Freedom of Expression? By Richard Sale

 

A Vermont college says it has initiated an independent investigation into a protest in which the author of a book discussing racial differences in intelligence was shouted down during a guest lecture and a professor was injured.

Middlebury College president Laurie Patton said in a letter to the school community on Monday that once that work is completed the college will follow a process of determining a course of action for each person understood to be involved in last week's events.

She says people have the right to make their voices heard in support of and in opposition to other people and ideas but the college's concern is acts of disruption and violence.

Author Charles Murray's talk was moved to a different location and was live-streamed to the original venue. But protesters drowned it out.

The college says some protesters became violent and one pulled a professor's hair, twisting her neck.

Hundreds of students chanted as Murray started to speak at an event Thursday, forcing the school to move the talk to an undisclosed location Charles Murray's new book argues that the economic problems of America's working class stem largely from their own character flaws, and that wealthier people should be less shy about teaching them how to live responsibly.

 

Murray  

I don’t know him, nor have I read his writings beyond a review of his works in the article. 

He seems to belong to a school of thought we known to us. In 2012, I wrote,

“Belonging to a superior social class in Europe rested on family, lineage, and vast holdings of property. The wealth that resulted gave social prestige. Wealth was simply an enabler. In Europe, its possession did not make you a gentleman. “Flash forward to America. 

“The key to power in America was money and the possession of huge amounts of it.  After the Civil War, money was the key to ascending the social ladder, and getting a fortune was not a matter of polite duels between nimble rapiers but of brass knuckles. It was a high stakes game. Success meant glory; failure, bankruptcy and oblivion. Respect for the rule of law was ignored as irrelevant. When Jay Fiske and JP Morgan found themselves in control of the two ends of the Susquenna Railroad, they resolved the conflict by mounting locomotives at each end and then ramming them headfirst into each other. And even when one party lost, it retaliated as best as it could by ripping up tracks and destroying trestles as they went.

“Competition between companies meant no quarter given and none asked. In one case, a persistent opponent of Standard Oil was blown up by dynamite.  Some organizations resorted to kidnapping. There were other incidents of moral charm as well. When a great blizzard blew down telephone poles in New York, Jay Gould, a ruthless master of money markets was forced to send his financial dispatches by messenger. His competitors kidnapped the boy, substituted a look-alike, and for days, Gould was dismayed to find his moves were known days in advance.

“Not only were these titans of industry ruthless and implacable, they were vulgar and flagrantly arrogant, boasting openly about their immorality. At no time did they treat the American public with any reverence. Commodore Vanderbilt, the king of shipping and commerce, once said, “What do I care about the law? Haint I got the power?” J. Pierpont Morgan was no better. When an associate of his, Judge Gary, challenged him, he said, “I don’t want some lawyer telling me what I cannot do. I hired him to tell me how to do what I want to do.”

“Finding an honest financier in those days was as rare as finding a jewel in the head of a toad. The historian Robert Heilbroner once said that the rich in the 19^th century ran the country as one big casino, but what he didn’t say was that the game was almost entirely rigged.  Heilbroner, Hofstadter, Josephson, and many others abound with incidents that make you turn away in moral disgust. These robber barons were alas simply ordinary men, simple, sentimental, and unimaginative and not very well educated.  Some like Carnegie turned to philanthropy later in life, but they were very old by then. They had spent their vital force.

“Over time, after the Civil War, embraced a doctrine of a debased, heartless form of Darwinism that proclaimed that those that had emerged at the top of the conniving heap were the best fitted to survive.  They claimed to be choicest flower of civilization. When the philosopher Herbert Spencer visited New York, it was almost a state occasion. Spencer, of course, was a close friend of Andrew Carnegie.

“Huge financial success has a strange effect. When any one of us begins his career, little notice is taken of him or her. When a businessman becomes a captain of industry, his fame somehow results in his being seen as a gifted person with extraordinary skills, superior diligence and superior insight.  Soon an ideology springs up around him, based on cowed servility, that embraces his poisonous practices all based on the maximization of profits, the minimization of risks -- as if it were the source of the American greatness. Hofstadter said, “Assured by intellectuals of the progressive and civilizing value of their work, encouraged by their status exemplars of the order of opportunity, exhilarated by the thought that their energies were making the country rich, industrial millionaires felt safe in their exploitation and justified their dominion.”

