by Ann Coulter
7
THE LEFT’S WAR ON
SCIENCE: BURNING
BOOKS TO ADVANCE
“SCIENCE”
Listening to liberals invoke the sanctity of “science” to promote their crackpot ideas creates the same uneasy feeling as listening to Bill Clinton cite Scripture. Who are they kidding? Liberals hate science.
Science might produce facts impervious to their crying and hysterics. Even at college re-education camps, it’s striking that the chemical engineering and economics departments are jam-packed with Republicans, while liberals are all taking French. As with their sudden new interest in the military, liberals invoke “science” only as a cudgel to end debate. Actual science excites them only if it involves some sort of Nazi experimentation with human embryos.
When Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life landed on the shelves in 1994, liberals responded with their usual open-mindedness to scientific facts. The 850-page book represented eight years of collaboration between Herrnstein, a Harvard psychology professor, and Murray, a political scientist. The Bell Curve synthesized mountains of data culled mostly from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY), a federal study testing the intelligence of more than 10,000 Americans beginning in 1980, with regular follow-ups for many years thereafter. Contrary to the party line denying that such a thing as IQ existed, the book methodically demonstrated that IQ exists, it is easily measured, it is heritable, and it is extremely important.
The book—all but one chapter—dealt exclusively with the influence of IQ on white people’s lives. After years of censorship on the subject of IQ, the entire book was a stunning revelation. Once the taboo was shattered and the unspeakable was spoken, IQ turned out to be an extraordinary commodity. Among many other things, IQ is a better predictor than socioeconomic status of poverty, unemployment, criminality, divorce, single motherhood, workplace injuries, and high school dropout rates. The ability to speak different languages is not correlated with IQ, but nearsightedness is. Spouses tend to have closer IQs than siblings. Although other factors influence IQ, such as a good home environment and nutrition, The Bell Curve authors estimated that IQ was about 40 to 80 percent genetic.
In a rare editorial about a book, the New York Times said The Bell Curve was “a flame-throwing” book with “a grisly thesis.”’ The Times was suspicious of the “aura of scientific certitude” to The Bell Curve, calling the scientific findings “ugly” and vowing that they would soon be challenged by other experts in the field. Not yet—but soon! The Times denounced Murray as “a political ideologue who uses social science data to support his policy preferences,” and then launched into an irrelevant tirade on the “long and sordid history” of “bigots” who used ” `scientific’ evidence that blacks, or American Indians, or Jews, to name three targets, were of inferior stock.”
Having spent decades rigorously enforcing the taboo against any mention of IQ in any context, ever—with a narrow exception for remarks about the IQs of Republican presidential candidates—the Times complained that The Bell Curve “belabor[s] the well-known fact that the average IQ of blacks is 15 points below that of whites.” I’m going out on a limb to say that fact was not well known to readers of the Times. Indeed, the indignant denunciations of the book were never clear on whether the problem was that The Bell Curve was wrong or that it was old news.
An article in BusinessWeek said that to call the “opinions” in The Bell Curve “scientific truth” was “downright dangerous.” In fact, the book was nothing but “a house of cards constructed to push a political agenda.” Newsweek branded Murray “an intellectual snake charmer” who wrote a book that took a “deeply angry” view. The magazine added that Murray “vehemently denies he is racist.” Columnist Ellen Goodman said she suspected Murray and Herrnstein had raised the issue of genes and environment influencing racial differences in IQ solely “in order to break thètaboo’ against fanning racist sentiments.” Newsday columnist Robert Reno calmly said of the book, “The slop Murray has served up is not only unappetizing, but warmed over. Proving the inferiority of races has for 100 years been the mischief of self-promoting scholars as credentialed as Murray and as squalid as the louts who churned out thèscience’ behind Dr. Goebbels’ loath-some ravings.” Only liberals could interpret a statement that people have varying IQs as a call to start killing people.
After the furor over the book died down, it came out that psychometricians had known the truth all along. They had been lying to the public about IQ In light of the calm and measured response to Murray and Herrnstein’s book, one could see why.
A few years later, the American Psychological Association formed a Task Force on Intelligence in response to the publication of The Bell Curve and issued a report basically admitting the truth of all the book’s major conclusions.’ Among these were:
• “Differences in genetic endowment contribute substantially to individual differences in [psychometric] intelligence …”; and
• “The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socioeconomic status.”
So much for the New York Times’s claim that as soon as “unlike-minded scholars have time to react, they will subject its findings to withering criticism.”
Liberals were afraid of a book that told the truth about IQ because they are godless secularists who do not believe humans are in God’s image. Christians have no fear of hearing facts about genetic differences in IQ because we don’t think humans are special because they are smart. There may be some advantages to being intelligent, but a lot of liberals appear to have high IQs, so, really, what’s the point? After Hitler carried the secularists’ philosophy to its bloody conclusion, liberals became terrified of making any comment that seems to acknowledge that there are any differences among groups of people—especially racial groups. It’s difficult to have a simple conversation, much less engage in free-ranging, open scientific inquiry, when liberals are constantly rushing in with their rule book about what can and cannot be said.
