Johnny, They Hardly Knew Ye
John Derbyshire, as probably everyone but me already knew, has been fired by National Review. The firing was in response to a calmly written but injudiciously frank piece on Takimag on what to tell American children about race relations. Rich Lowry, in slipping the knife into his colleague's back, was surprisingly polite, confining himself to words like "nasty and indefensible." Compared to the nasty and indefensible name-calling that has been the hallmark of NR, this is almost a compliment. Wanting to think as well of Lowry as I ought to, I can only assume that he deliberately avoided terms like "racist" and "bigot" in order to avoid harming Derbyshire's damaged reputation.
On the other hand, the worst thing that John Derbyshire has done to his reputation with serious people is to associate with NR. He is intelligent, reasonably well-read, possessed of a decent prose-style and the courage of his convictions. What in the world was such a man doing in such company?
I have been telling Mr. Derbyshire this, admittedly at long intervals, for over a decade. I have also advised him that he has been too candid on race matters. There is hardly a subject on which Americans can stand to know the truth or even hear it discussed, and race heads the list of taboo subjects, taking precedence even over sex and gender issues. Even Rich Lowry, as ill-informed as he appears to be on everything under the sun worth knowing, must know that Derbyshire's arguments are the result of statistical studies, not of racial prejudice. The fact that Lowry--or anyone else at NRO--does not even try to refute them seems pretty clear proof.
Long before Rich Lowry went to National Review, the founder of the magazine had excommunicated the Birchers, Murray Rothbard, Sam Francis, and Joe Sobran. Those were the good old days, when NR still had men on the staff who would commiserate, if only in private, with the victims. I had several reassuring conversations after Mr. Buckley threatened to "excrete" Chronicles and its editors from the wholesome body of conservatism. I supposed he picked up this charming diction from the father of John Podhoretz and his friends.
I searched for comments on NRO and found none. Of the tweets I looked at, most made no comment and of those that did it was 20 to one critical of Lowry for being too polite. A million such readers add up to exactly nothing. "I'm glad I'm a beta," I can almost hear them saying, "alphas have too much responsibility and gammas are stupid."
John Derbyshire is no doubt unhappy to be out of a job, but his friends and fans can only congratulate him on his good fortune in getting away from these awful, stupid people.
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Are you all going to hire Derbyshire, or publish his pieces? Has he been in Chronicles before? I agree that he is an intelligent writer, and can also be very funny. On the other hand he is a crazy atheist. I have no problem with what he wrote in Taki, in fact it was a cogent and well-supported piece.
There is really nothing for "American conservatives" to contribute to political discourse today except perhaps minor variations on the economy or organizing the next war. American politics has been reduced to a billion dollar a year advertising campaign between a false positive and a true negative. Being fired from National Review is probably one of the more honorable rewards Mr. Derbyshire has received in some time and at least places him in the company of more serious writers fired before him. Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot or B. Jowett couldn't write for that rag and if they did, the current staff of sillies would find their work suspect.
My father said quite often, particularly when he wanted me to show some courage, that a man who had no enemies was not worth a damn. It would seem, from my father's perspective, that Mr. Derbyshire is worth a lot, given his enemies. For his physical struggles, I offer my prayers.
Race aside, National Review has a serious problem of sullied brand image in the wake of the Bush years. All but the most partisan are hesitant to utter the words, "I am a Republican" without a qualifying "but..." tacked on to the end. For my own part, I have had an increasingly hard time calling myself a "conservative" since at least 2006. The bulk of the "conservative" intellectual and media apparatus in the United States has always been subservient to neo-liberal economic theory and the Republican Party; since Bush it has been subservient to neocon postwar hegemonic utopianism as well. The discrediting of this dreadful beast is still just beginning. Its dismantling will be a boon to the civilizational goodness and decency that conservatives once cherished, not to mention a relief for the lives and livelihoods of all people, of all races across the globe.
The headline scared me for a second, knowing of JOhn's health issues. But it truly is a badge of honor to get fired from NR. To think that me early steps on the right were guided by them in the early 80s....
Excellent article by Derbyshire. The unjust firing confirms my general contempt for NR.
The IQ studies are sad and true per se, but I strongly suspect they are misleading if taken as an indicator of what black and white kids would be like if raised the same. I would be interested to know of any studies that attempt to estimate and adjust for non-racial factors like culture, wealth, income, neighborhood, school, exposure to high-IQ relatives, friends, classmates, etc.
Seems intuitive that whatever color they are, kids raised badly or by dim-witted people or around dim-witted people or in a culture that celebrates ignorance, laziness, etc., will turn out to have lower IQ than kids who are not so raised.
Admirably said.
The late and lamented Mr Sobran gave the truest description of the sewage works from whence arises National Review (I'm paraphrasing): "The conservative movement is essentially a telemarketing scam".
I remember the little Irisher Rich Lowry on various Fox News (Murdoch-owned global Zionism) programmes in the mid-2000's when we still subscribed to overseas television. He was garrulously mindless and servile.
Wow, the original article really is blunt. Surely Mr. Derbyshire anticipated the backlash that inevitably resulted. In fact, he should count his blessings if he does not become an active target of the Sharpton/Jackson crowd and avoids hooligans like Spike Lee & Rosanne Barr trying to Tweet his address to ne'er-do-wells.
I commend the man for his frankness and bravery, but I question his prudence and judgment. Since he framed his entire article as a conversation with his children, my question is, and this is not directed at him specifically but is rhetorical, where is that line drawn between prudently raising a family in this insane world and sticking one's neck out for the good of society?
I've looked to St. Thomas More as a model for the current times - I'm not trying to stick my neck out any further than I have to. If I have to, if I am directly accosted, I will not, I pray, back down, but I am not going out of my way to advertise anything. I've discovered that my ability to influence others, co-workers, friends, commenters on websites . . .etc. is practically non-existent. Whether from my inability to articulate my arguments correctly and persuasively or from my audience's disinclination to consider my point-of-view for even half-a-second, there is never much return of investment (there is always the exception of actually encountering someone who wants to know the truth, in which case I always hope to establish a good rapport that might turn into a friendship, but I have found this is as rare as an albino rhinoceros, at least in the circles I'm stuck in). On the other hand, it is probable that my arguments could eventually be determined to be offensive to someone (potential offense today is as dastardly as actual offense), and this can result in the usual stock & pillory procedure wherein I could lose my job and potentially not be able to find another job in the same business (physical threats are usually added at no additional cost depending on the level of potential offense). I'm not afraid of digging ditches for a living if I have to, but its not the type of work my talents encourage me to pursue nor does it cover the costs of a growing family where the mother stays at home to raise the children.
