The Dean of the Harvard Law School who condemned law student Stephanie Grace's private email displaying openmindedness on the heritability of IQ differences is not the same person as the HLS Dean nominated by Obama to the Supreme Court yesterday -- Martha Minow was Elena Kagan's replacement as Dean when Kagan became Obama's Solicitor General.
It's hard to imagine, though, Dean Kagan acting less weaselly about IQgate than Dean Minow did. A Senator should ask Kagan what she thought of her successor's actions (although I doubt that will happen, since the growing tradition is to make Supreme Court nomination hearings as soporific for the public as possible).
But, where do such people as Elena Kagan come from?
Why, in her case, from a public grade school and high school!
Of course, it's a rather different kind of public school, one that you have to pass an I.Q. test to get into when you are in nursery school. From the NYT:
Tenth graders at Hunter College High School in Manhattan had a substitute teacher in their American history class on Monday for an unusual reason: Their regular teacher, Irving Kagan, was in Washington, watching his sister, Elena, accept President Obama’s nomination for a seat on the Supreme Court.
Both siblings attended Hunter, and Mr. Kagan returned to be a social studies teacher there. Their mother, Gloria, taught for years at the affiliated elementary school. So it was with a special sense of pride that students and teachers in the schools on East 94th Street welcomed the news that Ms. Kagan, the nation’s solicitor general, had risen even higher on the school’s long list of notable alumni.
Hunter College High School is highly unusual among public schools in New York City. Affiliated with Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, the high school is publicly financed and managed, but not run by the city’s Department of Education.
To attend the elementary school, children must excel on an I.Q. test and in a class observation to win one of its coveted 50 kindergarten seats. The high school starts in the seventh grade, and attracts some of the brightest students from around the city. Cram schools have popped up to help students prepare for the combined math, reading and essay test required for admission.
For those who get in, the competition does not let up. Juniors and seniors fret over a phenomenon common to high-achieving schools: Among so many outstanding students, it is hard to distinguish oneself.
Dozens of seniors this year were National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalists. “It’s like embarrassing if you aren’t a National Merit winner,” said Joseph Pearl, 16. About a third of graduates go to Ivy League schools.
Do you ever get the impression that there is a certain conflict between what elites, such as Harvard Law School deans, say about IQ and what they really believe deep down? Perhaps the witch-burning fervor they display against heretics stems from their desire to cover up their own Doubts?
To be fair, screening for high IQ isn't inconsistent with Minnow's comments about the e-mail. Minnow didn't say IQ didn't exist, did she? She just said that blacks aren't genetically prone to be lower IQ. You can believe that, and rationalize the relative scarcity of high-IQ blacks, but pointing to "nurture" rather than "nature" explanations.
ReplyDeleteA better tack to take with the likes of Kagan and Minnow would be this: if you can rely on merit and intellect to select applicants to Hunter College High, why can't we do the same at the local fire department, hospital, etc.?
I wonder what portion of students at Hunter school are white, black, Asian, etc, and whether they use AA for admission.
ReplyDeletekind of public school, one that you have to pass an I.Q. test to get into when you are in nursery school.
ReplyDeleteWhy test so young? It's biased against late bloomers, and I'd bet they end up smarter on average than children with accelerated development. Is it so parents can send the kids to private schools without disruption if they don't get in.
I have a question for Ms. Kagan's hearing: The bar exam has a disparate impact on blacks and hispanics in every state. Should the exam be abolished?
I would like to point out that some minority group or some such is already whining that Ms. Kagan didn't hire enough minorities for tenure-track positions. That's a plus.
ReplyDeleteDid Obama set out to pick two single women? Did he think they were less likely to mellow, in fact were more likely to become radical as they got older?
ReplyDeleteOf course there's your write-up on Linda Gottfredson (10/25/05) and social impact of IQ. And before then, also:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton
and most controversially:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAszZr3SkEs
What's of paramount importance is ensuring a system that allows free speech even on the most unsettling of subject matters. Cheers.
A corollary to their suppressed HBD awareness is the tendency to equate lesser intelligence with inferiority. All parties in the HLS controversy exposed their elitism with the same Freudian slip.
ReplyDelete"Do you ever get the impression that there is a certain conflict between what elites, such as Harvard Law School deans, say about IQ and what they really believe deep down?"
ReplyDeleteI don't think you have to go very deep down to get to their honest opinions about IQ and race. The reason one doesn't wear that opinion on their sleeve is obvious: it's rude. It makes minorities feel inferior and creates an awkward tension between the races. I.Q. as a matter of public issue drives a wedge between the races. White Nationalist understand this and they exploit it--and if they believe what they say they do they should.
