I find it highly interesting that the Left accepts genetics in relation to the following propositions:
1) gay people are born that way
2) and now, conservative people are born that way, that is, stupider than liberal-minded people

but that
3) race is just a social construct.
4) intelligence is not largely hereditary.

Can you square this circle?

A new study from Brock University, whose results are published in the Daily Mail, says that conservative children are less intelligent than liberal children, and their intelligence seems to have been determined by the degree of conformity to doctrines of racial tolerance.

You can skip this excerpt from the article or read it as you please:

Together, the well-established theoretical and empirical links between lower g and greater right-wing ideology and between greater right-wing ideology and heightened prejudice
suggest a mediating mechanism (Baron & Kenny, 1986) by which lower g may be associated with greater prejudice. We propose a model (see Fig. 1) in which lower g predicts greater right-wing ideology (Path a) and greater right-wing ideology predicts more prejudicial attitudes (Path b). Furthermore, although we expected that lower g itself predicts greater prejudice (Path c), we hypothesized that this association is facilitated in large part by right-wing ideology (i.e., through Path a and Path b). Therefore, we expected that if right-wing ideology  (i.e., the mediator) is included in the predictive model, the anticipated negative direct effect between g and prejudice (Path c′) will be substantially attenuated or statistically nonsignificant; such a finding would support a significant negative indirect effect (the product of Paths a and b; Shrout & Bolger, 2002). Thus, individuals with lower cognitive ability may be more attracted to right-wing ideologies that promote coherence and order, and because such ideologies emphasize the maintenance of the status quo, they may foster greater outgroup
prejudice.

Ahem, gentlemen.

People who oppose the drowning of white western societies in a sea of Muslims or blacks are dumber because…(fill in the blanks)

People with lower general intelligence (g) favour social coherence? What might be the matter with social coherence? 

“Conservative ideologies or value systems are not necessarily characterized by prejudice, and social conservatives do not “value” negative evaluations of out-groups. Instead, conservative ideologies contribute to negative out-group evaluations. Not only do cognitive abilities predict each of these constructs, but our analyses reveal that right-wing ideologies and contact with out-groups go a long way in explaining the relation between mental ability and prejudice.

To the contrary, contact with out-groups goes a long way to explaining what we may find offensive in their behaviour, viz honour killimgs.

The authors conclude:

In conclusion, our investigation establishes that cognitive ability is a reliable predictor of prejudice. Understanding the causes of intergroup bias is the first step toward ultimately addressing social inequalities and negativity toward outgroups. Exposing right-wing conservative ideology and intergroup contact as mechanisms through which personal intelligence may influence prejudice represents a fundamental advance in developing such an understanding.

First, I defy you to parse the last sentence.

Exposing ideology…and contact .. as mechanism through which… intelligence may influence prejudice…represents an …advance.

Does that make any sense? Never mind, that is the least of their offences to reason.

However, the major unexamined premise of their article is that there seems to be no real world out there in which out-groups and in-groups live, act, put out grabage, or not, act peaceably, or not, work hard, or not, tolerate differences, or not. The second premise is that right-wing ideologies are the sole sources of prejudice.

Of course, prejudice cannot be explained solely by intelligence, ideology, or intergroup contact. Prejudice has complex origins, including personal factors, such as ignorance and a lack of empathy (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008), and social factors, such as resource competition and intergroup hierarchies (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Yet some factors, such as the ability to adopt alternative perspectives, might be driven by mental capacity, given that contact with out-groups is mentally demanding (Richeson & Shelton, 2003).

The learned authors would be surprised to learn that most of what is called prejudice is fact-driven: actual experience with people of different classes, religions, languages, and cultures builds up a body of experience that guides the person in his next encounter with persons of that group. Most stereotypes are accurate, but incomplete, and everybody but academics recognizes this. Most people operate on sterotypes until theyget better data, and then work on the better data. That does not mean I am prejudiced for or against Armenians if I think they are industrious and commercial-minded; I have met enough of them to know.

