Over the past year, thirty-six-year-old Andrew Tate has become a cultural phenomenon. On social media, the former British kickboxer-turned-influencer is one of the most famous men in the world, with over eleven billion views on TikTok alone. Tate is the personification of various internet subcultures, combining the critiques of the anti-feminist manosphere and the alt-right with the posture of a pickup artist. A self-described pimp who has stated he believes sexual fidelity is only for women, he made his millions running porn sites. He now uses social media to accrue legions of young male fans and monetize them by running online programs such as Hustler University, which sells tips on how to pick up women and get rich quick. His popularity grew when several social media platforms decided to simultaneously de-platform him, landing him interviews with everyone from Tucker Carlson to Piers Morgan.

On December 29, Romanian authorities arrested Tate and his brother at his Bucharest mansion on charges of human trafficking. Six women have accused Andrew Tate (and other suspects) of running a lover-boy scheme in which they persuaded women they wanted a relationship but then forced them to perform in pornographic videos. He remains in jail without bail on charges of rape and sex trafficking.

Tates status as an international internet celebrity makes this more than a local crime story. It is crucial to understand why he is wildly popular among men today. Tate made his money by turning his romantic partners into camgirls and selling their bodies to viewers online. On a now-deleted section of his website that pitches his tactics to other men, Tate wrote:

Andrew Tate is a symptom of our cultures crisis of masculinity rather than a solution to it. Hes a self-described pornographer who says he is too smart to read. But what he does is win. He drives fancy cars, flies on private planes, lives in fancy mansions, and parties in dozens of countries. All the while, he markets himself as an opponent of Western degeneracy while boldly selling a different sort of degeneracy in response.

Tate is fundamentally a creation of our current moment. Because our post-sexual revolution culture advocates gender neutrality and condemns traditional masculinity, he can advocate overt misogyny and claim to be defending traditionalism and masculinity. He can argue that his ugly views attract backlash merely because they are dissident; that he is not a sleazebag, but a heroic realist. He runs porn sites despite arguing that everyone should live true to God and yourself; he says he loves super-religious countries even though they enforce a baseline of morality he has no desire to live by. But because he angers progressives and claims to be fighting for truth, he frequently gets away with making these assertions without any pushback from interviewers.

Tates popularity is a reminder that in a society frequently hostile to traditional masculinity, lucrative opportunities arise for hucksters to amass influence by selling the genuinely toxic kind. Tate tells men to take back their lives and assert controlat the expense of women. There is no mutual, Christian self-sacrifice in his thinking. He says that our society wants to keep young men poor, weak, complacent, and alonebut makes his money from porn and casinos, facilitating addictions that do precisely that. His alleged conversion to Islam was a pathetic attempt to borrow credibility from a worldview that he hopes will help him cosplay as an ancient warlord rather than a promiscuous porn peddler who works out and mastered the social media algorithms.

In the wake of the sexual revolution, Christians called for a return to the values we abandonedand many believed that a backlash would eventually bring this about. But in a culture thrown into chaos by the implosion of our moral infrastructure, we are seeing many kinds of responses emerge. There is the self-help stoicism of Jordan Peterson and the common-sense feminist critique of Louise Perry (see her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution). And then there is Andrew Tate, a creature of the sexual revolution who advocates masculinity without virtue, strength without tenderness, and casual cruelty by right of conquest. His popularity is an indication that in our pornified, post-Christian society, this particular path has proven attractive to legions of confused young men. These men desire, as men always have, to be heroesbut in a society that has left them with no guidelines or pathways for achieving true heroism, many cling to the false promises of Andrew Tate.

Jonathon Van Maren is the author ofPatriots: The Untold Story of Irelands Pro-Life Movement.

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Andrew Tate, Symptom of the Sexual Revolution | Jonathon Van ... - First Things

Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre speaks at an adult education centre as he starts his tour of Quebec on Jan. 16, in Montreal.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

As a public service, we are ceding this space to an urgent request from the Quebec provincial police for help in identifying a person calling himself Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who visited the province in recent days. The following is an unofficial translation:

The Sret du Qubec is seeking assistance from the public in establishing the true identity of an individual going by the name of Pierre Poilievre, who held several public events and granted mainstream-media interviews this week in Montreal, Trois-Rivires and Quebec City.

The SQ has reason to believe that the person in question may have usurped the identity of the federal Conservative Leader in order to persuade Quebeckers that the real Mr. Poilievre is nothing like the angry cartoon character who won his partys 2022 leadership contest by promising to blow up Canada as we know it. The individual in question seemed much nicer and more reasonable than the Pierre Poilievre who has been trolling the internet in recent months. We nevertheless ask the public to exercise caution in trusting this individual, despite his friendliness.

