Harden's Folly by Steve Sailer - https://www.takimag.com/article/hardens-folly/ This Kathryn Paige Harden is a real Tarden. Is she really this stupid or just prone to mendacity in an academic culture that prides itself on free inquiry all the while banishing the slightest hint of heterodoxy? Harden tries so hard to prove it's all about the science while pandering to official dogma with mantra-like incantations about race not being real.
All this suggests US and West in general are a theocracy. To deviate from officialdom, you must try to fool the authorities(and even yourself) that your heresy is not only in tune with but in service to dogma. Harden is like a biologist arguing before the Church that evolutionary theory, far from disproving Creationism, confirms it. The problem isn't so much fooling the others — as one must lie sometimes to 'survive' — as fooling oneself, and Harden seems high on her own supply. Perhaps her formative years under PC made her believe in the official nonsense even as her studies indicate otherwise. Kind of similar to some Chinese wishing to believe their much capitalized economy is an extension of Maoism when its model is closer to Singapore. Her book ought to be called Genetic Hide-and-Seek as that's the game she plays(and in which she can't even find herself). Or the Genetic Shell Game.
Steve Sailer: "elaborately contrived triple-bank-shot attempt to head off growing Ibram X. Kendi-style science denialism"
But is the Kendi Man really about denialism? His only interest seems to be blackity-black, and the likes of him never complain about black over-representation and over-achievement in certain fields, especially athletics. So, to the Kendi Man, it's not about science or genetics but "We blacks deserve everything". It's not about egalitarianism but privilegism by other means, i.e. blacks are owed rewards even when they aren't deserving. Of course, the Kendi Man is just clever enough(or stupid enough, but how can one tell the difference these days?) to drudge up stuff about slavery and Jim Crow as such dominate the current narrative. Mentioning those precludes the need for any rational debate. It's like people used to quote verses from the Bible for instant holy-than-thou points. Kendi's shtick is, "I'm holy because the Narrative favors black magic, so pay me."
Saying the Kendi Man is for egalitarianism is giving him too much credit as idealist or person of principle, however misguided. In truth, he is an arch-tribalist who, if science proved blacks are smarter, would be most welcoming of the finding... along with all the 'woke' idiots whose real religion is black-worship than racial equality. Their fixation on 'not enough black quarterbacks' but never on 'not enough non-black running backs' gives the game away. Inequality in favor of blacks is never a problem. Jewishness is similarly an object of cult reverence. There can never be enough Jews in any department, but when the Jewish share of Princeton students dipped to 10%(still disproportionate given Jews are 2% of US population), that was a huge scandal. The 'injustice' had to be corrected, and Princeton dutifully complied.
Harden: "When social scientists routinely fail to integrate genetics into their models of human development, they leave space for a false narrative that portrays the insights of genetics as a Pandora’s box of 'forbidden knowledge'…"
Harden or Tarden is absolutely the worst because she's doubly dishonest. The race-realists are honest about race and racial differences. The anti-genetic ideologues are, at the very least, honest in their anxiety about the implications of genetic science that can overturn the very foundation of post-WWII consensus. Political Correctness isn't honest about the science but honest in its fear of the science, just like the orangutan patriarch Dr. Zaius in THE PLANET OF THE APES isn't honest about facts but honest in his fears. In contrast, Harden pretends the science is good for Political Correctness. She's either a devious player of 4D chess(which I doubt) or a smart person made stupid by a sickly blend of dishonesty and dogmatism, dime-a-dozen in media and academia.
Steve Sailer: "But, no matter how people differ genetically... we are still not absolved of the responsibility to arrange society to the benefit of all people, not just the tiny slice of global genetic diversity that is people of predominantly European ancestry."
This is doable on the national but not the global scale. Every nation has its share of smarties, middlies, and dummies. All modern systems have progressive taxation and other means to help out the dummies. This is manageable within the national setting, especially in smaller and homogeneous nations. But on a global scale, it's like the Aesop's tale of the dog losing its bone to snatch the seemingly bigger bone reflected in the water. In trying to save the world, the nation will be neglected and fall to pieces. And in the end, the world won't be saved either as it's too big to be saved by any single nation or civilization. Besides, how is a nation supposed to take care of its dummies when it keeps on taking in more people, many of them dummies from all around the world? Perhaps, some of the immigrants will work hard and pay taxes and produce more wealth to take care of the native dummies. But then, the dummies will be further relegated to loser status as there are more competitors in their midst. Worse, what if many of the immigrants are dummies themselves? Sweden used to have a pretty decent system for taking care of its dummies, but the social safety net has frayed because Sweden chose to save Africa and Afghanistan.
