Was SPLC Wrong to Educate Middlebury Students On Covert Hate Monger Charles Murray?

Protesters at Middlebury College not long ago, and subversive, racist - eugenicist hate monger Charles Murray.

Let us concede we live in treacherous times for bastardized memes and subtle mind viruses to be unleashed on an unsuspecting populace, especially by those endowed with an academic cachet or more or less benign appearance. There is no doubt,  not one, that if Josef Goebbels had re-materialized at Middlebury College four months ago and brandished a thesis that Jews were inferior and hence needed to be eliminated, there'd have been an unholy outcry. And oh yeah, a lot more than screaming and pulling fire alarms would have gone on. Also that there would have been no mistaking such a screed for "free speech".  In fact, if erupted from Middlebury's students they'd have been lauded rather than now vilified for "attacking free speech" regarding Charles Murray's attempted appearance.

The screeching of most of the media - including some overpaid moron named Carl M. Cannon at 'Real Clear Politics' -e.g.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/03/19/the_hate_group_that_incited_the_middlebury_melee_133377.html

 has been that the great Murray was delivered a hate -filled beat down and after all he does hold a "doctorate from MIT" and is a member of the "esteemed American Enterprise Institute".

But before our compadres on the Right do backflips in exultation at Murray's claimed respectability, let us bear in mind that the Jew-hating  Joseph Goebbels also  obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1921. So a doctorate is no assurance of respectability or moral probity. After all,  this eugenics -imbued mastermind of Nazi propaganda is the one who developed numerous tracts comparing Jews to vermin, paving the way for the Final solution.



As for the American Enterprise Institute, which the ignorant hack Cannon praises, e.g. "this Washington-based think tank is devoted to 'defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world."  (sic, barf) let's not overlook the applicable facts here:

The AEI  were the ones offering scientists up to $10,000 each to write tracts and op -ed pieces denying global warming.  As reported by the UK Guardian "letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered."

Real charming bunch of individuals devoted to "human dignity" there. They'd allow humanity the "freedom" to burn in an unbearable hothouse world - devoid of polar ice caps and glaciers, coastal cities sinking, diseases rampant-  because they've enabled liars and propagandist schmucks to brainwash people into thinking climate change is a myth or hoax.

According to The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), of which I've been a member for over 15 years, Murray - like the AEI -  "advocates the total elimination of the welfare state, affirmative action and the Department of Education, arguing that public policy cannot overcome the innate deficiencies that cause unequal social and educational outcomes".

This academic reprobate's central thesis (in The Bell Curve) is that:

"the United States has experienced dysgenic pressures throughout either most of the century (the optimists) or all of the century (the pessimists). Women of all races and ethnic groups follow this pattern in similar fashion. There is some evidence that blacks and Latinos are experiencing even more severe dysgenic pressures than whites, which could lead to further divergence between whites and other groups in future generations.”"

A section that could have come straight out of Goebbel's hands.   What are Murray's "dysgenic pressures"?  They are the selection effects, factors responsible for the reduction of a population's intelligence arising from a regressive gene pool.  In this case,  because blacks and Latinos exhibit lower average I.Q.s than whites (or Orientals) they impact the aggregate gene pool adversely sending the overall intelligence lower.

Note that while Murray has loudly insisted he's not espousing eugenics, the very use of the term "dysgenic" - which recognizes negative eugenics, show that he is.

One here is led to reference Goebbel's tract (The Nazi -Sozi, 1932) cited by Konrad Heiden in his monograph The Fuehrer, :

"Certainly the Jew is also a man, but the flea is also an animal. And the other animals do not harbor and cultivate the flea but exterminate it"

To be sure, Goebbels in his tract is blunt, crude and merciless. There is no effort to disguise exactly what his eugenics theme means.  This is unlike Murray's which basically says the same thing (pertaining to Latinos and blacks),  but is couched in academic lingo (delivered in the guise of a serious academician)  to disarm any would be critics.  Thus, because Murray offers an academic patina he is to be treated respectfully and given a fair hearing for his toxic ideas, mind viruses and memes.  "Free speech", after all. But under SPLC tutelage the Middlebury students weren't fooled and were not about to confer respect, gravitas or dignity to a racist rapscallion.