The SQ draws the publics attention to a recent Angus Reid Institute survey indicating that almost two-thirds of Quebeckers have an unfavourable view of the real Pierre Poilievre. This may have something to do with his highly publicized support for the freedom convoy that occupied downtown Ottawa in early 2022, and a widespread portrayal in Quebec media of Mr. Poilievre as a right-wing populist who styles himself along the lines of MAGA Republicans. The person calling himself Pierre Poilievre who visited Quebec this week sounded more like a Green New Deal Democrat.

The individual in question bears a striking physical resemblance to the Member of Parliament for Carleton and speaks with the same distinctive twang, in both official languages. Nevertheless, the SQ has several reasons to believe he may be an imposter.

During his media interviews and press conferences, this individual never once said that everything feels broken in Canada. He offered a positive green vision of Canadas future as a renewable-energy superpower and global leader in electric vehicles. We must permit Quebec to build more hydroelectric dams to provide the electricity that will be needed to power electric cars, the person calling himself Pierre Poilievre said. The future of our green economy depends on [critical] minerals and green electricity.

The individual in question did act like the real Pierre Poilievre in evading questions about whether a Conservative government would make an increase in federal health transfers conditional on Quebec agreeing to adhere to certain national standards. He did promise to speed up the certification of foreign-credentialed doctors and nurses to alleviate a labour crunch that has left Quebec hospitals severely understaffed.

I respect Quebecs autonomy. I do not want to interfere in their decisions, the person calling himself Pierre Poilievre told a prominent Radio-Canada news anchor. Quebeckers are capable of being masters in their own house, as they say.

However, contrary to the real Pierre Poilievre, the individual in question offered only mainstream answers to mainstream questions. This person did not once veer into the culture-war diatribes characteristic of the real Pierre Poilievres social-media persona. Not once did this individual leap to the defence of Jordan Peterson the University of Toronto professor emeritus who has become a hero of the anti-woke U.S. right, and who has complained that the College of Psychologists of Ontario ordered him to undergo social-media training because some of his tweets may be degrading the profession as the real Pierre Poilievre did recently in English on YouTube. The individual calling himself Pierre Poilievre was not heard even saying the word woke in Quebec.

The individual in question denied reports the Conservatives are trying to recruit high-profile Coalition Avenir Qubec cabinet ministers Genevive Guilbault and Eric Girard to run for their party in the next federal election. Ms. Guilbault is Deputy Premier and Transport Minister. Mr. Girard is Finance Minister. They are competent centrists in Premier Franois Legaults otherwise right-leaning government. Either would be a catch for the Tories.

Controversial Quebec Conservative Party Leader ric Duhaime, who is also a fan of Mr. Peterson, would appear to hold political views that align more closely with those of the real Pierre Poilievre than the two CAQ ministers. But the person calling himself Pierre Poilievre did not go out of his way to arrange for any photo ops with Mr. Duhaime on his Quebec tour.

These and other inconsistencies in the behaviour of this person calling himself Pierre Poilievre lead the SQ to ask the public for any information that could aid in determining whether this individual is the real deal or a poseur. If you can help, please contact the SQ Anti-Fraud Squad as soon as possible.

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Opinion: Will the real Pierre Poilievre please stand up? - The Globe and Mail

The Jayhawks picked up a key commitment this weekend from Damarius McGhee who will transfer from LSU.

One of the factors that led to his decision was the relationship he built with Kansas cornerbacks coach Jordan Peterson. When McGhee entered the transfer portal in early December that is when Peterson first reach out.

He started recruiting me and hit me up as soon as I hit the portal, McGhee said. Then over the last couple weeks we started to really get into it.

During that time, it gave Peterson a chance to sell McGhee on the program. It was a big reason he committed to the Jayhawks.

Oh yeah, that's my guy, he said of Peterson. He told me a lot. He told me about the defense, and I like how they do their schemes. I like what they do with their defense. He was joking around a lot on the visit. Hes the one who basically recruited me the whole time.

McGhee saw the bond the coaches have on the official visit and that was something that caught his attention.

The coaching stuff stood out, he said. I can tell that they want everybody together, be together, and grow together. That's really what I'm looking for. Coming from LSU and that new coach and everything.

As a true freshman he started on special teams at LSU and that was one of his strengths coming out of high school. He was a four-star recruit coming out of Pensacola Catholic High School and had offers from several colleges including Alabama, Georgia and several others.

Peterson talked to him about playing special teams as well as cornerback.

That's what really opened my eyes about Kansas, McGhee said. One of the first things they said something about special teams and running kicks back. So, I was just like, Yeah, this is probably going to be the place for me. I've been wanting to do that. I missed that and I've been gone for too long.

A portion of his visit was watching the basketball against Iowa State. He liked the game and the atmosphere in Allen Fieldhouse.

Not too many people can say that they went to one of those, he said. That game was crazy right there. That was probably the best basketball games Ive seen.

