What began at the Volokh conspiracy with a discussion of the William and Mary anonymous speech code system became a discussion of Dr. Watson and his unguarded comment regarding the intellectual inferiority of Africans.

Dr. Watson, who shared a Nobel Prize for his part in the discovery of the structure of DNA, has from time to time made remarks that have outraged the sensibilities of the politically correct.  From The Independent:

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

…

His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Let me acknowledge that prizes like the Nobel and Pulitzer have frequently been awarded to charlatans and mountebanks.  The most notorious recipient of the Pulitzer is Walter Durante who airbrushed Stalin’s crimes while the Soviet dictator was killing millions of Russian peasants.  And then, of course the more recent recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize have been notable for their insipid anti-Semitism (Jimmy Carter) and for their faux science (Al Gore).   There is often little relationship between wisdom and intelligence.  Some of the world’s foremast writers, artists, scientists and engineers are crackpots who use their fame in a particular field to advance ideas away from their area of expertise.

That having been said, Dr, Watson made a comment that is not totally unrelated to his area of expertise: genetics.  It did, however, result in a furor which caused him to be fired from his position as head of Cold Spring Laboratory, a position he held for 50 years.

Dr. Watson has since repudiated his statement.  But that repudiation is as suspect as a “confession” of the accused at one of Stalin’s show trials.  Even for a 79-year-old the worldwide condemnation that his original comments received would have caused even John McCain to buckle.  From the Herald Sun:

However, in apologising in London, Dr Watson said: "I am mortified about what has happened.

"I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have.

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I apologise unreservedly.

"That is not what I meant. More importantly, from my point of view there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

Which gets me back to the Volokh conspiracy in which a commenter identifying himself as PatHMV said:

I'm normally quite suspect of attacks from the P.C. police. However, I think the reaction to Dr. Watson's remarks was quite appropriate. He did not get in trouble for, as you suggest, engaging in any type of scientific research. No, he gave an interview to the Sunday Times, saying, among other things:

“people who have to deal with black employees find this [black intelligence being equal to that of "us"] not true”

He was not "speculating in academia." He was making ill-founded general observations in the public press. Precisely because of his august reputation, he has a greater responsibility than most to speak cautiously, based only on actual science. Had he been crucified for a research paper published in a scholarly journal, I would defend scientific inquiry. But he wasn't doing that, and it was appropriate to loudly criticize him for it.

When challenged on this statement :

If I may paraphrase your comment, you believe that someone can make a case for a theory but cannot reflect on it’s practical application if it breaks a cultural taboo?

He replied: No, Moneyrunner, that's not what I said. I was responding to a statement suggesting that the Watson affair was an attack on academic freedom and our ability to conduct scientific studies. Watson was not attacked for academic work. The specific quote of Watson's which I cited was not in ANY WAY based on any scientific study or data.

Given the terrible history in this country, and around the world, with racism, and with the false pseudo-science which has in the past been used to justify racism, I do think that scientists such as Watson have a special responsibility to not make public statements like that without STRONG scientific evidence to support them.

In other words, there are some areas of science that require a particular sensitivity to correct social thought because they may otherwise be abused by bigots or racists. 

A follow-up comment by “MDJD2B” concluded with this: Does that mean that scientist who engage in such speculation should lose their [sic] jobs? Does it matter whether they are scientific or adminstrative jobs?

To which PatHMV responded:

Yes. Depending on the particular circumstances, they should lose their jobs. No, it doesn't matter what their particular job is.

The anti-scientific bias of this is literally staggering. PatHMV actually sounds like a medieval cleric defending the position of an earth centric universe because to their minds, the mere discussion of another system would destroy the Christian faith. Truly staggering and truly monstrous for the modern age.

The rabid desire to shut off the debate on this subject reveals a more pernicious issue. It is that there is a belief – not just among the usual suspects but also among the Liberal and oh-so unbiased community that there may be differences in cognitive abilities among the races. That would explain the death grip that Liberals have on affirmative action via lower entrance exams to universities, the elimination of certain math tests in communities for new hires to police departments, and other similar demands.