“Every other measurement of merit was discarded as trivial or eccentric.  The long trials of reform -- the passage of child labor laws, the Factory Acts, the struggle for Social Security -- meant nothing for Big Business. The fact that economic life for the masses was intolerable meant nothing at all. For Big Business, power to compel was the grim idol it worshiped and adored. And worse, the famed barons were an incredibly crass bunch who smoked cigars wrapped in one hundred dollar bills.  They were vulgar and pedestrian souls.”

Professor Charles Murry

Murray has been described as a “libertarian capitalist” which Wikipedia defines as one devoted to “ fiscal discipline, respect for contracts, defense of private property and free markets^[4] and the classical conservative stress on self-help and freedom of choice under a laissez-faire and economically liberal capitalist society with social tenets such as the importance of religion, and the value of traditional morality^[5] through a framework of limited, constitutional, representative government.”

Some of these ideas are not to my taste because elements of them seem heartless, but having students at a small liberal arts college in Vermont shouting Murray down to prevent his speaking and explaining his ideas fills me with vivid alarm. It should alarm you as well.

On what grounds does a group shout down an author because your views disagree with his? What entitles any crowd to ignore considerations of forbearance and civil good manners in order to shout down views unfavorable to yours? What prompts such dogmatism in a student that it wants to rule out any discussion of views except ones that endorse your pet notions? Are you really so certain that your knowledge is so sound and valid that you can wield it like a club to silence a dissenting or skeptical voice?

To shout someone down may give you the complacency that comes from knowing that you think just like everyone else, but that sense of self-satisfied complacency that works to rot the soul. It weakens the power of the mind. Complacency in matters of intellect is a sinister quality.

See Part Two

 

 

 

Comments

[FkDahl]

Growing up in ethnically very homogeneous Sweden I thought, and many Swedes still do, that everybody else in the world is alike, just different in skin color (anecdote: the year before me my Fältjägarregemente (RIP) had it's first black conscript ever. Concern over his winter camouflage led to him being issued white zinc paste by his NCO. That would probably be considered racist now). Now, years later, having lived in what is now a no-go zone in Stockholm, various parts of the US, Arab rich part of France, and now in Silicon Valley my outlook has changed. I think there are significant differences not just in IQ but also in disposition between ethnic groups. (and Trump has the right instinct about Sweden)
I think northwest Europeans have a strong sense of inner guilt but also fairness, MENA to be strongly clan and respect centered, Africans to be childlike and family oriented, and east Asians to be smart and group shame centered.
Murray's thesis, and further developed as in r/k selection theory http://www.truthjustice.net/politics/rk-selection-the-forbidden-theory/
- is around the tenet that populations in cold climates were forces to plan and collaborate for winter which led to an overall increase in IQ and decrease in testosterone (so that males would collaborate) while in warm climates with food resources but also deadly diseases or predators around the incentive for planning was absent, and chance of sudden death meant an incentive to procreate rather than tinker, with no selective drive to increase IQ. The global IQ scores show 100 for Caucasians, 80-85 for Africans (or derived therefrom), around 105 for Chinese, and around 85 for MENA. This is a very touchy topic for an academic - we all know what will happen if they speak out about this.
On a personal note I have noticed that high IQ people tend to plan ahead more and control themselves more, and have fewer children, if any (fellow theoretical physics graduates were not big hits with the ladies). What appears to be low IQ people (since I have not talked to these people I use "appears") will, especially in a social welfare resource rich country like Sweden(istan) have lots of children. The academic achievements of these children is underwhelming, while they are strongly over-represented in crime. I am convinced if these recent immigrants were from China or Vietnam they would be much more successful. Recall the LA riots. The shop owners were to a large degree Asian.

Comparing world-wide IQ scores it appears 90 to be the cutoff for a democracy. 85 is the average IQ of prison inmates. 15 is the standard deviation, of this bell (Gaussian distribution) that Murray is referring to.

I'm a white guy, the source of all evil on this planet, the one ethnic group not allowed to express pride in his origins.
I guess this makes me a racist and alt-right.
As for Europe : Helmut Nyborg (prof emeritus) expresses it well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO04pmW2Njk

[BabelFish]

Very much looking forward to part two, Richard.