Now, it's true that the US has been somewhat different. In most European nations(in the past at least), most of the poor and the dumb were ethnically same as the middle and rich. But in the US, many of the poor have been blacks; worse, blacks haven't been merely poor but prone to criminality and other pathologies, made worse by the fact that they are more muscular and aggressive than whites, which is why so many whites are scared-half-to-death of blacks. Especially following the Civil Rights Movement, black behavior, fueled by rambunctious black pride, has been so unruly that many communities figured they would do better with immigrants than with blacks, a running theme in David Cole's columns. Los Angeles with so many Mexicans may not be paradise but it sure ain't Detroit or Baltimore either.
All these 'progressives' like Harden must decide if they're more about loyalty to the Democratic Party(that gains from mass immigration) or concern for blacks. The dirty secret is the so-called 'progressives' elites want mass-immigration because newcomers are useful buffers between themselves and blacks.
Of course, the problem with blacks is that, even minus immigrant competitors, too many fall through the cracks either due to lower IQ or lack of character(as much of black esteem is about out-hustling others than playing it straight — even the attitude of the smart guy in COOLEY HIGH is, "I can lie and steal too good not to survive").
Also, while many blacks are hostile to more immigration(as they see the newcomers as usurpers and competitors), they identify so closely with the Democratic Party that they favor anything to its advantage. There's kneejerk sense among blacks that what is good for the Democratic Party is good for black people, just like many white conservatives believe GOP is implicitly about white interests. Of course, while a party can boast of its concern for blacks(and Jews and homos), it's taboo for any party or political figure to show any interest that pertains to whites as a group.
But the pro-mass-immigration stance of both parties seem hellbent on replacing both historical blacks and historical whites of America. As Jews control America, it's mainly in their interests. Even as Jews flatter blacks to use against whites, Jews know blacks are the main destroyers of cities where Jewish Power is concentrated. So, Jews want more docile immigrants to replace blacks in urban areas. And Jews want non-white immigrants to replace the historical white Christian America because more diversity among goyim means Jews can play divide-and-rule over them.
With Trump at the helm, it seemed just barely possible for blacks and whites to unite on anti-immigration position. But once Jews engineered the 2020 BLM riots by encouragin the worst tendencies among blacks, the black-white anti-immigration coalition seems dead.
Even MAGA people, after the black riots, would prefer immigrants over blacks who ruin cities. And as immigrants tipped the South to Democratic control which led to the toppling of Confederate monuments, blacks are okay with mass immigration too. Blacks alone couldn’t take the south, but blacks plus immigrants are turning the entire South to the Democratic Party. Same happened in the Midwest. They were mostly Republican, but the combination of white globalists, blacks, and immigrants tipped them Democratic.
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| The silly whore cannot even decide on her stupid hair color. |
As the South fills up with more immigrants, Democrats are gaining over Republicans, and blacks welcome the transformation. But won't blacks face more competition? Or, are black elites unconcerned with the black masses and care only about their own privileges by way of Democrat dominance? Or, do blacks regard non-blacks, white and non-white, as just more people to leech off and suck dry? As blacks have lagged in generating their own wealth, much of their 'economy' depends on milking what others create. It's the same in Africa. Hindus and Chinese are let in to build stuff. Black elites get their cut in the form of bribes and contracts(where non-blacks actually do most of the work). And the unwashed blacks get theirs on occasion through massive looting when riots break out.
Harden and her ilk confuse 'palliative' with 'egalitarian' or 'equitarian'(if such term exists). At most, a free society, even at its most social-democratic-leaning, can be 'palliatarian'(or 'palliational') but never truly 'egalitarian'. If parents have two children and one is big and strong while the other is weak and wobbly, the latter can be provided with palliative care so that he can, at the very least, walk and function in life. But there is No Way he's going to be a high school track star or football player. If a parent has a kid who is very bright and another who is retarded, palliative attention can help out the dummy kid, but he's never going to be a smart kid, let alone a genius. And of course, everyone knows this, but people love to pontificate about 'equity' or 'egalitarian' to either feel good, virtue-signal, or conceal their obsession with elitism. Kamala Harris will yap about 'equity' but has been a whore to the rich, smart, and powerful all her life. Nice cover. That so many conservatives attack the likes of her as 'leftist' means they fell for the trap. She is a whore to the rich and powerful but accused of being 'leftist'(ROTFL), which means her cover has worked.