McGhee said Kenny Logan was his host and they hit it off right away. They have something in common being from Florida and playing defensive back.

I just knew he was from Florida just when I heard him talk, I was like, yeah, he's from Florida, McGhee said. But two different parts of Florida. Hes ready for me to come in though, so we can go to work. If you saw what he said he called me lil bro when I committed.

He is in the process of getting into KU and said he could arrive sometime later in the week.

I'm excited to go out there, he said. I'm excited to go out there and play. I'm just trying to show everybody who I used to be.

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Damarius McGhee ready to get to Kansas and work - Rivals.com - Kansas

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Andrew Tate Detained In Romania For Another Month: His Human Trafficking Charges Explained And A Timeline Of The Social Media Stars Controversies -...

In March 2022, over six months before Elon Musk officially took over the social networking site, the billionaire took to Twitter to slam the apps stance on freedom of speech.

From that point onwards, his agenda became pretty clear and his determination to acquire the platform ramped up.On October 27, he did just that, for the sum of 44.4 billion.

In the months since, employees have been fired, verified (blue-ticked) accounts have started being charged for the privilege, and some users who audaciously critiqued Musks approach to the platform have been banned.

Conversely, Musk has reinstated some of Twitters most controversial figures.

Musks freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach policy means that while hate speech on the platform wont be promoted or boosted, users will be able to seek it out - no different from the rest of the Internet, to quote Musk himself.

The Twitter Blue subscription has even allowed senior Taliban officials to briefly acquire verified status - includingHedayatullah Hedayat, the head of the Taliban's "access to information" department.

Citing local media, the BBC reported he had his blue tick revoked in December but it recently returned to his profile - before it was removed again this week.

The former US president was always vocal on Twitter until his account was permanently suspended in January 2021 following the storming of the Capitol in Washington, DC.

At the time, Twitter said this was done in order to prevent the risk of further incitement of violence. Following the ban, Trump retaliated by launching his own social media app, Truth Social.

On November 18 last year, Musk asked his Twitter followers whether Trump should be allowed back on the platform. In a Brexit-esque result, 51 per cent of users voted yes, and two days later, Musk confirmed Trumps account would be reinstated, signing off Vox Populi, Vix Dei: the voice of the people is the voice of God.

Six weeks after being banned for sharing antisemitic posts, Kanye West was granted access to Twitter once more - only to have it revoked again on December 2, 2022.

The US rapper, now known as Ye, was banned again for posting an image of a swastika inside the Star of David. It was shared just hours after he stated "I like Hitler" on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' radio show, InfoWars.

Musk soon afterwards took to the platform and tweeted 'FAFO' (F*** Around and Find Out).

Towards the end of last year, a number of high-profile brands binned their relationship with West over the antisemitic posts shared on his Twitter and Instagram profiles, including Adidas, which terminated its Yeezy trainer deal.

Currently under investigation in Romania over allegations of rape and human trafficking, the social media influencer Andrew Tate is another big name who made a Twitter comeback following Musk's takeover.

On November 18, 2022, his account - which was deactivated over the summer - returned, and became very active in re-establishing the man who was also removed from platforms including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok for a multitude of reasons, not exclusive to referring to women as property.

Since then, Tate's account has been removed once again following his arrest in Romania on December 29.He and his brother, who are both detained in the country, have denied any wrongdoing.

Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson made a return to Twitter after being banned last summer for violating Twitters hateful conduct policies.

The offending tweets targeted Elliot Page, referring to the transgender actor by his deadname Ellen and preceded a 15-minute long video where Peterson said he would rather die than delete the tweet and concluded, Up yours, woke moralists. Well see who cancels who!

Since his return to the platform, Peterson has made a number of demands on Musk and the future of Twitter - including that Twitter bans anonymous accounts from posting alongside verified accounts.

Over the years, and especially in recent months, a few different public figures have found their Twitter access revoked as a result of factors including inciting hate speech, racism, sexism and more.

These are some of the other accounts the world is nervously awaiting a verdict on.

After rising to fame on the hit UK TV show 'The Apprentice,' Katie Hopkins ultimately gained a name for herself as a right-wing commentator.

Following several short suspension stints on Twitter, Hopkins was permanently banned from the site in June 2020 after telling footballer Marcus Rashford women should think about how they are going to feed a child before they decide to have it.

Alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was permanently blocked from Twitter following abusive content directed towards actor Leslie Jones.

The founder of the far-right conspiracy theory website Infowars called the Sandy Hook school shootings a government orchestration and was banned from Twitter in 2018.

However, Musk has already commented on this, stating on Twitter I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.

