There is a certain image that Canada projects to the world, one that is particularly compelling to Americans. It’s the image of Canada as a tolerant, progressive, kind and humanitarian nation, populated by mild-mannered and polite people.
.. The idea of Canada the Good — a Scandinavian-style socialist democracy, with the added bonus of multicultural harmony — is an attractive one, helpful in providing Canadians with some kind of national identity, and left-leaning Americans with a handy rhetorical device for political arguments: Look at what’s possible, right next door!
.. But it’s worth remembering that this image of Canada, currently personified by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is a relatively recent construction, largely put forth by Mr. Trudeau’s father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Before that — and for most of the intervening years, between Trudeaus — the public face of Canada has looked a lot like, well, Jordan Peterson.
.. Canada is home to many more Jordan Petersons than Justin Trudeaus.
.. Mr. Peterson is — to use one of his favorite terms — something of a national archetype, the default setting of the Canadian male: a dull but stern dad, who, under a facade of apparent normalcy and common sense, conceals a reserve of barely contained hostility toward anyone who might rock the boat.
.. those who make a fuss are bothersome and ignorant at best, and probably dangerous and destructive too.
.. This is how “peace, order and good government” came to be the Canadian answer to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
.. Charisma is suspect here, and when Mr. Peterson uses that word to describe Mr. Trudeau, it’s not a compliment.
.. Suspect, too, is any whiff of revolutionary spirit. Pierre Trudeau might have technically been a liberal, but he was the kind of liberal who declared martial law in 1970 when a bumbling handful of Quebec separatists were deemed enough of a threat to justify suspending civil liberties en masse.
.. Our politics reflect our sense of unease with anything radical.
.. Liberals who think of Canada as a lefty haven should look to our most recent federal election: the New Democratic Party, ostensibly the major party farthest to the left, ran its last campaign on a platform of balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. Not even the Green Party dares to suggest divesting from Alberta’s oil sands.
.. On every issue, from peacekeeping to pipelines, carbon targets to Indigenous relations, Mr. Trudeau has largely continued the policies set by his predecessor.
.. Canadian conservatism is not brash. It not belligerent, it is not loud. It is not Fox News. But our most popular columnists all deliver the same message: Things are the way they are for a reason. Those who agitate for change are stepping out of line.
.. He reserves particular ire for young activists. “I tell 18-year-olds: Six years ago you were 12 — what the hell do you know? You haven’t done anything,” he says. “You don’t have a degree, you haven’t finished your courses, you don’t know how to read, you can’t think, you can’t speak.”
“It’s just not right,” he says, “to tell people in that situation that they should go out and change the socioeconomic structure of the culture!”
.. Delivered as a fiery sermon, this impassioned plea for humility and self-improvement gets laughs from Peterson fans. But in practice, it’s actually an argument for submission to the status quo that would have prevented any number of people, from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Emma Gonzales, from ever speaking up.
.. Americans are raised to believe that individuals, even flawed ones, can indeed change the world, and sometimes should. Canadians, for all that we’ve managed to construct a society that Americans sometimes envy, lack this ethic.
.. The resulting mind-set, disdainful of idealism and suspicious of ego, is one we are now, evidently, exporting.
.. Jordan Peterson is considered a heroic figure of historical importance, the man who finally said “Enough!” to political correctness run amok, to mobs of rabid Social Justice Warriors, to an ideologically driven “leftist-Marxist” movement hellbent on destroying Western civilization itself.
.. Mr. Peterson can be more accurately described as a previously obscure Canadian academic who believed, erroneously, that he would soon be forced by law to use gender-neutral pronouns and who refused to bow to that hypothetical demand. The proposed human rights policy that made Mr. Peterson famous is now Canadian law, and no instance of “compelled speech” has occurred as a result of it or resulted in criminal charges, as Mr. Peterson feared. On the issue of legal requirements for pronoun use, things remain the way Mr. Peterson wanted them — the same.
.. Mr. Peterson was taking a stand not against power in that instance but on behalf of it. His acolytes, some of whom might consider themselves to be walking in the tradition of rugged American individualism, should note that they are in fact taking marching orders — “Rules for Life,” no less — from a line-toeing Canadian, preaching a philosophy not of American defiance but of Canadian deference.
Jonah Goldberg on Trump’s Syria Flip-Flop
If it is a one-off, this strike is the very definition of a symbolic pinprick. It was launched with highly precise weapons against the airfield from which the Syrian chemical attack emanated. According to reports, we apprised Russian personnel at the base beforehand, meaning the Syrians effectively had advance warning as well.
