© Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Tamika Mallory (center) and Linda Sarsour (second from left) lead protesters at a march in Fairfax, Va., July 14, 2017.
On May 18, Jordan Peterson and Stephen Fry
debated Michelle Goldberg and Michael Eric Dyson in Toronto on the merits of political correctness. The debate was infuriatingly unproductive, turning as it did into a wide-ranging but rather unfulfilling discussion. Still, I was glad to see that despite their frequent digressions, both sides managed to produce the occasional insight.
I wish, though, that one particular point of contention had been further explored. Around halfway through the debate, Peterson asked Goldberg if she thought the Left ever went too far in its theories or tactics. She replied with a bland comment about how she was against leftist "violence and censorship." This was moral pusillanimity of the highest order. Being against violence and censorship is the ethical equivalent of being against slavery or genocide; it is axiomatic and requires neither serious thought nor moral courage to state such a position. Goldberg failed to answer the real question Peterson was asking: What left-wing
beliefs should be forbidden, deemed too radical and dangerous for anyone to hold?
One longs for the day when left-wing intellectuals answer this question - or even begin to contend with it.
As Peterson noted, our intellectual culture has been largely successful in delineating the sorts of opinions which are unacceptable for right-wingers to embrace. Race hatred is not okay. Apologetics for Klansmen and National Socialists are not okay. Peterson says, correctly, that the cultural taboos on racial-supremacist sentiment are fully justified; we know what racist ideologies can do and have done, and so we feel disgusted whenever anyone attempts to resuscitate them.
Comment: Having regained control of almost the entire border line with Jordan, the Syrian Army began a full-scale mop-up operation to secure the area before safely deploying border forces.