But why does a guy who believes in racial harmony more than racial homogeneity care so much about public figures speaking frankly about race and IQ?
Do you ever get the impression that there is a certain conflict between what HBD guys, like Steve Sailer, say about racial harmony and what they believe deep down?
Somebody should start a website devoted to collecting good, tough, and embarrassing questions that ought to be asked of Kagan during her confirmation hearings.
ReplyDeleteDo you ever get the impression that there is a certain conflict between what elites, such as Harvard Law School deans, say about IQ and what they really believe deep down? Perhaps the witch-burning fervor they display against heretics stems from their desire to cover up their own Doubts?
ReplyDeleteDo you ever get the idea that Christian fundies who reject science understand they're being hypocritical when they go to the doctor when they're sick?
Of course they don't. And neither do liberals question the tenants of liberalism. Steve is naive in a way. If you're in the top 1% of intelligence and 90% of people as smart as you believe something, for most people that's enough to be sure something is true. Only nerds like Steve worry about things like logical consistency, Occam's Razor and the like.
A few of the elite "get it" and keep their mouths shut. A few get it and convince themselves it's not that important and shouldn't change their position on any major issue. The vast majority are conformists who believe in biological racial equality as much as they believe the sky is blue.
Perhaps the witch-burning fervor they display against heretics stems from their desire to cover up their own Doubts?
ReplyDeleteNope, just ethnic warfare.
FWIW, you can get into Hunter HS without going to Hunter Elementary. A girl in my 6th grade class went to Hunter HS. (This was, of course, a gifted class.)
ReplyDeleteI have a question for Ms. Kagan's hearing: The bar exam has a disparate impact on blacks and hispanics in every state. Should the exam be abolished?
ReplyDeleteOr better yet: Is the bar exam unconstitutional?
"Perhaps the witch-burning fervor they display against heretics stems from their desire to cover up their own Doubts?"
ReplyDeletePerhaps? Maybe. But it also stems from the fact that affirmative action and set-asides can only be justified if disparity exists due to racism. What it really allows them to control is the middle class. Also, they need the minority vote - useful idiots - and so have to appear as their defenders. Reasons may vary, of course, depending on the liberal. But some of them, God bless 'em, actually believe that shit.
"I wonder what portion of students at Hunter school are white, black, Asian, etc, and whether they use AA for admission.
Blacks and Hispanics will certainly be underrepresented, but the real point of this form of de jure segregation isn't to keep your kids away from Vibrant Peoples. It's to make sure that the kids they attend school with, whatever their color, are intelligent and well-behaved.
New York seems to have a large number of these schools. Memphis City Schools had a magnet program (they called it an "optional program") at White Station H.S., which is in the Jewish section of East Memphis/Shady Grove. (Go to Google Maps and type "Memphis synagogue" to see how concentrated Memphis's Jewish community is. All the temples and synagogues are within about 2 miles of each other.)
Even though Memphis had mandatory busing, the effective result of the optional program was to segregate Jewish kids from black students who were bused in.
Thus Jews in Memphis got to continue being portrayed as good pro-civil rights liberals who didn't do the white flight to the County Schools like everyone else, while never actually having to experience genuine integration.
Sotomayor & Kagan have undergradute degrees from
ReplyDeletethe same Princeton department of history.
The world of "diversity" is often a very, very tiny circle ...
So did anything cross Dead Kagan's
ReplyDeletelips during the roasting of Larry
Summers?
Half Sigma had some thoughts on this:
ReplyDelete"People who are capable of using logic and reason to solve a complicated math problem, for some reason, shut down when an application of similar reasoning would cause one of their core beliefs to be proved wrong. In general, people are much more comfortable in adopting the belief of the majority rather than making up their own minds. And it doesn’t seem to matter how nonsensical the majority beliefs are.
At the conclusion of this essay, it’s appropriate to ask if this essay will convince anyone of anything? The answer is that it’s possible that someone sitting on the fence would be swayed over to the correct side, but for the most part, human beings are amazingly adept at ignoring logic and reason when it suits them. Among educated white people, the idea of racial equality has become a religion, and the whole point of religion is that it involves faith rather than science...."
http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/10/an-essay-on-rac.html
And in response to ad hominem attacks:
"But if I may psychoanalyze the people who make such attacks, they are doing so because the evidence in favor of a genetic explanation is so powerful that it creates cognitive dissonance, and the only way they have to work off the cognitive dissonance is to attack the messenger."
http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/11/response-to-com.html
Just remember, there's lies, damn lies, and finally stats - whichever way you want to slant 'em. Why is IQ so sensitive a subject matter: if one's weak, lifting weights can make ya stonger; if one's lower in aptitude, one's relegating to a lesser bandwidth of comprehension no matter what. It's a dicey discussion that brings up a lot of emotions - hence why so contentious.
