Racial supremacy is a fairly taboo topic in the media. That’s why William Saletan thought it was exciting to tell liberals that they were no better than creationists if they failed to accept the “studies” done by white supremacist J. Philippe Rushton. It’s also why Andrew Sullivan and George Will thought it was exciting to promote The Bell Curve. It doesn’t matter that there is little-to-no scientific evidence for any of it. What matters is that taking on an edgy topic like this proves you are a brave media maverick.
But I’d argue that Saletan’s and Sullivan’s flirtations with white supremacy are mostly symptomatic of the general Slate/TNR fetish for contrarianism. Sure, you think that white supremacist notions are just for bigots, but once you get past the conventional wisdom of our hippie overlords blah blah blah. In particular, Saletan’s white supremacist piece could just as easily have been a multi-part treatise on why Creed is underrated.
The popularity of Steve Sailer among principled, intellectually honest conservatives is much more troubling. Sailer writes for site called VDARE.com; the name is taken from the name of the first white English child born in North America. After Hurricane Katrina, Sailer wrote
What you won’t hear, except from me, is that ‘Let the good times roll’ is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society.
(This was criticized harshly by Jon Podhoretz — I’m certainly not claiming that all conservatives agree with Sailer.)
I’ve mentioned before that David Brooks has cited Sailer’s work (in passing) in his Times column. Well, it turns out that Jon Tierney once based a good chunk of a column on Steve Sailer’s estimates of Bush’s and Kerry’s IQs (Sailer estimated that Bush’s was four points higher, something Tierney — now a Times science reporter — thought this massive IQ gap would be Bush’s “secret weapon”, I kid you not). Of course, one could argue that they didn’t know really know who Sailer was and that, in Tierney’s case, it’s pretty likely that he was also engaging in Slate/TNR contrarianism.
But here’s something striking: when he was at the Atlantic, Ross Douthat linked to Steve Sailer at least eight times (here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here), approvingly in each case. Douthat also wrote that “….Will Saletan bravely attempts a summary of the emerging scientific consensus on racial differences in intelligence, another issue where the left doesn’t much care for science has to say” (Douthat later semi-retracted).
I’m just a shrill vituperative D-list blogger, so I don’t expect anyone to reply to this, but Andrew Sullivan, Matt Yglesias, and the rest of the At Pack: you have spent a lot of time promoting Douthat, did you ever call him out on his frequent links to Steve Sailer and Vdare.com?
And can we all stop pretending that there isn’t a sizable racial supremacist component to much of mainstream conservatism?
Update. Balloon-Juice favorite Daniel Larison also has VDARE on his blogroll. VDARE publishes a lot of stuff, much of it crazy, but I am not sure that it is all crazy. So I don’t know what to make of this exactly.
Update. Loneoak makes a good point in the comments:
When the Sailer zombie meets the Bobo sociology, bad things happen. Because Bobo/Douthat/respectable conservatives are not bound to standards of rigor in their observations of human behavior, it is far too easy for them to pick up on ‘science’ that conforms to their weaksauce sociology. This is not to say that sociology could not ever support politically conservative politics, but rather that our toxic media atmosphere only supports conservative pundits who can effortlessly repackage ‘common wisdom’ about human behavior as ‘hard truths.’ Because we live in a society whose ‘common wisdom’ is often white supremacist, the Sailer-Bob nexus is any ugly one.
demo woman
Let the games begin. When will the visitors arrive to defend themselves?
DougJ
@demo woman:
The only one I expect to hear from is Steve Sailer. Though I hope that I don’t.
Martin
Creed is underrated? Tell me more!
And you’re a racist for pointing out that there are racists out there. Racist!
ChrisB
Don’t flatter yourself. :-)
But that’s a good catch on Douthat.
Joel
Why is it that “popular” science reporters for national publications (like Tierney, Saletan, and Dubner) are facile contrarians?
Mouth of the Douthat is a douche. Also.
DougJ
@Martin:
I added a link.
El Cid
Now you have rubbed the turd lamp and the shit genie will soon appear.
Sirkowski
Michelle Malkin is syndicated by Vdare.
Bill E Pilgrim
There’s something repulsive about that in a nature documentary sort of way.
Martin
@DougJ: Wow, when did Slate start hiring 7th graders. Very progressive of them. When does the “Who would win this fight: Batman or Boba Fett?” analysis come out?
Ann B. Nonymous
If you do an Google Image search for Steve Sailer, you get pictures of mixed-race wunderkind Malcolm Gladwell.
Laura W.
I thought you were just a hack blogger who drinks too much and falls in love with girls?*
For you, DougJ.
Good Lord. She’s like otherworldy. Hurts to look at her, in a really good way.
*Reference: https://balloon-juice.com/2009/05/24/they-lost-it-at-the-movies/
Martin
@Bill E Pilgrim: Well, he semi-retracted on chunky Reese Whitherspoon as well, so it’s a bit of a habit with him, apparently.
Turbulence
This isn’t remotely the same, but Daniel Larison’s blog has a link to VDare under the recommended sites list. Maybe he shouldn’t be getting regular links and praise from BJ?
Zifnab
Sorry, but I live in Texas. We never started pretending that down here – except maybe in the vaguest “I’m trying to get elected, don’t look behind the curtain” sense.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
No FP mention of today’s odious POS emanating from George Will?
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin:
Batman clearly wins. More and better gadgets.
DougJ
@Turbulence:
Yes, you’re right.
JGabriel
DougJ:
Anyone who remembers Tierney’s op-ed column knows he is a Republican. I won’t hazard a guess as to where he imagines/identifies himself on the conservative-libertarian scale, but the “contrarian” stance is just cover for his partisanship and biases.
.
matoko_chan
I have never understood your antipathy for the Bell Curve, Dougj.
Murray’s book is a valid statistical collection of data.
If you can show me math errors or statistical errors I will accept your premise…..but at this point I have to consider you a bioluddite of Leon Kass’ tribe of anti-rational science denialists.
Gunner Billy K
No.
SATSQ
DougJ
@Laura W.:
No one got that “Third Man” reference last time.
aimai
Bill E. Pilgrim–that is the funniest thing that has ever been said about Douthat.
aimai
Gunner Billy K
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re an idiot. Mandalorians regularly fought – and defeated – Jedi. Batman wouldn’t last 5 seconds against a Jedi.
The Moar You Know
The gift that has kept on giving in the United States since the early 1800s, at least.
@Turbulence: Larison is an unrepentant secessionist. Do with that what you will; I don’t read him at all anymore.
Money quote: “I don’t defend the legacy of the man who ushered in a destructive, illegal war that killed hundreds of thousands.”
News flash, Daniel. Lincoln didn’t start it.
soonergrunt
A substantial part of conservatism is maintaining the status quo by any means necessary. What else would one conserve but the status quo? All of the “I want my country back” bullshit is about seeing a guy who is not white in charge and God knows we can’t have that. Since such attitudes are veboten in modern society, even for “mainstream” conservative thought, there must be a moral and intellectual superiority to white people. Seeing and believing in such allows one to maintain one’s racism in the face of social disapproval and one’s own conscience. Black people are where they are because they are imoral and stupid, not because white people actively hold them down, and to suggest differently, or to try to remediate the situation is something that can now be fought with a clear conscience.
Of course, BoB will chime in here with something batshit crazy in about 5…4…3…2…1…
Turbulence
@DougJ:
Yes, you’re right.
Now listen here you ra…wait, wtf? DougJ, this is not how it is supposed to work at all. You’re supposed to get defensive, then whiny, then lash out at me, I’m supposed to insult you, a general melee should ensue, and we should accomplish nothing. You can’t just short circuit all that by being reasonable. Haven’t you learned anything from the 500+ comment thread we had last night?
John Quixote
Red Rover, red rover, let George Will come over!
We need to figure how to turn fellating Tony LaRussa into a full-time gig.
Fred Hiatt is a tool for letting this shit get to print. Also.
Turbulence
@matoko_chan:
If you can show me math errors or statistical errors I will accept your premise…..
Read the special appendix in later editions of Stephen J Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man”.
Randy P
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Well, since you bring it up… George will says “Leave Arizona Alone!” concluding with this gem:
This is apparently where he thinks all Hispanics are to be found, except in Arizona.
Yet right before that passage he says this:
totally failing to get the point: That these people who have been here for centuries now have to walk around with birth certificates or other papers to prove they have the right to walk around. Or face arrest, and perhaps deportation to a country they’ve never been in.
Tonybrown74
Now I can’t get the sound of Sade out of my head.
Thanks, DougJ!
Turbulence
@The Moar You Know: @Turbulence: Larison is an unrepentant secessionist. Do with that what you will; I don’t read him at all anymore.
I dropped him from my RSS reader a few months ago after noticing the VDare link and something else that freaked me out which I’ve totally forgotten….
How sad is it that the most reasonable conservative has lunatic views like that?
Omnes Omnibus
@Gunner Billy K: Listen asshole, Batman is Batman; therefore, he wins. He is an American, also, too. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Stefan
Sailer writes for site called VDARE.com; the name is taken from the name of the first white child born in North America.
I guess he’s not counting the Spanish as “white” then; there were Spanish children born in North America before the date of Virginia Dare’s birth in 1583.
Omnes Omnibus
@Turbulence: Part of the fun of contrarians is that they must contradict. Here is a Slate article debunking “The Bell Curve.”
Bnut
@Gunner Billy K:
This.
John Quixote
@Gunner Billy K:
What if he had some Bat Jedi Repellant? I seem to recall him carrying some Bat Shark Repellant once. Or does Adam West not count?
Michael
In other news, crickets are chirping at REASON on the potential violation of the liberties of Arizona citizens.
Now, back to this topic, I think I’m going to have to abandon a forum I used to like that was the domain of allegedly “pro-science” conservatives due to a breakout of Murray based racialist bullshit, among other things. For a bunch of allegedly pro-evolution, anti-cretard posters, they’ve sure come to embrace religious creationist politicians – apparently mostly out of apprehension over the thought that their taxes might go up (which is reinforced by a pathetic, trembling gaze upon uppity young bucks angling to take their T-Bone steaks).
slag
@Turbulence:
Hehe.
Randy P
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m reminded of something I learned on a Bruce Lee special years ago. Lee’s only break into American TV was to be the Green Hornet’s sidekick, Kato. And one time for some reason or other on the old Adam West “Batman” show, Batman and Robin ended up duking it out with the Green Hornet and Kato.
And Kato loses to Robin.
As a little kid, I was a rabid fan of the “Batman” show but for some reason I don’t remember this episode.
Svensker
@John Quixote:
Does spluttering for 5 minutes straight count as being rendered speechless?
BTD
This will ruin your day DougJ – a post by me at FDL on this very subject back in 2006.
Michael
In other news, crickets are chirping at REASON on the potential violation of the liberties of Arizona citizens.
Now, back to this topic, I think I’m going to have to abandon a forum I used to like that was the domain of allegedly “pro-science” conservatives due to a breakout of Murray based racist nonsense, among other things. For a bunch of allegedly pro-evolution, anti-creationist posters, they’ve sure come to embrace religious creationist politicians – apparently mostly out of apprehension over the thought that their taxes might go up (which is reinforced by a pathetic, trembling gaze upon uppity young bucks angling to take their T-Bone steaks).
Ash Can
I understand what you’re saying, but this strikes me as an awfully convenient cover. After all, is it always possible to tell where “edginess” leaves off and racism begins? “Oh, I didn’t really mean that. I just wanted to stir up a little crap.” Yeah, sure.
With all the things to be contrarian over — to a thoroughly dreary degree, too — why would they want to play in the pigsty at all if they sincerely don’t like the smell?
Gunner Billy K
I wasn’t going to bring up Batman’s irresistible urge to hang out with young boys in tights, but Omnes Omnibus made me do it.
Mandalorian defeats Paedo every time.
ts
More Third Man references, plz! I’ll start: Douthat was born to be murdered.