Excerpt from:

Trump, Tate and the Taliban: Which controversial figures have the Twitter blue tick? - Euronews

Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and anti-woke crusader who has stirred controversy and garnered praise, opprobrium, and ridicule for his pronouncements on postmodernism, neo-Marxism, gender, morality, and the rules of successful living, has donned a new pundit hat to opine on Russia, Ukraine, the war, and the West. The maverick professor lays out his thoughts on the subject in a 50-minute video that garnered over 1.4 million views in the week since it was posted; the transcript can be found on the Daily Wire, where Peterson is now a regular contributor. Unfortunately, the main conclusion one can derive from the video is that creeping pro-Kremlin sentiment is a real problem in certain social conservative quartersand its an ugly thing.

Peterson starts with the obligatory I think what Putin has done is unconscionable disclaimer, and he even throws in a denunciation of the collusion of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. But it doesnt take long to reach the inevitable but: Theres a need, Peterson says, to deeply understand the motive forces for this war in order to end it and prevent similar future conflicts.

Fair enough. Peterson mentions his March 4 interview with foreign policy scholar Frederick Kagan, who put forward the thesis that Vladimir Putin is a prototypical authoritarianor even a thug in the Hitlerian moldand that Russias invasion of Ukraine is the result of Putins personal desire for empire and power as well as an expression of the imperial expansionism that typified the Soviet Union. But that explanation apparently isnt good enough for Peterson, so he turns to University of Chicago realist John Mearsheimers 2015 lecture, Why Ukraine is the Wests Fault, for an alternative perspective more sympathetic to Russias concerns.

Peterson gravely notes that he was concerned that Mearsheimer might be a Russian apologist, but thankfully that does not seem to be the case. Then he moves on to the apologetics: NATO and EU expansionism into Ukraine . . . has already and will continue to pose an intolerable threat to the Russians, who view Ukraine both as an integral part of the broader Russian sphere of interest and as a necessary buffer between the Europe that has invaded Russia to terrible effect in 1812 and 1941. (By the way: It wasnt Europe that invaded Russia on either of those occasions; it was Napoleon and Hitler, who also invaded numerous countries in Western Europe. If every country that repeatedly got invaded over the course of its history is entitled to an obedient buffer country on its borders, its going to be buffers all around.)

The blame NATO defense of Russias actions is, as Ive written before, bogus. But one part of Petersons elaboration on this argument is so striking that it deserves to be quoted in full:

Mearsheimer states, starkly (and this explains a fair bit of Putins potential motivation) that Russia would rather see Ukraine destroyed, razed to the ground, than comfortably ensconced in the Western sphere of influence.

If true, I would say that this doesnt exactly contradict the authoritarian with a bent for imperial expansionism (or even thug in the Hitlerian mold) take on Putins actions. Neither does a third point Peterson then brings up: that Russia sees Ukraine as a threat to its primarily petro-funded economy, particularly in relation to the European market. Sorry, but if you invade another country and slaughter people to protect your oil and gas trade, it might not make you Hitlerian, but it definitely makes you the baddies.

But even these explanations dont suffice for Peterson, who wants to find the wokeness angle in order to tie all this to his hobbyhorse. Here, according to Peterson, is the real story:

Putin regards the current West as decadent to the point of absolute untrustworthiness, particularly on the cultural and religious front. . . . And whether he believes this or notand I believe he doeshe is certainly able and willing to use the story of our degeneration to make his people wary of us and to convince them of the necessity of his leadership and to unite them in supporting his actions in Ukraine. . . .

And are we degenerate, in a profoundly threatening manner? I think the answer to that may well be yes. The idea that we are ensconced in a culture war has become a rhetorical commonplace. How serious is that war? Is it serious enough to increase the probability that Russia, say, will be motivated to invade and potentially incapacitate Ukraine merely to keep the pathological West out of that country, which is a key part of the historically Russian sphere of influence?

Petersons example of Western degeneracy is Ketanji Brown Jacksons elevation to the Supreme Courtnot only because she was picked on the basis of her race and sex (since Biden had explicitly narrowed the pool to black women), but because, during her confirmation hearings, she punted on the question What is a woman? by answering, Im not a biologist. Peterson concedes that it was a gotcha question, but then concludes that it doesnt matter: The fact that woke ideology simultaneously makes being a woman one of two key criteria for a Supreme Court seat and muddies the meaning of woman means that it violates the principle of non-contradiction and makes our culture irredeemably irrational.

What does this have to do with Russia and Ukraine? In Petersons view, the Russians see woke ideology as a new version of the Communist quest to remake human nature and tell themselves something like this:

Those Westerners are so out of their mindpossessed by the very same ideas that destroyed us for a century (and didnt they?)that we simply cannot trust them. Those Westerners are so out of their mind that a devastated but neutral Ukraine is preferable to a functional bordering state aligned with the US and Europe. Those Westerners are so out of their mind that well push the world to the brink of a nuclear war and potentially beyond to keep them off our doorstep. Because weve been there before and were not going back.

