The New Chinese

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When you talk to Americans, you find that they have all these weird notions about Chinese communism. You try to tell them that China isn’t a communist country anymore. It’s got a different system: meritocratic paternalism. You joke: Imagine the Ivy League taking over the shell of the Communist Party and deciding not to change the name. Imagine the Harvard Alumni Association with an army.

This is a government of talents, you tell your American friends. It rules society the way a wise father rules the family. There is some consultation with citizens, but mostly members of the guardian class decide for themselves what will serve the greater good.

The meritocratic corpocracy absorbs rival power bases. Once it seemed that economic growth would create an independent middle class, but now it is clear that the affluent parts of society have been assimilated into the state/enterprise establishment. Once there were students lobbying for democracy, but now they are content with economic freedom and opportunity.

-- David Brooks for The New York Times

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The New Chinese

♠
When you talk to Americans, you find that they have all these weird notions about Chinese communism. You try to tell them that China isn’t a communist country anymore. It’s got a different system: meritocratic paternalism. You joke: Imagine the Ivy League taking over the shell of the Communist Party and deciding not to change the name. Imagine the Harvard Alumni Association with an army.

This is a government of talents, you tell your American friends. It rules society the way a wise father rules the family. There is some consultation with citizens, but mostly members of the guardian class decide for themselves what will serve the greater good.

The meritocratic corpocracy absorbs rival power bases. Once it seemed that economic growth would create an independent middle class, but now it is clear that the affluent parts of society have been assimilated into the state/enterprise establishment. Once there were students lobbying for democracy, but now they are content with economic freedom and opportunity.

-- David Brooks for The New York Times

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Fatal MySpace Hoax Draws No Charges

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No criminal charges will be filed in the case of an Internet hoax that ended in a teenage girl’s suicide in a St. Louis suburb last year, the local prosecutor said yesterday.

( Read more... )

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Fatal MySpace Hoax Draws No Charges

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No criminal charges will be filed in the case of an Internet hoax that ended in a teenage girl’s suicide in a St. Louis suburb last year, the local prosecutor said yesterday.

( Read more... )

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Romney to Defend His Mormonism

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One way to make the pitch would be to speak about Jesus, which Romney has done privately in meetings with religious leaders over the last two years. "Mormons often say they are more into Jesus than regular Christians are," says Stephen Prothero, author of The American Jesus, speaking at the Pew Conference on Religion, Politics, and Public Life. "The best answer to the accusation that they are not Christian is that they are crazy for Jesus."

-- John Dickerson for Slate.com

Could Jesus have ever guessed that he would play so important a role in American presidential contests two thousand years later? Oh, wait, that's right, he's omniscient.

I guess it's only fair, seeing how Muhammad is still big in world affairs.

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GodTube gives its own explanation of the Mormon Jesus:

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Romney to Defend His Mormonism

♠
One way to make the pitch would be to speak about Jesus, which Romney has done privately in meetings with religious leaders over the last two years. "Mormons often say they are more into Jesus than regular Christians are," says Stephen Prothero, author of The American Jesus, speaking at the Pew Conference on Religion, Politics, and Public Life. "The best answer to the accusation that they are not Christian is that they are crazy for Jesus."

-- John Dickerson for Slate.com

Could Jesus have ever guessed that he would play so important a role in American presidential contests two thousand years later? Oh, wait, that's right, he's omniscient.

I guess it's only fair, seeing how Muhammad is still big in world affairs.

___ ___ ___

GodTube gives its own explanation of the Mormon Jesus:

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A Parting Shot on Race and IQ

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In the absence of some startling new evidence, the crux of the issue turns out to be this: Do you believe the legacy of American racism, in all its complexity, can explain depressed black IQ scores, even when controlling for all other factors, including socioeconomic status? Is the black experience, in other words, so unique as to constitute, for nearly all black Americans, a separate wheat field? If you say yes, then good news: You believe (along with the most prominent environmentalists) that the black-white IQ gap will close in the next 50 or so years. If you think no, then bad news: You believe, with the most prominent hereditarians, that blacks as a group must resign themselves to higher rates of poverty, unemployment, divorce, and violent criminality purely as a matter of genetic fate.

The crux of Saletan's pieces was his Liberal Creationist analogy. The analogy is hopeless along several competing dimensions, but it reminded me of the Dilettante's First Law of Empirical Narcissism. In a moment of controversy, the temptation to proclaim yourself an avatar of truth, and your opponent a faith-based inquisitor, is natural enough. But Darwin is Darwin thanks to generations of independent corroboration. By definition, generations of independent corroboration do not stand behind a thesis that is still being hotly contested. In claiming Darwin (or Copernicus or Galileo) for his cause, a person is often by implication saying: There would be consensus here, but for you damned critics! This is an odd definition of consensus. Conversely, when one's angry reaction to an idea is being adduced as evidence in its favor, one should ask: What does my anger have to do with the truth-content of your idea? If you told me there was a genetic basis to Jewish avarice, I would be angry. So what? What does my anger have to do with your crappy research?

-- Stephen Metcalf for Slate.com

One more word on the Saletan essays on race and IQ. A hard word.

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A Parting Shot on Race and IQ

♠
In the absence of some startling new evidence, the crux of the issue turns out to be this: Do you believe the legacy of American racism, in all its complexity, can explain depressed black IQ scores, even when controlling for all other factors, including socioeconomic status? Is the black experience, in other words, so unique as to constitute, for nearly all black Americans, a separate wheat field? If you say yes, then good news: You believe (along with the most prominent environmentalists) that the black-white IQ gap will close in the next 50 or so years. If you think no, then bad news: You believe, with the most prominent hereditarians, that blacks as a group must resign themselves to higher rates of poverty, unemployment, divorce, and violent criminality purely as a matter of genetic fate.

The crux of Saletan's pieces was his Liberal Creationist analogy. The analogy is hopeless along several competing dimensions, but it reminded me of the Dilettante's First Law of Empirical Narcissism. In a moment of controversy, the temptation to proclaim yourself an avatar of truth, and your opponent a faith-based inquisitor, is natural enough. But Darwin is Darwin thanks to generations of independent corroboration. By definition, generations of independent corroboration do not stand behind a thesis that is still being hotly contested. In claiming Darwin (or Copernicus or Galileo) for his cause, a person is often by implication saying: There would be consensus here, but for you damned critics! This is an odd definition of consensus. Conversely, when one's angry reaction to an idea is being adduced as evidence in its favor, one should ask: What does my anger have to do with the truth-content of your idea? If you told me there was a genetic basis to Jewish avarice, I would be angry. So what? What does my anger have to do with your crappy research?

-- Stephen Metcalf for Slate.com

One more word on the Saletan essays on race and IQ. A hard word.

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