Honestly I gotta agree with you here, bud. When I was growing up in Canada I had to keep my dreams a secret. If you had any grand goals people thought you were an egomaniacal weirdo. It wasn't until I seriously dated someone here in the US that I realized the difference: as part of the "delving into each others' inner lives" phase of the early relationship, I sheepishly admitted I had dreams of doing some pretty big things. I was greeted with an eye-roll and her saying "everyone wants to do something like that".

Here in the USA it's normal for everyone to have big dreams, and weird if they don't. I think I like it.

As a Canadian who has lived in the US for 1 year (in SF) I have a totally different take away. I noticed that people here are very hard working, almost as they are desperate for success, like if they fail or lost their job they would just die, poor and homeless and healthcare-less.

I found that people in Canada were much more focused on happiness and were more willing to make sacrifices to improve their quality of live, though in Vancouver the housing crisis was a gut check for anyone who's goals include owning a home, or starting a family.

There is money to be made here in the valley, especially in tech, but it is not where I intend to be permanently. I want to retire one day, and I probably can't do that here. I definitely couldn't do that in Vancouver with a local salary.

>> like if they fail or lost their job they would just die, poor and homeless and healthcare-less

Because they could be very easily if they don't have a family safety net. I think that ultimately puts a damper on peoples' productive and creative ability as they tend to then focus more on keeping their job rather than being the most productive they can be for their employer.

> I think that ultimately puts a damper on peoples' productive and creative ability as they tend to then focus more on keeping their job rather than being the most productive they can be for their employer.

You could also look at it the other way. The lack of a safety net is like burning the bridges: it encourages you to be more productive and creative precisely because if you're not, then you've got nothing to fall back on.

I think that works when looking for employment, because there is a wide open field in which creativity is more likely to find a good match. Once people get hired they tend to focus solely, right or wrong, on getting on with the people within their organization which is going to place a limit on their creative output.

> like if they fail or lost their job they would just die, poor and homeless and healthcare-less

Poor people get free healthcare in the US. I'm not sure how you could not know that after decades of that being the case. Medicaid has existed since 1965. Not only has it broadened out considerably, today there is also CHIP and SS disability to further supplement that along with countless smaller programs.

Just Medicaid + CHIP covers 70 million people, about 22% of the US, or twice the entire population of Canada.

The US also has vast housing subsidization programs for poor people.

Before Medicaid expansion, Medicaid was strictly for disabled populations under the age of 65 and below a certain income.

After Medicaid expansion, Medicaid is offered to those with an income of below ~130% of the federal poverty line: roughly $16k a year for an individual. I think we'd both agree that $16k/yr is abjectly poor, and those making even 50% more than that are still very poor.

However, only 33 states have expanded Medicaid. Some of the poorest states in the Union have not expanded Medicaid. Therefore, Medicaid is still strictly for disabled population under a certain income in those states.

To say poor people get free healthcare in the US isn't a true statement. Some very poor people in the US have access to Medicaid, depending on their location and income. Some poor people in states that have expanded Medicaid will still not get free healthcare because, while they are objectively poor, they do not meet the income requirements for Medicaid.

For those with a low income, and without access to Medicaid, health insurance premiums are very high and have deductibles that people would need to take a car loan out to pay.

You are incorrect. Medicaid is not and was not strictly for "disabled populations". Are you thinking of SSI?

Over 67 million people are enrolled in Medicaid, over 6 million are in CHIP. That's over 22% of the population.

Your definition of objectively poor is suspect, because the cost of living varies so widely across the US.

I agree there's more ambition/drive in the US (Just observed, never having worked there), but there's lots here too. People do start companies.

I think the bay area tends to do a lot more experimentation darwinian style, but I suspect it's because they can (more seed money/angels, etc)

It's the East Coast vs West Coast mentality.

West coast has always been about experiment wheareas east coast is more conservative. I've always wondered if it was because the Europeans took hold of the East coast first and it was only the more brave who would take on the Westword journey. Perhaps that mentality is still engrained in the culture?

I think Dragons Den vs Shark Tank is a clear example of how much stronger the US is (population is 10x too though).

My dad has a good saying: "what takes three hundred years to accomplish in western Europe takes 3 generations on the east coast, takes 30 years on the west coast".