Peterson does stress once again that Putin himself may or may not believe this and that, regardless of his sincerity, he is weaponizing the War on Wokeness to promote his imperial and self-aggrandizing goals. However, he still maintains that the real key to solving the Russia/Ukraine problem lies in winning the civil war in the West by defeating the radical ideas of Marxist inheritance that are currently destabilizing our societiesand that, as long as those ideas dominate, American and Western support for freedom in Ukraine is nothing but shallow moral posturing.

Where to begin?

The notion that the Wests moral standing vis--vis Russia in 2022 is undercut by some uniquely terrible moral degeneracy and irrationality does not pass the laugh test. For instance, as David Frenchpoints out,for a good part of the Cold War the United States tolerated not only racial segregation but the often-violent oppression and disenfranchisement of black Americans in the Southern states. I daresay this was in drastic contradiction with the principles of freedom and democracy we were upholding in opposition to Soviet Communism. Does Peterson really think that putting Justice Jackson on the Supreme Court after a selection process limited to black women is more reprehensible than excluding blacks (and, in many cases, women) from a wide range of high-level public positions?

(Incidentally, Putin has also invoked the history of racial injustice in the United States as proof of American hypocrisy on human rights, continuing the Soviet-era tradition of such whataboutism. Authoritarians will weaponize whatever they can!)

One could also point out that Putins obsession with keeping Ukraine out the Wests clutches goes back to circa 2004which is to say, it started about a decade before what liberal pundit Matt Yglesias dubbed the Great Awokening: the shift to the new progressive focus and framework on race, gender, and other identities.

Whats more, if we want to talk about contradiction and non-contradiction, Petersons own plea for Western civilizational renewaland his claim that such a renewal will ensure a more friendly disposition from the Russian political establishmentis profoundly incoherent. He asserts, for instance, that the radical ideas he finds so corrosive must be defeated not only by adherents of traditional religious values but by classic liberals [and] small-c conservatives defending the heritage of the Enlightenment. But he also argues that Russia sees itself as championing a religiously ordered society built on Russian Orthodox values; he even cites Dostoyevskys A Writers Diary, a collection of political newsletters, as an expression of this philosophy. Leaving aside the repellent passages on the Jewish Question in that work, there is no doubt whatsoever that Dostoyevsky loathed and feared degenerate Western influence at a time when Western liberalism was about 150 years away from going woke.

As the cherry on top, Peterson mentions the neofascist crank Aleksandr Dugin as a genuine philosopher whose influence on Putin supposedly shows the Russian leaders authentic interest in philosophical and theological matters. (Peterson had previously discussed Dugins alleged status as Putins adviser, and his hostility to Western liberalism as a driver of materialistic hyper-individuality, in a 2015 lecture.) Im not even sure whats more important to point out here: that Dugins philosophy is virulently hostile to even to the least woke varieties of Western liberalism, or that Dugin is either a kooky, occultism-obsessed prophet of Russian imperialism or a mega-troll whose public persona is a kind of performance art. (Of course, in truly postmodern fashion, it is possible that he is some combination of both.) The bottom line is that if you take Dugin seriously as a philosopher, youve well and truly jumped the shark.

Whether or not Western liberalism should return to its more classical roots is a topic for another day. In any case, such a pivot cannot be the answer to the current crisis in Ukraine if only because of how long it would take to happen. But Peterson has some short-term proposals, too:

Perhaps the declaration of Ukraine as a neutral state for a minimum period of twenty years.

Perhaps a new election in Ukraine subject to ratification by joint Russian-Western observers.

Perhaps a pledge on the part of the West to not offer to Ukraine any membership in NATO or the EU that is either not simultaneously offered to Russia or moving forward on terms acceptable to Russia.

Peterson concedes that his suggestions might be wrong and even dreadfully nave, which is probably the most accurate thing he says in this entire piece. Consider their substance: His first proposal would directly reward Russia for its naked aggression.

The second is an arrangement Russia would only accept if it were facing imminent, ignominious defeat and desperately needed a deal to save face. (Any election in Ukraine today would hand a resounding victory to pro-NATO, anti-Russia candidates even in those parts of the country where pro-Russia sentiment and skepticism toward NATO were widespread before the war.)

As for the third proposal, it too amounts to a reward for Russias invasion, granting the country a veto on Ukrainian membership not only in NATO but in the European Union. Whats more, by Petersons logic, an offer of NATO or EU membership to Russia should be seen as a menace to the country, not a friendly overture: Didnt he just tell us that Russia is going to war in Ukraine partly to keep the scourge of Western liberal decadence from its door?

The reality is that, for all the Wests culture-war problems, the defense of Ukraine is both the most genuinely liberal cause (in the classic sense of the word) and the most genuinely moral cause that exists in our public and political space right now. And, be it reflexive contrarianism, pandering to his fan base, or genuine conviction, Peterson now finds himself on the wrong side of that causewhich arguably reduces all his talk of defending of Western civilization and upholding strict moral standards of good and evil to, yes, shallow posturing. The worrying question, given his large fan base and his status as a conservative celebrity, is how many people will follow him there.

