Category: Best MLLG Series of All Time

Liberals Live In a Plastic Bubble

George Noga

Defining Liberalism – Part 3

By: George Noga – March 20, 2013
       Liberalism has much in common with the 1976 movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. The movie’s hero, Tod Lubitch, was born with an improperly functioning immune system; contact with unfiltered air could kill him. Hence, he lives inside a protective bubble insulated from the outside world. Similarly, liberals have a malfunctioning belief system that can’t handle contact with the truth; they live in intellectually isolated, segregated enclaves, i.e. inside a plastic bubble. Most live their entire lives without ever conversing with an evangelical Christian, conservative or tea party supporter. Note: Lyrics are from Eiffel 65: Living in a Bubble.
 
Living in a bubble baby
A bubble’s no reality
You’ve gotta have a look outside
Nothing in the bubble is the way it is supposed to be
And when it blows, you’ll hit the ground
 
      Liberals become more isolated than conservatives because of schools, government, media, the workplace, pop culture and even religion. They can’t relate to their fellow Americans in fly-over land. They believe to visit New Mexico you need a passport, visa, interpreter, inoculations, water purification pills and currency exchange. In contrast, conservatives, who also must endure all these liberal institutions, have an in-depth knowledge and understanding of liberalism. The following details how liberals construct their plastic bubble.
     Education: Most everyone attends K-12 public schools and colleges which are highly liberal government institutions. A liberal curriculum written by liberal professors is taught by liberal unionist teachers. Political correctness and liberal mythology permeate everything. They are taught that there are no universal values except that there are no values. It is like Lake Wobegone, without winners and losers and every child is above average.
     Media, Pop Culture and Religion: The ultra left wing media solidify liberal lies and myths. Businesses always are portrayed as despoiling villains while crusading journalists and government activists are saviors of the planet. Pop culture and the media are symbiotic. Even most (non evangelic) religions have mutated their beliefs to accommodate liberal statism.
The bubble doesn’t make you but it’s you that makes the bubble
And you better try to remember that it’s in your head
The bubble is a very tricky thing all full of hype and it is not easy
To try to see the way things are they’ll always be
 
       Government and Workplace: An ever bigger share of Americans work for government at all levels; it is now approaching 17% of all workers. Public sector workers now are heavily unionized and see their interests diametrically opposed to the private sector. Most everything government does promotes the liberal agenda. Political correctness, speech codes and sensitivity training now have hit the workplace resulting in a highly liberal work environment.
      The ubiquitous and powerful combination of schools, universities, media, pop culture, government, religion and the workplace, along with physical isolation, create the bubble. Once inside, escape is nigh impossible, nor do the denizens of the bubble even realize they are in a bubble. It is like they exist in a parallel universe. They do not know what they do not know. No one they meet and nothing they ever read or see forces them to confront their ignorance.
Living in a bubble baby
But it’s not the place to be
Cause it’s a place of lies and hype
Don’t believe the bubble cause it’s nothing  but a dream
And when it blows you’ll be alone
 
       On those rare occasions when liberals are confronted by truth, they don’t know how to react; they don’t realize how isolated they have become.  Just like Tod Lubitch, the boy in the plastic bubble, contact with unfiltered truth could kill their liberal beliefs. Consequently, their first instinct is to deny the truth; after all, nothing in their bubble has prepared them for it. Their next instinct is to call the speaker of truths racist, homophobic, sexist, ignorant and evil.
      Tod Lubitch finally left his bubble, but few liberals ever do. After all, life is more comfortable inside the  bubble than venturing out into the real world where things are not so simplistic and dogmatic and some thinking is required. Liberals don’t know what they don’t know. They prefer life inside the bubble even though that life is a lie because liberalism is a lie.