ReplyDeleteFred said...
ReplyDeleteA better tack to take with the likes of Kagan and Minnow would be this: if you can rely on merit and intellect to select applicants to Hunter College High, why can't we do the same at the local fire department, hospital, etc.?
Their answer: Because merit and IQ are relevant in our world. But any idiot can become a firefighter or cop.
What Fred said.
ReplyDeleteNo liberal disbelieves in intelligence; in fact what they agitate for is precisely an absolute meritocracy predicated entirely on attributes like intelligence. They do hold that race is not a relevant distinction with respect to merit, and also deny that there is a real correlation between race and intelligence, much less a causation. Some liberals deny that the value 'IQ' is statistically meaningful, but this isn't the same as saying intelligence doesn't differ between people.
On the other hand, I think white elites really want to believe that IQ is not innate. They want to believe they made it on hard work and inner fortitude. Winning the genetic lottery doesn't have the same appeal.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as a sort of low income, not terribly successful member of the East Coast Ivy educated Ph.D. holding quasi-Jewish progressive intellectual type, I have the following explanation for why the cognitive elite go along with myths regarding racial equality in cognitive ability:
ReplyDeleteThey are as a rule extraordinarily busy working 15 hours a day, competing with other smarty-pants, raising their families, and when possible, shopping and decorating.
They have no time to reflect upon anything, especially depressing, pointless topics like underperforming minorities.
What is their motivation for questioning the conventional wisdom?
Being right won't stop them from being fired, blackballed, & disowned by their friends and colleagues.
The task of dismantling quotas, diversity, disparate impact, etc. is inconceivably daunting, and the result would just be even more dysfunctional and impoverished minority groups.
Elite belief in racial equality in intelligence is skin deep at best, simple pretense at worst.
99% of the professional elite would make the transition to regarding different racial differences in cognitive ability as biological givens without so much as a hiccup.
Most would be profoundly relieved at being able to drop the performance and speak frankly about these issues.
The current consensus is held together by terrorizing people with dire consequences if they break the censorship rules.
Psychoanalyzing the upper middle class is a waste of time in this regard:
that conform because it is necessary in order to enjoy the fruits of professional and social success in contemporary America.
I will stipulate that there's a great deal of barking, jabbering insanity in the upper middle class as a result:
the same people who will spend tens of thousands of dollars to adopt a Haitian child with an IQ around 70 would probably have an abortion before they would consciously bear a child with an IQ below 115 or so.
But for the most part, this is not about fanaticism or delusion, but instead about nothing more exciting than simple social conformity.
The reason one doesn't wear [their IQ] opinion on their sleeve is obvious: it's rude. It makes minorities feel inferior and creates an awkward tension between the races.
ReplyDeleteOur current mainstream mendacity has the same effect. Maybe a little non-rude honesty would be a step forward.
Nature vs. Nurture?
ReplyDeleteLOL.
Look at Montgomery County, Maryland and Fairfax County, Virginia. These two counties used to have the best public schools in the country. Now they have gone downhill. http://www.rgj.com/article/20100511/NEWS/5110354/1321/news/Nevada-candidate-gets-endorsement-from-controversial-source
And who might these poor performers be?
Christian fundamentalists do not reject science, they reject evolution. You can verify that for yourself by going to a site like The Institute for Creation Research (http://www.icr.org/). Their arguments against evolution are based both on scripture and science.
ReplyDeleteYou mean she might be a hypocrite? I don't believe it.
ReplyDelete@Rob
ReplyDelete"I have a question for Ms. Kagan's hearing: The bar exam has a disparate impact on blacks and hispanics in every state. Should the exam be abolished?"
Someone should have asked the "wise latina" this also.
BTW: I've looked at dozens of law firm web sites recently. All big firms tout diversity hiring. Among the things I wonder, is if non-diversity attorneys ask how diversity hiring negatively impacts them.
Rob - I enjoy reading your comments.
Please start your own blog. It would be great to read all your thoughts in one spot.
