Threatening or committing violence against someone simply because of their speech is an act that violates the very foundation of human life on Earth . Peterson, Saad’s friend and another speaker at the Ryerson event, identified the importance of speech in his landmark book, 12 Rules For Life (which I highly recommend, by the way)... At the beginning of time, according to the great Western tradition, the Word of God transformed chaos into Being through the act of speech. It is axiomatic, within that tradition, that man and woman alike are made in the image of that God. We also transform chaos into Being, through speech...
Neither side will ever get my loyalty until they make shrinking the government their No. 1 priority... And I’m not holding my breath.) Saad just published a new book earlier this month called, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense . And it’s certainly chockful of controversial topics... The idea pathogens addressed in Saad’s book include postmodernism... radical feminism... transgender activism... science denialism... and the tendency to frame every issue as an “either/or” proposition (a malady he calls “epistemological dichotomania”). He has also been critical of Islam on occasion, and suspects that is the cause of some of the death threats. And the attempted suppression of Saad’s freedom to speak at Ryerson is hardly unique... In The Parasitic Mind , he reported the findings of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (“FIRE”) – a non-profit organization founded in 1999 to focus on protecting free speech on college campuses in the U.S. According to Saad, FIRE documented 192 “disinvitation efforts” (attempts to stop invited speakers) at American universities from 2000 through 2014. In that span, disinvitations were successful as often as 44% of the time... and they were three times more likely to occur if the speaker is on the political Right. This is ludicrous no matter which way you lean politically, though...
To tell the truth is to bring the most habitable reality into Being... Truth
reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become partner, rather than enemy. The beginning of Peterson’s quote refers to the Book of Genesis, which begins with God creating heaven and Earth. From that Bible verse...
In that span, disinvitations were successful as often as 44% of the time... and they were three times more likely to occur if the speaker is on the political Right.
American Consequences
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