The Lies of Liberalism

George Noga

Defining Liberalism – Part 2

By: George Noga – March 8, 2013
 
        We previously defined liberalism as a lie based on obvious contradictions and disdain for facts; let’s get specific. Liberals can’t be honest about their beliefs and must cloak and misdirect them in various ways. They favor abortion including termination of babies born alive during a botched abortion, a/k/a infanticide. They are sanguine about 50 million legal US abortions since Roe v. Wade but oppose capital punishment of which there have been about 1,300 during the same time period. Instead of directly making the case for their beliefs, they adopt palliative terms such as pro choice and women’s health. Of course, they don’t really mean pro choice as they strenuously oppose a woman’s choice about where to send her kids to school, owning a gun, having medical insurance, joining a labor union and even what to eat and drink.
      They readily embrace absurd contradictions; it is okay for a very young girl to have an abortion without parental knowledge or consent but don’t protest if the same girl is arrested for selling lemonade in her own front yard. In the craziest contradiction of all, liberals advocate gender-selective abortion that results in culling girls from the population as is commonplace in China, India and now among certain ethnic groups in America. This is nothing more than asserting we must accept the systematic killing of young girls in order to protect their rights, i.e. we must destroy the village in order to save it. How’s that for modern feminist thinking?
“Liberals advocate gender-selective abortion, i.e. the systematic abortion of 
baby girls arguing they must abort the girls in order to protect their rights.”
      Liberals voluntarily do business with Apple, Disney, Wal-Mart and countless other companies; they love their quality, value and customer service. They also must interact with DMV, USPS and IRS. Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart had trucks loaded with food and water ready to help victims. Within 24 hours of Sandy, Verizon had 95% of its cell phone service running. Government did nothing. Yet liberals demonize business and prefer government; they believe corporations create oppression and governments create prosperity. They are ignorant of public choice economics that proves politicians’ and bureaucrats’ actions are based on self interest to maximize their own power and are opposed to the public interest.
      Following are a demi-dozen other liberal lies and the list (for space limitations) omits mention of energy, guns, climate change, public unions, the debt crisis and a vast array of other issues where liberal thought consists of legerdemain, prestidigitation and bald-faced lies.

  1. The US has the most progressive tax system in the world; the rich pay a higher share of taxes than in any other country and our corporate tax rate is the highest in the developed world. Nevertheless, liberals argue vociferously that the well off don’t pay their fair share.

  2. Liberals are for diversity in every possible way except for thought where they oppose it.

  3. Organic food fails every independent taste test versus conventionally grown food; isn’t healthier; requires more land; is worse for the environment; and costs more. Yet, it is a darling of liberals who oppose genetically modified food that actually is better for people.

  4. Every one of the top 100 measures of human and environmental well being is the best it has been in the past 50-75 years and is getting better all the time. In the face of all this, liberals continue to argue counter factually that things are bad and getting even worse.

  5. Our schools are terrible and getting worse. This has nothing to do with funding; it is the fault of educrats who regard it as a jobs program for adults and teachers unions that stand in the schoolhouse door blocking poor children from leaving. School choice is the civil rights issue of our age and liberals are on the wrong side despite their falsetto empathy.

  6. Photo IDs are needed to buy tobacco, alcohol, drive, cash checks, fly, open bank accounts and attend the Democratic convention. Liberals believe it is racist to require one to vote.
     In what may be the biggest whopper of them all, most liberals refuse to call themselves liberal, opting instead for non descriptive and misleading terms such as progressive, non-aligned  and independent. Not only is liberalism a lie, liberals lie about being liberal.
Coming next week: The final part in the series defining liberalism: Life in a Plastic Bubble.

Liberalism is a Lie

George Noga

Defining Liberalism – Part 1

By: George Noga – March 1, 2013
 
       This posting is the first of three that examines and defines modern liberalism. We mustn’t however allow ourselves to become confused by political labels such as conservative, fascist, communist, liberal, progressive, centrist, populist, democrat, republican, libertarian, socialist and anarchist. Labels notwithstanding, mankind always has been divided into two camps.
      Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land) wrote: “The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” Grover Norquist stated it simply: people divide politically between the “leave us alone” and the “takings” coalitions. Thomas Jefferson nailed it 250 years ago: “Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe . . . depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist. Call them  . . . by whatever name you please. they are the same parties and pursue the same object.”
       Modern liberalism wants people to be controlled, doesn’t want to leave them alone and wants to take from them. As Jefferson described, it fears and distrusts the people and desires to arrogate all power. Today’s liberals believe in the supremacy of the state and thereby reject the principles of America’s founding documents. They must control individuals in order to control society with the aim of bringing about their vision of Utopia – inevitably resulting in hell on earth as with all Utopias throughout human history. This leads to a soft tyranny (which we already have) and ultimately results in a hard tyranny, i.e. some form of totalitarianism.
     This is a good beginning point but there is much more to understanding and defining modern day liberalism. It is anti-empirical, inconsistent with objective reality and driven by emotion; it eschews logic, reason and persuasion in favor of compulsion. It is all about feeling and its credo is sentio ergo sum, i.e. I feel therefore I am. Thus, liberalism can be understood and defined as an emotional state characterized by obvious contradictions, disdain for facts, Utopian fantasies, obsessive desires to control and to take from others and antipathy for all who differ.
“Liberalism: An emotional state characterized by obvious contradictions, disdain for truth, Utopian fantasies, obsessive desires
to control and to take from others and antipathy for all who differ.”
      As accurate as the preceding definition is, it represents but a  way station in my grasp of liberalism. My thinking has since evolved to an even higher level and I have come to  understand the true nature, and hence the ultimate definition, of modern liberalism. Everything about it is based on lies. Liberalism has been mugged by reality, although none of its acolytes dares acknowledge it, preferring instead prevarication, deceit, ad hominem attacks and appeals to emotion. The true definition of liberalism thus requires only four words: Liberalism is a lie!
       In part two (next week) I describe in detail how and why liberalism is a lie. The third and final part (two weeks hence) describes how contemporary liberalism has become so insular that its adherents live lives that resemble that of the “Boy in the Plastic Bubble“. Stay tuned!

