Idea Fountain

Much has been made among leftists about recent tests that apparently prove conservatives are more stupid than liberals.

George Monbiot, one of the most sanctimonious of this particular ilk, and one who suffers from incredibly myopic analytical skills, wrote an article about “Liberal Constipation.”

http://www.monbiot.com/2012/02/06/liberal-constipation/

In it, he laments that liberal people are not puffed up enough over the lofty results of such tests.

“…We  have been too polite to mention the study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence…It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact…It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly “different” others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.”

The fact that the above assertion assumes that conservatives are racists has nothing to do with intelligence testing whatsoever. It actually shows poor abstract reasoning abilities in and of itself. That many conservatives see different solutions to social issues hardly makes them racist.

Furthermore, “conservative” and “liberal” are something of a misnomer, leading to semantic concerns. The classical liberal- what I call myself- is very different from the Monbiot modern liberal, which leans waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay left of centre, not centrist, as is classical liberalism. Classical liberals now need to be differentiated in these terms, since liberals have usurped the word and drowned out the progressive themes of liberty, religious freedom, and progress. Today’s liberals lean toward communism and are far from “progressive”- they do not want progress at all, they want to go backwards into tried and failed models like subsistence farming, redistribution, de-industrialization, etc. They pride themselves on being progressive because they apparently fight for human rights. Confusing matters further, the real progress in human rights, however, is being made by fearless Christian capitalists  who are fighting for victims of Islamist and communist tyranny rather than forcing, as do most liberals, the view that “all cultures are equal including those that act barbarically” on victims of machete rape and female genital mutilation. Liberals most often strive to protect cultures from offense rather than individuals from castration,mind control, and other forms of torture.

There’s no place for me today on the left or the right, the liberal or the conservative, which makes me a libertarian, except that I don’t quite fit there. I use the term nonetheless as closest proximity to what I believe- in freedom for all people. Since I was not long ago, before I took up real thinking, a raging leftist liberal and am now accused of being a right winger, (which is funny since I’m pro-legal drugs, pro-legal sex work, pro-gay, pro-abortion, pro-women), it’s difficult to guess where I might end up on the test. I suspect I will clock in at slightly brighter than the average but nothing to write home about. Nonetheless, I am capable of thinking for myself and also of remaining open to changing my mind- which are both important qualities that many of the brightest minds sadly lack.

In any event, since George Monbiot puts great stake and certainty into the results of intelligence testing, I wrote him a letter and eagerly await a reply. Here it is:

Hi George,
Your article boldly refuses apology for the fact that tests have repeatedly shown that conservatives are not as intelligent as liberals.

Question: Does this mean you also accept unquestioningly the consistent results of the past several decades, of tests where blacks and Hispanics repeatedly score lowest?

Just curious about your take on this aspect of the Bell Curve, since you accept the liberals over conservatives aspect. Please don’t respond with facile assertions that white people intentionally skew these tests. We already know this isn’t true, because Asians score higher than white people.

Lorette

What does all this mean? White people must have made coloured people stupid, that’s it! Oh- but those high Asian IQs…guess that’s not it.

Actually, it appears that most white conservatives are too polite to mention the ongoing, consistent results that “prove” they are smarter than black people, save for a few testosterone-riddled savages on white power sites- and the Asians are even more polite and even more seldom gloat about their intellectual prowess- at least not in English, to us. Both are far more than can be said for Monbiot.

But I think it’s great that he brings it up, because its ridiculous to avoid the conversation out of politeness and political correctness. The Bell Curve, one of the major and most vocal studies, raised all hell with its assertions that, while some members of every race occupied every step on the intelligence ladder, the majority shared a rung. The study was lambasted as racist, debunked, and tossed away. But the problem child wouldn’t go away, and the countless studies meant to undo its sinister findings unfortunately cemented them. Decades later, when new studies keep on finding the consistency of this intelligence ladder, no matter how they try to shake the results with different techniques, few outlets bother reporting such uncomfortable news. Monbiot, of course, surely has articles proclaiming white intelligence and the right to it every time such a study comes out- if only to be consistent, of course.

Since he places great store in the credibility of the journals in which the dumb conservative proofs are published, no doubt the endlessly long chain of credible scientific journals asserting the racial hierarchy of intelligence is extremely impressive. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law Journal surveyed other sources of the evidence in 2005 and dared to examine the science, methods, results and explanations put forth.