The SPLC again:

"Many criticisms of The Bell Curve, most notably Charles Lane’s thorough takedown in The New York Review of Books, have pointed out that Murray’s attempts to link social inequality to genes are based on the work of explicitly racist scientists. In an afterward to the book, Murray rejects criticisms that rest on the fact that “we cite thirteen scholars who have received funding from the Pioneer Fund, founded and run ([Lane] alleged) by men who were Nazi sympathizers, eugenicists, and advocates of white racial superiority.” Murray contends that the racist pseudo-scientists he cites “are some of the most respected psychologists of our time” and that “the relationship between the founder of the Pioneer Fund and today’s Pioneer Fund is roughly analogous to that between Henry Ford and today’s Ford Foundation.”

In fact, the Pioneer Fund’s ties to eugenics and white supremacy are not nearly as historically remote as Murray would have his readers believe. The president of the Pioneer Fund at the time The Bell Curve was written was Harry Weyher, who was a personal friend of the Fund’s founder, Wickliffe Draper, and shared his supposedly archaic views on race. Just two months after the initial publication of The Bell Curve, Weyher gave an interview in which he argued, among other things, that desegregation had “wreck[ed] the school system.”

Russ Bellant, author of 'Old Nazis, The New Right And The Republican Party', South End Press, 1991) traces the current incarnation of the Pioneer Fund back to the Reagan era with the likes of Ralph Scott and Roger Pearson both of whom "received tens of thousands of dollars from the Pioneer Fund which assists researchers attempting to prove Black inferiority".

So we return to the central question: Should an idea - no matter how abhorrent and toxic  - be able to receive an unopposed hearing anywhere?  Especially at a university? And the answer now, as before  when I posted about it (Jan. 9. 2015) , is absolutely not! 

As I noted then:

"There is a vast gulf between what clueless humans call "freedom of expression" and moral communication.  The key difference is that moral communication does not incite to violence, by castigating and vilifying a whole people. And yes, that means words and cartoons can act as murderous weapons! They embed themselves in the mind, especially of those already with axes to grind, and incite them to take precipitous action.

And lest we take that as a freak exception let us recall how Limbaugh once referred to Leftists as "cockroaches" e.g.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/02/951587/-Limbaugh-Leftists-are-cockroaches#


And the Nazis during the Third Reich regularly depicted the Jews in cartoons and films as "rats". E.g.

http://sefershoah.wordpress.com/nazi-propaganda/

Was this free expression or free speech, given the horrific effect it had? Of course not! It was the most scurrilous, vile refuse and propaganda masquerading as speech. No form of propaganda is defensible, whether in books, film or cartoons. This is not free speech but hate speech. It defiles the user as it does the target, reducing each - via dehumanization. See the Nazi material produced on the Jews in the preceding link."

Back to the SPLC again:

"Murray and Herrnstein described Richard Lynn, whose work they relied on more than any other individual, as “a leading scholar of racial and ethnic differences.” In his many subsequent defenses of Lynn, Murray neglected to mention the many serious methodological criticisms of Lynn’s work, or his contributions to white supremacist publications including VDARE.com, American Renaissance and Mankind Quarterly, the last of which Lynn also serves on the editorial staff of.

The Bell Curve not only relied on “tainted sources” like Lynn, but is itself making a fundamentally eugenic argument. The central, and most controversial chapter of the book, focuses on the threat of “dysgenesis,” a term that Murray and Herrnstein claimed to have borrowed from population biology, but which in actuality was coined and has been used exclusively by eugenicists to describe the problem that their policy proposals were intended to fix. Dysgenesis refers to the supposed genetic deterioration of a population, but while Murray and Herrnstein wrote as though it represents mainstream science, dysgenesis is not considered to be a real phenomenon by modern evolutionary biologists. It is widely accepted only among the “scholars of racial and ethnic differences” that appear so prominently in The Bell Curve’s bibliography."

In other words, like Goebbels' own distorted eugenics (applied to Jews),  Murray and Herrnstein's is also tainted by pseudo-science, yet has the disproportional effect of undermining the fundamental fabric of our society if taken seriously. Again, why should anyone have to waste gray matter rebutting this offal any more than Goebbel's comparison of Jews to fleas? The point is there is no intellectual rebuttal possible that will persuade the minions who emotionally  gravitate to these toxic notions, given they use the notions as points of support for their racist beliefs. Hence, best to not to allow the emotional chords to be excited in the first place!