The last unexamined premise is that of the outgroup and the ingroup. In the case of this article, the authors clearly share the view that the average white Briton is the in-group and the blacks, muslims, gays and others are the outgroups. But who says? The outgroups have had enormous legal privileges at their disposal in the form of anti-discrimination enforcement in Britain. The merest outburst on a public bus the other month by Emma West, some young white woman, against all the foreigners taking up space on welfare resulted in her children being seized by the state.

Here we see the results of clever men writing clever articles demonstrating a complete incapacity to see beyond their prejudices.

This offended Big Dyke, the person who controls the political line that homosexual behaviour is not merely behaviour, but an ineradicable biological condition, existing from conception or at least month 6 in the womb. Nixon was sent to thought correction camp, and when she emerged, she was heard to say that

“While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact.”

Actually it’s both, Cynthia. Mostly sexual activity is a series of choices and actions, but the Left would have us believe it is an inherent genetic condition. Indeed whether we believe it or not, that is the line that all Left-thinking people have to follow.

As Jim Goad writes in the always entertaining Taki’s Magazine:

” as an inveterate mocker of leftist contradictions, I will note that the SAME people who are INSISTING homosexuality is entirely genetic are precisely those who for generations now have denied and dismissed the idea that “race” or “gender” are anything more than “social constructs.” When it comes to race and gender, they will only accept environmental explanations; but when it comes to what you do with your naughty bits, they will only permit biological alibis. For race and gender, it’s 100% “nurture”; for sexuality, it’s 100% nature. Like always, they make no sense. But I enjoy watching how they struggle to fit straight pegs into gay holes.

For my part I share Goad’s amusement that the Gay Left believes that political and social tolerance will be greater if the rest of society come to believe that gayness is a biological condition rather than a choice, and yet at the same time they shout and scream that race is a social construct, so that tolerance will be greater on that ground.

Moreover, what  is the matter with a free market in sexual choice? Very probably they fear free choice  here as much as they fear it everywhere else. My God, if people were actually free to choose their sexual partners, who knows what could happen? Gays going straight! Straights going gay! Worse, no one would give a damn!  Curiously, they share the same fear of free choice here as religious and social conservatives. Which brings the intriguing question into focus: is the Left just a godless form of religious and social conservative? It bears thinking about,

The left will mount the expected disinformation campaign to confuse people that “honour killings” are just a general part of violence against women, the cure for which is greater social intervention in private lives by police and the ‘caring’ professions, plus more social spending on the same client groups.

The appeal in the Shafia case will attempt to throw sand in everyone’s eyes in this regard, seeking to de-legitimate the analysis of honour killing.

Aisha Gill, in the Guardian, writes the following confused nonsense, which will be a template for the Left to avoid the issue of Islam:

“Yet, by focusing on the subject of honour, such violence is too often explained away by cultural stereotypes – allowing society to dismiss these cases as something that only happens in minority communities with their “outdated” notions of justice. This allows us to completely overlook that, first and foremost, these cases are of violence against women, and the concept of honour is being used to legitimate the continued oppression of women.”

The two ideas are perfectly consistent. We are completely aware that the vast majority of honour crimes are Muslim in origin, followed by Hindus enforcing caste sensitivities. This is not a “stereotype”; this is an observation of fact. And yes, we are completely aware that these murders are intended to control women and prevent them from marrying whom they love or choose.

She goes on:

There is a tendency in the west to see so-called honour killings as exclusively related to specific cultural traditions. [Yes, we do, because they are] They are often depicted as culturally specific to Muslim communities although they are not, in fact, restricted to any particular religion, culture, type of society or social stratum[The lack of restriction does not affect the fact that they are disproportionately committed by Muslims] In its report on harmful practices, for instance, the charity Imkaan reported a case of a Traveller woman forced to leave her community due to “honour-based violence”.

Now watch the sand being thrown in your eyes in what follows:

“Yet there is a widespread belief that honour is no longer as important in western societies, what with their emphasis on individual rights and legality. However, the modern-day importance of “honour” should not be so quickly cast aside. In the UK data from the British Crime Survey 2009/2010 suggests that nearly a million women experience at least one incident of domestic abuse each year, while close to 10,000 women are sexually assaulted every week – how many of these cases relate to the “honour” of the perpetrators being allegedly besmirched by victims and survivors?” [You do it too, you nasty white people!]