David in NY
@John Quixote:
You know, this makes me think both of my sons’ games at about ages 9 and 6 (the 9-year old continually flummoxed his younger brother by inventing stuff like “Bat Jedi Repellant” in imagined combat games), and the Republicans’ style of debate (you get the analogy, right?).
JGabriel
matoko_chan:
I know you’re snarking, but here is book that cataloged Herrnstein & Murray’s errors before The Bell Curve was even written: The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould.
Turns out Herrnstein’s & Murray’s methods and thesis were unoriginal and have been repeatedly invoked before. Who’d a thunk that retrogressive racist arguments actually were retro? No one could have predicted …
.
JK
Doug,
Peter Brimelow founded VDARE.
More info on Brimelow
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2003/winter/keeping-america-white?page=0,0
DougJ
@BTD:
Thanks for the link.
What bothers me, though, isn’t Sailer and Limbaugh. It’s that “respectable” conservatives are, in effect, doing it too.
Gunner Billy K
Unbelievable. (Or not.)
I can’t believe I haven’t seen them called out on this.
Bnut
@Stefan:
Did this child have papers? Thought not, off to jail with her.
Zifnab
@matoko_chan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Criticisms
The ludditism isn’t on DougJ’s side of the fence. The authors try to paint a very black and white (pun!) picture of human intelligence and sweep a great deal of nuance under the rug in their quest to prove their premise of inherited intelligence.
Then there’s various criticisms ranging from how intelligence was weighted to how malleable intellect was by education.
If you’re going to shove fingers in your ears and scream “La la la, I can’t hear you!” then of course you’re not going to hear any criticism, Makato. I found a host of criticism in five seconds of Google / Wiki searching.
INTERNETZ – UZE DEM!
Omnes Omnibus
@Randy P: I vaguely remember that episode. I was a huge Green Hornet fan as a small child. Now, on that topic, Green Hornet would certainly kick Boba Fett’s ass. Anyone who denies this is simply an idiot who is not woth engaging in discussion on this or any other topic.
DougJ
@ts:
I’m saving up for a long post where I compare New Orleans and Cincinnati a la Switzerland and Italy under the de Medicis.
Loneoak
If I had the time, I would love to do some thinking about the relationship between Bobo-style faux sociology of respectable conservatives and this far-too-common acceptance of crap race-realism ‘science.’ Race-realist genetics/genomics is one of my areas of study and there is a dynamic that makes it hard to root out of scientific practice and commentary. When this science gets torn apart both by observers of science (like me) on philosophical/sociological/ethical/historical grounds AND destroyed empirically in follow up articles from responsible scientists, the original researchers will retract some substantial portion of their empirical claims (such as X is correlated with Y), but will still maintain a commitment to their research holding true in the future because the world must be this way. Then in the future their compatriots will cite the ‘case of so-and-so scientist’ as evidence that legitimate work gets shot down and *are not held accountable for acknowledging all of the previous work being withdrawn.* Race-realism is a terrible zombie meme. It survives only because it conforms with deeply held white-supremecist (or in some cases black-inferiorist) beliefs. It is universally sloppy and poorly formulated.
When the Sailer zombie meets the Bobo sociology, bad things happen. Because Bobo/Douthat/respectable conservatives are not bound to standards of rigor in their observations of human behavior, it is far too easy for them to pick up on ‘science’ that conforms to their weaksauce sociology. This is not to say that sociology could not ever support conservative politics, but rather that our toxic media atmosphere only supports conservative pundits who can effortlessly repackage ‘common wisdom’ about human behavior as ‘hard truths.’ Because we live in a society whose ‘common wisdom’ is often white supremacist, the Sailer-Bob nexus is any ugly one.
Sentient Puddle
@John Quixote (quoting George Will, lest there be any confusion):
OK.
As someone who has lived the vast majority of his life in New Mexico (which, by the way, is majority minority, Mr. Will) and the remainder still in the southwest border states, I hereby grant permission to the rest of you to indeed judge Arizonans disdainfully.
(Well, just as long as we’re talking Arizonans who support this shit. I got family in Arizona that’s cool.)
slag
@Gunner Billy K: Oh yeah? Well, Boba Fett’s dead. There. I said it. Dead. D-E-A-D.
No matter what the story books say.
Paris
“I don’t defend the legacy of the man who ushered in a destructive, illegal war that killed hundreds of thousands.”
Bush?
Laura W.
@DougJ:
Will that be before or after you post your Vast Viognier Viticultural Manifesto?
You’re a big fat tease, I’ve realized.
The Moar You Know
@Turbulence: Boy, I didn’t know about the VDare association. That’s about as white supremacist as you can get without actually buying a Nazi flag, tattooing “88” on your chest, and wearing red suspenders and Doc Martens.
It is sad. Larison obvious has some issues that seemingly don’t affect his ability to be reasonable on most issues; but the issues that he has make me unable to point to the guy and say “look, there is a reasonable conservative”, because if you do some digging it turns out he’s not reasonable at all.
Perry Como
There are worse things in life.
JK
Speaking of racial supremacy, Pat Buchanan is the guest on this month’s edition of In Depth which airs this coming Sunday on C-SPAN2 from 12:00 pm – 3:00pm eastern time.
liberty60(Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression)
@DougJ: @Turbulence:
Whoa, hold on a moment-
I have read Larison, and found his writing to be sometimes agreeable, sometimes not; and yes, the links are to some people whose writing is awful/ racist/ stoopid whatever.
But before we go on a purge of 3rd party writers, maybe we should consider that a good thought is a good thought, even if it comes from a flawed source.
And especially, de-linking someone who argues well because of a link to someone who doesn’t, is exactly the sort of epistemic closure we have been talking about.
I stayed too long in the conservative fold because of this sort of thinking.
Bnut
I think the more interesting fight would be Superman vs. a Jedi. I think me and my boys covered most, if not all hypothetical superhero and animal/dinosaur fights on convoys.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bnut: Does the Jedi have Kryponite?
jeff
Doug, I’m grateful to you for shining some light on this. Greg Laden has engaged this “respectable” racism for some time, bringing quite a few geneticists to his comment sections. What is amazing to me is how easily Steve Sailer mixes with polite company, despite being a “race realist”–as he calls himself–or just a racist. Buchanan remains a mystery in this regard, as well.
I’ve read extensively about this, and am often amazed at what I find.
mtraven
The Sailerites have learned how to package up racism in forms that are acceptable to mainstream discourse. “Human biodiversity” is their latest slogan and it’s quite effective as a wedge, since it is quite true that there is such a thing. Liberals need to get better at pushing back on this.
JGabriel
Stefan:
Oh, that’s so adorably naive. Conservatives counting Spanish as white, the very idea!
.
kid bitzer
back when i used to comment sometimes on yglesias’ site, i would hassle matt in comments about why he would sometimes cite or quote sailer with approval. my, of course, never replied.
i haven’t seen it happen recently, but then i’ve also been reading my’s site less.
but there’s some weird story behind the phenomenon. why is a grotesque, david-duke level racist like sailer being treated as though he’s a member of polite society? what, did he go to harvard or some shit?
Gunner Billy K
@slag:
“Fett made his most notable bounty in 3 ABY, when he captured Rebel Alliance hero Han Solo, and brought him to Jabba. A year later, during the Skirmish at Carkoon, Fett fought against the group of Rebels. However, he was knocked into the mouth of the sarlacc by Solo. Though no one in recorded history had ever escaped from the sarlacc, Fett was able to escape, although not entirely unscathed. Thanks to his iron will and Mandalorian armor, he was able to fight his way out of the beast’s belly, killing the sarlacc.”
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Boba_fett
Besides, there are millions of him running around in clone armor anyway.
Ann B. Nonymous
With Larison, I suppose you could point out that there are Negro Orthodox churches. He still gets weepy thinking about the NATO bombing of Serbia.
John Quixote
@David in NY:
Definitely.
Except a nine year old wouldn’t come up the dumb-ass shit that spews from mouths of GOP leaders and thier TeaBagging BFF’s.
twiffer
@John Quixote: well, CT is rather far from AZ and i think the law they passed is a gross and obvious violation of the 4th amendment, worth of more than disdain. however, my closest contact with hispanics would be with with my s-i-l, niece and my co-workers. does my opinion not count?
or is will just trying to say that all hispanics fall into 3 categories: 1) restaurant staff; 2) landscaping staff; 3) illegal aliens?
YellowDog
Reading this post, two thoughts came to mind. First, the concept of “superiority” is so value-laden and has such a history that I cannot trust anyone who traffics in such ideas, even when it is couched as an argument for the sake of an argument. Second, I would like to know how many intimate friends any of these “intellectuals” have who do not look and sound exactly like them? I’m not talking about people you know at work. I’m talking about friends who come to your house, or who visit from out of town, or whom you visit in another city when you have the chance. These are friends with whom you share parts of your life. And they may be part of your family. I’m guessing the answer is “few or none.” If they had, they would understand the inanity of the whole exercise.
DougJ
All right, I’ll do that this weekend!
Bnut
@Omnes Omnibus:
At certain times Superman was shown to have barely survived a nuclear explosion, as well as having to hold his breath in space. I think the latter is stupid, but if a nuke can hurt him, imagine what Star Wars weapons would do. One thing I have never understood about SM though: If his people are so strong, how did they ALL die in some planetary explosion? Krypton/Alderaan?
JSpencer
Yup, it takes a lot of courage and intellect to liberate your inner racist, dress it up in fancy clothes and go out on the town.
Zifnab
@Sentient Puddle:
Ditto out here in Texas. I live on Hwy 59, the illegal immigrant freak’n corridor. Judge away. Somehow the great state of Texas, for all it’s flaws, has succeeded in handling illegal immigration without resorting to card checks from Brownsville to El Paso.
bemused
George Will lecturing about judging disdainfully from a distance about people or issues without having any close contact with them is really quite hilarious.
Gunner Billy K
@Bnut:
They’re only strong under a yellow sun. Krypton didn’t have a yellow sun (it was red, IIRC – not a DC guy). So their strength/powers were that of normal humans on Earth while they were on their home planet.
MikeJ
@DougJ: Look at your blogroll over there. From here they just look like little dots. What if I gave you 20 grand for each dot you got rid of?
John Cole
You people back off Larison. I read him every day and have yet to see anything remotely racist or unfair. Over the line.
DougJ
@MikeJ:
FTW.
Barry
@Joel: Because so many columnists are facile ‘contrarians’, where ‘contrarian’ means ‘afflict the afflicted, comfort the comfortable, question the truth, don’t question the lie, and pat oneself on the back for being courageous’.
Gregory
Maybe not. Their state government, though, should.
DougJ
@John Cole:
I tend to agree. I haven’t seen him link to anything nutty there.
canuckistani
@DougJ:
The problem with Cincinnati is you get the murders, poisonings and bloodshed of the Medicis without even the cuckoo clocks to justify it.
someguy
Phew. You really had me for a minute there DougJ. I didn’t see that line until the second time through, and it was then I realized this post was a spoof.
Good one! But April Fool’s was a month ago.
ts
The Douthat post Doug cites is a wonder. Jared Taylor actually shows up in comments! Robert Stacy McCain, sadly, does not.
Bnut
Not a single winger columnist I have read has covered what I feel to be the biggest problem here: What happens when real American citizens start getting thrown in jail? Not a one.
Doctor Science
The Will quote is most baffling to me because it assumes that the hard-working gardeners and restaurant staff Will has encountered are not, in fact, illegal aliens. Yet most illegal aliens are in the US to *work*, and work they do. Many of those “fine men and women” he praises are in the US illegally, working for wages below the US market value for labor.
Does anyone know if the AZ law contains any provisions for enhanced sanctions against employers? I know that any citizen can sue a police department they feel is not being aggressive enough about enforcing the law; will citizens be able to sic the police on employers of illegal aliens?
Bnut
@Gunner Billy K:
You learn something new (fictional) everyday.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Co-sign on Larison. He’s no racist, though I don’t understand why he would want to have any association with Sailer, who is a professional race-baiter.
I mentioned Ross Douthat’s connections to Sailer in another thread. Sailer was also a frequent commenter on Douthat’s Atlantic site while L’il Ross still allowed comments.