Harden pretends she's saying something original when the modern order has long accepted the need for social safety nets and palliative measures for the poor, the sick, the old, and etc. Social Security for the old provides a measure of stability, but it's hardly egalitarian. If Social Security made old people equal in health and ability, they would be re-entering the work force. It's precisely because age wears down one's abilities that palliative means are provided for the retired. Same goes for the less intelligent in society. They will never succeed by mainstream standards(unless they win the lottery, the real kind), but we don't want them starving, so they are provided with aid or trained for less demanding jobs.
It is so tiresome to hear proposals for more programs and more funding when so much money has been wasted, is being wasted, and will be wasted on expensive public education for countless blacks, among others, who hardly respond to scholastic overtures. It's like arguing a fat person should be fed more food.
If honest, Harden will admit the US has pretty much given up on a large sector of the black population. All this talk of 'equity' and the pampering of the black elite(as trophies) are really to pretend otherwise. By always pretending to be doing SOMETHING, nothing really has to be done, except by symbolic measures like erecting George Floyd statues and teaching 'woke' catechisms to school children. Indeed, whole swaths of the black population aren't even deemed fit for manual labor, much of which has gone to brown people from south of the border. PC is about talking one way while walking the other way.
Harden: "The fact that income, educational attainment, subjective well-being, psychiatric disease, neighborhood advantage, cognitive test performance, executive function, grit, motivation, and curiosity are all heritable... blah blah"
What really matters is this. While non-genetic factors matter, they are overwhelmed by genetic factors when (1) genetic differences are significant and (2) there is sufficient freedom for most people. If society allows women to play sports but not the men, women will dominate the games even though men are genetically more athletic. But once men are allowed to compete, they will trounce the women(even if women are afforded some slight advantages by society).
PC operates on a fallacy that, because some groups were disadvantaged as a result of socially sanctioned discrimination in the past, the removal of discrimination will result in equality. But did meritocracy in sports lead to equality between blacks and whites? Did Jewish Emancipation lead to equality between Jews and Christians in the Austro-Hungarian Empire?
Inequality can be the result of social policy but can also result from the free reign of genetic competition, in which case social policy often comes into play to narrow the gap somewhat but never totally because dumb people cannot be geniuses and paralympians cannot complete with four-limbed Olympians. Thus, social policy can go FROM favoring one group over another for supremacism's sake TO favoring one group over another for anti-supremacism's sake. In Russia, removal of anti-Jewish laws accorded equality to Jews, but later, 'affirmative action' penalized Jews to make the playing field more equal for non-Jews.
When a socially discriminatory order shifts to free competition, established hierarchies will eventually make way for new ones. It's like American Football went from all-white to mostly black; it's even truer of basketball, which at time, was dominated by whites and Jews. Now, if everyone had the same IQ, same personality, same health, and same physical abilities, a non-discriminatory order may be reasonably egalitarian, but no such society has ever existed.
The rise of new hierarchies has been the story of capitalism where the old aristocracy was replaced by new elites(who became even richer and more powerful). Jews certainly got lots of money and power owing to their IQ in a liberalized order.
Now, how come we can accept Jewish inferiority in certain areas but not black inferiority in any area? We acknowledge Jews are richer because they are smarter but also accept Jews aren't well-represented in sports because they're less athletic than Africans, Germanics, and Slavs. There's no controversy about Jewish lack-of-success in sports. We accept Jewish advantage in one area and disadvantage in another. So, why can't this be of blacks as well? They can run faster and jump higher, but they are relatively lacking in IQ.
Besides, why should any race be the best in everything? In a way, diffusion of talent among the races makes for a kind of fairness or a crude kind of 'equality'. Indeed, the symbiotic relationship between Jews and blacks is based on Jewish business smarts and black rhythm & running. Jews are superior in one area, blacks superior in another. There's no scandal about Jews not making it as boxers and wide receivers, so why is there such outcry about blacks not making it as business moguls or top physicists?
Steve Sailer: "On the other hand, it’s not as if the lowbrow leftists like Ta-Nehisi Coates are losing politically and economically."