Guns and Schools Revisited

George Noga

Guns and Schools – Part 3

By: George Noga – January 17, 2013

      My recent miniseries on guns and schools was among the most forwarded of all time; reader response was incredibly favorable (thank you) and heavy. Given the strong reader interest, I am reprising the topic for what I trust is the final time. I covered much ground in the prior posts whereas in this one I hone in on the quintessence of the issue.
“The greatest cause of school killings is untreated mental illness
which exists for one reason, and one reason only: liberal dogma.”
      Far and away, the greatest causal factor in mass school killings is untreated severe mental illness  particularly of those prone to violence. Mental health experts estimate there are 70,000 such people in the USA today. This situation exists for one reason only: liberal dogma. Progressive groups, led by the ACLU, prevent states from passing laws that force treatment or, if necessary, institutionalize the severely mentally ill. Connecticut is among the very worst.
      It wasn’t always this way. Due to some bona fide concerns about abuses in mental facilities, but mainly due to a twisted and perverted notion about individual rights that became a canon of progressivism in the 1960s, mental hospitals were emptied. Since that time, beds in public psychiatric hospitals have shrunk by 90% despite an increase of 140 million people. Another byproduct of compliance with this liberal shibboleth is homelessness; a vast majority of which are comprised of such unfortunate souls; the same is largely true of prisons.
     Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, framed the issue in a compelling manner; he said, “Imagine the national outrage if people with Alzheimer’s were permitted to wander about the streets uncared for. But, by some perverse logic, it’s considered okay for schizophrenics.” Let’s sum up. The severely (potentially violent) mentally ill go untreated, wander among the general population, become homeless, populate our prisons and are condemned to tortured, miserable lives – all in obeisance to the liberal religion. Oh yes, and when there is a school shooting by one of these tortured souls, they blame it all on guns – also in obeisance to liberal religion.
“The severely mentally ill go untreated, wander the streets, become homeless, populate our prisons and are condemned to tortured, miserable lives – and all in obeisance to the liberal religion.”
      The second greatest causal factor in school killings is the copycat effect. Most people don’t understand just how real this phenomenon is. In fact, it is about as old as the media itself. In 1774 Goethe wrote his classic “The Sorrows of Young Werther” in which the hero committed suicide in a certain manner. Following publication, there was a spate of identical suicides throughout Europe – and this at a time of low population when few read and news was local and moved glacially. Today there are over 7 billion people (all interconnected), the media is global and pervasive and news moves at the speed of light. Oh yes, and when there is a copycat school killing, the media blame it all on guns – all the while flogging the story for all it’s worth.
      Yes, there also are some other causes (see the first two parts of this series), although guns is not one of them. Nevertheless, untreated severe mental illness and the copycat effect are, by a large measure, the two leading causes. Both result directly from the liberal religious creed and are propagated by liberal institutions. That explains why they reflexively point to guns as the cause – to shift opprobrium from themselves and onto a standard liberal demon – guns.
     All the while, they fully understand the flap over guns is an ephemeron and that there will be no changes to gun laws. One of the few, if any, bipartisan consensuses in Congress today is about guns – specifically opposing any new restrictions on firearms. The identical pattern repeats every time. First, there is a tragedy followed by demands for more gun laws. Second, after a predictable interval the clamor subsides, no new laws are passed and everything is exactly as it was before. So it is this time and so it will be again the next time.

