For the first time in years I met James Higham of the Nourishing Obscurity and Orphans of Liberty blogs for lunch and drinks (Virgin Marys for me on my health regime) this weekend. I am visiting family in my home town in North Wales. Wanting to catch up with James and — given some alarming posts he has made about his health of late — check up on his well-being, I took the opportunity to meet in the nearest English city, just across the border.

James blogs so eclectically that the inside of his mind is well known to his readers. Some of them may even feel they know too much! This is something of a paradox as he’s such a private person when it comes to the external details of his life. It’s one of the interesting aspects of our online community that someone who knew almost all of his innermost thoughts and beliefs (and not a few of mine) could walk by our table in the charming pub where we spent our happy hours together without knowing who either of us was. 

He was in good form and full of adventurous plans for the future. We had a convivial meal and gossiped a little about people we know. Mostly they are bloggers from the brief golden age of the ‘sphere before Twitter coarsened the online world, removed much of its good humour and brought it under the dangerous, authoritarian gaze of the establishment.

We also reminisced about our very different experiences in Russia. Our times there overlapped and, at this remove of time and space, we were able to get a more rounded picture of what was going on at that interesting stage in Russian history than was apparent to either of us while we were there  

We have in common a classically liberal approach when it comes to making laws (as few as possible but rigorously enforced because so few would be the truly important ones). We are both also quite socially conservative when it comes to matters of personal ethics, family, duty and personal life. James is a Christian who trusts God to deal with others moral failings, so doesn’t need secular leaders to address them clumsily. I lost my faith years ago and though I look for it occasionally have never found it again, but my morals are essentially those of the church in which I was raised. In practice that means I feel guilty about any of my actions that the church considers would disappoint God.

I lack - and sadly miss - James’ hope for justice in the afterlife and am as painfully aware as anyone with actual experience of Man’s attempts at justice of their inadequacy. Yet like him I feel immorality (to the precise extent it doesn’t genuinely injure or defraud others) is a matter for individuals, their consciences and (if they have one) their God.

James is an eccentric perhaps to modern eyes and his tastes in music are not always mine but agree with his posts or not (and often I don’t) I have always enjoyed and often learned from his writing. He’s no angel (yet) but he’s a smart cookie (former professor) and a good egg. It was a pleasure to see him being his unique self and relishing his complicated life. 

UPDATE: James blogged about our meeting here. 

I attended Dr Peterson's event at the Apollo last night. I say "event" because I don't know what else to call it. It was actually a lecture on philosophy but "lecture" seems the wrong word for an address to five thousand excited (and mostly young) people who gave him a rockstar reception. If it were still the 1960s, I might call it a "happening".

Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report introduced him and observed that "tonight it feels like we are winning". It was certainly inspiring to me, having tried my humble best for years to defend the values of the West, to be in a room with so many like-minded people listening raptly to a man doing an oh-so-much better job of it.  The dominance by the Leftist establishment of the public arena from the media through politics to the comedy for which the Apollo's stage is most famous has made me feel at times as though my few gallant readers and I were hiding in a forlorn, shrinking ghetto of ideas. Last night my adrenaline surged as I realised Western civilisation is alive, kicking and beloved. So I don't envy Dr Peterson his success where I have failed. Rather I am relieved by it - in every sense. I am relieved that we are not doomed and as a sentry on the borders of Western thought, I feel that I and my intellectual popgun have been relieved of duty by a Rambo armed to the teeth. I am happy to be to him one of the true friends he advises people to seek out. I delight in his success and I hope he has much more.

I am reading his book at present. I am both loving it and finding it hard going. He lays out twelve rules for life and justifies them with essays that cover prehistory, mythology, biology (human and other), religion, the ideas of the great philosophers and the wisdom of the great psychologists. It draws upon his extensive personal study, his experience as a clinical psychologist and his background in academia, where he has laboured long in obscurity among the cultural Marxists and malevolent identarians. 

His talk last night was hard going too. In introducing the Q&A Dave Rubin commented that each talk so far on the tour has been different. This is no scripted, rehearsed event to promote a best-selling book. Peterson is an experienced educator who simply thinks aloud in the presence of his students, drawing upon his extensive learning. He does so at a intellectual level rarely attempted today in dumbed-down Britain. He makes no concessions to his audience. None. And they react as if they had been dying of thirst in the desert and he had happened by with a glass of water. 