Coates is not a leftist but a black tribalist who uses leftish-sounding socio-babble to gain more for his race, especially for himself. When has he, or the Kendi Man, ever griped about the inequality faced by Palestinians? Just like Obama, they know they must flatter Jewish power while dumping on whitey to get their hands in the cookie jar. Calling black tribalists 'leftists' only muddles the issue. We can't have clarity unless we know the real name of the game.
Harden: 'One-drop' social rules have guaranteed that Americans who identify as being White are very unlikely to have any genetic ancestry that is not European, so in this case self-reported race and genetic ancestry appear to converge.
One thing for sure, one-word-rule has rendered the meaning of 'Latino' meaningless. Even brown people with little or no white blood count as 'Latino'(or is 'Latinx') because they speak Spanish. More than anything, this clouds the race issue.
Harden: "…race (unlike ancestry) is an inherently hierarchical concept that serves to structure who has access to spaces and social power."
Just about any concept is hierarchical because everything about mankind is hierarchical. This goes for 'class', 'sex', 'age', 'religion'(With God on our Side), 'nation', 'empire', and etc. 'Education' and 'Academia' are hierarchical too. Colleges are above high school, and elite colleges are above run-of-the-mill colleges. Big Business is bigger than small business.
Also, everything is a double-edged sword. Nationalism can be used as springboard for imperialism, but it can also be the battle cry against imperialism, like in the Cuban Revolution and the Vietnamese and Algerian struggles for independence. Race was invoked in the past to keep blacks down, but blacks used race as means of solidarity and unity. Indeed, why are blacks averse to adopting libertarianism and its emphasis on individualism? They know they can gain more pride, prestige, space, and social power by invoking race. 'Race' can be used as expression of supremacism('our race is better than yours' or 'our race has the right to rule over your race'), but it can also be used to gain and secure historical or social space('our race deserves to be free' or 'our race is deserving of dignity', or even 'our race has a right to preserve itself', which is the theme of Zionism in its national manifestation — Charlton Heston as Moses organized on the basis of tribe rooted in the blood covenant when he said "Let My People Go"). Likewise, 'sex' could be used to argue men should rule over women, but feminists have also built an ideology around it for their own 'space'.
It's often said the 'pseudo-scientific' concept of race is the product of 19th century imperialism(with roots in the Enlightenment and rationalism with its mania for classification). So, was mankind a happy lot prior to this Evil Concept? Maybe it wasn't so bad for the peoples conquered, pillaged, and raped by Turks, Mongols, Arabs, Vikings, and Romans because 'race' wasn't a hot ticket item back then? Will America's current racial problems go away if we do away with the concept of race? That's like saying greed and theft will go away if we do away with the concept of 'money' or 'profit'.
If race = imperialism, how does one account for the Spanish Conquest of the New World? It happened long before the 19th century invention of 'race'. The Spanish sent missionaries and converted the savages, and there was much race-mixing, but was that a happy affair? If anything, history suggests the denial of race can be used as a tool of imperialism. It's a denial of group identity, like when Golda Meir said there is no such people or culture as 'Palestinian'; and the Turks deny the existence of Kurds and refer to them as 'mountain Turks'. Using Harden's logic, one may ask, what right did the brown races have to defend themselves against white conquerors when, white or brown, they're all just the same, part of the same human species?
Come to think of it, one way to resolve the racial issue in America is by arguing that the white race didn't really enslave the black race since race doesn't exist. Rather, some people who thought they were white enslaved some other people who thought they were black, but in truth, they were all just people. So, the racial angle of the narrative was pure fantasy. In truth, it was just a case of some people enslaving some people. Therefore, just as it had been wrong for whites to regard themselves as whites lording over blacks, it's about time blacks stop seeing themselves as blacks done wrong by whites. It only furthers the illusion of race.
Now, one people who were long race-or-blood-conscious were the Jews. In contrast, Christians and Muslims were less so as their big theme was converting the souls of all peoples around the world. Now, which people, the Jews or the Christians/Muslims, were more aggressive, invasive, and imperialist? True, Jews joined in the empire-building, but it was on the backs of Christians and Muslims who sought to break through the barriers of race and blood to create a one-world community united before God the Lord. One result is Latin America, a very hierarchical place beset with countless social, political, and economic woes.