Not surprisingly they moved out west soon after school and I've been forever poisoned to the east!

Yeah, that's why Germany has maglevs and high speed rail and California can barely get it's own HSR off the ground.

That's a truly awful saying that's emblematic of the stupid prejudices brought about by American exceptionalism and the even more obnoxious (to me) West Coast exceptionalism.

As much as I nodded along with your exasperation at the parent poster's (father's) demonstration of bias, you can't compare long-distance public transportation infrastructure in places with the population densities and growth rates of Germany and California, two extremes in that sense. California has 1/5 more area, with half the population, and that population has almost doubled over the last 35 years, versus a few % growth in Germany.

>you can't compare long-distance public transportation infrastructure in places with the population densities and growth rates of Germany and California

You very much can. Parent didn't ask Californians to build infrastructure in Yosemite or the Death Valley. Heck, not even in Bakersfield.

How's that L.A, San Diego, and San Francisco public transportation infrastructure? Places that, if anything, have more population density than the most populus German cities?

The US mostly relies on air travel, and it's not too inconvenient if you can avoid major hubs like SFO and LAX. The population of those metropolitan areas isn't the problem; it's the distance, as well as the lower demand for travel between them. California is also more seismically active. You can build a passenger HSR system in California, but the cost/benefit is going to be worse than somewhere like Germany.

Distance wouldn't be much of a problem. It isn't much longer than Paris - Frankfurt. Chinese trains cover the distance in 2 hours. It would work from a European perspective, but Europe built most of its networks decades ago. The Chinese aren't just building train lines, they are building entire regions.

Everyone complains how few things can be built in SF or LA, but suddenly having a lot of space available is something negative? Californians have a dream scenario on their hands as the high cost of construction can relatively soon be offset by the huge gains in capturing the global tech market. Something that will pay off for a century. And they should have the money to do it. It is probably one of the best infrastructure investments available anywhere.

Wendover Productions made an interesting video on the economics of Trains in the States:

https://youtu.be/fwjwePe-HmA

The point is, it's still very difficult to do basic things in California: get to work and have a place to live. This is progressive?

I hear this explanation floated around a lot, but I have extreme doubts that it has any bearing in reality. I live in NYC, and it's not that we're adverse to experimentation. Far from it; we mix and match cultures obsessively until the most bizarre "only in New York" moments come about.

Instead, New Yorkers are more likely to call bullshit on an idea when it isn't good or at a minimum challenge it to be better. You don't have nearly the same survival of the fittest attitude in the Bay Area from my impressions, and as a result tons of crackpot ideas end up funded. Admittedly, crackpot ideas in NYC also get funded (Juicero, oy) so I'm not sure if the difference can totally be attributed to New York's adversarial nature.

Mostly what it boils down to here I suspect is that start-ups just aren't as visible because all of the software devs and engineers realized that they could go work in finance rather than a "tech company" and make millions of dollars more. In this sense, lots of New York's innovative spirit gets channeled into problems relating to designing custom ASICs for HFT and trying to outwit the market.

As another point, who claim that the East Coast is averse to experimentation have a marked tendency to ignore counterfactual examples like BBN and Bell Labs. Even Xerox (in Rochester) and Kodak were pretty deep into R&D before they fucked themselves.

I have lived on both coasts and the biggest difference I have noticed is the strength of the elite university caste system in the East. It felt like if you didn't go to a top ten school you had a glass ceiling.

It exists out West too but in my experience so far is less prevalent and is given less weight. People out East often start a presentation, pitch, or interview with where they went to school. Out West I have done a dozen VC meetings and have only been asked once or twice and I didn't get the impression it was a major data point for them.

Dominant mentalities are:

East: who are you? What is your background?

West: what can you do?

I've never lived outside of the East Coast / mid-West, but what you're saying sounds feasible. That said, I'd guess that the "who are you? What is your background?" question is more of a Boston thing than a New York thing, since New York doesn't have the Puritan / Boston Brahman caste system. I've known of a number of people who went to state schools or random unknown schools in New Jersey who've done reasonably well here.

I also wonder if the weather has anything to do with the mentality.

Winters in the East Coast are harsh so it forces people to be more 'realistic'. Whereas the sub tropical West Coast gives people an environment to think in more imaginitive ways.

Also Juicero was headquarted in San Fran?

