Jack Kemp

Unlike Peter Brimelow, I never met Jack Kemp. Once upon a time I thought positively of him, because he was a big Ronald Reagan supporter and he advocated for a “flat tax,” which is a pretty good idea if it could be implemented correctly. (It must be pointed out that a “flat tax” means different things to different people.)

But in retrospect, I don’t think that Jack Kemp was really one of the good guys. He was a paleo-conservative HBD-denialist with disturbing paleo-libertarian tendencies (as evidenced by his support for the gold standard). Just as liberals believe they can fix the black-white achievement gap through liberal policies such as Head Start and other spending programs, Jack Kemp believed he could fix the black-white achievement gap through conservative policies, like making NAMs take more personal responsibility. For example, he believed that if poor people owned their own home, then they would suddenly take pride in ownership and become good capitalists instead of underclass poor people.

Because Jack Kemp was an HBD-denialist, he was pro-immigration, both to demonstrate how non-racist he was and because in his narrow libertarian view of the world, all government restrictions, including restrictions on who's allowed to move here and work here, are evil and do harm to the economy.

I see Jack Kemp’s influence behind a lot of other conservative HBD-denialist initiatives, such as No Child Left Behind, Bush’s illegal immigrant amnesty initiative, the belief that we could turn Iraq into a capitalist democracy just like the United States, and of course, the housing bubble and its collapse which was directly inspired by Jack Kemp’s assertions that home ownership for everyone would make the country a better place.

* * *

It's easier for religious Christians like Jack Kemp to deny HBD because they don't believe in evolution, so they don't have to explain why intelligence stopped evolving 50,000 to 100,000 years ago when the races split up. They can just believe that God created us with equal intelligence.

Comments

[roissy]

yes, most conservatives, especially those of a religious bent, are blind to the realities of HBD. or they are too cowardly to admit their belief in it. hypocrisy will win you the right kinds of friends, but at the cost of your integrity.

conservatives also have their heads up their asses regarding the nature of women.

[The White Detroiter]

"Just as liberals believe they can fix the black-white achievement gap through liberal policies such as Head Start and other spending programs, Jack Kemp believed he could fix the black-white achievement gap through conservative policies".

Kemp also supported liberal policies like "affirmative action" to fix racial gaps. He also constantly told Republicans to pander to blacks and denounced conservatives for questioning Obama's closeness with Rev. Wright. When Vernon Robinson, a black Republican, ran for Congress in 2004 Kemp initially endorsed him (probably because he is black). But when he discovered that Robinson was running against illegal immigration Kemp withdrew his endorsement. Kemp was generally terrible on national question issues.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Just as liberals believe they can fix the black-white achievement gap through liberal policies such as Head Start and other spending programs, Jack Kemp believed he could fix the black-white achievement gap through conservative policies, like making NAMs take more personal responsibility. For example, he believed that if poor people owned their own home, then they would suddenly take pride in ownership and become good capitalists instead of underclass poor people."

But Kemp at least was offering solutions palatable to the public and the elites.

This is why Kemp was influential, he gave both elites and ordinary middle class Republicans at least superficially plausable solutions to the struggles of the poor.

HBD is being resisted - even by smart people like Tyler Cowen - because there are few HBD solutions that elite policy makers can resort to if the Blank Slate goes down, other than maybe Eugenics***.

The elite hates HBD because HBD means both conservative, liberal, and libertarian policies for the poor, or even mediocre, must have their expectations for their favored government policies drastically scaled back because of the inherent limitations of human neuro-psychology implied by HBD.

The public - including white Americans - do not like HBD because, to them, people such as Charles Murray are basically saying their children are doomed if they do not have at least a 110 IQ.

White Nationalists celebrate the powerful evidence for HBD because it proves how multiculturalism is a failure, but even ordinary white Americans dislike HBD because most people do not like to think about how genes influence who people are.

HBD's largest problem is that HBD has few, if any, positive policies that can give the elites and public something to fall back on when the Blank Slate goes down in flames.

***By Eugenics I mean ANY policy that increases the birthrate of the most talented, and reduces the birthrate of the underclass.

Eugenics not includes policies such as steriliing drug addicts and prostitutes, but simply cutting off welfare to welfare dependents to reduce the underclass birthrate.

Using pronatal policies to increase the birth rate of the most talented by, for example, increasing the affordability of childcare for the upper middle class so they can afford more childcare and have more children is also, technically, Eugenics.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

Btw, Sigma,

You're VDare entries are being discussed over at Mangan's:

http://mangans.blogspot.com/2009/06/bashing-vdare.html

[Turambar]

TUJ is right that HBD is DOA. The whole business last year with Slate should have convinced you of that. Unless you find some way to apply HBD to just the groups liberals dont like you will never get any traction.

Assuming that HBD is not your rasion d'etre (a big assumption in the last months) as opposed to successful public policy, you are much better off with someone like Kemp who can influence government.

In point of fact, promoting an ownership society for all citizens is what you purport to favor under the umbrella "middle class values".