Here’s the wonderful Douthat “Welfare Duchess” column:
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/12/the_myth_of_welfare_queens.php
eponymous
@matoko_chan:
Well, I can’t speak for DougJ, but for me the biggest issue I have with the Bell Curve is the assumption that there is some sort of inherent immutiability with respect to racial categorization and this, in turn, allows one to make claims regarding intelliegence as an inherent trait.
While there is a biological component to intelligence, there hasn’t been any strong scientific evidence linking this biological component to morphological features (the owtward appearance of people and the most common types of features used when organizing people into racial categories). Biologically, the concept of race is almost meaningless as people with similar genetics can have quite different outward appearances.
Until those who support aspects of the Bell Curve can show that there is a biolgical link between intelligence and one’s outward appearance (or that there can be some sort of method or way of demonstrating the immutibility of racial categorization), plus account for sociological or environmental effects on intelliegence (pre-natal care, socio-economic status, education, etc.), then the rest of us will continue to argue for what the Bell Curve really is – a shoddy piece of research.
Brien Jackson
@John Cole:
Well, the company you keep and such. I like Larison’s (foreign policy) writing and I’m sure he’s a fine fellow, but he is writing for AmCon, and he’s part of a domestic policy movement that doesn’t have a good history vis-a-vis race and currently has overwhelming appeal to Birchers and white supremacists. Whether or not that’s an indictment of the person on Larison’s end or not is a matter of opinion, I suppose.
The Moar You Know
@John Cole: I respect you…
@DougJ: and you as well…
But you guys have got to be kidding regarding Larison. Did you not read this link?
My Noxious Views
How is calling Lincoln an usurper (gee, where have I heard that language recently?) OK? How is referring to Lincoln as a man “who ushered in a destructive, illegal war that killed hundreds of thousands” in any way not the statement of a lunatic?
Newsflash: LINCOLN DID NOT START THAT WAR.
Racist? I don’t know, but I do know some of the company he keeps is racist. I’ve never read anything racist by him, so that’s a slight plus.
But I do know that he approves of secession wholeheartedly, and approves of the Confederacy wholeheartedly, and that is not OK no matter what your reasons are.
Do what you want. 95% of the time he seems sane, but that other 5% makes me unable to take him seriously.
kay
And who better to provide it than conservatives?
Imagine writing that sentence. Jesus. That’s what I hear when they talk. Scolds.
Dave C
John Derbyshire is another one of those conservatives who seems almost reasonable until he starts talking about sociology. One minute he’ll be railing against the idiocy of creationism, and the next he’ll just drop a piping hot turd of racial superiority into the middle of the room like it’s a normal thing to do. Quite a weird and unsettling phenomenon.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
“I have never understood your antipathy for the Bell Curve, Dougj.
Murray’s book is a valid statistical collection of data.”
I think the fact Murray and Herrenstein don’t really understand what the heritability variable really means (you can see this again and again in their discussions, even one where they mock liberals, not understanding that heritability is not a fixed variable – less variation in the environment means increased heritability).
Plus, epigenetics is starting to tell us that there’s a lot of covariation of genetics and the environment. What age you do twin studies at may reveal more divergence between identical twins. Also, studies of fraternal twins have knocked the heritability estimates down to 0.3-0.4 from the 0.6-0.7 Murray & Herrenstein assumed. So a lot of conclusions in their book assuming a high heritability haven’t held up.
That’s not to mention all the skewed reading of statistics they did in compiling the book – see the Slate article linked above.
Turbulence
@John Cole: You people back off Larison. I read him every day and have yet to see anything remotely racist or unfair. Over the line.
Larison publicly boasts about his membership in the League of the South, which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a “racist hate group.” In fact, the group’s leader has publicly said:
Maybe that’s not a big deal, but…it would give me pause. I think I’d leave any organization that believed that, wouldn’t you? I mean, can you think of any good reason to continue affiliating with such a group?
Regnad Kcin
@DougJ: the Zither music is running on a loop in my head, now, thanks
Ailuridae
@DougJ:
Err, no. You both need to read the link The Moar You Know posted. Larison is unquestionably a secessionist and there is, simply, no excusing that. Jeebus, the League of the South is a hate group according to the SPLC.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Bnut:
I’ll take your Superman and Jedi and raise you one Sentry. The Sentry possesses the power of one million exploding suns!
Suck. On. That.
slag
@Turbulence:
I don’t know. We may be getting into Obama-Jeremiah Wright territory here. I try not to judge people based on who they know but rather what they do and say. Relationships are complicated, and people keep or discard them for a variety of reasons. Unless I see someone acting in a way or espousing views that I find unforgivably objectionable, I try to disregard their associations as much as possible.
Ed Drone
@Gunner Billy K:
WRONG!!!! Jedi are fictional beings, so batman wins!
ED
Paul in KY
@slag: Boba Fett is not dead, yet. he is still being digested by that thing he fell into. I think it was called a ‘Sarlack’ or something like that.
JGabriel
@John Cole:
It’s a little more problematic than that, John. Yes, Larison argues that slavery was shameful, but he’s also a Confederate sympathizer who self-identifies as a member of The League of the South – a present-day secessionist organization that is characterized as a neoconfederate hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
.
Zifnab
@Bnut:
It’s a non-issue, what with you being guilty until proven innocent. Only illegal aliens travel without papers. I have my drivers license on me 24/7, ipso facto all Real Americans(tm) do also. And if I’m out at the swimming pool in my trunks – well, those times hardly count because no police officer would ever dream of carding me at the Country Club.
Bnut
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
I see your Sentry and raise you a Galactus
kommrade reproductive vigor
Whoops, we’ve only been pretending? I thought it was a given. Sorry!
I suspect this does not mean Mr. “Hello” Sailer would allow me to marry his daughter.
MikeJ
@Zifnab: Drivers license isn’t proof of citizenship.
Zifnab
@Paul in KY: Dude. He totally clawed his way out of that thing.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Boba_Fett
Because he’s the Motha Fookin’ Fett.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJvxEjGpIqU
Midnight Marauder
People keep making a big deal (and rightfully so) about the following quote from Larison:
But really, I think the sentence directly before it is equally telling, if not more so:
Now, if he is talking about the Civil War, and his views on that war are that Abraham Lincoln was the initiator of aggression, you’re going to have a hard time defending that this guy is not a Lost Causer (as TNC would say). Because making comments like that are diametrically opposed to “positions” like this:
and this:
@John Cole:
I think this dilettante blog from West Virginia needs to think a little bit more about what kind of rhetoric you are actually aligning yourself with here in this specific instance.
EDIT: And for the record, every sentence of Larison’s I quoted above is from the exact same paragraph in the link that The Moar You Know posted previously.
Bnut
@Zifnab:
Had to share this
Zifnab
@MikeJ: Psh. It is if you’re white.
Turbulence
@slag: I don’t know. We may be getting into Obama-Jeremiah Wright territory here. I try not to judge people based on who they know but rather what they do and say. Relationships are complicated, and people keep or discard them for a variety of reasons. Unless I see someone acting in a way or espousing views that I find unforgivably objectionable, I try to disregard their associations as much as possible.
I think there’s a lot to be said for your caution. On the other hand, I don’t really care that Larison has friends in the League of the South; the issue is that he is a member, boasts of his association, and writes for their magazine. Maybe his membership is no big deal, but it seems like a warning flag.
And Rev Wright didn’t have the SPLC criticizing him. Those guys are badass yo.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Bnut:
This is why I’m going with the Sentry. A nuclear explosion is nothing compared to “the power of a million exploding suns” and one of the Sentry’s favorite activities is throwing villians into the sun.
The only problem is the Void. If the Sentry goes of his meds then the Void comes around and f*cks everyone up big time.
Cacti
George Will’s mealy-mouthed defense of Arizona sounds like he’s channeling his inner William F. Buckley…
Jay C
@ #83:
Well, taking a supportive position for John Cole (yeah, I know, courageous contrarianism for Balloon Juice!), I think he has a point about about Daniel Larison. Getting on someone’s (someblogger’s) case about what he/she writes, or cites approvingly, or quotes is one thing: ripping them solely for one (or even more) blogroll links is another. Larison seems to be quite the sane voice in the blogosphere – castigating him for imputed “racism” solely on his VDARE link is pretty lame stuff. Racist posts, comments or direct cites? Sure; rip away! – one link? Not so much…
That said, though: VDARE is a pretty malodorous site: yeah, they pretty up -or try to – their fundamentally racist nonsense with a coating of oh-so-Serious “sociology” and “science” as a front for the same-old, same-old white-supremacist bile. It always put me in mind of a quote I read once in in a “political” novel (it may have been Alan Drury, I really don’t remember) – where one character remarks about another (a Senator from the South, I think):
“He’s quite the model of the “modern” Southerner. He quotes University of Virginia geneticists instead of John Calhoun to “prove” Negroes are inferior”
Plus ça change…..
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
As far as Sully, I just think it’s a little disgusting that a self-styled “South Park Republican” (whatever the fuck that means) is promoting some girls-are-icky papist closet case as the future of conservatism.
Joel
@The Moar You Know: I thought red suspenders was a SHARPs dealie-o. Like that NOFX song.
liberty60(Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression)
@The Moar You Know:
Fair enough- which is my point. We should be able to take a piece of writing on its own merits, and not feel the need to vet the author and research everything he has written, in order to accept his point.
Larison’s stupid writing should be called out, but his insightful stuff should be as well.
I take issue with all this, one, because it seems very Firebaggish/ RedStatish- “Larison is in error here, so everything he writes can be dismissed”, and two, it has a way of spreading- I have seen people sneer at the mention of Sullivan, or Frum, or Friedersdorf, for similar reasons.
Yes, they make stupid points sometimes. Fine. Got it.
But I would be much, much more discriminating about who gets tossed into the “We won’t read/ link” category- it is drawing the circle a bit too promiscuously.
Yes, there are some writers- Jonah Goldberg IMO- who really have never written a sentence I thought was worth the time it took to scan it- but most writers occasionally have something interesting to say, even if they keep terrible company or go off the rails sometimes.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Bnut:
Yeah, Galactus is a bad mutha f*cka, but the Silver Surfer f*cked his shit up so…
Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers), aka Warbird, aka Binary, is an absolute powerhouse and nice on the eyes but the Sentry can beat her like a wife who doesn’t know her place.
Paul in KY
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: How about The Silver Surfer?! Yeah, what about him, from Zen-La & factotum of Galactus. etc. etc.
I’ll bet he could whup Boba Fett.
soonergrunt
@Doctor Science:
I doubt it. The employers are likely to be white, after all.
Cacti
@Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions:
Another name for glibertarian
Paul in KY
@Zifnab: Not canonical!!! LALALALALALALAL – I can’t hear you!!!
Midnight Marauder
@Jay C:
Again, I don’t think the problematic issue here is having a VDARE link in his blogroll. I think the problem is boasting about how proud your are of being a member whose leader has publicly stated:
Let’s be clear. Daniel Larison unabashedly supports this position through his active, continuous membership with the League of the South.
I get that the dude is an otherwise “sane” voice in the conservative blogosphere, but you cannot ignore that this is a very noxious position he endorses.
WereBear
I’ve been wondering of late; perhaps all this Conservative Angst isn’t just a case of whining loserism. (Thought it is that, too.)
But Conservatism is truly enmeshed in an identity crisis, if we go with the definition I see thrown around all the time: that of preserving the status quo.
We’re in the 21st Century, ya’ll. The status is just not going to be quo.
My grandmother rode a horse to school; my father grew up on a farm that didn’t have electricity until he was 12, and I make my living on computers, which didn’t exist when I was going to school; I’m a self-taught generation. And my nephew texts in his sleep and meets girls on MySpace. (He’s 14, cut him some slack.)
Perhaps the newest generation will be more nimble Conservatives, spreading rumors on Twitter with their Blackberries and all. But doesn’t that mean they’ve joined the Dark Side?