Come to think of it, if egalitarian ethos took deeper root in North America, it was precisely because it was more homogenously white, at least in the northern parts and Canada. Egalitarianism, though always out of reach, is easier to approximate with a homogenous population with a narrower range of talents. Easier among beagles than among greyhounds, beagles, pit-bulls, and chihuahuas.
Harden: "A closer look at the science of genetic ancestry makes it clear that 'race does not stand up scientifically, period.'”
The statement is true and untrue depending on how one defines race. And there are varying definitions. Using the stupidest definition of race, her statement would be true. But then, the current age has no problem with stupidity when it comes to sex or 'gender', which has also spawned the pronoun-craze where some dope claims he isn't only a 'she' but a 'they'. Such nonsense is accepted(and enforced) as 'science' in our age. If Harden means that the human species is far more complicated than the simple groupings of caucasian, negroid, and mongoloid, that's true enough. Bushmen are different from Bantu blacks. Tamils are exactly what? And though the American Indians originated from Asia, they seem to have evolved sufficiently into a new category. And Nazi racial science had its crazy side. But, any concept can be invalidated if defined by its falsities or stupidities. Nationalism can be anything from patriotism to jingoism. Love can mean love for the devil or the love of God, in which case 'love is love' is the stupidest idea imaginable.
Still, if she insists the concept of race is wrong because it's burdened with historical baggage, then give us a new term so we can use that instead. But while there's a lot of terminological violence in rejecting the term of 'race', there is terminological silence in coining a new concept. Why the timidity? I don't care if we shouldn't use 'race' anymore. Just give us any term that means the emergence/existence of different groups within the species as the result of tens of thousands of evolution and geographical and climactic separation. Unless such term is provided, no one should reject 'race' because it's the only term we have. Based on new scientific knowledge, what should be the new term for differences created by evolution? How about 'scatterin' as different races arose from organisms within the species scattering all around the world. White scatterin and black scatterin. Or just scats. ('Scat' means animal shit, but that's okay because people like Harden are full of shit. How about 'guano' for race?)
Harden: "…in reality, you could have it exactly backwards, and the genes that matter for education could be more common in the ancestry group with worse educational outcomes."
That'd be more likely in a socially discriminatory or orthodox order. If a group is smart but denied educational opportunities, it will have high IQ but lack in academic prizes. Or, if the group has smart people but is trapped in orthodoxy, like Jews who only studied the Talmud or Chinese who concentrated on Eight-Legged Essays, it will under-achieve in many areas. Evangelicalism and Creationism probably suppressed intellectual achievement among certain Christian groups.
But the problem of inequality in the West is mostly the result of genetic differences. Once discrimination was ended and all groups adopted modern modes, winners and losers were largely chosen by genetics.
Harden: "For example, we now have a polygenic score for predicting the highest level of education attained. In the latest iteration announced this month, using a sample size of 3 million, those in the highest decile were nine times more likely to graduate from college than those in the lowest decile. It works pretty well for whites in the U.K., America, and New Zealand. It works less well for East Asians and worst of all for African-Americans."
East Asians are so education-focused that many more of them than whites will engage in studies regardless of other factors. The ant-attitude defines their outlook. In contrast, blacks are so fun-focused that many more of them than whites will engage in letting the good times roll. The grasshopper attitude prevails among them. In contrast, being neither intensely ant-like or grasshopper-like, whites tend to divide more naturally between those with ant-tendencies and those with grasshopper-tendencies.
Steve Sailer: "Charles Murray... as Frank Sinatra used to say about Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life."
Bad example as Sinatra's character was brainwashed to say that about someone whom he actually loathed.
Sailer: "Seriously, Murray is obviously a superb individual."
Maybe he's a nice guy, but the nicest guy can have evil ideas while a nasty person can espouse humane ideas. What is better? A kindly devil or a mean angel? So, even as Murray's critics may concede he's a nice person, they can still find his ideas to be abhorrent. But this applies to people on the Left as well. Some Stalinists were nice kindly people as individuals.
At any rate, it doesn't matter how nice you are in a theocracy. If you blaspheme God, you are agent of the Devil even if you're the nicest person in town. In the current ideocracy, blacks are magical, and it's heretical to say they are deficient in any way, or if they are, it's all the fault of evil whites. So, no matter how nice or kindly Murray may be, he can only be a blasphemer in the eyes of the establishment.