This is my dilemma. As a man, I feel a certain obligation to do what's in my power to make society better. I'm not altruistic; I understand that this society is where my children will eventually live after leaving my own personal fortress, so for their sakes if nothing else I want to make it better. However, I feel just as certain that my power to make any impact is limited to how I raise my children, and activities beyond that do little more than jeopardize my ability to raise them properly. I have to confess, though, that it chafes me to not publicly stand up against the insolence of a Sharpton or a Jackson at every possible opportunity. If I thought I had even a small support group behind me, I'd feel ennobled to make these types of stands, but I know no such group exists. Quite the contrary, I know all it takes is a snippy call by anyone with a grudge against me to get social workers to descend upon my house and try to actually steal my children from me. Had I the money I'd have a team of lawyers on retainer, and then I'd be happy to run my mouth off whenever I liked. This is not the case.
So is it prudence or cowardice on my part? Or both? What is the proper role of a good parent today? Much of the advice Mr. Derbyshire offers is to avoid confrontation to ensure safety, yet his own article obviously eschews this idea (surely he knows that Freedom of Speech today is only a fun phrase on par with other government terms like "Affordable Health Care Act" and "Freedom of Choice" laws). And I'm not considering this question restricted to racial issues. I believe my concern can be applied to the entire range of potentially offensive issues (same-sex issues, feminist issues, religious issues, the role of government, immigration, . . . etc.) I'd be happy to hear others' thoughts on this - I have no idea what the right answer is, if there is a right answer. I only know what path I have taken thus far.
I will add that my best wishes go out to Mr. Derbyshire and his family.
Your children, of course, come first, Mr. Cornell. Focus your energies on creating, through the successful raising of your family, that "small support group" that will be there for your children in one or two generations when they need/want to spread the fight a bit further. To whom little is given, little can be expected. I think that if you feel frustrated at not doing more, you're probably doing enough.
Zero times anything = zero.
"I'm glad I'm a beta," I can almost hear them saying, "alphas have too much responsibility and gammas are stupid."
Bravo Dr. Fleming!
Mr. Cornell,
"So is it prudence or cowardice on my part? Or both? What is the proper role of a good parent today?"
No, it is not cowardice. Courage is not rash action in the face of certain defeat. I suggest walking and not running to the nearest exit---women and children first. Publicly?Talk about the economy and the need for more democracy and GOP candidates. Privately? Love God and do what you will.
I have never been disturbed by anyone's honest expression of opinion, no matter how wrong or apparently horrifying. The expressions of alarm and disgust I have read at AmCon, Salon, NRO etc give off a whiff of soiled diapers. These are mere children, and not especially intelligent--much less brave--children, at that.
Was Derbyshire imprudent? I think so, especially considering the bad company he was keeping. Do I care? Not at all. People who are not public intellectuals would do well to play their cards close to the vest, but if one is going to make the mistake of making a career as pontificator, one may as well have a good time. They lying and cowardice and sucking-up of the NRO children would make any grown man sick to his stomach. We all have to keep silent about some things at some times. I've been censored any number of times. The most offensive thing you can say today is to name the topics that are off limits--it used to drive my personal nemesis, Richard Neuhaus, into fits.
If one cannot tell any truth, it is far better to remain silent--our ultimate right under the law. Otherwise, a man has to cut lose occasionally and say what he knows.
The greatest problem I have with some on the racialist right (I name no names) is that their minds are too often darkened by a rooted dislike that is not enlightened by any ray of faith, hope, or charity. I was talking about JD's column with a friend who said he more or less lived by all of the rules Derbyshire put forward except for one--he would frequently stop and help a black person in trouble.
When I asked my colleagues about this point they all agreed, and, Aaron Wolf last week stopped to help an older black man who apparently had some kind of fit, fell, and cracked his head on the sidewalk. Aaron called 911 and waited for the EMTs to arrive. Meanwhile a crowd of hoodies showed up screaming imprecations at the tardiness of the EMT response and so impeded his efforts to help the victim, the fireman had to call the cops. Even those of us who are less formidable in size and strength than Aaron, though, would have done the same thing. In South Carolina I used to pick up black hitchhikers of all ages. Here in Illinois, I would limit myself to people under 12 and over 50. In the South, by the way, I have been helped repeatedly by very decent black people who picked me up when my car broke down on several occasions.
The situation here is really hopeless, partly because of the anarchic parts of our population, partly because of the indoctrination forced upon us by the leftist media and educational system, but mostly because of the cowardice and dishonesty of the conservative movement. These people--if it is right to call them people--have no principles or scruples except to advance their own petty interests, and they will slander and libel anyone who contradicts the status quo defined by the New Republic and the Atlantic.
My good luck is that I don't need them any more. They can tweet each other to death with their simpering platitudes, for all I care. They just don't matter, and they never did, even when conservatives had vastly more guts. The chief objective of official conservatism is to maintain the lines drawn by the Left. That was the main purpose of National Review, even in its best days, and certainly when I was writing for them. Looking back at a magazine in whose pages one could find Mel Bradford, Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Clyde Wilson, Robert Nisbet, Chilton Williamson, and Sam Francis, it seems like a golden age, but all those good people were the exception. The respectability clock was ticking, the sharp-edged pendulum getting ever closer to the necks of the victims. With very few exceptions (Burnham), the founding and early editors were all ideological game-players. They contributed nothing more significant than a few witticisms. They are gone and their heirs are the despicable little pygmies who would spit on Buckley's grave if it would win a little respectability with the Washington Post.
In South Carolina I used to pick up black hitchhikers of all ages. Here in Illinois, I would limit myself to people under 12 and over 50.
