The Canadian psychologist fighting for the right to opine without having to submit to “social media training” — reeducation — has lost a court battle.
An Ontario court has dismissed Jordan Peterson’s appeal of a decision that had ruled in favor of the autocratic College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO).
A year ago, Dr. Peterson’s livelihood was jeopardized because, on social media, he challenged “consensus” determinations on matters like climate change, sex-change operations on minors, and COVID-19 policies.
That’s when CPO, a regulatory body established by legislation, told Peterson that he must either submit to degrading “training” as the penalty for participating in public discourse or forfeit his right to practice.
With the new ruling, “There are no other legal avenues open to me now,” he says on Twitter. “It’s capitulate to the petty bureaucrats and the addlepated woke mob or lose my professional licence.”
The setback pertains only to “this round,” though. And: “There is nothing you can take from me that I’m unwilling to lose.”
In a recent National Post column, he says that he can either comply with the reeducation and confess his ideological sins or “tell my would-be masters to go directly to the hell they are so rapidly gathering around themselves and everyone else.”
If you read Dr. Peterson’s warnings to fellow Canadians about the precarious state of their liberties and interpret his tone accurately, I think you’ll agree that he’s going with the go-to-hell option.
Peterson has made millions off the fame he garnered by opposing the compelled speech aspect aspect of Canada’s Bill C‑16. Thanks to the marketplace of ideas, he has more go-to-hell money than most folks.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “The De-Frocking of Jordan Peterson”
No one should be at all surprised.
The political culture of Canada is not simply different from that of America; Canadians often seek to define Canada in how it differs from America. In many Canadian political debates, one side will swiftly seek to associate the views of their opponents with Americanism.
It was bad enough when many Americans defined America as Not-the-Soviet-Union. At least excellent reasons could be found for not wanting to be fundamentally like the Soviet Union.
In Not-America to our north, liberty of expression doesn’t have the institutional protection that it has in America. Dissidents in Canada are tried and sometimes imprisoned for their views, with many folk up there so witless as not to recognize that indeed dissent of some varieties is illegal and directly punished by the state.
What is happening in Canada is *not so* slowly and surely coming to the United States.