CT Blue

Jim DeMint’s Heritage Foundation is catching flack for publishing the ravings of a white supremacist, though why that should be a surprise, I do not know.

Prominent Republican lawmakers such as Marco Rubio has questioned the accuracy of the $6.3 trillion price tag. Then there are the revelations that the co-author of the study, Jason Richwine, wrote for white nationalist publications which comes after the Washington Post discovered Richwine wrote that whites have superior intelligence to Hispanics in his doctoral dissertation.

Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ” — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”

(via FDL News Desk)

Okay, I’m willing to attach the term “racist” to Richwine, and I realize that it’s difficult to define the term “race” in any definitive fashion given that it has no biological foundation, but since the argument that different “races” have different IQs requires at least some coherent way to define the difference between one race and another, I am deeply puzzled by Richwine’s conclusion. Has anyone every actually argued that Hispanics constitute their own race? If so, which race is it? My general impression is that the term is applied generally to people who come, or whose ancestors came, from Spanish speaking countries in the Americas. (Also counting, of course, the folks who were within the present geographical limits of the greatest country on earth when it decided to take some low hanging fruit away from Mexico.) My further impression is that these folks are an amalgam of Native American, Europeans and Africans, with the mixes differing pretty wildly from place to place. So it would be interesting to know how this “scholar” defines the term “Hispanic”. Is there some magic amount of white blood that exempts one from membership in this race, or is the old saw about one drop still operative? For that matter is it only the Hispanics that come here that are dumber, or is there some empirical evidence that the average IQ in South America, Central America or Mexico is lower than here in God’s (who is and always was white, by the way) country? I guess my money would be on the theory that the average Hispanic IQ is inversely proportional to the quantity of African blood in the Hispanic. Old traditions die hard.

But getting back to the whole idea of defining races, if we get to make up new races pretty much at will, is some color variation from the norm (the norm being white, of course) a sine qua non for a group to qualify as a race? Because I’d like to define a new race: Republicans. I have no evidence that their IQs are not lower (though the idea is full of truthiness), but they are definitely unable to employ their brains to engage in rational thought. For that reason they are definitely inferior to those of the Democratic race. In order to preserve our way of life (i.e, the things and social customs I like and the ideologies with which I agree) we should limit their privileges consistent with their inferiorities. Obviously they should not be allowed to vote. Being a softie, I’m all for opening up preserves, where their race can develop along its own lines, and where they can even shoot each other to their heart’s content. Since they couldn’t vote anymore, we could let them watch Fox News as much as they want.

The price tag for allowing them to range freely has been enormous. We have been mired in depression now for 5 years, almost solely because their inability or refusal to engage in rational thought has made it impossible for us to get out of that depression. They’re here, so we can’t build a fence to keep them out, but we can certainly take steps to keep them under control.

It seems that the folks in Burkesville, Kentucky feel unfairly put upon. Some people don’t understand why they feel perfectly comfortable giving real guns to five year olds, or why they can’t see how a parent that leaves such a loaded gun available for said five year old to shoot his 2 year old sister might have some responsibility for said shooting. Certainly more responsibility, I would argue, than the five year old, who may go to his grave with a load of guilt for an act of which he only dimly understood the consequences.

After all, they say, giving guns to kids is part of their “way of life” and therefore we should give them a free pass. All over the world this excuse is used to defend the inexcusably stupid, barbaric, or unjust. Everything from cannibalism, to slavery to female genital mutilation can be explained away by resort to this argument. Back in the days of American slavery it was the South’s excuse for holding millions in bondage. An alternative phraseology is “part of our culture”. If one uses “culture” as a defense one need not justify the behavior to either god or man; it is because it is.

Here in America we are supposed to back off whenever anyone uses this lame excuse for stupidity or bigotry. The Southland has raised this sort of thing to an art form, not surprising, since they’ve had lots of practice, in that they’ve been been using it for hundreds of years to justify everything from slavery to lynchings to segregated proms.

For some reason, we folks in the North don’t get to make this excuse – nor have we sought to. I’m not sure why that is; certainly we do some stupid things up here, but when we’re criticized we tend to try to justify our position by argument; sometimes reasonable, sometimes not, but the idea that we are privileged to behave stupidly because we’ve always behaved stupidly doesn’t have much traction here. I’m not saying we’re morally superior; we’ve just been trained. The Southern States have played the victim so long that we all sort of concede their right to do so; we here in the North are supposed to soak up criticism and keep our mouths shut even when the criticism is unfair.

On this specific issue, my mind remains boggled. When I was a very young boy, Davy Crockett (who came from Tennessee which is pretty much the same as Kentucky, or was when Davy was born on that mountaintop) was my hero. I knew every word to his theme song, and I was prepared to believe almost any good thing about him, but even then I knew that he didn’t actually kill him a bar when he was only three, and I was only four at the time. I had toy guns (never gave them to my kids) and it never crossed my mind that I had any business having a real one. I don’t know what I’d have done if my father had handed one to me back then. But it wasn’t part of my parents way of life to give me the means to easily kill before I even understood the reality and finality of death. I guess I just had a deprived childhood, but then I got to grow up without the burden of guilt I would have had for killing one of my siblings.

Unbelievable. Well, unfortunately, not unbelievable:

BURKESVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Authorities in southern Kentucky say a 2-year-old girl has been accidentally shot and killed by her 5-year-old brother, who was playing with a .22-caliber rifle he received as a gift.

Kentucky State Police said the toddler was shot just after 1 p.m. CDT Tuesday in Cumberland County and was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.

Cumberland County Coroner Gary White told the Lexington Herald-Leader that the children’s mother was at home at the time.

White told the newspaper that the boy received the rifle made for youths last year and is used to shooting it. He said the gun was kept in a corner and the family didn’t realize a shell was left inside it.

White said the shooting will be ruled accidental.

Yes, you read that right. Someone gave this kid a real gun.

No criminal charges will be filed.

Now, I’m just a small town New England lawyer, and I don’t practice criminal law. That puts me at a double disadvantage, I guess, since we have this concept called “reason” up here, which makes it hard for me to understand the thought processes of the Southerner. But even in my ignorance of the criminal law, I know there’s a crime called “risk of injury to a minor”, and my reason tells me that there may be at least three people who have committed a crime here. That would be the idiot who gave the gun to this child and the parents (if they weren’t the gift givers) who allowed him to have it. For good measure we might add the corporation that manufacturers a “rifle made for youths”.

Postscript:  A later article at TPM states that charges are still being considered, but it looks unlikely that there will be any charges.

In light of this shooting, I got a kick out of this story from the rational state on New York. I mean, the guy probably deserves to be charged, but what a contrast.

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who dresses up as Cookie Monster in Times Square turned down a plea deal in a New York City case accusing him of shoving a 2-year-old after his mother refused to tip him.
Osvaldo Quiroz-Lopez is charged with endangering the welfare of a child.

Maybe he should have shot the kid instead.