If all they are planning to “preserve” is their twisted rationalizations for keeping vast chunks of humanity as hewers of wood and drawers of water, that’s not a political philosophy so much as it is an expression of institutionalized sociopathy.
Can’t see that appealing to the youngsters…
burnspbesq
Larison detonates a truth bomb. Greenwald is the target, and Douthat is collateral damage. Seems like a win-win outcome to me.
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2010/04/27/douthat-and-anti-jihadism/
Cacti
An honest question.
Is there any researcher flogging “negro intellectual inferiority research” who doesn’t have an obvious “whites as the master race” agenda?
WereBear
@Cacti: No.
Turbulence
@liberty60(Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression): I take issue with all this, one, because it seems very Firebaggish/ RedStatish- “Larison is in error here, so everything he writes can be dismissed”, and two, it has a way of spreading- I have seen people sneer at the mention of Sullivan, or Frum, or Friedersdorf, for similar reasons.
Here’s the thing. I’ve got some conservative leaning friends that I might want to send Larison pieces to because, as you say, his writing can be outstanding on some issues. But I can’t do that now because if I do, I might get back a reply saying “Are you shitting me? You want me to read the rantings of a nutjob who thinks that Lincoln started the Civil War and that slavery wasn’t a big deal? WTF? Are you high?”
I think there is a difference between writers sometimes disagreeing with me about lots of issues and writers believing in totally fictional history.
In any event, if BJ keeps Larison on the blogroll and keeps linking to his better pieces, I guess that’s OK…I’d just like to see some awareness that on some issues, he’s totally insane (hint: Lincoln did not start the civil war).
Comrade PhysioProf
“Evolutionary psychology” pseudoscience gets mainstreamed in exactly the same way. Some fuckbag misogynist asshole social scientist at a fourth-rate university publishes a study on undergrad human subjects purporting to show that bitchez love the color pink because CAVEMEN and WOOLLY MAMMOTHS!!111! This gets picked up by some fuckbag misogynist asshole barely literate journalist at the NY Times and PROFIT!
jeff
@Cacti:
I believe there are a few that subscribe to the possibility that Africans are genetically less intelligent.
This scientist is not, I think, a racist–but he does entertain genetic groupings having different IQs.
Also, the whole Ashkenazi IQ thing from a few years back is implicitly racialist.
twiffer
hey look, more dehumanizing of illegal aliens from a GOP candidate for an iowa rep seat :
obviously it’s not racist or anything though.
Zifnab
@Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions:
It means you’re a douche, but you want to hang with the cool kids.
South Park Republican makes about as much sense as Christian Atheist.
Tonal Crow
Fixed.
Ann B. Nonymous
John, it’s like someone being a member of a society that admires the Third Reich but who personally finds its anti-Semitism repugnant–but more so, since the Confederacy was all about owning black people, from alpha to omega, while the Third Reich had other goals than eradicating Jewish people from the Earth.
Since Larison is an educated man, he surely has encountered the truth of the matter regarding the Confederacy. Instead, he chooses to believe lies in support of the treason of racial supremacists who bought and sold human chattel.
And yes, I think he’s shallow enough that his views would flip-flop if the human chattel were his coreligionists.
Bnut
@Paul in KY:
I stopped reading Star Wars novels after ‘Vision of the Past’ and only read those because Zahn is such a good writer. I too often get confused/angry with the canon of it all. (puts nerd hat back in closet)
Cacti
@twiffer:
Nothing racist about comparing Latinos to dogs.
To the pure in heart, all things are pure.
wrb
What I’ve never gotten about people who worry about superiority in of one group the average is that they don’t realize how utterly meaningless it is in application. Because in application you are dealing with individuals.
You can slice and dice people into all sorts of groups and some will score better on average, but that is worthless when making a decision about an individual. Maybe the average IQ in Boston is higher than the average in Baltimore but that doesn’t make the idiot from Boston a better pre-med candidate than the genius from Baltimore.
Similarly, if whites have higher average IQs than blacks or blacks can jump higher it doesn’t make Chris Rock a more valuable basketball player that Steve Nash nor does it make the cracker gas pump jockey superior to the black physicist.
I think the issue is more fraught than need be. Even granting everything to those who argue for some superiority in the average… my response is “so what?”
dadanarchist
Larison also has a link to Lyndon Larouche’s blog – does that mean he is a Larouchie too?
/snark
The membership in the League of the South is genuinely disturbing, however.
slippy
I remember someone who I used to respect linking to vdare.com . . . and as I read the dripping racist fecal matter rolling down the page I wondered how in the hell people like that could walk down the street unattended without running into things.
I mean, there’s one thing I’m sure of and that’s that racism is for STUPID people.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@soonergrunt: This.
Because we must pretend that people who risk their necks to come to this country illegally only do so to suck on the nannystate teat with the rest of the lazy brown piglets!
(Those yahoos protesting around day laborer sites – merely a fig newton of your imagination dear sir. Illegal immigrants don’t work, don’t want to work and no one would hire them if they did want to work. Which they don’t.)
Besides, people risking their necks to come to a land of opportunity to make a better life for their children is a bad narrative. Or rather it’s a very good and compelling narrative, but it’s being used by the great-great-great-great grandkids of people who risked their necks &c.
Zifnab
@Paul in KY: Not canonical? You want to see canonical?
http://www.yaysports.com/nba/images/jar%20jar%20binks.jpg
Here. Here’s your god damn Canon.
I’ll take my Timothy Zahn and my Tales from Jabba’s Palace over your pod racing and goth clowns any day, thank you.
Gunner Billy K
@Bnut:
n00b.
http://marvel.com/universe/One-Above-All
SectarianSofa
@Joel:
If you can’t join them, beat them down with BS? Seems to be the modus operandi for a lot of people in many contexts.
Where legit membership (in this case, either a temperament suited for actual academic-level research, or the requisite skills for such) is impossible, undermine the credibility of the ‘establishment’ by glibly evangelizing pulp fiction. Or racist pseudoscience. Or what have you.
trollhattan
@soonergrunt:
BoB was banhammered for walking down this very path. And ain’t that a shame?
Dave C
@trollhattan:
What? But that renders my pie filter completely useless!! I need somebody new to pie (gotta have that fix!)–any suggestions??
Linda Featheringill
@twiffer:
I think that is exactly what he is saying.
Martin
I need to derail threads more often.
PanAmerican
I knew the history of the Lost Colony but I didn’t realize the yahoos had projected their psycho-sexual baggage upon Virginia Dare.
JM
The importance of whiteness matters most to those whites who have nothing else going for them. For this reason, I think that the correlation between racism and ignorance is something of a coincidence.
If racists weren’t dumb, worthless people, they wouldn’t be trying to cash in their own cutaneous boxtop.
liberty60(Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression)
@Turbulence:
In which I agree- if Larison makes a sharp observation about the foreign wars, lets remark on it; the logic and observations contained in that piece can stand or fall on their own. If he associates with Confederates, let him be called out for it.
And now, totally off topic, here is evidence that finding one’s spine and asserting the truth, boldly, is working:
Whining commences about how much of a Badass Bully Obama is
Let us savor.
asiangrrlMN
If we are going by stereotypes and brainpower, then bow down bitchez to your new Asian overlords! We totally blow up the muthafuckin’ bell curve, yo!
@MikeJ: It sure as hell wasn’t for me! I will never make that mistake again in confusing the two.
@liberty60(Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression): I cannot stand Sully because he is an arrogant prick who has to make the same fucking discovery time and time again. Something has to be personal before he acknowledges there may be merit in something. To see him sitting on Olbermann and smugly allowing that maybe women might be allowed to have first trimester abortions, but not third trimester abortions because his fucking conscience doesn’t allow it was the last straw for me. His ratio of useful info to utter bullshit is about 10%/90%, and I can get that ten percent elsewhere.
There are some conversation enders for me, as Benen put it, and Sully crossed at least three of them.
@Dave C: Makelakaweeweeeee! That’s the only person I pie.
Jay C
@Midnight Marauder:
On reflection (yeah, I know: mainly a radical, America-hating, DFH trait) I’ll concede your point. I hadn’t been aware of Larison’s League Of The South connections: and you’re right: it’s definitely a factor to have to consider when assessing his opinions.
But then (radical, America-hating DFH as I must be), I take and analyze blogosphere commentators’ opinions for what they say – and apply “corrections” for background and bias as necessary.
Thanks.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@burnspbesq:
teehee.
Comrade Dread
I think some folks like to talk ‘intellectually’ about taboo subjects simply because people hold them to be taboo.
Now to sum the important part of this thread:
Batman vs. Boba Fett:
Motivation: Tie.
Training: Tie. They’ve both spent their entire lives training in combat.
Notable Foe Defeated: Batman.
The Batman: Let’s just say the entire DC pantheon of villains. Also, Superman.
Boba Fett: Uh… well, he tied up Luke Skywalker for a few seconds. Also, Han Solo, but he was backed up by Darth Vader.
Death:Batman.
Boba Fett: Eaten by a toothy tentacle space vagina beast.
Batman: Dies of a heart attack after beating the crap out of Superman.
Batman vs. Jedi: Toss up.
Batman would win if he was aware of the capabilities of his opponent and enough time to plan to counteract them. Otherwise, the Jedi.
Now a Sith would just flat out choke the Batman and be done with the fight in five seconds.
Superman vs. Jedi:
Superman. Freeze breath, supersonic attack speed, flight, heat vision. The Jedi would be incapacitated before he knew what was happening.
Superman vs. Death Star:
Superman. The guy can fly right through the thing into the reactor and out the other side, and we all saw just how bad the Empire was at hitting anything smaller than a planet.
Midnight Marauder
@Jay C:
I wish I could bronze this and put it in some kind of Surprisingly Kind And Thoughtful Responses In The Blogosphere Hall of Fame.
You know, just for the rare historical posterity and all.
Gunner Billy K
@Comrade Dread:
Dark Knight Returns isn’t even close to canon.
And while I do agree Batman’s biggest asset is his ability to learn his opponent’s abilities and weaknesses, how exactly do you make a plan to counteract a force-choke or force-push?
matoko_chan
@eponymous: umm….it is actually a good piece of research for its time….however, we do know more about epigenetics and other variants of inheritance (behavioral, symbolic) now….also more about statistics and metrics and data collection and experimental design.
The book was published 16 years ago, an eon in scientific progress.
I do disagee with Sailer on the phenotypic variation that you point out…in order for his assumptions to be valid we need a full genetic screening for each individual breaking down the % african american chromosomal heritage vs % caucasian.
Hideously expensive.
But my point to DougJ is that Murray doesn’t attempt to massage data or skew results.
The methodology and technology of that timeslice delivered those results.
Are they suspect now?
Sure.
Write a new book.
;)
Comrade Dread
Jedi are have morals and don’t use the Force to directly attack their opponents so he wouldn’t have to worry about a choke unless he was fighting a fallen Jedi, and, as I mentioned above, if that were the case, he’d be dead.
Otherwise, attack indirectly, traps, area of effect weapons, multiple sources of potential danger to throw off their precognition.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Gunner Billy K:
“God does exist, and he’s American.”
How could we have forgotten Dr. Manhattan?
I’m changing my vote from The Sentry to Dr. Manhattan.
matoko_chan
@Turbulence: Read the special appendix in later editions of Stephen J Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man”.
many geneticists have issues with Gould too.
i have better things to read.
Jay C
@liberty60(Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression):
Oh Jesus H. Christ on a three-wheeled bicycle! Is this person actually given space on CNBC’s site to post this [to-be-charitable-and-avoid-profanity] nonsensical gibberish?
OK: on the one hand, he admits:
But then feels prompted to toss in a colostomy-bag-full of stock tripe like:
Right, Dennis: President Barack Obama’s main traits, as you see it, are “poutiness”, and and a sense of “omnipotence and popularity”?
ODS – it’s not just for Tea any more….
SectarianSofa
@DougJ:
Weird. Didn’t make sense until you said ‘FTW’. And now I see the awesome.
Will have to suggest that college profs use that as an annotation on passages they particularly like… on handouts and such. How else will the kids know what’s important?
someguy
Let’s back up the assertion that mainstream conservatism is about racial supremacy and hatred. Here are the “mainstream groups” that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as hate groups.
