“Meteoric” is thrown about somewhat excessively to describe our age’s rapid success stories. It’s a shame that’s so for two reasons: Firstly, grand words shouldn’t be so often wasted on even the pretty dang impressive; and second, the successes often burn out in pathetic fashion. A full professor at the University of Toronto cannot really be rescued from obscurity, but the ascension of Jordan Peterson shows that superstars can be made faster than ever before. (If old terms for greatness are reduced to cliche, it makes one wonder if neologisms are in order.) On top of it, he’s approaching six years of abiding influence in the digital age. I haven’t sorted the attention span inflation rate, but that’s quite a feat. I can’t say what will come of the liberal experiment, but, if it has a future, we might be discussing the most important figure of this careening chapter of its history.

But there are a handful of presuppositions implied here–beyond the aforementioned survival of Western civilization, which in any case will likely at least sputter along in such a way that noble optimists of centuries to come might be able to squint their eyes, tilt their heads and say, “Yeah! It wasn’t so bad back then.” For future optimists to be in such a position, we are assuming that history manages to survive as a science. (This is strangely taken for granted, both by a Left that insists on their placement on the “right side of history,” as much as it is by a Right, which, however consigned to supposedly-honorable defeat, appears to still believe in Nock’s remnant.) The most important assumption, which I’ll get to shortly, is that American conservatives are willing to jump in with both feet. The last is that someone more significant doesn’t come around. That’s something we could all reasonably hope for, but which I wouldn’t recommend waiting on.