.
October 07, 2009
The year 2009 has been the
sesquicentennial celebration of Darwin`s great book
On the Origin of
Species. Biologists, among many others, have
been happily praising the luminous figure usually shown
in old age as a bearded sage. Not many scientists turn
out to be correct after 150 years, so
Darwin`s greatness certainly depends in part on the
truth contained in his theory of evolution by natural
selection.
Yet his immense fame has been
working against him in the
era of Obamania and frantic efforts to create or
claim equality where human nature
may
pose insurmountable barriers. The truth about Darwin
is being submerged in the multicultural phantasmagoria
enveloping our culture.
For
example,
Smithsonian magazine`s
February, 2009, edition had
Darwin and
Lincoln on the cover, insinuating that Darwin was a
champion of equality. The theory of evolution allegedly
implied the oneness of man, so we are reassured that
Darwin was an egalitarian.
Smithsonian was not alone in
misrepresenting Darwin. A new book called Darwin`s Sacred Cause,
Adrian
Desmond and James Moore, (authors of an
earlier Darwin biography) belabored Darwin`s
anti-slavery position at the expense of his very clear
depiction of real racial differences. Of course, the
theory of evolution does indeed imply that all races of
man derive from a common ancestor and are surely
genetically similar. But the large amount of variation
among the races impressed Darwin to the extent that he
worried about what he thought was the problematic nature
of
inter-racial mating
It is therefore significant that
Takimag.com, a noted conservative website, published an
essay that supported the thesis that Darwin`s work
actually undergirds political conservatism more than it
does liberalism. Indeed, Matthew Roberts of Takimag
refers [Darwinian
Traditionalism, February
14, 2009] to a
classic article by John O. McGinnis from the
pre-purge National Review[The
Origin Of Conservatism,
December 22,
1997], which offers a powerful argument for Darwinian
biology as a foundation for conservatism. The question
of theology has proven a problem for Darwinism for over
a century. However, my purpose here is to take only one
of McGinnis`s points,
natural
inequality, and show why it is a critically
important part of the
culture wars.
Despite egalitarian liberals`
ferreting through materials to present Darwin as their
champion, he was nothing of the sort. His own England
would arrest him for hate speech today—just as they
nearly did the Nobel laureate
James D. Watson in 2007 when he
discussed the black/white IQ difference of 15
points. This is why
Stephen Jay Gould, the ultimate proselytizing
egalitarian, compartmentalized the
"good" and the "bad"
Darwin.
There
is very real danger when politics trumps science, as it
did in the former USSR. Truth was
often
suppressed under Stalin. Our Constitutional
guarantees theoretically provide a measure of protection
against any president or party who might attempt
political suppression in the name of
"greater good"
but in these plague times of economic stress and a
leftist government in power, it could be tempting to
engage in manipulation of genetic research, for
instance, to ensure that the myth of equality is safely
perpetuated.
After all, who could have imagined
that massive government efforts to
"equalize"
all children through education would grow exponentially
even as earlier efforts were clear failures! Romantic
dreams die hard, and educational dreams seem to involve
a special measure of irrationality. Charles Murray in
his Real Education
tried to
bring America to its senses, but the
Obama
administration will obstruct any reforms aimed at
truly meritocratic schooling.
The
irrational efforts to fit square pegs into round holes
reflect the blind adherence of the social sciences—with
the exception of
Ernest van den Haag,
James Q. Wilson, and a handful of others, to the
SSSM or Standard Social Sciences Model of inquiry, based
upon environmentalism. For half a century, the social
sciences have disregarded the growing force of modern
genetics uncovering our human nature and allowing us to
understand evolution in deeper ways. As
"blank slaters" who place their trust in environmental factors
above genetic ones, these social sciences perpetuate the
myth that we can be whatever we wish and that learning
can be powerfully affected by trivial factors without
regard for IQ.
Most Americans have little or no
knowledge of the biology of race and are subjected to
the egalitarian chorus from a MSM that protects the
inequality taboo. Liberal disinformation thrives on
college campuses and indoctrination into social justice
values are mandated on many campuses.
The
irrational hubris and deep hostility of the militant
left should never be underestimated. Their 2008
presidential victory provides the political mandate for
experiments in social engineering they have dreamt about
for decades.
Recently, a professor of psychology
at the University of Michigan,
Richard Nisbett, [Email
him]writing in the
New York Times,
expressed the liberal utopian hope that Obama will
select research programs with proven
"payoff" for
government support because he believes that some
programs will bridge the IQ/achievement gap between
whites and blacks. One example he gives: a
"still unpublished" study in which adult learners took the Graduate
Record Exam before and after the Obama election victory,
with blacks (naturally) doing
much
better after the victory! [Education
Is All in Your Mind
February 7,
2009]
Nisbett here shows a complete
ignorance of the 50 plus years of research on
"the gap"
with no study showing lasting gains of any value. The
"Obama Effect" is an artifact that would never bear close scrutiny
by psychometricians, just as all the other studies found
no lasting, real effects.
While several other Nisbett
favorites show some promise they demand unrealistic
manpower and money to sustain in a real world
environment. But the point is that mission to equalize
the races academically knows no bounds and serves as a
supreme temptation for massive social engineering. In
the poisonous atmosphere of what
Richard Bernstein called “The Dictatorship of Virtue
", we cannot trust the MSM and academia to
tell the Darwin story as it really was.