The real problem is Murray's weakness. Why is he nice to people who hate him? Niceness is a virtue when shown to those who appreciate the gesture. It is a worthless vice when extended to those who hate you and mean you harm. Be nice to those who are nice to you, be mean to those who are mean to you. But Murray is nice to his enemies. Worse, he's nicer to people who mean him harm than those who are willing to lend him an ear. He'd rather suck up to Neocons than side with people like Kevin MacDonald and Jared Taylor(who has problems of his own in cucking to Jews). Murray is a fuddy-dud with 'dangerous' ideas, which means he lacks the cojones to see his ideas to their conclusion. In that, he has something in common with Harden who admits certain things but draws all the wrong conclusions. Murray keeps hoping and pretending that his ideas are compatible with individualism and libertarianism(and with 'respectable society') when they're not. Murray's ideas are rebellious but he plays it respectable, which makes him a fool.
Sailer: "She and Murray disagree over the meaning of 'virtue.' Harden’s New Testament-inspired egalitarian utopianism, in the tradition of political philosopher John Rawls, sees no virtue or merit in a pilot (such as her father) having excellent pilot traits."
She is right, at least partly, on the matter of virtue. If talent or skill = virtue, O.J. Simpson would be a saint. In a way, the problem with the US, no less among the 'woke' than among the 'based', is the delusion of conflating success, especially associated with celebrity and fame, with virtue. People look to athletes and pop stars for 'wisdom'. Conservatives are giddy that the rapper 50 cents be complaining about taxes and thinking of moving to Texas. And then, there was the thing with the vile Nikki Minaj. She went on a rant about her cousin's balls and became an instant hero to the anti-vaxxer crowd.
There is value in meritocracy per se that rewards people based on talent and hard work, but a person's intelligence or professional success doesn't guarantee virtue, even though one can say work ethic is a virtue compared to sloth. The US deep state has lots of of smart and diligent people, but they don't seem very virtuous when it comes to honesty, honor, truth, and justice. When one of them, Edward Snowden, blew the whistle on government abuses, the elite consensus was to totally destroy him.
Perhaps, meritocracy is more about fairness than virtue. It is externally applied and neutral in its lack of a priori favoritism. It observes and chooses for superior talents regardless of other factors. It's like the referee in sports mustn't favor either athlete and must be neutral in rewarding points and penalties based purely on performance. If a lowlife son-of-a-bitch is more skilled than a truly nice fellow, meritocracy favors the former.
But all social orders have sacraments and taboos that make absolute meritocracy impossible. Even a super bright kid will not be admitted to Ivy League if it turns out he said unkind things about Jews, blacks, or homosexuals. In the past, one's reputation could be destroyed if one badmouthed Jesus or is a homosexual. So, the rules change over time, and these rules will favor official norms and dogma over absolute meritocracy. So, success isn't determined only by merit of talent but correctness of creed.
Today, anyone who supports BDS or sympathizes with Palestinians won't gain much success in the elite realm. He will be shut out by the establishment that mainly caters to Jewish supremacism. Imagine any writer or director proposing a movie about the plight of Palestinians. He or she will be blacklisted on the spot and for as long as Jews control Hollywood and the media. Jewish power and wealth were built largely on meritocracy of intelligence and hard work, but Jews also use non-meritocratic means to keep their perceived enemies and rivals from gaining ground. To succeed in today's world, you must bow down to the Jewish-favored creed.
In the past, many Jews had to convert to Christianity to rise up the social ladder. Today, Jews control the gods, and one has to worship the rainbow-homo(as Jews replaced Christianity with Queertianity) to gain access to the Deep State, Big Business, and the like.
Even sports are not purely meritocratic because there's a thing called sportsmanship, i.e. even a great athlete can be penalized for un-sportsman-like behavior. Or he can be expelled from the league for saying unkind things about Zionists who terrorize Palestinians.
Unlike mere fairness(of meritocracy), virtue goes the extra mile and is essentially an internally generated trait. Instead of merely being fair with mankind, it wants to do more to be a better person and/or to make for a better world, sometimes in a self-sacrificing way.
To be sure, meritocracy can be an internally generated goodness, a virtue, in a world where success mostly depends on connections and corruption. If one personally chooses to be meritocratic in such a system, he is going against the tide, going the extra-mile to be a good person. That would be virtue. But in a system where meritocracy is taken for granted as the rule, all it can do is pick and choose winners and losers based on a narrow set of talents. It's about ability then ethics.
Harden: "A lottery is a perfect metaphor for describing genetic inheritance: the genome of every person is the outcome of nature’s Powerball."