Juicero may have headquartered in San Fran because it was the "cool thing to do", but the founder lives in Brooklyn. I suspect that the San Fran HQ was HQ in name only.

Weather certainly does have an effect on culture. That said, the East Coast vs. West Coast, U.S. vs the World rivalry is mostly contrived, and claims that one area is more innovative than another are dubious. It's reasonable to claim that the Bay Area has more of an engineering-centric culture, but that is likely due to a) Intel and b) the presence of multiple well-funded National Labs within close proximity.

If you look at the case of Leland Stanford, for instance, you'll notice that he maintained pretty deep personal and economic ties with his hometown of Albany up until his death- a lot of his success wouldn't have been possible if he hadn't been able to rely upon his extended family in the East Coast for support.

Stanford University was actually originally supposed to be in Albany, but was the location was switched to Palo Alto- allegedly because people got greedy. Instead Albany got a children's orphanage sponsored by Stanford's wife, which didn't last past the 30s. [1]

[1] http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2010/10/01/why-stanford-isn...

Sailing across an ocean to who knows what is pretty brave.

I expect the enormous wealth captured by computers and software gives people the leeway to experiment.

California and Japan are the farthest people and ideas can travel...those who survive the journey will have been refined by it!

When those people meet those ideas at the end of said journey is when then magic happens

> West coast has always been about experiment wheareas east coast is more conservative.

This is just flat out wrong and a bit egotistical. Now the west coast thinks it’s the “experimenters” rolls eyes

True that's an over generalization!

I don't think it's egotistical though.

As a Canadian thank you for your story. I felt somewhat the same way but thought it was just me.

As a German thank you...I feel just the same way about it!

To infinity and beyond guys

That's part of the "tall poppy" culture endemic to Canada and other British colonies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

You stand out, you become a target.

> Here in the USA it's normal for everyone to have big dreams, and weird if they don't. I think I like it

It makes Americans easily manipulated and exploited.

That’s unfair - any stable trait of any community will be used by people to manipulate and exploit them.

Not every trait is equally exploitable.

I agree with this observation. There are countless examples of companies making big money by taking advantage of that trait.

So true. I'll give you a poignant example... I was a Canadian exchange student at a California University. I was walking from one class to another when I noticed somebody on a skateboard coming my way on the path.

Just as he was passing I realize it was one of my professors. That surprised me and I turned my head as he went by to take it in. But what surprised me more was that I was the only person who gave a shit that a 50-year-old guy in dress pants and a sweater just road past on a skateboard. That's when I first realized people were much more open-minded.

It took me about 10 years after University to move back to California and I can't imagine I'll ever move away.

Where in Canada did you live and gone to school?

I live in the US now, and don't disagree that Americans as a people are more...well, I like the word 'ambitious'.

But I think your characterization of Canada is overly harsh: in Toronto and Montreal I know (and love) misfits just as individual, wild, and free as anyone I met during my years in Brooklyn.

Also Canadian (Vancouver / Victoria), spend a lot of time in SF. This has also been my experience but I'm wondering if its just a big city thing in CAD.

I’m a New Yorker, grew up there and now living in SF. Brooklyn was cool, but it didn’t “get” the kind of experimental intellectualism that’s needed in a tech startup scene. Not ripping on my old hometown. They have the intellectualism but haven’t applied it to tech. If I were to go back to New York, I wouldn’t go into tech, I’d go into finance because that’s where the nerds would be.

If I may, when I visited Vancouver (several times), I couldn’t find a coffee shop culture there. For some reason this seems like a big deal. In Manhattan and in San Francisco, people write in coffee shops and it’s kind of a thing. This seems like a big deal too. There’s more startups that started in a coffee shop than you’d think. Again, it goes towards a certain kind of intellectual experimentation.

I remember this Ted Talk titled “Where Good Ideas Come From” [1] where the speaker suggests that coffee or the combination of coffee and stimulating conversation catalyzed the generation of ideas and the rest is history up to the birth of Enlightenment. It seems like it’s still happening around coffee shops.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_co...

That's a really good talk. Thanks.

Which coffee shops in Manhattan?

As a Vancouverite, I found people less adventurous, less free-thinking, and greedier, in the Valley. Not by a huge margin, but still.

