Jason Malloy on the politics of IQ
11/05/2007
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF
Deep in the comments to his impressive GNXP post "James Watson Tells the Inconvenient Truth," Jason Malloy states:

The political implications of genetic differences are far from obvious, and if negative political consequences DO end up stemming from these findings, you know what? The majority of the blame can lay squarely at the feet of the Jerry Coynes of the world who absurdly refused to predicate or defend their principles on anything less than (tacitly confessed) fairytale lies of total genetic human equality.

Jerry Coyne and the intellectual and scientific community always had the choice to argue "It is 100% irrelevant if there are genetic differences, social justice X and political policies Y and J are predicated on ethical values K and Q"

But they didn't choose to make this argument. Instead they systematically cried and hollered and silenced and lied for 50 years. Like Coyne they just sulked and quietly dreaded and accepted that genetic differences would (and should) lead to a less just world. And then, accordingly, they turned their backs on every principle they should represent as humanists and scientists to try and bury and prevent any inconvenient revelations of such differences.

Coyne and company will switch gears abruptly and entirely in arguing the value system I suggest above, I fully assure you, but they will do so only too late, and they will only look like disingenuous fools to everyone in doing so.

So when the big news comes, if the American people make some dumb and illiberal choices about what to do about it, why don't you lay a large portion of the blame at the feet of the intellectual classes who were too narrowly ideological and myopic to try and prepare the public (and themselves) for it ethically and intellectually?

Or you can just scapegoat the truth seekers and truth tellers for all our problems, like most people - right and left - in this profoundly anti-intellectual culture.

Print Friendly and PDF