Intelligence, Gender and Race Differences

Lots of non-PC articles coming out today, from the claim that men are five points ahead on IQ tests to the first new article on race and IQ from Charles Murray since he co-authored The Bell Curve.

Like Andrew Sullivan says:

The fact of human inequality and the subtle and complex differences between various manifestations of being human - gay, straight, male, female, black, Asian - is a subject worth exploring, period. Liberalism's commitment to political and moral equality for all citizens and human beings is not and should not be threatened by empirical research into human difference and varied inequality.

Hateful actions have been justified by this kind of thinking. But if you believe that reason reigns supreme then you can't let that stop you in your pursuit of knowledge and understanding.

UPDATE: The "liberals" are responding. Atrios and Digby have some great points here. Matt thinks people who believe The Bell Curve holds up are fools, not bigots. Personally I don't have a strong opinion on this, although it seems clear that Bell Curve likely confuses levels of education with IQ.

All I know is this: Research shows strong parallels between "group psychology" (even for large groups like "society") and individual psychology. Thus, in the long term it does society no good to create taboos and suppress debate.

UPDATE II: I normally like Atrios, his writing is intelligent even though it's a little one-sided at times. But this is ridiculous:

The ignorance of Andrew Sullivan is shocking. A decade later, he still has no clue why the publication of racist pseudo-science reflects not a man who is "interested in the truth," but rather, as I said, a bigot, a fool, or both.

Look, it may be that The Bell Curve is completely devoid of scientific merit. I really don't know. But please present some sensible arguments instead of resorting to name-calling. I read Atrios often and I find his "far-left" reputation to be much exaggerated. His grasp of economics and his ability to form coherent arguments makes him more of a moderate in my book. But like many liberals (and human beings in general I suppose) he completely undercuts his "moderate" credentials with occational posts like the one above that have no rational merits whatsoever.

Leave Shabana Alone!

Terrible news from the motherland:

Earlier this week shots were fired at a restaurant owned by the sister of Shabana Rehman, a Pakistani-born Norwegian comic who (like the spiky-haired Canadian lesbian Muslim writer Irshad Manji, the author of The Trouble with Islam Today) has taken to using jihad and Islam as the jumping off point for her jokes and political commentary.

I always enjoy Shabana's newspaper columns and tv comedy when I'm in Norway, she's really a fantastic woman. Her sister's attackers should be tortured and killed slowly by 72 virgins...

B.D. on Flypaper

A must read from B.D. I am actually very curious to see what he has to say next.

Does CNN need saving?

Via Atrios, all this talk about saving CNN has taken on a new dimension for me now that I work there. I don't have anything to add though, except that I agree with DC Media Girl.

Outta Iraq

Via Kevin, here is Juan Cole's plan for withdrawal. This plan balances the need for getting out (because our presence is clearly counter-productive) and the desire to avoid the human tragedy of a full-blown civil war.

College Rankings

It is the season for silly college rankings. The latest to take a crack at it is The Washington Monthly. Apparently tech colleges do more for the country (and my old digs do the most).

Democrats and Elections

Commenter Ed Stephan has an interesting take over at The Carpetbagger:

Over the last fifty years or so, we have become a nation of primarily selfish, isolated, fearful (or bored), purpose-less, tasteless, non-passionate and uncompassionate, artless, incurious, brain-dead consumers, unaware of any past, willing to bankrupt any future, i.e., perfect targets for what (little) the GOP has to offer.

Liberals, Conservatives and Nastiness

Kevin Drum has a good post articulates some of the reasons why conservatives are so much better at sliming their opponents with nasty fact-twisting ad campaigns like the swift boat veterans campaign.

UPDATE: Hiding/stopping comments on this post because some idiot posted an advertisement.

Why Democrats Lack Voter Appeal

Matthew Yglesias has a few points worth noting: Contrary to most liberals' beliefs, American voters don't vote on "the issues", they look for people who they can identify with. Simply put: A white Christian voter will choose a white Christian politician talking about Christian family values.

