The Recantation of Dr. Watson
For Dr. James Watson, 79-year-old co-winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine for his discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, October marked the nadir of a brilliant career.
The month began with Watson headed to London to promote his new book, "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science," and to lecture to a sold-out audience at the prestigious Science Museum. An author's dream tour.
Last week, his lecture was canceled, his tour terminated, his 40-year tenure as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island came to an end. Across Britain, he was being denounced as a racist.
What had the wicked Dr. Watson done?
Did he defend the chattel slavery in which five of our first seven presidents engaged? No. Did he agree with Abraham Lincoln that blacks did not deserve equal social and political rights and should be sent back to the continent whence their ancestors came? No. Did he argue for the segregation that was the law in the nation's capital in which this writer grew up? No. Did he utter the "N-word" used by Harry Truman, who integrated the armed forces, and Lyndon Johnson, who enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965? No.
Watson neither endorsed segregation nor expressed any animus toward people of color. He had simply told The Sunday Times he was "inherently gloomy about the prospects of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really."
While there is a natural desire to believe all people are equal, Watson said, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."
In his new book, Watson adds, "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."
What Watson was saying was: From a long life and his own reading of IQ test scores, he believes that intelligence is not distributed equally among the races. That conclusion was also reached by social scientists Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in the 1990s best-seller "The Bell Curve." The SAT scores seem to bear them out.
When Watson's remarks hit print, however, a new London blitz began.
The Labor Party chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee charged Watson with "baseless, unscientific and extremely offensive comments" and urged his colleagues to "reject what appear to be Dr. Watson's personal prejudices."
"Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr. Watson's remarks to be looked at in the context of racial hatred laws," said The Independent. Said Steven Rose, a founder of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science, "This is Watson at his most scandalous."
The Telegraph quoted Koku Adomdza, director of the black pressure group The 1990 Trust, as calling Watson a "complete dinosaur" and demanding he apologize to "Africa and all people of African origin."
Added Adomdza: "Dr. Watson is really a relic of the oldest stock and deserves to be made to account for his extremely offensive and ignorant remarks. ... His very poisonously racist opinions put students and the unsuspecting public at serious risk."
Of these thought police, almost all, it may be fairly said, are academic mediocrities or political hacks who could not carry Watson's microscope. Yet as the scrub stock piled on, the Nobel Prize winner appeared to buckle.
I am "mortified," Watson said, burbling this recantation.
"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly, from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."
Sad. Why, with all his honors, prestige and security, did Dr. Watson feel the necessity to apologize for what he wrote, said and believes? Why did he not play the man by flipping off the censors? If they were going to take away his chancellorship, why not go down fighting?
In the England of Henry VIII, heretics were beheaded and their heads put on spikes. Many men, like Thomas More, did not recant.
From the time of Tiberias to the 17th century, men gave up their lives rather than renounce a belief in God. Others gave up their lives rather than renounce a disbelief in the Church. Why could Watson not stand up for his disbelief in the ideological myth of the inherent equality of all men, cultures, creeds and civilizations?
In 1990, the respected journal Science wrote, "To many in the scientific community, Watson has been something of a wild man. ... Colleagues tend to hold their collective breath when he speaks out."
Too bad the wild man was denatured and domesticated.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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The remarks of these so-called "anti-racist" groups strengthens Dr. Watson's conclusion. Stupid is as stupid does.
St. Peter, in denying Christ three times before the crowing of the cock, was recanting before the fickle crowds, his affirmation of Jesus as the Christ and even his willingness to defend and die for the Christ just a few hours before.
St. Peter had to both face the Christ and humble himself before Him as the Christ firmly but lovingly asked St. Peter three times, "Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep."
St. Peter would ultimately show that by feeding Christ's sheep that he loved the Christ and would at life's end get the opportunity in the form of his own blood to refute his recantation.
Who will ask Dr. Watson the question three times, and will Dr. Watson ultimately refute his recantation?
I pray that he does and wish him all of the requisite courage to that end.
As Steve Sailer has pointed out, in cases like these never appologize/recant. It only goes down hill from there. See Lott and Summers. Be willing to stand up for the un-PC remarks you make or don't make them. These recantations only embolden the enemy.
As Galileo said under his breath, "But it does move."
Red,
I agree. Better to be a Thomas More than a Trent Lott.
