Wednesday, 31st October 2007
5:38pm
It is now the case that if you sit on an adoption panel in Britain, you may no longer act in the best interests of children by insisting upon placing them for adoption with a mother and a father; nor may you freely exercise your conscientious refusal to place them in a household where you suspect their interests might be harmed. Today, the Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled against Andrew McClintock, a Justice of the Peace and a member of an adoption panel. He had asked to be relieved of the duty to hear cases which might raise the possibility of children being handed to same-sex couples for adoption. This was because
...he considered that there was insufficient evidence that this was in the child’s best interests and he felt that children should not be treated like guinea pigs in the name of politically correct legislation.
Since the Department of Constitutional Affairs refused to allow him exercise this conscientious objection, McClintock had no option but to resign from the adoption panel. As he is a Christian, he believed that this constituted discrimination and harassment. The Tribunal ruled not only that this was not the case, since McClintock had not indicated that his objections were rooted in any religious or philosophical belief, but that the DCA
was justified in requiring him to carry out the full duties of the office in accordance with his judicial oath.
But that oath requires those who swear it to
‘…do right to all manner of People, after the laws and usage of this realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.’
McClintock believed that he would not be doing right to children by placing them for adoption in same-sex households. He argued: ‘It is possible to argue that a child is likely to thrive in same-sex households. What is much more difficult to argue, however, is that, in the present state of knowledge, such a placement is anything other than experimental. There is no quantity of research that can say “this arrangement has been tried, and found to prepare the child for adulthood as well as an upbringing in a household that is single parent or traditionally heterosexual.” Accordingly, and irrespective of our views of the arrangement in itself, the question arises: Is not a placement of that kind an experiment in social science? Is it possible to accept the statutory obligation to remove a child from one kind of harm, and then to place that child where the emotional atmosphere has unproven consequences and where the risk of being teased at school (for having two daddies) could easily be harmful? …’
The Appeal Tribunal rejected this argument on the grounds that McClintock had brought his case
on the basis of the matter which concerned him being under-researched.
This is disingenuous to a high degree. The overwhelming weight of evidence is that children do best if they are brought up by their mother and father. The reason adopted children do so well is that this situation as replicated as closely as possible. As far as I know, there are no reliable studies of same–sex adoptions, for the obvious reason that they are such a new phenomenon. There is a small body of research into same-sex parenting, although most of this is into lesbian households with virtually no studies of parenting by two gay men. This data, inadequate as it is, has nevertheless raised some concerns about the interests of children in such households.
So McClintock was absolutely right to characterise same-sex adoption placements as a social experiment, with the most vulnerable of children used as guinea-pigs. It is now clear that the DCA is not only happy for the most vulnerable of children to be used in this way – it insists upon it. Anyone who objects cannot serve on adoption panels. There is thus no possibility whatever of conscientious objection.
The original tribunal said in its judgment:
‘…To have allowed the Appellant, or anyone else for that matter, to opt out cases where they disapproved or were less than enamoured with the law because of their views on a particular matter or because their conscience would not allow them to consider doing something, would have been abdication of the responsibilities of those whose task it is to uphold the administration of justice in this country. Even if a Judge personally has particular views on any subject, he or she must put those views to the back his or her mind when applying the law of the land impartially as their judicial oaths of office require them to do. It is the only way the public can place any trust in the law. To allow Judges with a particular point of view the ability to avoid cases which come before them because they feel it will likely cause them embarrassment or difficulty could, apart from anything else, impose greater burdens on others or lead to a situation whereby another pool of Judges with views in another direction might have to sit and adjudicate on such cases. The Respondent’s stance was therefore wholly proportionate and wholly justified and, in our view, wholly necessary. In a country where there is such a diverse range of opinions and beliefs held and expounded by people from many religions and walks of life, it would be invidious were judges to pick and choose which cases they were prepared to sit on. It would undermine the basis of our judicial system, one that ‘warts and all’ has served people well for a very long time.’
The tribunal had a short memory. During the miners’ strike in 1984 there were magistrates who were allowed to ‘recuse’ themselves from hearing public order cases against striking miners on the grounds that they were members of the miners’ union and therefore sympathetic to their cause. And in any event, insisting that the law must be applied regardless ignores the fact that such a law may be in conflict with another law. For example, the Children Act enjoins public authorities to act in the best interests of the child. That is exactly what McClintock thought he was doing.
