Jordan Peterson: Bureaucrats will rue the day they tried to shut me up
By Jordan Peterson | Published by the National Post
In November 2022, the administrative board that regulates the conduct of psychologists (and much more than that, it turns out) decided that my political views were a disgrace to my profession, that of clinical psychologist. I was therefore sentenced by that board, the Ontario College of Psychologists, to a bout of mandatory re-education, of indeterminate duration, at my expense, with my learning not evaluated by any standard method but subject to the opinion of those charged with, profiting by and exploiting my forced studentship. I took those decision-makers forthwith to court, and lost. The decision of the Ontario College of Psychologists was upheld. I then appealed, to a higher court. On January 16, 2024, that appeal was rejected. There were no reasons provided.
This means that my legal options have been exhausted. Thus, I face two choices. I can comply, when the College goes ahead with its determination to require my re-education, dutifully attend whatever bloody classes their DEI-enthusiast “social media experts” (whatever those are) determine to inflict upon, confess the sins of my classic liberal/conservative or even Judeo-Christian political, philosophical and theological commitments, repent and silence myself — or even become a standard-bearer for the faux-compassionate woke cause, at least publicly. Alternatively, I can tell my would-be masters to go directly to the hell they are so rapidly gathering around themselves and everyone else, lose my right to practice or even to describe myself as a psychologist, and suffer the consequences on the reputation front:
“Canadian psychologist Jordan B Peterson, disgrace to his profession, forfeits his formal licence, in consequence of his crimes.”
And what exactly were those crimes? — because there’s the rub or, at least, one of them. This is where the reader should pay careful attention, Canadian or otherwise, because this is what lies ahead in the West, given the course our leaders and their still-blind and deaf followers are charting. It should be hard for anyone considering this situation to believe that I am playing straight with the facts, if they have any of their own opinions or values whatsoever — because if what I have done and said constitutes the equivalent of a professional crime, you can be sure that your own head is full of like transgressions, regardless of your political stance, and your own tongue therefore likely to spill the beans.
I criticized three Canadian political leaders: a councilwoman in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, for what I regarded and still regard as her disgraceful behavior during the Canadian Trucker Convoy; Justin Trudeau’s former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, a man who resigned from one of the highest positions within the office of the former amidst a scandal that had enveloped the teflon-coated Liberal administration; and the woke poster boy and shining narcissist himself, Canada’s Prime Minister, a man who has done more to destroy my country than anyone else, in reality and reputation, nationally and internationally (and that includes his father, who was no shirker in that regard).
I pointed out the shortcomings of the idiot costly self-aggrandizing virtue-signaling demoralizing lie of the power-mad climate apocalypse-mongers — that on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the entire three-plus-hour transcript of which (!) was submitted to my College as evidence of my disgraceful conduct.
I voiced my objections to the politically-correct insistence that morbid obesity be regarded as the equivalent to the highest standards of athletic beauty, and I took a certain Hollywood actress or actor to task because that same person (oh tortuous grammatical niceties) used its platform to parade the advantages of double mastectomies when performed on the bodies of perfectly healthy young women.
I regret none of these actions. I would say exactly the same things again. Furthermore, I believe that time has been kind to my decisions: the reality of the idiocy that I pointed to then, whose reality was then denied by most, has become something increasingly apparent to an increasingly majority of people in the interim.
I should point out, too, that these crimes were reported on the publicly accessible Ontario College of Psychologist website informer page not by anyone who had ever been a beneficiary of my professional services, or any people that knew them, or any of the people directly criticized, or by anyone who knew them, or even (in the main) by citizens of Ontario, my home province, or Canada. They were instead brought to the attention of the “authorities” by activists in other countries, many of whom also lied in writing, claiming that they were in fact clients of mine. About a dozen of such people reported me — this in contrast, by the way, to the millions or now even tens of millions of people who have found the work I have done and the stances I have taken of clear psychological benefit, and who have said so, buying my books, watching my lectures and even directly informing the College of their favorable judgment.
What does this all mean for me? Frankly, very little, practically speaking. I have options, in my fortunate and privileged position. I am no longer financially dependent on my practice, which I had to fold up in 2017, in the wake of the first scandals that emerged around me. I am independently wealthy. I am also not dependent even on my formal status as a psychologist. This makes me very unlike my colleagues and fellow professionals, for whom threat to their licence is an intolerable threat to livelihood, reputation and family stability, financial and otherwise. I could even move to the U.S., say — to one of the still-free states — and join my daughter, who has done so for equally political reasons, and as an increasing number of Canadians have determined to do.
