What’s Wrong with the World

If you want to know whether you are a member of the New Elite, you can take this test: http://tinyurl.com/32rbcx8

"It's the conversion of the elites we ought to hope for, not their demise. "

Amen. As I commented at Alternative right (http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/no-way-out/):

American society is deranged because the overwhelming majority of people believe in the fundamentals of the leftist worldview: God is unknowable (or nonexistent), Thou Shalt Not Discriminate, nonliberal America is evil, etc. When it comes to secondary or tertiary issues, people have diverse belief. But on the fundamentals, most people (even most conservatives) agree with the left.

And they agree because it is always the case that the vast majority, even a strong majority of the intelligent, ambitious and well-educated, believe what society’s intellectual and spiritual leaders teach about the ultimate issues. Most people don’t want to think about ultimate things. They just want to hear the answers and get on with their lives.

Therefore Americans will believe whatever their intellectual and spiritual leaders teach. At one time, America’s leaders mostly taught what we now call conservatism. But the leftists gradually took over America’s leadership classes, and now Americans believe in leftism.

How exactly can non-leftists seize control of the institutions of intellectual and spiritual leadership? No blueprint is possible, and it will obviously take a long time and a great deal of blood, sweat, tears and toil. But I just want to point out that changing what the leadership class teaches can be done, because the left did it.

I repeat: What the leaders teach, the people believe. This is how social change occurs.

What is wrong with the world?

Rap star Kanye West makes video where he kills white women. Two of the biggest black celebrities in the world got together to make a video glorifying violence towards women (in which most of the women are white). The images are shocking, especially considering the close connections between one of the rappers and Barack Obama.

[remainder of comment deleted - JC]

Alan: Spot on comment. Thank you.

Robert: Your example certainly illustrates the problem, but a little too explicitly for my comfort level on a public website. And please, no video or image links to such garbage.

Robert's comment at 1:24 am was posted previously at Alt Right as a comment to an article about Alex Jones (http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/our-glenn-beck/). Both times the comment is at best only marginally related to the topic.

I took the quiz:

1. Do you know who Jimmie Johnson is? (The really famous one, not the football coach.) - No, but if Jimmie Johnson is really more famous than Jimmy Johnson, how come no one's ever heard of him?

2. Can you identify military ranks by uniform insignias? - Yes, and I can identify WACS and WAVES by the uniform alone.

3. Do you know what MMA and UFC stand for? - Male MammaryAholic, and Unfunded Federal Cutbacks

4. Do you know what Branson, Mo., is famous for? - A music festival? Of some kind? Who cares? Have people from Branson ever heard of Woodstock?

5. Have you ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis or Rotary club? - No, but I played pool in a Moose lodge and have considered checking out the Knights of Columbus

6. Do you know who replaced Bob Barker as host of "The Price is Right?" No one can replace Bob Barker. Plus, I stopped watching daytime TV when I was 11.

7. Have you ever lived in a town with fewer than 25,000 people? (During college doesn't count.) - Several times. Like the elites, I like knowing everybody's business.

8. Can you name the authors of the "Left Behind" series? - What self-respecting human being with an 8th grade education would want to be able to do that? I think one was named LaHaye, but I hope I'm wrong.

9. Do you live in an area where most people lack college degrees? (Gentrifying neighborhoods don't count.) - I haven't taken a poll, but probably not. One of my best friends is a mechanic, though, another is a dropout, and the best of all got killed in Viet Nam before he could finish college.

10. Can you identify a field of soybeans? - No, but why didn't he ask about corn, cotton, tobacco, oats, peanuts, tomatoes, squash, carrots and lettuce? Has Mr. Murray ever baled hay? I have.

I could have come up with a lot better questions.

Oh, by all means, make up an arbitrary definition and then force people to adhere to it. I don't listen to rap music because it is: a) not, technically, music (it is a form of rhetoric) and b) it is gutter rhetoric of the most demeaning kind. I don't read modern mainstream comic books because they are self-serving amoral drivel. Every musician who strives for excellence is an elitist of sorts. Heck, even Bach and St. Thomas Aquinas were elitists. Everyone who strives for the narrow road is an elitist, so Murray's definition is not even wrong, but ab elitist definition, itself and so, ironic.

Everyone who strives for the narrow way is an elitist. In fact, at least morally, that is the only way. Murray has it wrong. His brand of elitism strives for the wide way and isn't elitism at all, but rather a form of dictatorship of the personal preferences of a few. He mistakes the few for the elite. Elitism can be a road to heaven or hell depending on the humility of the one walking. That academics and rich people have hubris is a fact as old as the written record. This is not news. Why is he writing this? Social science, this ain't.

See, I am obviously not an Elite because I used ain't in a sentence, although I cofess I used it correctly.

The Chicken

...and I spelled some words wrong, so, clearly I am not an Elite. So, how does Murray's work distinguish between the poor speller or someone trying to type on a small keyboard, eh? Gotta stop or I will start tearing Murray's research to shreds and it won't be pretty. I'll let Lydia do it for me by saying that Murray's work is a backslap to homeschooling. By all means, everyone should know who Jimmy Johnson is because Murray says so. By the way, who is he and why should I care? Left Behind, while entertaining is poor theology, so, again, why should I read it? I never made the transition to digital tv. Why should I care what 100 million people waste their time on? This is nothing but ad populum disguised as science. Nothing to see, here.

The Chicken

I stunned a Tea Partier coworker by pointing out something similar. It's not the existence of an elite that is problematic, but that our elite feels no sense of aristocratic duty to lead the country as, well, real leaders. Much of what outrages the left with the elite from extreme C-level officer pay, to the blatant double standard in courts (rich white kid sells a kilo of cocaine, it's community service; poor black kid is looking at maybe 10 years in prison) is caused by the elite not behaving as it should.

Further compounding the problem is the fact that when the elite "gets a conscience" it often manifests in a way that tears down the accomplished non-elites (the white collar office professional, doctors, engineers, small business owners etc).

Re: the article on marriage. It seems the group most likely to marry later and engage in family planning has the strongest and happiest marriages. What are we to make of this?

If the questions William posted are the ones you referenced, they aren't very good. Anyone who is historically literate should know military insignia and knowing Branson may mean that one is in the entertainment field and CM cuts across class anyway. Are soybeans that different from other bush beans? Most metropolitan areas have towns with less than 25,000.

@ Mike T - I tend to agree. Christopher Lasch discussed this idea both in (as I recall) The Revolt of the Elites and in The True and Only Heaven.

Jeff, I would be interesting in seeing your take on this article: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print.

What I want to know is does Mr Culbreath and those who agree with him want to return to mideval Europe where the human element of Holy Mother Church was taken over by these 'Elites' and used the power of the Church to prevent social mobility e.g. by telling them that 'it is worldy to want to rise above the place in life where God has put you' and introducing the distinction between Choir and lay Monks/Nuns in the Religious Life (based on your education = based on your social class).

Sure the idea of Elites is fine if you have St Elizabeth of Hungry, St Wencelas, St Margaret of Scotland and St Count Elezer but realisticly the majority of the elites bear a closer resemblence to The Marquis St. Evrémonde, Henry the VIII, Diocletion and Nero.

I'm trying to figure out what makes these people elite? There's a brief mention of books, what books, what kind? Perhaps a tell all from Senator Oliver Snert wherein he lays forth his, God help us, vision for America.

It seems in the quote that this elite may not have memories, are they captives of the moment, caught up in these things called trends, the passing fancies of ephemera? If so they are an elite absent knowledge of a Before, a constitutive Past, they are in someplace where current events must mean less, or perhaps too much, there being no grounding in time with it's restraints and lessons.
This is an elite? What has become of the very word?

Given that list, being out of touch with mainstream America does not seem like a bad thing.

I also question the 25K population measure. Houston has a "Greater Metropolitan Area" of several million, but it is made up of thousands of smaller towns/villages/hamlets, some of which are quite exclusive. So does that count? Does each New York burrough count separately? To get a truly 25K pop not tied to a major metro area, you would probably have to travel 100+ miles, but that may just be due to the size of Texas ;)

Rather than a negative elite list (i.e., where a "no" gets you into the elite) a more helpful one might be a positive elite list. I am a far cry from being "elite," yet I could only answer one or two of those yes.

Prof. Luse says, '8. Can you name the authors of the "Left Behind" series? What self respecting human being with an 8th grade education would want to be able to do that? I think one was named LaHaye, but I hope I am wrong.'
I am glad that Carl Olson, who writes for First Things has read them and responded to the Pre Trib, Pre Mil, Dispensationalist view of eschatology they advance.
We need not just to know the thinking of Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Reid. We need to be able to work out of the Weltanschaaungs that Aquinas and Reid laid out and answer the LaHayes of this world. I wonder if B. B. Warfield had engaged the dispensationalists if the fundamentalist movement would have taken the left turn that it took in the early twentieth century.

The op-ed is strangely pointless and scattershot. It's like trying to pin down jell-o. He uses a phase like "quintessentially American" to apply both to friendship with evangelical Christianity and to evanescent things like popular sports figures. (The evangelical friend question didn't make it into the quiz for some reason.) It isn't even all a matter of good vs. bad. There is nothing particularly good or bad about camping in an RV. If indeed the "new elite" wouldn't be caught dead in one because of snobbishness, then this is bad, because they are snobs. I myself am not into camping in any event because I'm a wimp and don't like mosquitoes and discomfort (this was decidedly not the case in my teens), but it has nothing to do with "not wanting to be caught dead in an RV."

One wonders what, exactly, Murray's point might be. There are ways of being out of touch and ways of being out of touch. For example, if one is doing some sort of worthwhile research or is running a farm and raising children, then it is charming that one doesn't know the name of some contemporary sports star or doesn't watch Oprah. "I have a life," the person might say. "I'm doing something worth doing."

I also think Murray downplays too much the ideological isolation problem. I think that's huge and is indeed part of what the Tea Party people are cueing to. If most of our journalists and policy makers hang around only with people who despise social conservatives and have never had a Christian friend, that sort of isolation is pretty important and is to be deplored. They end up being not just "elite" but narrow-minded and, in a very important sense, ignorant.