Rubin asked him about this week's article by Bari Weiss in the New York Times in which Weiss coined the phrase the "Intellectual Dark Web" and listed him as a member. He thought it amusing and said he was waiting to see how that idea developed. He had given some thought to what the IDW members had in common, however, and concluded that, in contrast to the condescension of the Left,  it was "assuming the intelligence of their audience". He certainly did that last night. The audience stayed with him for an hour and a half as he wrestled with the great truths of being human; nodding and murmuring and sometimes cheering their approval and laughing at his occasional highbrow jokes. Gentle reader, though we have doubted ourselves in the teeth of our enemies' sneers, we are not the fools they take us for. There are millions of us longing – not for sound bites or dog whistles crafted by the likes of Alistair Campbell, nor for the kind of "Leftism Lite" offered by Conservatives in name only – but for a higher level of principled discussion based on an intelligent appreciation of our civilisation's core ethic; the "sovereignty of the individual".

I spent a lot of money to be in Dr Peterson's presence (£55 for a ticket plus an £8.50 "booking fee") but, given all the many hours of his lectures that are available for free at his YouTube channel, no-one needs to feel unlucky if they can't afford to do the same. Rising rapidly from obscurity because of the stand he took on Canada's "compelled speech" law making "misgendering" a trans person a "hate crime", he has become the most important public intellectual of our age. He says that, though of course there is a political dimension to the subjects he's discussing, his objectives are not political.

He says his career has been about talking to and educating people one by one to help them live better lives. That's how he set out to give his life meaning and it is still the rộle in which he is most comfortable. Besides, as he joked, "I don't think five thousand of you would have come out tonight to listen to Justin Trudeau." He is a brilliant, humble man who says (and I believe him) that he is both astonished and grateful that in the last eighteen months he has been able to help people on a scale he had never imagined. Asked how he was coping with his sudden fame his response was cool and telling. "I have always been a careful man," he said, "but I have learned to be even more careful now that there are people waiting to pounce on any error". 

The enemies of the West who have marched through and seized control of our academic institutions hate and fear him. They will defame him at every turn. Rubin asked the audience last night to make a video to post on their Twitter and Instagram feeds using the hashtag #12rules of Peterson's answer to his question about that defamation. There will be dozens of technically-superior versions out there, but you can find my video here. I hope it will encourage you to watch many more over at his site. 

Dr Peterson's message is that we should all seek to find meaning in our own lives, for our own good and for that of our loved ones and our community. It's tautology to speak of false idols because all idols are false. He declines to be our political leader but he is a wise teacher to whom we can all look for guidance. I commend him to you wholeheartedly. 

Julian Assange: Sweden issues fresh arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder | Media | The Guardian.

The most interesting thing about the Wikileaks story is not the information published (was anyone really naieve enough to be surprised?) but the responses of state power everywhere. Totalitarians, kleptocrats, democrats; their angry reactions barely differ. The criminal charges brought against Julian Assange in Sweden, for example, are not so much stitched up as haute couture. All the casual observer will recall is that he was accused of rape. So much for the benevolence of states.

If Assange has endangered lives in Afghanistan or elsewhere that is to be deplored, but most of the leaked material is merely embarrassing to politicians and their servants. It reveals them (to whose surprise?) to be petty, stupid and monumentally careless with our money. He has provided a useful litmus test. People you should like and trust admire his courage and worry about his future. People you should fear and despise call for his head.

Every state represents a dangerous concentration of power and resources, all too tempting for those in charge to deploy against those who irritate them. If Assange is able to name Litvinenko's killers, for example, who can doubt he is in danger of an expensive and painful death? Yet even social-democratic Sweden is prepared to trump up charges. He is a brave man taking great risks.

Hilary Clinton is coldly furious, but who ever doubted which side she is on when it comes to State vs. Citizen? Sarah Palin - supposed friend of the people - has unmasked herself too. A former advisor to the Canadian PM is calling for a hit, and Mr Harper does not disown him. At the other end of the political food chain, Iain Dale quivers with indignation. Look around you. All over the place, people are revealing their true colours. For this, Julian Assange has put himself in harm's way. It's an odd choice but, as Dr King said,

If you haven't found something worth dying for, you aren't fit to be living.

Good luck, Mr Assange. Watch your back.

The booze crisis!.

Hie thee over to Tim Worstall's blog for an interesting (and sometimes scary) discussion on the extent to which it is right to use state power to achieve social goals. "Jacob" began the discussion on Tim's post about the economics of alcohol consumption, by saying;

An interesting debate ensued, with more such interventions by "Jacob" Eventually this led "Stephen" to make my favourite blog comment of the week;

Touché. Stephen of Zenvestor, blog commenter at Tim Worstall's blog, is hereby appointed my "Person of the Month."

Link: Faculty of Philosophy: Dr Arif Ahmed.

...is my person of the month. Here's why. Well said, that man although - to quibble slightly - I don't think we should feel free to mock the over-sensitive only when their beliefs are "...a tissue of superstition and prejudice..."

In a free society, one should sometimes mock beliefs just for fun, if only to test them, or to harden the believers up for life as free men. They will thank us for it one day, when they are no longer mullah-struck victims clinging to the apron strings of the Nanny State.