By far the easiest thing for me to do personally, therefore, is to say to the College “do your worst, you petty tyrants,” and let the cards fall where they will. I could even report, in detail, publicly (very publicly) on the re-education process, as I most certainly will do, if I decide to go that route. I could take the inevitable reputational hit mentioned previously, and continue going about my happy and profitable business. I have positioned myself very carefully, knowing all this was coming, accepting its inevitability, so that I wasn’t even particularly upset when the news came down. My personal security and desires, however, are not the point, and they haven’t been, right from the beginning. Here’s the point:
Canadians, mark my words: Your much-vaunted Charter of Rights isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, as one of its last remaining signatories has been continually striving to indicate. Your right to free speech is essentially non-existent, as evidenced by the court decisions we are now considering. You have almost no real rights to property. Your rights to mobility can be taken away without consequence at any moment, as they were very recently. You can all-too-easily become the indentured servant of anyone you dare to hire. Your tax load is going to continue to increase, and rapidly. Your economy is predicted to be the worst performing of any developing country for the next three decades — and that failure will be trumpeted, positively, as the “degrowth” necessary to save the planet (thus so conveniently providing those who, like Trudeau, have no interest in monetary policy to parade their ignorance and Machiavellian idiocy as a positive virtue: “I’m saving the planet” is a get-out-of jail free card for any and all crimes and justification for a grab for power the likes of which we have never seen. The failure of my appeal means that your professionals — engineers, physicians, lawyers and teachers, among others — are now required by administrative fiat to conceal what they really think and believe (which is precisely the truth you most truly need from them) lest they run afoul of the administrative minions who have now been granted full sway over their tongues and pens.
The Supreme Court has already determined this: hence the failure of my appeal. Regulatory boards in Canada are not required to apply the law correctly, as law professor Dr. Bruce Pardy recently pointed out. Furthermore, they can infringe charter rights — and those are your most fundamental rights — if they do so “proportionately.” And what does “proportionately” mean, practically speaking? It means any way they choose, unless you have the courage, time and resources to object. Fighting these pathetic demons has already cost me weeks of work and close to a million dollars. Are you, fellow Canadian professionals, feeling up to that task? I thought not — and have seen very little evidence of courage or ability from you on that front. So we can just imagine where that will leave the typical Canadian, who dares to speak his or her mind. Finally, and furthermore: the infringement on your rights — all your rights — can and will be justified by the courts if the action that does so promotes “charter values” guaranteed and promoted nowhere in the fundamental legal structure that makes up Canada — and those have become precisely the diversity, equity, inclusivity, group-rights conceptualization of humanity and vengeful quasi-Marxist but worse victim-victimizer narrative that all goes to make up the progressive ideals of the carnivorous sheep who now rule this sad and blind land.
Are you listening, Canadians? If you refuse to abide by rules so radically leftist that they would have been and were in fact eschewed until recently by the outright socialist Canadian New Democratic Party your opinions have now become outright illegal. Present them, even think about them, at your peril. And if you think I’m exaggerating, or beating my own drum, for reasons of my own, ask yourself this: what in the world is in it for me, in so doing? I could at any moment and so easily end my association with my increasingly mad profession, as I have the universities who so recently showed their disgrace in Washington, DC (I’m talking about you, presidents of MIT, Harvard and UPenn), and go about my perfectly functional life, without the burden of scrapping with idiots — without even the necessity of facing the full reality of the political idiocy and willful blindness that now makes up the Canadian scene.
But I think I’ll fight a little longer. Bring it on, you bloody pikers: take your next steps, bureaucrats: write me, and tell me how exactly we are to conduct my re-education. I’ll play along, find out exactly what you will do, now that you’ve been emboldened to do whatever it is that the darkest resentful demons lurking in your evil little low-level administrative hearts most truly desire, even to your own detriment. I’ll see how burdensome playing your pathetic game becomes, and I will publicize every single bit of it. And, if I get tired of it, which seems highly likely, I’ll hand over the bloody licence I am increasingly embarrassed in any case to possess and let you continue journeying oh-so-morally to the dismal, fearful, pessimistic, moralizing, petty, butter-won’t-melt in our mouths hellish straits that you envision as the paradise best fit for your fellow citizens, yourselves and your children.
You have won the battle, minions of the deep state, faceless-for-now but not for long bureaucrat-authoritarians, but you haven’t won the war. And here is a warning, too, as is only fair: So far I have been constrained in my response to your pushing and prodding and overlord-nagging by the requirement not to compromise my efforts on the legal side. But that’s all over with, now, isn’t it? So there are no holds barred, as far as I am concerned. And it may be that you have nothing better to do with your nasty narrowly-circumscribed micromanaging bodies and souls than to cause me trouble. But we’re going to perform that dance on the international stage, with all that light shining on your machinations, and you may well come to rue the day you attempted to take possession of my tongue.
For the original version of this opinion piece, see the publisher’s website here
Further Reading
Bruce Pardy: Jordan Peterson against the tyranny of the administrative state
Image credit: Gage Skidmore