[MRW]

I like.

[ambrit]

Very well said sir. I have seen similar occurrences on a small scale in everyday life. We all have. I, alas, have done some of it myself. My theory is that the socially "powerless" can use such displays of "strength" to foster a false sense of their own importance and power. As you remarked, this behaviour reflects a lack of critical thinking. Facile solutions replace the trials of confronting moral problems head on. As my wife has said to me in the past; "Who ever told you that life would be easy?"
I look forward to Part Two.

[helenk3]

lets stop all federal money colleges. Also lets start examining the whole education in this country. The Constitution should be have to be taught in junior high school with refresher courses in high school.
We have cheated our kids out of a good education and failed both parents and schools on preparing them for real life.
Think about it if you were a business owner how many of the them would you hire? I can understand why businesses hire illegals. I do not agree with it but I understand it.
I am not sure if I would send my kid to college in this country today. Cost a fortune and prepares them for nothing. I can see the need for charter schools and home schooling

[helenk3]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzKzu86Agg0

[turcopolier]

helenk3

Pls don't put up a link without describing its content. pl

[Jack]

Richard

This incident points to the fact that as a society we can no longer agree to disagree. The classical liberal philosophy of Rousseau, Paine, Locke, Hobbes, et al, that provided the intellectual framework for the American political experiment is now fraying. How many Americans have any knowledge of the philosophical foundation of the American experiment with liberty and self-government?

[helenk3]

sorry
it is Mike Rowe talking about today's education.
I thought the video would show not just the link

[helenk3]

the rise of victimhood on campus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H20jwYq8WI

[Prem]

The student loan system needs to be reformed.

As it stands, the taxpayer is underwriting ever larger sums, spent in ever more dubious ways.

The system should transfer risk to colleges. They can choose to lend hundreds of thousands to people who graduate with "studies" majors, but their future revenues should depend on being able to collect the debt they generate.

[doug]

This is a topic I looked at back in the 90's when M&H's infamous, "The Bell curve," came out. I was reading an article in the New Yorker by Gould just ripping into the book. Gould focused on the use of R-Squared, a measure of correlation and noted that a particular correlation claimed to be strong by M&H was listing in the book notes as fairly low which was nonetheless ignored by M&H.

I was appalled, curious, and also reasonably mathematically literate so I picked up M&H's book to see what was going on.

What I discovered was a pretty compelling case that both Gould and M&H saw what they wanted to see and dismissed, or failed to look into, facts they were aware of that didn't match their biases.

It's a long story that revolves around the meaning of R-Squared in logistical regression. Apparently neither bothered to inform themselves before shooting themselves in the foot. Some years later Murray admitted they made the error but, unfortunately, Gould died and I have not seen any indication he had addressed it.

It's a fascinating example of how pre-existing beliefs can drive analysis off the rails. Even in the relatively well defined field of math and statistics.

[Prem]

One of the things that surprised me most when I arrived at an RI campus (from England)in the early 90's, was the fact that you could make somewhat accurate guesses at who was the top and bottom of a class just by looking at them.

That's a major weakness of affirmative action at elite colleges.

Being in the bottom 10% of a class is a pretty depressing experience. It doesn't surprise me that many affirmative action beneficiaries arrive with ambitions of a career in STEM, but give up, do a "studies" major and aim to become Diversity Officers in some corporation. They are also prone to vocal grievance mongering - the Yale Screaming Girl and Mizzou hunger striker are examples.

HBUs actually do a better job than the Ivies of graduating African Americans in STEM fields.

[Babak Makkinejad]

IQ has been increasing historically as well.

But this discussion reminds me of the Lincoln-Douglass debate on the social status of the African-Americans in contradistinction to those of European-Americans.

And I think Lincoln articulated a respectable and eminently practical view; viz. :

"I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." [Great applause.]

The thrust of social and political policy, in my opinion, ought to be accommodationist, first and foremost, and then only distantly transformative.

But we are dealing with a global ethos that pines for life as is lived by many in Sweden, having being sold the snake oil of Development Theory which puts transformation ahead of accommodation and instrumentalist approaches against educative one.

