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August 06, 2007
I see that the political Right is becoming more open and public in its core beliefs. So we have American political scientist Charles Murray, who will address a Centre for Independent Studies ideas forum, In Praise of Elitism, next Monday, is reported in The Australian as saying:
Australians talk about this tall-poppy syndrome without understanding where it comes from. It is based on the idea that we're all equal. Well, I've got news for you -- we're not all equal and the sooner we accept that, the better. There's nothing wrong with being elitist and we need to come to terms with that and embrace it."
Murray's position is simple. Inequality is good. Inequality is natural and intelligence is hereditary. By not accepting that we are embracing the second rate and so doing nothing excellence. This is conservatism, not libertarianism, since liberalism has held that equality is a basic or core value of the liberal tradition along with freedom.
Murray, who is a scholar in the W.H. Brady Program in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute, is known for arguing that that women lack the evolutionary genetic intelligence to master the highest levels of mathematics and the hard sciences, that whites are intellectually superior to Blacks and that Blacks were by nature more likely to "fail" in society and that welfare needs to be abolished because it encourages women with low intelligence to sprout children who are in turn not likely to be very bright.
How does this relate to an Australia that celebrates egalitarianism along with freedom?
The CIS certainly takes a negative view of Australia. In its blurb for the conference it says that universities are ‘dumbed down’ as entry standards are diluted. Politicians appeal to blatant self-interest as they compete for the votes of an apolitical and uninformed electorate. Television is engaged in a race to the bottom, and the internet (once hailed as the harbinger of the rebirth of Athenian democracy) is full of hard pornography. Has barbarism now triumphed over enlightenment?, it asks.
Presumably, elitism is the conservative answer to this dumbing down tendency in postmodern capitalism. As Murray says:
Whether we like it or not, the future of our culture lies in the hands of the people at the top of the IQ bracket.These young people are not being pushed at all and that's what worries me the most. They are bright but they have no idea what it is to be rigorous. For instance, way too many people are going to university. Statistically, only 15 to 20 per cent are able to deal with a college education, unless, of course, it's not a genuine college education and it's dumbed down. And that's what we have right now, certainly in the US.
Murray holds that believes the education system, as it stands, is a disaster.
We all know that but it's especially a disaster for above-average students. What amazes me is this de-emphasis we have in schools now on learning. This should be the reason kids are there but instead they are asked only to express themselves. They are not expected to interpret correctly but rather they are asked what they feel about the material. This is so harmful for their intellectual development. You never have the right answer because all answers are right. Everyone gets an award at school, no matter how undeserved. But I'll tell you something, kids know; they understand what's going on. This constant praise produces measurably lower self-esteem because kids know they haven't deserved the praise.
It goes deeper than nurturing elitism. What of the non-elite? Murray, and some members of CIS, hold that government programs to help the poor did more harm than good and should be abolished. Poverty, according to Murray, isn't the result of plant shutdowns or layoffs, the boom-and-bust cycles of capitalism or even racial and sexual discrimination. Rather, said Murray, some people are too irresponsible to better themselves. The problem is simple: inferior poor people marry other inferior poor people and produce even more inferior poor children.
They argue that unless the permanent welfare class begins to exhibit certain behavioral changes like finishing high school, like getting married and like being in the workforce, you are going to have an expanding welfare class or underclass which will by the turn of the century be a considerable segment of the population.
But how can an "underclass" that is viewed as being poor because of inferior mental capacity be transformed into a productive, useful -- and profitable -- segment of the working class? Won't "those people" need support, counseling, training, supervision -- and discipline? Won't they need a whole structure to promote those "certain behavioral changes"?
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We are all different yet, in many ways, the world over, so much the same.
Surely we can recognize excellence and high achievement without making those who fall short of it feel inadequate or inferior.
One's genetic inheritance, however bountiful or deficient, should not be used as a label.