Re: the article on marriage. It seems the group most likely to marry later and engage in family planning has the strongest and happiest marriages. What are we to make of this?

Those are incidentals, Al, as the report itself makes very clear. "Family planning" is ubiquitous within all classes. And the problem with the middle class today isn't that they marry too early, it's that they don't marry at all. Intelligence, social status, and economics are the key influences here.

Jeff, I would be interesting in seeing your take on this article: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print .

Jonathan, that's a long article and I didn't read it very carefully. A couple of points, though. The author laments that today's elites are less diverse culturally and ideologically than the elites of the past as a result of their formation in American universities. For my part, however, I think elites are only useful if they share a common worldview on some level. The author also claims that today's elites are overly dependent on government. Presumably he means the academy. Again, I don't find any particular fault with this arrangement: it's what they believe and how they use their influence that makes today's elite parasitical, not the fact that they are tied to academia.

Also, the author is much too sanguine about the "country class". This is a good group in many respects and I know them quite well, but they are also (with many individual exceptions) a part of the problem.

One wonders what, exactly, Murray's point might be.

Lydia, do you suppose he might be atoning for the kind of vulgar elitism he aided and abetted (however unintentionally) in writing "The Bell Curve"?

What I want to know is does Mr Culbreath and those who agree with him want to return to mideval Europe where the human element of Holy Mother Church was taken over by these 'Elites' and used the power of the Church to prevent social mobility e.g. by telling them that 'it is worldy to want to rise above the place in life where God has put you' and introducing the distinction between Choir and lay Monks/Nuns in the Religious Life (based on your education = based on your social class).

I think you mischaracterize medieval Europe somewhat - many a bishop, saint, and scholar rose from humble beginnings - but in general, yes, it would be a better world if there were less worldly ambition. If medieval men were too much tied to their place, at least they had a place: they knew who they were, what they believed, from whence they came, and to whom they owed allegiance. By contrast modern men are largely rootless and deracinated, which of course fuels the ambition and avarice that fuels our political and economic systems.

Jeff, I don't know, but even so, that wouldn't be a point--that is, a thesis. If his thesis is just, "The elite are out of touch with the rest of America" (which it appears to be), that's just too vague to be useful. It sounds like an indictment, but as we've been saying here, it's a messy and confused indictment inasmuch as it includes things that are important to know and experiences that are good to have along with trivia and foolishness that people would do well to avoid and neutral experiences that no one particularly needs. He does refer to his book with Hernstein (which I probably don't evaluate the same as you do), but I couldn't quite understand the point of the reference. He seemed to be saying that he had learned that he was wrong about something, but did that book imply that the elite are _not_ out of touch with the rest of America, that they do _not_ marry among themselves, and so forth? It was a big book, and I didn't read it all, but it doesn't seem to me that they addressed those questions, and I can't think of anything they did say that would have implied particular answers to those questions.

Jeff,

Your words ring true, albeit understating the actuality of medieval life. This has much to do with the revisionist Whig History that even many of us take for granted. There is certainly enough true scandalous events within the Catholic Church, it seems strange that so many Protestants desired to bolster these with exaggeration and outright fiction. Please note that there were and are plenty of principled Protestants that were and are more than happy to stick with actual abuses and theological disagreement. Sadly, the narrative was taken over by the atheists, who have every intention of painting both sides with the same brush.

Were we stripped of our technological advances, or they empowered with them, I am more than certain that our medieval counterparts had the better portion.

Populist revolts, of which the Tea Party was one, at least in its infancy, provide practically infallible diagnoses of various problems. However, they should never be relied upon for a prescription.

Yes, I'm sure it's to the benefit of the members of the working class for wealth not to be redistributed. After all, they should have "roots". If you're going to make an appeal to property rights, I can point out that the elites have, through the State, so abrogated them in the past and present that their wealth is a consequence of mass theft. And anyway, what Catholic in good conscience would reject the preferential option for the poor? Right-wing Catholics are every bit as much "cafeteria" Catholics as left-wing Catholics are.

Typically excellent op-ed by Charles Murray. He's the greatest data-naut of our time.

Jeff, why you would think that *The Bell Curve* "aided and abetted" "vulgar elitism" is a complete mystery to me.

And if you really think that there was "less worldly ambition" about in the medieval period then there is today, then I would strongly recommend that you review, say, the history of the Papacy in those interesting times.

The biographies of, e.g., Boniface VIII (1235-1303) (consigned by Dante to the 8th circle), Clement VI (1291-1352), and Benedict XII (1012-1085), among many others, make for lamentable reading.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Steve, I'm curious, though: Do you not _at all_ get a slight feeling of analytic frustration with the extremely varied nature of Murray's examples? I really do. I get the feeling that he thinks that by using such varied examples he shows that his thesis applies across a broad spectrum of areas and that he knows what he's talking about. But all that it really does, in my opinion, is to render the phrase "out of touch" less meaningful as a criticism. I really couldn't care less if someone is "out of touch" in the sense of not having watched an episode of Oprah. Good for him, is my response. (I've never watched an entire episode of Oprah myself.) I do care if someone is out of touch in the sense of having no Christian friends or spending all his time among people who voted for Obama and who think all Christians are dumb. For that matter, I would agree that spending all one's time around people only with incomes of $200,000 or more per year probably significantly narrows one's knowledge and experience of men, morals, and life. Not camping in an RV, not so much. It seems to me that Murray trivializes his thesis by making its meaning so broad.

What would your response be to that criticism of the piece?

Lydia - I'd guess that, from Murray's perspective, you & I & Jeff Culbreath & pretty much everybody else who contributes to this site is an elitist, every bit as out of touch with mainstream America as, say, our al.

And isn't that the truth?

"There is nothing particularly good or bad about camping in an RV. If indeed the "new elite" wouldn't be caught dead in one because of snobbishness, then this is bad, because they are snobs"

There is, however, also an anti-snob type of snobbishness. Michael Kinsley, IMO, did a great job calling Bill O'Reilly out on this type of "I'm more of a coal miner's daughter than you!" type of snobbery. America's always had an anti-class populist streak in it from the days of Jackson but today I think if anything the gap between the 'upper elite' and the 'lower class' in terms of tastes, entertainment, even outlooks has never been smaller.

For example, is the 'lower class' really all that ignorant of The Sopranos? Has 'the elite' never watched 'Family Guy' or 'Desparate Housewives' or laughed at a reality show? Other aspects of the "please don't call me elite" test also seem pretty suspect. How many Americans can expect to have worked on a factory floor when the economy is over 70% service related? How can a majority of Americans live at least a year in a small town of less than 25,000 when a majority lives near the major urban centers on both coasts? What % of Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club members really lack college degrees? How many people who work jobs are able to watch 'The Price is Right'? (And unlike Sopranos, would you record it or TiVo it if you missed it?)

Likewise who today finds praise for, say, attending opera or classical music performances? Or being able to talk intelligently about fine wine or eating gourmet food or having servents! Recall when John Kerry ran for office the campaign worked to NOT publicize the fact that he could speak French fluently but even Republican candidates make a point of giving some speeches in Spanish, the literal language of the servents of today's elites. If you brought an elite person from, say, 1911 to the present he would probably not say the elites were too far from regular Americans but too close. He would probably say the only elitism in America today is anti-elitism where people feel guilty about any indicator that they are elite in any way.

John H.,

Yes, it is to the benefit of the working class, just as it is to the benefit of all peoples who aren't truly disadvantaged not to receive wealth that is stolen from others. I contest your ridiculous claim that our current elites have their wealth only as a consequence of "mass theft" and further, it is unclear to this Catholic how redistributing wealth to the "working class" has anything to do with the "preferential option for the poor."

Steve,

Back from Europe? I agree with you about "The Bell Curve" but I also agree with Lydia that this particular Murray piece is too scatter-shot in its critique. I also agree with Jeff C. that we want an elite guiding the country but our current elite is not doing a particularly good job. Tony Blankley, channeling George Washington, suggests we need to do a better job of cultivating old fashioned virtues (which you don't necessarily get watching daytime TV):

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/3/a-public-voice-for-private-virtue/

Jeff S. - yes, I'm back from the (intermittently) lovely Eastern coast of the Adriatic.

But with a terrible cold.

Steve, if that's true, it trivializes the indictment. For example, my friends are, I would guess, more diverse in ideology and economic situation than the friends of the people Murray seems to have in mind, despite the fact that I've never watched an episode of Oprah! So what does that mean? Or consider a conservative Christian academic like Ed Feser. Ed no doubt has frequent contact with and professional/work relationships with people who _heartily_ disagree with his most-cherished religious and political views, as well as having close relationships with those who agree with him. This obviously makes him more less out-of-touch and more broad-gauge than a liberal academic member of the elite who never has to deal with any colleague who doesn't have a similar political-ideological profile to his own, at least in broad outline.

Again, there are ways of being out of touch and ways of being out of touch. Some matter more than others, and many people will be out-of-touch with lowbrow culture in some ways an in-touch in others. Does the fact that I like country gospel music and regularly exercise to bluegrass give me "non-elitist perk points" and outweigh the fact that I don't watch Oprah? How does one measure these things?

And I wouldn't lay bets against the proposition that at least one of my colleagues here at W4 has spent the requisite amount of time that Murray lists living at less than twice the poverty line, outside of graduate school. (And why doesn't graduate school count, in any event?)

It's just too messy. There's nothing wrong with some kinds of elitism. We need to focus on things that count and be prepared to say why they count.

Jeff, why you would think that *The Bell Curve* "aided and abetted" "vulgar elitism" is a complete mystery to me.

I'm thinking of the undisguised "IQ elitism" now prominent in some circles, especially HBD circles. It's vulgar.

And if you really think that there was "less worldly ambition" about in the medieval period then there is today, then I would strongly recommend that you review, say, the history of the Papacy in those interesting times.

Thanks, Steve. As it happens I do happen to know a little about the papacy. But your mistake is in failing to distinguish by degree. Worldly ambition has always been with us, of course, but in the middle ages it was condemned as sinful, today it is praised as virtuous. In the middle ages few men had any opportunity to fulfill such ambitions, even if they had them, while today such opportunities are considered a birthright and every 2nd grader is told he can be a corporate CEO or, if that doesn't work out, president of the United States.

