Did you know that Bari Weiss, of the New York Times, interviewed Jordan B. Peterson, of lobster hierarchy, at the recent Aspen Ideas Festival? Nor did I until it popped up after I had watched a YouTube video of the very white Oxbridge chappies of Monty Python at Powerline that are now identifying as black lesbians.

Now, you might ask, what is a nice Jewish girl from Squirrel Hill doing around a rough-talking Canadian from Fairview, Alberta, in the subarctic boondocks?

Yes, it was a bit challenging for Bari, particularly when she said that (46:03), although she liked a lot of the themes in 12 Rules, Peterson lost her with the notion of women being identified with Chaos in the Jungian archetypes.

Okay, so I had a bit of a problem with that when reading Maps of Meaning, because I too have been carefully taught to think of women as fragile victims of the patriarchy. It’s hard to accept that men occupy the axis of Order-Tyranny, and women the axis of Creation-Destruction. Except today’s Good Little Girls aren’t supposed to have to deal with scary stuff like that in their safe spaces.

Safe spaces? Jordan Peterson had a riff on that (36:08), how safe spaces are a good way of keeping Good Little Girls from dropping out of college -- to make sure they will rack up the maximum debt the college has in mind to pay for all the administrators -- and “cripple them in their 30s and 40s” with debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Indentured Servitude, he called it.

Of course, the transgender pronouns issue came up, which gave Bari a chance (15:50) to squeak out “transphobe” to signal her virtue.

Of course, there was a questioner who tried to trip Peterson up on the gender pronoun issue (1:11:37), and like all the Aspen questioners, he had to tell us that he was something special: in his case, a “linguist.” Peterson put him away by saying that he figured he knew which trans-person was genuine, and which was doing a power trip. But anyway, if he were wrong in any pronoun instance, well, then he was wrong, and would have to deal with the consequences.

My question is: can’t we finesse the pronoun issue by using the second person “you?” Or are trans-bullies insisting that we address them in the third person? Now, my preferred pronoun is “Yes, Master” in the style and inflection of Peter Lorre, otherwise you are a deplora-phobe and hater.

Jordan Peterson insists that he is not a conservative, but he keeps slipping in code words that we all know unlock our secret decoder rings. For instance, Peterson told the Aspen audience (1:24:07) that we have properly identified certain right-wing notions as unacceptable, but done nothing about the extreme left. Says Peterson:

We have a problem. We know how to put a box around extremists on the right. Basically we say, oh, you are making claims of ethnic or racial superiority. You’re not part of the conversation.

What do we do on the left? Nothing! (Pause) That’s not good!

Hey! I have an idea! Whenever a leftie uses a left-wing pejorative like “transphobe,” Bari, we say: Oh, you are making a bullying remark intended to shut people up.  You’re not part of the conversation!

Imagine an America like that!

Of course, the lefty Aspenians know that Peterson is not quite the thing, but Jordan Peterson is also reviled by alt-right chappies like Vox Day. You can see why both extremes are upset. Peterson believes in the search for meaning over the pursuit of happiness; that values come before facts, that politics is a lot less important than ordinary life and religion, that you cannot achieve anything in life without discipline.

My view is that Jordan Peterson working on the border between Order and Chaos upon the most vital question of our age: finding a new religion for the educated elite to replace their failed religion of leftism. As he says, the question is how to become a person that could not have been made to participate in the atrocities of Nazism and Communism (8:35), knowing that unless you go to work on yourself then you are probably a person that would go with the totalitarian program. Maps of Meaning is quite clear about what kind of a person we need to become:  the Sacrificial Hero of myth and religion.

It is clear to me, reading about Peterson’s acts and watching him speak, that he is living the life of the Sacrificial Hero. And if the Chief Priests of the academy and the Scribes of the fake news eventually get him, it won’t be the first time.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.