Selected Writings about Intelligence

I have treated intelligence many times; for example:

Positive Rights and Cosmic Justice: Part IV
Race and Reason: The Achievement Gap — Causes and Implications
“Wading” into Race, Culture, and IQ
The Harmful Myth of Inherent Equality
Bigger, Stronger, and Faster — But Not Quicker?
The IQ of Nations
Some Notes about Psychology and Intelligence
“Science” vs. Science: The Case of Evolution, Race, and Intelligence
More about Intelligence
Not-So-Random Thoughts (XXI), fifth item
Intelligence and Intuition
Intelligence, Personality, Politics, and Happiness
Intelligence As a Dirty Word

The material below consists entirely of quotations from cited sources. The quotations are consistent with and confirm several points made in the earlier posts:

Intelligence has a strong genetic component; it is heritable.

Race is a real manifestation of genetic differences among sub-groups of human beings. Those subgroups are not only racial but also ethnic in character.

Intelligence therefore varies by race and ethnicity, though it is influenced by environment.

Specifically, intelligence varies in the following way: There are highly intelligent persons of all races and ethnicities, but the proportion of highly intelligent persons is highest among Ashkenazi Jews, followed in order by East Asians, Northern Europeans, Hispanics (of European/Amerindian descent), and sub-Saharan Africans — and the American descendants of each group.

Males are disproportionately represented among highly intelligent persons, relative to females. Males have greater quantitative skills (including spatio-temporal aptitude) relative to females; whereas, females have greater verbal skills than males.

Intelligence is positively correlated with attractiveness, health, and longevity.

The Flynn effect (rising IQ) is a transitory environmental effect brought about by environment (e.g., better nutrition) and practice (e.g., learning and application of technical skills). The Woodley effect is (probably) a long-term dysgenic effect among people whose survival and reproduction depends more on technology (devised by a relatively small portion of the populace) than on the ability to cope with environmental threats (i.e., intelligence).

I have moved the supporting material to a new page: “Intelligence“.

Freedom of Speech: Getting It Right

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech….

Constitution of the United States, Amendment I

* * *

[T]he sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others….

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1869), Chapter I and Chapter II

* * *

[T]he character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Schenck v. United States (1919)

* * *

To justify suppression of free speech there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the danger apprehended is imminent. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the evil to be prevented is a serious one.

Louis D. Brandeis, Whitney v. People of State of California (1927),
joined by Holmes

* * *

The First Amendment has been systematically misapplied for the past 100 years, thanks mainly to Holmes and Brandeis. Mill’s generalizations are fatuous nonsense. Here is a palate-cleanser:

[O]nly where advocacy of and organization for an overthrow of government is deemed to be a “clear and present danger” can such advocacy or organization be curbed. Which is somewhat like waiting to shoot at an enemy armed with a long-range rifle until you are able to see the whites of his eyes. Or, perhaps more aptly in the 21st century, waiting until a terrorist strikes before acting against him. Which is too late, of course, and impossible in the usual case of suicide-cum-terror.

And therein lies the dangerous folly of free-speech absolutism….

The First Amendment, in the hands of the Supreme Court, has become inimical to the civil and state institutions that enable liberty….

[Mill’s harm principle] is empty rhetoric….

Harm must be defined. And its definition must arise from voluntarily evolved social norms. Such norms evince and sustain the mutual trust, respect, forbearance, and voluntary aid that — taken together — foster willing, peaceful coexistence and beneficially cooperative behavior. And what is liberty but willing, peaceful coexistence and beneficially cooperative behavior?

Behavior is shaped by social norms. Those norms once were rooted in the Ten Commandments and time-tested codes of behavior. They weren’t nullified willy-nilly in accordance with the wishes of “activists,” as amplified through the megaphone of the mass media, and made law by the Supreme Court. What were those norms? Here are some of the most important ones:

Marriage is a union of one man and one woman. Nothing else is marriage, despite legislative, executive, and judicial decrees that substitute brute force for the wisdom of the ages.

Marriage comes before children. This is not because people are pure at heart, but because it is the responsible way to start life together and to ensure that one’s children enjoy a stable, nurturing home life.

Marriage is until “death do us part.” Divorce is a recourse of last resort, not an easy way out of marital and familial responsibilities or the first recourse when one spouse disappoints or angers the other.

Children are disciplined — sometimes spanked — when they do wrong. They aren’t given long, boring, incomprehensible lectures about why they’re doing wrong. Why not? Because they usually know they’re doing wrong and are just trying to see what they can get away with.

Drugs are taken for the treatment of actual illnesses, not for recreational purposes.

Income is earned, not “distributed.” Persons who earn a lot of money are to be respected. If you envy them to the point of wanting to take their money, you’re a pinko-commie-socialist (no joke).

People should work, save, and pay for their own housing. The prospect of owning one’s own home, by dint of one’s own labor, is an incentive to work hard and to advance oneself through the acquisition of marketable skills.

Welfare is a gift that one accepts as a last resort, it is not a right or an entitlement, and it is not bestowed on persons with convenient disabilities….

A mother who devotes time and effort to the making of a good home and the proper rearing of her children is a pillar of civilized society. Her life is to be celebrated, not condemned as “a waste.”

Homosexuality is a rare, aberrant kind of behavior. (And that was before AIDS proved it to be aberrant.) It’s certainly not a “lifestyle” to be celebrated and shoved down the throats of all who object to it.

Privacy is a constrained right. It doesn’t trump moral obligations, among which are the obligations to refrain from spreading a deadly disease and to preserve innocent life.

Addiction isn’t a disease; it’s a surmountable failing….