Merely by asking a fatuous question does not turn interpersonal violence, even male-female violence,  into a culturally approved tradition of killing daughters who consort with males in any way before marriage. Honour killing is the enforcement of the idea that the penalty for unchastity is gruesome death of the daughters, sisters, or other females relatives,even if the unchastity was involuntary, such as rape, especially incestuous rape. Further, these killings are approved by other female members of the family. The last honour killings in Western societies died out in the 1840s, and they were called duels, exclusively fought by successful males of equal rank in formalized contests of bravery.

Watch how  Aisha Gill’s specious analysis shifts the blame from tribalism and Islam to feminism in the following:

“Tackling “honour” killings requires a shift in political thinking. Instead of regarding them as a cultural tradition common to a range of “backward” societies, the issue needs to be seen in the context of violence against women and the inequality found throughout society.

Instead of soft-pedalling the Islamic, Hindu and tribal nature of the phenomenon, let us call it by its true name: barbarism. Why are we importing these people?

The issue for me is the time gap between the first real evidence the thing was a fraud, and the abandonment of policies in places like Ontario that were predicated on a global warming that is not happening, and if happening, not caused by man’s CO2 emissions.

I cite, for example, the comment by Falsum to the blog posting Inconvenient Facts posted yesterday. The report by scientists appeared in the Daily Mail. Falsum wrote:

The Daily Mail? Seriously? That newspaper has slightly less credibility than the average 14 year-old youtube commenter. The scientific community is agreed that global warming is real, that we are causing it, and that it will be catastrophic if we do not do anything.

Hack journalism does nothing to change that. Try again when you find an article in a reputable peer-reviewed journal.

 What the  article said – which evidently Falsum did not bother to read, was that the British Met Office had realeased the data. The first paragraphs were:

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

The East Anglia Climate Research Unit is the source of the Climategate email hacking scandal.

In Falsum we find the complete believer, confident that the science is on his side, and not afraid to say so. The last time he thought through the issue must have been four or five years ago, because he has missed everything since.

 What has fascinated me is the several-year-long gap between the first publication of the emails that showed the whole thing was a vicious academic game played for keeps (Climategate 1, in 2009), and the spread of this realization slowly slowly through the intelligentsia until now.

Consider Ontario for example, where the provincial government has been pursuing a policy spending billions on wind farms and coal plant shutdowns, paid for by large increases in electricity rates. The opposition leader Tim Hudak dare not attack the theory behind Premier McGuinty’s folly because to do so would offend the state of believed ignorance in the Ontario media.

Wikipedia entries on the subject of Climategate are fully controlled by warmists to this day.

Climategate 1 occurred in 2009. It exposed all the doubts and lack of facts of the perpetrators of the carboin myth for all to see. A cascade of toothless inquiries since, led by warmists,  has exonerated the perpetrators.

 Yet anyone with a few hours of time on their hands and the inclination to read into a subject can find convenient summaries of the emails in question.

We are in the presence of a believed mythology. Man bad. Gaia good. Spaceship earth being plundered and ravaged by insensitive male boors. Imminent doom from CO2 emissions. Redemption through atonement to Gaia.

It took many decades for communism to be exposed.

Capitalism bad. Capitalists evil. Working man good. All power to the working man through the revolutionary appartus of the Party. The Party knows the outcome of history, and it must temporarily assume dictatorial powers, but only until the work of socialism is complete, when we shall all be free and equal and living in a man-created paradise.

Communism had the advantage of a huge captive state, a ruthless regime of terror and victory in WW2. It was a vastly successful ideology that held a third of the world in thrall to a primitive Gnostic superstition. It lingers in North Korea, which is a theme park of xenophobic failure and starvation.

By contrast the climate thing has all the features of leftism without the bother of Marxist economic claptrap. The climate thing carries on with its own regime of intimidation inside universities, hysteria in the media, mathematical modeling that is fact-free and cannot even predict the past, and government subsidies. Its influence today vies with communism in the 1930s. Will it die soon, or will it take another few decades for most average informed people to realize it was a scam?