Harden is one big idiot. That's the dumbest thing I ever read. The human equivalent of powerball lottery would be if someone is super-beautiful, super-healthy, super-personable, super-leadership-qualitied, super-intelligent, super-athletic(and in all sports from weightlifting to swimming to high jump), super-creative(in music, poetry, and act), and etc. Powerball is about one in a million, or ten million, or hundred million.
Human competition is far more mundane and general. Most people are content to excel in one thing or another. For the vast majority, genetics means having just enough decent genes to finish college, have a nice job, and retire with saving. Powerball-thinking is for likes of Elizabeth Holmes, the too-good-to-be-true nutter, who wanted it all.
Genetics is more like a slot-machine, a rigged one at that. Pull on the genetic lever of a smart man and smart woman, and you're more likely to get a smart kid. Pull on the genetic lever of a dumb man and dumb woman, and you're more likely to get a dumb kid. Of course, smart parents can produce dumb kids, and dumb parents can product smart kids, but genetics means that the game is rigged based on parentage.
Genetics would be more like a lottery in the manner of Rev. Mhoon, that is by randomly pairing dummies with smarties in a mass wedding ceremony. But it's generally not the case that smart women marry some fat guy whose ass crack shows when bending over.
Sailer: "Harden propounds a sophomoric view that intelligence is 'socially valued, not inherently valuable,' and follows that up with a conspiracy theory that early-20th-century eugenicists plotted to get us..."
Harden is correct in the strict evolutionary sense. Every trait has value in relation to the environment. A shark's fins are perfectly engineered for the ocean but useless on land. A chimpanzee's high IQ isn't going to do it any good in the middle of an ocean. A low-IQ fish with gills has infinitely better chance of survival.
And even among human societies, the value of intelligence depends on the culture and social setting. While it's good to be reasonably intelligent in any setting, high IQ would have been useless in most societies through history(and especially pre-history). A strong man who could chuck spears and fight rough was more valued. An Einstein or Plato would have been useless to the Vikings or Zulus.
Extreme high IQ has value only in advanced civilizations with freedom that allows for such trait to explore and express itself. And even though all societies, even the simplest, have recognized the difference between smart and dumb, admiration for high IQ began to matter only with the emergence of advanced societies that capitalized on genius.
But Harden is probably not speaking strictly in an evolutionary sense but to virtue signal that she's more about the heart than brains.
Harden: "…to see intelligence (as measured on standardized IQ tests) and educational success, perhaps more than any other human phenotypes, in terms of a hierarchy of inferior and superior persons is not an accident. It is an idea that was deliberately crafted and disseminated..."
The more a society becomes competitive and achievement-oriented, this becomes inevitable. After all, is a great civilization possible without identifying winners from losers? Jews had their Rabbinical studies. Chinese had their Confucian exams. The Greeks were more multi-faceted as they prized not only intelligence but creativity, athletics, and beauty, which is why they were so foundational in the many pursuits that came to define the West and then the World.
But the Greeks also adopted Christianity, and their highest sense of good came to be piety. Christian piety is less enamored of and even hostile to beauty(vanity), intelligence(skepticism & egotism), athletics(brutality), and creativity(sensuality). Its emphasis on humility would seem anti-superiorist but actually provided yet another opportunity for superiority: holier-than-thou-ism.
On the one hand, Harden works in the Galileo-an world of high IQ science, but on the other, she is a member of new church of PC pieties. And just like Christianity, the new theology of Diversity-Inclusion-Equity has its own superiors and inferiors. The superiors are the Good Good People who repeat the fashionable sacraments(and favor Jews, blacks, and homos uber alles) while the Bad Bad people are those who dare to spout heresies and should be burned as witches. Bad Bad people are also those who support BDS and call for justice for Palestinians who are being 'genocided' by Zionist supremacists.
Now, is the US excessively concerned with IQ and success? If anything, many have griped that the problem of America is anti-intellectualism, populist vulgarity, blissful infantilism, and obsession with sports and pop culture than with science, math, and mental stuff. In any high school, the nerds and geeks are ignored while jocks and 'popular kids' get most of the attention. Judging by mass culture, Americans mainly seem interested in trashy personalities and pop stars. Most Americans would rather watch two women beat the crap out of each other in MMA than read a book by Harden or any female scientist. Also, colleges have been dumbed down over the years. It panders to popular tastes, and for all I know, they're teaching rap poetry in colleges. The rap musical HAMILTON became cause celebre among the elites. That Donald Trump became the champion of so many Americans doesn't say much about their intellectual curiosity either. But is he cruder than HAMILTON or the likes of Lena Dunhum promoted by the elites? Go on youtube, and the videos that get the most views are stupid or trashy as hell, or just plain dumb.