Guns and Schools: 10 Keys to Prevention

George Noga
Guns and Schools – Part 2
By: George Noga – January 3, 2013
  
     My previous post corrected much of the pervasive media misinformation and bias about the Newtown tragedy. It also described the real causal factors for mass shootings in schools. This post presents a principled plan to prevent rampage school killings.
  1. Change the culture. We have lowered expectations and standards for personal and civil conduct – the vicious attacks, untruths and extreme negativity of the recent election campaign being a good example. Long established rules, limits and barriers have been destroyed. Daniel Henninger in the WSJ describes it as removing all the guardrails for society. There is a linkage between cultural disarray and personal disarray. When the entire spectrum of acceptable behavior shifts, those at society’s margins go off the tracks. Our intellectual, political, religious, media and cultural elites need to rediscover self control. This will take time and won’t solve 100% of the problem, but it is a needed start.

  2. Reduce the copycat effect. The copycat effect is real and proven. This is where the media need to exercise self restraint. No one advocates legal restrictions on the press, but a voluntary industry wide code of conduct would be a good start. Before this can happen the media must acknowledge its culpability in creating future horrors. Right now the media is too busy flogging the story for all it’s worth and deflecting blame onto the NRA.
  3. Treat and/or institutionalize the violently mentally ill. The statistics are too numerous to list but they all prove most rampage type attacks are perpetrated by the mentally ill. The heart of the problem is the existence of numerous people with severe mental disorders who are not being treated – and under existing law cannot be forced to accept treatment. In the 10 worst mass US killings, the majority were by people with untreated schizophrenia. Instead of changing gun laws, the imperative is to change laws pertaining to mental illness. That will do more than anything else to prevent future tragedies.
  4. Eliminate (fake) gun free zones. A sign proclaiming a gun free zone is a welcome mat for rampage killers. Gun free zones such as at airports are real as they are backed by  metal detectors and a police presence. However, most gun free zones are merely notional and work only to increase the danger to those within the zone. It has been proven ad nauseum that more guns equate to less crime. Numerous mass killings have been stopped (see Part 1) by citizens with legal guns. Over 2,500,000 times each year legal guns prevent or stop crimes. The Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990 needs to be repealed.
  5. Understand that guns are not the issue. As I wrote last week, neither of the two deadliest school attacks in America involved guns. On the very same day as the Newtown tragedy, there was a mass school killing in China where 22 children were stabbed. Other mass school killings have involved dynamite, cars and fire. The sooner we all disabuse ourselves that guns are the culprit, the sooner we can begin to focus on the real causes.
  6. Learn from business. Mass killings in the workplace are down nearly 70% in the past 20 years and without any changes to gun laws. Of 20 mass shootings this year, only 1 involved businesses which have become more adept at understanding personality and risk. Most businesses use the run-hide-fight paradigm; they don’t ignore threats; they have violence prevention programs and they practice deterrence. They change the calculus in a potential killer’s mind that he will be able to control the situation until the SWAT team arrives. And yes, this calculus involves guns; there are few, if any, fake gun free zones in businesses.This approach is proven to work and it is idiotic to ignore it.
  7. Enact universal school choice. School deaths may be caused by individual monsters but they are abetted by a collective monster – government. Families are forced to send their children to specific schools where it is impossible (under existing law) for anyone to defend them. Some countries (Israel included) promote guns in schools and this has saved lives. If every family had choice, they could decide for themselves which school to send their children for the best education and also the best protection. I wonder how many liberals would choose to send their children to so-called gun free schools.
  8. Understand 100% protection is not attainable. Despite the best preventative measures, we cannot eliminate all school murders. Even if all the measures described herein were in place, some incidents would happen. We could use these to learn and to further enhance preventative measures. These should not be occasions for knee-jerk attacks on guns.
  9. Seek real solutions not political solutions. It is abundantly clear that viable solutions exist to vastly reduce school violence. We must resist the urge to adopt quick, feel-good political faux fixes which may satisfy for a short time but will do nothing to solve the problem. Passing a law can be quick and easy but real solutions take time and effort to bear results. We may need to shed some old shibboleths about guns in the process.
  10. Government is part of the problem not the solution. Government doesn’t do anything well except perhaps the military. Theoretically, it may be helpful to tweak gun laws to keep guns from the untreated mentally ill. I don’t advocate this however because government would botch mental illness the same way it botches everything else. Do you really want the same folks as at the DMV in charge of deciding who is too ill for guns? The solution to preventing school violence lies in more liberty and less government.
“It is not possible for any scient person to read this and continue to believe more gun laws are the answer. Yet that is all we are hearing.” 
     It should not be possible for any scient person to read this and continue to believe more gun laws are the answer – or even a tiny part of the answer. Yet that is all we are hearing. That is why I interrupted my holiday torpor to write these posts. We can vastly reduce school violence but only if we first abandon myths about guns and the lust for a quick political solution.
     Finally, I cannot write about guns in America without pointing out that our constitutional right to keep and bear arms is not primarily about hunting, target shooting, sport or even self defense. Our founders considered gun ownership, first and foremost, a political right and it always must be understood in that context.