Not that you need me to moralize about safety, but I can't help remarking that these days, hitchhikers under 12 are likely to be entrapment plants by cops hunting for the next entry on the sex offender list and that 50 is the new 40...
I never read Mr. Derbyshire much before he was fired and doubt I will even satisfy my curiosity by reading the piece that supposedly got him fired. The important thing to remember from all of this, especially for the young readers, is that :
1) they will slander and libel anyone who contradicts the status quo
and
2) (they) are the despicable little pygmies who would spit on Buckley's grave if it would win a little respectability with the Washington Post.
Once you understand these two very simple and obvious truths, "the rest is history" as they say. You will live a long life understanding everything there is to know about the importance of old sayings such as ,
"Hold your friends close, but your enemies even closer," or the one Ronald Reagan always repeated: "Trust but verify," or my all time favorite from the ancient christian myths : "COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!"
There is hardly a subject on which Americans can stand to know the truth or even hear it discussed, and race heads the list of taboo subjects, taking precedence even over sex and gender issues.
Writing honestly about the Jews remains the biggest taboo.
Even Mr. Buckley, when the blackguard was black-balling Joe Sobran over his putative animus of Jews, wrote race reality when it came to blacks.
"Conservatives" have so circumscribed their own polemical field of commentary that about the "bravest" act they are now capable of is a ritual denouncement of former friends and colleagues.
I guess I will have to dissent in any kind of praise for Derbyshire. Until several years ago when he outed himself as a religion hater, all I got from him was a sort of right wing nihilism. Now his version of conservativism seems to be a IQ-centric/eugenic racialist. (as opposed to just white racialism) And thats why I looked at his article mostly in disgust. Some of those in the 'HBD' world will have nothing positive to say about blacks, ever, because of the IQ materialism. Because blacks average an IQ of about 85, it only fits with the HBD'ers that nothing good can ever from them. Dumping on blacks is just their modus operandi.
"I'm glad I'm a beta," I can almost hear them saying, "alphas have too much responsibility and gammas are stupid."
Dr Fleming, I would love to hear Chronicles take on this 'game' phenomena, if it hasnt been done already.
I am also going to agree with Daniel on the strange values of racialists, eugenicists, and the like.
It seems to build a cult of worship around being "super-human", forgetting that all mortal men are just...well...mortal men. Exalting someone who is simply a mere human in the end is the strangest form of pagan idolatry - of making gods out of humans. This talk of IQ scores and racial differences underscores such values. It was on this path that the Swedes implemented an eugenics program to "purify" Sweden under which tens of thousands of Swedes were sterilized by force.
Indeed, one finds that racialists are halfway between being pure rational materialists and being metaphysicians. They don't exactly value humans in a higher order sense, and reduce them to crude beings of genetically determined intelligence and characteristics. On the other hand, they use a very pseudoscientific notion of race and intelligence, even when both are fairly subjective concepts (we don't even know if race exists, given the immense similarity in DNA of all humans). So neither scientific, nor spiritual, but all arrogance.
I think you missed my point a little bit. Derbyshire and his brand of eugenicist doesnt care about white racialism, its solely IQ racialism. There are many HBDers who resemble WNs, but Derbyshire and his crowd are not among them. Believe me, I am the last person to to deny the importance of race (let's just say my views are about the same as Sam Francis's). But if vulgar WNs can be accused of taking something healthy and taking it to the level of race idolatry, the eugenicists abscond all notion of kith and kin by making IQ their tribe.
em>It seems to build a cult of worship around being "super-human", forgetting that all mortal men are just...well...mortal men.
Well bless me Prateek, you've opened my eyes!
If you weren't resolved to be perverse and disingenuous, since I more than a little doubt that a fellow who persists in following the debates at Chronicles is unintelligent, you would understand that there are degrees of strength and intellect and thus varying definitions of 'humanity', and the properties that constitute it, dependent upon which individual, class, or race's perspective (usually consecrated and dressed up in religious garb) is considered. 'Mortel men' are not all 'mortel men' equally and denying the obvious existence of diversity (by which I mean change) and motion, the varieties of life and the variegations of those varieties themselves, how by opposition is brought about harmony in nature, is the stupid conceit of a Platonist believing that reality is subordinate to human thought.
Man has no other standard than man, therefore 'perfection' makes no sense other than as a relative reference against the values and instincts of human societies - things, or men, can be perfect, they can be super-men, if you consider them as such and the facts convincingly corroborate that designation (for instance, contrary to the calumniators and nihilist hermits, this world is perfect - not this epoch or a particular country - but this world we inhabit with its poverty, deformity, slavery and cruelty, is perfect because whatever is is good, whatever is is right, and the absence of such phenomena would be a sign that humankind, indeed all mobile animal life, had forever perished from the earth; that would be imperfect, that nothingness and morbid exhaustion which the pacifists, anti-racists, and such haters of life long for, is imperfection, is defining humanity down as you are).
On the subject of race, the modern 'West', one cannot help but observe, has the strangest, unhealthiest (to use your diction) conception of ontology, of being, one can conceive. Race is simply physical being; your being as the sum of your antecedents and the web of your genealogical relations radiating outwards as the threads of a web. Abstracted, overly anthropological conceptions of race are evidence of the alienation and dissolution of the social habits and impulses of the contemporary pig ('Western' man) as he wallows half-contentedly, half-discontentedly in his stye. Race is being, what you are and from what ultima vaginorum
you sprang from.
Addendum to the above:
Really Mr Sanjay if you're determined to object to, and grossly invert, the natural processes and instincts of foreign bodies of peoples (not improbably from interested motives) you ought to show us the ordinary courtesy of including in your impeachment of race-thought a country whose discriminations of racial kinds and their nicer subdivision into immutable hereditary castes is notorious, having generated a whole 'pseudo-scientific' vocabulary of phyla, genera, and subgenera that would perplex the most learned taxonomist: I mean of course the Indian sub-continent (strange too your countrymen's irate and scornful aversion for the negro "given the immense similarity in DNA of all humans" and the approximate outward, and not just outward, likeness of the Hindostani and negro anthropological types).