Justice is a dish best served hot, so that would-be criminals can connect the dots between crime and punishment. Swift and sure punishment is the best deterrent of crime. Capital punishment is the ultimate deterrent because an executed killer can’t kill again.

Peace is the result of preparedness for war; lack of preparedness invites war.

The list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s certainly representative. The themes are few and simple: respect others, respect tradition, restrict government to the defense of society from predators foreign and domestic. The result is liberty: A regime of mutually beneficial coexistence based on mutual trust and respect. That’s all it takes — not big government bent on dictating new norms just because it can.

But by pecking away at social norms that underlie mutual trust and respect, “liberals” have sundered the fabric of civilization….

The right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” has become the right to assemble a mob, disrupt the lives of others, destroy the property of others, injure and kill others, and (usually) suffer no consequences for doing so — if you are a leftist or a member of one of the groups patronized by the left, that is.

But that’s not the end of it. There’s a reverse slippery-slope effect when it comes to ideas opposed by the left. There are, for example, speech codes at government-run universities; hate-crime laws, which effectively punish speech that offends a patronized group; and penalties in some States for opposing same-sex “marriage”….

In sum, there is no longer such a thing as the kind of freedom of speech intended by the Framers of the Constitution. There is on the one hand license for “speech” that subverts and flouts civilizing social norms — the norms that underlie liberty. There is on the other hand a growing tendency to suppress speech that supports civilizing social norms.

“Freedom of Speech and the Long War for Constitutional Governance“,
Politics and Prosperity

* * *

“This Has to Stop”

That’s a typical reaction to the latest (but, sadly, not last) mass shooting at a school (or anywhere else). What is the point of saying “this has to stop”? To express one’s outrage? It’s safe to assume that anyone who has an ounce of feeling for other people is outraged by mass shootings.

No, the point of it is virtue-signaling. But that’s all there is to it. Where’s the beef — the “solution” to the problem? Is it to tighten laws about access to guns, when the already tight laws aren’t being enforced well enough, and couldn’t be given the imperfections in human institutions? Is it to stop making “assault rifles” and large magazines when there are already so many in circulation that it won’t matter if no more are made. (Will there be an equally ridiculous and futile ban on the manufacture of knives and materials that can be made to explode?) Is the “solution” to clamp down on gun and ammunition sellers, period, when there are so many of them operating in the black market that it wouldn’t deter anyone who is serious about committing crimes?

Or is the “solution” to confiscate all firearms and ammunition (when they are volunteered or readily found), leaving law-abiding citizens at the mercy of those who scoff at the law? Yes, that must be it. Because it would be possible to confiscate millions of firearms and hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition. And the resulting piles of guns and bullets would make an impressive showing on TV and in news photos. But it would be all for show. Except that the law-abiding Americans who turned in their guns and ammo would thenceforth be defenseless against the army of thugs and criminals that would remain at large.

What has to stop is the cultural erosion that has made almost routine something that was rare more than 50 years ago: mass murder. Mass murder isn’t happening because there are “too many” guns out there; America has been well armed since before the Revolutionary War. It’s happening because an increasing fraction of the population lacks a strong conscience, upbringing in an intact family, and strict discipline.

Related reading:
Gilbert T. Sewall, “How We Defined Deviancy Down and Got a Culture of Violence“, The American Conservative, May 22, 2018
Brandon J. Weichert, “Maybe America Should Ban Guns“, The American Spectator, May 24, 2018 (Weichert’s real target is moral decay, which the left has encouraged and abetted.)

The Constitution: Myths and Realities

I have posted The Constitution: Myths and Realities at Realities. This very long article reworks and consolidates many posts at Politics & Prosperity. It’s worth your time if you haven’t thought critically about the role of the States in the creation of the Constitution, the legality of secession, and much more, including a strong argument that Americans aren’t morally bound by the Constitution.

The article runs 15,000 words, but still omits much relevant material from this blog. Thus the links to 21 posts in the pingbacks at the bottom of the article. Follow the links there for complementary and supplementary readings.

Moral Relativism from the Times

The headline in The New York Times Says It All: “As U.S. Demands Nuclear Disarmament, It Moves to Expand Its Own Arsenal“. As if an enlightened policy would be to disarm the U.S. first and hope (without hope) that other countries would follow suit.

I wonder if the authors of the piece really gave any thought to the matter. If they had, they might have concluded that it would be better for the U.S. to have a monopoly on nuclear weapons so that (a) no one could threaten the U.S. or its citizens’ overseas interests with a nuclear attack and (b) the U.S. could more easily protect its citizens and their overseas interests. It’s like having your favorite team ahead 10-0 going into the bottom of the 9th inning, instead of being tied 1-1. But the U.S., of course, isn’t the left’s favorite team.

The “reporters” who work for the Times — like their “liberal” brethren” throughout the U.S. — have swallowed the poison pill of moral relativism and transnationalism:

Mindless internationalism equates sovereignty with jingoism, protectionism, militarism, and other deplorable “isms”. It ignores or denies the hard reality that Americans and their legitimate overseas interests are threatened by nationalistic rivalries and anti-Western fanaticism. “Transnationalism” is just a “soft” form of aggression; it would erode American values from the inside out, though American leftists hardly need any help from their foreign allies.

In the real world of powerful international rivals and determined, resourceful fanatics, the benefits afforded Americans by our (somewhat eroded) constitutional contract — most notably the enjoyment of civil liberties, the blessings of free markets, and the protections of a common defense — are inseparable from and dependent upon the sovereignty of the United States. To cede that sovereignty for the sake of mindless internationalism is to risk the complete loss of the benefits promised by the Constitution.