One politician has stated it in a kinder, gentler way: it’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. The expectations people have for children or adults who are not quite … what?

It’s perfectly fine for another racial group to score, on the whole, higher than Caucasians. But it’s not OK for some group to score lower. Which brings us to the dilemma. If Asians are – on the whole – smarter than Caucasians but Africans are – by definition - just as smart as Caucasians can we draw any conclusions about whether Asians are smarter than Africans? Or is that also not allowed?

Rich Tucker writes "Mea Culpa"

And one of the responses is by "Lilly" 

My response was too long to go in the comments box at Rich's column, so I though I would comment here.

There are a lot of people who are simmering from the some of the events and trends of the last 50 years.

An analogy would be the reaction of the people in Eastern Europe who were freed from Communism after the USSR fell.  There were a lot of pissed off people who were now finally free to make their opinions known.  In some cases they imprisoned or even hung their oppressors.

Here is what Lilly mentioned that – thanks to the alternative media – we now have a chance to debate:

During World War II hardly a family was untouched by the war. People hung little star flags in their windows to show how many living members they had at the front, and how many dead. But even then, we did not see the kind of hysteria that now goes with "Support the Troops!"

You see, that sort of BS is what passes for reality in “Lilly World.”  “We” did not see people saying they supported the troops, but not the war.  “We” did not have a party that told us the war was lost.  “We” did not put Nazi saboteurs in cushy jails, we shot them.  “We” moved hundreds of thousands of ethnic Japanese into internment camps and kept them there.  “We” gave the military a free hand to bomb cities and when thousands of civilians were killed in the process, that was war, not a cause for legal action.  If anyone had said any of the hateful things that are regularly said about our troops today by the Left, they would have been lynched.  “Support the troops?”  Hell yes; that was not even a question.

It feels now as if a lot of elderly conservatives who have been stewing ever since public protest shut down the Vietnam War are now trying to get even for the way they felt then.

There is truth here too.  For years since the end of the war in Viet Nam, the simpering simps who cut off all aid to our allies in South Viet Nam have told us how noble they were while the rotting corpses of the millions of people killed after they had their way stank up the place.  The MSM were unified in presenting a picture drawn by the Left.  A picture of American brutality and futility that they brought to an end.  And when that end did not come in reconciliation but in millions of deaths, tropical Gulags and hundreds of thousands of “boat people” taking chances in shark and pirate infested waters to escape the future that the Left had consigned them to, the Left partied on, congratulating themselves on having won their just cause.

For forty years they have been getting madder and madder not just about Vietnam but about gays coming out of the closet  and about unmarried couples living together openly and about legalized abortion and most of all about forced racial integration---and now "Support the Troops" has become the kind of code that "Law and Order" used to be. These people seem to want a new order in which their values will control everyone in the United States. And they very much want their knee on the neck of every liberal.

Well, now.  The people I know really don’t have a problem with gays coming out of the closet.  They do have a problem with being told that they cannot disapprove of the gay lifestyle.  They have a problem with being told that their moral code is evil.  They have a problem with people, both gay and straight flaunting their sexuality – not in the bedroom – but on Main Street in “gay pride” parades featuring the public display of body parts that were once called “private.”  They have a problem with being told that they must rent rooms in their home to people whose morals they find offensive, or go to jail.  They have a problem with doctors sucking the brains out of babies who are partially born and being told that this is a procedure that is guaranteed by the constitution.  And they are tired of being told that if they object to this, they are interfering with a woman’s body.

And when they object to having these values forced down their throats, they then find themselves told that their values are illegitimate.  The only values that can be forced on people are the values espoused by the Left: the ones who take pride in the death camps of South East Asia, take pride in calling our troops Nazis, take pride in denigrating people of faith, and take pride in killing babies.