Jordan Peterson Being Interviewed In The Netherlands By A woman who Just Doesn't Get It

Click Here to Watch A Great Mind As He Makes His Case

An interview with the inestimable Jordan Peterson as he talks about everything from why children need to roleplay to the negative reaction he often gets from the media compared to the overwhelmingly positive reaction he gets from people in the street. When the woman veers into politics, as all Peterson's interviewers invariably do, the woman I think is astonished when Peterson explains that you can't explain western civilization as the oppression of women by men, that equality of outcome leads to mountains of bodies, that Marxism is just as bad as Nazism, and that Canada, while a great country, is by no means the last bastion of civilization, unless you are going to exclude Europe, Scandanavia, Australia and New Zealand.   

Age Not Race

As I was reading about the gifted young Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahones today I came across a story calling him a black player. That got my dander up. Why does someone want to call him black to the exclusion of everything else? In Mahones's case, it is not an either-or thing. He is clearly biracial. One can clearly see his black heritage in his hair. Not so much in his nose and lips. And hardly at all in his skin color. Jimmy Garappolo, the Italian-American Forty-Niners quarterback is if anything darker than Mahones. But no one calls him Italian.

Years ago I once asked someone why Barack Obama was the first "black" president. He had a white mother and a black father, so why didn't we call him the first biracial president? He responded by saying it was the old drop-of-blood rule. If you had a single drop of black blood you were considered black. 

Well cripes. It is pretty stupid to let a racist rule from the days of slavery or Jim Crow govern how we do things today. If it is absolutely imperative to know a person's racial background, why don't we at least do it scientifically?

A couple of years ago my older son gave me a 23andMe DNA test for Christmas. I had mostly identified as Italian growing up, even though my mom was English (maiden name Franklin). Part of the reason was my Italian surname. But an even greater reason I think was that my uncle married a 100% Italian girl. She was such a great cook that it was natural for me to identify with the Italian side of the family. But when I got the 23andMe test results back it showed that I was only 11% Italian. The rest was mostly European. 

Well, that wasn't hard to figure out. The Ciotti family came from the area up by Lake Como where people may be culturally Italian but genetically are more likely to be Austrian or German. And my mother's English ancestors (Franklin) probably originally came from France where their name was Fraunclein. If one wanted to be accurate about my background one could say I was a genetic European with a cultural affinity for  Italy.  

Actually, the most interesting thing about the upcoming Superbowl isn't the race of the quarterbacks but the fact that Patrick Mahones is 25 and Tom Brady is 43.  I think Mahones is the better quarterback at this point but I'm rooting for the geriatric Brady to pull it off. It would imply, however faintly, that old guys like me haven't yet completely lost everything.

Raising the Minimum Wage Versus Freezing the Price of Bread.

 

I was listening to a program on NPR tonight about Biden's proposal to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour. One of the guests argued that, contrary to what Republicans always say, an increase in the minimum wage won't hurt either the economy or the prospects of entry-level people looking for their first job. If that's really true, perhaps $15 an hour isn't ambitious enough. In a man-on-the-street interview, one guy said he needed $25 an hour to live decently. Well Hell's Bells, if we can do $25 without a problem, why not do $50?

We could of course come at this from the other direction too. Maybe instead of increasing the minimum wage we just freeze the price of food, rent, gas, and everything else? 

This fortunately is an experiment that has already been done. When food prices are rising many governments in many places have tried to solve the problem by setting a low price for bread. It never works. Bakers aren't stupid. If you tell them to sell bread below cost very soon they quit baking it at all. And it's not a solution to tell them to make it up on volume.

Leftwing Science Denial

 We know what happens when a conservative expresses doubt that the climate is getting warmer or that man-made CO2 is the problem. Leftists call him a "science denier" and cancel him on the Internet. But what happens when a man denies biological science by declaring he's a woman "trapped in a man's body." 

I'll tell you what happens. All of a sudden everyone on the left side of the aisle suddenly declares the person now to be a woman despite his five o'clock shadow, XY chromosomes, formidable male member, and inability to bear children. If a 6-foot, 200-pound guy with a three-day beard wants to mingle in the girl's locker room, hey no problem.  Many on the left also think it's only right that that big guys get to knock around the other players in women's soccer or run them down in women's track. 

I have no problem with guys wearing dresses, lipstick, and perfume. I wouldn't marry one but they have the right to dress the way they want. My problem is when they expect me to say I believe that they are really women. When it comes to cognitive dissonance that is just a bridge too far. I don't believe people who tell me they are Napoleon or Jesus Christ and I don't believe guys who tell me they are girls. It's not sexism. It's common sense. And anyone who denies it is no more scientific than someone who denies climate change.