Guns and Schools: Plain Truths

George Noga
Guns and Schools – Part 1
By: George Noga – December 27, 2012
  
        The staccato drumbeat of claptrap and counterfactual blathering by the brain-dead state sycophant media and their progressive camp followers roused me from my holiday torpor. It impelled me to write this unplanned 2-part posting. First, an elegiac:  my thoughts, prayers and condolences go out to all the victims and their families and friends. Although predictable, it nevertheless saddens me that so many are so quick to politicize every gun related tragedy by advancing their anti gun political agenda.
“The two worst school mass murders in America didn’t involve guns.”
     This first of two postings is a presentation of facts and perspective which thus far has been largely absent from the pubic debate. In part 2 (next week) I advance a principled approach for the future to address guns and schools including measures for prevention.
Correcting Media Errors and Bias
       It is falsely asserted Sandy Hook was the worst school killing in America, or at least second to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Agitprops for gun control conveniently forget about the deadliest school mass murder in 1927 Bath, Michigan in which 44 were killed. They forget because guns were nowhere present; the perpetrator used dynamite. Moreover, 500 pounds was found unexploded; had it detonated, the death toll would have been far, far worse.
       Nor does anyone mention what arguably is the second worst school related mass murder in America, i.e. the Janet Reno approved attack by agents of the federal government in Waco, Texas in 1993. In that attack (spearheaded by tanks for crying out loud) 28 school children and 55 adults were killed. Again, guns did not play a role as the casualties resulted from fire.
“The guns used in Newtown were not assault rifles.”
      The litany of media misinformation continues. For starters, there is no such thing as an“assault rifle“; that term was created from whole cloth in the 1990s by gun control advocates to frighten the low information crowd. Connecticut has an assault rifle ban and the guns used in Newtown were legal and would have been so even if the federal ban were still in place.
       Firearms are used 2,500,000 times a year in the USA to prevent or to stop crimes; this fact is never reported because the number of lives saved often is indeterminable. Many mass murders have been prevented by citizens with legal guns; these include Shoney’s in Anniston, Alabama 1991, Pearl, Mississippi High School 1997, Edinboro, Pennsylvania school 1998, New Life Church in Colorado 2007 and just a few weeks ago at the Clackamas Mall in Oregon.
       The most disgraceful media coverage was the 2002 shootings at Appalachian State in which 3 students retrieved legal guns from their cars to stop the killer. Over 400 media outlets covered the story, all knowing the role guns played in stopping the tragedy. Yet 99% failed to mention  that guns stopped the killing; instead, they used terms such astackled and subdued.
The Real Causal Factors
      Undeniably there is a copycat effect that is caused or exacerbated by the media; the very same folks who want you to believe the cause is guns are themselves an integral part of the chain of causation. This is well documented and explained in the 2004 book “How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines“. Media coverage  is much more pervasive today than in the past because of the ubiquitous, 24/7 in-your-face news cycle. And don’t expect any mea culpas from the media; they are too busy flogging the story.
      Another real casual factor is the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill – including those who are violent. Recall this was a liberal shibboleth from the 1960s and 1970s. In earlier times the violently mentally ill would have been in a state institution. The New York Times(ugh) did a study that found 47% of “rampage murderers” were mentally ill. Pursuant to the liberal diktat to release all the mentally ill, hospital beds for mental patients have plunged to the level of 1850 – over 160 years ago. Don’t waste your time waiting for regrets from liberals; they are too busy deflecting the blame from their failed policies; it’s not their fault; they meant well.
“If your home had a ‘gun free’ sign, would you be more or less safe?”
      Yet another real cause is ersatz gun-free zones; it is no coincidence that most of the recent mass killings have taken place in schools, movie theaters and shopping malls, all make-believe gun free zones. A sign proclaiming a gun free zone is like a welcome mat for perpetrators. If you put a “Gun Free Home” sign outside your house, do you believe you would be more safe or less safe? Memo to progressives: This is not a trick question. People who engage in mass killings are not hardened criminals, they are weaklings and cowards who dissemble when an armed citizen materializes. At the Clackamas Mall, the killer, who just had begun his rampage, was confronted by a citizen carrying a legal handgun; His next shot was to kill himself.
       Surprise! Government is a cause, the same government that gives families no choices about where to send their children to school and then dictates gun free zones making it impossible for anyone to defend them. John Lott in his books “More Guns, Less Crime” and “The Bias Against Guns” proves to any reasonable reader the efficacy of an armed population. States that adopted right-to-carry laws experienced a 78% drop in deaths from rampage attacks.
      Finally, the intellectual climate is to blame including university professors, journalists and politicians who evangelize a new culture where the long established rules of civil conduct no longer apply. We have drastically lowered the barriers on acceptable political and personal conduct. The most vulnerable and marginalized among us lose all self restraint. If we truly want society to have no restraints then we must be prepared to reap the whirlwind.
“Workplace shootings are down 70%; prevention is possible.”
       Next week in Part 2 I present a fact-based and principled plan to prevent future mass shootings at schools. Preview: workplace shootings are down by about 70% in the past 20 years and without any added gun regulations. This occurred because businesses implemented real world solutions instead of phony political solutions. Stay tuned.