This depreciating and impugning the goodness of what we secretly want in this life which nature has not granted us, at once both ungenerous and dishonest, suggests to my mind, by way of its extreme opposite, the spontaneous and unflagging generosity towards life demonstrated by Napoleon who can teach our wretched age much about the truth of human nature and give up these ignoble lies.
On the gore-flecked, bloodstained and smoky Russian plains, the Emperor was noted as remarking as he surveyed the carnage of the field of battle at Borodino : "It's the most beatiful thing I've ever seen".
Wonderful, wonderful!
Mr. Maxwell raises legitimate questions I did not really address. One might divide up what is at stake into questions of fact (IQ differences, crime rates, behavioral traits), the author's character and intentions (whether public spirited, merely truth-seeking, racialist, or hate-filled), and the reaction he inspired (shock, outrage, hate, revenge). I concentrated mostly on this third question, though inevitably one has to consider the first. By the way, the current thinking on race and IQ seems to posit a baseline IQ of 90 for most groups, 100 or 100+ for Europeans and North Asians, and somewhere in the 70's for Africans. I'm not an expert in these things and cannot pretend to speak with authority.
The problem with American race arguments is that both sides are generally wrong. Race is not nothing but it is not everything. To fail to consider the implications of race when young men walk up to you in a questionable neighborhood can be fatal--and let that stand for a certain blindness in all social policies--but to consider only race is to reduce human existence to one dimension. Even the late Sam Francis went too far in emphasizing the significance of race. I once asked him whether, if he went to Japan, he would prefer the company of Kurosawa or that of a technically Caucasian primitive Ainu living in a cave. Perhaps facetiously, he said, "the Ainu."
In many a racialist's mind--I mean of the best sort--there is an implicit hierarchy of relationships, resembling what anthropologists called a segmented society. We are closest to kinfolks and neighbors, then members of the tribe and through the tribe to the nations and then to allied or related nations. But even socieities like the Nuer described by Evans-Pritchard have cross-cutting relationships that bind people of different segments together. That is one of the roles of religion and secret societies like the Freemasons, Rotarians, or the Nuer's Leapordskin Chiefs. One of the racialists' failures is to consider this very important dimension of human social life, which draws me closer in some respects to a Japanese or Nigerian Catholic than to an English atheist. There are also vocational ties--carpenters relate to carpenters, poets to poets--to say nothing of erotic attractions that bring together an Englishman with a Chinese woman.
By the way, the current thinking on race and IQ seems to posit a baseline IQ of 90 for most groups, 100 or 100+ for Europeans and North Asians, and somewhere in the 70's for Africans. I'm not an expert in these things and cannot pretend to speak with authority.
No, those figures are more or less right. Within a given age group, the median is set at 100 and the standard deviation is assigned 15.
By the way, Mr. Maxwell, as one who works near to psychometrics and has observed the cultural and technical characteristics of people of varying g-levels, I have found it unavoidable to conclude that intelligence (g) is a critical factor in cultural and social development, on all scales from broad to individual. No doubt you are correct to castigate those who, in your words, make "IQ their tribe." Yet:
"Because blacks average an IQ of about 85, it only fits with the HBD'ers that nothing good can ever from them. Dumping on blacks is just their modus operandi."
Finding a place - apart from a jail cell - in contemporary society is very, very difficult for those whose IQ is under 100. That is of course more of a failing of contemporary society than of anything else. For one thing, as we are all aware gainful low-skill, labor-intensive employment is difficult to secure, thanks to the corporate moguls and their subservience to China's exchange rates and cheap prison labor.
What is probably the more important factor, however, has been the speed with which mass media has swept Western countries since 1945 and subsequently rotted. The scandalous starlets of MTV, the lowbrows of American politics, the dweeby divorcées on daytime soap operas, the bisexual self-hypers on talk shows, the gangsta rappers, the Lady GaGas: this is now mainstream American culture. There are few positive inspirational voices able to make it through this noise nowadays.
Naturally, those of lower intelligence are less likely to actively seek out those positive places of refuge - Churches in which the Gospel is still preached, more traditional-style folk music venues - and more likely to accept the rotten culture they are offered by the prominent starlets they look up to.
No wonder the black illegitimacy rate boomed from 22 percent to 68 percent from the 1960s to the 2000s. And if my interaction with the blue-collar workers at the factories where my father has been a process engineer are at all representative, those numbers are pretty accurate so far as is concerned that portion of the white population who resembles average blacks in socioeconomic and intellectual terms.
Everyone we see on TV lives rotten, and parents let their children grow up on TV. Their children subsequently abandoned societal norms and children grow up without fathers, obliging the TV to act as a surrogate parent. So much for children's rights. At least in the 1960s a child could (theoretically) choose whether his parents would be Mom and Dad or the Boob Tube.
So yes, there does seem to be a strong causal link between IQ and illegitimacy-criminality, if only an indirect one that would not hold without the kind of rotten overclass the masses look up to. This should not be surprising. Measurable psychological traits often show very reliable correlation with behavior. Probably the best-known example is the link between sociopathy and criminal behavior, and between psychopathy and violent recidivism.
Of course, IQ is not in itself a moral category and is not so fatalistic as an antisocial personality. I would be the last to claim that it is. The question of what to do about the issue is something I have not explored, though a priori I think the destruction of all cable and network TV stations would go a long way.
I read Derb's article and found it to be an honest,factual and courageous.Too many so-called conservatives are afraid to question the rigid,pc,racial orthodoxy which prevails in this society.I yearn for an honest discussion on race--no holds barred.Chronicles could do better on this issue.Since Sam Francis death there has not been enough frank discussion in your magazine of race and how our radical demographic transformation is radically impacting this country.I have had enough of "people playing their cards close to their vest" as you describe it.I believe this is only an excuse for cowardice and surrender.
Ah, another bold white nationalist who does not supply his name. He cannot hide from us, and his name is Charles Dyer. Those of us who actually have put our reputations, incomes, careers, and even the safety of our families on the line, year after year, are really impressed by the bold race warriors with nothing to lose. They are the sort of people who cannot even read, obviously, since my advice was not to journalists and writers but to people who are not in the business. Why should husbands and fathers risk losing a job and alienating friends simply because it makes them feel good to shoot their mouths off?
