Your pragmatic, principled, unflinching courage and commitment to free civil discourse is a shining example that is much needed. Please keep it coming.
Much as I like most of Peter's perspective and activities, a big problem is that we old-fashioned-liberal civil-discourse types are simply not adequately recognizing that several *disparate* cohorts in the US and the world perceive that they are necessarily at war -- hybrid war -- with us. I am convinced this has been true for a long time, no matter how we approach it and no matter what we say. Something's gone very wrong here with Enlightenment liberalism when such a range of intelligent people have abandoned it so starkly, from leaders down to rank-and-file. This is not a small portion of the population. Instead, arguably the sum of them is now a wide majority. The choir we are preaching to is declining, and from my view has been as long as I've been an adult, since the Carter administration.
Those wars are essentially "holy wars", no matter what their ideology or religion. As this has evolved into a radical departure from the mid-20th century Western hegemony of free thought, we are serious trouble. Reliable establishment support is long gone. Presenting ourselves unflinchingly to zealots seems only to impress upon them that we are fools, and thus deserve their contempt and attacks. At sufficient exposure, one risks being Kirk'ed, by who knows who. We'd better get sober about how real and generic this is.
I don't pretend to know how to fix this devolution and I do condemn and avoid all violence, but somehow, we badly need to up our game -- and fast.
Keep up the good work Peter. I don’t always agree with you—and I think different POVs are one of the great pleasures and rewards of sentient life—but I applaud your efforts on behalf of civil discourse.
Asking a Progressive to debate their beliefs is like walking into church during Sunday Mass and expecting a parishioner to debate the existence of God and the validity of Christian dogma. Their beliefs are theological, not empirical or rational. And what makes Progressives worse than my hypothetical Christian, they don't even know this.
They have been gradually conditioned, pressured and manipulated into adopting a sacred faith, which is installed and enforced via cult dynamics—shame and guilt, accusations of moral pollution, threats of social ostracism etc.
Progressives don't need to debate, they need to be deprogrammed.
It might be less about desire than ability. You can't debate what you've never thought through, it's like trying to turn music into words.
I always keep this quote by Spinoza around:
"For this is how human beings are constructed: whatever they conceive purely with their intellects, they also defend purely with intellect and reason while, on the other hand, whatever opinions they derive from their passions, they defend with their passions."
So you might get a passionate refusal or denunciation, at best. Progressivism is a secular faith, akin to Marxism, but more American, therapeutic, and Protestant.
Last night i watched a video on how to earn $1k to $20k+ a month by using AI to "create" and sell novels. You use a template, even an exsting novel, and multiple choice selections for characters and plot. Yes, it's coming. EVERY possible storyline and character combination ! You sell your creation by ebook or instant print house. Now doesn't that fill your heart with gladness ? Barf !
This is a great approach. Love you man, you are doing God's work (ha). Really, you are doing very important work on behalf of all persons who support free speech.
I have some push-back for you Peter. I have been a follower of your work, a subscriber for years and agree with you 99.9%. My push-back is not adversarial. No one person can know everything there is to know. That includes you, Peter. The only way to truly understand the world around us is to understand HOW the world got to be the way it is. That is the one issue/subject not seen in your videos (unless I missed it)…historical perspective! A little smattering of history here and there is NOT historical perspective. I started studying Political, Economic, Religious, Social history about the time you were in High School. It has been my life’s second job/work. The sad thing is you do not even realize how desperately you need historical perspective to improve and succeed in all you do. Spend an afternoon with me out in Oregon. You will see/understand the world you live in better than you ever have before.
I have read hundreds of books and the information/result from them cannot be encapsulated within a brief comment or recommendation. This is why I ask Peter if you ever get back out to Oregon if you would please spend an afternoon with me. Then there are always questions to explain more in-depth on how particular historical events still affect today’s world, etc. If you do ever join me for an afternoon, I will give you my ‘short list’ of 150 books in PDF format. You do not have to read the books all the way through. I have already done that. All you have to do during travel time or wait in airport time is scroll down through a PDF and read the highlighted sections. The rest of the book is there if you want to dig deeper.
No one book has all the answers but together they give a more accurate understanding of why things are as they are and with that knowledge what can be done to turn things around to prevent the worst possible future outcomes and bring America back to sanity and a better future. But all of that is not written in any one book. It is understanding gained from reading between the lines of hundreds of them.
People do need to study history to understand how we got here. There are many prisms through which can be viewed. Marxism is probably the most accurate - for analyzing past events and current events as well. Not so good for future planning. The Marxist historians do miss a lot of the cultural stuff though.
