Columnist: What If Some Of Us Are Dumb?

William Joyce

Chemotherapy for PC
Jan 23, 2004
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Rod Dreher: What if they're not smart enough? | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Opinion: Points

"Yes, we can!" says Barack Obama at every turn, and why shouldn't he? It's a deeply American sentiment. We Americans are romantic egalitarians by nature. We like to think that ours is the land of opportunity, where anyone can succeed if he just works hard enough. But what if it's not true? No rational person would believe that every child born has the same chance to become Tony Romo or Tiger Woods. Some have more opportunity to develop their athletic talents, of course, but it's obvious that there are natural limits to an individual's physical abilities. This is not even controversial.

But we aren't allowed to say openly that some people are flat-out more intelligent than others, though it's not hard to find evidence for this. In fact, you wouldn't have to look much further than my math grades in high school to see that I was not MIT material and never would be. I barely passed college math.

So what? I excelled in classes that required verbal skill and found my vocation as a writer. Had I been pushed to go into engineering or a field that required a mathematical mind, I would have been fighting my own natural limits and miserable.

There's no shame in discovering one's limits and learning to succeed within the boundaries set by nature. The fictional town of Lake Wobegon and the candyland of No Child Left Behind are the only happy-clappy utopias where all children are above average. It is a false, even cruel, egalitarianism that leads people to believe otherwise.

If it's true that quite a few Americans are incapable of doing serious college work, our nation has to face some serious moral questions. In fact, the social justice of the globalized economic system comes directly into play.

Globalizers of the left and right keep saying that American workers have to be re-educated and retrained to compete in a world market in which manufacturing jobs move overseas. But what happens to workers who lack the cognitive abilities to do the higher-level "knowledge" work the new economy requires of them?

A thought experiment: What if staying competitive in the globalizing economy required developing a stronger back? What if the economists told lawyers, professors, paper-pushers and other nerdlings they were going to have to spend a lot more time at the gym to develop the muscles of longshoremen – or get left behind? Would this be the insult that made a man out of Mac?

As if. The nerdling would be able to improve his strength to a certain degree, but to tell him his physical limits are defined only by his desires and will to succeed is to play a cruel hoax on him.
 
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There's no need to post an article for validation. Alucard and Jose are proof that some of us are just naturally dumber than others. I think most of us figured that out on our own already.
 
There's no need to post an article for validation. Alucard and Jose are proof that some of us are just naturally dumber than others. I think most of us figured that out on our own already.

Joyce has an agenda. He posted this to lead you to the thought that certain races are less smart naturally. Leading to his real point , which is the White race is superior.
 
Joyce has an agenda. He posted this to lead you to the thought that certain races are less smart naturally. Leading to his real point , which is the White race is superior.

noy sure joyce has thought this all the way through.....because we are all decendants of adam and eve or a piece of ooz from some puddle....

in short.....joyce is part black...
 
Joyce has an agenda. He posted this to lead you to the thought that certain races are less smart naturally. Leading to his real point , which is the White race is superior.

I kind of thought the same thing, but it's quite a reach. The author clearly defines the limitations as individual.

In fact to argue otherwise, would be to argue against the article itself.
 
I kind of thought the same thing, but it's quite a reach. The author clearly defines the limitations as individual.

In fact to argue otherwise, would be to argue against the article itself.

That has never stopped Joyce. Believe me he is playing a shell game. He is playing a game at feeding certain material to the masses to try and lead them to where he wants them and it has nothing to do with what an article REALLY means.
 
I'm with Dirt, this goes without saying. All you have to do is read one post from Jose and realize that some people in the world are really stupid.
 
That has never stopped Joyce. Believe me he is playing a shell game. He is playing a game at feeding certain material to the masses to try and lead them to where he wants them and it has nothing to do with what an article REALLY means.

Putting Barack Obama's intellect against George Bush's kind of shoots WJ's theories in the gonads anyway. ;)
 
I kind of thought the same thing, but it's quite a reach. The author clearly defines the limitations as individual.

In fact to argue otherwise, would be to argue against the article itself.

Agreed--the article taken at face value makes an excellent point even IF we were all the same race. Some people simply have different skills than others. Some just barely have the brains to stay alive much less be competitive in a global economy.
We are outsourcing jobs Americans can do and allowing cheap, illegal labor to pour in our country and told Americans WON'T do what they are doing. Bullshit---Americans won't do it because the pay sucks.
 
i have met many a well spoken fool.....

I'm sure... but the editor of Harvard Law Review isn't one of them. Disagree with his politics all you want. But you can't fault his intellect...as opposed to the badly spoken fook who's been inhabiting the white house for two terms.

my point was one of the irrelevance of race anyway, not politics.... at least not specifically.
 
I'm sure... but the editor of Harvard Law Review isn't one of them. Disagree with his politics all you want. But you can't fault his intellect...as opposed to the badly spoken fook who's been inhabiting the white house for two terms.

my point was one of the irrelevance of race anyway, not politics.... at least not specifically.

obama's intellect is yet to be proven.....he speaks well.....that is pretty much it so far....
 
obama's intellect is yet to be proven.....he speaks well.....that is pretty much it so far....

It not only hasn't been proven--I'm not even sure it's been put to the test. Intellect is only one of many qualities needed to play the game.
 
well, my feeling is you can't be editor of Harvard Law Review and be a slouch. I'll disagree with you about his intellect anyway. but different strokes, as they say:

Though his year's law review was the least cited in Harvard's history. It means probably nothing, but hey if just being editor counts, so should the other things.
 
It not only hasn't been proven--I'm not even sure it's been put to the test. Intellect is only one of many qualities needed to play the game.

leadership and problem solving and critical thinking......then surround yourself with intellect.....

problem with intellectuals is they think they already have all the answers....
 
Though his year's law review was the least cited in Harvard's history. It means probably nothing, but hey if just being editor counts, so should the other things.


see, i don't feel the need to diminish someone's intellect just because i disagree with them. I can tell you I saw George Will on TV with Stephen Colbert this week and the guy is brilliant. I disagree with him, but I'd never question his smarts. (Yes...btw... as opposed to baby bush whom I think is one of the stupidest people I've ever seen in politics.. .but it's b/c he's really dumb, not because I don't agree with him. I think Cheney is a really bad guy... but I'd never call him stupid).

But ... for some reason, some parts of the right seems to have this need to diminish every aspect of people they disagree with... I think not acknowledging that Obama's smart is kind of silly.
 

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