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Michael Medved says something dumb

May 14, 2008, by PZ Myers

Did someone declare this National Flaming Racist Idiot week, and I just didn't notice until now? You have got to read Michael Medved's latest foray into pseudoscience: he has declared American superiority to be genetic, encoded in our good old American DNA. Because our ancestors were immigrants, who were risk-takers, who were selected for their energy and aggressiveness. Oh, except for those who are descended from slaves.

The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide - between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.

But, he hastens to add, modern African-American genetics have been leavened with the genes of recent, self-selected immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, so their unfortunate stay-at-home genes have a "less decisive influence".

As is usual for Medved, a dullard incapable of any kind of thought beyond the superficial, he doesn't think his thesis through. Wouldn't this imply that Moslem immigrants to Europe, with their risk-taking willingness to move to new environments, are their true hope for the future? That the old blue-bloods of this country are less fit than, say, the Nisei? And if the descendants of African slaves are not successful go-getters because their arrival was coerced, what about the immigrants who were fleeing religious persecution, or all the Americans who are descended from indentured servants? Are there no successful entrepreneurs in Europe or Asia or Africa? Should we give extra bonus points to the descendants of nomadic tribes of warriors, like the Germans? It's a very peculiarly narrow view of a kind of simplistic genetic determinism that ignores the complexities and the varieties of ways people got here to promote a ridiculous premise.

And then he gets sillier.

"Senators Obama, Clinton and other leaders who seek to enlarge the scope of government face more formidable obstacles than they realize. Their desire to impose a European-style welfare state and a command-and-control economy not only contradicts our proudest political and economic traditions, but the new revelations about American DNA suggest that such ill-starred schemes may go against our very nature."

Uh, what? Republican policies are now part of our genetic nature, and the Democrats will be defeated by our capitalist genes?

This is Michael Medved of the Discovery Institute, an organization that has recently been raving about the evils of eugenics and the soulless Darwinian view of nature. Yet here he is, spouting off the kind of smug, invalid, pseudo-biological jingo that belongs in the Gilded Age and would be comfortable in the mouth of a robber baron trying to justify a war in Latin America. It's nothing but handwaving rationalizations for an intrinsic superiority to our tribe, with a complete absence of evidence.

LINK

It isn't even original. For heaven's sakes can't they come up with any NEW reasons for their racist (and sexist) crap? I heard that one as a kid in Houston back in the 1950s - and the person I heard it from got it from some radio talking head nutcase in the 1930s. I'm sure it wasn't original with him, either.

Ignorance or convenience? Some of the Southern Coast of U.S. was originally populated by white people who were brought here against their will. They were prisoners. Along the Southern Atlantic coast were prison colonies the English used to dump their excess criminals. Many of them escaped and made their way into the Ozarks and became the first settlers. Hence, the old tradition-image, until recently, of the Ozark mountaineer who would not go out onto his porch without his gun.

Convenience or lack of critical thinking, depending on how "far up the ladder" the spouter is. Divide and conquer is an old and valued tradition among the despot and robber barons of the world - and lack of ability to figure that out has always led to people who should have been "brothers in arms" against said despots fighting each other to the despot's benefit.