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My IM chat with Ross Douthat
It is here and it was produced yesterday afternoon. The point about fertility was borrowed from Steve Sailer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 4, 2008 at 07:09 AM in Sports | Permalink
Comments
"I believe so …"
Surprised at that prediction. Good read, but bring on that Bloggingheads already!
Posted by: burger flipper at Sep 4, 2008 8:08:36 AM
Moderation in all things.
Posted by: odograph at Sep 4, 2008 8:09:27 AM
"I also think, though, cynically, that the GOP knows that "delivering" on the abortion issue would spell their doom and thus they won't ever do it."
Wrong, because if they ever did 'deliver', it would be an eternal battle to keep it so. To say the least.
Also there is always more ground to take in the abortion war. Take a look at El Salvador, which followed the xtian fundy belief that abortion = murder to its logical legal conclusions.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Sep 4, 2008 9:44:35 AM
Tyler, since Steve Sailer is a white supremicist why bother to give him legitimacy?
Posted by: matt at Sep 4, 2008 9:53:42 AM
Jason Malloy - Did you even bother to read the entire first page of the article you linked to? If you had, you might have noticed the editor's note appended at the bottom. It states, briefly, that the article was mistaken in a fairly fundamental way. It's about a poor woman who was sentenced to 30 years in jail for the crime of having an abortion in the 18th week of pregnancy. The editor's note points out that, in fact, the finding was that she carried the child to term and then killed it. I'm sure you don't mean to make the argument that the awful consequences of anti-abortion law would be people being sentenced as murderers for murdering infants?
I'm not what pro-lifers would call pro-life, but I do think sensible people can agree that we should restrict things like infanticide and 3rd trimester abortion. You know, kind of like the rest of the civilized world (read: all of europe) does.
Posted by: Blighter at Sep 4, 2008 10:01:32 AM
matt- Since Sailer believes East Asians have, on average, a third of a standard deviation higher IQs than white folk, why call him a white supremecist? Is it just because "racist" is a handy label to cudgel someone with when you don't like their observations about the world?
Posted by: blighter at Sep 4, 2008 10:05:05 AM
Tyler,
I think your opinion on McCain is at loggerheads with your desire to see reform in the GOP. First, I'd say that upon close inspection, he seems quite a bit more thoughtful on big decisions than his blowhard exterior suggests. And his big decisions have typically been marked by fairly sound judgement and independent thought, although not the sort of libertarian streak I'd like.
Still, McCain's selection needs to be put in context of the wider GOP status. As you said, they didn't exactly have a deep bullpen, and returning to the path the diverged from in 2000, with Palin, is probably about as much as can be expected. If my wildest dreams were to come true, they'd push the Republicans in a slightly more libertarian, slightly more independently minded direction, and that's certainly a good thing.
Contra those who suggest the "Republicans have been bad, so withold your vote!" strategy, I'd say that if you want any reform in the GOP, you ought to vote for them. Victory would mean the ascendency of the McCain/Palin brand of Republicanism, which, if not great, seems slightly less bad than the alternatives.
On the other hand, if they're crushed, what signals does it send to politicans at large and to the GOP? Is says people want more Democratic sounding policies, and will push the GOP either more in that direction ("Compassionate conservatism" or however that crap gets branded, I guess) and/or more in the direction of hardcore social conservatism and Bible thumping. Neither option appeals very much to me at all. Or just plain old big-government liberalism, which is what the Dems appear to be offering when you cut through the "change" rhetoric.
Posted by: MikeDC at Sep 4, 2008 10:11:39 AM
"Did you even bother to read the entire first page of the article... The editor's note points out that, in fact, the finding was that she carried the child to term and then killed it."
Did you read the article? It describes abortion laws in El Salvador, not just that one story.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Sep 4, 2008 10:36:31 AM
I am surprised that you are surprised by the attacks on Palin. Hillary detractors were almost as vicious and she was pro choice, and they were modivaded by more than just Clinton fatigue. Palin strong pro life stance just added an extra dimension to the animosity toward women seeking power, not just by men but by women especially young women.
Posted by: joan at Sep 4, 2008 10:48:50 AM
Sailor is a racist, and says so openly.
Posted by: green apron monkey at Sep 4, 2008 12:30:58 PM
I'm in MikeDC's category, "Republicans have been bad, so withold your vote!"
I believe that if the Republicans win in 2008, every "bad actor" from the last 8 years will say "see, we can get away with it."
(BTW, I did a search to be sure. The words "debt" and "deficit" do not appear in Palin's speech from last night. Any yet my Republican co-workers felt they heard a commitment on that ... go figure.)
Posted by: odograph at Sep 4, 2008 12:32:51 PM
"What you won’t hear, except from me, is that 'Let the good times roll' is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society." - Steve Sailer
Posted by: green apron monkey at Sep 4, 2008 12:36:28 PM
Oh lord. Are people here really arguing to taboo Steve Sailor's writings on fertility and Palin because of a completely different set of writings by him on race?