This is but another example of how the law is being used as a wrecking ball against mainstream western moral values and the interests of the vulnerable. A law passed ostensibly to eradicate prejudice and discrimination actually discriminates instead against those who want to protect the interests of the vulnerable and defend mainstream social mores. This is not an expansion of freedom but its eclipse.
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Thursday, 25th October 2007
10:39pm
At least two of our MPs get it. Paul Goodman and Michael Gove have put down this early-day motion in the House of Commons:
This House, recognising that freedom of speech within the law and freedom from violence and intimidation are indispensable preconditions of a free society, deeply regrets the decision of the Dutch Parliament and Government to withdraw protection abroad from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the author, film-maker and former politician, and urges both bodies to reverse this decision forthwith.
As I have said here before, it is not just revolting that Hirsi Ali has been effectively thrown to the Islamist wolves by a west that she has tried to warn about the danger that it faces, but the abandonment of this brave woman sends a catastrophic signal of the west’s weakness to the enemy at its gates. It is shocking that more MPs have not rallied to her cause. Goodman and Gove’s gesture is as conspicuous for its isolation as for its decency.
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9:12pm
I am not party to what actually provoked the meltdown at Farringdon Road, home of the Guardian and its stablemate the Observer and where the editor of the Observer Roger Alton has suddenly resigned. My own paper, the Daily Mail, carried an account today of what led up to this; it seems it was a combination of vicious ideological warfare and poisonous personal jealousy. Nothing new there, then, at Guardian Newspapers (where I myself worked, on both titles, for two decades). Alton is a brilliant and inspired editor who is almost universally admired for his creativity and independence of spirit which have given the Observer a brio and readability that the Guardian so conspicuously lacks – and which is reflected in the fact that the Observer’s readership has risen while the Guardian’s has declined, which is said to be at the heart of Alton’s difficulty. His brilliance showed up the Guardian’s failure. So he had to go.
One thing in particular struck me from the account of the Farringdon fratricide -- the apparently seismic rupture caused by the fact that two Observer journalists, Nick Cohen and Andrew Anthony, have made a very public personal political journey away from the life-denying orthodoxy of the left, particularly over the Iraq war and associated anti-American hysteria. What leapt out at me was that some Guardianistas believe as a result that that the Observer
..has been hijacked by rightwing war-mongering neo-cons.
There was a time when the left saw itself as in the very front line of the fight against fascism. No longer. Now it vilifies the defence of liberty and liberal values as ‘warmongering’. And because fighting Islamic fascism is not a left-wing position, ergo to the Manicheans of the left it must be right-wing. Of course, the irony that they fail to recognise is that many on the right of British politics (who make a fetish of stability, even where it entrenches a death-dealing tyranny that threatens all of us, and who think that Abroad is a terrifying place full of madmen who will leave us alone as long as we are nice to them) are equally consumed by exactly the same visceral hatred of America and implacable opposition to the Iraq war. Although their starting point is very different from the left, there isn’t a cigarette paper to slide between the views of both camps on these issues. But the left are incapable of grasping such nuances and acknowledging their strange bedfellows because, as can be seen from their treatment of Cohen, Anthony and Alton, only one point of view is permitted on the left -- and those who depart from it by definition become numbered automatically among the damned. Or neo-cons, as they are better known.
There is however a further point. The reason Cohen and Anthony have provoked such apoplexy is because they are apostates of a certain kind. I know this because, despite differences between us, I too have been there. It is not that they were men of the left and have now crossed the political floor to become conservatives. If that were the case, there would not be this fury. No, their crime is that they have not crossed the political floor. They remain radicals, committed to fighting fascism and injustice. They remain apostles of the Enlightenment, committed to reason over obscurantism. And they are saying that their erstwhile colleagues on the left have betrayed all of this, that they have betrayed their own radicalism; and instead they have sided with those who wish to destroy the civilisation of the Enlightenment, with those who want to perpetuate tyranny rather than free the enslaved, and with those who want to run up the white flag to those who are laying siege to the values of which the left so noisily proclaim that they are the champions and guardians.
That is why they will never be forgiven. It’s because the left know that they are right about the bankruptcy of the left's own position. And so they have to be silenced.
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8:57pm
Last night’s BBC Radio Four
Moral Maze, on which I am a panellist, discussed in the wake of the James Watson controversy whether it is ever right for science to censor itself.
