A few weeks ago, Thomas Sowell wrote an article in which he implied that thinking\u2014serious thinking\u2014is an activity whose time has come and gone.<\/p>\n
If ever we needed proof of this, the Reverend Elizabeth Mollard supplies us with it in spades.<\/p>\n
On May 12th<\/sup>, The Lancaster New Era <\/i>edition of The Intelligencer Journal <\/i>published a letter by Mollard that expressed her displeasure with the paper\u2019s columnist, Paul Gottfried.\u00a0 Interestingly enough, it is Gottfried\u2019s critique of none other than Sowell himself\u2014\u201cThomas Sowell\u2019s Genetic Fallacies\u201d\u2014that has Mollard and a number of Christian clerics who co-signed her rebuttal up in arms.<\/p>\n According to Mollard, Gottfried defends the position that interracial disparities \u201cin education and income\u2026.must be due to\u2026genetic makeup.\u201d<\/p>\n This is simply wrong.<\/p>\n Gottfried is clear that his objection to Sowell is that the latter \u201cseems to be denying entirely the effects of genetic inheritance.\u201d That is, he is not interested in offering an account of inter-group disparities, but in challenging Sowell\u2019s insinuation that genetics play no role in explaining human accomplishment.\u00a0 Gottfried is modest, for he only asks that Sowell supply some support for the radically counterintuitive proposition all<\/i> that we are stems solely<\/i> from our choices.<\/p>\n Indeed, not only is this a reasonable request in its own right, but it is particularly reasonable given that Sowell, a black man who has a history of studying race and IQ going back some 40 years, has himself insisted in the past that genetics do in fact figure to some extent in accounting for group performance.<\/p>\n Next, Mollard likens Gottfried\u2019s views to those of Hitler.<\/p>\n This would be offensive to any person with an IQ above four if it wasn\u2019t so patently absurd.<\/p>\n A person born without legs, regardless of how diligently he tries, will never be as good of a basketball player as is Michael Jordan. An individual with mental retardation will never become an astrophysicist. Obviously, in conceding this we in no way purport to pronounce upon \u201cthe worth\u201d or dignity, the \u201csuperiority\u201d or \u201cinferiority,\u201d of the individuals involved\u2014irrespective of whether the individuals in question are members of different racial groups.<\/p>\n If it is unfair for us to liken ourselves<\/i> to segregationists and Hitler for taking stock of the genetic determinism in cases of this sort, it is that much more unfair to draw these comparisons with Gottfried who, after all, only expressed incredulity over the notion that genetics are of zero consequence in accounting for human performance.<\/p>\n Gottfried is a Jew whose family fled Nazi persecution in its native Austria\u2014but not before Hitler murdered some of his relatives.\u00a0 This makes Mollard\u2019s charge of \u201cHolocaust denial\u201d against him that much more egregious.<\/p>\n While she never explicitly accuses him of such, this is exactly what she is driving at when she writes that Gottfried\u2019s position on Hitler\u2019s motivation is \u201cin clear contradiction to the research of reputable historians who have documented many examples of Hitler\u2019s medical experiments and murder of those, particularly Jews, that he believed were physically inferior.\u201d<\/p>\n In reality, Gottfried never denied\u2014and, given his family history, never could <\/i>deny\u2014that Hitler did just the sorts of things that Mollard and \u201creputable historians\u201d claim he did.\u00a0 What he denies is that Hitler\u2019s slaughter of Jews was motivated by a belief in their intellectual <\/i>inferiority.\u00a0 He writes that \u201cthe Nazis never advocated the expulsion or destruction of the Jews as \u2018racially inferior.\u2019\u201d \u00a0Rather, \u201cHitler and others in his group thought Jews were quite clever but working maliciously against the Aryan race.\u201d<\/p>\n From assault to genocide to war, just a second\u2019s reflection on any number of acts of violence immediately reveals that, not infrequently, a belief in the innate superiority of oneself or one\u2019s group is a non-factor.\u00a0 Did the Allied Powers believe that they were innately superior to the Axis Powers?\u00a0 Must the elderly woman believe in the genetic inferiority of the burglar who she shoots and kills?\u00a0 Must rival gangsters subscribe to some doctrine or other of innate or genetic inferiority before they can shoot each other down?<\/p>\n Finally, Mollard says that her and her colleagues \u201creject this type of belief\u201d\u2014the belief that genetics might have something <\/i>to do with accomplishment\u2014because they think that it lends \u201ccredence\u201d to \u201chatred.\u201d<\/p>\n As a Christian, it is hatred<\/i> that I reject, not some belief<\/i> that might be used to justify or fuel it.\u00a0 Presumably, Mollard and company reject hatred also.\u00a0 It is on hatred, then, that they should focus, for hatred can and does take flight from any number of ideas\u2014including ideas that have achieved the status of facts.<\/p>\n For instance, some members of just those minority groups on whose behalf Mollard advocates hate whites on the basis of the belief <\/i>that they have suffered historical indignities because of the majority\u2019s belief that they are inferior.\u00a0 Are Mollard and her colleagues willing to renounce this <\/i>belief?<\/p>\n Mollard and the co-signers of her letter have argued here in bad faith.\u00a0 In the spirit of their Master, they should do the Christian thing and ask Paul Gottfried for forgiveness.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few weeks ago, Thomas Sowell wrote an article in which he implied that thinking\u2014serious thinking\u2014is an activity whose time has come and gone. If ever we needed proof of this, the Reverend Elizabeth Mollard supplies us with it in spades. On May 12th, The Lancaster New Era edition of The Intelligencer Journal published a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n