University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson has become something of a youtube sensation for his hardline stance against political correctness and its divisive and liberty-curtailing logic. When asked by a fellow panelist on Bill Maher's profanity-encouraged HBO talk show, Real Time, how he squares this seeming promotion of offending with a concern he voices about giving American Trump-supporters an off-ramp in the event that Trump is impeached or otherwise removed from office, he seems to fumble the logic football a little.
How I would have responded?
Liberals choose to believe in an ideology that confines individuals to groups with assigned collective grievances. Their choice leads them to believe that anyone calling into question those grievances or their assignment to a given group can only do so out of a hatred of that group even though that hatred may be disguised to varying degrees. It is completely consistent with this choice of core beliefs to virtue-signal frequently--to pat oneself on the back for one's morality and intelligence by seeing through the disguise and boldly proclaiming the inherent evil of the motives of one's ideological opponent. The virtue-signaling is accomplished in the same stroke as the condemnation of hatred, thereby, to use Peterson's phrase, "weaponizing compassion" as an effective ideological bludgeon. If a conservative stands up for the idea of freedom of expression, it can only be part of the disguise--only because he wants to defend nefarious motives. The logic is entirely circular, each assumption seeming to confirm the correctness of the last without ever actually examining it or seeking external verification.
Conservatives, on the other hand, choose to believe in an ideology that celebrates individuality and seeks to limit the power of governmental forces constraining individual liberty to the most local level possible--a society of one if possible. Their choice leads them to believe that anyone calling into question that freedom is either misled about the consequences of concentrating power--in which case the remedy is respect of the other's liberty, and taking the care to demonstrate by counter-argument the logical flaws leading to the misconception--or is cynically maneuvering to hold that power for themselves--in which case the remedy is not to convince the power-seeker, but the broader group whose power the power-seeker seeks, via the same care to demonstrate by counter-argument the logical flaws leading to the undoing of the illusion. In other words, conservatives don't impugn motives, but rather attack bad ideas in recognition of the people's inherent goodness and moral agency. Conservatives that attack liberals ad hominem rather than attacking liberal ideas ad ideis are acting either in abuse of their own principles, or in defense against ad hominem attacks fighting fire with fire.
The theory liberals hold in perfect consistency with the core ideas of their ideology, not in abuse of them, is not only weak--since no conservatives would recognize themselves in a liberal "explanation" of their motives, the "theory" liberals hold about conservative motives doesn't actually explain the phenomena it purports to--but circular because it the presumption of ill-intent is a self-fulfilling prophecy priming the intellectual pump to filter out counter examples, and see all evidence of well-doing as merely a more clever veneer for the suspected hatred in the conservative heart. And it is not only an error of circular logic that leads liberals to demonize conservatives, but, as it gathers critical mass, it is therefore also liberal ideology that is the root cause of political polarization and divisiveness.
Conservatives are perfectly consistent in opposing the force and imposition that political correctness seeks to impose on individuals while at the same time opposing the divisive impugning of the motives of conservatives as somehow inherently racist, bigoted, sexist, homophobic, or whatever other false stereotype with which they seek to brand the only ideology that truly respects the freedom of all races, creeds, genders and orientations, because ours is the only one that doesn't aim for any group to assign grievances or even membership to any other. Only when liberals are able to see this consistency will they be able to break out of their circular set of assumptions and truly evaluate ideas and the motivations of people for what and who they are.
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