When I worked for a state organization, certain minorities were considered "protected classes" - they were monitored separately from other employees. I recall being told by management to change my evaluation of a black female and give her a higher rating - a rating I did not agree with based on her actual performance. I learned that other managers had also been requested to alter unfavorable evaluations of black employees. A newspaper with statewide circulation carried an article about minorities in the workplace which stated that reviews of employees on file at the state personnel office indicated that there was no significant difference in performance between blacks and whites.
"Added Adomdza: “Dr. Watson is really a relic of the oldest stock and deserves to be made to account for his extremely offensive and ignorant remarks. … His very poisonously racist opinions put students and the unsuspecting public at serious risk.”
He put students and the unsuspecting public at serious risk? How? Were his “racist opinions” juggling grenades? Did they fire machine gun rounds into the air? Could it be that they were driving drunk, or smoking a cigarette next to a leaking propane tank? Perhaps his “racist opinions” were having unprotected sex? What is this idiot talking about? It’s an opinion, not a bomb.
I’m starting to worry. How much further will the cultural pendulum swing before society has had enough?
We are passive creatures indeed.
Its a shame that the politically correct Maggotts have struck again. Dr Watson's statements on African Intelligence are more then verified by looking at Haiti, the garbage can of the Caribbean. Watson should have demanded that his critics prove their theories. Incidentally the inferior quality of American cars was a result of the conversion of the Detroit factories to a mostly Negro workforce.
When America loses Pat Buchanan, it will be a lesser nation. No other columnist on Townhall has dared mention this story. Their silence tells us where we stand.
As to how bad it can get, the EU is trying to pass, i.e. decree, a law that makes "racism and xenophobia" criminal offenses. If the Liliputians in Brussels have their way, Watson would be in jail today. It will get much worse before it gets better.
"St. Peter"... "denying Christ" ... "Feed my sheep” ... Santa Claus ... Mahesh Maherishi Yogi ... Ron Hubbard ... Hare Krishna ... Joseph Smith ...
Rather, a rational analogy would be with Galileo's 1663 N.E. recantation of Heliocentrism. He did it simply to save himself from horrible torture and being either burned alive or cooked in oil at the hands of christian sadists (of the "holy church"-at-Vatican variety). The legend has it that during the remaining nine years of his life under house arrest he recanted his recantation by saying "E pur si muove", "it still moves", in reference to the motion of Earth around the Sun. In any case, Galileo's scientific legacy lives forever.
A far less glorious case was that of Marlon Brando, an American movie actor, who, during an interview a few years back, merely pointed out the well-known fact that Jews controlled the entire indigenous entertainment industry. Faced with ... the horrible prospect of not being able to make any more millions of $ ... he went to some creepy "chief rabbi" to prostrate himself, wept publicly on TV ... ... and at the end ... since 2004 he can hardly enjoy his "$ millions" anyway, not six feet under...
As for James Watson of the Crick & Watson double-helix fame, his case fits somewhere betwixt the above two, perhaps... But the shame is on the entire rotten to the bone Establishment.
In a past life, I was the adminstrator of certain state agencies. Every time, without fail, when I would recommend policy change or make policy change, those who did not want the change would charge me, utterly unfounded, with racism. I have experienced boards which had ordered me by unanimous vote to implement a policy, wilt under the unfounded charges of racism. Since I was the administrator, the board would then blame me although the demand for the change had orginated with them. That is one of the primary reasons why I left the adminstrative field.
This is what happens when a society embraces the pernicious and morally backward notion of Human "equality". How far our self-styled "elites" and "opinion-makers" have descended !
Just another proof that Darwinism, if it operates at all, does so in reverse.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
Truth, like God, is no respecter of persons or ideology. The 'equality' spoken of in the Constitution is not a declaration of 'sameness', but rather the fact that we are all equal in the eyes of God and under the law.
Are 'blacks' inherently inferior or superior to whites, Asians and other groups in their various attributes? Well, I can tell you this as an artist, each group has certain PHYSICAL characteristics unique to that race. For instance, there is the artistic concept of 'facial slope' - that is, the angle of the profile of a face from the perpendicular - forehead to chin - to the horizontal plane. This 'slope' changes with race. Caucasians tend to have the least amount of facial slope, their faces being almost perpendicular to the horizontal while Asians exhibit slightly more and blacks have the most facial slope with the mouth and chin noticeably forward of the nose and forehead. Ergo, if one is drawing an African chieftain, skin color is less important than facial slope because to draw the face without taking it into account will produce a Caucasian in black face.