There is nothing new under the sun.

But every age brings a totally unique mix of virtues and vices, in totally unique proportions.

And I wouldn't lay bets against the proposition that at least one of my colleagues here at W4 has spent the requisite amount of time that Murray lists living at less than twice the poverty line, outside of graduate school.

At or below the poverty line, even, on public assistance for a time (as a child).

I just barely escaped new elitism with a score of 3.5. Like Bill Luse, though, I bet I could rig a test that is more non-elite than Murray's.

Have you ever had macaroni and cheese more than four times in a week?

Worked for less than $4.00 per hour after 1980?

Do you know the difference between an arc and a MIG welder? Do you know what MIG stands for?

Do you know what the four "H"s of 4-H stand for? Or do you know what FFA stands for?

Have you ever lived within two miles of your town's water tower?

Seen more than ten episodes of Bonanza or Andy Griffith?

Castrated a bull-calf or a goat buck?

Milked a cow or a goat?

Entered a tractor-trailer backing contest?

Shot a .22 rifle?

Butchered a chicken?

Cleaned or gutted a catfish?

Cut up a tree for firewood?

Gone to the box-top races?

Do you know the words to "the perfect country and western song"?

Do you know where Merle Haggard lives today?

Ever had a bonfire in your front yard?

Ever had Maxwell House instant coffee on purpose?

Take that Charles Murray. :-)

If the test is manufactured from Murray's post, it needs to include all of his questions, anyway. Is the one about the factory floor on there? I don't recall seeing either it or the one about having an evangelical Christian friend.

I've been on a factory floor, to pick up my paycheck. I worked in the factory office. For what that's worth.

The test was supposedly printed with the original article, but I can't find it with the online version. Kudos for your factory points. That makes it official, you can't be elite. And I'll bet you have more than one evangelical Christian friend, just for good measure.

I've worked in an almond huller, a chainsaw sales and repair shop, a metal fabrication shop, a garage door manufacturing shop, and a lumber yard - these ought to count for something too.

Jeff,

How many working class families do you know? I can assure you that I know many, and that to imply they are not disadvantaged is preposterous. As for wealth, consider that interstate highways (the vast majority of damage is caused by trucks but the bill is footed by typical drivers), communication subsidies, airliners, merchant marines, R&D subsidies, vo-tech subbsidies, and yes, even university subsidies, to name a few, cover the cost of running large-scale corporations at the expense of the public. In Europe, the enclosure movement took land from farmers who from any legitimate point of view appropriated those resources. In the States, the banking and money monopoly has - and still does - preclude workers from forming viable credit unions, artificially driving up the rate of interest by restricting the supply of capital. Land was practically given to the railroads, which not only benefited the owners but, like the interstate, put the distribution cost of large-scale manufacturing on the taxpayers. Landlordism has hardly left "enough and as good" for those unfortunate enough not to have acquired real estate early on. For more, I recommend reading some of Kevin Carson's work, who is a free marketeer if anyone is.

I worked in a factory, Lydia. We put together a crucial component of the landing pads for the Surveyor mooncraft. It was a summer job taken to help pay for my education so that I could join the elites. It didn't work.

But do you still drink Maxwell House coffee on purpose, Bill? :-)

(Okay, I'll stop.)

John H.,

Where does one start? Let's just say I agree with basically nothing you say and I think your economic history is bunk and your understanding of how our market economy works is flawed. I just checked out Mr. Carson on La Wik and he seems like a nut.

Jeff C.,

I failed every single one of your additional questions, but for the record, I worked in a real live factory during college one summer. My first job was also at McDonald's and I loved it.

Well, Jeff S., that makes you a bona fide city slicker in these parts. I think I failed the water tower question. Orland's water tower is about 3 miles away.

I think I got three out of four of Jeff's. By my recollection (and it's been a long time ago), in 1985 I started in the factory office at officially $3.75 per hour with a 25 cents per hour "bonus" which could be docked for the entire week if you were late or missed a day in the week. So I usually actually made $4 per hour, but they held that "bonus" thing over you and could drop it at any time. I've had Maxwell House instant coffee on purpose, but not very often.

And I'm sure I've seen _way_ more than ten episodes of Andy Griffith and Bonanza, many-a year ago. My kids watch Andy Griffith on DVD now.

I sincerely apologize in advance, but I have no ability to resist answering Jeff's test questions.
1) Sort of, hamburger helper meals were very common growing up. Also, a frequent, cheap breakfast was peanut butter toast with apple sauce, very tasty.
2) Yes, in various restaurants.
3) I'm guessing something to do with the fuel supply.
4) No. Future Farmers of America.
5) No.
6) Everyone in the South is required by Custom to see Andy Griffith dozens if not hundreds of times.
7) Gross.
8) Not gross, but no.
9) What is that?
10) And ruin my liberal street cred? Never.
11) No.
12) Cleaned.
13) That was how we heated our family home for five years.
14) No.
15) Something involving dogs, trains, a cheating spouse, and drinking.
16) If ever something were to qualify as useless trivia.
17) If a relative's front yard counts, yes.
18) Yes. It wasn't good til the last drop.

How many working class families do you know? I can assure you that I know many, and that to imply they are not disadvantaged is preposterous.

By working-class do you mean blue collar? I started out as a mechanic, and my good friends from my home states are mechanics and maintenance workers. They aren't doing too badly for themselves, never seem to find themselves unemployed even though in a somewhat stagnant and dying economic zone. I have nothing materially that they don't have, and I'd be surprised if their net worth isn't higher than mine, and they never attended college. In fact they probably have more wealth than I do because they didn't.

If medieval men were too much tied to their place, at least they had a place: they knew who they were, what they believed, from whence they came, and to whom they owed allegiance

Mr Culbreath
So you admit that you would prefer a social order where one would bow and scrape to an absolute monarch who could have you murdered on trumped up charges, where education (a great social equalizer)is reserved for the few, where the common man and women have little recourse to justice and no prospects of improving their living conditions.

You would prefer a situation where Priests and Bishops who are often merely the surpluss sons of noble families tell poor people that to want an improvement in their living conditions (often simply wanting to know that there will BE a next meal) is worldy, I know for a fact that many pre vatican 2 Priests did just that.

Let me ask you a question Mr Culcbreath; was Bishop François-Melchior-Charles-Bienvenu de Miollis (the real life Monseigneur Bienvenu of Les Miserable) simply wasting his time trying to improve the lives of his flock?, was Frank Duff (Founder of the Legion of Mary) being naive in trying to help the disadvanteged in Dublin ? should the late Archbishop Oscar Romero have avoided confrontation with the Government?

Your posts sir make me ashamed to be a Catholic, I would suggest sir that you either read for the first time or re-read the works of two men who stood up for the poor in the 19th centuary: Mr George Muller (evangelical - accused of educating the poor above their 'natural station' by the 'elites' of his time) and Mr Charles Dickens (Anglican - needs no introduction), and if the works of these two men do not evoke some feeling in your soul I would suggest anything by Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu otherwise known as Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Jack,

Absolute monarchy is not medieval era, but rather an outgrowth of the Renaissance, and only then in some nations. Now it is certainly true that a baron could deign to abuse some serf out of absurd cruelty, however this sort of thing usually made life worse (and at times shorter) for the baron later on. The Church looked upon such actions rather crossly (if only to keep appearances), and the peasants themselves were often a rather unruly and dangerous bunch when angered.

As for education, again you have swallowed whole a pseudo-historical narrative. Generally speaking, well off peasants, or at least fiscally shrewd peasants, would enlist their sons into what nowadays would be called parochial schools, where they would learn the invaluable legal language of Latin. Some would return to their fields, often acting on behalf of their fellow peasants when it came to legal disputes over landmarks, dowries, taxes, fines, tithes, and torts; of these, one would be ELECTED as sheriff by their fellow peasants. Of course, some would stay within the church and serve in some capacity or another, including even prestigious appointments like abbot, priest and bishop. It should also be noted that while some sons and daughters of the nobility were sent off to the local monastery, far more of the "excess" sons found life for themselves in the military capacity. After all, crossbow bolts didn't have a "stun" setting for nobility, who were required to lead their knights into battle.

Now, when it comes to social advancement, life was not all that horrible in the peasantry nor all that lovely in the nobility. Usually peasants would live peaceful lives, content in knowing they were beneath the notice of both their baron or the baron besieging his manor. The holiday schedule would make a modern government worker blush, beer was considered a dietary staple (and rightly so in unbiased view of medieval nutrition) to be consumed throughout the day, and cheese that we pay nowadays for over $20 a pound was sold for beans. While meat was harder to come by in those days, the local lord would be mortified to furnish those previously noted holiday feasts without it.

Judging medieval life by the caricatures of it made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is like believing Catholicism can be explained in good faith by Jack Chick.

Getting back to the main post, here would be an interesting question to ask, apropos of Murray's op-ed:

What examples of being out of touch are there that could potentially be a problem for policy makers, rendering them unsympathetic to real problems and concerns of the people generally, even though there is no actual moral failing involved?

I would propose as one example

--having had extremely strong job security for all or most of one's working life.

I say this as a woman married to a professor with tenure. Nor am I saying that there is something wrong about tenure or that no one who has been a tenured academic could ever make a good public servant.

I am merely saying that I could understand someone's saying that a person who has had tenure most of his life has been insulated from an important type of shock, strain, and worry that affects many, many other people to whom he might wish to speak if he became a popular journalist or a politician. In this sense, a tenured academic might be said to be "out of touch" without intending by this to castigate the person.

Elitism basically creates a set of hurdles that make it difficult to join the 'elite group' while at the same time not making it so difficult or so rare that people simply cease to care about being a member. The anti-elite elite test seems to play on this tactic. Let's see, in order for me to not be elite I have to live in a rural community where my nearest neighbor is 20 miles away. I have to watch the Price is Right and Oprah but at the same time I have to shop at Wal-Mart and carry a full time job in an auto plant....before I clock in, though, I also have to tend to several acreas of corn, eat eggs and toast for breakfast at a small town grill which I get to either by riding my horse or driving my pickup. My free time, when not consumed with watching the Price is Right is spent hunting Moose, RVing, or watching NASCAR, WWF or maybe football (although the Jimmy Johnson thing makes me think now that football isn't safe from the charge of being an elitist!).