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Wednesday, 24th October 2007
1:31pm
The former Northern Ireland First Minister, Lord Trimble, has produced today an important and timely pamphlet which shreds the glib analogy by which Northern Ireland’s ‘peace process’ is promoted as the template for ending the Israel/Arab impasse. The argument is that, just as Northern Ireland was pacified by the fact that British government suddenly changed tack and started talking to the IRA without preconditions, so the Israel/Arab conflict will only end if Hamas are brought into dialogue and negotiations. A variety of individuals and organisations in Britain, the US and elsewhere are spouting this ahistorical and ignorant view which has gained significant and alarming traction in the upper reaches of the British establishment. I am glad to see that in his pamphlet, Lord Trimble specifically singles out by name the ‘conflict resolution’ groups Conflicts Forum and Forward Thinking, as well as Peter Hain, Daniel Levy and Michael Ancram, who are busy promoting this view, every part of which is false. It is a lobby that I have previously written about here, here, here, here and here.
Much of the Trimble document is an account of the Northern Ireland peace process itself, and not everyone will agree with the conclusions he draws about whether it has actually left the province in the gratifyingly satisfactory state that public opinion generally deems it to be. Whatever one thinks about Northern Ireland, however, the points Trimble makes to show that the analogy with the Middle East are wholly false are entirely sound.
Broadly, there are two key differences. The first is that, whether or not people disagreed with the aim of a united Ireland and abhorred the terrorism used to achieve it, the goal itself was perfectly respectable, unlike the goal of Hamas to eradicate Israel and Islamise the region (I would add that Fatah shares the former aim). Much more important, however, is that that far from the Brits suddenly reaching out to the IRA, it was the IRA that suddenly told the British government ‘the war is over’ and asked to be brought into the political process. And that was because, as Trimble says, it had been beaten into a permanent stalemate. That is entirely different from talking to Hamas which is still attacking Israel through rocket attacks and suicide bomb attempts. In fact, as Trimble says, the British government did talk to the IRA in 1972 when it was still very much at war. The result was disastrous and merely intensified the IRA’s belief that everything was up for grabs.
As Trimble says, it is supreme folly to imagine that peace follows from talking to ‘biddable extremists’, and not just across the Irish sea or in the Middle East.
In Northern Ireland, this has helped to create an account of the past as Irish republicans would have it. The British Government, notwithstanding its achievements in Northern Ireland, has been remarkably acquiescent in this process; indeed, at times it has even encouraged it. In this regard, it is striking that the temptation to ‘buy off’ the loudest and most bombastic is also in evidence in the Government’s approach to the Muslim community in the United Kingdom. After 9/11, as Martin Bright has shown, the Government embarked on an ‘engagement’ with the British/Muslim community that rested on choosing interlocutors who were not genuine moderates but radicals, often of foreign origin. In an attempt to achieve the quiet life, it has made short-term and unsustainable deals, undermining more moderate partners on whom it must rely in the long term.
Absolutely. Appeasement has undermined relative moderates in Northern Ireland, in the Middle East and in Britain and has only served to strengthen and embolden the enemies of freedom and democracy. All those currently pushing ‘engagement’ with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Islamists worldwide are merely helping them do their dirty work. The Northern Ireland paradigm is a lethal illusion.
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10:34am
The impulse driving the latest changes proposed for 18+ school examinations is the same impulse that has progressively brought the entire UK education system to its knees over these past thirty years and more. It is, at root, the view that if everyone can’t achieve high academic status, then high academic status must be abolished.
The new system sets out to abolish A-level by stealth. A-level is considered the ‘gold standard’ of the education system. The gatekeeper to university entrance, in the past it ensured the most efficient and effective higher education system in the world, since the depth and focus of its examination ensured high quality entrants and a very low drop-out rate.
Over the years, however, as the entire education system imploded, it has been progressively undermined. One of the factors contributing to this ratcheting of standards ever downwards was what happened to the 16+ examination, a forerunner of the current A-level proposals. In a well-meaning but misguided attempt to do something about the ‘under-performing 40 per cent tail’ of children leaving school at 16 with no qualifications, the ‘vocational’ CSE was introduced alongside the academic O-level. Lo and behold, in due course it was decided that this was no good because the CSE was considered inferior to O level. So the two were merged into the GCSE — the exam for all talents that everyone would pass. Forced to play to the lowest common denominator, the GCSE inevitably turned into a worthless qualification.
This in turn pulled down the standard of A-level, whose fate was sealed when the government signed up to the belief that, in order to stamp out any danger that anyone might feel inferior to anyone else, all must have prizes and everyone should have a degree. Pushing unsuitable people into higher education meant standards inevitably fell. To mask this, A-level standards were massaged downwards. As A-level got ever easier to pass, it became ever more meaningless.