Other physical attributes such as body hair and type etc. all denote differences among the races that no amount of political correctness can alter. Of course, the crossbreeding among the races has certainly spread those characteristics far and wide among mankind as a whole, so unless one is dealing with an isolated population, it is no longer possible to make definitive statements regarding the characteristics of individuals with regard to their race even if it is possible to make a more sweeping generalization regarding individual races.
The important thing here is the fact that the institutions of our culture are being - indeed, HAVE BEEN - subverted in the name of 'tolerance' and 'humanity'. People are being tyrannized into silence by a movement (political correctness) that is the antithesis of justice, liberty and freedom. Right now, most of the consequences to those who dare to voice concepts rejected by the movement, however valid, credible and correct, is merely public humiliation. However, the way things are proceeding, it won't be long before the weight of the law will be brought to bear on all those who dare to hold (much less express) 'unpopular' opinions, ESPECIALLY in matters of race. When that day comes, human freedom will be irredeemably lost.
I'm glad that Ben (No 10) refers us to Galileo...comparing the scientist to Thomas More is well over the top....I recall hearing the impeachment of slick Willie, who compared himself to Thomas More & nearly crashing my (Detroit branded) Pontiac...Regards j marcin (No 8)...how sad your comment...what responsibility does management have for engineering / building a quality product? If we accept the industrial model of production (as opposed to a craftsman model), the employee is reduced to an economic unit of production, at the disposal of management?
It’s pretty easy for us to support free speech for those whose ideas are identical to ours. The test of the sincerity of those who preach free speech is their support for the free speech for those whose ideas we loath. Or we’re exposed as hypocrites. So I put you gentlemen to the test:
1. To think the matter through: The logical, necessary, and unavoidable conclusion (if you except Watson’s premise) is that there are Übermenschen and Untermenschen. (Funny... now where have I heard those terms before?)
2. To turn the tables: The omitted fact is that Asians and Jews score better on IQ tests than “Whites”. So another logical and unavoidable conclusion (if you accept the Watson premise): If any writebacker is “White”, he must therefore acknowledge to all of us his relative untermenschlich status, and yield his education, employment, and social status, and submit obediently and with utter servility to the Asian or Jew, his übermenschlich Master. At the very least, to draw the Watsonian conclusion, “Whites” must be “inherently gloomy about the prospects” of “White” countries relative to Asian and Jewish, or certainly serve without complaint as cannon fodder in wars for Asian and Jewish countries, because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.”
3. To ask a question: In all our IQ testing, how did the following rank: Teutons, Celts, Iberians, Italics, Greeks, Slavs, Basques, and Finnish-Hungarians? Just asking.
(Quote): "He had simply told The Sunday Times he was “inherently gloomy about the prospects of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.” -Pat
Here's the rub'adub'dub. We know we don't yet have a working definition for what 'intelligence' is. However we have a native sense and sensibility, intuition, experience etc. with just about what it is.
To be black does not mean to be dumb, nor does to be white or asian mean to be bright automatically although there are generalities possible just like one can generalize that generally blacks tend to excel in music and sports and this is Fact etc.
But here's the most sinister part of the liberal insistence that we are all 'equal' (which quite stupidly enough does not really mean anything at all.) However, that rather backward 'belief' is a very good Cover for exploiting people like black Africans, because instead of dealing with them as they Are - it is easier to literally destroy them and grab Africa's natural resources by dealing with them - Only as liberals 'say' they are and thus should be-in the gospel according to liberals.
That way black Africans NEVER can actually get the help or assistance they may need the Way they need it, and of course in destroying them that way, then, white liberals can also have no pangs of conscience about they have done...After all these sweet, Black Africans were indeed you see treated 'just like equals.'
The Roman Catholic Church has always understood that just as God, CHRIST and the Holy Spirit meet US where we all Are without the impossible stipulation that we FIRST be equal to God so too must we all meet our fellow brothers and sisters WHERE THEY ARE TOO and not where would like or imagine or insist that they be.
Of course England has long since dispensed with the Roman Catholic Church - and sadly it shows. It's just not intelligent where they're At now. [Funny.] ... But it is funny.