In reality, though, these are just cultural variations. Working class people in Kearny NJ generally are not going to be able to identify anything related to farms. People in Idaho go to Starbucks and Paris Hilton has probably seen the inside of a McDonalds. If your income is higher than average you're goint to buy and do things differently than someone with less income. It's interesting, though, that the tastes of our rich are not that different from the tastes of our poor. Watching shows like Bravo's 'Housewives' you notice that the very well off seem to enjoy consuming the same things that the 'average person'does, just more.

In contrast look at the British who have/had a real class system with a real elite. Christopher Hitchens had an interesting piece on Slate.com recently where he mentioned you could tell one's class by whether he put the tea in his cup first then added boiling water or vice versa. Go back in time and you'll find that a country with a real elite just doesn't enjoy different sports and amusements than the non-elite, they even speak with different accents, sometimes don't even speak the same language.

"I am merely saying that I could understand someone's saying that a person who has had tenure most of his life has been insulated from an important type of shock, strain, and worry that affects many, many other people to whom he might wish to speak if he became a popular journalist or a politician. "

I agree with this however I think the meme has a bit too much self loathing by Murry. It's not like a person is handed tenure at 27 yrs old when he scores his masters or phd. There's a lot of stress and angst required to finally get it and once you got it there's no gurantee of riches.

Likewise it's not like there's non-elite positions without great job security. Police officers, for example, often have excellent security and benefits after 20 years. In this recession unemployment hit disproportionately the low skilled and a portion of white collar workers. If you didn't get laid off in the last two years, you probably have excellent job security.

In contrast, some professions that I think Murray would classify as 'elite' have greater than average employment risk. Journalists, writers, pundits etc. Sure you can achieve something like tenure if you become a George Will or Sean Hannity but there's hundreds of wannabes who have to hawk their stuff on an empty stomach as they look to make it big.

I don't disagree with Lydia that a tenured professor has a life experience that's different from many other people but I don't take to the concept that he should feel he needs to apologize for being 'out of touch' and I think it's even worse to imply that 'getting in touch' can or should be accomplished by trying to act like a stereotype. The fact is whoever you are you are going to be 'out of touch' with the majority of other Americans because America is a big place with people who live very diverse lives. If you're a cop, a member of the military, a factory worker, a farmer the fact is you are out of touch with just as many Americans as the local college's English Professor.

I will guarantee you that most local college English professors live in a reality of their own making.

I am merely saying that I could understand someone's saying that a person who has had tenure most of his life has been insulated from an important type of shock, strain, and worry that affects many, many other people to whom he might wish to speak if he became a popular journalist or a politician. In this sense, a tenured academic might be said to be "out of touch" without intending by this to castigate the person.

I suppose, but the tenured academic doesn't need to become a pathetic serial entrepreneur (ahem!) to know something about what that kind of life might entail. Just as a Catholic priest does not need to be married to give effective advice to married couples. Any reasonably intelligent American who cares - and that's a key qualification - can get himself "in touch" well enough to perform competently as a leader of those not of his class persuasion.

I think you're right about that, Jeff. Marie Antoinette could have been the queen of France without saying, or even thinking, "Let them eat cake."

Actually, it turns out that Marie Antoinette probably was the queen of France without saying "Let them eat cake." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake

A false attribution. But I know what you mean, and heartily agree. Historical examples are legion.

Jeff,

"Any reasonably intelligent American who cares - and that's a key qualification - can get himself "in touch" well enough to perform competently as a leader of those not of his class persuasion. "

I think this hits the nail on the head. I'm sure while Lydia's husband may have more job security than many of the kids he teaches, he probably has meet and learned a lot about a huge array of people from all types of families and backgrounds and if he takes the opportunity to care he probably is in touch with a huge cross section of American life. Taking a year off to watch Oprah or work in a factory may yield him some interesting experiences but won't, IMO, make him more 'in touch'. The example of Catholic clergy is also pretty good as their lives are purposefully intended to be very different from the super majority of other people and that's meant to be a feature, not a bug. Sometimes being on the outside looking in allows one to get a clearer picture.

Boonton, we agree. (We shd. hurry up and celebrate this, as who knows when it'll happen again. :-))

Step2: Not much to say, but thanks for taking the test. Metal inert gas. Head, heart, hands, health. When you back a trailer into a tight spot with a farm tractor. Lots of city slickers heat their homes with firewood; few actually cut the wood. A relative's front yard does not count: everyone has a relative in the country somewhere. Useless trivia? Not here in the state of Jefferson. Oh, and the words to the perfect country and western song:

Well, I was drunk the day my momma got out of prison,
And I went to pick her up in the rain.
But before I could get to the station in the pick-up truck,
She got runned over by a damned old train.

Any reasonably intelligent American who cares - and that's a key qualification - can get himself "in touch" well enough to perform competently as a leader of those not of his class persuasion.

I think this is doubtful. I don't see how most groups would accept any such "thin" conception of a leader, and I suppose this might be wise. I don't think Murray's "not of America" is so shocking in this light.

Traditionalist conservatives ought to avoid the kind of populist rhetoric that suggests we would be better off without elites, or that elites should not be culturally different from the mainstream, or that elites are somehow "not of America" because they are, well, elites. It's the conversion of the elites we ought to hope for, not their demise.

Any group that can't stand criticism doesn't deserve to exist. Is there any reason to think anti-elitism is at some all-time high? I doubt it, in fact I'd guess it is quite low historically.

I don't see how most groups would accept any such "thin" conception of a leader ...

Only if you think history begins in 1776, or more accurately, 1829, and ends at the borders of North America.

Is there any reason to think anti-elitism is at some all-time high? I doubt it, in fact I'd guess it is quite low historically.

It's complicated. Paradoxically, I think anti-elitist sentiment is at an all-time high, all the while mindless, docile submission to the elite is also at an all-time high. Hand in glove.

I wouldn't get too worked up about Murray's literacy tests. I'm not sure if he's always been an educational reformer by profession, but for quite some years he's been trying provide a unified view what we should know and learn. Cultural literacy and all that. Does this list method provide a satisfying account? Well what does? Does the "Multiple Intelligences" strategy by Howard Gardner? They are both trying to do the same thing. They are trying to give a unified account our cultural and intellectual life after the collapse of a consensus, and both are bound to fail.

I think Murray's piece is a pretty brilliant take on things, and I think it helps to read him knowing that his "literacy view" has some issues, like all the other accounts, and I wouldn't judge his article by discomfort with that. I also get the impression he has some unique and needed ideas on educational reform.

Most here are using the term to being merely exclusive in some way rather than inclusive. This seems to trivial a definition for reasons many have already stated, certainly to do justice to Murray is driving at.

VDH adds two other criteria: (full article)

2) "... elitism is the deliberate deprecation, in active or passive fashion, of the other world of physicality and pragmatism."

3) "... the elitist, by his very nature, proves overreaching. That is, he seems in anti-Platonic fashion, to think his expertise in one field is instantly transferable to another.

I think we should use the term in a fuller sense in this debate without so much confusion. This would also help to explain such expressions as W. Buckley's famous one:

“I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."

Any reasonably intelligent American who cares - and that's a key qualification - can get himself "in touch" well enough to perform competently as a leader of those not of his class persuasion.

I think this is doubtful. I don't see how most groups would accept any such "thin" conception of a leader, and I suppose this might be wise.

To be accepted as leader in any full sense is to become one of the group in the relevant way, or for the relevant commonality already present to be recognized. For someone to say "he's not one of us" (if done in truth) is to say this has not happened. I don't think competence and caring is sufficient.

Two points:

1. I don't care if my surgeon is in touch with me culturally as long as he's "in touch" with me on the operating table. There may be more than one thing to lead in a given situation

2. Many of my student have never heard of the Marx brothers or even (gasp) seen an episode of Star Trek, so we have little in common. The needs of the job (education) establish the leadership.

The Chicken

Jeff,

I have say it. On your "test" one of your questions was:

Have you ever butchered a chicken?

Really! Garrotting a galliform has got to be illegal, somewhere. Throat-slitting a species has got to be grounds for punishment. Inciting to incision is just too horrible to contemplate.

Malice afowlthought?

How would you like it if my test question were:

Do you enjoy eating dead, helpless, blog commentators?

Really! I'm shocked. Your attitude, clearly, is the result of listening to evil Country music.

The Chicken

Paradoxically, I think anti-elitist sentiment is at an all-time high, all the while mindless, docile submission to the elite is also at an all-time high. Hand in glove.

Hear hear.

I think this is doubtful. I don't see how most groups would accept any such "thin" conception of a leader, and I suppose this might be wise.

To be accepted as leader in any full sense is to become one of the group in the relevant way, or for the relevant commonality already present to be recognized.

Well, Mark, there's one good thing: If you're right, it means that Meghan McCain will never be elected to public office.

1. I don't care if my surgeon is in touch with me culturally as long as he's "in touch" with me on the operating table. There may be more than one thing to lead in a given situation

Competence is all you care about all things being equal. But the "all things being equal" part hides a lot. I've learned over the years with friends and family in all matters medical to get at least two opinions, and sometimes three or four if there is any doubt on anything that isn't routine or if there is any doubt that you've been offered all the reasonable options. My wife this week successfully had a dental procedure done by a dentist 100 miles away (we live in a dense urban area where there are hundreds nearby) despite starkly differing advice from several local dentists. Why? The bottom line and the point of decision came down to (as it always does) to "what would you do if this was your wife, and why?" I've seen this so many times that accepting the advice of a professional comes down to personal character and sharing a philosophy on life. Without both I won't follow the advice, and shouldn't. Heck, I even select a mechanic by how much he shares my outlook on life and philosophy on the matter in question. In both examples, I could get very detailed and specific about how I identify with the view and character of those whose advice or services I accept, but in the interest of being concise I'll just say there is a recognition that "he/she is one of us" that would do things more or less as we would that goes well beyond competence. Now if I think I've reached a decision that I need some routine service and a given person has a track record of performing this service competently, then the importance is obviously less.

Bottom line is that Aristotle was right. It doesn't actually make any sense to say you have a good teacher who isn't a good man or woman. The two go together.