We may conclude the students at Middlebury were right to disrupt Murray as they likewise would have been to disrupt Josef Goebbels.  (They were not right to engage in any physical force or assaults, obviously ) The reason is that hate speech, irrespective of any academic veneer, merits no special place or respect and absolutely no dignifying by resort to a "free speech" ruse to peddle it.  As the notorious Gen. Hudson Austin opined after slaughtering hundreds in the Spice Island of Grenada (before U.S. forces arrived in Operation Urgent Fury in 1983): "My biggest gift was being allowed free speech on the radio to pave the way for my purge!"

Hudson had been enabled - by the deft use of hate speech and propaganda - broadcast over Grenada's government radio, to enlist enough support to put hundreds of his political opponents  (to the New Jewel Movement) in the Richmond Hill prison. There,  antiaircraft weapons were subsequently used to slaughter Austin's hapless victims, after they were forced into the prison courtyard.

Most Americans never knew or heard about that, only about the invasion of the island nation which all the Caricom nations (including Barbados) had called for.

But Charles Murray would never advocate that!   Maybe not, directly. But it is but one small step to deem a race inferior before some faction will believe it is entitled to wipe out the group so designated. Let's not fool ourselves.

It is ironic beyond belief that Morris Dees is ridiculed in Cannon's piece using ad hominem ("a shyster") while the SPLC is deemed a "hate group", even as Murray and the AEI are extolled as the bearers of light and human dignity.  But this merely discloses how perverted the intellectual landscape and critical thinking basis  has become in the U.S., to the point the pro-Trump and right wing media and its memes now hold so much sway.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/steven-rosenfeld/74109/study-how-breitbart-medias-disinformation-created-the-paranoid-fact-averse-nation-that-elected-tru

Heritage Foundation Exposes its Racist Underbelly With "Paper" from a HahVahd Numbnut

The Heritage Foundation, a conservo think tank (and I use that term liberally)  has always harbored an odious brew of vile crypto-facsists, Libertarian assholes and right wing screw jobs. They are also known for concocting refuse published in assorted academic "papers" - which term I also use loosely.  Most people of sense and acumen knew that once Jim DeMint - Demented Tea Bagger got the top job there- the place would slide down at an accelerated rate.

Well, we didn't have long to wait. As Rachel Maddow exposed last night, this bunch of troglydytes are now at the center of a storm that threatens to engulf them. It concerns an academic paper to do with the intelligence of immigrants. It claims, and I shit you not, that their I.Q.s are substantially lower than whites and moreover they will add $6.3 trillion to the deficit if wide-open immigration legislation is passed.

All of this is based on the numbers "crunching" of a former Harvard Ph.D. grad - a Jason Redwine-  who actually wrote in his dissertation (making one wonder how the quality of Harvard Ph.D. dissertations has descended):

"The average I.Q. of Immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population. And the difference is likely to persist over several generations."

In other words, this bozo with three letters after his name (which don't mean diddly) is claiming that "immigrants" (no distinctions, just one general category) will become poverty-stricken "takers" that will have to go on whatever dole is available, and their year-by-year taking (from gov't) will bring us all much further into debt.

Well, it doesn't take much exposure to his claptrap (and btw, ANY thesis adviser at Harvard that allowed the quoted rot to pass muster  for a Ph.D. ought to be fired forthwith.) to see the similarities to bollocks produced by another Heritage alumnus, Charles Murray. Readers may recall Murray was the author of The Bell Curve in which he attempted to tie IQ to racial genetics, with African-Americans and Latinos at the lower end of "the Bell Curve"- a Gaussian distribution.

Murray followed this up with a knock-off  book, (Coming Apart)  that extended his poverty -taker paradigm to poor whites. He basically took 300 odd pages to "document" how working class whites were detaching from the "four founding virtues of industriousness, honesty, marriage and religion".  Because of this profound moral laxity, these poor whites were damaging the white brand, and also ramping up deficits because of their entitlement mentality. They ranged from middle age working whites just fired from white collar jobs, who refused to flip burgers, to younger Gen Y types who refused to respect "the Man" and put their asses to work without whining. HIs worst diatribes were reserved for those who grabbed benefits, whether Social Security or Veterans disability, and these were tagged as "parasites".

 In any case, he attributed the Whiteys' grafting ways and laziness to their collective failure to hold up the four props as explaining why they are perhaps now embracing government "entitlements" and in the process reducing their collective IQ. For example, we learn that in blue-collar America (in contrast to the white upper class in which divorce rates hav declined) divorce has soared since the 1980s, and nonmarital child-bering is skyrocketing Worse and worse, 40% of white females with just a high school diploma have children outside of marriage, compared to 5% with college degrees.


