An Inconvenient "Truth"

James Watson recently reminded us that, although you have to be intelligent to win a Nobel Prize in science, you don't necessarily have to be smart. He waded into trouble when he said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospects for Africa.” So far so good. Who in their right mind wouldn't be pessimistic about the corrupt and incompetent countries that infest that continent.

But he twisted a lot of knickers when he added “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”

Oh, Oh James! Now you've done it! You should know there are things you can't even bring up much less assert. And this particular link between race and intelligence is one of them. In the seconds it took to utter those words his long distinguished career was in ruins. His lecture tour was canceled, his 40-year tenure as chancellor of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island came to an end. Across Britain, he was being denounced as a racist and there's even talk of prosecuting him under their ludicrous "hate speech" laws.

But why? No, it's not because he's wrong (or right for that matter.) His sin was that he brought it up at all. As a spokes-dolt for London’s Science Museum, one of several venues to cancel appearances, said Watson had gone “beyond the point of acceptable debate.”

"Acceptable debate." That sums it up. There are things you can talk about and some you can't. Reminds me of the Victorian woman who said in regard to Darwin's theory that we descended from apelike ancestors, “Let us hope it is not true, but if it is, let us pray it does not become generally known.”

Now my question is, who decides what is acceptable? Apparently it's the Establishment, which is nothing more than a mob in respectable clothing. And we all know "mob mentality" is a very scary thing. Lets hope research into the cause of cancer doesn't sometime become unacceptable.

The final irony is that the man who first determined the structure of DNA was essentially destroyed by a comment about genetic differences.