______________________________
(( To think the matter through: The logical, necessary, and unavoidable conclusion (if you except Watson’s premise) is that there are Übermenschen and Untermenschen. ))
That's not true at all. The quoted text embodies three errors that account for most well-meaning people's resistance to admitting racial average IQ differences:
Error #1: The belief that if group A has a lower average IQ than group B, then the group A members have no rights that group B members must respect. Human rights are based not on IQ, but on each human being's status as a child of God. If one prefers a secular argument, lest militant atheists go on the warpath, the philosopher Mortimer J. Adler supplied one in his book "The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes:" Any being capable of rational thought, as evidenced by propositional speech, has rights. That group includes all but the most profoundly retarded individuals who, even so, must be treated with kindness and respect appropriate to their condition.
The argument that bases human rights on group average IQ also proves too much. Truck drivers, as a group, probably have a lower average IQ than molecular biologists, but no one would argue that the latter may enslave the former. Chronicles readers, as a group, undoubtedly have a higher average IQ than congressmen, but we have neither the right nor the inclination to enslave them.
May I also note, in passing, that Dr. Watson once said his IQ was only about 110. I don't believe him for a moment, but it shows that he does not regard IQ as a prime measure of human worth. Nor, on close reading, did the authors of "The Bell Curve."
Error #2: The belief that a group average tells us anything useful about any individual member of the group. Human populations show wide variation in IQ, as they do in many other traits. The fact that African blacks have a lower group average IQ than European whites tells us nothing helpful about *this* particular black or *this* particular white. The white might have a higher IQ than the black, or vice versa, or their IQs might be the same.
Error #3: The belief that IQ is the most important thing about a person or group. IQ is certainly helpful in sustaining a civilization such as our own, but many other qualities are also important: honesty, courage, loyalty, and so forth. Neoconservatives are typically quite intelligent, but they often lack the other qualities that would make them helpful members of society. Infantrymen as a group might score lower on IQ tests, but without their bravery and physical prowess, society would not long survive.
Scott Palmer,
One of the tools within the Marxist narrative - think Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and New Left - is that of absolute equality of individuals and races. Some of the other tools within that narrative are racism itself, gender equality to the same absolute, and, of course, homophobia. To acknowledge what Dr. Watson said as having the potential for truth is a threat to them; it takes aways one of the most effective tools they have in their quest to dismantle, destroy and deconstruct Western culture which Georg Lukacs said was "their" - the cultural Marxists - enemy. They will not tolerate the loss of this tool.
Ben at 10,
I am sorry that I overlooked your post. One takes it that you have little to naught for St. Peter and the Christ. Against Galileo I have nothing. I liked the young Brando as an actor; the old Brando became in my perception a parody of himself. However, those things aside, their encounters with the establishment are appropriate comparisons to the subject of this thread.
Ben at 10,
I failed to add in the post supra that Peter eventually did refute his recantation of his Faith and paid the ultimate price for it in the end. Neither Galileo nor Brando did. That's why I continue to hold that Peter would be a better model of Watson while he still has some life left in him.
Is there any scientific evidence that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution have evolved identically, i.e. equally?
Prof. Wolpoff's (U. Michigan) multi-regional theory of evolution is routinely criticized, I believe, because it suggests that the races separated approx. a million years ago or so, instead of the 100-200 thousand years under the "Out of Africa" theory. Wolpoff's theories apparently do not comport with the current "consensus" of egalitarianism.
Why does Sid Cundiff parody Watson's remarks with his statement on "submitting obediently" despite the fact that Watson's remarks referenced nothing of the sort?
Sid Cundiff is trying to hijack the thread. Ignore him.
Notice that the left-wing media (and PC czars like Sid Cundiff) are denouncing Watson. Are any of them denouncing the gentlemen below?
“We remain a hunted people. Now you think you have a destiny to fulfill in the land that historically has been ours for forty thousand years. And we’re a new Mestizo nation.”
“Our devil has pale skin and blue eyes…”
“We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.”
– Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez, founder of La Raza
“Around the year 2040, whites will become a minority in the United States and, believe me, it will be ‘payback time’.”
- Pro-Immigration Activist, Jorge Sanchez
“And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem.”
- African Studies professor, Dr. Kamau Kambon
“Blond hair and blue eyes are a biological defect.”
“The white race is a disease, and the only cure is a bullet. The rule of whites is history. Soon they will be our serfs. It’s now the Age of the Brown Man.”
- Hindu nationalist, Ramesh Sharma
“The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists. Make no mistake about it we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed–not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed.”
