Jordan Peterson truly needs no introduction. Most Canadians with their noses — or thumbs — in the news have an idea of who he is, albeit likely a highly biased one.He is arguably one of — if not the — most famous and influential Canadian public intellectuals ever. Don’t get me wrong: we certainly have a plethoric and respectable list of academics who have made incredible advancements in their fields and beyond. But has anyone from Canada in the intellectual orbit ever become as world-renowned and widely discussed as Peterson? It would be hard to argue that case. His fame is truly unprecedented — both loved and hated by literally millions.But Jordan Peterson has decided to leave Canada. He no longer lives in Toronto, walks our streets, teaches at our schools, frequents our coffee shops, runs his local practice, or debates on our campuses. The pressure Canadians placed on Peterson and his family — social, personal, professional, spiritual, and intellectual — was immense. Most of us will never know what it feels like to bear those forces..OLDCORN: Ottawa shouldn’t ask the Supreme Court to rewrite the notwithstanding clause.Yet, for many, this is seen as a win — for Canada, for progress, for freedom.But is it?If we really dive into what this means for Canadians and Canada, is it truly a positive outcome — to have pushed someone of his nature to the point of exile? Or ought we be ashamed of how we treated him, and how deeply we may come to regret not acting on his urgent calls to action in the cultural, spiritual, intellectual, and political realms?.The Politics of the BoxSee, the problem seems to be that we have an identitarian obsession with fitting public figures into a neat ideological category — or box, for lack of a better term. Now, this take isn’t novel, but with deeper analysis, it’s far more profound than we assume. Bear with me. This will come back to Peterson.You see, these “boxes” we create for people are a neoteric iteration of the subject positions that postmodernists talked about endlessly. The subject position, according to the postmodernist, is a way of categorizing people based on binaries: good and bad, normal and abnormal, natural and unnatural, healthy and unhealthy. It allows individuals to be defined, labeled, and understood according to a body of knowledge, “facts,” and rationality..GOLDBERG: Ford’s solution to everything is deflect and blame someone else.By placing people into these subject positions — along with the labeling and cataloguing — we become, in postmodern terms, justified in how we feel about them, treat them, speak to them, and respond to them. The idea isn’t simply, “Hey, you’re X.” It’s, “Hey, you’re X, therefore I can do X.”Let’s use the over-commodified term “fascist” as an example. If you label someone as a fascist, that person becomes subject to a specific set of responses — often extreme, dehumanizing, and sometimes violent..Peterson and the Subject PositionSo, back to Peterson. Our culture and knowledge-producing institutions helped create the subject position of the “conservative,” the “right-winger,” the “white male,” the “privileged” — allowing us to throw extremely complex and nuanced individuals like Peterson into these neo-subject positions. Once boxed in, they become fair game for bullying, ridicule, hatred, ostracization, castigation, humiliation, alienation, and even violence.As a Canadian culture, we accepted that these categories validate — and even warrant — the dehumanizing responses Peterson was tirelessly subjected to. We leaned on a body of literature, often developed within our academic institutions, to rationalize egregious behavior in the name of progress.But Jordan Peterson is a multifaceted human being — a father, a grandfather, a Jungian psychologist, a curious man, an intellectual, and so much more. And yet we labeled him, boxed him in, and ultimately leveraged those labels to push him out of the very country he risked his livelihood to protect from tyranny..EDITORIAL: It’s time to hit the reset button on Canada’s broken immigration system.A New Thought ExperimentNevertheless, as our postmodernists taught us — though they curiously seem to have forgotten — we can pick up different frameworks for understanding one another. We can challenge the subject positions we've created and begin to know each other differently, which allows for different responses to people and their ideas.So, let’s engage in a thought experiment..Instead of absurdly and immaturely boxing Peterson as a “right-winger,” a “fascist,” or a “conservative,” let’s pick another category from the opposing extreme. Let’s put him in something like a “left-wing,” “progressive,” “forward-thinking,” “compassionate,” or “magnanimous” box — and then examine how that shift changes everything.Within one or some of these subject positions, we might understand Peterson as a public intellectual deeply concerned about the horrors of tyranny, government overreach, harmful clinical practices affecting children, the normalization of once-unethical medical procedures, the cultural failures of modern men, rising addiction, societal apathy, abandonment of responsibility, lack of structure, nihilism, dishonest and corrupt politics, exclusionary social practices, declining marriages and healthy relationships, and the spiritual shortcomings of atheism..ALBERS: Government does not create value.You see, we choose how to know and understand human beings like Jordan Peterson. These ways of knowing shape our treatment of them. If we call him a “Nazi” and actually believe that to be remotely true, then yes — of course he will be pushed out of civil discourse and society.But this was a wildly moronic and uneducated choice. We chose to label him this way. We allowed our social, linguistic, and discursive patterns to justify the hatred directed at him. That hatred pushed him out of the country..A Canadian FailureWe failed our democratic duties as Canadians.We failed our commitment to deontological principles.We failed Jordan Peterson.We must mature beyond this simplistic and lazy version of subject-position creation. We must stop casually throwing out terms like “Nazi,” “fascist,” and “dangerous” when we know exactly what we are doing — and when we know, deep down, that the person in question is none of those things..OLDCORN: Moe's China EV tariff flip flop betrays Saskatchewan producers.Yes, neo-Nazis, fascists, and dangerous individuals do exist. But Jordan Peterson is not one of them. He is so far from it, it's truly absurd.He is, arguably, one of the best things to ever happen to Canada — for freedom, for democracy, for liberty, for progress. Yet we refuse to see him this way.And so, as we continue down a national path marked by lawlessness, illogical decision-making, infringements on personal freedom, virtue-signaling, and the erasure of liberties — while rejecting the much-needed restoration of Judeo-Christian values and structures — we may, in time, come to wish we had paused and truly listened to his message.