So even if people are starting to really dislike Republicans because they are corrupt, ineffective and economical with the truth, they still don't like Democrats. As Matt says they may end up disliking the GOP so much that it leads to victory in the short run but it does nothing in the long run.

I think Matt is right when he says that "what's going on here is something that's a bit difficult for most liberals to get our collective heads around". There truly are two Americas, and guess what: The other part is bigger.

Jennings dies

This makes me incredibly sad. America has lost a great journalist. They don't make 'em like this anymore. I hope the time will come when people with wisdom, integrity, and a sense of public service will again dominate the airwaves.

UPDATE: Glad to see that Greg agrees. Although I can't help but wonder: When will he stop backing Bush? Is he really so stubborn that it will take a cowardly mid-term election retreat from Iraq to change his mind? Today's Republican party doesn't have room for a man who characterizes a bona fide and hated member of the "mainstream liberal media" like this:

The kind of journalism and anchoring that Jennings did--intellectually honest and judicious, delivered with a steely calm (rather than the shrill hysterics or 'emo-anchoring' now in vogue) appears a dying breed today.

Krugman: Design for Confusion

Krugman sums up the conservatives approach to policymaking:

[Corporations] pouring a steady stream of money into think tanks that created a sort of parallel intellectual universe, a world of "scholars" whose careers are based on toeing an ideological line, rather than on doing research that stands up to scrutiny by their peers.

.. The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved. This impression reflects the assiduous work of conservative think tanks, which produce and promote skeptical reports that look like peer-reviewed research, but aren't. And behind it all lies lavish financing from the energy industry, especially ExxonMobil.

There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that nonscientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy - if it's got numbers and charts in it, doesn't that make it science?

He then goes on to Intelligent Design:

The important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn't have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory.

Clever, huh? :)

Moral Conviction: Democrats vs. Republicans

I was looking for some of Andrew Sullivan's excellent posts on torture when I came across this e-mail from one of his readers:

What really bothers me right now is the political self-protection in place of moral values that happens on the right and left. The left demonstrated this with their rallying around Clinton during Monica-gate. While Clinton probably did not deserve to be impeached, he certainly did not act presidential and was not worthy of the support he received. With the Democrats out of power, the Republicans have been front and center with their political self-protection. Where is the outrage about torture? Honestly, they impeach Clinton over sex and lying, but actual incidents of human beings from around the world being treated with Nazi stye torture is responded to with circling of political wagons. At what point does humanity trump politics? Those who committed the horrors of 9/11 showed no humanity, and only looked to serve their political agenda of terror. We are better then that. Both parties need to be. I am not calling Republicans Nazis or saying they are the same as 9/11 terrorists, but I am saying the moral fiber of our nation is called into question with government sanctioned torture of people, incident or guilty. It is one thing to get into debates about what it means to be patriotic, a silly debate the right and left get into all the time, but it is another thing for our humanity to be at stake. Where is the outrage? Both parties have men and women of great moral conviction. May of those Democrats were missing during Clinton's presidency, and it seems many Republicans are missing now.

Like most liberals I am very disturbed by the lengths to which conservatives and Republicans nowadays will go in order to defend Bush & Co. Whether it is Karl Rove outing a CIA agent for political gains or Alberto Gonzales writing his "torture memo" I am truly astounded that the vast majority of conservatives and Republicans (good friends included) are either a) not bothered at all, or b) actively defending the administration.

But are the Democrats any better? Andrew's reader doesn't seem to think so, since many Democrats defended Clinton during his presidency. Thus he ends up lamenting a lack of moral conviction on both sides.

In this he may be right but it is important to note the different forms of moral conviction. Conservatives care greatly about personal virtues such as fidelity and honesty while liberals care more about saving the evironments and eliminating human suffering.