- Jewish studies professor, Dr Noel Ignatiev
"I failed to add in the post supra that Peter eventually did refute his recantation of his Faith and paid the ultimate price for it in the end. Neither Galileo nor Brando did. That’s why I continue to hold that Peter would be a better model of Watson while he still has some life left in him."
I think what was objectionable was *not* the high regard Mr. Peters has for Christianity--which is pretty much a requirement on this site--but the framing of this issue in religious terms. Comparing a denial of race to a denial of Christ at least seems to border on the blasphemous.
It is difficult to believe that so many people place such importance on a thing (ie. IQ) whose closest approach to a definition is a numerical score on a standardized test. As a vague, ambiguous, albeit with strong connotations, concept, it might justify an occasional cup of coffee.
Also, for those who haven't looked closely lately, natural blue-eyed blonds are not in the majority. And contacts and hair coloring could erase them overnight.
remember all this i.q. talk is good... but until you go mano-a-mano taking the test to see who finishes faster and with the most correct answers from him or her across the table... you do NOT even know your own i.q.
someone Vested in politics and social control told You what it was.
you may 'believe' you know it.
if you're intelligent and honest with yourself do you KNOW it?
don't make me laugh... go take it TODAY. see what's your score- today.
Enjoy!
____
Mr. Moses,
My reference to St. Peter and to the Christ was a call to look to a higher standard, the highest I can image. If Dr. Watson was, in his initial statement, articulating his opinion on the light that he thought that he had from his data, then I would wish him the courage to defend it. St. Peter's courage to refute his own denial of the Christ is an example of such courage. Is discussing race and the differences which might or might not exist between races so evil as to invite the charge of blaphemy, especially since we are not actually talking about the "denial of race," whatever that means, but Dr. Watson's denial of his on intellectual position based on the facts which he had gleaned? Enlighten me as to how that might border on being blasphemous. If your answer is reasoned and rational, then I'll take it to my pray closet. There, if the Holy Spirit concurns with your reasoned and rational answer, I'll repent.
i don't know, i don't read r.m.peters too much - words like everything give off vibrations and so i usually tend to respond for better or worse that way. my intuition is as i've stated some are neocon wannabes. and some holier than thou or dost protest too much. ha-ha-ha. thanks God for humor. mea culpa.
________
"... I’ll repent ..."
Aw, gimme-a-break... what a .... .
a. lugano? i thought i had dispensed with you? of course, not possible... it's like headlines ... a. lugano survived when a bomb that went off in his hat failed to kill him.
it's why you're 'refreshing...' albeit usually 'wanting'...
then you'll hit me Up... funny.
ugh. - a. lugano again. Life.
_______
The odd thing is that Mr Buchanan, a Catholic, denies one of the basic tenets of the Catholic religion, namely the essential equality of all human beings!
The other point worth noting is that the principal conceptors of IQ tests and the great defenders of the scientific validity of such tests are white Americans. Since these tests systematically show white Americans to be more "intelligent" than the rest of us, doesn't that seem just a bit too convenient? I'm sure that if I devised an IQ test, I would score higher on it than anybody else on Earth, quite simply because it would reflect my personal concept of what does and does not constitute intelligence. Any sort of measurement which systematically operates in favour of those doing the measuring is inherently dubious from a scientific point of view. Dr Watson's, and Mr Buchanan's, error was to overlook that most elementary of all human charactersitics: self-interest.
Anyone else here notice that the “anti-racist” groups and their bedfellows, the "anti-fascist" groups are the first groups to use fascist tactics?
Most sane people realize that there are others who are more intelligent than themselves, as well as others who are less intelligent. Only a fool (or a neo-con) would call himself the most intelligent person in the world. Mr. Kenny's "error" is blindly denying the obvious inequality that exists between the races. If all men were born equal then the concept of this argument would not even exist. All men are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Mr. Kenny (@32),
How has Mr. Buchanan denied the essential equaility of all men? The discussion of the average IQ of Africans is a discussion of the average IQ of a particular group made up of particular individuals. To say that one particular group has a lower IQ than some other particular group is to make am existential statement, i.e. a statement about these groups and their members insofar as they exist as particular instantiations of human nature. It is to say nothing at all about human nature itself, i.e. the essence of humanity, which is what would be required if he were making any kind of statement about the essential equality of all men.