Continue commenting here, of course.
If we were an army and Steve is a General, you sir are an officer.
Hunter High's IQ testing seems so blatant. If it's good enough for Hunter, why isn't it good enough for fire departments (e.g. New Have, CT)?
ReplyDeleteSome schools use surrogate measurements.
Rollings Middle (Summerville, SC) is a public middle School of the Arts for grades 6-8.
Prospective students are tested in 5th grade for artistic abilities (music, dance, drama, visual art). I later saw this as a surrogate measure for mostly two-parent families who could afford to send their kids to lessons and did.
I heard 65%-75% of students were classified as gifted and talented.
The school's demographics were telling: (approx) 65% female, 85%+ white. The boy's basketball team was 100% white.
It's a great school; my kid attended.
Many school teachers from all over the district sent their kids there.
Steve Sailer said: "Do you ever get the impression that there is a certain conflict between what elites, such as Harvard Law School deans, say about IQ and what they really believe deep down?"
ReplyDeleteNo. I think liberal elites have a preternaturally well-developed ability to compartmentalize. They're like the mate who has extramarital affairs but sincerely claims to love his or her spouse.
And: "Perhaps the witch-burning fervor they display against heretics stems from their desire to cover up their own Doubts?"
No. If you accept my notion that modern liberalism is a form of narcissism, you know that liberals have no Doubts. Since narcissists are always right, whatever belief system they chose is always right, too. The witch-burning fervor they display is nothing more than the very real rage they feel at being confronted or opposed by anyone over anything.
Reading your blog is not only informative, it's a heck of a lot of fun. It's not too much to say that you've changed the way I look at the world. But you do seem to make the mistake that very bright people on the right make, that of assuming that those on the left arrived at their political views through a thought process. I maintain that leftists tend to be narcissistic at the very least and in many cases, are full-blown narcissists. They therefore have chose their belief system because they see it as an impregnable way to maintain their superiority by maintaining the moral high ground. Essentially the left is, as so much has been ever since the loathsome 60's, all about "feelings".
Thus when I hear or read someone asking why an obviously bright leftist thinks something really stupid, I just shake my head. However bright the elite has been in fooling and manuevering average people into accepting and paying for all this foolishness, their "reasons" for what they think have little or nothing at all to do with reason.
What is the name of Elena Kagan's lesbian partner?
ReplyDeleteKagan has said she's OK with hate speech laws. Wonder if this is going too far for her:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255264/Pupils-aged-hate-register-Teachers-log-playground-taunts-Government-database.html
OT:
ReplyDeleteCheck out this statistically illiterate (and/or deliberately misleading) madness from the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/nyregion/13frisk.html?hp
It's remarkably similar to pieces Steve criticized about imaginary minority lending "disparities". Blacks and Hispanics are stopped more often (in raw numbers) than whites, but once they are stopped they are about equally likely to be arrested - similar to minorities receiving fewer mortgages, but defaulting at the same rate. The article, of course, draws the absolutely counterfactual conclusion that the similar arrest rate indicates that thousands of blacks and hispanics are being stopped for no reason.
Another thing is it means they are out of touch. They think everyone is smart. They think everyone is diligent. They also do not know that you can live a good life in low income if you have some wisdom.
ReplyDeleteMore iSteve weirdness - a Jew who converted to Mormonism [and who is kinda/sorta related to Kitty Dukakis] wants to challenge Orrin Hatch.
ReplyDeleteSotomayor & Kagan have undergradute degrees from
ReplyDeletethe same Princeton department of history.
The world of "diversity" is often a very, very tiny circle ...
If Kagan is confirmed the Democrats wll have three women on the Supreme Court. One from Manhattan, one from Brooklyn, and one from the Bronx. It's a New York state of mind ...
In her statement to the Harvard Law School community, Dean Minow ought to have proclaimed that free speech on campus is very broad, that it is rooted in the freedom and equality of all human beings, and that its purpose is to protect the robust examination of ideas, including controversial ones, in order that the truth may emerge. She ought to have reminded students and faculty who cherish free inquiry that it is their responsibility to confront views that they deplore with better evidence and stronger arguments.
ReplyDeleteIf Dean Minow’s principle that hurtful opinions must go unspoken and unexamined were taken seriously and applied impartially, then law schools and universities would be obliged to close down the dispassionate investigation of an enormous range of important public issues, from the morality, law, and politics of abortion, affirmative action, and same-sex marriage to the causes of the financial crisis; from the efficiency and justice of health care reform to the rules governing the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of enemy combatants; from Middle East politics to immigration.