Intelligence (IQ) and Public Policy

George Noga

Mokita – Something we all Know but Won’t Discuss

IQ – Intelligence Part 2

By: George Noga – June 23, 2012
  
        This is the second of two posts dealing with IQ; the first is on our website www.mllg.us; it revealed the radically transformed role of IQ in our private lives. This post undauntedly goes where few have gone before, the role of IQ in public policy. In Papua New Guinea their Kivila language has a word, Mokita, which describes a truth we all know but agree not to talk about. So it is with IQ.
“A mokita is a truth we all know but agree not to talk about.”
     So why does MLLG go there now; why not leave well enough alone? The US public policy debate has become atrophied and twisted by myth and political correctness. Many of our biggest social and economic problems (education, poverty, homelessness, et seq.) are much more accurately defined and explained by IQ than by any other cause. Before we can begin to solve such problems, we must understand them and be willing to look for solutions where the data lead. What follows is a fact-based and principled look at IQ and public policy in America.
Psychometrics of IQ in America
     We are a nation of 310 million; that means about 2.5%, or 8 million of us, have IQ below 70 which is two standard deviations (“SD”) below the norm. Another 30 million have IQ between 70 and 80. An IQ below 70 means significant limitations in two or more areas and de facto retardation. IQ between 70 and 80 means trouble with everyday demands such as filling out routine forms; such people have borderline retardation and limited trainability. Those 40 million Americans with IQ of 80 or less are the focus of public policy questions in this post.
The Role of IQ in Public Policy
     Jumping straightaway to the ineluctable point, IQ should inform our public policies where applicable. Today we not only ignore IQ, we are loath even to talk about it and quick to castigate the few intrepid souls who dare raise the issue. Every measure of social pathology is strongly correlated with low IQ. Poverty, unemployment, welfare, poor parenting, crime, injury, delinquency, drug abuse, illegitimacy, child neglect and even incivility are inexorably and directly linked. The converse is true of those with high IQ; they manifest virtually no social pathologies including every one of the aforementioned listedsupra. Let’s touch briefly on just three areas where policy should be informed by IQ: poverty, education and homelessness. Of course, criminal justice, the drug war and many other areas of public policy also are impacted.
“Poverty, unemployment, welfare, bad parenting, homelessness, crime, injury, delinquency, drug abuse, illegitimacy, child neglect, incivility and all other social pathologies are strongly correlated with low IQ.”
     Poverty: The true level of poverty in America, as defined by those who experience material hardship, i.e. lack the resources to meet basic needs for healthy living including food, shelter, clothing and medical care, is only 2% to 3% of the population. Of the people government classifies as being in poverty, two-thirds (67%) by their own reports suffer no material hardships; in addition, another 17% are illegal aliens. When we subtract those two cohorts, the computed result is eight million people living legally in America who suffer material hardships. These eight million people who experience material hardships are substantially the same eight million cohort with IQ below 70. It seems clear enough; poverty at its root is not primarily an economic or social problem, it is one of low IQ that demands entirely different solutions.
     Education: What if the vast majority of children in the very worst schools had sub 70 (or sub 80) IQ? There is  no amount of spending that could make a difference. Contrary to public perception, Head Start is a failure; it achieves only short-term gains, all of which disappear by third grade. What is bien entendu is no way ever has been demonstrated permanently to raise IQ. Programs like Head Start only raise performance up to the level of a student’s inherent capability as circumscribed by IQ. Throwing unlimited money at schools with low IQ students is ineffective. Remember, these are kids who are either retarded or have difficulty filling out a form. If we honestly recognized the situation, we could craft better approaches. We are not doing justice to the very kids we are trying to help and all because we find truth uncomfortable.