I will second the misgivings that Prateek expressed about those who worship IQ tests. If these tests (and SATs etc) where really accurate, then how come all the Ivys and other top schools are dominated by leftists and liberals, but after they graduate they get to work on Wall Street, where supposedly they think opposite of left and liberal.
All facetiousness aside, an IQ of 80 or 90 may not mean that person is not intelligent. It my be that such a person intuitively responds to a diffent set of criteria.
Let us "unpack" Charles Dyer's argument. First he lies, and attributes to me an argument I did not make. When his lie is exposed, he compares the Christian faith with racialist theories, as if the two are remotely equivalent. They are only equivalent if your religion is racial hatred, as in this case, apparently, it is. Finally, he obviously knows nothing about early Christians who did not go around making themselves a pain in the arse to their neighbors. Anyone who has read the apologists knows they advised Christians to be good neighbors and good citizens. The trouble-making rigorists (e.g. Montanus, Tertullian, the Donatists) created problems for all Christians and certainly helped to bring on the persecutions.
I have no objections to people being white racial nationalists. Some of my best friends, as the saying goes, are. What I do object to are liars and people with bad manners. Mr. Dyer undoubtedly knows of a good friend of mine, who always advises people in this peculiar little movement not to make trouble in their families or their workplace. That is because my friend--like his friend late Sam Francis--is what they used to call a gentleman. (So is Jared Taylor, from what I know of him.) He doesn't make up stories or sound off on subjects he knows nothing about or accuse people of cowardice simply because they don't agree with his point of view. He doesn't expect me to devote this magazine to an anti-Christian creed I don't believe in.
Racial differences are a fact, but so are the laws of gravity and thermodynamics and so is man's inhumanity to man. Just because I recognize a fact and take account of it does not mean I am required to devote my life to it or waste my time conversing with louts.
Because I am going home and don't want to have to deal with louts, I have blocked Mr. Dyer until tomorrow, though he may still submit comments which may be posted tomorrow morning, Here is the comment to which I am responding above.
Let's apply Fleming's "reasoning' to one of his favorite groups--the early Christians.Who also espoused very controversial views.So the rank and file should have shut up and cowardly retreated from openly discussing their radical views because championing Christianity would lead to the "lose of jobs or alienating friends".Thankfully, the early Christians had more guts than Fleming.
All of the studies I know of that have attempted to measure IQ based on equal cultural, social, and economic backgrounds still show Blacks behind Whites. Keep in mind that as a statistical measure, it only applies to groups, not individuals, and represents a shift to the left in the bell curve. There are still super-intelligent Blacks, just fewer of them as a percentage of the total population.
It may have been Arthur Jensen who once said that intelligence--in the social scientific use of the word--is defined as what is measured by IQ tests. It's rather a closed system, but it has the merit of being clear. IQ tests measure several abilities: verbal, mathematical, analytical. I always had trouble with those shapes turned inside out. It was only when I was much older that I realized that a large part of my problem is the lack of depth perception: I have terrible eyes that have undergone operations, and since they work independently I have very limited and imperfect perception of depth. It plays Hell with a young man trying to catch a pop fly as the ball goes through the range of first one eye and then another--shifting, sometimes at the last minute, over an inch. On the other hand, I was convinced as a teenager that this was a gift since I was not so subject to optical illusions or, as I believed, propaganda delusions.
Obviously, IQ numbers are a composite, disguising the fact that women rate higher on verbal tests and lower on the others, but come out equal with men overall. There are other intellectual and psychic skills which are not measured, and the number of geniuses who end up driving cabs and living on junk food is notorious. IQ tests cannot measure the ability to appreciate music or painting or verse, though they can indirectly help to predict--to some extent--who can be a successful composer, since music composition is so mathematically based. The tests are not especially good at predicting economic success and this is frequently used against them. I have another interpretation. Highly intelligent people do not always value money so much as others because they don't need so much money to enjoy life.
Whatever may be true of the tests, it is certainly true that people with IQ's below 80 are not going to be mathematicians or physicians or even newspaper columnists, and people with IQ's below 140 are probably not going to be physicists. While it is not true that dumb people are happier or more moral than smart people, I have known plenty of dimwitted people who led better lives than some of my more brilliant friends and acquaintances. Some day I shall tell the tale of my debate at Ann Arbor on Affirmative Action, a tale that has much bearing on this discussion.
Relatively small differences--15 points--on IQ matter in some things, and bigger differences can matter absolutely. Nonetheless, as Sam Francis used to argue, general statistics cannot determine the intelligence of an individual. He also argued, in private as well as in public, that IQ differences between the races could not be the basis of public policy. However, as any sane person knows, the fiction that there are no differences is the justification for very expensive and useless programs like Affirmative Action, to say nothing of all the race and gender class action suits.
Years ago I wrote a fairly controversial piece that made some readers angry. In it I argued that I could justify either of two approaches to race in America. I would be content with race-neutral legislation (so long as it did not violate basic Constitutional rights) that outlawed racial distinctions in the marketplace or in government hiring. Merit alone would determine things. Or, if race had to be taken into consideration, then I wanted it to be my children's race that got the privileges. Affirmative Action, in conferring benefits on other people's children based on their race, was immoral and offensive to white people. Under attack, I sent it to the esteemed Walter Williams, who wrote back to say there was nothing in my article that he could take exception to.
You are correct to say that a reluctance to publish one's real name while expressing politically incorrect truths is a function of fear, but it is a perfectly rational and moral fear, a fear for one's family's welfare, and for one's own livelihood. It would of course be despicable to sound off with a pseudonym if what you were doing so in order to be insulting with impunity, but that is not the real reason why most normal people are unwilling to own up publicly to their honest racial feelings. As Clyde Wilson has asked in these very pages, "Be honest now: are you looking forward to living in a majority non-white country?" The only honest answer from sane people is of course, hell no.
