Richard Lynn II

Richard Lynn (II)

True story. It happened in New  Hampshire or Maine, a few years ago.
A young single mother was partying with her boyfriend; a cheerful drug addict. The mother had children; the oldest was a 3 year old little girl. One assumes from the trajectory of the party that the mother was enjoying the drugs along with her boyfriend. The three year old was in attendance.

Sometime during the party the boyfriend takes the little girl into the kitchen. And puts her in the oven. And closes the oven door.

Now, we all catch our breath. We pray if we are so inclined; just don’t turn the oven on.

But you know the answer because this story is on this blog. The oven goes on.

The cop who found the little girl had trouble sleeping that night. Maybe he wondered what the last few minutes of that little girl’s life was like.

I guess we all do.

 

The lesson to take away for purposes of this blog is simple:

You cannot count on a miracle.

 

Why tell the story here?

Because there was no miracle.

 

It demonstrates the point of this blog: People have to understand what nuclear weapons are. People have to take responsibility to get the nuclear threat right.

 

There have been two dramatic events in the past few months which directly involve nuclear weapons:

Russia invaded Crimea, and China launched a nuclear sub which carries a stated purpose of slaughtering millions of Americans on the East Coast should America launch an attack on China. I defensive protection he Chinese label, “A Second strike Capability.”

 

Now the press is full of debate, criticism, and emotion on Russia’s invasion. But I have yet to hear any comment on the topic of the submarine? We have here a curious myopia.

I think the “look-away” pattern is established because the assumption is that the sub is like all the other weapons systems: a display of economic potential. Which is to say, if America has 200 subs and China has but one; that sub is no big deal.

 

That is a sensible position if one thinks the issue is whether the Chinese sub will embolden the Chinese to start a war. But if one wishes to consider how long that Chinese sub will keep American 3 year olds within minutes from an oven, that position is dangerous.

This is where nuclear weapons are so different from the weapon systems which have preceded them. If China had, say one machine gun, and America had 7 or 8 machine guns, America would be safe from the Chinese but China would be vulnerable to attack from America.  Or if China had one carrier fleet and America had 6 or 7 carriers, China would be at risk and America would be safe.

The beauty of the sub is precisely that it is not about defeating an American weapons system; it is about ignoring the whole issue of American weapons systems, and inviting America to a mutual suicide dance. That is why, from China’s perspective, nuclear weapons represent deliverance.

People that look like they belong in England or North America are now as vulnerable as people that look Chinese.
They will never put that sub away.

Now the point of the blog is that it was predictable way back at the beginning of the nuclear age, before Hiroshima even, that the sub would finally make its appearance. The only question was when the great majority of Chinese boys would be in school.

The British Imperialist and the traditional Chinese aristocracy could not have imagined that there was in the Chinese peasantry a potential engineer who could finally be able to destroy England and America. But that is what that submarine represents to the Chinese today.

IQ theory, once it is understood, predicts that American and English vulnerability would be on its way.

In the days of Lord Palmerston, people that looked like they belonged in England could go to China and shove the sign “Chinese and Dogs, keep out,” down the Chinese throat.  They could do that then because they had been in school and interacted with the world as educated people interact with the world. They can not do that now preciously because the Chinese boys have also been in school. A certain percentage of those Chinese boys have turned out to be very, very good in algebra class. Hence, the sub and vulnerability for people that look like Lord Palmerston.

 

In the days of Lord Palmerston, the Chinese were a peasantry; a behavioral monotone. Absent a school system, no one sees which boy would would perform well in class, and which would not.

 

Italian immigration to the U.S. demonstrate how fast IQ theory operates on a population once one has the “field” to demonstrate the IQ reality; which is to say a school system. It isn’t that what happened to Italian immigrants to the U.S. represents a phenomenon which is “like” the behavior that produced the sub. It is that they are exactly the same thing.

 

Now, it may not be the most accurate account of what happened to Italians once they learned the English language and started attending school for as many years as the Native White Americans
I repeat my mantra.  Professor Eysenck cited Italians as an example of an immigrant population where circumstances forced the less intelligent to emigrate, and where they achieved significantly lower IQ scores than a random sample of the original population would have demonstrated. (H. J. Eysenck,  The IQ Argument: Race, Intelligence and Education (New York:  Library Press, 1971),  43.)

Now, in fact if one sees what actually happened to Italian Americans between 1950 and 1970, and compares it to the census category that must represent the White American IQ average, one does not see what  Professor Lynn or Professor Eysenck assume.
 