I guess they left NRO off of there, but even the SPLC is entitled to a screwup now and then.
Tony J
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Au contraire.
The Sentry would exchange a few titanic blows with Superman, but then he’d think “OMG, that’s the guy my invented superhero persona, made possible by the ability to manipulate reality I gained when I downed an experimental chemical brew in pursuit of a drug-fuelled high, is based on!”, and fly off into space where he’d shiver and hug himself until the other characters have dealt with the problem in a way that leaves some scope for the writers to inject drama into their plotting.
I’m sorry, but it’s true.
And Boba Fett lives in Space! His only problem would be in figuring out how to spray carbonite on The Sentry while he’s floating around shivering and hugging himself. So there.
And on the Larisson thing, I’d heard about his mega-secessionist leanings, but even though I’m over at AmCon quite a bit doing the “Know Your Enemy” thing, I haven’t seen him posting anything Pro-Confederate, which is odd, because in the last month there’s been quite a bit from crazy-assed Jack Hunter and Pat the Buckra trying to push the “It wasn’t about Racism, it was about States Rights and Secession!” line. I wonder why Larisson stayed out of it, given that defending ‘Confederate History Month’ should have been right up his street?
Paul in KY
@Bnut: My definition of canonical (as regards Star Wars) is that if it isn’t in one of the 6 movies, then it’s not ‘canonical’.
My definition of ‘canonical’ in regard to LOTR is slightly different.
Gunner Billy K
@Comrade Dread:
Right – though I’d argue some of the Jedi in eps 2 and 3 were pretty quick on the lightsaber trigger. That notwithstanding, the only way a Jedi would find him/herself in a battle with The Batman is if The Batman attacked him/her. Because Jedis only use The Force for defense (trust me on this – I just watched TESB and ROTJ this weekend).
So, we can assume The Batman’s hostile intent. Then logically, the Jedi is free to defend him/herself by using a force push, force choke, or whatever. Really, if they cut off a dude’s head with a lightsaber (using the Force) is that dude any less dead than by using The Force to Force Choke or Force Push The Goddamn Batman off a goddamn cliff?
BOTTOM LINE: Batman loses.
Randy P
@matoko_chan:
Point number 1: The Slate critique linked upthread was written in 1997. It references a body of other contemporary critiques.
Point number 2: I do not accept your premise that statistics, probability theory, mathematics, etc are like so totally different now than they were in 1994 or whenever that tripe came out. That’s complete nonsense. Did you really just dismiss all experimental work that took place before the 21st century?
It was NOT a good piece of research, which is why it went into book form rather than getting submitted to a research journal.
Your response to the Gould appendix is equally silly. You admit you haven’t read it, you have no intention of reading it, and “geneticists have issue with Gould”. Was that supposed to be relevant to this discussion? In what way?
Gunner Billy K
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
LOL.
SectarianSofa
@Bnut:
Dinosaur Jesus says his Pop can beat up Galacticactus’s Pop, or whoever. Also, Old Testament God has a supply of Mandalorians *and* Jedis in his Sarlacc, and if you piss him off, boy, you’d better look out.
Also, He’s got a pillar of salt shaker full of kryptonite, so don’t try to pull that one.
Paul in KY
@Zifnab: He/it may be technically ‘canonical’, but let’s not talk or think about him/it.
You did have to bring him/it up, didn’t you ;-)
Jay C
Oh wow, talk about
willfully-delusional alternative-reality bullshitepistemic-closure issues: I just read THIS bit of Dennis Kneale’s Obama-The-Bully screed, and about fell out of my chair:Cites, pleez? “So much effort”? Barack Obama, AFAICT, has spent the bulk of his early term in office trying to consciously AVOID even mentioning his predecessor, much less “lambasting” him. And I notice Kneale (just coincidentally, no doubt) elides the Clinton-Bush 43 transition (“restoring honor to the White House“, folks?) . What a tool.
“Projection – it’s not just for Hollywood anymore….”
Gunner Billy K
@Paul in KY:
It’s nice you have your own definition, but your definition is not canon.
As it turns out, there are Five Levels of Canon in the Star Wars Universe. (No really. Stop laughing.)
In descending order of importance:
G-canon
T-canon
C-canon
S-canon
N-canon
G-Canon is absolute, and even it includes “the movies (their most recent release), the scripts, the novelizations of the movies, the radio plays, and any statements by George Lucas himself.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_canon
artem1s
you know if Arizona lawmakers had only passed a reasonable law so that police could tell the difference between the
Hispanicsillegal immigrants that jumped theghettofence and the fine men and women who cut lawns and work in restaurants they wouldn’t be catching all this flack. how about all the fine men and women who cut lawns and work in restaurants wear a distinguishing badge on their clothing all the time? You know, something like a star or triangle. That way the police wouldn’t be harassing the goodimmigrantsHispanicsfine men and women who cut lawns and work in restaurants.snark
Paul in KY
@Comrade Dread: Excellent synopsis, Toravich! I can see you spent some time thinking about this. I would have to say I agree with your conclusions (except you didn’t include The Silver Surfer & Galactus).
I’m expecting a revised 2nd edition to include them :-)
Comrade Dread
No, there is a difference.
When using the Force to guide their lightsaber, they are not directly using the Force to attack another living being.
Using it to choke the life out of an opponent is a direct application of the Force to kill or hurt another living being, hence it’s forbidden by the Jedi code.
Which is also why you never see Jedi throwing around lightning, though it would have made things a lot easier. Especially for Obi Wan in his second encounter with Darth Vader.
Hence, as I originally said, the Batman wins against the Jedi if he’s aware of his supernatural abilities AND has enough time to work out a contingency plan.
If the Batman meets a Jedi for the first time or doesn’t have time to logically think of how to attack him or is facing a Sith, the Batman’s going down.
Turbulence
The SPLC profile on the League of the South is here.
My favorite bit is:
I don’t think there can be any question that the League of the South is a profoundly anti-American organization. Putting aside its views on race, this is organization that rejects secular government and wishes to establish a theocracy in the US. As a christian, I find that notion deeply offensive and profoundly stupid.
More highlights:
Look, if Larison is proud to be part of a group that publicly condemns interracial marriage, that’s his right. But can’t we question his judgment? If this isn’t enough, exactly what would be enough? Rank anti-semitism?
Gunner Billy K
@Comrade Dread:
Look, I realize it’s frowned upon (but I do not believe forbidden) for a Jedi to use a Force Choke, but my point is they have other force-based attack methods that even The Goddamn Batman couldn’t plan around.
I agree The Batman would last longer against a Jedi than a Sith, but in the end, they both could kill him just as dead, just as easily.
P.S. I seem to recall a certain Luke Skywalker using the Force Choke in ROTJ. Where is your God now?
Paul in KY
@Gunner Billy K: It’s a sad day in a boy’s life when he finds out his canon is not canonical. Thank’s, dude (sob).
Comrade Dread
@Paul in KY:
Batman vs. the Silver Surfer:
There’s a lot of tough calls on this one. But frankly, I’ll give it to Batman on a 51% – 49% basis.
I’m thinking Batman and Dr. Doom are about equal on intellectual terms, and the Surfer has lost on at least a couple of occasions to Dr. Doom who drained his powers, so I think Batman could probably do the same.
Batman vs. Galactus:
Uh… well, unless a giant bald alien shows up and hands him the Ultimate Nullifier, Batman’s an appetizer for Galactus.
Salt and freshly ground black people
@Bnut: And they won’t. This UK Guardian article covers what was happening even before the Arizona law got signed (a “Mexican-looking” truck driver gets asked to show evidence of US citizenship – his commercial driver’s license and social security number are not enough, so he’s handcuffed. He is permitted to call his wife at work – she has to leave work, go home and bring over his birth certificate to prove that he’s a US Citizen). No apologies for the disruption in both their lives. If the right wingers are not acknowledging that stuff like this was already happening in Arizona, they’re certainly not going to admit that the new law will make it worse.
YellowDog
I hate to get involved in this nonsense, but let me point out for the benefit of Gunner Billy K that Luke Skywalker did not complete his Jedi training and was not steeped in centuries of Jedi learning and lore. He almost certainly did not know the finer points of Jedi combat. Plus, it’s a freaking movie. So, put on some pants, leave your parents’ basement (AKA “Command Central”) and get some fresh air.
Comrade Dread
@Gunner Billy K:
I’ve traveled in the dark circles of Star Wars hell, my friend, and there are blog threads devoted to Luke’s using that power that go on forever.
Suffice to say, I think Luke didn’t really have a strict Jedi teacher for a long portion of his training (just how long was the gap between Ep. V and VI?) and was figuring it out himself.
So I think he was still skirting the dark side up until the climax of that movie, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see him engage in some acts that violated the Jedi Code.
Wow. I am a geek.
Also, just to put it on the record, I’m married to a very tolerant and wonderful woman, have two kids and I’ve long since left the basement. :)
Gunner Billy K
@Comrade Dread:
Dude. Dude. I’m gonna have to ask you to step back for just a moment and think. I’ve indulged your arguments for the sake of fun and all, but shit just got real.
You’re seriously arguing Batman could defeat a Jedi? You’ve got to be trolling me.
You seriously think Batman could defeat Mace Windu? The only way – ONLY WAY – is if there were some sort of unfair trickery going on. Like…. oh, I dunno… maybe if he set some snakes loose on Mace’s transport ship.
Gunner Billy K
@Comrade Dread:
P.S. The Jedi could always use the Force Kick if he really wanted to mess up The Batman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Ega_dU0_E&feature=related
Mnemosyne
@matoko_chan:
If you saw any of the Henry Louis Gates PBS series, “Faces of America,” he says in the intro that one of the reasons he wanted to do the series was that he looked into his own ancestry and discovered that he has more Irish ancestry than African — i.e., he’s more than 50% Irish/European.
Repeat that for 90 percent of African-Americans whose ancestors have been here for more than 50 years and you start to see the idiocy of Sailer’s (and Murray’s) assumptions that you can look at someone’s exterior and figure out what percentage of European ancestry they have.
Randy P
@Gunner Billy K:
Heh.
I got left in the geek dust long ago in this discussion, but I got that reference.
Mnemosyne
@Salt and freshly ground black people:
You can’t even get ostensible left-wingers like Little Dreamer to acknowledge that it was already happening, so trying to get right-wingers to admit it is pretty much the definition of a hopeless cause.
gwangung
@Gunner Billy K:
Dude, we’re talking Bat-God here. “With sufficient prep time…”
soonergrunt
@trollhattan: WHAT? When the hell did that happen?!
Man, I leave for a couple of weeks and BoB finally pisses off John Cole enough to get banned, AND I MISSED IT?!?
There ain’t no justice.
Paul in KY
@Comrade Dread: Thank you for your Revised 2nd edition. I didn’t know Dr. Doom had gotten the best of my silver friend. Probably played on his compassion or something. The Surfer is a touchy-feely guy (being a zillion parsecs from the sweet Shalli-La (or whatever her name is) will do that to you) & he ends up being too nice for his own good sometimes.
Bnut
@Gunner Billy K:
Slow down there. No one said Samuel L. was in play. I change my pick to him. Over everyone.
Randy P
@soonergrunt:
The original BoB comment in question I guess has been deleted, but it’s quoted here.
The presumption is that this was the one that got BoB banned.
robertdsc
There was a Clone Wars-era Jedi named Plo Koon who occasionally used lightning, though he termed it Electric Judgment:
Electric Judgment
b-psycho
@The Moar You Know: Yeah, it’s obvious the Confederacy was evil, and they had an evil reason for seceding. But calling secession itself evil because of that is like saying the internet is evil because people trade child p*rn on it.
Are the secessionists mentioned in this article evil? Because I personally think they have a point.
Turbulence
@b-psycho:
Are the secessionists mentioned in this article evil? Because I personally think they have a point.
