"Dog Pile on the Wabbit!"

Today's portrait of shame is Andrew Sullivan in his role as the Elmer Fudd of cultural commentators.

Our case in point is his post on this article by Selwyn Duke. The article itself is pretty much drivel -- straw man followed by red herring followed by bald assertions, misrepresentations, and insane cognitive leaps, none of which say anything at all about racism. The article itself is just more left-bashing, which Sullivan picks up. What's interesting here is the segment that Sullivan quoted with a comment about the "left's faith-based science." (Snicker.) Sullivan has a habit of plopping a paragraph from someone else's screed into his blog with a semi-snide comment, or none at all, I guess so that he can go back later and start flip-flopping on what he really thinks in true conservative fashion when someone calls him on it.

What is the truth about racial differences? For one thing, is it logical and rational to claim that, except for appearance and a few diseases and conditions of the body, every group is the same in every way?

This is the left's implication, and it's absurd. It seems especially odd when you consider that most of these inquisitors are secularists who subscribe to the theory of evolution. Yet, despite their belief that different groups "evolved" in completely different parts of the world, operating in different environments and subject to different stresses, they would have us believe that all groups are identical in terms of the multitude of man's talents and in every single measure of mental capacity. Why, miracle of miracles, all these two-legged cosmic accidents, the product of a billions-of-years journey from the primordial soup to primacy among creatures, whose evolution was influenced by perhaps millions of factors, wound up being precisely the same. It's really the best argument for God I've ever heard, as such a statistical impossibility could only exist if it was ordained by the one with whom all things are possible.

Notice how Duke not only manages to slam "the left," but also takes a swipe at those who give credit to reality-based science, in this case evolution -- why am I not surprised?.

The reality of the matter is, of course, that race and race-based differences are much more complex than either Duke or Sullivan is prepared to admit. Duke seems to be basing his argument on genetic/morphological data, which misses the point completely. Anyone who has been following work in the Human Genome Project or any of the historical genetic research done over the past several decades knows that the actual genetic difference between races is too small to measure. (Consider that the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees is somewhere on the order of 2% or less. That doesn't leave a lot of room for significant differences between a Norwegian and a Hausa. Consider that the mitochondrial DNA of representatives of just about every modern human population has been traced back to a small group of women in Africa about 200,000 years ago. To say modern humans "evolved" is different areas is misleading at best.) If you want to talk about differences in crime rates, out-of-wedlock births, education, "achievement," you have to look at cultural and historical markers, which Duke doesn't do -- in fact, there's barely any admission that such things exist.

(I will stipulate that there might be a biological basis for racism, based on the fact that the hominids, and the whole range of our relatives in general, with a very few exceptions, seem to have a deep sense of "us" and "other." That's adaptive -- we are social animals, and seem to have done quite well on that basis. Does this explain the current fuss on immigration? No. But it's a potential starting point, or would be except for the fact that such basic aspects of human behavior wind up with so many cultural overlays that a direct causal effect is apparently impossible to trace. And how do you explain those who have no problem with immigrants?)

No, it's much easier to land on "the left" because of the reaction to remarks from an important and influential biologist that were, at the very least, fuzzy and ill-defined, if not irresponsible, and to ascribe his repudiation of those remarks to the "left-wing thought police." (Excuse me -- Watson screwed up. He admits he screwed up. Selwyn Duke, whoever that is, however, sees it as an excuse to project the right-wing approach to public discourse onto the left. Sullivan, as is usual when he's operating from total ignorance, jumps on the bandwagon, gods know why. The man's reasoning power is apparently sadly diminished.)

The article, as you'll notice, appears on a site titled "American Thinker." It's to laugh.