A View From Here -- Deb Weiss
A VIEW FROM HERE
by deb weiss
Peter Singer's The Hell Curve
September 9, 1999
In 1994, sociologist Charles Murray and the late
Richard Herrnstein published "The Bell Curve," a
provocative study of race and IQ.
It was an instant outrage. You'd have had to spend the
next few months holed up in a bunker to miss the
incendiary headlines and radioactive sound-bites.
Murray and Herrnstein drew fire on several fronts.
Even the book's defenders admitted that its
conclusions were marred by weird statistical leaps.
Besides, Murray -- a libertarian provocateur -- was
already on the establishment hit-list, mostly for his
work on welfare reform.
Rejecting the conventional wisdom, Murray and
Herrnstein claimed IQ itself was a critical predictor
of success. They raised hackles with their take on
'nature-versus-nurture,' declaring that intelligence
is genetically determined, with 60% of measurable IQ
innate and fixed.
Their most explosive claims, though, were those
linking IQ and race. Using questionable techniques,
they concluded that on average, 'black' IQ was about
15 points lower than 'white' IQ. What's more, they
insisted, the difference was immutable.
This was a staggering polemic. Even if their methods
had not been flawed, they wildly overstated the
significance of 'race' (generally considered too vague
a concept to be scientifically useful).
Yet despite its defects, their study raised serious
and interesting questions about some of our most
fundamental assumptions. It deserved a hearing.
It didn't get one, though. Instead, the left's
efficient smear machine kicked in.
Since Herrnstein had died before the book came out,
Murray took the hit alone. They savaged him for
everything from methodology to ideology, then
gleefully dredged up ugly whispers about his personal
life.
Above all, Murray was assailed for the sin of
'racism.' It did him no good whatever to deny this
toxic charge: he was tarred, feathered, run out of
town on a rail, hung and buried -- then dragged back
into the public square so the mob could do it all over
again.
**********
Flash forward to the summer of 1999, and the
appointment of Peter Singer as Ira W. DeCamp
Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University.
Dr. Singer, philosopher, activist and animal rights
guru, exists to push the envelope on issues of life,
death, and what's for dinner.
In his view, it's immoral to eat a steak, but
eminently moral to abort a baby (especially a
'defective' one) or euthanize an Alzheimer's sufferer
-- though not, interestingly, his own mother,
profoundly disabled by Alzheimer's. According to a
recent, reverent New Yorker profile by Michael
Specter, Singer, like many a good son, spends a small
fortune to ensure that she's tenderly provided for.
Perhaps he feels it's other people's mothers who
should be put to sleep.
As Specter notes, Singer believes it's more ethical to
perform laboratory research on "hopelessly disabled,
unconscious orphans than on perfectly healthy rats."
He regards animals as potential 'persons' with claims
equal to those of humans, saying, "The notion that
human life is sacred just because it's human life is
medieval."
You can't escape the sense that Singer is Jack
Kevorkian in pedants' clothing -- upscale, polished,
minus the visible madness: even rather charming,
bracketing his eerie rants in pieties about suffering,
justice, and income redistribution. This doubtless
accounts for his friendly reception by the
establishment press.
Mind you, his appointment sparked considerable outrage
-- just nothing quite as public as the furor produced
by "The Bell Curve." His critics include pro-lifers,
advocates for the disabled, theologians -- easily
marginalized as 'right-wingers' or 'religious nuts',
or simply 'nuts.' Their views are rarely permitted
uncensored into the public forum.
Dr. Singer is well-protected from the vulgar herd.
His appointment delights progressives, who celebrate
at least partly -- you can't help thinking -- because
it's such a wickedly delicious way to stick a needle
in the eye of the right.
Or maybe, in the dark recesses of their progressive
souls, they count on Singer to produce a moral
justification for euthanizing conservatives.
Either way, they applaud his appointment, starchily
insisting that even controversial views deserve a
public hearing.
Yes. Indeed. These are the very people who moved
heaven and earth to silence Dr. Murray ("no free
speech for fascists!"): but never mind. It's quite a
point of view.
Still, even progressives must concede that controversy
shouldn't automatically be rewarded with prestigious
and handsomely-paid tenured appointments at America's
great universities -- especially when the controversy
involves a man who once said, without apology:
"Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent
to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at
all."
This notion may not be 'racism,' but surely it
deserves at least a shadowy niche in the chamber of
horrors, instead of an endowed chair and worldly
honors at Princeton University.
A VIEW FROM HERE archive
Pat And The Poor Old Elephant -- September 6, 1999
Some Kind of Heroes: Mumia, Soliah, Et Al -- September 2, 1999
Being Janet Reno -- August 30, 1999
The Ghost At Our Banquet -- August 26, 1999
Solving Maleness -- August 23, 1999
The Media: A Nose Like a Vacuum Cleaner -- August 19, 1999
A Voter's Guide To The 21st Century -- August 16, 1999
A Good Town -- August 12, 1999
Singing The Praises Of Government News -- August 9, 1999
The First Couple's Chamber Pot -- August 5, 1999
Lifetime's Woman of the Year -- August 2, 1999
Thinking Over This Tax Cut Thing -- July 29, 1999
The John John Show -- July 26, 1999
America's One China, Two Alka Seltzer Policy -- July 22, 1999
The Politics of Speaking Ill of the Dead -- July 19, 1999
The Nasty Legacy -- July 15, 1999
All in a Slow News Week... -- July 12, 1999
Traps For The Young -- July 8, 1999
Remembering Michael Dukakis -- July 5, 1999
R.I.P., O.I.C. -- July 1, 1999
Mr. Clinton's Post-War Vengeance -- June 28, 1999
Guns, Cuisinarts and the Bill of Rights -- June 24, 1999
Attack of the Concerned Advocates -- June 21, 1999
FTC Nation -- June 17, 1999
The Very, Very Coincidental World of Bill and Hillary Clinton -- June 14, 1999
Water-boiling in Our Time -- June 10, 1999
Crisis and Peace -- June 7, 1999
Reinventing God -- June 3, 1999
On This Memorial Day -- May 31, 1999
The Un-McCarthy Era -- May 27, 1999
Unspeakable Spin -- May 25, 1999