[Ishmael Zechariah]

Mr. Sale,
More on colleges (and college presidents):
http://tinyurl.com/lrnjz7s
"Then other students decided to attack Reveley’s stance; one demanded, “We are students, and we pay tuition to be here. That is the reason why we are able to write these demands.”
It does seem that serious change in the overall attitude of "students" is indicated. Such change probably needs to start with the "professors" who instigated the farce @ Middlebury.
Ishmael Zechariah
P.s: I had read the "Bell Curve" and studied its claims and its statistics. IMO by disregarding the extreme tribalism of certain ethnic groups, and their propensity to systematically exclude outsiders from industries/power centers they control, Murray oversimplified the problem. Under such conditions analysis using the "random" distribution is inapplicable.

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

I would encourage a college education for certain majors, but only to college that do not force undergrads to take some of the usual freshmen and sophomore required courses: such as sociology, for example.

Sad to say, as an English teacher for years, I told my own kids I would not pay anything if they chose English as a major. When I attended it was a wonderful major, wonderful classes and professors.

Now it is nothing buy PC drivel. Heck they don't even expect their students to understand standard grammar.

Our public school systems must be reformed if they want to exist. Otherwise, only the children whose parents just want a baby sitter will attend.

[Prem]

I'm fairly sceptical about those numbers. The field attracts cranks, which is a pity. Some widely quoted numbers (on African IQ) are based on decades old, tiny samples.

Anyhow, genome wide association studies will probably give us pretty solid answers in a decade or so.

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

To read the philosophers and writers of the Enlightenment is beyond the capability of most people nowadays. Sad, for sure. I think that all this connection to the Internet is a large part of the problem. People are constantly checking what others are doing and trying to decide what others are doing to figure out if they should be doing the same thing. No thinking for themselves.

[Malooga]

"Charles Murray's new book argues that the economic problems of America's working class stem largely from their own character flaws, and that wealthier people should be less shy about teaching them how to live responsibly."

Ah yes, "the White Man's Burden" in this year's fashion.

One way to test Murray's thesis would be to redistribute all money from the "responsible" rich to the "flawed" working class and measure how well they hold onto their wealth over say a generation or two against how the newly poor ruling class manage to re-accrue wealth.

Any wealthy believers willing to put their self-serving ideology to the test at the expense of their wealth? I didn't think so.

Surely the problems of the working class could not be caused by the disappearance of industrial jobs with union benefits and security and the dissolution of labor laws.

And surely the wealthy only became more responsible after the repeal of Glass-Stegall and the ever more moral ways to employ their assets to make even more money in the FIRE, weapons, drug and GMO industries.

The conceit that the wealthy suffer less from "character flaws" is risible. After all, classical Freudian analysis boomed in treating the pathologies of the wealthy, not the poor of their day.

Nevertheless, your argument that Murray should be allowed to have his word is spot on. Our educational system encourages emotive reaction and herd psychology over individual critical thinking and argument.

[trinlae]

Ironically, the high church of utilitarianism has denied funding to any discipline of qualitative value that cannot be easily monetized.

Philosophy, theology, arts, cultural history, all those areas of expertise and their discourse dont even hire faculty in USA anymore...its all "lecture pool" unstable outlook & poor income for the sorry soul who dares master such disciplines.

Contrary to the thesis of the shunned & violently banished author, we see no rush by the 1% and above to actually undergo the scholarly training to take up the slack that their casino economy forbids.

But loss of etiquette, discourse, formal debate is all given lots of crocodile tears in public. Lets see Goldman Sachs, Jp Morgan, BoA, Gates Foundation, etc replace the billions in liberal arts faculty endowments they crashed in 2008 sitting in Cayman Islands, then preach to working classes about eloquent communications.

[Peter AU]

Looking back through history, the various civilisations that have come and gone in various climates, some much longer lived than our current "western" civilisation, the so called dark ages ect, puts a hole in your theory on IQ or the development of IQ.