2. Many of my student have never heard of the Marx brothers or even (gasp) seen an episode of Star Trek, so we have little in common. The needs of the job (education) establish the leadership.

Many of my student have never heard of the Marx brothers or even (gasp) seen an episode of Star Trek, so we have little in common. The needs of the job (education) establish the leadership.

"Leadership" in the sense you are using it simply means acquiescence to authority and possibly acceptance that a teacher has some knowledge that you don't. Students are in classes together for a whole host of reasons having to do with the shared understandings of their parents and culture, whether those understandings are right or wrong.

To be accepted as leader in any full sense is to become one of the group in the relevant way, or for the relevant commonality already present to be recognized.

Well, Mark, there's one good thing: If you're right, it means that Meghan McCain will never be elected to public office.

What I said means nothing of the sort. You are playing on the subtleties of the term "leader". Voting for a person only means they appeared to be preferable in the minds of voters to the other candidates; it says nothing about why, or whether the judgement was valid.

Back to this statement:

Paradoxically, I think anti-elitist sentiment is at an all-time high, all the while mindless, docile submission to the elite is also at an all-time high. Hand in glove.

Since there are no supporting reasons offered for this assertion, and none likely to be, it is worth noting that the statement seems to exude a fierce resentment typically made by members of groups that perceive themselves undervalued.

Mark, lighten up a bit. My remark about Meghan McCain was intended to be funny.

Okay, sorry. :)

Have you ever butchered a chicken?

Really! Garrotting a galliform has got to be illegal, somewhere. Throat-slitting a species has got to be grounds for punishment. Inciting to incision is just too horrible to contemplate.

Dear Masked Chicken, you're right, that question was highly insensitive. Mea culpa. If it's any consolation I use an axe rather than a knife. It's quicker that way, at least when the axe is sharp. I haven't butchered a chicken since last summer and am trying to break the habit.

How would you like it if my test question were:

Do you enjoy eating dead, helpless, blog commentators?

I would be deeply offended.

Really! I'm shocked. Your attitude, clearly, is the result of listening to evil Country music.

You mean songs like "Cluck Old Hen"?

Cluck old hen,
Cluck in the lot.
Next time you cackle
You'll cackle in the pot!

VDH adds two other criteria: (full article)

2) "... elitism is the deliberate deprecation, in active or passive fashion, of the other world of physicality and pragmatism."

3) "... the elitist, by his very nature, proves overreaching. That is, he seems in anti-Platonic fashion, to think his expertise in one field is instantly transferable to another.

I think we should use the term in a fuller sense in this debate without so much confusion.

Uh, no, Mark. Nice try though. In the first place the topic has nothing to do with "elitism" or even "elitists", but "elites". The first two are pejorative, the latter merely descriptive. My choice of words was made carefully (in this case anyway!). You might like to redefine "elite" in a pejorative way, but for purposes of this discussion that is a red herring.

Definition of "elite" per Merriam-Webster:

1. the choice part : cream (e.g., the elite of the entertainment world)

2. the best of a class (e.g., superachievers who dominate the computer elite — Marilyn Chase)

3. the socially superior part of society (e.g., how the French-speaking elite…was changing — Economist)

4. a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence (e.g., members of the ruling elite)

5. a member of such an elite —usually used in plural (e.g., the elites … pursuing their studies in Europe — Robert Wernick)

Uh, no, Mark. Nice try though. In the first place the topic has nothing to do with "elitism" or even "elitists", but "elites". The first two are pejorative, the latter merely descriptive. My choice of words was made carefully (in this case anyway!). You might like to redefine "elite" in a pejorative way, but for purposes of this discussion that is a red herring.

If "elitism" has no relevance to your post, and the distinctions I introduced are a red herring, why did several other commenters use the term "elitism" interchangeably with "elites"? If "elitism" is so clearly pejorative, why didn't you correct the commenter who said "There's nothing wrong with some kinds of elitism"? Belief in rule by an elite is neutral, not a pejorative. It is a pejorative among many, and certainly myself, but that is because of political beliefs. Many think elitism is good. It's quite a stretch to claim I was trying to redefine "elite" as a pejorative, and untrue. Besides which, Murray linked articles that discussed elitism so obviously he considered it relevant.

VDH points out that not all elites are elitists, quite obviously, but trenchantly points out the tension between the two in saying "the elitist, by his very nature, proves overreaching ... to think his expertise in one field is instantly transferable to another."

Poor whites in some respects are the biggest losers in this new arrangement. I'm sure you saw this study but I'll repost online summary of it:

Russell K. Nieli looks at study by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade showing lower-income European Americans most discriminated against in college admissions.

Nieli argues:  "When lower-class whites are matched with lower-class blacks and other non-whites the degree of the non-white advantage becomes astronomical: lower-class Asian applicants are seven times as likely to be accepted to the competitive private institutions as similarly qualified whites, lower-class Hispanic applicants eight times as likely, and lower-class blacks ten times as likely. These are enormous differences and reflect the fact that lower-class whites were rarely accepted to the private institutions Espenshade and Radford surveyed."

Via affirmative action, it's possible that poor Asians, blacks or mestizos can enter this new elite -- but there seem to be more barriers for poor whites.

BTW, the new (post 1920's) American political elite is perhaps one of the most disappointing the world has ever seen and it's only become worse since the 1960s culminating in the recent leaked Wikileak diplomatic cables, showing how truly "ghetto" this new American "elite" has become. Compare these cables with the memoranda of Cicero or 19th British statesmen. Read Trollope's Palliser series if truly want stark contrast.

I've lived in a few of the places described above. My point is that they're not really "elite" in any traditional sense of the word -- unless by "elite" you mean high-tech hipsters driving $50K cars who wear t-shirts to work and use the word 'like' in every other sentence. The people in these places often are either SWPL or the recipients of affirmative action. Either way, not really "elite" in the way Trollope would understand it.

I've lived in a few of the places described above. My point is that they're not really "elite" ...

BTW, the new (post 1920's) American political elite is perhaps one of the most disappointing the world has ever seen and it's only become worse since the 1960s culminating in the recent leaked Wikileak diplomatic cables, showing how truly "ghetto" this new American "elite" has become. Compare these cables with the memoranda of Cicero or 19th British statesmen. Read Trollope's Palliser series if truly want stark contrast.

I get the comparison to past times and I share your concerns, but are you saying the elites are worse in the U. S. than abroad? I've not lived abroad so I wouldn't know. In what other places are the elites in better condition?

I don't think there is much doubt that the condition of the elites is worrisome. Still, if you remove the time references in the bottom snippet I suspect it seems like something that Henry James would say.

Yes, perhaps I sounded a bit too much like one of those bleak - "apres moi le deluge" - sorts. It wasn't my intent. Obviously people have been complaining about decline for the past couple centuries.

When one looks closely at this new elite -- at places like the the biotech quadrant of Cambridge, MA or high tech in Austin, TX or telecom in Raleigh-Durham, NC - what's interesting is how boring it is - unless one finds Starbucks, Maya Angelou readings at Border's, taupe subdivisions, or fundraisers for Haiti to be exciting.

Running the show are some very smart whites and NE Asians -- but the NE Asians are often quite materialistic and withdrawn, and the whites very boringly predictable SWPL types. And then you have all the various recipients of affirmative action who -- in some symbiotic relationship with the SWPL types - flock to these places to alleviate their insecurities through the other's (now secularized) self-flagellation.

History never truly repeats itself, so this "elite" is somewhat unique. Yet, history is not without unworthy elites. Read Petronius' "Dinner with Trimalchio".

I decided to actually read the piece since we've been speaking about it so much in terms of rather shallow cultural habits (Dunkin Donuts v. Starbucks, Price is Right v. Sopranos etc.). Murray's logic here is an embrassment.

1. He opens his piece with a Tea Partier & Glenn Beck piece on the 'elite' coming from places like Yale. But the criticism of 'elites' by people like Beck and Palin is just partisan politics. For example, does being a Price is Right fan and attending NASCAR races on a regular basis make you oppose the estate tax as a 'death tax' while being a Yale grad makes you an 'out of touch' supporter of the estate tax? No being a Republican does. Watch NASCAR all day long while drinking Bud lite and Sarah Palin will still call you an elitist if you're not a Republican supporter.

2. He then cites some 'New Elite' members who recognized this supposedly new class decades ago:

"Why are the members of the New Elite feeling so put upon? They didn't object back in 1991, when Robert Reich said we had a new class of symbolic analysts in his book "The Work of Nations." They didn't raise a fuss in 2000 when David Brooks took an anthropologist's eye to their exotic tribe and labeled them bourgeois bohemians in "Bobos in Paradise." And they were surely pleased when Richard Florida celebrated their wonderfulness in his 2002 work, "The Rise of the Creative Class." "

OK but this isn't "came from Yale". You're talking about higher income earners in the US. Higher income earners do do different things than lower income earners. In 1950 the banker, the lawyer or doctor made more than the bricklayer....and then the difference between his culture and the brick layer's was probably larger than it is today.

3. He then goes on to note the composition of the student bodies of the elite schools:

"On the surface, it looks as if things have changed. Compared with 50 years ago, the proportion of students coming from old-money families and exclusive prep schools has dropped. The representation of African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans has increased. Yet the student bodies of the elite colleges are still drawn overwhelmingly from the upper middle class. According to sociologist Joseph Soares's book "The Power of Privilege: Yale and America's Elite Colleges," about four out of five students in the top tier of colleges have parents whose income, education and occupations put them in the top quarter of American families, according to Soares's measure of socioeconomic status. Only about one out of 20 such students come from the bottom half of families."

He doesn't seem to notice it but he is undercutting his thesis, that the 'elite' have grown 'out of touch'. He is presenting data that the elite schools have become more open to all Americans, not less. He is bemoaning not a growing chasm between 'elite' and 'regular Americans' in terms of being able to get their kids into the top schools but the fact that there's still a tiny bit of bias left in the system towards 'elite'. When you consider that income inequality has grown dramatically over the last twenty, thirty years it would seem like the elite schools have been a countervaling force. If the elite schools followed the income, the top 10% of the top 1% would make up most of the elite school's students with some opportunities for the reaminaing 90% of top 1% with maybe 1 in 20 slots for 'lower families' made up of the top 25%.