@28: Mr. Peters is well-intentioned, and indeed we should all have the courage to stand up for our beliefs. Nevertheless, understand that comparisons of intellectual statements to proclamations of faith are tenuous at best, and may to many people have the literary effect of elevating mammon to a higher spiritual plane--and THAT can seem blasphemous.
@32: Mr. Kenny, no, all men are not created equal, and this myth ought to be dispelled immediately by any understanding of Church history, historical teaching and Sacred Scripture. Jesus apparently loved St. John more than his other disciples. The Church has never denied or condemned the existence of worldly masters and slaves, and I don't think even John Paul II would have argued that a bishop's proclamation carries equal weight to his own simply by virtue of coming out of the mouth of a human being.
What is also true, however, is that human standards of what constitute higher or lower status are not necessarily the same as God's, that He may not honor all rulers in the same way they were honored on Earth, and that beyond what we are told in the moral guidelines of the Church, we have little indication of how He makes His selections.
Mr. Kenny's attack on IQ smacks of postmodernism. Go on, deny it all you want, and meanwhile, the rest of us will live in the real world and judge from rough experience.
Mr. Moses,
Your words:
"@28: Mr. Peters is well-intentioned, and indeed we should all have the courage to stand up for our beliefs. Nevertheless, understand that comparisons of intellectual statements to proclamations of faith are tenuous at best, and may to many people have the literary effect of elevating mammon to a higher spiritual plane–and THAT can seem blasphemous."
Please enlighten me, for I have quite the teachable spirit, how in the context of my original post you find a juxtaposition of an intellectual statement and a proclamation of faith. In addition, I would learn from you how such are "tenuous at best." Surely I do not detect a touch of gnosticism which would hold that there can be no intercourse, in the most positive meaning of that word, between the intellectual and the divine, or even more base perhaps between matter and the divine? What something "SEEMS" to be is not necessarily what is actually is. I do note that the way to hell, according to some, is paved with good intentions; therefore, I would cede that there is no virtue in my good intentions. Meanwhile, there are the more pressing questions raised by this thread. The rabbit which I have inadvertently jumped has run, as is his wont, the predictable full circle. Let us now get on with the business of hunting the elusive stage of which Mr. Buchanan has given us the scent.
Mr. Moses,
Your words:
"@32: Mr. Kenny, no, all men are not created equal, and this myth ought to be dispelled immediately by any understanding of Church history, historical teaching and Sacred Scripture. Jesus apparently loved St. John more than his other disciples. The Church has never denied or condemned the existence of worldly masters and slaves, and I don’t think even John Paul II would have argued that a bishop’s proclamation carries equal weight to his own simply by virtue of coming out of the mouth of a human being."
Well said. I stay my hand from the temptation of making a worldly comparison. : )
@37: I think it was this statement: "Who will ask Dr. Watson the question three times, and will Dr. Watson ultimately refute his recantation?" juxtaposed with the example of St. Peter denying his faith three times, then recanting and repenting, that lended a certain celestial emotion to your words. I get what you were trying to say, but it seemed slightly ridiculous, and it could easily be taken wrong.
(( Since these tests systematically show white Americans to be more “intelligent” than the rest of us ))
That's another common error.
Asian populations such as Chinese and Japanese have higher average IQs than white Americans and Caucasians generally.
If white people designed IQ tests to prove their own intellectual superiority, then they did a lousy job of it.
On average, each race has its own strengths and weaknesses. They're all different. Isn't "diversity" supposed to be a wonderful thing, these days?
Regarding equality, this is a product of the Enlightenment, not traditional Christianity. No where does the Bible even condemn the institution of slavery, much less argue for the equal rights of man. We may have equality before God, but such utopian projects are not necessarily part of God's plan on Earth.
-----
"Asian populations such as Chinese and Japanese have higher average IQs than white Americans and Caucasians generally."
This isn't true. Many Asians in the West score higher, but that is only because the cream of the crop immigrated to the West. And that is changing. The largest group of non-Hispanics coming into the U.S. are now from India and China.* The actual average IQ in India is only 81; in China, 97; and in the U.S., 98. However, if you average out Mexicans and blacks in the U.S. and only factor in whites, then the average jumps up to 107. (In the UK, if you only factor in whites, it's 108.)
Whites are wasting their time if they are worrying about blacks, who are disorganized and harmless and, unlike whites, do not even value intelligence. The blacks I know just chuckled about Watson's comments. They could care less. They value more things like material possessions, status, and power.