Posted by: Hopefully Anonymous at Sep 4, 2008 12:43:00 PM
green apron monkey,
the key word in your quote is "tend". The assumption that African-Americans, on average, display poorer "native judgment" than other Americans is reasonable given that they, on average, have substantially lower measured IQs.
Also, I think that the someone's-obnoxious-hence-do-not-talk-about-him idea is wrong. I'd quote Hitler approvingly if he had said something clever.
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at Sep 4, 2008 1:37:38 PM
Matt, you obviously know very little of Sailer's writings to call him a white supremacist. Sailer opposes Jared Taylor's white nationalism with his own "citizenism". The whole series "white nationalism" vs "citizenism" arguments can be found by searching Vdare's archives. It is really absurd to call him a white supremecist when he dissaproves of even white nationalism.
Green Apron monkey, where is the quote where Sailer says he is a racist? I'd bet that 99 percent of people know that word to mean something other than what Sailer believes: that there are differences in averages for some traits between different races and that some non-zero percentage (but not 100% either) of that difference is genetic in origin.
If you accurately summarize his views he doesn't sound like a neanderthal. But simply calling Sailer a racist falsely implies that he hates other races and/or thinks all blacks have lower IQ's than all whites.
LemmusLemmus, they will probably still argue that Steve is evil because he believes some of the average IQ difference is genetic. What a sad state of affairs for society that believing that scientific hypothesis that may or may not turn out to be true in the future gets you demonized. But if you hold the opposite, equally (at best) unproven hypothesis you are an angel.
Posted by: scottynx at Sep 4, 2008 1:57:16 PM
Tyler, sorry for helping to turn the thread into an off-topic Sailer debate.
Posted by: scottynx at Sep 4, 2008 2:13:19 PM
I believe that if the Republicans win in 2008, every "bad actor" from the last 8 years will say "see, we can get away with it."
Except, if you actually look at the Republican party, there seems to have been some realization of this during the last eight years. Bush and Cheney are clearly radioactive and on the way out, and the prime movers in the Congress who squandered things, Lott, Delay, Hastert... they're all gone too.
That "leadership" and brand of Republicanism took a huge beating and has more or less already been thrown out of office. They won't be saying "see, we can get away with it", because they won't be in power.
If McCain wins, then he's setting the agenda going forward. And he, despite numerous flaw IMO, generally opposed the most aggregious fuck-ups of his party. He was the path not taken in 2000 and has largely been the voice of reason since.
And the Republican rank and file looked at that this year and rewarded him. They could have gone in the direction of Guliani or Romney, I suppose, if they'd wanted more of the same. That was reinforcement of the message sent when the other "leadership" was defeated and/or hung out to dry.
So what message is sent if McCain gets trounced? If it were still punishing the same guys in control, I could sort of see it as an attempt to teach a lesson. But it'd effectively be punishing the political base of the GOP when they already seem to have done about the most they could reasonably be expected to do to repudiate those policies.
Doing that would, as best I can tell, just force folks to conclude something like: 1) We need to be more like the Dems to win (more tax and spend) or 2) We need to do something really crazy.
Posted by: MikeDC at Sep 4, 2008 2:19:33 PM
Steve Sailer tends to be racist. He's not rude about it. He may well be a delightful person.
The man spends every moment of his life arguing that some races make better citizens than others due to inherent racial characteristics. Setting aside whether you think that is correct or incorrect, it certainly is racist. What do racists believe, if not that?
Posted by: green apron monkey at Sep 4, 2008 2:49:20 PM
Hold up green apron monkey, surface similarities ought not dictate direct comparisons. I agree there are some unanswered questions about Sailer's motive for the topics he addresses (I've seen him bait people on racial issues entirely too much to not question whether he has just some benign interest in those subjects), but just because he happens to make claims which are similar in their surface qualities to claims made by racists does not make him a racist. Theoretically, if Sailer is guided by interest in the truth he'd change his views if the facts (like IQ by racial groups, etc) were different, but the racist would not change their view in those instances. For evidence for the last claim, if I remember correctly Gould provided fairly good evidence in The Mismeasure of Man about how earlier scientists changed the body measurement they used to determine which race and sex was the smartest when new evidence came along that would show that the white male was not at the top. They were clearly racist, whereas (if Sailer is genuine in his approach) Sailer is not.
Posted by: Levi at Sep 4, 2008 3:13:58 PM
Good argument, MikeDC. I'm not ready for that though. As much as it would have rankled, McCain/Lieberman would have made that easier to accept.
Posted by: odograph at Sep 4, 2008 3:19:42 PM
"What do racists believe, if not that?"
Bingo.
Posted by: PLW at Sep 4, 2008 3:35:09 PM