The 2nd page then goes on to assert that this reinforces his Bell Curve hypothesis but it really doesn't. He confuses the elite of Reich & Brooks which is higher earning people with the elite of the Ivy League schools, of course the two overlap but the former is more important. I'm sure lots of Yale grads watch "Mad Men" and "The Sopranos" but those shows haven't made millions by simply winning fans from the Yale alumni set. He confuses a data point with a time series. Yes you can find a difference in cultures. You can find people with little interest in "Mad Men" but have read a few "Left Behind" novels and wonder why they won't make a good movie about them. But the existence of a difference today doesn't mean an increasing difference. Consider:

"But the politics of the New Elite are not the main point. When it comes to the schools where they were educated, the degrees they hold, the Zip codes where they reside and the television shows they watch, I doubt if there is much to differentiate the staff of the conservative Weekly Standard from that of the liberal New Republic, or the scholars at the American Enterprise Institute from those of the Brookings Institution, or Republican senators from Democratic ones. "

But go back 50 years. Was William F Buckley and, say, the Kennedy family all that different in terms of where they went to school, the recreation activities, their culture?

And Murray doesn't go there because to do so would subvert his Bell Curve hypothesis. The cultural difference isn't increasing but decreasing. If Bill Gates's son chats with a girl in Starbucks whose mom works full time at Shoprite and has been on food stamps several times in her life, it's quite likely they will share a lot of cultural references in common from common tv shows, movies down to sharing the same language (including cell phone texting conventions, Facebook and Twitter use etc.) Replay the same story from 100 years ago and you don't get "Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts "

And this does contradict Murray's Bell Curve. The Bell Curve asserted that nature matters more than nurture. If you let nature take its course, you're going to get a widdening distance between the elites and the non-elite. In the past the cult of 'blood' supposedly countered nature. Havard ignored merit to a degree to make space for the legacy sons of its alumni and marriage choices tempered the advantage of natural traits by requiring potential mates to come from 'good families'. Since then we have moved to a meritocracy with the very talented able to reap more rewards than ever (and no don't carp about affirmative action, today you simply aren't going to find many dolts in Harvard's Freshmen class) there *should* be a widening divide between the elites and non-elites but its just the opposite.

I love our Elites. I wish I could be just as smart, beautiful, rich, and powerful as they are [sarcasm]. In this life, they get everything they want and more. As for the next life, well, that's a different story.

On the other hand, some of the projects the Elites come up with are a little irksome for us non-elites, such as these funny, interminable wars and "nation-building" projects overseas. The last I checked, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, the non-elites are the ones expending the most amount of blood in these neverending projects. And we non-elites also get taxed to pay for them, which cost billions every week. Also, the elites own all the "Too Big To Fail" operations. I wish I was "too big to fail" so I could get a couple of billion dollars to bail me out of a jam. But alas, I'm not among the Elites.

I guess I should just keep quite and let my betters run the show.

And this does contradict Murray's Bell Curve. The Bell Curve asserted that nature matters more than nurture

I have not read The Bell Curve, but I've always thought that IQ theory was bunk. Not that doing well on an IQ test doesn't mean certain things, it obviously does, but that intelligence is some native cognitive capacity that can be measured apart from the knowledge one has, much like height or weight. It's just silly. Some people are brighter than others, but the fact is we don't know what intelligence really is, let alone how to measure it.

Ignominious
"On the other hand, some of the projects the Elites come up with are a little irksome for us non-elites, such as these funny, interminable wars and "nation-building" projects overseas."

Really? I didn't realize that the Red States were so opposed to the Iraq war. Does that mean Michael Moore is not a member of the elite? I wouldn't think so being that you described them as 'smart, beautiful, rich, and powerful' and at best he is one, maybe two of those things. I ask because usually when people carp about the 'Elite', esp. people like Sarah Palin & co. they don't have in mind people like George Bush or Dick Cheney. More often than not they seem to be talking about people like Michael Moore who last time I checked never won an election nor was appointed to any decision making process.

"And we non-elites also get taxed to pay for them, which cost billions every week. Also, the elites own all the "Too Big To Fail" operations. I wish I was "too big to fail" so I could get a couple of billion dollars to bail me out of a jam."

If you owned these operations that literally means you're a stock holder. If so you've been hosed pretty badly. If you went back in time and put your money in Fannie/Freddie shares, GM, Lehrman Bros, Bank of America, etc. you're not doing too well. If you worked for these corporations then maybe you still have a job which is all good but that's not exactly a free gift. If you're getting a paycheck from them it's because you're working for them. The only think that's really been bailed out is a disembodied entity called a corporation which is not really a person. Indirectly who got bailed out was more or less everyone else who directly or indirectly needed the financial system to function.

And let's not forget it was a certain political party's candidate whose VP Candidate has been running from day 1 for President as Mrs. Anti-Elitist who got up in a Presidential debate and said those who didn't vote for TARP were not putting their country's good first. If you want to take a Noam Chomskish view of the 'elite' then feel free but let's make it clear that the more common use of anti-elitist rhetoric is not so broad.

Mark,

I haven't read the Bell Curve either but from what I read about it I believe its thesis was that IQ provides an edge (just an edge) and that IQ is inherited. Not that nurture has no impact, if you lock a kid in a closet for ten years he's not going to overcome that abuse just by having high IQ genes.

This is an interesting conservative criticism of the meritocracy. In older times elite positions were reserved for an elite class. With a meritocracy the best all grab the top slots, hook up with each other and start having kids with high IQ genes.

This would tie in with what I believe David Brooks wrote about Obama's 'elitism'. People like Obama and Clinton are tarred as elitists by the right while the left see just the opposite, people who weren't born to money or high ranking families who worked their way to the top. While people like Bush are the epitome of the elitist idea. Slack off in school, slack off even until you're 40 freaking years old! and you still can be President. The other take sees the elite more like the nerds of school. Because they read all the books and got all 100's they can never be challenged by those with a more roguish spirit...or more to the point because they clinched the 'book learning' title they will never take seriously challenges from those who took a different path to life, hence the elitism charge is more about snobbery.

My take is that this view has merit but then why should someone's views be automatically entitled to respect? It's great to receive wisdom from those who acquired it from non-academic, non-ladder climing the 'meritocracy' methods but that presumes one has acquired wisdom. The anti-elitist stance IMO decays too quickly into its own type of anti-elite-elitism where people go around making a show of how 'regular' they are.

I have not read The Bell Curve, but I've always thought that IQ theory was bunk. Not that doing well on an IQ test doesn't mean certain things, it obviously does, but that intelligence is some native cognitive capacity that can be measured apart from the knowledge one has, much like height or weight. It's just silly. Some people are brighter than others, but the fact is we don't know what intelligence really is, let alone how to measure it.

Mark, this is completely, 100% wrong. You have a lot of reading to do. Start here with Murray's essay The Inequality Taboo.

http://www.aei.org/article/23075

You should read Cochran and Harpending's _10,000 Year Explosion_, which gives the necessary background information to show how genetic IQ inequalities are possible. This book is definitely one of the most influential books I've ever read -- and seems to be so for everyone I know who has read it.

Mark could also read the following two articles to counter the IQ obsession some people have.

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/sloth/fagan-holland-2007.pdf

http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2001/0401IQ.aspx

boonton: "The only think that's really been bailed out is a disembodied entity called a corporation which is not really a person."

On the other hand, real flesh and blood people do get taxed to pay for all the bailing. Funny, but I don't recall anybody asking me what I thought about being made to pay for it.

boonton: "More often than not they seem to be talking about people like Michael Moore…"

That 3rd rate movie maker, Michael Moore? Not in my book. On the other hand, Cheney, Bush, et al, seem pretty l33T to me — nothwithstanding Bush's ungrammatical "bushisms." I wish I had an income even a fraction of theirs.

boonton: "And let's not forget … Mrs. Anti-Elitist …"

It's funny how she got dragged into the picture, everyone's favorite Bête Noire. I never voted for her, nor do I ever intend to do so. But I entirely agree with your assessment that her putative "anti-eliteness" is mostly a pose and entirely artificial.

booton: "I didn't realize that the Red States were so opposed to the Iraq war."

Not everyone who happen to live in those states is a jingoist warmonger. One can love his country without wanting it to be an world empire.

Ignominious,

"On the other hand, real flesh and blood people do get taxed to pay for all the bailing."

Who exactly has been taxed for the bailouts? At the moment the $700B TARP fund is all but $30B or so paid back basically making the GM bailout the only thing that actually cost anything to the taxpayers (and even that's an open question since the gov't still owns GM stock which no one knows what it will eventually sell for). The Fed's lending facilities have suffered no losses but even if one of their borrowers defaulted, the Treasury is under no obligation to make good on it nor would it have to since the Federal Reserve owes no debt to anyone and is the only entity that can actually create whatever money it needs.

Andrew, you don't grasp what I said. Murray, in the article you linked begs the question by talking about "innate abilities". No test can tell you whether abilities are innate or not. This is the problem of IQ theory. These types of things are and can only be philosophical assumptions.

I have no inequality taboo, and I know that IQ tests is a predictor of certain types of achievement.
But you aren't grasping what IQ theory is. Just look at the quotes at the top of the umich article you linked. If this could be empirically verified why do we have statements about philosophical assumptions?

"no agreed upon answer"

"we first need to know what intelligence is to understand the source of racial differences in IQ"

"experimental approach to the question"

"The interpretation of the fact that racial groups differ in IQ depends on one's theory of intelligence."

The fact is that there is a Bell curve in IQ tests is because test questions that are too hard for a given group that would destroy the curve are removed, and ones that are too easy for a given group are also removed until you get a nice bell curve. This is done after repeated sampling. It isn't a natural Bell curve like you have with height, weight, etc. IQ measures something --just not intelligence

Look at what Alfred Benet, inventor of the IQ test, said:

“... the scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.” Binet thought the use of his Intelligence Quotient (IQ) as a definite statement on a person's intellectual capability would be a serious mistake. He said "Some recent thinkers…[have affirmed] that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we must try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing."