But if you're in it for the money, the 2x salaries can't be beat.

'Free' as in as long as you both have the same socially-acceptable opinion.

When I graduated and tried to find work in Canada multiple firms told me I was "too weird" and "should move to California", so I did and I'm super happy that it worked out the way it did -- but I still feel sad about having to leave my home country to be my authentic self.

My experience in here in the 'States exemplifies your comments "that I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value".

But this does not lead to healthy social communities. We as a country are drunk on the idea that our friends are people who think and act like us, when this is only part -- IMO, a very small part -- of group chemistry that this outlook overlooks. Group interaction is so much more complicated and beautiful than that. At least in my case, my best friendships are with people very much unlike me.

If you look at the current political situation here we are all banding together along lines of common interests and beliefs, and not things like proximity, or economic need, or other factors. And one wonders why we are so divided, when nobody wants to find common ground...

I hate to use the word diversity but it's as important in life as water, now more than ever.

> we are all banding together along lines of common interests and beliefs, and not things like proximity, or economic need, or other factors. And one wonders why we are so divided, when nobody wants to find common ground...

I believe you are reversing the cause and effect. It is never easy to find common ground. In the bad old days when people could not band together along lines of common interests and beliefs easily, common ground were found by the powerful suppressing the opinion of the powerless, and other times by resolution of war.

I think the appropriate term here is "diversity of thought" which is sort of opposite to the unqualified "diversity" which usually means diversity of genetics and uniformity of thought.

Not everyone in my environment thinks as I do, but I can find enough that I can live a happy life.

This is not so in other areas.

A lot of Canada's GDP seems to come from mining, and some of it seems to come from places that could be disrupted by technology or ecological concerns, so I'm not surprised at resistance to disruption.

Mining is a bit of a paradox. Historically mining companies were the "start-ups" of their day.

When you discovered a deposit you'd stake a claim (e.g. patent) and then seek investors to exploit it (e.g. venture funding). If the discovery turned out to be genuine and the mine was successful the returns would often be extraordinary.

Thing is, a lot of mines fail. Maybe there's resources there but extracting them isn't practical or profitable. Maybe there wasn't as much there as theorized. Maybe it was all a lie.

The paradox is that once you have a successful mining industry built up, people think of those as the conservative play, the safe bet, and are reluctant to go through that process all over again with a new industry.

Real-estate (in addition to associated construction) is bigger for than mining and oil:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/g...

But can one really count that, at least in the context of how the people understand where their money really comes from? Consider the adage, "Buy land: they don't make it any more."

A growth in the value of land isn't, in and of itself, an actual product, though I do agree the construction is. However, how much of that construction is actually in service of a different industry (i.e. would never have happened but for, say, mining and oil)? Similarly, how much of that real estate value would drop to approximately zero if the industries supporting it disappeared?

I'm sure there's some construction, especially residential, that must be happening just due to population growth, but I'm skeptical if that accounts for even a majority of that number.

Certainly not all that construction is related to real-estate. Still real-estate as a % of GDP eclipses "mining, Oil & Gas".

http://www.investorsfriend.com/canadian-gdp-canadian-imports...

My point is that a chart like that doesn't even hint at how much of that "real estate" activity is a direct result of the needs of "conservative" industries. It certainly stands to reason that something like resource extraction is not just land-intensive but is intensive in changes to land ownership/tenancy.

I'm pretty confident that someone who, according to that chart, is in the "real estate" industry who works selling houses in newly-built mining towns knows full well what industry really supplies his income.

I'm pretty confident that residential real-estate activity (people selling houses to each other) in major urban centres (eg: YVR, GTA) eclipses that of mining towns.

That may well be true, but it's just not detailed in those charts.

A very brief search resulted in this:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/607742/gdp-of-manitoba-c...

If that's accurate, it suggests that Manitoba, which, though known as more agricultural and manufacturing rather than mining, has the same pattern of "real estate" accounting for individual income. Of course, the significant majority of the population is in Winnipeg, but I don't think that qualifies it as a major, on the same scale as Vancouver or Toronto.

Again, I think that even real estate "industry" workers in Winnipeg know their money really comes from manufacturing, just as the ones in Edmonton know their money really comes from oil.

Maybe in the major cities you mention it's not so obvious, but "real estate" still fails to eclipse the sum of all the industries that actually produce something (manufacturing, resource extraction, construction).