     Homelessness: This is open and shut; today no one in America is homeless absent social pathologies. That explains why the media go into a frenzy whenever they think they find a mainstream family in that circumstance. Because both homelessness and low IQ involve pathologies, it seems clear enough that homelessness results from low IQ; government agencies now understand this but aren’t willing to extend this knowledge to poverty and education.
Implications and Solutions – Private and Public
     Let’s distinguish between private and public behavior. Individuals (liberal and conservative) readily understand the increasing role of IQ in achieving success. People want smart kids and make their marriage and parenting decisions accordingly. The market value of IQ is soaring and differences between elites and others are turning into a chasm. Something must be done about this cavernous cognitive and cultural divide before we soon inhabit a brave new world in which vastly outnumbered Alphas become isolated in communities surrounded by razor wire to protect against the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons bent on their destruction. It already is happening in much of the world and the trend is well underway in the USA.
“We must not shirk from the truth even when it is radioactive.”
    In the public sphere, we must change the culture to value truth above all else and not to shirk when it is uncomfortable – even radioactive. None of our worst problems will be solved with myths and political correctness. We must craft approaches and solutions to real problems based on real causes. We can improve failing schools, poverty and other problems only if and when we are honest. Failure to bridge this cognitive/cultural chasm will come at a steep price indeed.
“Everyone needs a valued place in society and to live on a human scale in a community without complex rules in a culture emphasizing virtue.”
    There are other things government and society can do to shrink the cognitive-cultural divide and to permit everyone a valued place in America; these actions include:
  1. Restore and emphasize local neighborhoods and communities;
  2. Vastly reduce and simplify laws, rules and regulations to make it easy for people to live;
  3. Make it easier to earn a living;
  4. Facilitate living a virtuous life including restoration of marriage and, above all;
  5. Everyone, regardless of cognitive ability, should have a valued place in society.
    Mokita harms those who practice it because they fundamentally are dishonest; the greatest toll however is on those we purport to shield via vapid political correctness. Of course, all the while we engage in mokita publicly, we privately practice selective marriage and breeding. After all, we certainly don’t want political correctness to interfere with our own family, do we?
Credits and source notes: Charles Murray’s books “The Bell Curve” and “Coming Apart” were the source of ideas and data about the role of intelligence as was “The Global Bell Curve” by Richard Lynn. In addition, I read numerous scholarly journal articles in 2008-09 while researching a chapter about IQ for a book on family history.

Brave New World Arrives 500 Years Early

George Noga

The Astonishing Role of IQ in 21st Century America

IQ – Intelligence Part 1
By: George Noga – June 15, 2012

     This is the first of two posts about the shocking role of intelligence (as in IQ) in contemporary life; this installment deals with its transformational effect on our private lives; the second part addresses a radioactive issue: IQ and public policy. A sea change, mostly over the past half century, has taken place off all radar screens. It already exerts a profound effect on our lives and, when it reaches its culmination later this century, will forever change life on Earth as we know it.

“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t.”

     Brave New World was taken from Shakespeare; in The Tempest when Miranda, who was raised on an isolated island, saw other people for the first time, she exclaimed the above words. Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel is set in the year 2540; what he warned about is happening 500 years early. The difference is instead of the World State controlling children’s IQs in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, we are doing it voluntarily but every bit as thoroughly.