None of that matters to a “liberal”. Better the U.S. should be blackmailed by a tin-pot dictatorship than it should spend money to ensure against blackmail by any power, small or large. The U.S. is such an awful place, after all, so rife with sins of the left’s imagining. That’s why the leftists moved to Canada and Europe — I wish.

What’s With the Pink?

Women are no different than men, right? They can do everything men can do, right? (Wrong, but I’ll let it pass for now.)

Why, then, do feminists and their eunuchs among the male of the species insist on using pink to signify femininity?

Pink when it’s time to remind everyone about breast cancer. (As if reminders were needed.)

Pink to protest the elevation to the presidency of the worst male chauvinist since Bill Clinton, who was the worse one since LBJ, who was the worst one since FDR, and so on. (There should be retroactive protests of most of the male-chauvinist presidents from Harding onward, but that won’t happen because most of them were Democrats.)

Now comes pink for Mother’s (or is it Mothers’ or Mothers?) Day; thus:

After finishing a column for tomorrow I turned on the Rays game with the sound muted so I could monitor it while reading. What I found was disturbing. No, not that the Rays were trailing 17-1. That may be disturbing in New York or Boston, not even surprising here. But I see that, in honor of Mother’s Day, Rays and Orioles players are kitted out in a motley assortment of pink shoes, pink hats, pink batting gloves, pink undershirts, pink sweat-bands, even, God help us, pink bats. So I switched over to the Marlins/Braves game. Same desecration there, which I gather is MLB-wide today….

[S]urely Major League Baseball could have found a way to give a tip of the baseball cap to moms without the indignity of putting grown men in pink outfits. I just can’t watch it. I’m sure even plenty of moms, especially players’ moms, are put off by this marketing overkill. How could the players’ pit-bull agents have allowed this? Isn’t there anything in contemporary contracts about dignity? Where’s the take-no-prisoners players’ union? [Larry Thornberry, “It’s Undignified and I’ll Have None of It“, The Spectacle Blog, May 13, 2018]

Eunuchs, as I said.

The wearing of pink reminds people of the differences between the sexes (genders, in neo-speak), so how can it be allowed and encouraged? Well, it’s okay if pinkness is imposed on men (males). But heaven forbid that a girl (female) baby should be dressed in pink. Sexism! Toxic masculinity! Rank stereotyping! Call 911, it must be against the law!

Trump: The Consequential President

Ed Rogers, writing in The Washington Post on May 10, offers some back-handed praise of Donald Trump and his presidency:

For the Trump administration, the absence of disaster usually has to suffice as good news. Well, I wouldn’t say President Trump is on a roll, but he has had several good days.

Specifically, the outcome of Tuesday’s Senate primaries made it more likely that the GOP will retain control of the Senate, the clean break with the Iran deal can be considered a bold display of resolve, and two judges have fanned back special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — perhaps curbing his overreach. Progress toward an agreement with North Korea seems to be proceeding quickly. In fact, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo secured the release of three Americans on Wednesday who had been held prisoner, and President Trump announced he will meet with Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12. Regarding North Korea, Jeff Greenfield wrote in a Politico piece titled “Thinking the Unthinkable: What if Trump Succeeds?” last week that recognizing all of Trump’s flaws provides “all the more reason to retain a sense of perspective; to be able to consider seriously the proposition that this misbegotten president has somehow achieved an honest-to-God diplomatic success.”

Then there are the recent polls from Reuters-Ipsos, Gallup, CBS and CNN which show that the president’s job approval is ticking up. The unemployment rate is at an 18-year low; according to the National Federation of Independent Business, not only are record levels of small businesses reporting profit growth, but also the Small Business Optimism Index continues to sustain record-high levels. Americans have confidence in Trump’s handling of the economy. And at least for the time being, even the generic ballot is moving in Trump’s favor.

In addition, a few of the president’s critics are stumbling. The mainstream media did themselves real harm with the debacle of this year’s White House Correspondents Dinner, and Trump tormentor New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was forced to resign following allegations of repeated abuse of multiple women….

… Yet the Trump presidency could be an exploding cigar. Just as you begin to settle in and get used to it, the whole thing could blow apart.

To state the obvious, Trump is his own worst enemy — and he won’t change. Feckless Democrats won’t bring him down, Republicans have acquiesced, much of the media has become annoying background noise, and Mueller doesn’t seem to have a silver bullet. Only Trump can destroy Trump.

A correspondent of mine had some incisive things to say about the state of affairs:

I think Trump is not only consequential, but also significant. To me, in this context, consequential means changing important things from the way they had been. Significant, means historically noteworthy. I think he will be the most significant president since Ronald Reagan. Interestingly, both Trump and Reagan followed presidents that were not significant presidents, leaving little legacy to mark their terms in office. If Trump were to be impeached and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, remote possibilities, he would be significant 100 years from now. He is, and will be, significant for grabbing a political party and making it his party, even though he is not a politician. TR, also a Nobel winner, did the same.

Trump may also be significant for being unsavory and getting away with it.

My reaction follows:

Reagan accomplished three consequential things, in my view. First, he made old-fashioned conservatism somewhat respectable, though he was and still is reviled on the left for having done so. Second, his determined effort to rebuild the armed forces — to call the bluff of the USSR — was probably the main cause of the Soviet surrender in the Cold War. Third, his political support of Volcker’s tight-money policies, coupled with the tax-rate cuts he pushed through Congress led to the taming of inflation and a resumption of strong economic growth after years of “malaise”.