Important note: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
When people who have a political agenda they do not want to meet in an setting like a podcast it generally means they are propagandists who cannot defend their propaganda. Here in the U.S., generally, it is elected Democrats who do not do interviews outside of the dishonest, biased and corrupt legacy media. A dishonest media is one reason why Americans are ignorant about their own country. We also have a dysfunctional and agenda driven educational system, especially in blue states (Democrat) and academia resulting in a substandard education for students despite spending a trillion dollars a year because it is filled with propaganda- publicly funded!!! Try to get the president of one of the teacher’s unions to talk with you!
One piece of pushback: While I do think that Republicans are more more exposed to different ideas than Democrats, I don't think that's because they're more resistant to echo chambers; I think it's because the left has largely won the culture war and so there's no way to avoid their epistemologies/theories.
Yes, Democrats won the culture war by capturing legacy media, educational institutions and government institutions including the management and administrative functions controlling hiring and admissions while Republicans generally have been bystanders for several generations. Also advertising which has incorporated Democrat agendas on race and gender. Collectively all these institutions and entities have skewed the culture in their direction substantially over generations getting progressively worse. President Trump is the push in the opposite direction because the people have few options to express themselves in such a direct binary way. Gerrymandering, legislation and government restricts to funnel policies and legislation often benefiting Democrats. Who really thinks giving driver’s licenses and massive government benefits to illegal aliens is beneficial to the nation? Overall, it has been proven to be a massive financial deficit to the nation. By the way, assimilation is often not the goal or result. Congress is an impediment to the nation now. What legislation has been enacted to prevent another Democrat to do a repeat Joe Biden presidency?
You may be right on this. The Republicans have lost the culture war - I live in Mississippi - I guess we are slow and the last to get news. The Democrats have lost the class war. I wonder if they were even trying to fight in the first place.
Good luck. I have found Trumpeters and Identitarian leftists not just impervious to evidence but absolutely hostile to it. Reality is an inconvenience.
People who practice Marcusian ideology think that it's OK to lie. Denying that a communication has not been received when, clearly, the communication was received is tantamount to lying.
The strange thing about this current attempt to communicate an invitation is that they all did not reply. Given the diverse backgrounds of all these (educated - let's not deny it) people, it could be suggested that there is some well understood protocol followed by all who received your invitation, Peter. If so, who organises this strange unwillingness to participate?
This isn't conspiracy theory. It's common sense to assume that if an invitation is sent to a handful of well educated people, you'd get at least some response, even if it's just a 'no thanks'. But you got nothing. It's like the efforts of the SETI Project - you're sure they are out there, but all you get is crickets.
The formats that you have challenged my views and convicted me of not standing, speaking up for my beliefs and my fellow humans. I liked the apologetic style. The way you pressed the speaker to explain. And changed the question a little. I wish I could subscribe to you. Keep doing these needed conversations. May you not be discouraged and may God protect you!
I enjoy the one and one convos, the spectrum street one is my favorite, and the ones you did with an audience and both sides convo (can’t think of the name). I have learned so much from you!
It’s been great tools to engage w others. To research and search my heart and what I have been taught. Please keep doing this needed work. Oh I also liked the topics: the birds, astronaut one, the professors at the Texas college.
I have always been against people unwilling to put their names on comments or be willing to support, publicly, their point of view. Points of vews are exactly that. Neither right nor wrong. Be willing to engage it might surprise both yourself and your opposition. Talking is part of learning.
I have been wondering why no one has done this before now. Congratulations Peter for doing it!! So often questions are asked of someone with whom there may be disagreement … there is no response and then the matter is dropped. That’s halfway to nowhere in the search for common ground.
I have a question, though I'm not sure this is the correct place to ask: What do you do if, when these people do decide to converse with you, they start using tactics like name calling, gaslighting (in the literal sense, like implying that you have a mental disorder), ignoring their own contradictions, malicious sarcasm, and implying you hold positions you don't in order to justify doing all of the above.
Thank you for your service! I'm intrigued — could you give us a taste of what some of the denials are like? (I'm imagining people publicly saying "that lying SOB says he invited us, but he never did, the lying SOB!" and pretending to be really indignant, but I don't want to put words in their mouths. I'm curious as to how this dynamic actually unfolds.)
Your pragmatic, principled, unflinching courage and commitment to free civil discourse is a shining example that is much needed. Please keep it coming.
Much as I like most of Peter's perspective and activities, a big problem is that we old-fashioned-liberal civil-discourse types are simply not adequately recognizing that several *disparate* cohorts in the US and the world perceive that they are necessarily at war -- hybrid war -- with us. I am convinced this has been true for a long time, no matter how we approach it and no matter what we say. Something's gone very wrong here with Enlightenment liberalism when such a range of intelligent people have abandoned it so starkly, from leaders down to rank-and-file. This is not a small portion of the population. Instead, arguably the sum of them is now a wide majority. The choir we are preaching to is declining, and from my view has been as long as I've been an adult, since the Carter administration.