The problem with Americans is they love success and money, which is usually the product of high IQ and diligence, but prefer to conflate success and money with something else. The appeal of Rock/Rap culture is the bad boy wins the girls, drives the fancy cars, and wears all the bling. Bruce Springsteen sang about high school dropouts, rebels, and road-busters, the kind of people who lose in life or end up dead. But he became very rich. Most blacks who emulate rap culture end up dead or in jail, but blacks love the idea of the rich gangsta.
In Arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN, Willi Loman's delusion is that success comes by way of the hustle, a firm handshake and likability. Of course, such things matter, but it also requires hard work and real ability. Americans want to believe style should be sufficient for success. Substance is too boring and lame. Success is usually the product of intelligence and hard work, but that's too nerdy or geeky for the American Myth of John Wayne, Elvis Presley, and 50 Cents.
Harden says the less intelligent deserve more help, but that isn't the real problem, especially among blacks. The problem is blacks are soul-corrupted and rebuff any sound advice about what they should do. They find hard work and diligence 'lame' or 'white'. They want success to come with style alone or in sports. But how many blacks can make it to the NBA or NFL? (Black culture in the documentary HOOP DREAMS is surely telling, which is to say depressing.) Has anyone asked Harden, "How can you help people who don't appreciate sound advice?" The forgotten white working class is more likely to respond to constructive advice, but their livelihoods have been outsourced globally. Worse, it is evil for whites to care for fellow whites, not least because Jews demand that whites expend all their energies supporting the Zionist tyranny over Palestinians.
Now, there is a segment of Americans who are IQ-and-success-obsessed, and they are the elites(who are 95% Democratic). Elite parents do everything to make their kids go to elite schools or gain favors through connections — how George W. Bush got to be president, how Hunter Biden isn't in jail but selling junk art for $500,000. The rise of PC partly owes to these parents not wanting to jeopardize their kids' chance at success. They tell their kids to toe the line or else lose it all. Harden is surely part of this IQ-and-success-obsessed class. And these people do everything to gain more wealth and privilege.
But they don't want to admit that they are so focused on themselves and their class; therefore, even as they do everything to win and collect more prizes, they create this bogeyman of the 'racist' to fool the world(and themselves) that THEY are warriors for equality. But in fact, the likes of Jared Taylor and even Charles Murray have zero power in media and academia. All of the establishment elites are ideologically on the same page as Harden. So, if she's honest, she will admit that the most IQ-obsessed people are the so-called 'liberals', her colleague and peers. But instead, she paints herself as a humanitarian fighting an uphill battle against dragon-monsters like Murray. She is really punching down, but because the White Male used to be on top, she relies on historiography to pretend she's punching up against the Eternal White Male Patriarch Oppressor.
Even if Charles Murray and his ilk(and all MAGA people) vanished into the thin air this very second, the problems associated with race, IQ, success, inequality, and etc. would exist just the same among blacks, browns, and whites like Harden... like in San Francisco and Madison Wisconsin, totally libby-dib cities. Indeed, without the racist-as-bogeyman, people like Harden would finally have to face the music and offer a solution to the race problem. THAT would be difficult. But as long as her ilk claims to be fighting the big-bad-white-bogeyman, they can say their hands are tied at the moment and can't really address the problem yet.
If people like Harden are really serious, there is actually a solution. Offer more affirmative action slots for blacks in medicine, law, accounting, and other fields. And then, make sure these white 'progressive' types call on affirmative action talent for service. Need a brain surgery? Make sure it's a black doctor who got his license through AA. Need a corporate lawyer? Get an AA black guy. With so many rich progressive types, this should solve the problem. They got the money to sustain so many black professionals of AA pampering. And why should they complain? They are the ones who say there should be more 'inclusion' and that blacks are just as intelligent, capable, and diligent as any other race. They wouldn't want to be 'racist', would they?
DIS-UNITED STATES: WHY IDENTITY POLITICS ARE THE FUTURE - Black Pigeon Speaks