Are they trying to secede in order to ensure the buying and selling of human beings? Are they trying to build a theocracy or a state built around “European cultural hegemony”? Because if the answer to all those questions is negative, I’m going to say “no.”
Focusing on the secession aspect like a laser beam while ignoring absolutely every other bit of information we have on this organization seems…worrying.
Maybe I’m just an idiot, but why on Earth would any American who wasn’t a racist boast about their membership in a group that rejected interracial marriage? Could someone give me the non-racist justification for believing that interracial couples are doing something wrong?
soonergrunt
@Randy P: So, an Arbeit Macht Frei kind of thing then?
Well, alrighty then.
Persia
@Stefan: I don’t think Sailer counts Spanish citizens as human.
numbskull
@liberty60(Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression): Yeah, but Larison’s interpretation of nearly everything Lincoln wrote about the South before the war started suggests, to me anyway, that he’s just another Bircher. He may appear to be reasonable on some issues, but here, reasonable just means “not crazy, stupid, or stupidly crazy.” Even when JC touts Larison’s Latest, there’s nearly always a nugget of winginess in the essay that pretty much disqualifies the rest of the piece as serious commentary.
Edited to say: Geeze, step away for a few to get work done and suddenly I’m 140 posts behind!
les
@Zifnab:
All well and good, sonny; but into the hoosegow with you. A driver’s license is not evidence, far less proof, of nationality.
You better have a passport if you plan to visit Arizona.
b-psycho
@Turbulence: That wasn’t to defend Larison’s association with any of the groups mentioned. Just thought it was turning from “sympathy for Confederacy = racist nutjobbery” to “sympathy for ANY secession = racist nutjobbery”. That’s all.
les
@Turbulence:
Turbulence pulls this:
re: League of the South.
That well explains Larison’s loyalty, by itself. He may not be racist–although I don’t imagine they make him too uncomfortable–but he’s definitely a full blown authoritarian theocrat. He thinks people should live decentralized/pastoral lives, accept dogma uncritically and unthinkingly from religious authorities (the Orthodox Church pretty well settled anything of importance to the proles back in the 1300’s, doncha know) and let their (intellectual/social) betters worry about those pesky big picture issues. I get the sense that the last human society he really approved of was Russia under the Czars, although apparently the antebellum South was an acceptable version.
Comrade Dread
No, if Batman were to fight Mace, the universe could not contain the awesome badassery and would collapse into itself.
Hence Batman and Mace would win against the Universe.
Amanda in the South Bay
The real mystery is why people think Larison is some sort of principled, intellectually honest conservative. He’s a religious nutwad, just not of the in your face conservative Protestant type, whose problems with the mainstream conservative movement tend to be latched onto by liberals who are ignorant of his mainstream paleoconservatism.
Left Wing Bloggers Larison Man Crush indeed.
matoko_chan
@Randy P: Gould is not a geneticist…he is sort of an emo-populist.
punctuated equilibrium? plz….
I don’t read him.
well, since I seriously don’t want to reread the Bellcurve or any tedious rebuttal from non-mathematicians (slate) and pseudo-scientists (gould), ill just let DougJ cling to his epistemiolgy.
Just wait for the first text on SBH(social brain hypothesis) though, guyz….
You are in for the intellectual mauling of your sheltered lives.
Gunner Billy K
@Comrade Dread:
Then it’s settled. And probably the first nerd argument to involve Batman and Star Wars to ever come to a conclusion.
matoko_chan
haha, yeah that reminds me of one my favorite Sailer quotes of all time….at TAS.
he referred to the Beverly Hills Chihuahua-ization of America.
classic.
les
@matoko_chan:
And what were your credentials again–intelligent design theorist? You can’t be bothered to read Gould–paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science–because you think the racist math is more elegant, or you’ve disproved punctuated equilibrium in your backyard, or it troubles you to be contradicted? You’re not making loads of sense on this, unlike much other stuff you post. You actually think the Bell Curve represents good science?
Mnemosyne
@matoko_chan:
So pointing out the fact that Murray and Herrnstein screwed up their own numbers by vastly overestimating the heritability of IQ is useless because their numbers add up as long as you make the same statistical mistakes that they did?
I’m sure that if you use their bogus 60 percent number, you can make their numbers add up. When you use the actual number and not their made-up, seat-of-the-pants guess, not so much. Numbers are funny that way. I think the old computer science expression is, “Garbage in, garbage out.”
Bnut
@Gunner Billy K:
Ok, on to the windows/mac/linux debate, lol.
SectarianSofa
@matoko_chan:
Reminds me of the episode where both Mace Windu and Jesus Superflash kick your ass for acting retarded, for too long, with the wrong people. Also, the brown people called, and they want the genes you borrowed back. Your sorry ass doesn’t fit in them any more, and you’re embarassing your African ancestors. (Yes, I’m assuming some African diaspora action, but who knows. Whatever you say Murray says instead is fine, instead, since the funny part is still funny.)
Also, nutbag, I think you’re mixing up epistemology and semiology.
matoko_chan
/yawn
look, its an old book, I haven’t even seen it cited in ages.
as i recall, Murray used some established analysis and test to prove statistically significant between group differences in IQ….i would have to go back and read stuff im not interested in about narrow/wide heritability in a paper that isn’t published yet.
no thanx.
I do not have to either respect or read Gould, punctuated equilibrium is crapology and he is a pseudoscientist IMHO.
IQ may be slightly more plastic than people thought 20 years ago….but the bellcurve of IQ is real.
It is a gaussian distribution characterized by a mean and standard deviation…… generated empirical data gleaned from sampling populations of individuals.
Murrays conclusions on his hypothesis tests are not == (identically equal to) the bellcurve of IQ.
And actually sectariansofa, i have been kicking tea party jesus’ ass at TAS all week, you should drop by.
;)
Mike Furlan
RE: Bell Curve
If you want to say “Black people are stupid and are stupid because they are Black.” you must first define not just “stupid” but “Black.” And because “Black” is twice as important to your case, you really, really have to be clear about what “Black” is.
But Murry didn’t care to prove a scientific argument, he found that is was more profitable to merely put racial slurs on the same page with unrelated statistics.”
Really, is our President half “Black” and so only half “stupid”?
Did his “White” part cancel out the “stupid?”
If Michelle is 100% stupid so then are the kids 75% stupid?
Mike Furlan
RE:Daniel Larison
Daniel Larisonand his white supremacy is something like a provocatively dressed woman.
She is dressed that way, not to attract your attention, but some other guy you probably don’t even know. And, if you comment on how “hot” you find her attire, she’ll be insulted and might even slap you.
Daniel Larison’s kooky views are aimed at a select few, and as was stated earlier, we should just shut up about them.
Dean Wormer
@matoko_chan: Sorry, I had Stephen J. Gould for freshman core curriculum. I listened to Stephen J. Gould as he parsed his cancer diagnosis for undergraduates’ edification. And you sir, are not fit to hold a candle thereto.
Such as.
The Operative
I can’t believe how pathetically specious most of these anti-Larison comments are. None of you are even pointing to instances where Larison has said anything offensive or pernicious, you’re simply engaging in the same “x-by-association” games that I imagine many of you would decry if they were levied toward favorable politicians. By the inept rationale being employed in both DougJ’s post and many of yours, John Cole would be a fan of The Bell Curve because Andrew Sullivan (who’s on his blogroll, and who he’s linked favorably!) is.
There’s nothing wrong with calling out racism when it’s demonstrated and when it’s agreed with, but calling someone a racist because they’ve linked to people who are racist is just a witch hunt desperately searching for a witch. If you want to discredit a blogger or a writer, discredit their arguments. If you can’t do that, why should I heed disparaging distractions like racism charges without concrete demonstrations of racism? Or are you going to argue that linking someone you think is a racist is, in itself, racist?
A word that seems to be strangely missing from conversations about the secretly racist past of Larison and others is “wrong”. Which is all Larison is. When Larison calls Lincoln the aggressor in the Civil War, what in the world is so difficult about calling him “incorrect”, explaining how he’s incorrect and leaving it at that? There’s nothing racist about that opinion, and these efforts at overreaching to project an odiousness that isn’t in the text are tedious to plow through. It’s not a valid dismissal of Larison or his views, it’s just a pitiful effort to slander without even providing the proof required to give take grave charges of “racism” seriously.
And I’m sorry, DougJ, but while this post could have served to address an interesting topic, and led to some tangentially amusing comments, the post itself is just shoddy. For no reason I can fathom, you’re implying racism by implication (via claiming support for white supremacists) on a basis that’s equally as flimsy as some of these comments against Larison, and you change goalposts mid-post in an effort to do it. What you seem to be implying is that writers aren’t responsible for what they say (because that would make sense), they’re responsible for all of the opinions of the people they link, no matter if the links in question have nothing to do with the things you find objectionable about the person they linked. While I only did a cursory skimming of Douthat’s posts, everything he linked from Sailer had absolutely nothing to do with Sailer’s or Douthat’s views on race, and the implication that he’s racist or pro-white supremacist despite not saying, doing or linking anything overtly racist or pro-white supremacist is shamefully sloppy. How is this a fair aspersion? And if that’s not an accurate summation of your Douthat accusation, what was your point?
You seem to be demanding a weird kind of purity test that’s beyond the typical standards of intellectual honesty and veering toward being needlessly politically correct. Blogging is essentially an exchange of ideas and opinions. If you see an opinion you agree with – even from a disagreeable party – most bloggers typically post it, comment on it or expound on it. If you find the writings of disagreeable people enjoyable to some extent, blogging etiquette dictates that you place them on your blogroll.
They’re not responsible for every comment ever made by the person they’re commenting on, nor should they be expected to be. Why does your post proceed under the presumption that they are? And why do you blithely ignore the contexts of your links in an effort to paint Douthat as some kind of white supremacist supporter (when you only had one real shred of evidence for the assertion)? And what in the world does Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan have to do with it?
No one has to answer to your horribly rendered charge, and your argument is so undeniably weak, I don’t see why they should. It’s silly to think they’re responsible for the opinions of other writers, and I find it difficult to believe that you’re so dense that you can’t separate the arguments they’re making from the arguments they’re not.
If you want to call out racism and demonstrate moderate, intellectually honest Republican/conservative support for white supremacy, surely you can be kind enough to cite your typically unsourced generalizations with something approaching evidence. Most of what you cited doesn’t qualify. And if you’re going to broaden that critique to include more than the half a dozen people you named, you should come with a little more evidence than just those people. The only person responsible for Steve Sailer’s writings is – shock – Steve Sailer. Your entire case falls apart once you grasp that fact.
You’re expecting us to doubt and demonize some of these people based on what you think they think instead of by articulations of what they actually think. It’s unsurprising that many of the commenters followed this idiotic line of thinking with Larison.
Mnemosyne
@matoko_chan:
Your recall is incorrect but since, as you said, you don’t want to have to bother to check, why are you even arguing in Murray’s favor? The book has been debunked enough times from enough different angles that there’s no benefit of the doubt left for him.
Mnemosyne
@The Operative:
So when Douthat said, “….Will Saletan bravely attempts a summary of the emerging scientific consensus on racial differences in intelligence, another issue where the left doesn’t much care for what science has to say,” while simultaneously linking to Sailer, that wasn’t support for Sailer’s racist claims? Douthat just happened to accidentally link to a guy who’s primarily known for claiming that black people are inherently stupid to back up Douthat’s “scientific” claim that black people are inherently stupid?
Pretty weak tea, my friend.
Hob
To all the people trying to argue with matoko_chan, I suggest that you Google a few of his or her recent postings here and re-evaluate the likelihood of an intelligible response or any acknowledgement of error. I think it may be pie time.
The Operative
What DougJ said: “But here’s something striking: when he was at the Atlantic, Ross Douthat linked to Steve Sailer at least eight times (here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here)”
What I said: “They’re not responsible for every comment ever made by the person they’re commenting on, nor should they be expected to be. Why does your post proceed under the presumption that they are? And why do you blithely ignore the contexts of your links in an effort to paint Douthat as some kind of white supremacist supporter (when you only had one real shred of evidence for the assertion)?”