AMA about Manitoba: I was born there.

If resisdential RE tanks in Canada, a real possibility with rising interests rate and extreme debt levels, the economy goes down with it.

Mining / Oil & Gas isn’t going to save it.

I think you're conflating the value of the real estate property itself with the GDP from the "industry", which has to do with property changing hands or tenancy.

(Those charts also fail to show how much of that income is from residential transactions/management versus commercial ones.)

It just doesn't stand to reason that if people entirely stop paying other people to buy and sell each other houses (even if it does account for the vast majority of that 13% of the GDP) that the economy would collapse completely.

However, if housing values collapse due to questionable (or worse) lending practices, as happened in the US around 2008, could collapse the financial system and thereby the economy. It might even increase the GDP of the real estate category, especially as a percentage, at the expense of the finance category.

More importantly, though, I don't think there are any voters that buy the notion that they could, for example, do away with their real industry, such as mining or manufacturing, and replace it entirely with selling each other their houses. Because of that, whatever conservatism they may hold would remain from that real industry, regardless of what category the statisticians put their income in.

Hmmm that is an interesting observation. I wonder if and when more of the GDP comes from Services/Software, it will impact the culture of the country as well?

>I was born in Canada. I went to school in Canada. Only once I moved to the US did I feel like I could express and be myself. That I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value.

So to escape the uniformity of Canada you left and went to find a place were people think like you and value the things you do?

Isn't that what those Canadians are all about as well? Seeking the company of other similar thinking people?

The really open mind thing would be to recognize that some cultures like to experiment, others not, and both are fine.

This thread and it's comments have been super enlightening. Living in California my whole life has skewed my perception of what is normal with respect to ambition. Ambition is not inherently good, but Eve as a small child we are inundated with messages about success, "hard work" (whatever that means), and reaching

That's because Canada is socially liberal and financially conservative.

Socially liberal in some ways, but not in everything. 4 states decriminalized and/or legalized marijuana before any Canadian provinces. 2 of them did it years before Canada was even planning to do it. That is very telling of the two cultures.

Marijuana is illegal in every state, because it's illegal under federal law. No province could decriminalize marijuana because no province had criminalized marijuana in the first place. We never had the redundant laws that the US states had.

Summarizing the social liberal aspect of Canada by the legalization of marijuana seems very narrow minded. There are far more important social aspects than marijuana legalization.

Agreed, like I said, "in some ways". Of course, there are more important social aspects, and it's not an in-depth analysis of the two cultures and it wasn't meant to be -- it simply highlights just how open-minded Americans can be and how conservative Canadians can be and that's all it was meant to be.

marijuana has been de facto legal in vancouver for two decades

Toronto too. I've been "caught" smoking weed by the police in Toronto and they literally don't give a shit. That said, not everyone is willing to accept that -- there's a huge portion of very conservative Canadians who think "drugs" are for dropouts and losers (and don't realize the opposite is true too -- nearly half of the most successful people are doing "drugs" too).

>"The reality is Canada is deeply conservative."

Agreed. Ontario is a few weeks away from voting in a conservative government with Doug Ford at the helm.

I think the conservativeness of Canada is a bit different from conservatives in the USA though. It's less focused on "morality" and religion and more an aversion to change. Which is why I think it's possible for the culture to be simultaneously conservative and OK with things like gay marriage and legal cannabis, neither of which would be conservative positions in the US.

Same thing in Germany.

In the political sense, Germany is more liberal than the US (especially economically), but there's this sort personal conservatism that manifests in paranoia about data/privacy, aversion/skepticism around change and technology and risk, less acceptance of weirdness. German culture just feels...rigid. It's stable and very functional, but also inflexible.

Don't forget the incremental perfectionism, which wont allow for a product to ship, unless its polished to a mirror-shine, and at least a year behind any competitor.

And the constant skepticism to anything that is not a physical product. Writing Software in the eye of the layman is something between boring and con-artistry.

To be fair the polished product for physical goods is the better choice. If you buy the rushed appliance with design flaws you will just have to spend money again to replace it, or time to get it returned and fixed.

Software is different in that problems can be fixed instantly (since online updates) and the first to build the user base is often the winner.