As a (moderate) liberal I remember laughing out loud when I first heard about Monica-gate. Public figures caught in juicy scandals amuses me. Later on I came to see it more as a personal tragedy for the Clinton family and an excellent psychological case study in "compartmentalization" (which some conservatives rightly link to "character" although I'd say it's more about "emotional maturity"). But I never saw it as grounds for impeachment.

In torture-gate I'm not really sure I see grounds for impeachment either, but looking at Bush's policy decisions as a whole I definitely think voters should have kicked him out in 2004. In my view he is both ruining the environment and increasing human suffering. About his personal virtues I don't care so much, although I I'm happy his honesty ratings are finally falling. He could be caught snorting coke while cheating on Laura with Pam Anderson for all I care, as a liberal I would argue that he should be allowed to do whatever he wants.

But imagine the conservatives reaction to such a story. They would drop him like a hot potato. He would no longer be "one of them". Which is, I guess, ultimately what people's voting behavior comes down to.

I for one like to think I am much more like Clinton than Bush. Not because I yearn for infidelity (not any more than the next guy anyway) but because I value making the world a better place far higher than the protection of superficial Victorian moral standards.

Bush's Faith-Based Rule

I had forgotten about this Suskind piece from October 2004. It remains extremely insightful even though its opening prediction (a GOP civil war) hasn't started yet.

UPDATE: Or has it?

Democrats, National Security and Nukes

An excellent thread about national security, Democrats and nuclear threats over at Matt Yglesias's new place. He quotes Peter Scoblic of TNR:

[Democrats] must explain that nuclear weapons--not simply abstractions like tyranny or hate or evil--pose the greatest threat to the United States. And they must explain that, in contrast to Bush's fantasy, in which the earth is cleansed of evil, theirs is a story--all the more optimistic because of its realism--in which the concrete goal of securing and destroying fissile material can be accomplished through concrete steps.

Read the comments too. Money quote by commenter Gary Boatwright:

The first step is to reject the concept of "conservative hawk" and "liberal hawk." In the interest of ideological accuracy we should substitute "neo-conservative warmonger" for the term "conservative hawk" and "conservative warmonger" for the term "liberal hawk." The warmongers at TNR and the DLC are not liberal.

The second step is to recognize that the GWOT is simply a recycled version of the Global War On Communism. GWOT and GWOC are identical in every respect, including the lack of intellectual and ethical integrity. The Cold War had no identifiable military objective and neither does the GWOT.

Republicans and National Security

Kevin says:

Until Patrick Fitzgerald finishes his investigation, we won't know everything that really happened here. In fact, we still might not know even then. But we've learned one thing already: when presented with even a hint of evidence that someone on their team has treated national security with cavalier disdain, conservative concern with national security gets thrown overboard without a second thought.

Amen.

UPDATE: Kevin, who is thankfully back from vacation, has more.

Kid pics

Neoconservatives and God

Do neoconservatives believe in God? Via Matt, an interesting and comprehensive look at what founding neocon Irving Kristol thinks:

If God does not exist, and if religion is an illusion that the majority of men cannot live without...let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot do without them, and let then a handful of sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among themselves.

I have a lot of sympathy for this view. I myself don't think there is a God, but I agree that "the masses" might act in ways that are immoral and destructive to "the fabric of society" if they learned "the truth".

Although in theory it should be possible to design a societal structure modelled after tribal patterns where moral authority was placed in the hands of "elders" of some kind (which is in fact what happens in many so-called primitive cultures).

Where I have a problem is when religious (and thus moral) authority is hijacked by people who use it primarily for their own personal advancement. I'd say the current crop of Republican leaders exemplify this.

Slow postin'

Blame these guys:

Bush on Iraq in 1999

Here's a nice quote according to Bush's former ghost writer:

'He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,' said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. 'It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it.

On Smarter Jews

Are Ashkenazi Jews smarter than the rest of us? This fascinating report says so and suggests why (via Andrew Sullivan):

The selective force was the restriction of Ashkenazim in medieval Europe to occupations that required more than usual mental agility, the researchers say...