Meanwhile nothing was done to address the single most conspicuous failure of the education system since World War Two — the absence of high quality vocational training. All attempts to provide this were marred by the fact that the standard of these courses was rubbish. Instead of making them rigorous, the education establishment set out to remove the benchmark of excellence that stood as a reproach to the entire system, A-level. The problem was identified not for what it actually was, the ideology of ‘identical outcomes’ which had hollowed out the understanding of education and knowledge itself and turned excellence into a dirty word, but instead the fact that vocational qualifications were considered inferior to academic qualifications. The remedy for this was to abolish A-level altogether.
When this was first proposed in 2004 by the Tomlinson report along with the phased replacement of GCSE (as also too academic, God help us), the then PM Tony Blair, mindful of the likely outcry, refused to take this fateful step. Now the aptly named Ed Balls, Secretary for Schools Children and Families, proposes a system which is designed to undermine and destroy the A-level and replace it by a diploma which, in purporting to combine academic and vocational within one qualification, will without a shred of doubt be totally worthless.
The outcome is likely to be a still further narrowing of opportunity for the most disadvantaged pupils. Independent schools will increasingly bypass the UK examination system altogether and set the International Baccalaureate instead, and more and more gifted pupils will choose to study at universities abroad. State schools meanwhile will offer their pupils an increasingly worthless qualification, thus ensuring the stunting of their life chances and destroying what remains of Britain’s once inspirational meritocracy.
It is not accident that the word’ education’ has now totally vanished from the title of the department of state that is supposed to be in charge of its provision to the nation. In the grip of the spiteful and nihilistic doctrine that has become the orthodoxy in the education establishment and on the left, it is now set upon finishing the task of wrecking what was once the finest education system in the world.
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7:16pm
One of the many notable features of Britain’s state of denial over the true nature and reach of the global jihad is the country’s obsession with the Middle East at the expense of the other theatres of this conflict. Viewing world conflict through a Middle East-centric prism which means it concludes falsely that Israel is the cause of Islamic rage and the reason why the west is under attack, Britain seems to know nothing about the march of the Islamists across south east Asia and Africa which are steadily being radicalised to the cause of holy war. From time to time, Britain wakes from its stupor and waxes indignant from its armchair about Darfur where it dimly perceives a lot of people are being killed. It does not register the fact that a desperate and losing struggle is being waged across Africa against Islamists who are cutting a murderous and enslaving swathe across that continent, persecuting and murdering Christians and other faiths, converting them to Islam at gunpoint and threatening to turn much of Africa into an enormous troop carrier for the armies of the jihad against the free world.
In yesterday’s Telegraph, David Blair recorded this process in the failed states in the Horn of Africa. Somalia in particular threatens to become a base for al Qaeda, with Britain in particular in its sights as a target for Somali-born British terrorists. The idea that the fate of the Palestinians is somehow the motor for all this is demonstrably ludicrous. The fight for control over Africa is a fight being waged in the cause of religious war.
This is spelled out in a book I happened to pick up in an Islamic bookshop in Bradford last week. It was instructive to see that this shop, a large, bright institution staffed by courteous and helpful people, nevertheless stocked on its shelves books by Syed Qutb and Maulana Maududi, the principal ideologues of modern jihadi Islamism and its hatred of the west, and books and pamphlets published by the Islamic Foundation of Leicester, a prime institution for the promulgation of radical Islamist ideas over the past two decades and more, and which has been responsible for the radicalisation of countless British Muslims to the cause of holy war.
One of its titles is Nigeria and Shari’ah by Ghazali Basri, published in 1994. Nigeria is currently the site of a systematic persecution of Christians by Muslims who, as this article by Paul Marshall reported, have imposed a draconian system of sharia law and caused the deaths of more than 10,000 people. In his book, Basri provides the reason. Christianity in Africa, he writes, was linked indissolubly to colonialism, and the aim of both was to stamp out Islam in Nigeria. Islam is presented here as a force of tolerance and civilisation, but which was presented by the Christians and colonialist administration in a bad light:
Islam was portrayed, in text books, popular Christian literature and in churches as well as in classrooms, in terms of conquest and subjugation, while Christianity was portrayed as a liberating and civilising force…the west is entirely dependent on Christians for the protection and promotion of their interests in Nigeria. The survival of western interests today is directly linked with the survival of Christianity in the same way as the spread of Christianity about a century ago depended entirely on the presence of the western imperial army.