When it comes to discussions of race, it would be one thing to insist that everyone either speak openly or else remain silent IF WE ACTUALLY INHABITED a milieu of civil discussion in America. Since we don't have anything of the kind, but instead have the world of Derbyshire's pillorying, I refuse to use my real name when commenting on any right-wing sites. I received a very real and specific warning from an ally in the management of my work, who let me know that my activities were being monitored. I know for a fact that they google staff names to root out thoughtcrimes in the company, and that is more than enough to convince me of the stupidity of pretending that I enjoy freedom of speech. On the other hand, why shouldn't I take advantage of the admittedly limited and less-satisfying form of expression that I can find behind a nom de guerre, here and at similar friendly spots. If you all tell me that pseudonyms are disallowed, or frowned upon, I will gladly limit myself to silent reading, which is what I generally do anyhow.
I didn't have the privilege of reading Chronicles during Sam Francis' tenure, but I disagree with Charles that Chronicles lacks courage to discuss race honestly. think your willingness to publish Francis more than demonstrates the bona fides of Chronicles as courageously defying the race police who certainly do rule America.
I don't understand why Mr. Maxwell identifies with Sam Francis on race and yet condemns Derbyshire's atheism. Why is Mr. Maxwell prepared to overlook Francis' apostasy and to approve Francis' very frank and politically incorrect stance on race while dismissing Derbyshire as an HBD windbag? I see where Dr. Fleming points out that Francis disavowed IQ as a useful standard for public policy, but Francis obviously had a very high IQ. Perhaps it was his intelligence that won him the privilege of being allowed to speak so much truth about race.
These are very good questions to raise. My point in talking about cowardice was directed against those who think they know what we really want to talk about but are too discrete to shout it from the rooftops but themselves write their attacks anonymously while we put ourselves on the line.
Sam's relations with Christianity were complex. He was brought up in a Christian family and at his funeral the pastor showed us the oath of Christian allegiance young Sam had signed. When I met him he was an Anglican but on a long drive in the Shenandoah Valley he told me had lost his faith. I attributed his apostasy to the effects of working at the Heritage Foundation and living in DC. He turned somewhat Nietzschean on the question in private but rarely took a public stand, even against the Catholic Church which he honestly disliked. On racialist website discussion groups, he repeatedly warned his admirers against attacking Christianity or even Catholicism. He had too many Christian friends and family members ever to become anti-Christian--it was all a Germanic delusion from Nietzsche and Spengler. I remember arguing with him once about Constantine's conversion, and he was rather annoyed when I pointed out his scholarship reeked of Gibbon and was about 100 years out of date. On his deathbed, he welcomed the visit of Fr. Scalia and received the last rites of the Catholic Church. He died, as Fr. Scalia has said emphatically, not as a Catholic but as a Christian.
There are two lies told about his death: the first comes from atheists who are basically calling Fr. Scalia a liar; the second from Catholics the sum of whose information comes from Chris Check and myself. I sometimes think truth is impossible in this generation of man.
I suppose one of the things that really did Mr. Derbyshire in was his proposal to his children that they keep fake black friends to prove that they are not racist. Among other things, it really undermines the purpose of a genuine friendship to being pure opportunism. And it is realistically for the best to only have friends that you like. Not fake friends that you used as tools.
It did not help that he considered the above average African Americans to be a "luxury commodity", which is to say that other people are an inanimate object to be used as a tool for the luxury of making yourself look good.
On these two counts, whatever your view on races, Mr. Derbyshire genuinely erred.
Dr. Fleming, thank you for your always cordial replies. Reading Mr. Francis, it is obvious that his attitude to religion would have to be as nuanced as his approach to any other subject, and I am gratified to know that he was not a hostile type of unbeliever. I am very happy to hear this about Francis' conversion, something that several people have contradicted me about when I have mentioned it, and to hear it from someone with the authority to know the truth.
"I suppose one of the things that really did Mr. Derbyshire in was his proposal to his children that they keep fake black friends to prove that they are not racist."
Mr. Sanjay I interpreted that part of Mr. Derbyshire's piece to be deliberately sarcastic. If he was serious about it, then I think it is a very faulty piece of advice.
"I don't understand why Mr. Maxwell identifies with Sam Francis on race and yet condemns Derbyshire's atheism. Why is Mr. Maxwell prepared to overlook Francis' apostasy and to approve Francis' very frank and politically incorrect stance on race while dismissing Derbyshire as an HBD windbag? "
Because Francis rarely, if ever, made his quiet opinions on religion known. He never contributed to a blog on how stupid religious people are how hed like to have a 'right wing' without them (Secular Right). Maybe he did go a bit down the road of Nietzschian nihilism, but he still believed in a true conservative world view. Derbyshire on the other hand could really care less about 90% of what matters to American conservatives. He fully supports replacing 'stupid' hillbillys whos ancestors have been in the US for 400 years with 'high IQ' east Asians.
There really is no comparison between Francis and the Derbyshire.
I guess I misunderstood the nature of Dr. Fleming's initial post. I thought his thesis was Derbyshire was fired by liars for allegedly telling lies. It never occurred to me to consider the truth or falsity of the underlying offense or to even read the article. I thought he was merely pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of National Review pretending to scruples about misinformation of any kind as a qualifying factor for their writers.
I have really never understood the meaning or purpose of introducing IQ into such simple equations. I have nine children and it never occurred to me that I should treat the five with the highest IQ with a lesser standard of Christian charity or conduct than those with the lower IQ or vice versa. A black man in Chicago once robbed and assaulted one of my children while another one from North Carolina has been a good christian mentor and basketball coach for another. It never occurred to me to check their I Q before offering thanks to the one and criminal prosecution for the other. The one consistent observation I have made about National Review over the years is that they hire and fire writers without regard for any standard, other than expediency or what might possibly increase a desired audience at a given point in time.
Mr Frum culumniated an entire group of "unpatriotic American" citizens before the last Iraq war and was probably promoted for the smear. Why on earth should Derbyshire not be fired for the same or similar offense, given these type of standards of such a trite publication? When freedom is understood as license and leaders are the men with the guns,( and who could deny such an understanding today) then it becomes clear why one brother was named "Big" and the other brother left home to start Chronicles. PAX!