 And will it die suddenly, or just peter out?

 That the whole warmist fantasy will fail is not in doubt. But the average person of good conscience has neither the time nor the motivation to inquire too deeply into it, and so drastically mistaken measures are undertaken in all western economies by fools like McGuinty on  behalf of Gaianism, the latest Gnostic outbreak.

We can only hope that the learning cycle will be faster and less murderous this time with Gaianism than it was with communism.

The better source on this word jizya is Wikislam, which is much less politically correct.

Once a land is conquered by Islamic armies the ruler can impose a taxation on those non-Muslims who will not convert to Islam.

Jizyah is paid as a sign of submission and gives Dhimmis some legal protection in return. Under dhimmitude (the status that Islamic law, the Sharia, mandates for non-Muslims) Dhimmis usually are not allowed to carry arms to protect themselves, serve in the army or government, display symbols of their faith, build or repair places of worship etc. If the conquered do not wish to pay or convert, their fate may very well be slavery (under which, rape is permitted) or (as evidenced in the quotes above) death.

The amount of the Jizyah tax and the way it was collected varied from time to time and from place to place, but when imposed, the forced payment of Jizyah greatly stimulated the conversion of non-Muslims into Islam.[1] In some cases the taxation of the non-Muslims was so profitable that the Islamic rulers prohibited their subjects from converting to Islam, lest they should lose their income.

Secular humanists have trouble with evil in a different sense than Christians have trouble with evil. For the secularist God-abolishers, evil is not supposed to exist, and talking in those terms is suspect, like talking in terms of “humours” or other medieval claptrap. Evil is something which the progress of science is supposed to have abolished.

The Guardian has an interesting article from a Norwegian on the subject of Breivik which glimpses the truth and then retreats from it. The author sees the hatred which motivated Breivik as political in origin, but fails to draw the necessary conclusion that Breivik was sane. Locking him up, on whatever pretext, is the only answer. People so much agree on the necessity of putting him away that they close their minds to the possibility the man was entirely clear about his principles, willing to act on them, and knew the quality of his actions. Nazis were not insane. Breivik is not insane. Evil, but not insane.

The Guardian article writer says:

In the commendable decision to rule that a law against polygamy (strictly speaking polygyny) did not constitute an offence to Charter rights, the large obvious fact was missed, at least  in any coverage I have seen. My point is that, given the anti-male bias of contemporary society, the harm to men is not perceived, and if perceived, not thought worthy of mention.

Mr. Justice Bauman discussed the damage in terms of reduced male parental investment in children, and hence lower survival rates for children, higher rates of violent crime (from surplus men), exploitation of women and violence in the household, and the “lost-boy” effect, when male children reckon that they will never have a woman to love, so they leave the community.

If all of the society is polygynous, then there is no community which surplus males can leave except by emigration to another country which forbids polygyny. Fat chance of that for the Muslim world, and the 100 million surplus males of China and India.

And what do you do with 50 million surplus males, such as China or India have? The answer is obvious. You go to war. You have an inbuilt incentive to spend your surplus males on warfare, brigandage, and wife-gathering. And how do you gather a wife? You kill her husband, and take her home. Iran got rid of a huge surplus of its male population in the Iran-Iraq war(1980-1988), spending them as wastefully as they could. Half a million battle deaths resulted from the use of World War 1 tactics in that ill-fought conflict.

Among Mr. Justice Bauman’s many findings, these three struck me as closest to the theme of this article:

[785]     The sex ratio imbalance inherent in polygyny means that young men are forced out of polygamous communities to sustain the ability of senior men to accumulate more wives. These young men and boys often receive limited education as a result, and must navigate their way outside their communities with few life skills and little social support.

[786]     Another significant harm to children is their exposure to, and potential internalization of, harmful gender stereotypes.