In other words, if this is all that we have in store for Bashar al-Assad, President Trump’s dismayed anti-interventionists don’t have that much to worry about and interventionists have less to celebrate than think (more about them in a moment). Assad can go on killing women and children — he will simply have to use less efficient and more conventional weapons to do it. What a massive moral victory for the West!
•.. Look, I get why — morally, strategically, and legally — chemical weapons are different than conventional ones. But if my entire family and village were wiped out with bullets and bombs rather than chemical weapons, I wouldn’t draw much solace from any of these distinctions.
.. But Trump opposed enforcing Obama’s red line back then, nevertheless. The difference, as Trump admirably admitted from the Rose Garden, is that he’s president now and that changes your perspective on things.
.. That is a sound argument. But it was just as sound in 2013. Trump’s real motivation seems to be the fact that babies were “choked out” and that he saw it on TV. And it is this apparent fact that should give everyone — supporters and critics alike — the most cause for concern.
.. But the problem with charismatic leaders is that they are often a kind of Rorschach test. People project onto them what they want to see. I’ve lost count of how many conversations I’ve had with hardcore Trump fans who’ve described wildly different Donald Trumps — not simply different from the man I see, but different from each other. As a matter of logic, not all of these assessments can be right.
.. Earlier this week I wrote a column about how the core problem with Trump’s presidency so far isn’t his lack of an agenda or his tweeting or any of that. It’s Trump’s own character.
.. I do talk to a lot of people in and around the Trump administration. And the simple fact is that the chaos in the Trump White House is an outgrowth of the president’s personality. He’s mercurial. He cares more about status, saving face, respect, “winning,” etc. than he does about any public policy.
.. I think he’s sincere in his views about immigration, trade, excessive regulation, etc. But they take a back seat to Trump’s desire to maintain his charismatic status (which is why we’ve seen so many stories about how he gets mad at staffers who get good press — a really bizarre attitude for a manager when you think about it).
.. As Rich put it the other day, writing about the (first) push for Trumpcare:
Trump, for his part, has lacked the knowledge, focus or interest to translate his populism into legislative form. He deferred to others on legislative priorities and strategies at the outset of his administration, and his abiding passion in the health-care debate was, by all accounts, simply getting to a signing ceremony.
.. The strike on Syria is the single best proof that Trump has no overriding commitment to any ideological position. And I say this, again, as someone who supports the strike.
.. If Trump can abandon his position on this — all because of some horrific pictures on TV — what position is safe?
.. The fact that some in the Trump-can-do-no-wrong crowd are setting their collective hair on fire over the Syria strikes is a sign of ideological health (even if, again, I disagree with the substance of their complaint).
.. But the idea that the chaos in the White House is a function of bad staff is grossly unfair, even to Bannon. The chaos isn’t a bug in the Trump program — it is the program. It’s how he likes to run things. He could bring in a whole new roster of people, the result will likely be the same.
.. But pragmatism about ends isn’t pragmatism at all, it’s Nietzschean nihilism. If your goals are made slaves to your desire to seem like a winner, then the question of what you “win” at becomes entirely negotiable.
.. Conceptually, this is the difference between a knight and a mercenary. A knight fights for certain lofty ideals; a mercenary fights to win and reap the rewards. Politically, this is the lesson of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship. He decided that he’d rather be a successful liberal governor than a failed conservative one.
.. if I were a committed America Firster like Coulter and Ingraham, I’d see this for what it is: incredibly positive reinforcement for a politician who responds to flattery more than most.
.. second, I’d recognize that the lesson Trump might learn from this is that your poll numbers and press clippings get better when you throw your biggest fans under the bus and listen to the establishment, Jared Kushner, or Lord knows who else.
Bill Gates Book: The Myth of the Strong Leader
“The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age.”
the leaders who make the biggest contributions to history and humanity generally are not the ones we perceive to be ‘strong leaders.’
.. Gates explains Brown’s core argument, a leadership truism many will recognize. “Despite a worldwide fixation on strength as a positive quality, strong leaders — those who concentrate power and decision-making in their own hands — are not necessarily good leaders,” Gates writes.” Instead, Brown’s book posits that those who make the biggest difference “are the ones who collaborate, delegate, and negotiate — the ones who recognize that no one person can or should have all the answers.”
.. “I alone can fix it”
.. an American from Dallas came up to me and looked to see what I was doing. And he said, ‘well, America needs a strong leader and Donald Trump is a strong leader.’ There’s anecdotal evidence and survey evidence that one of the attractions of Donald Trump is that people thought he was a strong leader. I argue that there are lots of other qualities, which are more useful than strength, as defined by someone who’s domineering and maximizes power, and that being a strong leader and being an effective leader are not quite the same thing.