“Neither the existence nor the size of race differences in IQ are a matter of dispute, only their cause.” Sheesh. Holy awkwardness. News-Medical writes, “The Black-White difference has been found consistently from the time of the massive World War I Army testing of 90 years ago to a massive study of over 6 million corporate, military, and higher-education test-takers in 2001.”  These are not minor, easily dismissed studies.

The paper, “Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability,” is by University of Western Ontario’s J. Philippe Rushton and University of California at Berkeley’s Arthur Jensen and included criticisms of itself. It found that racial differences in intelligence appear in the earliest stages of life and cannot be explained away by education and health, etc. The authors examined ten themes, including: The Worldwide Pattern of IQ Scores. East Asians average higher on IQ tests than Whites, both in the U. S. and in Asia, even though IQ tests were developed for use in the Euro-American culture. Around the world, the average IQ for East Asians centers around 106; for Whites, about 100; and for Blacks about 85 in the U.S. and 70 in sub-Saharan Africa; brain size difference theories examined; trans-racial adoption studies and how IQ differences remain outside of cultural explanations; and a whole other load of cans of worms.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx

More and more scientists are quietly concluding that the explanations of culture, nurture, environment, wealth, etc be damned- genetics is the only explanation for the bulk of the results.

What do we do with this awkward information? Are Chinese people really smarter than German people? Are Italian people really smarter than African people? Do these tests reflect adjustments for education and poverty and health barriers? Where some tests can be discredited on some of these grounds, the bulk of the tests show bald, uncompromising evidence for the embarrassing.

Truth be told, I have no problem accepting that most Japanese people are smarter than I am. There’s no question I could ever advance science or invent lifesaving technology. My organizational and mathematical skills are near-developmentally challenged. That’s just a fact. Still, it’s easier to sit in comfy middle ground and claim to be “just fine” with looking up. I’m way less comfortable looking down, and, unlike Monbiot, who champions all of us to gloat over our triumph over stupid conservatives and blacks, I have a hard time accepting that my black friends are inferior. Or my conservative friends.

Dinesh D’Souza is a conservative Indian born author infamous for stirring up controversy with his claims that colonialism was good for India and by breezily referring to the studies that set him squarely atop. But, as he freely confesses, it’s much easier for a coloured man to discuss these sticky affairs than for anyone else. His book The End of Racism was reviled as racist because he examines these sticky themes. Now here we have a conservative man (stupid) who is Asian (smartest). He concludes that culture can profoundly affect intelligence, regardless of race or inborn capacity. He says the travesty in black America and England is created by those supersmart liberals who refuse to let blacks compete without affirmative action affirming that they are too stupid to advance on their own. He notes that regardless of one’s natural born IQ, family and social support for education and the refusal to tolerate crime or accept excuses for violence will help all of us, smart or stupid.

It’s all, admittedly, murky territory. And it gets confusing, too, since some studies measure different groups of whites- Scandinavians, Canadians, let’s say- and others actually think there are more than three races and don’t forget about Native Americans or Arabs (arguably not to be thrust into white or Asian categories), bla bla bla.

Most importantly, in my mind, is that IQ does not mean inferiority or less intrinsic value as a human being. A developmentally challenged or mentally ill person deserves freedom equally to a genius. It makes no difference what the colour of your skin is or the result of your IQ test- a human being is a human being is a human being. I understand that for those like Monbiot, an Islamist terrorist and a liberal recycler all deserve freedom and equality while a secretary at an oil office or a Kurdish woman who is tired of watching Baathists slaughter her children  or a conservative retard do not merit freedom and equality. But I don’t think like this. For me, IQ and skin colour have no bearing on a person’s humanity. All races and abilities are human. Only those who act consistently violently- terrorists, thugs, mass murderers- give up their right to the human family.

Of course, I saved the best for last. Might white scores- and liberal scores- be skewed by this dirty little secret: that the smartest of them all are the Jews? When Jews are measured separately, they come out on top every time, way above Asians. This also manifests in general in inventions, science, medicine, Nobel prizes, literature, and chess- more than half of chess geniuses are Jewish, despite the fact that Jews don’t even make up half a percent point of world population. Most Jews are liberal. Most Jews are white. Does this make whites look smarter than they are when averaged on test results? And does this make liberals look smarter than they are?

We’ll have to ask George.

It doesn’t always matter how smart or how liberal or how white or how Jewish a person is- you can still be blind as a bat. You can still be a Moonbat.