The real problems occur when the "software startup" model is applied to a product that it does not fit.

We're insulated because provinces cannot pass laws on gay marriage or legal cannabis.

Canadian federalism is incomplete in that regard.

However Ford could pull a Mike Harris and start firing nurses. His economic plan promises a balanced budget with no job cuts and no tax rises. He claims there are efficiencies to be had whatever that means.

Canada has gay marriages since 2005. Why would provinces need to pass more laws on that?

As of legal cannabis, it is better when it is federal. In US you will go to jail in one state, and can be just fine in another.

Passing laws on those issues isn’t even possible in Canadian provinces they don’t have the constitutional right.

Legal cannibis is absolutely a conservative opinion in the US. Most conservatives want government to just leave us alone.

Republican authored bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/975/

And Diane Feinstein opposed California’s 2016 legalization.

It’s ridiculous to suggest Democrats are more likely to legalize than Republicans because the facts don’t really support that. It’s much less of an obvious partisan issue. Remember, Democrats controlled the house, senate and White House in 2009-2011 and not a single legalization bill even made it to the floor.

To be fair, Doug Ford winning would be partially the liberals' fault. Kathleen Wynne is hated, and they for some reason had her lead again. They've got some great plans, but the way elections work makes it really easy for Doug Ford to pander hard to suburbites who only give a shit about lower taxes and real estate.

Frankly, as a Toronto area dev Doug Ford winning the election would definitely cause me to consider looking for work in the US. Toronto's in a pretty crucial moment right now wrt growth and infrastructure, and I don't really see the point staying if the party of stagnation wins - whatever tax cut they may introduce is dwarfed by higher salary + lower CoL in the US anyways.

Awesome article, and should be required reading for anyone who has only heard of Jordan Peterson through his fans.

I'll say that there's a huge difference in values between the big cities, the suburbs, and Alberta.

Alberta is much more socially conservative than most of the states (if you ever see a Canuck unironically call someone a "cuck", 9/10 times they're Albertan).

Montreal/QC are cool but still hosts an extremely ethnonationalist element that's all but crippled their local economy (remember that a little over a year ago, we had a terror attack where some altright guy shot up a mosque in QC).

Toronto is incredibly progressive (I'd argue it's the most diverse city on the planet), but is surrounded by some of the worst, overtly racist, politicians you'll ever meet. Because of a first-past-the-post voting system, even though they're in the minority, the vote among reasonable people is split among reasonable candidates, and hateful buffoons get a consistent voting bloc. (The late) Rob Ford was mayor, in spite of making violent rants, being repeatedly publicly drunk, using every racial epitaph in the book, smoking crack (sometimes on video), and smoking crack with his KKK-member sister. His brother, reported former drug dealer Doug Ford, now stands a real chance of being Ontario's next premier.

Vancouver is a great city, but somewhat isolated from the rest of Canada. Toronto's pretty expensive, but Vancouver is even worse. Unlike Toronto, though, there aren't a lot of options for anyone but the most wealthy who want to live there. While the Conservative party is very weak there (they didn't even have a location there hosting the federal leadership convention, when even people in PEI had one in driving distance), BC's influence federally is minimal. You could argue they're becoming something of an oligarchy due to the huge influence of corporate money. You either need to have a high-paying job, or be very old, to live there.

>To quote this excellent article[1]: "the default setting of the Canadian male: a dull but stern dad, who, under a facade of apparent normalcy and common sense, conceals a reserve of barely contained hostility toward anyone who might rock the boat. To these types, those who make a fuss are bothersome and ignorant at best, and probably dangerous and destructive too."

Just being a conservative or a right-winger is bothersome and ignorant and dangerous and destructive and lots of bad things. What a way of seeing the world. :-)

Bothersome is describing “those who would not rock the boat,” aka the enemies of the conservative, not the conservative.

The usual phrase is "psychologically conservative." Sticking to the comfort zone. Therefore, a psychological conservative who grows up in a politically Marxist household will remain Marxist, and of the same stripe of Marxist. They'll never consider political Conservatism seriously as a worldview, or switch to that.

What does this description have to do with being a "right-winger"? Looks like you are the one bringing a preconceived worldview into the discussion. You are not a victim.

It’s a quote from an article about a paleoconservative, Jordan Peterson. Isn’t it?