The real threat to the West comes from Asia. These people are more intelligent, and hope to overthrow the "white devils," defeating us both internally and externally. An Indian programmer told me recently that "one day whites will be collecting trash and cleaning the toilets in Little India (in California)."
*http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5124255.html
Mr. Moses,
Your words,
"@37: I think it was this statement: “Who will ask Dr. Watson the question three times, and will Dr. Watson ultimately refute his recantation?” juxtaposed with the example of St. Peter denying his faith three times, then recanting and repenting, that lended a certain celestial emotion to your words. I get what you were trying to say, but it seemed slightly ridiculous, and it could easily be taken wrong."
Finally, if I may mix my metaphors, you have taken me to the very heart of darkness as revealed in your quote given supra; therefore, let us consider the rabbit which I kicked up quite dead and even skinned. If you like, I'll roast him for us if you bring the appropriate wine. (Among many of my fellow Baptists I border on heresy because I enjoy a good wine - I prefer mine red and dry unless a good white is more appropriate, with a Klingenberger of a vintage year being my favorite.) Mean while, the stage which Mr. Buchanan has jumped for us ranges far ahead and turns to mock us. Mr. David, at #40 supra, has taken good aim at him and is likely to bag him ere we even course him. Perhaps, if Mr. David downs him, he'll give us a Weidmannsheil and allow us to partake of his kill - among the lesser creatures, partaking of the kill of another is called scavenging; we humans call it fellowshipping.
David's assertion that whites have a higher average IQ than East Asian races is not supported by any evidence of which I'm aware; neither is his assertion that their higher average IQ results from the skewed sample of Asians who have emigrated to the West.
"The Bell Curve" (Chapter 13), though noting the difficulty in comparing IQ scores across cultures, cites "the median IQ for the studies of Chinese living in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and China proper at 110; the median IQ for the studies of Japanese living in Japan at 103; and the median for studies of East Asians living in North America at 103. ... Mean white American IQ is typically estimated at 101 to 102."
Of course, mean and median are different statistical measures, but in a normal distribution (a bell curve) they should be very close, so the IQ estimates cited in "The Bell Curve" are roughly comparable.
David seems to fall prey to one of the other errors I mentioned: the elevation of IQ to "the most important thing" about human individuals or populations. Asians are undoubtedly smart people, but the civilization, economic system, and technologies that they now enjoy were created by white Europeans -- whose average IQ is slightly lower but who have many compensating virtues such as independence and imagination.
I agree with David that some people from India regard Western whites with hostility. Part of their attitude is mere racism, while a bit of it is rooted in their colonial history: read Winston Churchill's book "My Early Life" for a sample. The solution, as Pat Buchanan has said, is to halt massive immigration to America of people from incompatible cultures. We should also penalize corporations that outsource American jobs to other countries or that import H1-Bs to take jobs for which qualified Americans are begging.
There are some basic items that I think would like to touch on:
IQ is a measure of a certain type of intelligence. As such, it has been shown to be an accurate predictor of success in areas such as engineering, science and academics. As Charles Murray has written, many studies have confirmed the close correlation between high IQ and achievement in these fields. However, IQ tests are not an accurate predictor of artistic ability, creative imagination or plumbing skills. What is troubling about much of this discussion is, on the one hand, the glee with which some greet the notion that there are race-based differences in IQ and, on the other, the hysteria that any mention of differences between the races elicits. Our reaction should be, who cares? Why should it be at all shocking that certain groups are better or worse at certain things? And why should it change the way we, as Christians, treat our fellow creatures? The problem arises when it is suggested that because certain people are not as intelligent or pretty or strong that they should therefore not be afforded the same level of human dignity – i.e. slavery, euthanasia, sterilization, etc.
Where Dr. Watson errs is not in asserting that there are intellectual differences between Africans and other groups but rather in assuming that this supposed lack of intelligence - as measured by IQ - inhibits the implementation of "our" social policies. Apparently, Africans aren't smart enough to realize what's good for them - as we define it. My goodness, if implementing successful social policy is a function of group IQ, Israel and China must be Nirvana!