Those wars are essentially "holy wars", no matter what their ideology or religion. As this has evolved into a radical departure from the mid-20th century Western hegemony of free thought, we are serious trouble. Reliable establishment support is long gone. Presenting ourselves unflinchingly to zealots seems only to impress upon them that we are fools, and thus deserve their contempt and attacks. At sufficient exposure, one risks being Kirk'ed, by who knows who. We'd better get sober about how real and generic this is.
I don't pretend to know how to fix this devolution and I do condemn and avoid all violence, but somehow, we badly need to up our game -- and fast.
Keep up the good work Peter. I don’t always agree with you—and I think different POVs are one of the great pleasures and rewards of sentient life—but I applaud your efforts on behalf of civil discourse.
Thank you Greg! I'll try to keep the different POVs coming, if we can get them on the show.
The few PB videos I've managed to see, have left me wanting to see more!....really!....
Stay tuned...!
Asking a Progressive to debate their beliefs is like walking into church during Sunday Mass and expecting a parishioner to debate the existence of God and the validity of Christian dogma. Their beliefs are theological, not empirical or rational. And what makes Progressives worse than my hypothetical Christian, they don't even know this.
They have been gradually conditioned, pressured and manipulated into adopting a sacred faith, which is installed and enforced via cult dynamics—shame and guilt, accusations of moral pollution, threats of social ostracism etc.
Progressives don't need to debate, they need to be deprogrammed.
I like this view, that beliefs are "theological". Who wants to to debate their own beliefs, the iceberg they are resting on ?
It might be less about desire than ability. You can't debate what you've never thought through, it's like trying to turn music into words.
I always keep this quote by Spinoza around:
"For this is how human beings are constructed: whatever they conceive purely with their intellects, they also defend purely with intellect and reason while, on the other hand, whatever opinions they derive from their passions, they defend with their passions."
So you might get a passionate refusal or denunciation, at best. Progressivism is a secular faith, akin to Marxism, but more American, therapeutic, and Protestant.
The same is true of the "geniuses" now dragging us kicking and screaming into an "AI" / robots world.
Last night i watched a video on how to earn $1k to $20k+ a month by using AI to "create" and sell novels. You use a template, even an exsting novel, and multiple choice selections for characters and plot. Yes, it's coming. EVERY possible storyline and character combination ! You sell your creation by ebook or instant print house. Now doesn't that fill your heart with gladness ? Barf !
I do see the downside of it - but at the same time - now I can finally get published!
Jesus, I wish they had this shit when I was a college student.
This is a great approach. Love you man, you are doing God's work (ha). Really, you are doing very important work on behalf of all persons who support free speech.
Grateful for all you do - not a podcast that I don't miss with you - I continue to grow and educate myself through you and your guests. Thank you!
Great idea to document invitations. What about sending a print invitation by snail mail too. Demonstrates good faith effort.
Great thought! I'll pass it on to the team.
I have some push-back for you Peter. I have been a follower of your work, a subscriber for years and agree with you 99.9%. My push-back is not adversarial. No one person can know everything there is to know. That includes you, Peter. The only way to truly understand the world around us is to understand HOW the world got to be the way it is. That is the one issue/subject not seen in your videos (unless I missed it)…historical perspective! A little smattering of history here and there is NOT historical perspective. I started studying Political, Economic, Religious, Social history about the time you were in High School. It has been my life’s second job/work. The sad thing is you do not even realize how desperately you need historical perspective to improve and succeed in all you do. Spend an afternoon with me out in Oregon. You will see/understand the world you live in better than you ever have before.
Drop reading suggestions here! I love to learn more and will take a look at any recs you have.
I have read hundreds of books and the information/result from them cannot be encapsulated within a brief comment or recommendation. This is why I ask Peter if you ever get back out to Oregon if you would please spend an afternoon with me. Then there are always questions to explain more in-depth on how particular historical events still affect today’s world, etc. If you do ever join me for an afternoon, I will give you my ‘short list’ of 150 books in PDF format. You do not have to read the books all the way through. I have already done that. All you have to do during travel time or wait in airport time is scroll down through a PDF and read the highlighted sections. The rest of the book is there if you want to dig deeper.
No one book has all the answers but together they give a more accurate understanding of why things are as they are and with that knowledge what can be done to turn things around to prevent the worst possible future outcomes and bring America back to sanity and a better future. But all of that is not written in any one book. It is understanding gained from reading between the lines of hundreds of them.
Wikipedia. I'm serious. You can acquire a broad but shallow base of historical knowledge in a short amount of time.
I would love it if you could say more about this. What particular historical context do you think Peter should be including?
People do need to study history to understand how we got here. There are many prisms through which can be viewed. Marxism is probably the most accurate - for analyzing past events and current events as well. Not so good for future planning. The Marxist historians do miss a lot of the cultural stuff though.
