During my time at my elite liberal arts alma mater—a school whose motto is the “Life of the mind,”—I only knew a single student who openly defended capitalism. It was assumed and expected that everyone believed in, and would act in accordance with, a certain social constructionist view of gender: the belief that one’s gender identity—male, female, or neither—is determined by personal experience. Men were not supposed to question many feminist ideas, and white people were not supposed to criticize people of color’s views on race.
Then one day on YouTube I found a video of professor Jordan B. Peterson, University of Toronto psychologist and best-selling author of 12 Rules For Life, arguing against protesters that the government should not be allowed to compel people to use non-traditional gender pronouns. How strange, I thought: He’s not using prejudice, but rather he’s using reason, science, and a liberal theory of the state to form a well articulated criticism of orthodox left-wing positions. In four years of college I’d never heard anything like that before.