And that’s no way to run a law school or a university.
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
@ Ray Sawhill...I'm with you. Especially with the tough questions.
ReplyDelete"I think the reason why Jews like Martha Minow..."
ReplyDeleteIs she really Jewish? Her father's first name is Newton. I've never heard of a Jew named Newton.
Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com has a perceptive critique of Kagan (emphasizing her friendly attitude towards the Bush/Obama War on Terror and the curtailment of civil liberties justified in its name).
ReplyDeleteThis is like asking how certain Conservatives can believe that Jesus is the Son of God, even though the evidence is obvious that the New Testament was made up and that the Jesus described in there never even existed.
ReplyDelete"free speech on campus is very broad"
ReplyDeleteIt should have a very narrow core.
That core is the personal confrontation of the raw facts of contemporary science relevant to the issue. From that confrontation, one can impose varied values. There is no evidence of any such "two step" solution at work in this matter. It appears, rather, to be willful confusion molded into some shallow appearance of moral responsibility.
High IQ Disneyland.
Thanks, Rodney. Here I thought that blog-commenting was just screaming into the void. A modern version of Tibettan prayer flags.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think white elites really want to believe that IQ is not innate. They want to believe they made it on hard work and inner fortitude. Winning the genetic lottery doesn't have the same appeal.
ReplyDeleteWhy would anyone want to believe that? "Hard workers" are not an exclusive group. Anyone can qualify. But not just anyone can have a high IQ -- that status is truly exclusive.
Do you ever get the impression that there is a certain conflict between what elites, such as Harvard Law School deans, say about IQ and what they really believe deep down....
ReplyDeleteLet's look, again, at what Martha Minow said about IQ: IQ is the sole determinant of a person's worth. Do you really think she's hiding an even darker opinion?
But you do seem to make the mistake that very bright people on the right make, that of assuming that those on the left arrived at their political views through a thought process. I maintain that leftists tend to be narcissistic at the very least and in many cases, are full-blown narcissists. They therefore have chose their belief system because they see it as an impregnable way to maintain their superiority by maintaining the moral high ground.
ReplyDeleteAs Satoshi Kanazawa wrote recently, it's the peacock's tail. It's sexual display. The more convoluted the better. It shows how smart you are.
the evidence is obvious that the New Testament was made up and that the Jesus described in there never even existed
ReplyDeleteWhat evidence?
Seriously - all the archaeological findings [consistently, and even increasingly, in the modern era] continue to confirm [over and over and over again] the various biblical accounts [Old Testament & New Testament].
Is she really Jewish? Her father's first name is Newton. I've never heard of a Jew named Newton.
ReplyDeleteNotta clue, but interesting that no one's mentioned that Newton Minow, former chair of the FCC(?), was the inspiration for the name of the SS Minnow of Gillagan's Island fame. Sherwood Schwartz claimed he named the boat after Minow because Minow had compalined about the lack of quality television programming.
Their answer: Because merit and IQ are relevant in our world. But any idiot can become a firefighter or cop.
Indeed.
One more reason most firefighters and cops don't trust people like Martha Minow (and if it weren't for their status as giv't employees, ALL of them would).
No liberal disbelieves in intelligence; in fact what they agitate for is precisely an absolute meritocracy predicated entirely on attributes like intelligence.
Not entirely. In fact I think that much of the admissions process at the Ivies and other elite institutions is distorted for the purpose of reducing the importance of intelligence in order to keep out intelligent conservatives who, by temperament, aren't inspired to perform the same kinds of extracurricular activities as liberals. Move to an admit process based on raw IQ and the student population would still skew liberal/Asian/Jewish, but not to the same degree, and there would be almost no blacks or Hispanics at all.
This is like asking how certain Conservatives can believe that Jesus is the Son of God, even though the evidence is obvious that the New Testament was made up and that the Jesus described in there never even existed.
Nothing quite that obvious. The only "obvious" part is that the gospels were written several decades after Christ's alleged death and resurrection, and that the authors of Matthew and Luke used the Gospel of Mark as a template for their own Gospels (90% of Mark appears in Matthew and Luke, and in the same order as it appears in Mark). Most of what's claimed in them, however, appears to jive with what we know of the time period in question.
Kagan is a lawyer with little experience in a courtroom.
ReplyDeleteShe is a would-be justice with no experience as a judge.
She is an "academic" with no record of serious scholarship.