Thus far, only 16 months into his presidency, Trump has done three consequential things. First, he has nominated a conservative justice to the Supreme Court (though this didn’t change the balance on the Court) and a slew of district and appellate court judges, who seem to be solid conservatives. (There haven’t been any howls of outrage from the conservative sector of the internet.) Second, he has changed the image of American defense and foreign policy from defeatism (clearly the upshot of Obama’s “leading from behind”) to something like Reaganesque doggedness. (In tandem with that, he has backed the enlargement of the defense budget, though not yet, I believe, on a Reagenseque scale.) Third, he has deliberately (and somewhat effectively, as far as I know) pushed for a rollback of regulations that he views as especially harmful to the economy. His stance on immigration is loud and controversial, but it remains to be seen whether it will be consequential.

Maybe I’ve missed some important things, but my bottom line is agreement with my correspondent. It is entirely possible that by the end of Trump’s (first?) term the U.S. legal system will have shifted sharply toward a literal reading of the Constitution; the U.S. will not be in danger of military or political eclipse by Russia and/or China; membership in the nuclear club will not have expanded; trouble-makers like Iran and North Korea will have been “tamed”; and the rate of economic growth will be at its highest since the end of World War II, with a concomitant reduction in the real unemployment rate (much of which is still hidden in a low labor-force participation rate) and a somewhat higher (but not economically debilitating) rate of inflation.

If all or most of that happens — a big if — it will cement the political realignment in the country that was sparked by Trump’s candidacy. The Democrat party will increasingly be the home of affluent, well-educated whites (mangers, aspiring managers, academics, techies). Blacks will still be there for the Dems, though not in their former numbers, now that they are beginning to learn three things: Trump will not send them to concentration camps; white Democrats take them for granted while talking down to them; and blacks have done worse, not better, since Democrats began to throw money and special privileges at them. Hispanics will still be there for the Dems, perhaps in higher numbers than before because of Trump’s perceived “racism”. But the “blue collar” classes and regions will turn increasingly Red. Thus the Midwest, despite Blue enclaves in the big cities, will shift back toward the GOP. The South will remain Red, with the exception of Virginia and perhaps North Carolina, which are becoming extensions of the Northeast (though it will be less reliably Democrat because of the blue-collar shift). The Left Coast will remain reliably on the left, but the push to split California and liberate its conservatives will grow. If it succeeds, the GOP will become even stronger in Congress and in the electoral college. Regardless of what happens in California, the new GOP will be stronger politically than it has been at any time since World War II.

All of that could go by the wayside if there’s a real war involving the U.S., a recession, or a scandal beyond the known fact of Trump’s dalliances (i.e., an actual crime of consequence, not the payoff to Stormy). But barring such things, there will be a new GOP, and it will be stronger than the old one for some years to come.

As for Trump’s personal life, if things go nearly as well as they might, it will merit an asterisk in history books. Balanced historians (they’re hard to come by) will simply note that Trump was one of many presidents who couldn’t keep his pants zipped up, but that he succeeded in spite of it. They might even note that (among men, at least) there is a strong connection between sexual and political drive. Though the last observation will be out of bounds in the new Victorian era that is descending upon us.

The Kennedy Retirement: Hope Springs Eternal

UPDATED 06/27/18, ON THE OCCASION OF KENNEDY’S RETIREMENT ANNOUNCEMENT

Law professor and blogger Tom Smith (The Right Coast) quotes from and comments on yet another speculative piece about the (hoped for) retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy:

The Washington rumor mill is churning with speculation about whether Justice Anthony Kennedy will retire at the end of the Supreme Court’s term next month.

The rumors seem to pop up annually in recent years. But with Kennedy’s 30^th year on the high court passing in February and the justice nearing 82, the whispers about his future seem to be growing louder.

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

But how will the country endure without its chief moral arbiter? At every turn, Justice Kennedy has been there to make the final, incoherent distinction between right and wrong, between popular and unpopular, between what strange and incomprehensible thing the Law seems to say and what the murk at the heart of his conscience demands, at least for now.

Somebody should write something about this — the making of uber-political decisions on the basis of law-like rhetoric, which everybody knows is just politics, but which everyone agrees should be cloaked as law, while still knowing it is politics. Maybe this is a good thing? Keeps the lid on and all that? But no one has practiced this craft (?), art (?), or rubbishy self-indulgence (?) more semi-artfully than Justice Kennedy. He’s the un-Bork, the un-Ginsburg. He’s what you get.

I couldn’t possibly have put it that well. Kennedy has been fairly consistent in his use of judicial power to undermine civilizing social norms and the rule of law. Although he came out on the correct and decisive side of some crucial issues in the waning days of his justiceship, he too eagerly strove for “balance” and too timidly took up the cause of liberty (e.g., Masterpiece Cakeshop).

There is a canard, which I have read many times during the past few years, that Supreme Court Justices tend to retire during the tenure of president who is of the same party as the president who nominated them. This is the kind of balderdash that becomes “knowledge” among reporters and pundits who can’t be bothered to look up the facts.

Well, I have looked up the facts, and here’s what they tell me about the 35 justices* who have resigned or retired since 1900:

Slightly more than half of them (18) left office under a president of the same party as the president who nominated them.

Nine others are Democrat appointees who retired with a Republican in the White House. The last of these was Thurgood Marshall, who was nominated by LBJ and retired 27 years ago, during the presidency of G.H.W. Bush. Marshall’s retirement was like a gift from heaven because it resulted in the nomination and (painful) confirmation of Clarence Thomas, a faithful constitutionalist.

The remaining eight were Republican nominees who retired with a Democrat in the White House. Three of the last four justices to retire are in this category: Harry Blackmun (author of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision), nominated by Nixon and retired under Clinton; David Souter (another RINO), nominated by G.H.W. Bush and retired under Obama; and John Paul Stevens (the biggest RINO in captivity), nominated by Gerald Ford and retired under Obama.