Tom Piatak offers the following insights on his friend Sam Francis:
Three small points on Sam Francis and religion:
1) I spent many happy hours in conversation with Sam. He never attacked Christianity in any of them.
2) On one occasion, Sam reflected on the fact that so many of his close friends were Catholic and revealed that he had attended Mass on Christmas Eve with his nephew and his family while home for Christmas and confessed that he enjoyed it.
3) One of Sam's favorite novels was Brideshead Revisited and we discussed the novel several times, including Lord Marchmain's reception of the Last Rites. This has always comforted me, since Sam knew exactly why Fr. Scalia was there and he welcomed Fr. Scalia.
Robert Reavis, you were right about my primary intention in writing the piece, but it is also worth a bit of time to take up these issues in a serious and non-polemical manner. Derbyshire is more or less right on the facts, but there are other dimensions of human life that are more important.
I, too, took JD's advice on making black friends as at least partly in jest. If it were intended seriously, it would not be the hypocrisy that would bother me but the treatment of other human beings as mere means to an end. However he meant his remark, it would scarcely justify his dismissal, much less the calumny being heaped upon his head.
Mr. Maxwell, thanks, that makes sense. I agree with you that Francis belongs in a different and even a superior category of thinker than does Derbyshire. And I would agree that they even differed with respect to their forms of atheism. For me the main point is that Derbyshire's arguments in "The Talk" cannot be refuted by pointing out that he is guilty of spurious IQ-elitism. That would be SPLC-style ad hominem. I abominate Derbyshire's adolescent behavior toward Christians, but that doesn't undermine his well-reasoned argument about the reality of black crime, nor the conspiracy to ignore that reality.
". For me the main point is that Derbyshire's arguments in "The Talk" cannot be refuted by pointing out that he is guilty of spurious IQ-elitism. That would be SPLC-style ad hominem. "
But that isnt where I was coming from. I am the last person to deny black crime, etc, etc and all of the many problems they have. My point is that 'The Derb' comes from a sort of IQist belief set that is about one step from spewing racial hatred toward blacks. Maybe I've just been worn down by reading years and years worth of what amount to IQist versions of n- jokes, and that includes 'Derb'. Im all for total honesty in reporting black misbehavior, but some of the stuff that comes out of those types is so disgusting words cannot express my contempt for them. Its not uncommon to read from them (similar to the most vulgar WNs) how great abortions are because they reduce the number of blacks, and thus, black criminals.
Yes, it was in the book "Freakonomics" where perhaps the most notorious version of the "Abortion has been good for society" argument was made. On the other hand, the argument was annihilated by Mr. HBD himself, Steve Sailer. And as Sailer has noted so well and so often, IQ is a legitimate way of gauging prospective employees that is rapidly becoming illegal, because it underlines the politically incorrect fact that IQ tends to be genetic. The squeamishness over linking IQ and race in print is based on a faulty assumption that acknowledging the link is tantamount to proposing top-down eugenics. I agree that focusing upon IQ bespeaks the scientistic/materialistic bent of the HBD group, but that doesn't discredit using IQ as a rough and ready tool for refuting affirmative action.
But then 'Mr HBD himself' also advances a civic credal nationhood 'citizenism', that Im not sure how much it differs from what the elites already think. Im not so inclined to view 99% of the post-1965 wave as equal with that of the posterity of those of us whos ancestors were among the founding generation, and I agree with the WN charge that its just a cover for his enthusiasm for asian immigration which goes back to the view, that Derb seems to share, that IQ is the answer to all questions.
I see what you mean, and that is sad if that is what he's saying. I don't know whether Sailer is a Christian, but it's difficult to take seriously his concern about national sovereignty when he seems so often to ignore the inevitably Christian basis of any such sovereignty. Brimelow suffers from the same sort of indifference, and it weakens VDARE's credibility a lot. Incidentally, it looks as if VDARE will now be featuring a column from Derbyshire should he recover from his cancer.
Mr. Maxwell,
"doesn't discredit using IQ as a rough and ready tool for refuting affirmative action."
There are so many reasons for refuting unjust endeavors and their unhappy consequences, IQ is probably only one of hundreds. My point was not that various kinds of facts should not be reviewed and considered seriously in conversations about anthropology, racial characteristics or human relations. Rather, my point was that the civilized public setting for such conversations is so rare in today's climate of low class journalism as to be non-existent --- especially among the professional character assasins lurking around places like National Review, and the various conservative and/or liberal cable networks. In tyrannical settings, the scope of honest or delightful conversation is always reduced to a narrow whisper heard underground and quite always quite random and dangerous in its occurence. As random as say the diatribes against Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for translating "veritas" for Harvard graduates, or Pat Buchanan's contempt for stupid wars in the heart of Islam, to the random praise for Mike Wallace's 60 Minute's interview with The Reverend Louis Farakham or Chris Hitchen's public contempt for Catholics. My point was that when you work for friends like this, you would be better off learning to love your enemies.
On the racial/ethnic question, how does one draw the line? White is great, but then we cannot include the Jews, Slavs are not so cool, then we have an issue with catholics and pretty soon we are down to blond and blue eyed protestant Northern Europeans. In Europe, Germans thought they were the smartest and they still do, northerners hate the Southerners, Catholics the Protestants and Russians since they beat all of Europe united against them should feel superior etc.
It is often taken as a given that blacks are inherently violent, so a white person should shy away from large crowds of blacks. Which may be impossible if you are a white basketball player. But I would assume that I would tend to be inherently violent if my ancestors were enslaved and now I had to live peacefully with their tormentors offspring as if past did not matter.
The counterargument to this is that if you were a German you are not likely to get beat up on the poor side of Warsaw, but then again I am not so sure.
I know that IQ tests and SATs are supposed to be ideology neutral. But I wonder. They are writen by leftist Ivy professors who openly declare that people to the right of them are stupid and give such students bad grades.
On another note, to get into an Ivy, among other things your SAT needs to be at or above 1500. Now if you were black you may be able to get in with as much as a 200 point discount.
