundation, a Georgia-based nonprofit that specializes in helping families reunite and will have advice and resources for you.

Sincerely,

June

________

Do you have a family or relationship question for our advice columnist,Dear June? Send it toDearJune@EpochTimes.comor Attn: Dear June, The Epoch Times, 5 Penn Plaza, 8th Fl. New York, NY, 10001

June Kellum is a married mother of three and longtime Epoch Times journalist covering family, relationships, and health topics.

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Dear June: Father Seeks to Reconnect With Teenage Son - The Epoch Times