The first time I met Jordan Peterson, we disagreed. He had just delivered a brilliant talk for the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS), treating in part of the pros and cons of Liberal and Conservative political philosophy. Where we disagreed involved what he considered the pejorative side of Conservatism. Peterson argued that Conservative thinking and practice were a noble endeavor, but regrettably focused on the concept of walls, a kind of insularity that tended to exclude much that was regarded as disruptive or troubling to a sense of unanimity and epistemological coherence; indeed, such novel intrusions were likely to be regarded as a species of “disease.” There could be something closed-minded about Conservative principles, a rejection of the strange, the innovative, the foreign, and the revitalizing effect of infusions from elsewhere.
