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An Avalanche of Nonsense

I really should apologise. One simple question of mine has unleashed an avalanche of nonsense on the reading public, and there seems to be no stopping it. So much for my offer of a cease-fire. On the plus side, it did confirm Prof. Ryn’s claims and provide him with an opportunity to explain his position […]

I really should apologise. One simple question of mine has unleashed an avalanche of nonsense on the reading public, and there seems to be no stopping it. So much for my offer of a cease-fire. On the plus side, it did confirm Prof. Ryn’s claims and provide him with an opportunity to explain his position again.

In the latest version, in addition to approving of or being indifferent to slavery, we traditionalists are all apparently Hegelians, or so you might conclude from ominous quotes from the Philosophy of Right springing up at The Remedy. Looking over his recapitulation of the debate, I did notice that Mr. Peterson chose not to include the two posts that reveal him to be rather unserious. Small wonder when he thinks that it is a point in his favour to accuse his opponents of being possessed solely of hatred and bitterness:

Do these guys ever lay out a positive case for the Constitution—or for anything? A sign of one of the classic species of sophists is constant naysaying. The driving animus behind much of the neo-trads seems to be hatred rather than love. They are not defending anything so much as they are attacking something—or someone. One gets the sense that without attacking Lincoln or wacko-Jaco-cons or what ever else these people wouldn’t have much else to say. A long time ago they loved something because they thought it was true and good. I don’t know how it happens, but at some point they get angry that the world isn’t perfect or that they have been treated poorly and bitterness sets in—and that bitterness starts to grow and take over their thought.

Of course, let’s remember where this all began a little while ago. It began back in March when Mr. Peterson launched his criticisms of the “crunchy cons,” Caleb Stegall and the Pantagruelists and, for some reason, myself. Arguably, all of this has an affinity with the equally vapid, reflexively rejectionist response to “crunchy conservatism” that characterised a number of its opponents.

Speaking of arguing for things and making some sort of “positive” contribution, the essay of mine that he targeted for ridicule was one example of precisely that. I made a number of positive claims in favour of the desirability of conservatives to cast off the yoke of Enlightenment categories and assumptions in ethics and politics and return to the sources of the Christian tradition that are at the heart of our civilisation, and I made a few tentative suggestions for what should happen next. Because parts of my essay contradicted a peculiar understanding of the early period of American independence, Mr. Peterson went on the offensive. That’s how blogging works, but let’s cut out all pretense that we “neo-trads” haven’t offered anything other than unremitting criticism. When it comes to making criticisms, though, I will say that when usurpation and confusion abound there is some need for the causes of these things to be identified, criticised and refuted. This has been part of the conservative experience for 200 years and will presumably continue to be so. Presumably Mr. Peterson knows this, but then perhaps I should not presume that much.

Mr. Peterson, who allegedly does not care to engage in attacking other conservatives or engaging in “gotcha” games of an “inter-lectual” variety, started all of this with rather a lot of “attacking” other conservatives and attempting (without success) to score some cheap “inter-lectual” points. These were along the lines of, “I like the Declaration of Independence, so why don’t you?” Mostly, he asked a lot of rhetorical questions (to which, I suppose, the answers must be “self-evident”), proposed not much in the way of answers of his own and his next entry into the fray was to…start attacking Claes Ryn. No, no attacking going on here. Just a pursuit of truth! But woe betide the bitter and hate-filled “neo-trad” who engages in criticism, because he does so only to tear things down. How do we know? Well, because Mr. Peterson has just written an attack against us saying so. By the way, what shall the dismissive diminutive for Mr. Peterson’s crowd be? I’ll be entertaining suggestions in the comments.

Blogging is an activity that is given over to a lot of criticism. That is allegedly one of the virtues of blogging–it serves as an enterprise where numerous bloggers will be refining, critiquing and checking facts on everything in the public discourse. As usual, this ideal falls to pieces the moment it comes into contact with actual bloggers. As much as we all fail in trying to make blogging into something other than an electronic shouting match, and I’m sure I have failed on this score in the past week in some ways, Mr. Peterson distinguishes himself in the world of allegedly “intellectual” and conservative blogs for the poverty of substance in his every post.

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