Congratulations. You found the one real shred of evidence I directly referenced. How about you find a similar shred for the eight “here’s” that are supposed to be so damning for Douthat.
Mnemosyne
@The Operative:
How about the very next one? You did follow the link to the Sailer piece, right? It features gems like these:
—
—
(All italics above are mine.)
But I guess it was just a total co-inkydink that Douthat chose to link to an article by Sailer that very specifically criticizes Obama on racial grounds to illustrate his own point. I mean, it’s not like Douthat would have actually read the article before he linked to it as being supportive of his argument, right?
Mnemosyne
@The Operative:
Here’s a little nugget from Link #2 that Douthat found persuasive enough that he used it as a quote in his post, not just a link:
Hmm. A guy who strongly supports the theories of The Bell Curve about the genetic inferiority of non-whites says “families matter.” Hmm. Gosh, it’s just so mysterious what he must mean by that. There’s no possible way we could ever puzzle it out.
SectarianSofa
@Hob:
Since I don’t know what matoko-chan refers to, and it reminds me of 4chan, I just assumed from the get-go that non-seriousness (up to, and probably including, trolling) was in effect. While my premise is undoubtedly wrong, the conclusion seems congruent with what you suggest.
Mnemosyne
@The Operative:
Here’s a gem from Linky #3:
Since the Sailer article has mysteriously disappeared from the web, I suppose we’ll put that as a point in your column since Douthat is not specific about what exactly he disagrees with in Sailer’s assessment of Obama.
Salt and freshly ground black people
Can’t seem to edit my previous comment – it’s a Guardian blogpost not a full-fledged article.
The Operative
Mnempsyne, I don’t think you’re understanding my argument. Here’s what would make your counterargument more pertinent: where is the racism in the second link, or the propelling of anything approaching white supremacy? You speak of racism as though it’s a disease you can catch from interacting or directly quoting racists. It doesn’t work like that.
Ross Douthat isn’t even quoting Steve Sailer. He’s quoting Bramwell’s quoting of Steve Sailer, in a post that’s largely arguing the validity of defining conservatism as a “movement” and whether it’s useful when it’s seen and operates as one. The sentence in question and the thought that Douthat derived from the sentence has nothing whatsoever to do with race. Let that sink in. Take a deep breath. And come back with something a little better, please.
It should also be noted that not only does he ignore Sailer’s comment, he disagrees with the quoted text to make a point that dissents against Bramwell’s larger point. Am I supposed to take that as racist?
Remember: the topic of discussion is whether Ross Douthat is racist and whether his linking of Sailer is proof that he’s a racist (which he didn’t do in link 2, coincidentally). Sailer’s racism is accounted for, what I want more solid proof of is whether the linking of Sailer is de facto racist and how it’s arguable as such. In the contexts he’s been linked (save the one which I already accounted for), I’ve seen no evidence of that. Point me in a different direction.
The Operative
“Since the Sailer article has mysteriously disappeared from the web, I suppose we’ll put that as a point in your column since Douthat is not specific about what exactly he disagrees with in Sailer’s assessment of Obama.”
And even if it were specific, the sentence itself is neither racist or white supremacist. It’s an extrapolation of Obama’s personality based on assessments of his writing and observations of him as a political figure. Linking a racist doesn’t make the comment that Douthat wrote racist. It’s wrong and silly, but if these were the only charges levied toward Douthat, neither of us would be here right now.
Turbulence
The Operative, I’m really confused as to why someone who wasn’t a racist would join an organization that publicly condemns interracial relationships. I’m confused as to how a non-racist would then boast about his membership in the organization, an organization that openly calls for theocracy in America. Perhaps you can explain?
I’m sorry, I know you were busy burning down a strawman about how the only issue with Larison is a single link from his blog. But if you want to do more than troll, you should read some of the substantiative criticisms of him on this thread and, you know, try to address them rather than pretend like they don’t exist.
If you think like boasting about membership in the League of the South, with their condemnations of interracial dating and secular government, is great, then I’m curious: is there any organization whose membership Larison could boast about that would be a problem? I mean, if he boasted about being a Klan member, would that be OK with you too? Is there really no line whatsoever?
Little Dreamer
@John Cole:
I’m so glad to see that something is over the line for you, considering that you allow people on this site to call an entire state’s population human garbage (no, I guess there are no good Arizonans anymore) and don’t seem to have any problem with someone suggesting that 3 million people in Phoenix go without water.
Congratulations John Cole, you now have the fine distinction of owning a blog where everyone thinks it’s okay to kill 3 million people.
I hope you are happy with the result.
You suck!
matoko_chan
The bellcurve of IQ is NOT the same as Murrays book of the same title.
you people seem very confused.
I don’t have to like Gould, i like Atran and Pinker.
it is personal choice.
I get to do that, and I can read for myself and I don’t need you people scolding me about how great Gould is or how bad Murray’s book is.
I think Gould sukks.
Its a free country.
And Murrays work on between group differences is at least dated, and I suppose could be wrong….but I don’t personally care enough to research it.
You could quote me whatever test and ED he used, and say bam! look here! there is no significant between group differences, and I’d be okfine with that.
That would be scientific PROOF ….it would invalidate Murray’s hypothesis of between group differences.
Its all about the math.
Turbulence
@matoko_chan:
Are you talking about Steve Pinker? When I was at MIT, he was considered a huge joke. I knew dozens of people in the cog sci dept who complained about how much time and effort they had to expend deprogramming students who had gone through his intro class and learned all manner of things that just weren’t so.
SectarianSofa
@Turbulence:
They were just jealous of his hair.
KRK
@Little Dreamer:
You are just hilarious.
“People” = Wile E. Quixote at 2:42 a.m. in comment #457 on a thread that was by then the 5th one down the page. How could John have missed it? Oh, yeah, and your partner in crime said today to another commenter: “that person and I have been involved in what could be described as a feud for quite a long time. It really isn’t related to this topic. I wouldn’t draw any particular conclusions from it.”
I love how you go from “someone” to “everyone” in the space of a single sentence. I also love how this “suggestion” in a Balloon Juice comment thread is to be taken literally (Hi, Joe!) as a desire to kill Phoenicians. Particularly when last night you were all “OMG, you guys, just because I said ‘everyone’ doesn’t mean literally ‘everyone.'”
The Operative
“The Operative, I’m really confused as to why someone who wasn’t a racist would join an organization that publicly condemns interracial relationships. I’m confused as to how a non-racist would then boast about his membership in the organization, an organization that openly calls for theocracy in America. Perhaps you can explain?”
And in attempting to address my criticism, you’re engaging in the very same thing I decried in my original post – which was the assertion of racism by association, not by actual demonstrations of racism. Are Catholics anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-modernity and pro-pedophile apologists just because they belong to an organization whose hierarchy advocates those positions? No. Are Democrats unquestioningly pro-Whatever-Israel-Wants, pro-FISA, pro-Patriot Act, pro-Afghanistan War, and pro-“looking forward, not looking back” with respect to Bush, just because their parties leadership advocates and voted for those positions? No. If you can simultaneously grasp these two concepts, then you can grasp how someone can belong to an organization without endorsing the entirety of said organizations beliefs.
You’re applying the motivations and opinions of an organization to Larison, when he has – to my knowledge – never stated anything remotely arguable as racist, or anything that’s in line with the views you seem to so righteously object to. If you want to call Larison – who, might I remind you, is an individual and not an organization – a racist then let’s have it. Where’s the racism from him? Because until you find it, your positions are as empty as I’ve characterized them, and any continued insistence on this point has gone from tedious to willfully obtuse.
And I believe I’ve substantively addressed the tenor of most of the criticisms I’ve read. If you think my analysis missed a particularly trenchant one, by all means show me and I’ll respond. But most of this relies on spurious ad hominem and a logical foundation that persists on falling short of the challenge I outlined in my original post: if you have examples of racism from the parties you’re implying are racist, post them. Associating with racists, hanging around racists, citing racists on blog posts about topics that have nothing to do with race is not, in itself, racist. Arguing otherwise is not only disingenuous, it’s argumentation by smear.
I’m sure there’s a popular example at some point, at some place that received the exact opposite reaction for the exact same approach taken in some of these posts. Oh, yes. William Ayers. I trust you can connect the logical dots and see the weakness of your argument once you do.
Turbulence
The Operative, by your “reasoning”, a man who boasts of his membership in the KKK is not a racist provided he never says racist things in public, outside of Klan meetings, when he’s not wearing a white sheet. That conclusion is…bizarre. And absurd. Don’t you agree?
It is true that one cannot reliably infer individual beliefs from membership in extremely large, diverse organizations like the Catholic church or the Democratic party, but that does not hold when considering small tightly focused organizations. The specificity of the conclusions we can draw from group membership are related to the size of the group and the cohesiveness of its members. The Dem party is very large and not terribly cohesive in that all sorts of people who disagree on many issues call themselves Dems. League of the South is tiny and very cohesive: the only people who join are those who agree with the group’s basic goals: theocracy and “European cultural hegemony.”
Larison boasts of his membership in an organization dedicated to recreating the racial hierarchy of the ante-bellum South. He has said that he sees absolutely nothing for him to apologize regarding his membership. If he thinks theocracy and “European cultural hegemony” don’t require an apology, then we have to assume that he likes those things. This isn’t rocket science.
Look, I’ve written repeatedly that I don’t care who Larison’s friends and family are or what they believe. But joining an organization is different. So all this talk about Ayers is utterly irrelevant.
Finally, you really need an editor. I’ve never seen someone who was so long winded to such ill effect. Your unwillingness to treat your verbal diarrhea indicates a contempt for your readers.
The Operative
“The Opponent, by your “reasoning”, a man who boasts of his membership in the KKK is not a racist provided he never says racist things in public, outside of Klan meetings, when he’s not wearing a white sheet. That conclusion is…bizarre. And absurd. Don’t you agree?”
By my logic, a person can’t be reliably painted as a “racist” in such an absolutist sense without saying something racist, doing something racist and exhibiting racist behavior. The difference – as I see it – between the KKK and the League of the South is that the former is entirely known and based on of their views on race, whereas the latter is based on their views of the very principles Larison defended his membership on – secession, states rights (particularly with regard to Southern independence), anti-Civil War views, disagreeance with Lincoln’s approach, etc, etc.
If you’d simply concede that these were wrong, ahistorical and stupid, I would entirely agree with you. But you’re not. You’re saying it’s racist without the slightest hint of evidence that race is his motivation or that he subscribes to their views on race. Your use of that unrelated comparison is simply an effort to avoid what I thought was a fair standard: if you think he’s racist, prove it. You haven’t. And you will continue to tap dance around my request with analogies, rhetorical strawman and innuendo because you can’t.
So, again, your claim is that Larison is a racist. Where is his racism?
Turbulence
The Operative, did you not read my comment where I provided more data on the League of the South? Because I’m pretty sure that taking affirmative action to join, and then boasting of membership in an organization devoted to overthrowing democratically elected government with a theocracy controlled by a “European cultural hegemony” is racist behavior.
The Operative
Yes, and that still tells me absolutely nothing about Larison. The entirety of my problem with your consistent citing of this is that it’s speculatory. The only thing we know about Larison’s association with – and reasons for associating with – the League of the South is, well, he’s a member! You’re saying that proving that Michael Hill is racist works as proof that Daniel Larison is racist. That’s fundamentally weak reasoning, and that’s – as I’ve exhaustively outlined – not how it works.
Based on the information we have about him, and years of blogging about various subjects, the best you can conjure is still just a sentence admitting membership to a secessionist, borderline treasonous organization for reasons that did not cite and seemed to have nothing to do with race. You can continue to repeat SPLC’s assessment and it still won’t change the fact that you absolutely refuse to produce a single sentence from Larison that even implies the slightest hint of racism. I’ll even lower the standard. Do you have proof that Larison agrees with those Michael Hill quotes?