[HS: Ownership is a false middle class value. It doesn't matter whether someone owns a house or rents, what's important is how they behave. Owning a house requires a higher IQ than renting, so it shouldn't be encouraged for all people.]

[Truth(er)]

What matters more is the realization that non-whites are waging war against whites. HBD is just whistling past the graveyard.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Assuming that HBD is not your rasion d'etre (a big assumption in the last months) as opposed to successful public policy, you are much better off with someone like Kemp who can influence government."

HBD is a negative factor in the sense that HBD explains why some policy will NOT work.

HBD is pretty good at explaining why racially diverse immigration has large negative externalities, but it does not really offer much in terms of solutions aside from telling policy makers what policies they can and cannot expect to succeed.

[Frank]

"religious Christians like Jack Kemp deny HBD because they don't believe in evolution"

Also consider the PC elites that run the first world, most elites believe in evolution to the extent that they think it argues against a creator. In fact, most believe in a Disney-fied version that argues against any differences between races (evolution stopped 50,000 years ago) and male and females are identical outside of reproduction organs.

[Turambar]

"[HS: Ownership is a false middle class value. It doesn't matter whether someone owns a house or rents, what's important is how they behave. Owning a house requires a higher IQ than renting, so it shouldn't be encouraged for all people.]"

Wikipedia disagrees with you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class

"# Achievement of tertiary education.
# Holding professional qualifications, including academics, lawyers, engineers, doctors regardless of their leisure or wealth.
# Belief in bourgeois values, such as high rates of house or long-term lease ownership and jobs which are perceived to be "secure.""

You perceive that home ownership isnt important because you live in the outlier NYC where people rent shoeboxes for decades.

[Steve Johnson]

You perceive that home ownership isnt important because you live in the outlier NYC where people rent shoeboxes for decades.

Posted by: Turambar

House ownership isn't important because it's a late-stage outcome of a life lived middle class not a cause of middle class values.

People who own houses:

1) Have saved a significant amount of money
2) Committed to a long-term transaction with an institution that scrutinized them for signs that the applicant was likely to pay the institution back
3) Actually fulfilled those obligations
4) Spent money on the boring consumer good of a house rather than on some flashy good that you can take out and show off to strangers (like bling or a car). Showing off your house to strangers (through house parties) gets your house wrecked.

Notice how undermining these points in a Jack Kemp-like scheme of "increasing home ownership" (practiced by R & D alike) just resulted in the blowing up of conventional models of how many people will default on loans rather than widespread middle class behavior among NAMs.

[Turambar]

It is not true that the causality goes only one way.

In order to buy a house you have to have a certain level of prioritization and organization in your life.

But conversely owning a house imposes an amount of responsibility and accountability on you:
- you cant just blow off your job. You are now a mortgage slave.
- it increases your interest in obtaining a promotion
- you are responsible for the condition of the place- you cant just chalk thing up to "the landlord's responsibility"
- you are more invested in the community since its condition now affects your financial condition.
- since you are paying property tax you are now more interest in the performance of local government.

Kemp's goal was to enable home ownership, which has a salutatory effect on the candidate home owner in general. Helping someone who is a good candidate over their last hurdle is a public policy good. For instance many of us had family members give us a lump sum of money to help buy our first homes- someone from a poor background might never be able to scrape together the down payment in the old system.

The recent situation telescoped all many of the steps to homeownership for many people and removed all of the checks that was not what Kemp intended. We went through a period of time where we would lend money to people who haddent demonstrated they were credit worthy in the first place, and then we remove any penalty for not paying what they agreed. If you lend money to untrustworthy people and they see no downside in not paying you, you are not going to see your money.

The fact that Ed Andrews of the Times isnt embarrassed by his behavior is appalling. He is intentionally not paying back money that he knows he owes.

Likewise these people who are exploiting a loophole to avoid paying what they know they owe:
http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/2008/06/19/produce-the-note-how-to/

We need to get back to a 'stuff white people dont like' where people are shamed by this kind of morality.

[Andrew Ryan]

"It's easier for religious Christians like Jack Kemp to deny HBD because they don't believe in evolution, so they don't have to explain why intelligence stopped evolving 50,000 to 100,000 years ago when the races split up. They can just believe that God created us with equal intelligence."

Lots of Christians (like me) believe in evolution. The Roman Catholic Church does, for example. Jack Kemp was a Presbyterian so that does not preclude belief in evolution.

I do agree that HBD blindness underlies the worst policies of both the political Right and Left.

[Fishbein]

I wonder if the mind-body concept in western (esp. post-Descartes Christian) thought is behind a lot of resistance to HBD. Many people see humans as a sort of nonphysical substance ("spirit," "mind," "soul," "being" or whatever) associated with a physical body. The latter is obviously pretty variable among different people, esp. among different races, but the former must be some special material that is either good (and goes to Heaven) or bad (and goes to Hell). Animals aren't supposed to have "it," so they go to neither place.