SATs are supposed to be taken with minimum amount of preparation. but in reality cram schools in Arkadia and San Marino consistently produce tons of kids that are able to perform in the 1550 rage. One San Marino highschool recently had 5 kids that received a perfect score.
We can argue that being rich makes you more intelligent, that being Asian helps or we can take SATs and other IQ tests with a grain of salt and accept that that is how the game is played and that is all.
In his article, JD explains how the racial game is played and for it, he gets pilloried. In a way he gets pilloried for not playing correctly the game he was playing, the game of being a NR pundit. Sort of like not cramming for the SATs. I can only conclude that he did it on purpose and what that is remains to be seen.
Dr. Fleming, if I may, I just want to comment on a couple of points vis-à-vis IQ...
Obviously, IQ numbers are a composite, disguising the fact that women rate higher on verbal tests and lower on the others, but come out equal with men overall.
Yes. The median for men and women is about the same (100). However, it is also true that the standard deviation for women is rather lower than that for men. That is to say that both geniuses and cretins (retards) are easier to find in the male population.
Also, the standard deviation matters a great deal. That is to say that 15 points is a very noticable difference in real life--not necessarily of a person's work ethic, but certainly of what he is capable of. IQ is a highly singular measurement, but it is often misunderstood. For example, one with an IQ under 120 may be capable of earning an engineering degree, but he is probably not going to have a top-notch engineering career.
IQ differences between the races could not be the basis of public policy
A very wise observation. Such differences can, however, shed valuable light on certain social phenomena, and should not be discounted when discussing strategies.
But another thing to keep in mind is that IQ can be increased, even over the course of a given person's lifetime. The chances of improvement are, predictably, higher if the IQ is not already appallingly low (a certified imbecile is never going to become a genius) and if intervention takes place before the individual in question attains the age of 12 (or even 25).
I know that IQ tests and SATs are supposed to be ideology neutral. But I wonder. They are writen by leftist Ivy professors who openly declare that people to the right of them are stupid and give such students bad grades.
Not entirely true on the IQ front, but even so, isn't it interesting that even their best attempts do not suffice to bridge any sort of PC gap?
Disclaimer: I'm defending IQ on here because if I didn't I know that it would be a fight between only the neutrals (Dr. Fleming and Mr. Reavis) and the unbelievers.
IQ, like all other scientific measurements, is a detached observational number. It can illuminate a number of valuable observations and highly general predictions. No single quantifiable property in nature can or is meant to give a one-for-all answer to all sociological questions. Thankfully, that does not inhibit such properties from being extremely useful. Otherwise, there would be no such thing a science at all.
On another note, to get into an Ivy, among other things your SAT needs to be at or above 1500. Now if you were black you may be able to get in with as much as a 200 point discount.
Yes, probably true. Tough luck. If you don't like it, don't go to college. (And yes, I am increasingly of the opinion that if you cannot get into an Ivy League school, there is a 95 percent chance that a college degree will not be worth your time/money in terms of materialistic returns.)
We can argue that being rich makes you more intelligent, that being Asian helps or we can take SATs and other IQ tests with a grain of salt and accept that that is how the game is played and that is all.
First of all, SAT is not, strictly speaking, an IQ test, though SAT scores are believed to correlate significantly with IQ. (It is not, in my opinion, even close to the most accurate one, but it is still useful.)
Second, although Asians may get better SAT/IQ scores on average, anyone who knows anything about top-tier university admissions will tell you Southeast Asians are at an automatic disadvantage. Once again, not fair, but who ever said life was?
Third, maybe being rich doesn't make you intelligent. But let's suppose for a second that the qualities measured by an IQ test were indeed tilted towards those qualities that correlate with a high income. Wouldn't you WANT to know what the rich are like so that you could become more like them? Nobody, except maybe a monk, wants to be poor. Some are non-materialistic enough that they won't do everything and anything to get rich (and thank God there are still a few people like that!), but all things equal, we would still rather have money than not have money.
In brief: even if IQ WERE just a measure of income potential (and it is not), it would still be valuable, and we should still want to know what correlates with high IQ so that we can figure out whether it is worthwhile to aspire to.
Thank you for your thoughtful answer and I couldn't agree with you more that without an Ivy you are pretty much dead in the water.
I guess my problem with IQ tests is that they seem to me like opinion polls in the sense that the answers you get depend on what you want to get. If we want to call a test of this sort an IQ test then we are depending on the subjective perception of its creator. We will do well if we intuitively respond to the underlying algorythm that the creator favors.
Granted that we want to be objective etc., but I wonder how well this really works. In any case, the argument I am trying to make is that the IQ test of sorts that is being used, that is SAT, is structured in such a way that a non PC individual taking it is at a disadvantage. If he gets lucky and Once he is at an Ivy, he will be further discouraged from graduate school and serious scholarship by the grades he is receiving from leftist professors. To make the irony even more scathing, his leftist student friends with good grades will be in a position to start with 6 figure salaries on Wall Street, which is the epitome of everything that the leftist academia stands against.
I guess what I am driving at is the ability of the leftists to enjoy elitist privileges, while constantly speaking against them. and Using IQ and SAT tests to their advantage. I suppose it takes a special kind of intelligence .
A lot of people would think that Karl Marx may be deemed highly intelligent but is he really? Is anything the left has to say really intelligent? Are these people really so smart and can you have smart people both on the right and the left? I know that it is easy to say yes to such a sophomoric query, but... Can someone like Paul Krugman really have an IQ that is higher than in low hundreds? yet the country gets to do what he says.
Wouldn't you WANT to know what the rich are like so that you could become more like them?
There was a controversy of sorts at Smith College, one of the most well endowed schools in the country with one of the highest per student. The school could easily pay every students tuition just off the interest.
Anyway, an alumni association president of Westchester Coounty wrote in to the Sophian, the college newspaper, criticizing the policy of the outgoing college president who was proud for admitting an ever increasing number of minority students. The gist of the letter was that the more such students were admitted the less likely were the white girls of Westchester County likely to go to Smith and later leave money for the endowment and concluding that "the days of pearl wearing girls of Smith marrying Amherst men" were well over. You can only imagine the virulent backlash that the letter received.