The Cowardice of “Conservatives”

In yet another act of cowardice, a “conservative” institution has fired someone from saying something that is not only true, but that everyone knows to be true. This time the Heritage Foundation joined the ranks of the lickspittles by forcing out a senior researcher, Jason Richwine. Mr. Richwine, who co-authored the Heritage’s recently released report on the costs of amnesty, had written his Harvard PhD thesis on the implications of racial differences in IQ for immigration policy — and racial differences in IQ have such obvious policy implications that a “think tank” dare not think about them.

There is no need to repeat the things that have been said by Mr. Richwine’s attackers. They are just as gloatingly idiotic as you would imagine. It is far more important to point out that Mr. Richwine had important defenders — but Heritage still folded. And what makes its behavior particularly revolting is that the people who run it knew about Mr. Richwine’s dissertation ever since they hired him two years ago. It is hard to imagine more craven behavior.

Jason Richwine

Charles Murray got it right: “Thank God I was working for Chris DeMuth and AEI, not Jim DeMint and Heritage, when The Bell Curve was published. Integrity. Loyalty. Balls” — none of which are to be found at Heritage.

Michele Malkin noted that “if it is now inherently racist to study racial and ethnic differences among demographic groups, then it’s time to shut down every social sciences department in the country.”

Rush Limbaugh wrote: “We must have honest discussions about race. We must have honest discussions about immigration. Well, here is one. Here’s an honest discussion, a doctoral dissertation, and it is under attack because it is honest.” He added, “What is happening to Jason Richwine is inexcusable.”

Ann Coulter called the assault on Mr. Richwine “liberal attacks on science.”

Even David Weigel, hardly a friend of the right, was unhappy: “A liberal squeals ‘racism,’ and they hear the political correctness cops (most often, the Southern Poverty Law Center) reporting a thinkcrime.”

What are the eunuchs who run Heritage waiting for? Nancy Pelosi to tell them it’s OK to hire people who write about IQ?

I have a simple question for people who call themselves “conservative:” When are you going to stop letting the Left tell you what you cannot think? In other words, when are you going to be men instead of lapdogs?

Because you are lapdogs, Jason Richwine joins a distinguished group of men fired by “conservatives:” Joe Sobran, Sam Francis, Scott McConnell, John Derbyshire, Robert Weissberg, Kevin Lamb, Frank Borzellieri, Leif Parsell, and no doubt others who have slipped my mind. John O’Sullivan, Peter Brimelow, James Watson, and Patrick Buchanan have also gotten some form of the ax for excessive truth-telling.

Our country is run by the equivalent of the most primitive tribes of Papua New Guinea and Africa. They believe that if something bad happens it’s because some enemy cast a wicked spell. Here’s the American equivalent: Blacks commit a lot of crime and Hispanics do badly in school? Vicious white people cast spells to make it happen. Can’t find actual, individual vicious white people hexing blacks or Hispanics? Invent a new kind of collective spell called “institutional racism,” so you can blame all white people. And when you find someone who doesn’t believe in spells but talks about race and IQ, crucify him!

In Africa and Papua New Guinea they regularly roast witches. In America we don’t roast our witches. Instead, we call them “racists” and make them unemployable. Jason Richwine is a young man with a wife and two small children.He is a professional thinker, perfectly cut out for a job at a think tank or a university. Who will hire him now that he has been branded with the scarlet “R” for “racist”? And how bitter must it be when people you have known and worked with, people whose trust and respect you thought you had earned, toss you in the gutter at the slightest sign of opposition?

When it comes to race and IQ, the record of history, the results of a thousand studies — intelligence testing, cross-racial adoption, brain-size differences — along with what anyone with vision in even just one eye sees around him every day are apparently not enough. But some day, not far off, the evidence for race differences in IQ will be blindingly, deafeningly, stunningly obvious. The genes that contribute to IQ will be found, and someone — probably in China — will report that they are not distributed equally in every group.

Until then, is our country fated to stagger on under an illusion that makes it impossible to formulate policy on everything from education to immigration to welfare? We could avoid that fate if “conservatives” were not gutless weaklings.