Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Climaquiddick 2.0

1 Comment

In context. From comments:

I love all these claims of “out of context”. Maybe Jones et al can explain to us the correct context in which it is acceptable to:

Request a colleague to delete E-Mails material to an FOIA (a potentially criminal act)

Collude to block the work of professional scientists from publication

Attempt to have an editor of a scientific journal fired from their job

Cheer when a non AGW believing scientist dies

and so on and so on.

Strangely – ha ha – we never hear what this correct context is.

No, we don’t.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

In Which Andrew Sullivan Is Unfairly Attacked

64 Comments

One wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I actually largely agree with Andrew Sullivan. The notion that intelligence is not heritable is ludicrous, and if it is, the notion that every “race” is going to be equivalent in that regard is equally so.

Yes, I know that (Marxist) Stephen Jay Gould desperately attempted to make the case, but he failed. I have no firm opinions on which “race” is smarter than which (and yes, one can agree that race is a social construct while also recognizing that groups of genetically related people will share some inherited traits), but I don’t believe the acceptance of the notion that some are born smarter than others, and that some genetic groups may be on average smarter than others makes one a racist per se. Moreover, I don’t even care, since this fact should play no role in either public policy or individual interactions. The only people who believe that it should are collectivists, who believe that people should be dealt with as groups rather than individuals. Thus, if anyone is racists, it is them.

[Update in the afternoon]

It should be noted that I am not defending The Bell Curve or any specific research. I’ve never even read it. I’m simply defending the notion that different “races” could have different average “intelligence.”

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Making The Klan Boring

28 Comments

Jonah Goldberg on more whitewashing of “progressive” history:

I’ve long argued that there’s an infuriating tendency among mainstream liberal historians to take two approaches to evils in American history. Sins are always either the result of conservatives doing conservative things or they’re the product of America’s fundamentally bigoted nature. It’s just never, ever, the case that liberalism or progressivism has something to apologize for. Liberalism is never wrong, because essential to the concept of liberalism is the idea that it must always be right. The fact that racism and other evils were commonplace, even central, to much of the progressive project is simply too jarring to contemplate and so we get either a whitewash or blame-shifting. And with Boyle, we get both.

And we’ll continue to as long as people continue to take these people seriously. Meanwhile, here’s the real story of the 20s Klan.