It is poetic (pun intended) that Kennedy decided to retire during Trump’s presidency, so that he can be replaced by a constitutionalist in the mold of Alito, Thomas, or Gorsuch. I assume plausibly that Trump will in fact nominate someone in that mold.

Here’s the big picture, a plot of retirements by year and their effect on the nominal balance of party affiliations on the Supreme Court:

Party switches by justices
__________
* Here’s the chronological list of retirements, which the name of each retiring justice, the name of the president who nominated him (and year of accession to the Court), the name of the president at the time of the justice’s retirement (and year of retirement), and the effect of the retirement on the nominal party alignment of the Court:

Charles Evans Hughes – Taft 1910 – Wilson 1916 (GOP to Dem)
John Hessin Clarke – Wilson 1916 – Harding 1922 (Dem to GOP)
William Rufus Day – T. Roosevelt 1903 – Harding 1922 (Same)
William Howard Taft – Harding 1921 – Hoover 1930 (Same)
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. – T. Roosevelt 1902 – Hoover 1932 (Same)
Willis Van Devanter – Taft 1911 – F. Roosevelt 1937 (GOP to Dem)
George Sutherland – Harding 1922 – F. Roosevelt 1938 (GOP to Dem)
Louis Dembitz Brandeis – Wilson 1916 – F. Roosevelt 1939 (Same)
James Clark McReynolds – Wilson 1941 – F. Roosevelt 1941 (Same)
Charles Evans Hughes – Hoover 1930 – F. Roosevelt 1941 (GOP to Dem)
James Francis Byrnes – F. Roosevelt 1941 – F. Roosevelt 1942 (Same)
Owen Josephus Roberts – Hoover 1930 – Truman 1945 (GOP to Dem)
Robert Houghwout Jackson – F. Roosevelt 1941 – Eisenhower 1954 (Dem to GOP)
Sherman Minton – Truman 1949 – Eisenhower 1956 (Dem to GOP)
Stanley Forman Reed – F. Roosevelt 1938 – Eisenhower 1957 (Dem to GOP)
Harold Hitz Burton – Truman 1945 – Eisenhower 1958 (Dem to GOP)
Felix Frankfurter – F. Roosevelt 1939 – Kennedy 1962 (Same)
Arthur Joseph Goldberg – Kennedy 1962 – L. Johnson 1965 (Same)
Thomas Campbell Clark – Truman 1949 – L. Johnson 1967 (Same)
Abraham Fortas – L. Johnson 1965 – Nixon 1969 (Dem to GOP)
Earl Warren – Eisenhower 1954 – Nixon 1969 (Same)
Hugo Lafayette Black – F. Roosevelt 1937 – Nixon 1971 (Dem to GOP)
John Marshall Harlan II – Eisenhower 1955 – Nixon 1971 (Same)
William Orville Douglas – F. Roosevelt 1939 – Ford 1975 (Dem to GOP)
Potter Stewart – Eisenhower 1959 – Reagan 1981 (Same)
Warren Earl Burger – Nixon 1969 – Reagan 1986 (Same)
Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. – Nixon 1972 – Reagan 1987 (Same)
William Joseph Brennan Jr. – Eisenhower 1957 – Bush I 1990 (Same)
Thurgood Marshall – L. Johnson 1967 – Bush I 1991 (Dem to GOP)
Byron Raymond White – Kennedy 1962 – Clinton 1993 (Same)
Harry Andrew Blackmun – Nixon 1970 – Clinton 1994 (GOP to Dem)
Sandra Day O’Connor – Reagan 1981 – Bush II 2006 (Same)
David Hackett Souter – Bush I 1990 – Obama 2009 (GOP to Dem)
John Paul Stevens – Ford 1975 – Obama 2010 (GOP to Dem)
Anthony McLeod Kennedy – Reagan 1988 – Trump 2018 (Same)

The list includes Charles Evans Hughes twice. He first joined the Court in 1910, and resigned in 1916 to run for the presidency as a Republican. Hughes was then nominated as chief justice in 1930, to succeed William Howard Taft. Taft was the only person to have served as President of the United States and Supreme Court justice.

Rage on the Left

Back in the days when I was a “liberal” I was put off by such things as the rioting and looting in the aftermath of the assassination of MLK, the riotous behavior of anti-war protesters (even though I was against the Vietnam War as it was being fought), the filthy-speech movement, the occupation of campus buildings, and the many protest marches that blocked traffic and often led to violence.

Why? Because my “liberalism” wasn’t a sign of inner rage on my part. It was a mark of my belief — a wrong belief as I have come to understand — that “society” can be organized rationally (i.e., by government). My “liberalism” wasn’t based on irrational rage. I was therefore put off by the kinds of things mentioned above because they were external manifestations of rage. You could see it in the faces, speech, and body language of the rioters and protesters.

And you can see it in the faces, speech, and body language of today’s leftists. Always demanding things because — in their view — the world doesn’t match up to their idea of perfection. They take it personally, and it shows.

Today’s leftists are tantrum-throwers, just as were their forebears in the 1960s and 1970s. And today’s leftists are more dangerous than were their forebears because they are much more influential. For one thing, there are many tantrum-throwers of yore in positions of power who are sympathetic to their emotional descendants, and who share their solipsistic view of the world: They want what they want, they want it now, and they will do anything to get it.

Can Left and Right Be Reconciled?

TWO DIMENSIONS OF POLITICAL THOUGHT

The political views of left and right* should be understood as ideological and psychological phenomena. Left and right aren’t distinguished just by what people think, but more deeply by why people think as they do. Some people just see the world differently than others. And that fundamental difference is reinforced and magnified by identifying with a particular political camp, imbibing the views that issue from it, and seeking out evidence for those views to the exclusion of contrary evidence (confirmation bias).