Of course the study focuses on genetic diseases, which is important but not as controversial. Saying that one ethnic group is predisposed to a disease is fairly acceptable. Saying one group is smarter than all other groups is considered controversial:

It would be hard to overstate how politically incorrect this paper is," said Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, noting that it argues for an inherited difference in intelligence between groups. Still, he said, "it's certainly a thorough and well-argued paper, not one that can easily be dismissed outright."

This resonates well with my own thoughts. Why else would Jews be so incredibly successful in America?

..the researchers cite the fact that Ashkenazi Jews make up 3 percent of the American population but won 27 percent of its Nobel prizes, and account for more than half of world chess champions.

And from Exceptionalism (via Matthew Yglesias):

Strikingly, non-Jews greatly overestimate the size of the American Jewish population. A 1992 national survey conducted for the Anti-Defamation Leage by Marttila & Kiley found the median estimate of the percentage of Americans who are Jewish is 18. Only a tenth perceive them as less than 5 percent. . . .

An analysis of the four hundred richest Americans, as reported by Forbes magazine, finds that two-fifths of the 160 wealthiest Americans are Jews, as are 23 percent of the total list. Jews are disproportionately present among many sections of elites, largely drawn from the college educated. These include the leading intellectuals (45%), professors at the major universities (30%), high-level civil servants (21%), partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington, DC (40%), the reporters, editors, and executives of print and broadcast media (26%), the directors writers and producers of the fifty top-grossing motion pictures from 1965 to 1982 (59%), and the same level of people involved in two or more prime time television series (58%).

So, if a) Jews are smarter, and b) Jews are more successful, what does that mean? For one thing I don't see the point of pretending it isn't so. The following is also important:

• Non-Jews should be vigilant and forceful in our rejection of any hint of genuine anti-Semitism. We should not just leave it up to Jews to defend themselves.
• Since the success of Jews in business and media is due to their talents we should not resent nor glorify them any more (or less) than we resent or glorify other successful people.
• Efforts to label legitimate and non-racist opposition to Israeli policies as anti-Semitism should be forcefully countered. The always-excellent (and Jewish) Matthew Yglesias leads the way here.
• Jews themselves should seek to minimize the use of their often privileged (and well-deserved) positions in society to advance the interests of Israel in a "hidden" or "deceptive" way.

By "hidden" or "deceptive" way I refer to the advancement of arguments that do not acknowledge the inherent (and perfectly understandable) bias of many Jews towards politics in the Middle East.

Case in point: Neoconservatives and Iraq. As I've said before:

Imagine for a moment that Sweden and Norway are mortal enemies at war. Then ask yourself this question: Would it be in America's best interest to have me and my fellow Norwegian-Americans direct US policies in Scandinavia?

How is this relevant? Well the end goal is simple: Happy coexistence, mutual respect, and above all: No repetition of the conditions in 20's and 30's Europe (and previously) where envy, racism, and ignorance among non-Jewish populations paved the way for widespread sentiments that were exploited by an evil dictator.

If I were a Jewish-American today I would be angry with people like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz whose efforts to advance democracy in the Middle East leave them open to the charge of "inventing" threats to deceive the American public into helping Israel.

They may think they are helping both Jews and the wider world (in fact I'm sure they genuinely believe they are) but unfortunately the world is such that privilege and deception breeds envy and resentment.

Thankfully there is very little resentment in the country that matters the most today (America) but if the Bush presidency has shown us anything it is that popular perceptions of what is "acceptable" behavior can change very fast.

If current trends torwards Christian fundamentalism and Gitmo-style human rights continue then who knows what might happen tomorrow. Our best insurance policy is open and honest debate and as such I very much welcome this contribution from the Utah research team.

UPDATE: The Economist weighs in.

UPDATE II: Discussion at slashdot.