TABLE I

Native White Males of Native Parents

45-64             25-44

years old         years old

 

% classified as

professional,

technical,

managerial &

administrative       27.1              31.0

 

median school

years completed    11.4              12.5

 

% unemployed        2.6               2.7

 

% self-employed

workers                  15.2                 8.8

 

% institutionalized   1.1                .93

 

Family Income of Native White

Population of Native Parents

                                                        

45-64             25-44

years old       years old

 

median income      $11,149        $10,559

 

% below

poverty level       6.8            7.3

U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1970, National Origin and Language.

 

 

TABLE 2

Italian Males

 

45-64          25-44

years old       years old

foreign born    native of

foreign

born or

mixed

parentage

% classified as

professional,

technical,

managerial &

administrative        15.1             31.8

 

median school

years completed      8.4              12.4

 

% unemployed        3.3               2.4

 

% self

employed

workers                  13.6               9.7

 

% institutionalized  .45               .51

 

Family Income of Italian Americans

 

45-64             25-44

years old        years old

foreign born       native of

foreign

born or

mixed

parentage

median  income     $11,360        $11,832

%  below

poverty level       4.6              4.6

 

U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1970 National Origin and Language.
Clearly, between 1950 and 1970 second generation Italian-Americans caught up with the population that represents the IQ norm. In fact, it would probably be impossible to design an economic program that would not involve transfer programs moving income from Italians to the blond majority. The number that clearly drove the change was the figure “median school years completed.”

Now, Chuck has written a comment on my first Richard Lynn post and indicates that Italians lag the white majority by 2 to 6 points.
For purposes of this blog: Nuclear weapons and whether they must be controlled, that is no problem.

 

Certainly the blonds enjoy what everyone would concede is a superior aesthetic. I am no biologist, but somehow it seems understandable that exceptionally good looking people may have an intellectual advantage, as well as an enhanced racial sensitivity.

 

But, let’s put the same  advantage into the nuclear weapons game. Let’s say that the Germanic populations of Europe enjoy a 5 point IQ advantage over the Russians. It would be easy to assume that that means the Germanic populations could threaten the Russians with nuclear weapons and the Russians could never threaten the Germans.

 

But that is not what the past 50 years of nuclear weapons has produced. Once the Russian boys are in school, this sense of IQ representing a DISTRIBUTION trumps literally everything else.  The Russians may not exactly match the Gemanic distribution, but given enough Russian boys in school, we can predict that some of the Russian boys will be very very good.

 

Consider Professor Lynn on the issue of Italian poverty.

 

 LYNN replies: Unz needs to explain why there has been poverty and cultural deprivation throughout the far south of Europe. The consistently low IQs in southern mainland Italy (IQ: 91), Sicily (IQ:89), Sardinia (IQ: 90), southern Spain (IQ: 94.4), the Balkans (IQ:92), Malta (IQ: 95.3), Cyprus (IQ:91.8) and Turkey (IQ: 89.4), and the high frequency of African and Muddle Eastern genes in these locations make the genetic theory more plausible.

 

Now, there is no question that Lynn makes a reasonable generalization. If one compared economic data from most of the world, up to the very recent past, the whole planet exhibited “poverty and cultural deprivation” compared with Northern Europeans. In 1950, just  two Northern European countries; the U.S. and Great Britain produced roughly 50% of the entire planet’s GDP.

 

The reason, however, why the argument is getting a second look in this blog involves the particulars of nuclear weapons.  Russia and China can destroy both Great Britain and the U.S. in an afternoon; and North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran may join the choir in the next few years.

 

The heart of this blog is that what has happened with nuclear weapons in the past 50 years was predictable. That 50 years has not favored Northern Europeans; it has favored their enemies.  In 1950 America and Great Britain could have used as much force as they thought necessary, while enjoying total security at home. That is no longer the case. Today Englishmen and Americans can imagine that little girl in the oven; and can see there little girls.

 

Economics have played a role. America and Great Britain now produce about 25% of the world’s GDP. Other countries simply have more money to out into the nuclear industry.

 

But the role of economics has not been as dramatic as the behavioral input of educational systems. Basically, every country now puts its boys into schools for 11 or 12 years. When that happens, populations begin to approach American and Great Britain living standards.

 

What happened to Italian immigrants to the U.S. in the past half century also happened to Italians who stayed in Italy. Whether in the U.S or Europe, Southern Italians gained ground on British American and on people that lived in Great

Britain.

 

Consider Andrew Greeley. “The Italians are almost $2000 above the national average in family income and $454 above the northern metropolitan average,” p. 61. The American Catholic.

 

Lynn simply does not consider the changes that have occurred in the Italian economy compared with the British economy in the past 50 years.

 

rp

 

 

 

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