I am saying anything that the inventor of the IQ test did not say. American educators and psychologists using his test failed to heed his warnings about its limitations and eventually intelligence testing assumed a respectability well beyond its value and intent. He was honest about the remarkable diversity of intelligence and the need to study it using qualitative--not quantitative--measures. He stressed that intellectual development progressed at variable rates and could be influenced by the environment and that IQ was not based solely on genetics, was malleable rather than fixed, and could only be measured accurately in children with comparable backgrounds.

Mark,

You did not read the article I linked from Murray as your response clearly demonstrates. The Umich article you refer to was suggested by the left-liberal commenter, Step2. As Murray states, there is a common explanatory factor which consistently shows up in all intelligence testing which psychometricians call 'g', and this 'g' factor is known to have a strong biological basis. Much science has been done since Binet's time.

You did not read the article I linked from Murray as your response clearly demonstrates.

Andrew, cool your jets and condescension. You left a generally unhelpful and ambiguous comment. I never said Murray held classic IQ theory view or that this was his points in The Bell Curver. I said I didn't like classic IQ theory. Your "100% wrong" at first led me to think you disagreed with my statements generally. If you'd said "but that isn't the view Murray holds" then there would have been no confusion.

But I still have a problem with using IQ without the classic meanings since it isn't clear to many there are fully distinguished in the public mind. Another term should be used at the least. And no matter what you say, the Umich quotes are accurate in any case that all this depends on ones "theory of intelligence". No 'g' factor changes this. You can't abstract it one level and say it works any better or avoids any of the problems with biological correlation. Data does not interpret itself, it is up to the researchers to speculate on the meaning of empirical data, and that meaning is up for critique mainly on the merits of the philosophical assumptions used to interpret it.

I'm sorry to hear you break this down politically. We should strive not to be reactionary, but evaluate things by their own merits. So a umich study means nothing to you because it was pointed out by a "left-liberal commenter"? That's revealing. Andrew, may I ask if you've ever read a book on the philosophy of science? Because it appears not in your understanding of what empirical data can provide us. You can adopt whatever theory of intelligence you wish, but you can't say you got it from an empirical study. These are philosophical assumptions. Under certain assumptions on what intelligence is you handle the data one way, on others you handle it a different way. Murray thinks IQ predicts poverty because his underlying assumptions drive him to handle the statistics a certain way. Handle the stats another way and you'll get opposite conclusions. Statistics will tell you anything you wish since there are always a multitude of ways to interpret the data.

So I'm a liberal on this because I don't think that intelligence is in any way correlated with race, and the conservative position is that it is correlated in some abstract g-model fashion way with race? It isn't that way at all Andrew, and I encourage you very strongly to pick up a couple of books on the philosophy of science.

Mark,

If I am abrupt it is because I know you can take it, as well as give it as in the thread that diverted to a discussion on the Civil War. I will try harder to maintain a respectful tone.

In my view, your approach to this topic is not helpful. If I want to experience the reality of God do I need to consult a book on the philosophy of religion? God is there if one simply looks for him. Similarly, when people talk of whether someone is “smart” or rather a “dullard”, no one scratches their heads in confusion. It is this common sense understanding of the spectrum of mental ability upon which everyone somewhere falls that is at subject here. And if you say that this common sense understanding is exactly what you are challenging, then I say, fine, I don’t need this for my argument. As you say, IQ tests measure something that is real (call it whatever you want) and is heavily correlated with life success and civilizational capabilities as measured by various socioeconomic factors that matter politically. In the context of blacks and whites in America we could list some of these factors as the wealth gap, the education gap, the prison population gap, the marriage gap. As I’m sure you know we are living in a time where the worldview which rules American society says that all people and all groups of people are substantially the same and want the same things. One implication of this belief is that any inequalities that exist in American society, especially between groups of people of different racial background, are entirely the result of open or residual racism, are morally wrong and place upon society the sacred moral obligation to have them eliminated, by moving heaven and earth (or persecuting those who are on “top”) if need be. Of course, if these inequalities are rooted in biology, as the science of IQ testing strongly suggests, then eliminating them becomes an incredibly futile, wasteful, indeed impossible and evil, exercise.

The left is at war with conservatives, with truth and decency and they are winning. The science of IQ is growing and is valid and relevant to this war. And it provides a devastating weapon for our side to help expose the lies undergirding the leftist worldview. I don’t think it is helpful to have conservatives dilute the force of this growing knowledge by diverting the discussion towards a debate on the meaning of intelligence.

If I am abrupt it is because I know you can take it, as well as give it as in the thread that diverted to a discussion on the Civil War. I will try harder to maintain a respectful tone.

Sorry I sounded aggrieved. I shouldn't have been so touchy. Forget it, it was my fault. Your tone was fine. It was mine that was uncalled for. I guess I was a little on edge for whatever reason.

In my view, your approach to this topic is not helpful. If I want to experience the reality of God do I need to consult a book on the philosophy of religion?

Not the same at all. We have divine revelation and direct experience, among other types of experience of God. Besides which, aren't you the one telling me I need to read Murray, or others espousing his thesis, to fully accept or understand the nature of group differences? We all have a philosophy, the only question is whether it is good or less so.

As you say, IQ tests measure something that is real (call it whatever you want) and is heavily correlated with life success and civilizational capabilities as measured by various socioeconomic factors that matter politically.

This is simply false. There is no correlation of IQ (whatever it is) with success in life or income. There is neither a correlation between grades and adult achievement. Here is merely one of many that show even this idea is a fallacy.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/h32t6k951p4pl105/
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/do-good-grades-predict-success/

Assuming false correlations between intelligence and a number of things are not new. This is because of a popular tendency to believe that intelligence is what IQ theory says it is. Namely, like height or weight and measurable as such. It isn't. It never was. It is a fallacy. If intelligence was what IQ theory says it was, it would correlate with success. That some people are obviously brighter than others (as evidenced by what they do) does not entail this in any way. This has always been quite obvious.

... wealth gap, the education gap, the prison population gap, the marriage gap. As I’m sure you know we are living in a time where the worldview which rules American society says that all people and all groups of people are substantially the same and want the same things.

The fact that a liberal thesis of radical equality exists is not evidence that intelligence has a genetic correlation. I deplore the radical idea that men and women aren't deeply and significantly different in temperament and outlook, or that to the degree that a culture like ours provides equality of opportunity should say anything about equality of results between individuals or groups.

.. if these inequalities are rooted in biology, as the science of IQ testing strongly suggests, then eliminating them becomes an incredibly futile, wasteful, indeed impossible and evil, exercise.

Andrew, the ends does not justify the means. Either intelligence (waiving the fact that we don't know what it is ...) is genetically correlated or it isn't. How is it truthseeking if you decide ahead of time what beliefs advance your view? And I deplore everything about the liberal agenda that you do, and I don't believe IQ theory on the merits. This is not how we arrive at the truth. This is adopting a political correctness. Opposing liberal PC with another PC doesn't work.

The left is at war with conservatives, with truth and decency and they are winning. The science of IQ is growing and is valid and relevant to this war. And it provides a devastating weapon for our side to help expose the lies undergirding the leftist worldview. I don’t think it is helpful to have conservatives dilute the force of this growing knowledge by diverting the discussion towards a debate on the meaning of intelligence.

Truth and decency are not winning so long as politics trumps the truth, as it is for you by your own admission. Do you realize what you have admitted to here? The Flynn Effect eviscerates IQ theory as he showed that whole nations had their IQ raised in decades by 20 points, such is the changing norms on IQ tests (the removing of questions to make a bell curve).

As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, "black Americans' test score results in 1995 would have given them an average IQ just over 100 in 1945. Only the repeated renorming of IQ tests upward created the illusion that blacks had made no progress, but were stuck at an IQ of 85." The Flynn effect destroys IQ theory, but it is not even widely know. Murray mentions it only to dismiss it.

Sowell again: "When European immigrant groups in the United States scored below the national average on mental tests, they scored lowest on the abstract parts of those tests. So did white mountaineer children in the United States tested back in the early 1930s... Strangely, Herrnstein and Murray refer to "folklore" that "Jews and other immigrant groups were thought to be below average in intelligence." It was neither folklore nor anything as subjective as thoughts. It was based on hard data, as hard as any data in The Bell Curve. These groups repeatedly tested below average on the mental tests of the World War I era, both in the army and in civilian life. For Jews, it is clear that later tests showed radically different results—during an era when there was very little intermarriage to change the genetic makeup of American Jews."

Look, not only is the empirical evidence for IQ race correlation weak, there are good theological reasons for believing it false. Look, if intelligence (whatever it is) varies by race, how is it that moral worth is equal? How is moral worth equal if intelligence is not equally distributed? Justice is based on equality as has been widely known since antiquity. God's justice and love does not depend on people or groups having equal wealth or any equal outcome. But if he made some of us more intelligent than others that is entirely another matter. Moral capacities and judgements have always been thought to be based on intelligence. If intelligence has nothing to do with moral reasoning, then moral reasoning is not what it was thought to be since antiquity. Justice, and belief in a just God, requires this.

Denying the need for radical equality of outcome, as I do, in no way entails denying the actual equality that has from antiquity been believed. Classic views on equality are light years from liberal radical equality ideas that you, and I, deplore. In fact, IQ theory historically has been associated with the eugenics movement. This is no mere coincidence. In fact, the American church shamed herself in the early 1900's by buying into this and only repudiated it after WWII when the horror of Nazi eugenics showed the evil effects of Nazi eugenics.

Sowell thinks "The Bell Curve" has merit for the valid scholarship that there is, and deplores race-norming of admissions tests and such, but he eviscerates the genetic basis thesis nonetheless. I commented on the non-determinacy of empirical data in any case, but in this case Sowell trenchantly observes in "Ethnicity and IQ":

"… perhaps the most troubling aspect of The Bell Curve from an intellectual standpoint is its authors' uncritical approach to statistical correlations."

And Sowell liked the book. This is called intellectual honesty. Because you think a book has merit doesn't mean you have to accept it where it fails. Other quotes:

"While this open presentation of evidence against the genetic basis of interracial IQ differences is admirable, the failure to draw the logical inference seems puzzling."

