Erik: Thanks for your thoughtful response.
I used to believe that conservative philosophers could defend their position with logic and rationality. I may or may agree, but at least I could understand where they are coming from.
But in the past decade, conservatism makes little sense to me anymore. Maybe I have changed. Maybe these philosophers have dumbed down their works to earn more profit.
I lost interest in Mr. Peterson when he claimed socialism eventually leads to gulags. As a Canadian, he should be very aware that in 1969 Canada moved a significant part of its economy from private to public; i.e. public health care. i have not heard of any gulags in Canada. But maybe there is a great coverup that Mr. Peterson should be happy to expose for us, right?
Fifty-four years should be enough time to show the socialism-->gulag correlation, right?
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Your comments of expert vs non-expert is a paradox to me.
Medium is full of armchair analysts who know better than the elected politicians and high-ranking bureaucrats on what is the right thing to do. These people fail to understand that that many things are more complicated than they seem to be---and effective opposition to Policy X might be undermining some great work that we just can't see. Or maybe Policy X has benefits that won't manifest themselves until after the four-year election cycle. And somehow, someone needs to present things such that they can win elections.
In 1992, I acquired some ideas on how to improve democracy, based on my practical experience of being an active worker for a political party. I left partisan politics and never thought I would be in a position to champion or implement these ideas.
In 1997, CBC Radio was interviewing some well known political scientists. I thought: "These academics really have no idea of what is wrong, so they can't fix anything." It was then I decided I had to get my ideas out there.
I do read the odd political science book, but my position is the same as it was in 1997: this profession is totally lost. Here is my review of a popular political science book, which covers a lot about democratic reforms in Iceland:
https://medium.com/tiered-democratic-governance/book-review-open-democracy-769049d93101
In other words, political scientists really can't fix anything until they cast aside their 19th century tool known as western democracy.
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Getting my Ph.D. is impractical. And even if I did, I think I would be immediately be discredited by academia for my novel ideas. I would not be the first Ph.D. not to make it into the peer review journals.
I shall continue to plug along as best I can.
I have archived my works with a Canadian library. My five books are available now for a free download. In this way, my ideas still live if I happen to pass on.