She is mostly a political hack with a history of filling political appointments granted her by friends and cronies, including her gig as HLS Dean (appointed by Clinton Admin pal and fellow Jew Larry Summers).
Her political hackery/cronyism includes her friendship with Barack Obama while at U of Chicago Law.
She makes Harriet Miers look overqualified by comparison.
If confirmed she would increase the number of Jews on the Court to 3 while there would be 6 Catholics. There would be no Protestants in a country where over 50% of the population is Protestant. Nor would there be any Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, or Mormons. (I assume there are unacknowledged atheists on the Court.)
If confirmed she would make 6 justices who were educated at Harvard Law, the other 3 being educated at Yale.
If confirmed she would be one of 4 justices raised in New York City, with one more (Alito) raised next door in New Jersey.
Geographically the Court would look like this:
New York/New Jersey (5): Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, Scalia, Alito
California (2): Breyer, Kennedy
Indiana: Roberts
Georgia: Thomas
Seven of our justices would come from only 3 states. Given the Court's inherently political nature, why should we stomach a Court politically so dominated by people from the power centers of New York and California, with the rest of the country and its experiences, ways and mores being almost wholly unrepresented?
She does not deserve to be appointed for reasons of merit, and she emphatically does not deserve to be appointed for reasons of diversity.
What reason, then, is there to appoint her? Cronyism, I suppose, combined with a safe liberal vote for 30 or more years. Also, to placate Barack Obama's Jewish backers.
In a similar vein, David Horowitz deconstructs academic impostor Cornel West, the Ivy Leagues, and liberal radicalism at National Review Online. in his essay 'Hurricane West: Cornel West and American Radicalism'. I enjoyed reading a confrontation between West and Summers where Harvard President Larry Summers castigates West to uphold the college's academic standards.
ReplyDeleteIt was a quixotic attempt to uphold an academic standard that had long ago been shredded when West was elevated to an elite faculty such as Harvard’s (let alone to University Professor). But Cornel West was used to riding the waves of racial grievance to unearned successes. For 30 years the race card had trumped all standards, to West’s benefit, and he was not about to be intimidated, not even by a powerful university president and former secretary of the Treasury
By the way, Steve, do you happen to have the list of the 32 people Kagan is said to have hired while dean at HLS? The racial breakdown is 31 whites and 1 Asian, but it would be interesting to know the, uh, ethnic breakdown.
ReplyDelete"...the evidence is obvious that the New Testament was made up and that the Jesus described in there never even existed."
ReplyDeleteDude, I didn't realize you were a crackpot. Say it ain't so!
Also, to placate Barack Obama's Jewish backers.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen her Princeton senior thesis?
This chick is Emma Goldman [or Rosa Luxemburg] in drag.
She is very, very bad news.
PS: HEY JOHN DERBYSHIRE - SHE'S ON THE GOLDMAN-SACHS PAYROLL - FANCY THAT, MATE!!!
As Satoshi Kanazawa wrote recently, it's the peacock's tail. It's sexual display. The more convoluted the better. It shows how smart you are.
ReplyDeleteTo whom? People who agree with you? That's not sexual display. That's simple conformism.
The rejection of prevailing opinion, in fact, can be more fairly described as sexual display. Those who can see through the smokescreen are indeed special, but of course few people are able to perceive this fact. There are many parallel currents of sexual selection in our society, as different men and women look for different traits as indicators of fitness.
This is to follow-up on the remarks of not-too-successful Ivy-PhD Anon as to the motivations of lefty-elites on race. While fear of endangering earned privileges and status is doubtless part of it, I think there's something else: simple refusal to admit an error. When Jim Crow and its manifestations were dismantled, the 60-something folks we meet in the academy, publishing, etc. had a basic question before them. Should blacks be required to meet white standards, or should they be exempted? I'm too young to have been around, but I assume there was an argument about this somewhere around 1970. The latter position obviously prevailed, and part of that exemption process was to set up a self-esteem regime in which black people were to be considered "cool." After 40 years of this meme, of course blacks would end up emotionally disabled for the hard work of life. This site, which is otherwise excellent, consistently gives short shrift to this alternative explanation.
ReplyDelete"Have you seen her Princeton senior thesis?
ReplyDeleteThis chick is Emma Goldman [or Rosa Luxemburg] in drag.
Dude, take a look at the Socialist Party platform from the early 20th century, back when Eugene Debbs ran on it. A lot of the stuff these "radicals" were agitating for are things we take for granted today (minimum wage, weekends off, 8 hour days, etc.)