[VietnamVet]

RS,

There is a huge conflict over ideology, economics, and the future that is covered up but is discussed on alternative sites on the internet and to a degree on RT. There are very few people in power at the top of the West who are ultra-rich globalists. These moguls have converted the media to money making propaganda dispensers that defend the new aristocracy and perpetual war to the point of ignoring reality. Universities used to be hot beds of thought and experimentation. No More. They are student loan rent extractors that issue credentials to the top 20% so they can be the cosmopolitan privileged elite; servants to the 0.1%. What is taught is that free movement of money, people, and services is good. Ethnicity, religion and nationalism are bad. In effect to the lower 80%, go die.

It is insane to ignore human nature. Mankind is a mixture of good and bad traits. Greed is the worst. But at our core, humans will die to defend our families against invaders, corruption, evil and unfairness.

I recommend this YouTube video of the Summit with John Michael Greer, James Howard Kunstler, Chris Martenson, Frank Morris, and Dmitry Orlov that discusses the coming future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOFc0ZEmaHI

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

My fifth-grade teacher gave us an assignment once that forced us to think about IQ. At the time, there were still people writing about it and considering how to encourage high IQ's in their children. It was an offshoot of the eugenics movement that had arisen before. (Makes me think of Margaret Sanger.)

At that time a study had come out that families with fewer children had children with higher IQ's, while families with many children had children with lower IQs.

She asked us if we thought there should be some policy to encourage having fewer children. We had to write our thoughts on the subject.

I came from a family with four children. In those days that was not a large family or a small family. We had many (mostly Caucasian) families with only one or two children. And our community had many Hispanic families with more than four children.

In my own ethnic group, I knew great-aunts who had unbelievably large families: ten, twelve, even fourteen children. My grandparents on my father's side had eight children, and my grandparents on my mother's side had six children. My grandparents all came from mush larger families.

In their old country--Russia--the Russians had been jealous of them because they were so "Kinderreich" (rich in kids). The more children, the more farm hands. We were Germans from Russia.

So the writing assignment was very thought-provoking. The teacher was not trying to push an agenda, but trying to get us thinking.

(I always seem to brag, but I have to say that everyone was always looking at me because I always got the highest grades and the highest scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills that we took each year. It was just part of my life.)

Since then, and thinking of my own family, I think there are other considerations when discussing IQ and ability.

I am cursed with extreme nearsightedness, always have been. It kept me from doing well in sports and thus never participating in them. It kept me in a sort of "confined" world of books and reading and studying.

My siblings were good students, but were not really top academic achievers. They each grew up to have successful lives. But I also know that our ethnic group expected us to follow rules and take care that we kept our finances in order. We were expected to be self-reliant when we grew up.

I truly believe each and every person is placed on a path when he or she is born and is here to learn particular things based on the path he/she has been given.

A path for academics and IQ is perhaps just one and not better than the paths others have for athletics, art, music, social participation or group living, etc.

Society needs to evolve somehow to offer people the chance to follow their individual paths as part of contributing to the entire society.

There were many times in my life that I envied those without my IQ all while some wished they had my IQ. I wished I could sing, draw, or even pay some sport well. Bus my voice is terrible, I can draw a little, but only cartoons, but no one would ever pick me for a team sport.

That assignment gave us important things to consider after we each read our papers, and shutting down a discussion of them would have certainly been wrong. I don't remember one parent in our town who objected to my fifth-grade teacher's assignment. What a different time that was in the U.S.

[Balint Somkuti, PhD]

This smells like cultural revolution to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

But it is grass roots, or at least less centrally organized.

The west will have a hard time recovering from it if it's even possible.

[FourthAndLong]

Richard, not be surprised if you find this of interest:

https://www.amren.com/news/2005/11/worse_than_the_riots_themselve/

Note how the man had to publicly humiliate himself with an apology. His speculation that anti-racism may become the Communism of the 21st century really hit me.

I'd been reading through Bostock's review of Carrere's latest 'The Kingdom" in the latest N Y Review of Books

and while reading up on his very eminent and fascinating mother, Helene Carrere D'Encausse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hélène_Carrère_d%27Encausse

found that despite her very distinguished position and career she had to give an interview on Russian TV to get her views across bc in France she might have been lynched, so to speak. Note her comment on French laws being similar to Stalin's.

This article in American Renaissance of IQ and Genes is recent and v interesting an on your topic:

https://www.amren.com/commentary/2017/04/genetic-potential-intelligence/