Six Fundamental Truths About IQ

     We have allowed myth and political correctness to creep into our views about IQ, mainly because the truth makes many uncomfortable. Liberals in particular get apoplectic whenever hereditary differences are highlighted, such as when they learn little girls really do like to play with dolls and little boys with guns. The following axioms are accepted virtually unanimously by professionals and academics who study such things, albeit a few won’t say so publicly.

  1. There is such a thing as general level of intelligence on which human beings differ;
  2. All academic and achievement standardized tests measure this factor to some extent; tests expressly designed to measure cognitive ability (IQ) do it most accurately;
  3. IQ scores match what people mean when they use terms like smart and intelligent;
  4. Scores that measure IQ are stable throughout life although not perfectly so;
  5. Properly designed and administered IQ tests are not biased against any group; and,
  6. Cognitive ability is substantially heritable, no less than 40% and no more than 80%.

Psychometrics in the Twenty-First Century

     Around the middle of the last century the sea change began to be wrought. In earlier times high intelligence was nearly randomly and broadly distributed throughout society. A laborer, farmer or plumber was just as likely to have high IQ as anyone. Moreover, IQ rarely entered into the calculus of marriage. Everything changed beginning circa 1950; to wit:

  • High IQ students attending college soared from a low percentage to about 90% today of those who are in the top quartile. Among the top few centiles, the share is nearly 100%.
  • Elite colleges were transformed. In 1950 Harvard was easy to get into; by 1960 the average 1952 freshman would be in the bottom 10%. Today they wouldn’t even apply.
  • Bright kids from every place and background were identified and sorted. Today, any high performing kid could go to college and, if needed, without having to pay.
  • The entire non college population has been drained of the brightest kids and now has a markedly lower IQ than mere decades ago.

“The market value of IQ is soaring and the income/wealth gap
between the elite and others is widening at an alarming rate.”

  • Educational partitioning has been followed by occupational selection. High performers are concentrated in certain occupations specifically screened for that purpose. High IQ professions now take 5 times more of the elite than 20 years ago.
  • Cognitive ability and job ability are conjoined. The market value of IQ is soaring and the income/wealth gap between high performers and others is widening at an alarming rate.
  • Now we see physical segregation in addition to that in academia and the workplace.
  • The final step, selective marriage based on IQ, already is well established. Marriage and breeding between elites and others is rare even today as with Huxley’s Alphas and others. To put it bluntly, people want smart kids who can thrive in the world of the future.
  • This is happening all over the world and the trend is accelerating rapidly.

What Does This Mean For Our Future?

     Brave New World is arriving 500 years early. What kind of dystopian world will our children and grandchildren inhabit? Cognitive elites already matriculate in different schools, work in different jobs and workplaces, earn vastly more income, worship differently, shop differently, live in different cities and neighborhoods and send their kids to different schools. They intermarry and have kids who are even more elite. Now we are getting third generation elites for whom even their grandparents can’t supply them with insights into the life of ordinary Americans. But wait; it gets even worse.

“The greatest source of inequality in America today
is not economic – it is cognitive and cultural.”

   Elites don’t go to the same movies, watch the same TV shows, eat at the same restaurants, buy the same automobiles and vacation in the same places. They don’t look the same due to different notions about diet, exercise, body fat, cosmetic surgery, tattoos and piercings. They even have longer life spans. They raise their children differently, are indifferent to professional sports teams, eschew the military, disdain hunting and fishing, have different politics and well, you get the idea. Most will go through their entire life without ever talking with an Evangelical Christian, having a friend without a college degree or even knowing someone with a below average IQ. For crying out loud, they even eat breakfast (yogurt and muesli) differently.

     I don’t pretend to know how all this will end, except that it cannot be good. We are nearing the point where today’s cognitive elite Alpha pluses and Alphas are about as different from today’s Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons as in Huxley’s Brave New World. The main take away point for readers is to understand the radically transformed role IQ plays in the modern world and that the trend will become more and more pronounced over time. It explains a great many things no one likes to talk about and should influence our future public policies.

Next up: The role of IQ in public policy. Danger: Radioactive!

Credits and source notes: Charles Murray’s books “The Bell Curve” and “Coming Apart” were the source of ideas and data about the role of intelligence as was “The Global Bell Curve” by Richard Lynn. In addition, I read numerous scholarly journal articles in 2008-09 in connection with writing a chapter about IQ for a family history.