Given his lack of shyness about holding unpopular opinions, it’s difficult to believe that Larison has these outstandingly racist views without ever making so much as a passing mention of them in a way that supports your assumption. This is growing tiresome, and my criterion is amazingly simple. If you can’t match it with your next response, I’ll have nothing left to contribute beyond my apologies for not having as much faith in my psychic prowess. Just as a reminder, here’s Larison in his own words:
“Kirchick’s “discovery” that I have belonged to the League of the South for many years will come, I expect, as no surprise to anyone who has been reading this blog for very long. On my sidebar are links to the League of the South’s webpage and its blog, I have written several times for Chronicles, which also links to the League’s site, and I have repeatedly defended the principles of secession, decentralism and constitutionalism that I regard as being an inseparable part of the political tradition of the Antifederalists, Jeffersonians and the Confederacy. I still belong to the League, but I am not active in the group. My statements about Lincoln over the years should have left no one in any confusion about my views of the War or its negative effects on the Republic.
…
I don’t consider my membership or my views on the War to be shameful or requiring any apology. I don’t defend the legacy of the man who ushered in a destructive, illegal war that killed hundreds of thousands. It does take a certain fanatical mindset to see mass destruction and violence as the correct solutions to morally repugnant institutions, and let me be clear that I believe slavery was such a morally repugnant institution. I reject the mentality that says that the ends justify the means, and that the slaughter of other people is acceptable for the sake of ideology and centralising power.”
And the racism in his rationale is…where?
matoko_chan
look….
DougJ, the bellcurve of IQ is NOT THE SAME as Murray’s book.
The bell curve of IQ is a FACT and is not equivalent to w/e conclusions Murray claims.
If you want to disprove between group differences in IQ in Murray’s thesis, show me the math.
Anecdotal data and appeals to authority are not valid statistical tools.
otherwise, Science-nazis please just step on.
Mike Furlan
@matoko_chan:
If you think your “groups” are genetically distinct, but are merely socially distinct, then you are making an entirely different point than claimed.
There is no genetic data in the book.
matoko_chan
I object.
Is this liberal epistemic closure?
Homo sapiens sapiens IQ conforms to a “normal” or gaussian distribution. Like this.
There is A LOT of scientific evidence for that.
It seems to me….although this is unclear….that you, DougJ, object to the thesis Murray presents in his book……that there are between group differences in IQ.
I am just saying…..show me the math.
Don’t tell me to read shit, or give me anecdotal data, or adhom Murray or Sailer.
idc.
show me the math….give me a link, quote me a paragraph, ideally give me an inequality or a mathematical equation or statistics.
Do you believe Murrays work on hispanics and caucasions and asians is also invalid? Show me that too.
Just link me the math.
Otherwise I don’t see a see a nanoparticle of difference between you and the IDT-assclowns at the discovery institute like Behe and Berlinski.
matoko_chan
@Mike Furlan:
well…that is a falsehood.
it seems to me you are complaining about ED (experimental design).
i believe the racial demographics self-identified.
next?
matoko_chan
You know what the problem is?
Human equality is a liberal sacred cow.
You honestly want to believe that environment trumps heredity.
Well it doesn’t.
Otherwise people with functional retardation (below 70% on the bellcurve) could be taught to be rocket scientists.
IQ is not that plastic.
The ancients knew it.
So did Jefferson.
matoko_chan
DougJ, you are just like the teatards.
You don’t like that the right uses Murrays work to bolster their white supremacy narrative, so you try to discredit the scientists and the science.
You are isomorphic with what you most despise.
Mike Furlan
@matoko_chan:
Like I said, there is no genetic data in the book.
Shall we ask you to “self identify” your blood type before a transfusion without ever having been tested?
twiffer
@matoko_chan: curious as to why your dislike of punctuated equilibrium theory turns gould into a “pseudo-scientist”. it doesn’t exclude gradual processes; in fact it works in tangent with them. all it does is explain how rapid speciation might occur after a long period of stability.
evolution is not a single process. nor does attempting to convey complex processes in a way that is accessible to the layperson turn one into a “pseudo-scientist”.
matoko_chan
@Mike Furlan: racial and other demographic selfidentification is HERITABLE data.
There are four paths of heredity…..genetic, epigenetic, behavioral and symbolic….and those components are nonseparable, having interactions.
Blacks self-identify as african americans with “one drop”, the old one drop rule of the confederacy.
That is also an information rich variable.
Again, you seem to object to Murrays experimental design.
Certainly it would have been more rigorous to have made a chromosome analysis of each respondent, but economically nonfeasible.
I am interested…do you also object to Murrays finding of between group variance between asians and caucs, and hispanic-caucs and non-hispanic caucs?
Those are all self-identified parameters.
matoko_chan
@twiffer: it is MY OPINION and this is a free country and again, science-nazis that enforce epistemic closure are apparently not the sole provenance of the right.
bsr
Batman wins, no question.
Bob Fett is not even a challenge. This pathetic boob let a blind Han solo, his dog (ok ok it was a wookie) , and an untrained, master-less Padawan ( I think his name was Luke) defeat him. ‘Nuff Said.
As for the Jedi, remember the movies set in stone that their force powers are based on a scientifically observable and therefore scientifically modifiable occurrence. If Batman has some time to study it, he will not only counter force powers, he would probably figure out how to replicate them for himself. Batman would have no trouble defeating not just one Jedi, but IMO Multiple Jedi at once. Once he figures out how to replicate or counter their powers (and he always does, we’re talking intellect in the range of Doctor Doom and Reed Richards), they are just barely trained amateurs with fancy swords.
balzar
@Michael:
Why do you let them chase you out like that.??
sherifffruitfly
It’s perfectly fine to be racist in America, just so long as you aren’t *too* explicit about it, forcing the look-the-other-way-ers to actually acknowledge it.
pseudonymous in nc
Popeye the Racist Man is clever: his basic schtick is never to make “judgements” about his “scientific” findings.
The heavy implication, though. is that blacks need to be treated like infants, or the developmentally disabled, or intelligent primates. The Sailerites who don’t possess Popeye’s capacity to stay “respectable” by self-censorship make that explicit.
Mnemosyne
I have a feeling that The Operative is one of those people who thinks that the Civil War was not fought because of slavery. It was all about admitting new states to the Union (as slave states or free states), states’ rights (to own slaves and force other states to return runaway slaves to them), and an economic clash (between states with free workers and states that depended on slave labor).
Slavery was the underlying cause of every conflict that precipitated the Civil War. Every. single. one. Anyone who pretends that “states’ rights” meant anything other than “a state’s right to have slaves” needs to re-read the actual secession statements from the Confederate states.
Either Larison is ignorant of these secession statements — Texas’ specifically says, “[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery— the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits– a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time” (emphasis mine) — or he has read them and doesn’t care that the Lost Cause he supports is defined by the desire of the Confederate states to keep African-descended slaves.
So which is it, Operative? Is Larison ignorant of the history that he claims to know well or is he deliberately downplaying the very issue that the Confederate states themselves said was their primary reason for seceding because he knows it makes him look bad to support “patriots” who only seceded so they could continue keeping other human beings as slaves?
W. Kiernan
matoko_chan: Homo sapiens sapiens IQ conforms to a “normal” or gaussian distribution.
Of course it does. That’s just a tautology; it’s how IQ is defined. You start with any collection of various test scores and you can assign an IQ-like value to each test score. For that matter, you can do the same thing with any collection of various numbers, for example the sum of the digits on one’s car’s license plate. The median score gets an “IQ” of “100”; one standard deviation down is “85” and one standard deviation up is “115”; two standard deviations up or down get labeled “130” and “70”, and so on.
Now take those “IQ” values and plot them out in a bar chart, where the height of this bar is the number of samples with an “IQ” value between 85.0 and 85.99999, this next bar is the number of samples with “IQ” between 86.0 and 86.99999, and so on. Lo and behold, the famous bell-shaped curve. Wow, no kidding! The Gaussian distribution appears in the “IQ” data because you translated the test scores into “IQ” scores according to the Gaussian distribution in the first place!
Apprentice to Darth Holden
On Dr. Doom and the Silver Surfer:
Shortly after Galactus originally exiled the Surfer to Earth, for his alliance with the Fantastic Four in thwarting Galactus’ attempt at turning the Earth into a mid-morning snack, Doom lured the Surfer to his Latverian digs, and while the Surfer was gazing with longing at an image of the Cosmos that Doom procured with his orbiting satellite, Doom used a device to drain the Surfer’s powers and transfer them to himself.
Eventually the FF defeated the Surfer’s-Powers-enhanced-Doom by causing Doom to fly too high, running into the enprisonment barrier established by Galactus to keep the Surfer stuck on Earth. This collison nullified the effect of Doom’s device, returning the power to the Surfer and ending, for a while, the threat of Doom, who of course would come back a dozen or so issues later with yet another fiendish plot to get revenge on Reed Richards and rule the Earth.
Dick Hertz
@matoko_chan: You can do all the statistical manipulation in the world you like; but if your instrument doesn’t measure what it purports to measure your statistics are pointless or obfuscatory.
Yan Shen
Actually W Kernan, the fact that IQ scores are Gaussian isn’t a tautology or how IQ is defined. If you gave everyone an IQ test and everyone scored exactly the same, the clearly the distribution wouldn’t be normal, regardless of how you wanted to convert the raw score into an IQ score. The raw scores have to be normally distributed in the first place.
Imagine I give everyone an IQ test where everyone scores a raw score of 50. Clearly I can redefine that to correlate to an IQ of 100 and I wouldn’t have a normal distribution. You seem to miss the crucial point that the raw scores themselves would have to be more or less normally distributed to begin with. Take for example everyone’s wealth.
There are certain distributions which aren’t normal, like for instance wealth, which follows more or less a power law distribution.
Yan Shen
I just realized you could edit comments…
Pedant
“If you gave everyone an IQ test and everyone scored exactly the same, the clearly the distribution wouldn’t be normal, regardless of how you wanted to convert the raw score into an IQ score.”
That’s only because a zero variance makes nonsense of the pdf. You can’t divide by zero, but you can certainly divide by 0.001. If everyone scored between 99.999 and 100.001 on all tests, there would be no problem in cooking up a normal distribution from a battery of tests. The resulting score would measure “g” i.e. how good the subjects were at taking the tests – the tautology on which the whole infantile pseudoscience rests.
Yan Shen
You seem to miss the point Pedant that the original raw scores themselves follow a set distribution. If you want to then convert those raw scores to a different scale, you’re not going to change the underlying nature of the distribution itself, just the nominal values. If you give everyone in society an IQ test, the raw scores may or may not be normally distributed. If you actually alter the shape of the underlying distribution when you convert your data from a raw score to some other scale, what you’ve done is distort the data. In other words, if my original raw scores follow a power law distribution, if I convert the data and somehow end up with a normal distribution, I’ve actually distorted my original data. Statisticians have found that certain attributes like IQ or height more or less follow a Gaussian distribution. Other attributes such as wealth for instance, tend to follow a power law distribution.
Pedant
“You seem to miss the point Pedant that the original raw scores themselves follow a set distribution.”
I’m happy to assume that is so. Suppose the raw scores on every test item in a reasonably large battery of tests are uniformly distributed on the interval [99.99, 100.01]. Also, assume that the covariance between scores on any pair of test items is positive. The subjects’ weighted average scores won’t be uniformly distributed. The distribution will be approximately normal.
digitusmedius
Have there been any studies on the genetic defect in [some] white people which seems to make them spend so much time manufacturing “evidence” that they’re intellectually (subst. morally, or any other “virtue”) superior to other races?
David Ehrenstein
What’s especially amusing re Sully’s racism is that he included the tag “Brothers Welcome” on his “Barebackcity.com” profile. In other words he enjoys getting fucked by “lesser” mortals.
liberal
@Yan Shen:
That’s silly. Height is a physical measurement. Wealth is an economic measurement. The raw scores, on the other hand, are scores from tests cooked up by psychometricians.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but they’re not like physical or economic measurements.
liberal
@matoko_chan:
urban legend
I wonder how many of these assholes would drop in to defend their arguments at, say, Howard University.
Alex
Why the book The Bell Curve is completely wrong:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/topics/curveball.html