Egalitarianism: An Ideological Fallacy?

egalitarianism

[From French egalite: equality.]

(politics) The view that equality is the most important societal (and even ethical) value. Egalitarians usually focus on equality of results, rather than equality of opportunity or equality before the law, which are ideas usually associated with classical liberalism or libertarianism. In practice, egalitarian policies usually focus on the equal distribution [ed: redistribution] of wealth, sometimes verging on socialism.
the ism book

The type of egalitarianism defined above is the basis for most counter-productive leftist social policies. As the curve above shows, the closer society tries to get to the leftist ideal of egalitarianism, the more it falls into the characteristic "traps" that bedevil all attempts to implement socialism on the scale of large populations--particularly those with heterogeneous populations such as the US, New Zealand, and Australia.

The likelihood that different population groups can be characterized by different "Bell Curves of natural ability" makes it particularly difficult to achieve an ideal "Gini-curve" placement of a heterogeneous society, while simultaneously avoiding the traps above.

Ideological leftists tend to deny all scientifically measurable differences between population intellectual aptitudes. Physical aptitude differences between populations appear beyond dispute, and are generally ignored by egalitarian theorists and acolytes. But where population differences in physical aptitudes and characteristics exist, it is not unreasonable to also expect population differences in mental and intellectual (as well as emotional) characteristics and aptitudes.The blogger Half Sigma looks at an interesting way to study possible genetic contributors to IQ differences between populations:

There exists a publicly available gene database, The HapMap Project, that contains random samples of genetic sequences from people in China, Japan, Nigeria, and people in the United States with European ancestry. It’s now possible to search the HapMap database for genes that have been linked with intelligence in published scientific studies. In this manner, we can determine if high intelligence genes occur with greater or lesser frequency in the various races.

Now, here’s an interesting point. If even a single gene correlated with intelligence occurs with different frequencies in the different races, this alone proves that there are racial differences in intelligence. How is that? Well, the egalitarian theory holds that every race has identical intelligence. Therefore, whatever genes there are that affect intelligence, they must be distributed exactly equally in all human races. Once even a small race difference is proven, the egalitarian theory is proven false. At that point, it’s only a matter of determining which race has the higher average intelligence based on the genetic evidence.

Half Sigma

Of course it is really far too early to use the HapMap for a definitive demonstration of population genetic differences that may lead to IQ differences in populations. Only a few of the genes that contribute to IQ have been found, and far too few genomes have been sampled to provide representative comparisons of populations. Even so, the idea is promising, and within the next decade should begin providing results that go beyond twins studies, IQ test studies of schoolchildren, adoptees, and military members, and other methods currently used to compare population IQs.

True genomic and hapmap studies of population IQ and aptitude differences lie in the future. But they will be done, and there is no use for ideologues to attempt to stop them. And whether the race bigots and lobotomised ideologues like it or not some of the findings that emerge will make them all unhappy.

It is quite easy to get caught up in lazy arguments on this (and most any complex controversial) argument. One one extreme you find bitter and bigoted people with their minds made up, and on the other extreme you find people completely disassociated from reality with their minds made up. Anyone who uses either racially charged language, or ideologically charged language should not be trusted here. Their biases are already showing, even before touching on the substance.

Eventually the laws that force society into regressive, leftward positions on the Gini Curve will have to be changed. Reality, rather than ideology, will have to guide society into the future.



Among the blogs that follow these issues, GNXP, Audacious Epigone, and ISteve are among the best.