Here is what Paul Marshall reported was now going on under tolerant Islamic rule in
Nigeria:
Five women have been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, though no punishment has yet been carried out. Thieves have had their hands amputated by court order. One man had his eye removed after accidentally blinding a friend (he could have escaped this by paying 60 camels, but the injured party wasn't interested in the camels).
Under these sharia dictates, women are harshly subjugated. In northern Nigeria, they have been forbidden to rent houses and barred from riding motorbikes or traveling in the same vehicles as men. Taxi drivers have been caned for carrying female passengers. Zamfara requires all high-school girls to wear a hijab and bars them from wearing skirts and other ‘Western’ forms of dress. State officials have advocated public flogging of those violating an ‘Islamic’ dress code. Prostitution charges have been leveled at women merely for the crime of being unmarried after the age of 13. Judges in Bauchi State have told women to get married immediately or be sent to prison.
If this isn’t a war for civilisation, what is?
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Tuesday, 23rd October 2007
11:35am
David Cameron did well in yesterday’s Commons tussle with Gordon Brown over the EU constitutional treaty. But the danger to the Tory position is evident from the way those exchanges have been received. People's eyes are already glazing over from the sheer complexity of it all.
The government’s dissimulation over this treaty is simply astounding. They are misleading the public virtually with every breath they take. They shamelessly claim that it’s not the same as the constitution mark one when it’s 90 per cent the same. One European leader after another has acknowledged that it’s virtually the same thing; the government denies these leaders have said this (as Peter Hain so brazenly did in response to me on BBC TV’s Question Time last week). They then flip the argument over by claiming that their ‘red lines’ will protect Britain from all the dangerous provisions of the treaty which no longer exist because it’s not the same. But as has been pointed out, these red lines aren’t worth the paper they are written on.
Take Brown’s assertion yesterday that the UK has secured a protocol which makes the Charter of Fundamental Rights non-justiciable in the English courts because it ‘does not extend the ability’ of the European Court of Justice or the English courts to find English law incompatible with the Charter. Leave aside for the moment the not uninteresting fact that the government’s position on this has slid from claiming that the protocol is an ‘opt-out’ to the coy admission that it is merely a ‘clarification’. Whatever it is, it’s worthless.
That’s because it conflicts with the general and overarching principle of the EU that its provisions apply to all member states, which have an obligation to abide by them. Does this protocol take precedence over that overarching principle? Interesting legal question and one that would have to be decided by a court. And which court would that be? Why none other than the same ECJ whose powers are allegedly fettered by the protocol; the same ECJ which over the years has itself unilaterally expanded so hugely the powers of the EU because it sees itself as the judicial arm of the ideological euro-federalist project. In deciding whether the UK protocol was worth the paper it was written on, therefore, the politicised ECJ would be acting as judge and jury in its own cause. And this is Brown’s ‘red line’!
The other red lines are similarly worthless. Our so-called opt-in over justice and home affairs crumbles upon inspection and in any event will be obviated within five years. Brown says the government will not agree to any more constitutional changes during this parliament and the next. Big deal! The treaty gives the EU the power to produce whatever changes it wishes without having to call an intergovernmental conference, thus leaving what remains of our powers of self-government at the mercy of temporary parliamentary majorities. And that’s before we even get to the loss of all the vetos and the areas of ‘shared competencies’ which mean kissing goodbye to our ability to run our own country. Above all, this treaty creates a constitutional chimaera, a bureaucratic state with its own legal personality to which it explicitly requires this country to subordinate its own national interest. That is simply insupportable.
So this brings us back to the politics of this thing. The treaty is about to be dissected in Parliament line by not so red line. The bankruptcy of the government’s position will undoubtedly be exposed day by day during this process. We don’t know how this will play out nor how it will end. Maybe the country will be inflamed every day by discussion of passerelle clauses and competencies. Maybe large enough numbers of Labour MPs will remember what democracy entails and inflict damage. Maybe the Liberal Democrats will be locked in a Commons broom cupboard for 30 days. But it’s a fair bet that the public will quickly become numbed by the detail, and that Brown will simply railroad this thing through the Commons with the usual brutality.
In the face of this, the Tories now need substantially to raise their game. They risk being swept away in this tidal wave of mind-bending arcania and parliamentary process. Crucially, they need to tell the country now that if this constitutional treaty is ratified without a referendum, they will still promise to hold a referendum on it after ratification. They should tell us now that it will be an election promise. To the objection that this would entertain the possibility of breaking a treaty, they should say that ratification in these circumstances would be constitutionally improper, that no parliament can bind its successor and that the need to preserve independent British self-rule overrides any treaty obligation.