I wish Mr. Moses would be more careful in his sweeping generalizations. Even a cursory examination of the record shows the inaccuracy of the statement, ”The Church has never denied or condemned the existence of worldly masters and slaves”. The Church has repeatedly voiced its opposition to forced slavery. Refer to the papal bulls Sicut Dudum (1435), Sublimis Deus (1537) and In Supremo (1839) and to Father Joel Panzer’s book, The Popes and Slavery. All men may not be created equally, but they are all our brothers in Christ and should be treated as such.
Almost all the great accomplishments of the past 1,000 years have been the result of the Beautiful and Noble White Race, and that's good enough for me.
People, who really cares about IQ? Does it matter?
If the white race were the smartest, or the most ignorant race, I'd still support it, because it is MY race.
Kith and kin loyalties don't presuppose IQ.
"In the England of Henry VIII, heretics were beheaded and their heads put on spikes. Many men, like Thomas More, did not recant."
Buchanan knows better than this. Henry was the heretic, and he murdered the orthodox Christians, the Roman Catholics. St. Thomas More was not a "heretic." To call him that requires one to adopt the point of view that Henry was orthodox. This reminds me of a passage in one of his books where Buchanan puts St. Paul, Calvin, and Wesley together in the same breath. St. Paul (and, one hopes, Buchanan and I) would rather suffer death than profess the errors of Calvin and Wesley, so why lump together literally mortal enemies? I hope it's not in order to pander to American protestants in his audience.
From Michael Kenny: "The other point worth noting is that the principal conceptors of IQ tests and the great defenders of the scientific validity of such tests are white Americans. Since these tests systematically show white Americans to be more “intelligent” than the rest of us, doesn’t that seem just a bit too convenient?"
If Kenny is unaware, then his comment is prescient. If one checks its history, he will find that the IQ test was originally developed by professional sociologists specifically to showcase the superiority of Whites (that would be the descendants and co-nationalists of our Puritan forefathers) from the rest of us! In the words of the movie "The Good Shepherd", the character representing the "WASP entitlement" tells the Donovan character, "We have the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting." The up-to-date corollary would be that you may stay as long as you continue to show up for and man our planetary interventions like the Afghan/Iraq wars.
"I wish Mr. Moses would be more careful in his sweeping generalizations. Even a cursory examination of the record shows the inaccuracy of the statement, ”The Church has never denied or condemned the existence of worldly masters and slaves”. The Church has repeatedly voiced its opposition to forced slavery. Refer to the papal bulls Sicut Dudum (1435), Sublimis Deus (1537) and In Supremo (1839) and to Father Joel Panzer’s book, The Popes and Slavery. All men may not be created equally, but they are all our brothers in Christ and should be treated as such."
I am well aware that the Church has condemned the slave trade and the reduction to slavery of free men. I am not aware that any of those bulls was a proclamation of any "right" to freedom or a call for a sudden revolution against a pre-existing class structure.
Of course we are required to treat each other with Christian charity and generosity. The duty of the master to treat his subjects charitably is an important one, but it is distinct from the duty of his subjects to obey him. Radical egalitarianism, if stretched to its limits, would imply that wealthy employers must give their less well-off employees nightly settings at their personal dining tables and room and board similar to that which they give to their own children.
Mr. Moses,
I applaude your post supra, particularly the last paragraph.
j marcin:
"Incidentally the inferior quality of American cars was a result of the conversion of the Detroit factories to a mostly Negro workforce."
No it wasn't. The American car manufacturers were protected from foreigh competition. They had powerful unions to contend with. And the federal government burdened then with regulations.
Note that the very real turnaround in the quality of American made cars comes on the heels of the massive wave of Japanese imports in the 70's and 80's. They had to compete for a change, so they did. The last new car I had to take back to the dealer for a mechanical defect was a '96 Mazda.
@48: Thank you, and I apologize for not seeing your earlier reply in my haste--and hopefully I did not come across as too harsh or judgmental. St. Peter's courage should indeed be an inspiration to us all--but hopefully we don't become so emotive about worldly matters that we forget to be inspired in our faith.
@43 (encore) As far as the "glee" goes in finding that people of certain heritage have, on average, a measurably lower I.Q. than others, no doubt there are those who read this news with a nasty twinkle in their eye, patting themselves on the back for belonging to what they foolishly consider a "superior race." For many, however, the glee is more directed at those who have, for time immemorial, denied the existence, importance, or difficulty of race (except, of course, to demand slavery reparations and "positive discrimination"). Incidentally, there are those in or close to the academy who have now begun downplaying (and will soon deny) the existence of gender.