Among the most absurd results of liberals’ unbridgeable commitment to nondiscrimination was their insistence on suppressing the truth about AIDS and scaring Americans into believing that heterosexuals were as much at risk for acquiring AIDS as gays and intravenous drug users. Once again, the science had to be lied about so no one’s feelings got hurt. But in contrast to liberal preachiness about IQ, there would be no moralizing when it came to sex. Anal sex, oral sex, fisting, dental dams, “birthing games”—all that would be foisted on unsuspecting children in order to protect kindergartners from the scourge of AIDS. As one heroine of the sex education movement told an approving New York Times reporter, “My job is not to teach one right value system. Parents and churches teach moral values. My job is to say, `These are the facts,’ and to help the students, as adults, decide what is right for them.”
At least when Herrnstein and Murray talked about IQ, they got the facts right. Liberal sex educators claimed to be slaves to the facts—not to subjective moral values like promoting abstinence—but they spent most of the eighties orchestrating a massive campaign of lies about AIDS, as copiously documented by science writer Michael Fumento.
The high-water mark of liberal lies about AIDS came in 1985, when Life magazine’s cover proclaimed, “NOW, NO ONE IS SAFE FROM AIDS.”
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter praised the responsibility of the press in writing about AIDS, saying the Life cover “may have crossed the line, but not by much. It’s been twenty years, and we’re still waiting for that heterosexual outbreak.
A 1985 issue of People magazine began an article on AIDS warning that the disease “poses a growing threat to heterosexuals.” (And the folks at People wonder why they’re no longer considered a legitimate science jou
rnal.) Associated Press “science writer” Malcolm Ritter approvingly quoted an AIDS activist saying “there’s nothing inherent in homosexuality or drug use that leads to AIDS.” Evidently, Ritter is a “science writer” much the way Cindy Sheehan is a “geopolitical expert.”
The Chicago Tribune “science writer” quoted the head of California’s AIDS research task force saying it was “highly likely that the disease will spread into the heterosexual population.” Tribune columnist Bob Greene followed up with a piece titled “The AIDS Epidemic: Not for Gays Only,” in which he ominously concluded, “If you never gave AIDS a second thought before, it’s time to start thinking.” This was a few years before Bob Greene was dismissed from his Tribune job for having sex with a teenage reader. Let’s just hope it was safe sex.
“Dear Abby” informed her readers, “AIDS is not exclusively a homosexual disease. An increasing number of cases are being found among heterosexual (straight) men and women. All sexually active men and women, gay or straight, should be concerned.” Yes—especially when they share dirty needles with street junkies!
A few years would go by and the great heterosexual outbreak still wouldn’t materialize, but it seemed to be constantly just around the corner. In 1987, Oprah Winfrey said, “Research studies now project that one in five—listen to me, hard to believe—one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That’s by 1990. One in five. It is no longer just a gay disease. Believe me.”
In 1987, U.S. News & World Report said, “The disease of them is suddenly the disease of us … finding fertile growth among heterosexuals.”
In 1988, ABC’s 20/20 cited a study of AIDS cases on college campuses, claiming these were all heterosexual infections. It struck no one at ABC as odd that 28 of the 30 infections on college campuses had occurred in men.
Then, two years later, CNN reported on the rerelease of that same 1988 study, and concluded, “A new report from CDC indicates that AIDS is on the rise on college campuses.” As Michael Fumento remarked, “Only with AIDS can an old study be declared an alarming increase over itself.”
In 1992, PBS broadcast a program that claimed a single condom can save “hundreds of lives.” It would have to be “a hell of a condom,” Fumento said. (Maybe if you used it to plug up a leaky life raft …) The program was sponsored in part by a condom manufacturer, so liberals were willing to suspend their opposition to greedy profit-making corporations in this one instance.”
After a decade-long epidemic with more than a million infections, in November 1992 the Centers for Disease Control listed only 2,391 cases of AIDS transmission by white heterosexuals—and that included hemophiliacs and blood transfusion patients.
The most recent figures from the CDC—now called the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” in a stupid bureaucratic redundancy—show that through the end of 2004, almost 70 percent of AIDS victims in America acquired the virus through homosexual sex or intravenous drug use. Only 13 percent of cases are even alleged to be through heterosexual conduct. As Fumento has pointed out, determinations of the method of transmission are based almost entirely on self-reports and no one who got the virus from heterosexual sex lies and says he got it from homosexual sex or intravenous drug use, but the reverse is not true.
Intriguingly, black and Hispanic men—groups that have been slow to embrace Queer Theory—were five times more likely than white men to claim to have gotten AIDS from heterosexual contact. When the CDC performed a follow-up investigation on AIDS reports from two Florida counties, more than half of the cases of men who claimed to have contracted AIDS from heterosexual sex had to be reclassified as homosexual transmissions. This took little effort in some cases. The CDC simply looked at the men’s medical records and moved men with rectal STDs from the “heterosexual transmission” category to the “homosexual transmission” category. Men with symptoms that are frequently, but not exclusively, associated with homosexual sex, such as a loose sphincter muscle, remained in the “heterosexual transmission” category.