Why is the key to the irreconcilability of hard leftism and staunch conservatism. What matters, but it is a less definitive discriminator between left and right because what people think is more malleable.

WHAT IS A MOVEABLE FEAST

What people think is influenced heavily by family, friends, neighbors, church, club, co-workers, professional colleagues, and so on. The urge to belong and the need for approval have a lot to do with what one says to others. The need for cognitive consonance pushes people in the direction of “believing” what they say. Thus it is easy to say what meets with the approval of one’s key social groups, to move one’s opinions as the opinions of the groups move, to believe that those opinions are correct, to seize on supporting “evidence” (anecdotes, slanted news, etc.), and to reject information that doesn’t support one’s opinions.

An introvert is more likely to seek facts — or what he takes to be facts — than to be swayed by groupthink in forming his views. By the same token, it is probably easier for an introvert to change his views than it is for an extravert to do so. In any event, a person who is open to new ideas, and whose social milieu changes in character, may find that his views evolve with time. He may also be struck by an insight (“mugged by reality”) to the same effect.

There is also the kind of person who is temperamentally unsuited to the political views that he holds as a matter of social conditioning. That kind of person, unlike the person whose views are matched to his temperament, will be more open to alternative ideas and to insights that may reshape his views.

Overlaid on social influences are signals emitted by authoritative sources. For many persons, the morality of a particular behavior (e.g., divorce, abortion, same-sex “marriage”) depends on how that behavior is depicted in news and entertainment media, or is treated as a matter of law.

Though a person who is temperamentally predisposed to conservatism, or leftism, is unlikely to switch sides for any of the reasons discussed thus far, there is what I call the “squishy center” of the electorate that swings many an election — and thus government policy.

For example, every week since the first inauguration of Barack Obama, Rasmussen Reports** has asked 2,500 likely voters whether they see the country as going in the “right direction” or being on the “wrong track”. During Obama’s tenure, the percentage of respondents saying “right direction” ranged from 13 to 43; the percentages for “wrong track” ranged from 51 to 80. If voters were consistent, a majority would have said “right direction” and a minority would have said “wrong track” since the inauguration of Donald Trump. But “right direction” has garnered only 29 to 47 percent thus far in Trump’s presidency, while “wrong track” is still almost always in the majority, at 47 to 65 percent.

Here’s my interpretation: Hard leftists said “right direction” when Obama was in the White House; staunch conservatives have been saying “right direction” since Trump moved into the White House; and the “squishy center” has all the while been swinging from one side to the other, depending on passing events.

Scraping away the squishy center, I estimate that about one-third of the electorate is hard left and about one-third is staunchly conservative; thus:

I don’t mean to minimize the importance of what people think. Bandwagon effects are powerful politically. I am convinced, for example, that Justice Kennedy’s 5-4 majority opinion in favor of same-sex “marriage” (Obergefell v. Hodges) signaled to the squishy center that being on the “right side of history” means siding with the libertines of the left against long-standing social norms.

Obergefell v. Hodges certainly emboldened the hard left. As I put it on the day of Justice Kennedy’s fateful ruling,

for every person who insists on exercising his rights, there will be at least as many (and probably more) who will be cowed, shamed, and forced by the state into silence and compliance with the new dispensation. And the more who are cowed, shamed, and forced into silence and compliance, the fewer who will assert their rights. Thus will the vestiges of liberty vanish.

Just look at the increasingly anti-male, anti-white, anti-conservative, anti-free-speech behavior on the part of Facebook Google, the other left-dominated social media, and much of academia. It has gone from threatening to frightening in the past three years.

GETTING TO WHY: A PRELIMINARY EXPLANATION

There is something deeper than social conformity at work among the hard left and staunch right. That something rules out reconciliation.

My earlier attempt at pinpointing the essential difference between left and right is here. I say, in part, that

“Liberals” are more neurotic than conservatives. That is, “liberals” have a “tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, and vulnerability.”…

Anxious persons are eager to sacrifice better but less certain outcomes — the fruits of liberty — for “safe” ones. Anxious persons project their anxieties onto others, and put their trust in exploitative politicians who play on their anxieties even if they don’t share them. This combination of anxieties and power-lust yields “social safety net” programs and regulations aimed at reducing risks and deterring risk-taking.. At the same time, American “liberals” — being spoiled children of capitalism — have acquired a paradoxical aversion to the very things that would ensure their security: swift and sure domestic justice, potent and demonstrably ready armed forces.

Conservatives tend toward conscientiousness more than liberals do; that is, they “display self-discipline, act dutifully, and strive for achievement against measures or outside expectations.” (This paper summarizes previous research and arrives at the same conclusion about the positive correlation between conscientiousness and conservatism.) In other words, conservatives (by which I don’t mean yahoos) gather relevant facts, think things through, assess the risks involved in various courses of action, and choose to take risks (or not) accordingly. When conservatives choose to take risks, they do so after providing for the possibility of failure (e.g., through insurance and cash reserves). Confident, self-reliant conservatives are hindered by governmental intrusions imposed at the behest of anxious “liberals.” All that conservatives need from government is protection from domestic and foreign predators. What they get from government is too little protection and too much interference.

A DEEPER LOOK AT WHY

My hypothesis is consistent with that of Stephen Messenger (who blogs at The Independent Whig). Messenger’s hypothesis, which builds on the work of Jonathan Haidt, is spelled out in a recent article at Quillette, “Towards a Cognitive Theory of Politics“. Here’s some of it:

In brief, my theory holds that the political Left and Right are best understood as psychological profiles featuring different combinations of ‘moral foundations’ … and cognitive style…. To define ideologies in terms of beliefs, values, etc., is to confuse cause and effect.