William Hague’s current position is that he is not going to talk about what the Tories would do after ratification because he wants to concentrate on opposing this treaty. What he’s worried about is that, while the likes of Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine have not gone to war over the Tories’ current referendum pledge — presumably because they assume Brown will force the constitution through — they would go ballistic were the Tories to open up the post-ratification can of worms, thus enabling Brown to play the ‘Tory split’ card.
This caution is misguided. The Tories’ consistent mistake is to see themselves through Labour party eyes. We’ve seen from recent events that this grossly misreads the reality of public opinion. Brown was unable to deploy his ‘lurch to the right’ broadsides because — to the Tories’ astonishment — the public was already camped on this very territory, impatiently waiting for a political party to join them. So it surely is -- with knobs on -- over Europe. The public is relatively muted on the subject not just because it’s eye-glazing stuff but because, most crucially of all, they assume that the constitution is a done deal. They no longer have any faith that any political party will act in their interests.
But below the radar, they are aghast. If the Tories were to say now, loud and clear, that this country has not fought so painfully throughout the centuries to keep itself free and independent in order to throw it all away now in a bloodless surrender to Brussels, and that therefore the people will be offered the chance to decide whether they wish to stay free or become a hologram state even if —particularly if —Brown goes ahead and sells out his country, they would find that the people would be with them. After all, they can’t now say the issue is nothing less than the loss of Britain’s capacity for self –government and then say that’s something they will just have to learn to live with, without making themselves look ridiculous. And if those prehistoric ex-big beasts Clarke and Heseltine start beating their mangy chests, Cameron should simply say to them — you are the past.
Come on, Dave — this is your Clause Four moment.
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Monday, 22nd October 2007
5:28pm
Thank goodness for David Bellamy. In a glorious piece in the Times, he rips into the global warming scam with unrivalled brio — and with deserved contempt and fury for those who have turned science into the enemy of reason and sought to suppress the truth through a campaign of vilification and intimidation. Over and over again he brings forward elementary facts which directly contradict or fatally undermine the misleading claims and sometimes totally bent predictions of man-made global warming catastrophe which masquerade as ‘research’.
One reason why these charlatans have got away with it until now is their claim of a ‘scientific consensus’ that the case for man-made global warming is now established beyond doubt. But as Bellamy observes:
...the self-proclaimed consensus among scientists has detached itself from the questioning rigours of hard science and become a political cause.
And in any event, this ‘consensus’ is as much of an illusion as Al Gore’s drowning polar bears:
A recent survey of Klaus-Martin Schulte, of Kings College Hospital, of all papers on the subject of climate change that were published between 2004 and February of 2007 found that only 7 per cent explicitly endorsed a ‘so-called consensus’ position that man-made carbon dioxide is causing catastrophic global warming. What is more, James Lovelock, the author and green guru, has changed his mind: he recently stated that neither Earth nor the human race is doomed.
World saved! The consensus argument is of course in itself absurd. Even if this famed consensus existed, it would prove nothing except the unlimited capacity of people to fall into line when their livelihoods are at stake. The ‘scientific consensus’ has been proved wrong over and over again; it was not long ago that it was proclaiming with the same certainty that the planet was about to freeze to extinction.
What matters is not that very grand people with lots of letters after their names all agree to a proposition, but whether that proposition is actually true. The priesthood of experts gets away with spouting undiluted bilge because people are easily intimidated by their aura of intellectual invincibility. But however arcane their area of expertise, whatever they say still has to correspond to the basic requirements of evidence, logic, consistency and rationality. In those areas, the judgment of ordinary people is as good as anyone’s. And that judgment (backed up by countless scientists whose voices have been all but drowned out) says we are being played for suckers. Green ones.
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4:15pm
Professor Colin Blakemore’s courageous defence in the
Sunday Times of Dr James Watson’s right to speak and be challenged contained this aside:
Ashkenazi Jews are more prone to a variety of inherited medical conditions (but have higher average IQ than Caucasians, by the way).
This observation prompts two questions. Why is it racist for Watson to say that Africans are less intelligent than Caucasians, but perfectly acceptable for Blakemore to say that Jews are more intelligent? Can Caucasians never be victims of racism?
And why does he say that Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent than Caucasians when they are Caucasian?
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