While liberals loudly proclaimed that absolutely anyone could get AIDS, and that AIDS doesn’t discriminate, they simultaneously insisted that no one should worry about sharing towels or utensils with AIDS sufferers. That message might have been a little clearer if someone had simply said, Just don’t have anal sex with them! Liberals also may have been sending mixed messages by saying in one breath that “AIDS is not a gay disease” and that Ronald Reagan was a homophobe for not allotting more federal funding to find a cure.
At least we could count on the government not to politicize science. That is, unless the surgeon general was more interested in being called brave by the mainstream media than in giving Americans the truth. In June 1987, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop released a “Report on AIDS” that said, “Although the initial discovery was in the homosexual community, AIDS is not a disease only of homosexuals. AIDS is found in heterosexual people as well. AIDS is not a black or white disease. AIDS is not just a male disease. AIDS is found in women; it is found in children.”
The pamphlet droned on and on about the danger of heterosexual AIDS, warning that “[h]eterosexual persons are increasingly at risk” and “[h]eterosexual transmission is expected to account for an increasing proportion of those who become infected with the AIDS virus in the future.” Although “[a]bout 70 percent of AIDS victims throughout the country are male homosexuals and bisexuals,” Koop said, “this percentage probably will decline as heterosexual transmission increases.” Twenty years later and the percentage hasn’t budged.
Koop was a major advocate of teaching schoolchildren to use condoms, because, he said, “There is now no doubt that we need sex education in schools and that it must include information on heterosexual and homosexual relationships.” AIDS does not discriminate!
Koop took his campaign on the road, describing heterosexual sex as the sort of “very high risk behavior” that could lead to AIDS. He mentioned homosexual sex third in his list of “high risk behavior” that could transmit AIDS. In 1987, the CDC predicted that AIDS would be the number-one killer on campus by 1991.
It was as if the government had issued a scientific report stating, “Sharks will eat people, but so will rainbow trout!”—so as not to stigmatize sharks.
While gays were being decimated by the AIDS virus, Koop was more interested in not “stigmatizing” them than in saving their lives. See, where I come from being dead also carries a certain type of stigma. Instead of distributing condoms in gay bars and at Madonna concerts where they might have done some good, Koop insisted on distributing condoms in kindergarten classes, in order to emphasize the point that AIDS does not discriminate, which it does.
C. Everett had clearly flown the Koop. Yet with each more insane statement, Koop was hailed in the media for speaking truth to power. It almost got to the point where Dr. Koop’s distinctive look—the gay Amish Navy guy in the Village People—seemed more sane than the things he was saying about AIDS. Soon he was advocating teaching kindergartners about anal sex and AIDS. This stance made Koop more popular than John Hinckley with liberals.
In 1987, New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd—before she was elevated to the cartoon pages—wrote a heroic portrait of the man. Dr. Koop, she said, “fiercely wants to strip AIDS of its stigma,” and for that reason, he talks “about making an animated educational video that would feature two condoms `with little eyes on them’ chatting, and about the need for `gentle, non-mystifying’ sex education for students, starting in kindergarten.” I would pay quite a bit of money to hear someone describe anal sex—oh heck, make it any kind of sodomy—to a five-year-old in a gentle, non-mystifying way.
For wanting to teach kindergartners about condoms and anal sex, liberals swooned over Koop. Representative Henry Waxman called Koop “a man of heroic proportions.” Koop himself boasted of all the praise he was getting from some of the most heinous people in America: “Obviously, it’s gratifying to have people like Senator Edward Ken
nedy and Henry Waxman saying I have integrity.” Koop’s sodomy lessons, Clinton’s non-euclidean sex romps, Jocelyn Elders’s masturbation musings—all you have to do to become a liberal icon in this country is discuss non-coital sex in graphic detail with small children.
Conservatives were not so enthralled with Koop’s plan to introduce talking condoms “with little eyes” to kindergartners in response to the AIDS epidemic—an epidemic notable for not being spread by show-and-tell, peanut butter sandwiches, and nap time. Naturally, therefore, Koop’s conservative critics were accused of being against “science.” Koop wrote a letter to the Washington Post complaining that “[p]arents are uncomfortable with the science of reproduction,” which would raise questions about how they became parents in the first place. Is Dr. Koop comfortable with the notion of the oxymoron? Inasmuch as the kind of sex Dr. Koop seemed bent on teaching kindergartners does not result in reproduction, he may have been the one who needed a lesson. The New York Times echoed Koop, saying conservatives were “enraged” by Koop’s “emphasis on science rather than values.” Whenever liberals say values must take a back seat to “science,” you know you’re not getting values or science. In fact, I get a little nervous whenever liberals use the word backseat.