[787]     Polygyny has negative impacts on society flowing from the high fertility rates, large family size and poverty associated with the practice. It generates a class of largely poor, unmarried men who are statistically predisposed to violence and other anti-social behaviour. Polygyny also institutionalizes gender inequality. Patriarchal hierarchy and authoritarian control are common features of polygynous communities.

The damage is done by “the internalization of harmful gender stereotypes” is minuscule compared to the evident unfairness of polygyny to most males. Multiple wives mean sons without effective fathering, and produces  a surplus- unwanted collection of surplus males available for war, and crime, and disinclined for useful work. Osama bin Laden was the result of such an upbringing.

Such is the political correctness of our times, and its anti-male bias, that the principal harm of polygyny is mentioned briefly in the decision, and rates nothing in the media treatment of the question.

But this week we read headlines which may be of fundamental importance. The second experiment has demonstrated that neutrinos have moved faster than light. If this proves to be true and not merely the artefact of the experiment or observational bias, then the foundations of physics have just taken a five megaton hit.

So what is staying the same this month?

Eurozone crisis - same, but worsening.

Islamic inability to behave democratically? – same, but the evidence keeps coming in, all of which is ignored in the MSM picture of the world.

[Man-caused] global warming hysteria – the nails keep being driven in to that coffin, but the zombie keeps escaping.

My apologies to readers – job pressures have kept me from blogging lately. Happy is the blogger with a day job.

You will hear more about racialized persons, because the word acts like a dumptruck, transporting a host of grievance-mongering from one site of public discourse to another, without the bother of thought. Sort of like the German High Command sending Lenin to Russia in a sealed train, to get the bacillus out of Geneva and into the prostrate body of Tsarist Russia, where it could really do some damage. (I digress)

Wikipedia says:

Racialization refers to processes of the discursive production of racial identities. It signifies the extension of dehumanizing and racial meanings to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group. Put simply, a group of people is seen as a “race”, when it was not before.

This led me to the fascinating entry by the University of Guelph on the subject, Understanding Racialization:

In the past, race was defined as a natural or biological division of the human species based on physical distinctions including skin colour and other bodily features. This notion of race emerged in the context of European domination of nations and peoples deemed non-white. It was used to establish a classification of peoples. Some of the greatest atrocities in human history have been associated with notions of racial superiority.

There is no legitimate scientific basis for racial classification. Genetic science now tells us that physical characteristics and genetic profiles correlate more strongly between “races” than among them. It is now recognized that notions of race are primarily centered on social processes that seek to construct differences among groups with the effect of marginalizing some in society.

While biological notions of race have been discredited, the social construction of race remains a potent force in society. The process of social construction of race is termed racialization.

I would say that these three paragraphs contain the essence of the leftist falsehoods that dominate public discourse.

Read the following and inform yourselves:

1. This notion of race emerged in the context of European domination of nations and peoples deemed non-white.

False. All people at all times have been conscious of racial differences, and “race” did not emerge in post-16th century Europeas an intellectual construct any more than height or weight did. Race, ethnicity, tribehood: each and all have been observed facts of life since before conscious thought, just as rabbits differ from hares, or both from deer. The intellectuals of Enlightenent Europe may have systematized the classifications, but they systematized classifications of everything: taxonomy and species collecting was the fashion of the time, viz. Linnaeus and the modern biological classification system.

The 4,000 year old pictographs of ancient Egypt show Africans and caucasians as recognizable races. The Romans pondered the origin of races as they looked upon the red-haired Scythians and the Negroid Nubians, and considered the origin of races as related to available sunlight in their native lands.

2. There is no legitimate scientific basis for racial classification.

False. Humans have evolved. (Darwin is apparently a new idea in some quarters). They are evolving still, at an accelerating rate. Races emerged as Africans left the African continent and colonized the rest of the world in a process starting about 50,000 years ago, settling areas where neanderthals had been before them.

• The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, by Spencer Wells
• Race: The Reality of Human Differences, by Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele
• Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors, by Nicholas Wade
• The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending
• Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, by Philippe Rushton

Racial differences are real, genetic, unfolding in time, and evidenced by both organic processes and statistically-validated behavioral differences. I noted that the list of books above range in political acceptability from The Journey of Man, which has a PBS television series attached to it, to Philippe Rushton’s, which you can only get from non-Amazon booksellers. But they all say the same thing in different ways.