.. the Trump campaign wasn’t characterized by humility.
.. It remains to be seen what kind of team he’ll complete. So far it seems to be a mixture of billionaires and generals
.. the tone of the campaign — was unlike any in my lifetime. It was so aggressive. It’s one thing to say that you want to defeat your rival. But to say that the rival should be in jail — that was something more reminiscent of a third world country.
..
Many people saw Trump as a charismatic leader and then projected their hopes and their existing disappointments. They projected what they wanted to sense onto Trump. It’s rather strange that he was seen as the champion of blue-collar workers when the people he’s appointed [to the Cabinet so far] tend to be people who are very far removed from that milieu. This is a classic example of charisma being bestowed upon somebody.
.. Somebody who paints a bold picture, however remote it may be from reality, is probably more likely to be deemed to have charisma.
.. That the worship of strength, in the sense of domination and maximization, is the worship of a false god. There are other qualities that are more important in a leader — integrity, intelligence, collegiality, empathy, having a questioning mind — and if we’re very lucky, the person has vision as well.
.. I’m defining strength in the conventional way, as someone who is a maximizer of their power and wants to dominate all and sundry.
.. Eisenhower, a general, would be sitting at his desk saying ‘Do this! Do that! And nothing will happen. Poor Ike — it won’t be a bit like the Army.’ Trump is used to being in charge of his business empire. How hard is it for someone accustomed to that kind of hierarchy to make the adjustment?
.. I would hesitate to say what kind of president he’s going to be. When he’s faced with the fact that he can’t simply issue a set of instructions and it’ll automatically happen — because it’s a very complex political system and there are still checks and balances — how he reacts to that will be very important.
.. Why do you think people are so drawn to this dichotomy between strong versus weak leaders?
It’s hard to say. There’s something rather primitive about it. Going back to a time when there were clans and people looking to the chief, the person who was the ruler was also usually the strongest person or the greatest military person in the group.
What a professor who studies outside leaders has to say about Donald Trump
Who were some of the best unfiltered presidents?
Abraham Lincoln’s only national political experience was one term in the House of Representatives. He was an extreme dark horse candidate for the Republican nomination. Basically no one expected him to get it because he was a relatively minor figure.
He was such a success because he did things that, if people had known he was going to do those things, they would never have voted for him. That knowledge link is key. Lincoln positioned himself in the campaign as the least anti-slavery Republican — the Republican most likely to conciliate the South. And then when he went into office, of course, he wasn’t that at all.
.. I do not expect [Trump] to follow through on many of his campaign promises because one of the hallmarks of unfiltered leaders is that precisely because they don’t have a record, they can promise anything in order to get to power. They have more freedom to deviate because those promises have no reflection of their underlying beliefs. That can work out to their benefit. But that being said, the people who are thinking that “gee, this is normal” are deluding themselves.
.. What it demonstrates is the idea that people will be moderated by being in power is almost always false. When you are trying to gain power you say things meant to please the people who will decide whether or not you’re going to get power. That’s your goal. You want to please them in order to gain office and gain power. Once you’re in office, that’s what you have. You have power. Power is not a moderating force. Power is a liberating force.
.. That being said, if you were to pick an unfiltered person to be the president of the United States, it would be hard to imagine someone with worse odds of being a success than Donald Trump.
.. You write about charismatic leaders, particularly narcissistic ones, and their ability to, again, either be extreme successes or failures. You call charisma an “intensifier.” What does that mean?
Intensifiers basically make good things better and bad things worse. Charisma is a classic example. I define charisma as the ability to persuade people to do things through force of personality that you cannot persuade them to do [otherwise]. If the ideas you are trying to persuade them to are good ones, then charisma is incredibly valuable. If they are bad ones, than charisma is incredibly dangerous.
.. Clearly a very large proportion of the American population is affected powerfully by [Trump’s] charisma. He himself said this his followers are so committed that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they would still vote for him. That’s a pretty remarkable charismatic hold: That’s almost classically the definition of a charismatic leader who gets extraordinary amounts of adulation from their followers. You should expect that level of charisma to enable him to do things that a normal political leader simply could not even contemplate.
.. You will find that being a leader is much much harder than telling people how much better a job you would do if you were the leader. So you should take the advice of people who are experienced and the counsel and the help of people who have been there before. You should take it incredibly seriously.