Another day, another mobbing. On the front page of today's Timesthere's a story about an attempt by over 200 academics to ruin the reputation of a young scholar called Noah Carl. These researchers, many of them professors, have written an 'open letter' objecting to the fact that Dr Carl, who describes himself as a 'conservative', has just been awarded a prestigious research fellowship by St Edmund's College, Cambridge.
I have written before about the difficulty people on the Left have in grasping this point. They seem to labour under the illusion that the defence of equal rights is critically dependent on believing that we are all born as 'blank slates'. This is the hypothesis that any differences between us when it comes to things like IQ – whether individual differences or group differences – are entirely the product of the environment and have nothing to do with our genes. You can understand why an egalitarian who believes in equality of outcome would want to believe that's true, not least because it would mean once the socialist Shangri-la has been created the state won't have to constantly intervene to correct the inequities of nature. But that 'hard' equality is very different from the 'soft' equality of treating people equally.
Believing all people should enjoy the same rights, a principle which is embraced by the majority of conservatives as well as liberals, is emphatically not contingent on the 'blank slate' hypothesis. But because so many people on the Left mistakenly believe it is, they are quick to attack anyone who challenges it or who dares to defend those who challenge it. That is behind the ferocious attack on Dr Carl.
if we wanted to watch dumb asses unsupported opinions on Youtube we would.
Ahhhh, I see the left again want to censur and not have the truth come out how again we see a bunch of lefties try to discredit a person. Not based on any facts or even try to discredit his peer reviewed papers.