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Jordan Petersons Pro-Putin Punditry - The Bulwark

1. How Jordan Peterson Ruined His Image in Islam  New Lines Magazine
2. A Christian Woman's Remarks on Jordan Peterson  Juicy Ecumenism
3. Skeletor recites Jordan Peterson's essay about his Twitter suspension  Boing Boing
4. Jordan Peterson Gives Important Advice to Christian Churches. Should We Take It?  Daily Citizen
5. 'Grifter' Really Is the Only Word to Use for Jordan Peterson  The Daily Beast
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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How Jordan Peterson Ruined His Image in Islam - New Lines Magazine

COMMENTARY: In their defense of Rubins decision to become a father by artificial means, these conservatives concede one of the most offensive premises of transgenderism.

I had a hard time watching Jordan Petersons conversation with Dave Rubin about gay parenting and transgenderism. Im deeply disappointed in them. Ill cut right to the chase. These men claim to be opposed to transgenderism. However, in their defense of Dave Rubins decision to become a father by artificial means, they concede one of the most offensive premises of transgenderism. They evidently believe that with enough money, medical technology and legal support from the state, a man can do anything a woman can do. They are literally erasing women, while congratulating themselves on how thoughtful and profound and conservative they are.

I predict this cognitive dissonance will not last indefinitely. Within five years, Peterson and Rubin will repent: they will either repent of their opposition to transgenderism or they will repent of their support for gay parenting.

David Rubin and his civilly married partner, David Janet, want to become fathers. Rubin learned from his association with Jordan Peterson that parenthood is one of the keys to maturation and a fully actualized life. But neither of the two Davids is willing to have a sexual relationship with women. Indeed, by defining themselves as gay, they publicly attest that they do not respond sexually to a woman. So, they have contracted with a series of women to assist them in achieving this maturation milestone of fatherhood.

When I wrote my first article on this subject, I knew that they had purchased eggs from a woman they selected from a catalogue. And I knew that they had rented the services of two different women for surrogacy, one to gestate the embryos created with each of the mens sperm.

I didnt know until watching this video conversation, that the men have thoroughly studied the benefits of breastfeeding. They have two industrial freezers full of pumped breast milk. Where did this breast milk come from? The gestational mothers? Some other women? Do the two Davids think it matters where it came from? We also learn that these fathers are planning to involve female role models in their childrens lives, including their female relatives and night nurses.

So lets tally this up. Weve got the genetic mother, the gestational mother, the night nurses, the female relatives and no doubt, other female caregivers. But we have no legally recognized mother. Not one of these women has a legally recognized permanent place in the childrens lives. All of them are legal strangers to the children. This is literally female erasure the exact thing that so many female opponents of transgenderism have passionately decried.

These men have broken motherhood, the most fundamental human relationship, into a series of functions. Theyve transformed mother, an organic, integrated personal reality, into something artificial, scattered and impersonal.

Middle-of-the-night-breastfeeding illustrates what I mean. Although I have mothered more than 10 children, (depending on how you count: long story) I have only had the privilege of nursing one of those children. I can tell you from that experience: there is nothing like breastfeeding. My whole body relaxed into the care of that child. Getting up in the middle of the night was actually a joy. Nothing else mattered but me and the baby. In the words of one of our favorite lullabies, Things less important, will just have to keep, while I rockabye my baby to sleep. I was heartbroken when my daughter gave up breastfeeding at the age of five months.

(By the way, young Miss Chloe Cole, in her testimony to the harms of attempting to change her sex, made this very point. She realized that she would never be able to nurse a baby, because she had amputated her breasts. But I digress.)

I need not point out that the nice ladies the Davids engage to pump the breast milk and bottle feed the babies in the middle of the night are not going to have that attachment experience. Nor are the babies going to have the same bonding experience they would have with their natural mother nursing them from her breasts.

Natural motherhood integrates the genetic mother, gestational mother, nursing mother, care-giving mother, legally-recognized mother all into one person. Ordinary motherhood is natural, with nothing artificial, or dare I say, man-made. Most of all, ordinary motherhood is personal. My personal identity is crucial to my child and her identity is crucial to me. We are irreplaceable to each other, unlike the collection of interchangeable parts the surrogacy process relies upon. Does a man of Jordan Petersons caliber seriously believe these babies are going to be unscathed by this process?

Peterson seems as if he really knows better. He even said, You guys have the resources to navigate all this. Well, that is true. They do have resources. But a man shouldnt need extraordinary resources to be a good father. The first duty of fatherhood is to love your childs mother. Indeed, that is the ordinary way of becoming a father in the first place. David Rubin has already failed in this most basic duty. He will not be able to fully repair this breach, no matter how rich or smart he is, no matter how much society rallies around him.