The mass movement to
"equalize"
society quite simply lacks a scientific basis and, in
fact, is built upon a premise denied by Darwin. Races
not only exist, but they are different in very deep ways
that may well descend to the moral foundation of
humankind.
By that I do not mean that one can
treat people of different races in unfair ways, but that
the races themselves show
variations of ability to be honest. All other
factors being equal, some groups are
more
dishonest than others. Dishonesty correlates highly
with crime, so one expects blacks, with their very
high
crime rate, to demonstrate more dishonest behavior
than Asians and whites-which is exactly what they do on
things like
student loan default rates. IQ,
aggression, and impulsivity show
systematic racial differences, as well.
I
discussed these differences in my book called
Apes or Angels?
Darwin, Dover, Human Nature, and Race, a work
which is widely viewed as subversive even with the
endorsement of world-renowned scientists. The hypocrisy
of liberal scientists is on display as some websites,
such as
Pandas Thumb,
refuse to discuss my book while Smithsonian freely
misrepresents Darwin to the chorus of approval from the
left.
As late as May 18, 2009, I saw Al
Sharpton in front of the White House doing his
demagoguery on national cable television. This time it
was not to defend black thugs and murderers but to
demand
"equal results"
from the educational establishment. (Fortunately for
thinking people,
Carl F.
Horowitz wrote a
sterling indictment of Sharpton as a street hustler
and modern
racial demagogue.)
The
claim that evolution produces human
"oneness" is
misleading. Natural selection, genetic drift, and sexual
selection do eventually result in variation among
divergent populations separated by geography. Evolving
populations eventually differ so much from their
antecedents that they can no longer interbreed
successfully. They have become new species. With
Homo sapiens
we see 150,000 years of evolution in and beyond Africa.
From about 50,000 years ago human populations left
Africa on a diaspora that encompassed much of the earth.
Look at the vast variety of types
in Africa today to appreciate the ability of evolution
to generate differences due to adaptation. Whole
continental races retained unique genome characteristics
that evolved under different selection pressures. Among
the traits that varied were intelligence, lactose
tolerance, and disease resistance. Darwin, living long
before modern genetics, could only use anatomical
information and observations of behavior as bases for
his thinking on race, but modern research supports him
nonetheless.
In
his 1871 book
The Descent of Man,
Darwin addressed the issue of race directly. Long before
our PC era, Darwin had the luxury of worrying about only
one enemy,
Christian fundamentalists who were
angered by the implications of evolution for belief
in the Bible. Finding racial differences were actually
less controversial in Victorian times because few people
believed in complete equality.
Darwin was indeed an
abolitionist and hated the slavery he
witnessed in
Brazil
on a coffee plantation. However, this belief did not
prevent him from observing human differences and
speculating on how they came to be. Just as he could not
exempt humans from evolution, he could not exempt the
races from the natural effects of selection pressures in
different locations. Since intelligence and character
were important traits subject to change, he was not
surprised at the differences he found.
In
their recent book
The 10,000 Year
Explosion,
Greg Cochran and
Henry Harpending argue that evolution in humans
accelerated over the past 10,000 years. This claim
is based upon careful genome analysis of two quite large
groups in Africa and Europe. Natural selection operated
more quickly as human populations
underwent changes in metabolism, disease resistance,
and skin and eye color. The authors also establish the
fact that Ashkenazi Jews became
smarter than all others via
strong selection
pressures on IQ. If IQ can be affected in one group
it was very likely affected by the
different requirements in various continental
environments, some of which had extensive
agriculture while others did not. Steve Sailer has
written courageously about the
reality of racial differences in
IQ
and Cochran and Harpending suggest that such
differences are not at all surprising given the enormous
ecological differences of the various continental
environments, as well as cultural determinants such as
agriculture that likely affected personality and
cognition.
Cochran
and Harpending have drawn fire for opposing the
liberal myth of human equality. They discuss dozens
of ways that the races differ genetically and leave it
to the reader to decide who is right.
Watching
basketball on TV forces everyone to
acknowledge black superiority, a superiority blacks
themselves often openly flaunt. Whites have little
choice but to
cede certain sports to blacks on the basis of
merit but they themselves have been denied full
recognition of their academic superiority out of
militant ideological fanaticism.
Remember the
Bolsheviks? Will reason, good will, and tolerance
triumph in the Age of Obama? A fair and honest America
will put aside its notorious
"inequality taboo" and embrace a color blind
meritocracy?
Charles Darwin`s view of race was
both sympathetic and realistic. He is a model of good
sense in a time of liberal foolishness. Biological and
political theories do not readily fit together and the
act of hijacking Darwin is fraught with difficulties.
However, Darwinism does support the
conservative view that
human nature is not equal nor infinitely malleable
and is based upon an image of man as self-interested yet
altruistic toward one`s own kin.
Madison, one of our
founding fathers, worried that government could be
used as a mechanism for
redistribution of property. Given natural
inequality, lesser citizens will engage in
self-deception rather than acknowledge weakness. They
accuse others of holding them back. The demagogues of
the left move in.
If Obama is our
Sisyphus,
he will throw billions more at a
hopeless mission against which Darwin and genetics
would counsel.
One thing is certain: science and
liberalism cannot both be right.
Cornelius J.
Troost
[Email
him]was a professor of science education at UCLA
and chair of graduate studies at Brock University in
Ontario, Canada. While at Brock Dr. Troost created an MA
degree program in environmental education. He also
worked on critical thinking tests for the Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education at the University of
Toronto.