All humans who left Africa in ancient times are the products of adaptation to new environments, and various genetic compromizes have occurred over time to allow us to live in Asia, Polynesia, Europe, and the Americas.

3. Genetic science now tells us that physical characteristics and genetic profiles correlate more strongly between “races” than among them.

False. Stephen Jay Gould’s Marxist beliefs led him to to emphasize the commonlaity of our species-hood over the fuzzy distinctions of race. He has been debunked elsewhere. See readings above, but more particularly, see Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution, for the more general attack on Gould’s bioogical ideas.

4. While biological notions of race have been discredited, the social construction of race remains a potent force in society

“The social construction of race”. Of all the untruths taught in universities, perhaps none is more pernicious for the long-term than the denial of the biological. It has the effect of placing racial tolerance on the false premise that there are no races. Since there are no races, in this view, race is a social construct. Hence “racialized ethical vegans” can become a race – a category of people able to suffer “racialization.” You do not have to be a race to suffer discrimination. People will and do discriminate about anything, frequently for the benefit of human society. (e.g. the fridge is filthy- clean it. Pick up your mess. Get a job. Change the oil in your car) Trillions of discriminations keep civilization working.

Understand this: tolerance has no meaning or moral worth if there are not real differences to be tolerated. Toleration is a political bargain to make society livable without the need for an established religion.

The Telegraph reports:

Seven years after the Labour government passed a contentious law intended to abolish hunting with hounds, the country’s hunts – which no longer chase a live animal, but merely a trail of artificial scent instead – are in the best shape anyone can remember.

Part of the reason is that the law has proved almost comically difficult to enforce. Beneath its stated object of outlawing the hunting of wild mammals with dogs, near-total confusion reigns. In theory, you can hunt mice, but not rats, rabbits but not hares, domestic cats but not wild ones. Birds of prey, but not foxhounds, can be set upon foxes. Yet a bigger factor appears to be that exquisitely delinquent streak in the British character that reacts against the hectoring and bossiness of officialdom. As a result, thousands of people who previously had little obvious interest in hunting have taken it up.

“Our membership has doubled to around 1,000 since the law was passed,” says Sam Butler, the Warwickshire’s ebullient Master. “The support we are getting from the communities is incredible. Our range of activities is expanding all the time. Even with the economy the way it is, when everyone’s watching where their money goes, we are hunting at least as much as ever.”

“The move to clarify the law on self-defence follows a long campaign on the Tory backbenches in the aftermath of the 1999 Tony Martin case in which a farmer who shot a teenage burglar dead at his Norfolk home was convicted of manslaughter.

“The proposed amendment will make it clear that people threatened in their own home are not legally obliged to retreat and will not be punished if they use reasonable force to repel an intruder.

“While fleeing is usually the safest option if you feel threatened, people are not obliged to retreat when defending themselves or their homes,” Clarke said. “We will ensure that if you do react instinctively to repel an intruder, you will not be punished for it as long as you use reasonable force.”

“The detailed amendment makes it clear that the householder no longer has a legal duty to retreat in this situation, but the possibility that they could have done will be taken as a factor in deciding whether their use of force was reasonable.

“The news about social policy, it’s worth noting, hasn’t improved. A recent report by Isabel Sawhill and Jon Baron for the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy—an organization very much in the Glazer tradition—observed that yet another negative evaluation of Head Start (it has “almost no effect on children’s cognitive, social-emotional, or health outcomes at the end of 1st grade”) was “the 10th instance since 1990 in which an entire federal social program has been evaluated using the scientific ‘gold standard’ method of randomly assigning individuals to a program or control group. Nine of those evaluations found weak or no positive effects.”

Copies of The Bell Curve are available from your bookseller and if you have not read it, you are woefully uninformed of the consequences of intelligence differences, which are not, repeat not, matters of social arrangements. Any reader of this blog can afford the $5.20 purchase price of a used copy. Still in print at amazon.com.