All these theories are about to come crashing down around their heads in a few short weeks. The babies will arrive in their lives, changing them forever. All these mens beliefs will be tested by reality. These men wont be able to keep their carefully balanced, nuanced positions indefinitely.

That is why I predict repentance of one sort or another is in these mens futures. On one hand, they may try to brazen it out. I was so wrong to be mean to trans people, the sex of the body isnt so important after all, my partner is a wonderful mother-figure, Ive grown, blah, blah, blah. Or the two Davids are going to be astonished by fatherhood. Jordon Peterson is going to see the problems in real life and in real time. They are going to see that asking a male partner to play the female nurturing role is much more complicated than they expected. One of the children will raise a question or react or behave in some way that will prompt these men to ask, What have I done? At that point, all their past life decisions will come into question.

For me, an infertility crisis in my mid-thirties prompted me to start walking back my life decisions. I ended up reconsidering everything Id done and believed since about the age of 14. I came back to the Church. I can testify: there is life on the other side of repentance. I pray these men take the right path.

See the original post here:

Memo to Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin: Mothers Are Irreplaceable - National Catholic Register

On the intellectual bankruptcy of moral equivalence

By David French

The Third Rail examines the disputes that divide America. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Theres a pattern emerging in parts of the right. It goes something like this. Yes, Russia is wrong to invade Ukraine, but And what follows the but is invariably an avalanche of excuse-making and false moral equivalence. NATO provoked Russia, Ukraine provoked Russia, orand this is my favoriteWestern wokeism provoked Russia.

Earlier this week the extraordinarily popular Canadian professor Jordan Peterson released a lengthy (and immediately viral) video that represented the virtual platonic form of the argument that Russia is wrong, but If you have a spare hour, Id urge you to watch his entire lecture, if only to understand a view you may not hear much in your daily life.

I want to focus on a specific claim by Petersonthat Russia has not only gone to war to protect itself from what he describes as Western degeneracy, but that our alleged degeneracy robs the West of the moral high ground in the conflict. Heres a key quote:

And what is this degeneracy? Peterson talks about radical gender ideology, the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson (yes, really), and her reluctance to define a woman during her confirmation hearings. Heres more Peterson:

Petersons moral equivalence does not (yet) hold majority Republican support. While Republicans are less likely to support Ukraine in the conflict than Democratsand less likely to support strict economic sanctions against Russia and sending military support to Ukrainestrong majorities still oppose Vladimir Putin.

Petersons beliefs, however, are still worth addressing, and not just because they undermine American support for an ally that is directly confronting one of our nations chief geopolitical foes. His beliefs also lead to a sense of unjustified existential despair about the state of our own civilization and culture.

In short, while the West has problems, it is not degenerate by any reasonable historical measure, and there is no reasonable comparison between the virtue of NATO and Russia. To argue otherwise is to be ignorant or to engage in gravely deficient moral reasoning.

The rights disproportionate commitment to moral equivalence in the Russia-Ukraine war is explained partly by pure contrarianism (opposing anything the elite supports) and partly by a profoundly negative view of modern Western cultural life, and a prewar view of Putin as a muscular representative of specifically anti-woke Christian nationalism.

Theres no question that Putin has forged a close relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church, but that is an indictment of the Russian Church, not an endorsement of Putin. Hes a brutal war criminal who employed his military in indiscriminate attacks against civilians in the wars in Chechnya and Syria well before the wholesale slaughter in Ukraine.

Moreover, its hardly the case that Russia itself is a hotbed of religious fervor. Its far more secular than the United States (53 percent of Americans say religion is very important in their lives, versus only 16 percent of Russians). Russia has a substantially higher murder rate than every member of NATO, including the United States. It suppresses religious freedom, and it has one of the highest measured abortion rates in the world.

Is Russia defending itself against Western degeneracy and protecting the Christian faith? No, its distorting and appropriating Christianity to inflict its own pathological criminality on a peaceful nation and its innocent people.

Petersons critique of the West as degenerate or insane rests largely on the existence of radical gender ideology and illiberal wokeness that does have profound influence in a number of key Western cultural institutions, including the academy, large corporations, and much of the mainstream press.

Yet the Western-protected regime of individual liberty and the rule of law not only protects its citizens from the worst excesses of authoritarians on the left and the right; it protects the mechanisms of internal critique that can and do lead to reform. Moreover, even with wokeness abroad in the land, NATO countries remain among the best places in the history of the world to build a life and raise a family.

Neither America nor its Western allies have ever been perfect. Weve always been profoundly flawed. Indeed, the United States that fought World War II was far more degenerate or pathological than it is today. We liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny and Asia from Japanese despotism at the same time that we maintained an apartheid-like Jim Crow regime in the South.

