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Human Events, Jul 15, 2002
Enforce Border Security With Military Troops
When I was in the US Army Reserves, my battalion actually deployed to Hollimon AFB (near Alamogordo, N.M.). Our mission was to set up Ground Surveillance Radar (GSR) equipment to monitor the empty, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands for illegal aliens and drug smugglers. The operation was called Joint Task Force 6. JTF6 came to end when a storm of negative publicity erupted after a US Marine fired at and killed a young man (whose nationality I cannot recall). It should be noted that the marine was acquitted of murder since the victim had fired at the marine first.
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I applaud the recommendation for deploying troops to the border ["Put U.S. Troops on U.S. Borders," HUMAN EVENTS, June 24, page 11. However, prior to such a deployment, I would strongly urge Congress to mandate special "civil affairs" training for the soldiers. I would also confine the deployment to military police troops. Additionally, if possible I would outfit these border guards in uniforms other than the well-recognized camouflage fatigues, since the mere site of soldiers with helmets, flak vests and rifles could add fuel to already existing Mexican anti-Americanism.
-Brad O'Brien
Ft. Sam Houston, Tex.
Liberal's IQ Excuse To Stop Executions
Anne Coulter hit a home run ["Murdering the Bell Curve," HUMAN EVENTS, July 1, page 6] in pointing out the contradiction between liberal reliance on IQ when inventing a new constitutional right to free murderers from death row; and liberal rejection of IQ when it might be used to favor competence elsewhere, for example, employment.
-Barry Freedman
Los Angeles, Calif.
Does Ann Coulter really believe the 1994 book by Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein, The Bell Curve, has survived serious scientific scrutiny? To sample batches of people's IQ's by skin color and then assert that yellow people have higher IQ's than whites who have higher IQ's than blacks is meaningless. I do not have to do such sampling to determine these results. But Murray & Herrnstein concluded that to a degree, their "scientific" findings demonstrate that a human being's intellectual potential at birth is influenced by his/her skin color.
As Gregg Easterbrook noted in his scathing review of their book in the December 1994 Washington Monthly, the authors may not be "racist" per se, but they are "wrong-headed." But Easterbrook was being kind, for racist they are in the strictest sense. I've called them "benevolent racists," in that they are not suggesting blacks are "subhuman," as the term was applied in the Third Reich by the Master Race.
Murray was a sociologist and Herrnstein was a psychologist. Easterbrook quoted Evan Balaban, a former professor of evolutionary science at Harvard: "The people who say intelligence is genetic are the ones with no training in genetics." I remember seeing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in praise of the Bell Curve, signed by more than 200 professors of top-flight schools. There was no mention of their disciplines. I called Bob Bartley, editor of the Journal, and asked if he would mind checking. "Sure enough," he reported back, "They are all social scientists!"
-Jude Wanniski
Morristown, N.J.
Editor's Reply: Ann Coulter's column inadvertently cited the publication date of The Bell Curve as 1996. It was initially published by The Free Press in the fall of 1994 and released as a Touchstone paperback in early 1996.
Mr. Wanniski fails to appreciate the irony of his own claims-that popular misconceptions about the credibility of The Bell Curve's findings only makes Ann Coulter's points more salient. Aside from failing to notice this paradox, several of Wanniski's points reflect widespread fallacies about Herrnstein and Murray's book.
First, in establishing the criteria for assessing the scientific validity of The Bell Curve, Wanniski relies upon the judgment of a journalist (Gregg Easterbrook), who selectively cites the views of one scientist, rather than a convergence of scientific analysis. A geo-physicist who argues that the earth really is flat doesn't make the claim true.
Second, the Dec. 13, 1994, op/ed that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," was signed by 52 experts and not as-Wanniski claims by "more than 200." Although most were "social scientists," Wanniski's point-that all of the signers, confirmed by Bob Bartley, were social scientists-is simply inaccurate. Vincent Sarich, a physical anthropologist at the University of California (Berkeley), and Garrett Hardin, a prominent biologist who has written several biology textbooks, signed and endorsed the statement.
Third, contrary to Wanniski's innuendo that those who make hereditarian claims about intelligence have "no training in genetics," a number of eminent geneticists and biologists have asserted the case for heritable differences of intelligence, including: Cyril Darlington, Sheridan Professor of Botany at Oxford University, John R. Baker, zoologist and Reader in Cytology at Oxford, Harvard geneticist Edward M. East, David C. Rife, a former Fulbright Scholar and geneticist at Ohio State University, F.A. E. Crew of Edinburgh University, and Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson.
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Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
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- More »