Moral foundations are evolved psychological mechanisms of social perception, subconscious intuitive cognition, and conscious reasoning described by Haidt in The Righteous Mind….

Haidt allows that there are probably many moral foundations, but he has focused his efforts on identifying the most powerful. He’s identified six so far, summarized as follows in The Righteous Mind on pages 178-179 unless otherwise noted:

Care/Harm (sensitivity to signs of suffering and need)

Fairness/Cheating (sensitivity to indications that another person is likely to be a good or bad partner for collaboration and reciprocal altruism)

Liberty/Oppression (sensitivity to, and resentment of, attempted domination)

Loyalty/Betrayal (sensitivity to signs that another person is (or is not) a team player)

Authority/Subversion (sensitivity to signs of rank or status, and to signs that other people are (or are not) behaving properly given their position)

Sanctity/Degradation (sensitivity to pathogens, parasites, and other threats that spread by physical tough or proximity)….

He calls the first three foundations the “individualizing” foundations because their main emphasis is on the autonomy and well-being of the individual. The latter three are “binding” foundations because they help individuals form cooperative groups for the mutual benefit of all members….

Cognitive styles … are ways of thinking; operating systems, if you will, like Windows and iOS, that process information received from the social environment. There are two predominant cognitive styles, traced through 2,400 years of human history by Arthur Herman in his book The Cave and the Light: Plato and Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization, in which Plato and Aristotle serve as metaphors for each, summarized in the following two short passages:

Despite their differences, Plato and Aristotle agreed on many things. They both stressed the importance of reason as our guide for understanding and shaping the world. Both believed that our physical world is shaped by certain eternal forms that are more real than matter. The difference was that Plato’s forms existed outside matter, whereas Aristotle’s forms were unrealizable without it. (p. 61)

The twentieth century’s greatest ideological conflicts do mark the violent unfolding of a Platonist versus Aristotelian view of what it means to be free and how reason and knowledge ultimately fit into our lives (p.539-540)

Plato thought that everything in the real world is but a pale imitation of its ideal self, and it is the role of the enlightened among us to help us see the ideal and to help steer society toward it. This is the style of thinking behind RFK’s “I dream things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’” John Lennon’s “Imagine,” President Obama’s “Fundamentally Transform,” and even Woodrow Wilson’s progressivism.

Aristotle agreed that we should always strive to improve the human condition, but argued that the real world in which we live sets practical limits on what’s achievable. The human mind is not infinitely capable, nor is human nature infinitely malleable. If we’re not mindful of such limitations, or if we try to ‘fix’ them, our good intentions can end up doing more harm than good and lead us down the proverbial road to hell.

These two cognitive styles can be thought of, respectively, as WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) and holistic. In The Righteous Mind, Haidt describes the peculiarities of WEIRD individuals, as follows:

WEIRD people think more analytically (detaching the focal object from its context, assigning it to a category, and then assuming that what’s true about the category is true about the object). (p. 113)

[WEIRD thinkers tend to] see a world full of separate objects rather than relationships. (p. 113)

Putting this all together, it makes sense that WEIRD philosophers since Kant and Mill have mostly generated moral systems that are individualistic, rule-based, and universalist. (p. 113-114)

Worldwide, this kind of thinking is a statistical outlier because most people and cultures think holistically.³ Holistic thinkers tend to see a world full of relationships rather than objects, and they have a stronger tendency toward consilience. As Haidt explains:

When holistic thinkers in a non-WEIRD culture write about morality, we get something more like the Analects of Confucius, a collection of aphorisms and anecdotes that can’t be reduced to a single rule. (p. 114)

WEIRD Platonic rationalism and holistic Aristotelian empiricism can be thought of as the two ends of a spectrum of cognitive styles. Few people are at the extremes; most are somewhere in between.

The psychological profiles of Left and Right differ in the degree to which they tend to favor the cognitive styles and the moral foundations. A series of studies of cognitive styles has found that “liberals think more analytically (more WEIRD) than conservatives”:

[L]iberals think more analytically (an element of WEIRD thought) than moderates and conservatives. Study 3 replicates this finding in the very different political culture of China, although it held only for people in more modernized urban centers. These results suggest that liberals and conservatives in the same country think as if they were from different cultures.⁴

Haidt’s studies of moral foundations show that liberals tend to employ the individualizing foundations and, of those, mostly the care/harm foundation, whereas conservatives tend to use of all of them equally. There’s no conservative foundation that’s not also a liberal foundation but, for all practical purposes, half of the conservative foundations are unavailable to liberal social cognition. The graphic below comes from Haidt’s TED Talk [link added], and it shows that this pattern holds true in every culture studied on every continent, suggesting it is a human universal.

….

In sum, the liberal psychological profile tends toward the Platonic cognitive style combined with the three-foundation moral matrix. The conservative profile leans toward the Aristotelian cognitive style with the all-foundation moral matrix. The libertarian profile seems to be made up of the Aristotelian style combined with a moral matrix that emphasizes liberty/oppression more than the other foundations. [Ed. note: So-called libertarians are like realists who view the world through a pinhole instead of a picture window.]

As I have argued before, concepts like liberty, equality, justice, and fairness take on different—even mutually exclusive—meanings depending on which psychological profile is interpreting them. The Left’s bias toward outcome-based conceptions of ‘positive’ liberty seems to follow naturally from its profile of Platonic rationalism focused on the moral foundation of care. The Right’s tendency to favor process-based conceptions of ‘negative’ liberty follows from its profile of Aristotelian empiricism in combination with all of the moral foundations.