"A remarkable phenomenon commented on in the Moynihan Report of thirty years ago goes unnoticed in The Bell Curve--the prevalence of females among blacks who score high on mental tests …"

This is intellectual honesty. This is how we should all look at a book. Parts that are true we should say so; parts that aren't we should be able to admit it.

Sowell observes that "The Bell Curve" is three books in one, where on the part about IQ differences between groups--the part I dispute--he says:

"Here it is much more successful in analyzing the social implications where, as the authors say, "it matters little whether the genes are involved at all."

They haven't convincingly made their case at all. The facts Sowell cites are not in dispute, and these facts wreck the genetic basis thesis. I knew of the Flynn effect before The Bell Curve was written. Sowell studied IQ theory years before the book was written. Many are fooled by not understanding the principles behind IQ theory, and the devastating nature of the contrary evidence, and The Bell Curve is not a book where you'll learn of either.

It's obvious that we are far apart on this issue and will probably not come to significant agreement.

Besides which, aren't you the one telling me I need to read Murray, or others espousing his thesis, to fully accept or understand the nature of group differences?

Not at all. People have known for centuries the obvious innate differences between different groups of peoples simply through personal observation and experience, without the benefit of the science on IQ. You challenged the theory, implying to me that perhaps you hadn't read up on the science and suggested you do and gave you a place to start. It's clear to me now that you have read at least some of it and, very surprisingly, shocking even, reject it. First, questions are not added and removed to give the distribution the shape of a bell curve. The tests are normed to give the underlying normal distribution a specific mean and standard deviation. It's easier to talk about an IQ bell curve that has mean 100 and standard deviation 15 than to discuss one that is characterized by a mean of 97 and standard deviation 12. It doesn't matter as long as everyone is given the same test in the same environment. Second, it's bold to just state flatly that there is no correlation between IQ (whatever it is) and socioeconomic status. This is what The Bell Curve was primarily about and is not what Sowell is objecting to in your quotation of him. From footnote 45 to Murray's essay:

[45] Blacks and whites have different distributions of socioeconomic status (SES), and SES is correlated with IQ among both blacks and whites. When the difference in black and white SES distributions is statistically controlled, studies have typically found that the black-white difference is reduced by about a third of a standard deviation. But when blacks and whites of similar socioeconomic status are compared with each other, the difference as measured in standard deviations remains the same or increases as SES goes up. For a review of the evidence on this point, see Herrnstein and Murray (1994): 286-89.

You again:

Andrew, the ends does not justify the means. Either intelligence (waiving the fact that we don't know what it is ...) is genetically correlated or it isn't. How is it truthseeking if you decide ahead of time what beliefs advance your view?

I was a liberal on this issue, like everyone else, until I came across The Inequality Taboo in Commentary magazine in late summer of 2005. I was stunned, and shocked into exploring the subject further which I did, reading Murray, Lynn, Putnam and Rushton. That's how I arrived here, not via politics.

You say:

The Flynn effect destroys IQ theory, but it is not even widely know. Murray mentions it only to dismiss it.

He does not dismiss it. He discusses it in further detail in footnotes 44 and 74.

Look, not only is the empirical evidence for IQ race correlation weak, there are good theological reasons for believing it false. Look, if intelligence (whatever it is) varies by race, how is it that moral worth is equal? How is moral worth equal if intelligence is not equally distributed?

This doesn't make any sense. The distribution of IQ (or intelligence) differs more within groups than between groups. What is the minimum level of intelligence required to have the proper amount of moral worth? Because there are going to be lots of whites, as well as blacks, who don't qualify in that case. I reject this whole line of questioning. Somewhat related, I recently saw a wonderful film called Tim from the early 1980's where Mel Gibson plays a functioning young man with low cognitive intelligence who struggles to understand the meanings of death and romantic love. The film handles these subjects masterfully and tenderly and shows how low intelligence is not an obstacle to dignity and goodness.

Not at all. People have known for centuries the obvious innate differences between different groups of peoples simply through personal observation and experience, without the benefit of the science on IQ.

This is simply false. The issue of what, if any, capacities in humans are innate is a massively controversial issue historically. This debate has been going on for many centuries, and there has never been a consensus that there are in fact *innate* differences as you imply. No consensus on this whatever. This is simply not so.

You challenged the theory, … and, very surprisingly, shocking even, reject it.

I understand the nature and limits of empirical evidence, and the place of theological and philosophical beliefs. I also reject that homosexuality is innate, and alcoholism for that matter despite what the AMA says. It is only shocking to you because you have bought into naturalism to a significant degree.

Do you think homosexuality has genetic causes? And if you say "Yeah, but genetic predispositions are not determinative so a person still chooses whether to be gay or not", I'll say that you are presupposing that genetic causes are functionally identical to non-genetic causes and begging the question, and the conversation ends there. Because you can't assume genetic causes are functionally identical to non-genetic causes. How do you know they aren't functionally identical to other genetic causes that we've discovered that are determinative, and that we have no moral control over (abnormalities and diseases and such). You don't and you can't so it is a grand leap to assume genetic causes for intelligence and unwarranted.

First, questions are not added and removed to give the distribution the shape of a bell curve. The tests are normed to give the underlying normal distribution a specific mean and standard deviation. It's easier to talk about an IQ bell curve that has mean 100 and standard deviation 15 than to discuss one that is characterized by a mean of 97 and standard deviation 12.

This is misinformed. Normalization uses samples, which by definition involves the insertion and removal of questions. Now if IQ is innate, why do they need samples? Samples are used until they get the right number. Samples with certain questions and samples without certain questions until the number is right. When they get just the right set of questions to produce the number they are looking for they're done. This is undeniable. This isn't like rounding scores on a math test as you seem to think.

It doesn't matter as long as everyone is given the same test in the same environment.

"In the same *environment*". If IQ is innate, why does environment have to be factored in? If it were, they wouldn't.

I was a liberal on this issue, like everyone else, until I came across The Inequality Taboo in Commentary magazine in late summer of 2005. I was stunned, and shocked into exploring the subject further which I did, reading Murray, Lynn, Putnam and Rushton. That's how I arrived here, not via politics.

This article does not show that IQ is genetically correlated. This is your personal conversion experience to what has never been shown, and you are fooled by empirical studies and a strong desire to believe it for its utility to your political beliefs. You've already admitted this in a rather revealingly naked fashion. Utilitarianism isn't a good thing.

He does not dismiss it. He discusses it in further detail in footnotes 44 and 74.

A discussion in footnotes? Footnotes are typically for references, not discussions, and important discussions to an author would not be done in footnotes.

What is the minimum level of intelligence required to have the proper amount of moral worth? … low intelligence is not an obstacle to dignity and goodness.

The "proper amount" was determined by God when he created our species --we have no access to the level required. The only point of reference for legal and social norms is that *equality* of moral capacities are required to have the *same* moral worth. Moral capacities depend on intellectual capacities. The fact is that we don't know what intelligence is. Can you tell me what it is? No you can't. You want to say "Well whatever it is, it has nothing to do with moral capacities." How do you know that if you don't know what it is?

The issue of what, if any, capacities in humans are innate is a massively controversial issue historically.

Perhaps it's controversial regarding which capacities but not that some capacities are. Regardless, we obviously have very different impressions from our respective readings of history.

I...reject that homosexuality is innate...

Me too. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover's book The Politics of Homosexuality settled this question for me.

This is misinformed. Normalization uses samples, which by definition involves the insertion and removal of questions.

I didn't say questions weren't added or removed. I said they weren't added or removed to get the distribution to look like a bell curve, which is what you claimed. The underlying distribution of IQ is already normal, the tests are normalized so that the bell curve is characterized by mean 100 and standard deviation 15, this is done for convenience.

"In the same *environment*". If IQ is innate, why does environment have to be factored in?

Well, obviously because IQ tests require time and mental input and output from the subject. This process can be affected by excessive noise, lack of sufficient light, any number of things. Recall that the claim is not that IQ is innate but that IQ is largely, but not entirely, heritable.

This article does not show that IQ is genetically correlated.

I actually found it very compelling and the related literature that I subsequently familiarized myself with makes the case overwhelming.

...you are fooled by empirical studies and a strong desire to believe it for its utility to your political beliefs. You've already admitted this in a rather revealingly naked fashion.

Absurd nonsense. I became aware of the science first and the, admittedly, profound political implications only later. Mainly because, previously, I was blind to all the ways liberal society attempted to eliminate "gaps" in performance measures.

A discussion in footnotes? Footnotes are typically for references, not discussions, and important discussions to an author would not be done in footnotes.

This is what Murray says at the top of his article:

Covering both sex differences and race differences in a single, non-technical article, I had to leave out much in the print edition of this article. This online version is fully annotated and includes extensive supplementary material.

And here is a link to a debate Murray had with James Flynn on this very subject back in 2006.

http://www.aei.org/event/1425#doc

The only point of reference for legal and social norms is that *equality* of moral capacities are required to have the *same* moral worth. Moral capacities depend on intellectual capacities. The fact is that we don't know what intelligence is. Can you tell me what it is? No you can't. You want to say "Well whatever it is, it has nothing to do with moral capacities." How do you know that if you don't know what it is?

This is strange and I'm not sure what to make of it. Clearly whatever you mean by "intelligence" is not the same as IQ. If it were, by your logic then anyone with a low IQ would be morally deficient. I think I've stated my argument here clearly and do not want to dwell on this particular point any further.

I appreciate your desire to drop it, and after these two points I will.

I didn't say questions weren't added or removed. I said they weren't added or removed to get the distribution to look like a bell curve, which is what you claimed.

Here's what I claim: "The distribution of IQ test scores cannot be expected to follow a bell curve unless it is constructed by the tester to do so."

This fairly obvious fact was stated by Donald D. Dorfman in a journal in 1978. He is the professor in the graduate program in applied mathematical and computational sciences at the University of Iowa (Iowa City), and the author of the chapter "Group Testing" in the Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences.

Absurd nonsense. I became aware of the science first and the, admittedly, profound political implications only later.

The Bell Curve is not a scientific work. The major statistical analysis were not peer-reviewed in any journals, which is what a scientist would do. That wouldn't make it true in any case, but it would at least have added some credibility.