But that did not render the moral high ground in the Second World War up for the most serious debate.

Ive long been a participant in the American culture war. I was a pro-life and religious-liberty litigator for more than 20 years before I became a journalist. I also know that its easy to lose perspective when you spend too much time immersed in domestic disputes. Most of us, however, get jolted back to reality when we see the true face of aggressive, authoritarian evil. A clash over whether to use the word woman or a person with the capacity for pregnancy is a moral and philosophical dispute that can be mediated through the instruments of liberal democracy.

A Russian cruise missile launched into an apartment building, by contrast, represents a truly different order of depravity. A nation or culture does not have to be perfect to be right, and make no mistakein the clash between the war criminal in the Kremlin and Ukraine and its NATO allies, the true moral high ground could not be more clear.

The rest is here:

Jordan Peterson Is Wrong About Russia, and the West - The Atlantic

A visual representation of the souls of my children when they start lecturing me about my failings.

I finally worked up the wherewithal to start looking at my pictures from our trip. Matt had the better idea of posting big chunks of them every Sunday and then going back offline, whereas I thought, foolishly, that I would come home and sort them and then post them systematically. I added Post Pictures to my List Of All The Things I Will Do. I got home and started working down the list. Part of my magical thinking was that if I could just get to the end of my inbox, and do all the other miscellaneous admin (thats what I call it to myself) that always sits there, like the laundry, weighing on my conscience, I would be really happy.

So, I kid you not, I did just that (less the pictures). I coped with my inbox. I went through and paid all kinds of school fees. I found my stamps and mailed my letters. Iseriously, sit down and put down your iced coffeegot to the end of my list. I crossed the last thing off on Monday night and then sat back and waited for the flood of relief and joy that I knew, as certainly as night follows day, would overwhelm me.

But nothing happened. Nothing at all, except that I looked back at my phone and found I had three new tasks magically appear in my email that I didnt even know were going to hit me. And I was just as anxious as ever. And no feelings of happiness or relief whatsoever illuminated my soul. It was a huge and terrible disappointment.

And so, in the spirit of Solomon and all his experiments in temporal joy, let me just warn you off even trying.Do Not Devote Yourself To Admin. Dont. Dont make responding to email your full-time job. Youll do it all and youll still be stressed out. I mean, Im not suggesting you not do it at all, but, as the person who wrote Deep Work said (I think), shove that baby back in the corner. Admin should be confined to a small box, like a yapping angry dog. It shouldnt be let out to wander around and take over everything. Like the laundry, which should live in its own dismal room and be shoved back in whenever it spills out or whenever anything more interesting comes along, email and other sorts of tasks should be forced back into their desolating corner in favor of more satisfying pursuits, like pulling up weeds, arguing with your children about Jordan Peterson, and trying to recreate the Coffee With Milk that you ordered once in Portugal.

Not a very good picture, I admit, but stopping to fix it is really beyond my abilities right now. To put any nice pictures here Im going to have to go back and resize everything and Im not sure how. Hopefully, it isnt as complicated as it looks. Meanwhile, as I said, my children have had a lot of things to say about Jordan Peterson. Apparently, a lot of them watched his short lecture to the church (I havent had a chance to yet) and were both bemused and incensed. For some reason, most of them are big JP fans. The oldest is working her way through his lectures on the Bible and can often be found, headphones plugged in, smiling and shaking her head. They are interesting, but, as she says, he so often misses the point. As to what the church should be doing, my children wanted to give Jordan Peterson some advice. Of course, he is right that young men are being cast off and that the church should particularly invite them in and affirm their biological realities. But (and this is the advice bit) it would be helpful if Professor Peterson would take the trouble to discover what the church is for. And he could do that by reading more Christian writers andthey were quite adamant about thisgiving in and going to church himself. If CS Lewis could submit himself to the mediocrity of the C of E on an ordinary Sunday morning, and Jesus himself could go to the Synagogue for his whole earthly lifeand my goodness, what must it be like to sit there and listen to one dubious and confused biblical exposition after another, oh wait, God does it still! He is there in every worship service in every corner of every country through all timethan even Jordan Peterson can, and should, go. Because it is only by going and submitting ones impressive intellect to the mercies and grace of the ordinary gathering of faithful worshippers that the point of the exercise gradually becomes clear. And that is that Jesus saves us from ourselves and unites us to him. Thats a message that young men need, but also older ones, and women as well.

My children pointed their fingers at me and practically shoutedGo to church, Jordan. The young menand young womenof today who listen to you insist.

And now, if you will excuse me, Im going to go have my morning walk in this hideous thousand-degree weather. And after that, I have no idea. I probably need to go buy a latte since I cant make a good one myself and I cant crop my pictures either. Have a nice day!

See the rest here:

Wisdom of the Ages: Email, Jordan Peterson, and a Latte - Patheos