Important note: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
When people who have a political agenda they do not want to meet in an setting like a podcast it generally means they are propagandists who cannot defend their propaganda. Here in the U.S., generally, it is elected Democrats who do not do interviews outside of the dishonest, biased and corrupt legacy media. A dishonest media is one reason why Americans are ignorant about their own country. We also have a dysfunctional and agenda driven educational system, especially in blue states (Democrat) and academia resulting in a substandard education for students despite spending a trillion dollars a year because it is filled with propaganda- publicly funded!!! Try to get the president of one of the teacher’s unions to talk with you!
I will try! That's a great idea.
One piece of pushback: While I do think that Republicans are more more exposed to different ideas than Democrats, I don't think that's because they're more resistant to echo chambers; I think it's because the left has largely won the culture war and so there's no way to avoid their epistemologies/theories.
Yes, Democrats won the culture war by capturing legacy media, educational institutions and government institutions including the management and administrative functions controlling hiring and admissions while Republicans generally have been bystanders for several generations. Also advertising which has incorporated Democrat agendas on race and gender. Collectively all these institutions and entities have skewed the culture in their direction substantially over generations getting progressively worse. President Trump is the push in the opposite direction because the people have few options to express themselves in such a direct binary way. Gerrymandering, legislation and government restricts to funnel policies and legislation often benefiting Democrats. Who really thinks giving driver’s licenses and massive government benefits to illegal aliens is beneficial to the nation? Overall, it has been proven to be a massive financial deficit to the nation. By the way, assimilation is often not the goal or result. Congress is an impediment to the nation now. What legislation has been enacted to prevent another Democrat to do a repeat Joe Biden presidency?
You may be right on this. The Republicans have lost the culture war - I live in Mississippi - I guess we are slow and the last to get news. The Democrats have lost the class war. I wonder if they were even trying to fight in the first place.
Good luck. I have found Trumpeters and Identitarian leftists not just impervious to evidence but absolutely hostile to it. Reality is an inconvenience.
People who practice Marcusian ideology think that it's OK to lie. Denying that a communication has not been received when, clearly, the communication was received is tantamount to lying.
The strange thing about this current attempt to communicate an invitation is that they all did not reply. Given the diverse backgrounds of all these (educated - let's not deny it) people, it could be suggested that there is some well understood protocol followed by all who received your invitation, Peter. If so, who organises this strange unwillingness to participate?
This isn't conspiracy theory. It's common sense to assume that if an invitation is sent to a handful of well educated people, you'd get at least some response, even if it's just a 'no thanks'. But you got nothing. It's like the efforts of the SETI Project - you're sure they are out there, but all you get is crickets.
The formats that you have challenged my views and convicted me of not standing, speaking up for my beliefs and my fellow humans. I liked the apologetic style. The way you pressed the speaker to explain. And changed the question a little. I wish I could subscribe to you. Keep doing these needed conversations. May you not be discouraged and may God protect you!
Kind of you to say that, thank you so much.
I enjoy the one and one convos, the spectrum street one is my favorite, and the ones you did with an audience and both sides convo (can’t think of the name). I have learned so much from you!
I really appreciate that. Thank you so much.
It’s been great tools to engage w others. To research and search my heart and what I have been taught. Please keep doing this needed work. Oh I also liked the topics: the birds, astronaut one, the professors at the Texas college.
I have always been against people unwilling to put their names on comments or be willing to support, publicly, their point of view. Points of vews are exactly that. Neither right nor wrong. Be willing to engage it might surprise both yourself and your opposition. Talking is part of learning.
🎯
I have been wondering why no one has done this before now. Congratulations Peter for doing it!! So often questions are asked of someone with whom there may be disagreement … there is no response and then the matter is dropped. That’s halfway to nowhere in the search for common ground.
Thanks. It's the best solution I've come up with. Maybe others will follow?
Great Idea Peter. Love your work btw.
I have a question, though I'm not sure this is the correct place to ask: What do you do if, when these people do decide to converse with you, they start using tactics like name calling, gaslighting (in the literal sense, like implying that you have a mental disorder), ignoring their own contradictions, malicious sarcasm, and implying you hold positions you don't in order to justify doing all of the above.
Asking for a friend, as they say.
Thank you for your service! I'm intrigued — could you give us a taste of what some of the denials are like? (I'm imagining people publicly saying "that lying SOB says he invited us, but he never did, the lying SOB!" and pretending to be really indignant, but I don't want to put words in their mouths. I'm curious as to how this dynamic actually unfolds.)
"Fuck you, Nazi"
Respect how you feel - but you can do better lol
I don't think people should use this term - reduction to Hitler. Let's move on.
Well, that's definitely different than I had expected, if not in the direction I had hoped...
*shaking my head* Unbelievable!!!😣 Their ignorance seems to know no bounds.