Murray's suggestion? That the poor white's wealthier class betters teach them morals!

Now, anyone who's read Murrary's codswallop cannot fail to see the extension of the same statistical errors and nonsense to Jason Redwine's pseudo-science. (Btw, where do these crackpot "Jasons" come from anyway? Recall my earlier exposure of the Ph.D. moron Jason Lisle, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-jason-lisle-is-wrong-in-his-solar.html )

In the case of Redwine, statistical errors are evident merely from reading his statement-quote above from his dissertation, using the catch all "immigrants". Has he never observed or studied Asian immigrants, for example, who have some of the most industrious habits and actually display higher I.Q. s than Caucasians? Obviously not!   This means he's using the blanket term "immigrants" to pin the blame mainly on Mexican immigrants. But this doesn't wash nor are his skewed numbers worth much.

Right now, for example, the census figures show net zero immigration between the U.S. and Mexico. That means the numbers coming and going are balanced at about 1.4 million each way. This hardly can be used to make the case that we will see milions more Mexican Takers and then they're ramping up deficits by another $6.3 trillion. Where does he get that figure anyway?

That's another case of bogus use of stats, which we call selection effect. In this case, Redwine never bothered to factor in the immigrants' contributions, via their labor and paid tax dollars (amounting to $11.2 billion a year). In other words, Redwine - genius that he is- left out one whole side of the ledger projected over a generation (40 yrs.). 

This is as bad as not distinguishing between the economics of the assorted immigrant groups, or their educations, etc. Worse, he makes a typical error of many naifs in not appreciating several things about I.Q. itself: 1) that I.Q. can change over time, it's not some fixed number that follows you the rest of your life, and 2) I.Q. measurements and tests themselves vary and are highly subjective relative to a population's aptitude and skill set.

I mean really! Does this turkey believe that an I.Q. test - say devised in by Pygmies in Africa- would be expected to be the same as one for the U.S. and Canada?  Does he think a related rates  math item  or vocabulary item - like 'write the synonymn for derelict' would appear on a Pygmy I.Q. test.?

Is he even aware of the fact that the SAT, for example, has not been used by Mensa since the mid-90s as an alternative I.Q. entry determinant? (Only the SATs taken before about 1994 qualify, else one must sit Mensa's own test). Why the change? Because the College Board that administers it no longer was convinced the SATs met the basic requirements of an I.Q. format aptitude test.  This means that if Redwine used SAT scores, say, to assess Mexican or any immigrants' I.Q. scores, he'd be off base. They results would have to be tossed into the dumpster.

While Redwine and Heritage seek to clean themselves up from this fiasco, one thing is clear: The Repukes still haven't learned - even after the last election- that when they spit on immigrants (especially including all those who are also naturalized citizens) they will never get their votes.

"Coming Apart?" - Charles Murray's Arguments After This Last Book!

Maybe it was the venomous (and rightfully earned) backlash Charles Murray received after his ridiculous earlier book, The Bell Curve (in which he attempted to tie IQ to racial genetics, with African-Americans and Latinos at the lower end of "the Bell Curve" which prompted his new effort. Maybe he was convinced it was time to redress his earlier imbalance. Well, he succeeds, this time in recounting how working class whites are detaching from the "four founding virtues of industriousness, honesty, marriage and religion". In any case, he attributes their failure to hold up these four props as explaining why they are perhaps now embracing government "entitlements" and in the process reducing their collective IQ. Well, a bald and brash hypothesis if you can prove it!

Murray can't, any more than he could prove his earlier specious theory, but as before he goes out of his way to dredge up countless statistics to attempt to make his case that way. For example, we learn that in blue-collar America (in contrast to the white upper class in which divorce rates hav declined) divorce has soared since the 1980s, and nonmarital child-bering is skyrocketing Worse and worse, 40% of white females with just a high school diploma have children outside of marriage, compared to 5% with college degrees.

But while intriguing, none of these state make his case. Bear in mind, as I have noted before - it is a hallmark of classic Libertarians to try to invoke to blame victims of an oppressive system, int hie case one dominated by global capitalsm, as opposed to the system itself. The pervasive blame game that pervades the media then leads to the "fundamental attribution error" among the victims, making them believe they are responsible for their plight as opposed to a system stacked against them.