It’s almost as if Left and Right are speaking different languages, in which each uses the same words but attaches starkly different meanings to them. Both sides agree that liberty is a great thing, but because neither side realizes that their understanding of it is different from that of the other they talk past one another, or worse, assume their opponent is stupid, ignorant, or wicked due to the failure to grasp concepts that in their own minds are self-evident.

The American economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell describes the way these two profiles have played out in the real world since the late 1700s in his book A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. Liberal psychology is reflected by thinkers like Godwin, Condorcet, Mill, Laski, Voltaire, Paine, Holbach, Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, and G.B. Shaw. The conservative profile is seen in the likes of Smith, Burke, Hamilton, Malthus, Hayek, and Hobbes.

A Cognitive Theory of Politics can help us to improve our understanding historical events. For example, Sowell observes that the liberal ‘vision,’ or psychological profile, can be seen as the engine of the French Revolution. Jonathan Haidt made the same observation in a lecture he gave at the Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research (CCARE) entitled “When Compassion Leads to Sacrilege.” In contrast, Sowell argues that the American founding was a fundamentally conservative movement. A reading of The Federalist Papers through the lens of the Cognitive Theory of Politics bears him out, and Burke—who supported the American Revolution but opposed the French Revolution—would probably agree….

… The political polarization of America described by Charles Murray in his book Coming Apart is best understood as a self-sorting of the population based primarily on cognitive styles.

SYNTHESIS AND CONCLUSION

Putting it all together, leftists are attached mainly to the moral foundation of harm/care because of their nueroticism. But they pursue security for themselves and those to whom they are neurotically attached — various “victim” groups — by seizing upon idealized solutions. The apotheosis of those idealized solutions is big government, which has the magical power — in the left’s idealization of it — to right all wrongs without a misstep. (Defense is excluded from the magical thinking of the left because the need to defend the nation implies that America is worth defending, but it isn’t — to the leftist — because it falls so far short of his idea of perfection. Defense is also exempted because it draws resources from the things that would make America more perfect in the fascistic mind: socialized medicine, a guaranteed income, free day-care, free college for all, and on and on.)

Staunch conservatives, on the other hand, know that government is flawed because its leaders and minions are fallible human beings. Further, it is impossible for government to possess all of the information required to make better decisions than people can make for themselves through mutually beneficial cooperation. That cooperation occurs in the myriad institutions of civil society, which include but are far from limited to markets for the exchange of products and services. Staunch conservatives — who can also be called right-minarchists or libertarian conservatives — therefore decry the expansion of government power beyond that which is required to protect civil society from domestic and foreign predators.

Messenger, despite those fundamental differences, is hopeful about a reconciliation between left and right:

A Cognitive Theory of Politics offers a new lens through which we can better understand human history and more clearly see ourselves and each other. Using this tool, we can better understand how we got to where we are, what’s happening to us now, and the available paths forward. A more accurate, science-based, universal understanding of the ‘Social Animal’ (humans) by the social animal might break the language barrier between Left and Right and provide a common foundation of knowledge from which productive debate can ensue.

I disagree. Hard leftists and staunch conservatives are “wired” differently, as Haidt has shown, and as Messenger has acknowledged.

The staunch conservative sees civil society as a whole, understands that it is unitary, knows that it is self-correcting because people learn from experience, and accepts its outcomes as the best that can be attained in a real world of real people.

The leftist can’t see the forest for the trees. He sees particular outcomes that displease him, and is willing to use the power of government to rearrange civil society in an effort to “remedy” those outcomes. He doesn’t understand, or care, that the results will be worse: a weaker economy, fewer jobs for those most in need of them, more racial tension, more broken families, and so on, up to and including an irremediably polarized nation.

Moreover, because leftists are at bottom self-centered, they cannot tolerate dissent. Dissent from a leftist regime is ultimately dealt with by suppression and violence. What we see now on campuses and in social media is merely a foretaste of what will happen if the left succeeds in its aim of seizing firm control of America. All else will follow from that.

This leads to an obvious conclusion: Left and right — the hard left and staunch conservatism, in particular — are irreconcilable. They are in fact locked in a death-struggle over the future of America. The squishy center is along for the ride, and will change its tune (what it says) and allegiance opportunistically, in the hope that it will end up on the “right side of history”.
__________
* Given the actual stances of those who are usually identified as “left” and “right”, there is absurdity in a conventional characterization of the left-right political spectrum like this:

Generally, the left-wing is characterized by an emphasis on “ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform and internationalism”, while the right-wing is characterized by an emphasis on “notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism”.

The truth of the matter is almost 180 degrees from the caricature presented above. But Wikipedia is the source, so what do you expect?

I have explained many times (e.g., here) that the left is fascistic, while the right — excluding its yahoo component and some of its so-called libertarian component — is liberty-loving. (Liberty is properly defined as an attainable modus vivendi rather than an imaginary nirvana). So the real question of the title should be: Can American fascism and (true) anti-fascism be reconciled?

But I have refrained from using the “f” word, despite its lexical accuracy, and stuck with “left” and “right” despite the erroneous association of conservatism (i.e., the right) with authoritarianism (i.e., fascism). Just remember that “right” is often used to mean “correct”, and if anything is correct when it comes to striving for liberty, it is conservatism.

** I cite Rasmussen Reports because of its good track record — here and here, for example. Its polls are usually more favorable toward Republicans. Though the polls are generally accurate, they are out of step with the majority of polls, which are biased toward Democrats. This has caused Rasmussen Reports to be labeled “Republican-leaning”, as the other polls weren’t “Democrat-leaning”. There is a parallel with the labeling of Fox News as a “conservative” outlet (though it isn’t always), while the other major TV news outlets laughably claim to be neutral.

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