Thus, white lower class marriages are collapsing not because of some innate brutish carnality but because of the severe economic pressures imposed when jobs are lost by the tens of millions, sent overseas to India or China, while the Americans left behind jobless (mainly working class) are left to try to scrape through on minimum wage jobs. All this has been extensively documented by William Wolman and Anne Colamosca in their book: The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work, Addison-Wesley, 1997. They meticulously detail the global capitalist-enegendered coercive market in labor, which promotes a long term "race to the bottom" and with accompanying horrific social costs .

So, obviously, when jobs are lost en masse and new training doesn't succeed in replacing them, even as homes are foreclosed and debts mount, of course marriages will fall victim - comprised as they are of individuals who will be adversely affected from their own senses of worth to their bank accounts.

But never mind that the Libertarians, like Murrary, in their dream world insist the displaced millions can land on their feet if resourceful enough. Or, if they just had high enough IQs! And didn't depend on government "entitlements" that depress ambition and lead to mass stupidity. But let us always bear in mind this is the Libertarian trademark: to call 'foul' at any effort government might exert to support struggling citizens, even when its own tax policies have enabled the shipment of millions of jobs overseas with no penalties. And of course Murray IS a Libbie, first and foremost!

Murray writes in his tract: ‘What it means to be a Libertarian’ (p. 6):

“It is wrong for me to use force against you, because it violates your right to control of your person....I may have the purest motive in the world. I may even have the best idea in the world. But even these give me no right to make you do something just because I think it's a good idea. This truth translates into the first libertarian principle of governance: In a free society individuals may not initiate the use of force against any other individual or group”

Of course, this is also undoubtedly where the pet Libertarian canard that “taxes equal theft’ comes from. But looking at it objectively this is arrant twaddle and illogical to boot. I mean “libertarian principle of governance”! This is an oxymoron! Governance presumes and demands the non-passive act of governing, which means someone is actively setting standards of expected action, and also providing the means to uphold them. Else, what’s the point? It’s all an exercise in mental masturbation. In other words, unless someone (coercively) enforces governance, it will be meaningless. Now, maybe there IS a docile libertarian principle of “governing suggestion”- but this in no way is the same as “governance”!

Anti-statism is a central tenet of libertarianism, but it rests on no foundations, other than the so-called libertarian principles babbled by Murray and others. For example, Frank Chodorov, quoted by David Boaz of CATO Inst. in ‘Libertarianism: A Primer’, goes so far as to write:

“Society is a collective concept and nothing else; it is a convenience for designating a number of people... The concept of Society as a metaphysical concept falls flat when we observe that Society disappears when the component parts disperse”

Boaz himself joins in on what the “individual” means:

“For libertarians, the basic unit of social analysis is the individual.... Individuals are, in all cases, the source and foundation of creativity, activity, and society. Only individuals can think, love, pursue projects, act. Groups don’t have plans or intentions”

But, as Prof. Ernest Partridge put it in his (2007) blog piece on ‘Liberals and Libertarians’ :

“Now consider the implications of this denial of the 'independent existence of the public' and "society." If there is no "public," then there are no "public goods" and there is no "public interest." If there is no "society," then there is no "social harm," or "social injustice" or "social (and public) responsibility." It then follows that government has no role in mitigating "social injustice" or promoting "the public interest," since these terms are fundamentally meaningless.

Poverty and racial discrimination, for example, are individual problems requiring individual solutions”.

And this is mainly Murray's error in a nutshell, blaming individuals for societally systemic problems that only a government can address, resolve. Indeed, if Boaz’ concept held sway and government force was not used in Alabama in September, 1963 (JFK federalizing the Alabama National Guard to enforce school integration) we’d still be a segregated nation, with blacks sitting in the back of the bus, ‘colored’ water coolers and restrooms, and the rest. Only someone totally divorced from history and reality would claim individual African-Americans at the time could have obtained their civil rights with mere individual effort and no government input.

Will Murray ever get this? Doubtful! While correlation is obviously not the same as causation, one can't help seeing it as an appropriate response to Murray's ideas and readers are suggested to check out this site:
http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html

Meanwhile, we know historically that the Right has been making a concerted effort to blame everything on the middle and lower classes as well as the government which aids them via whatever program. The latest pick-on appears to be food stamps, never mind the Right's blowhards allowed the financial system to become endemically corrupted by toxic derivatives....but it's easier to lay the blame on "lousy credit misfits" who misused Fannie and Freddie to get home loans they couldn't afford.

More on this to come, as this campaign season plays out!