[BITList] more Charles Murray’s ‘Coming Apart - The State of White America’ - NYTimes.com

[COLIN TAYLOR]

Hugh,
there is likely something amiss with murray when he is consulted by republican and conservative ‘officials’ – as if their own venal  plans are not diabolic enough..
he writes for The American magazine published by the  --“The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a conservative[1][2][3][4] think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate".[5] AEI is an independent nonprofit organization supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C..”
The AEI is a think tank dedicated to ensuring the 1% remain the one per centers................it’s a bunch of rich academic yee-haw rednecks with PhD’s trying to look intelligent.................
ct


Op-ed writings
Murray has published opinion pieces in The New Republic, Commentary, The Public Interest, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Washington Post.[22] He has been a witness before United States congressional and senate committees and a consultant to senior Republican government officials in the United States, and conservative officials in the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).[22]

In the April, 2007 issue of Commentary Magazine, Murray wrote on the disproportionate representation of Jews in the ranks of outstanding achievers and says that one of the reasons is that Jews "have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested." His article concludes with the assertion: "At this point, I take sanctuary in my remaining hypothesis, uniquely parsimonious and happily irrefutable. The Jews are God's chosen people."[23]

In the July/August, 2007 issue of The American, a magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute, Murray says he has changed his mind about SAT tests and says it's time to scrap the test. "The evidence has become overwhelming that the SAT no longer serves a democratizing purpose. Worse, events have conspired to make the SAT a negative force in American life. And so I find myself arguing that the SAT should be ended. Not just deemphasized, but no longer administered. Nothing important would be lost by so doing. Much would be gained."[7]


From: HUGH 
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 12:52 PM
To: BitList 
Subject: Re: [BITList]Charles Murray’s ‘Coming Apart - The State of White America’ - NYTimes.com

Mike,

I read : "I did not want my children to grow up only knowing other upper-middle-class kids like themselves,” said Mr. Murray, who has two children with Ms. Cox and two from his first marriage. “That was a very conscious worry shared by my work.” 
Life in Burkittsville, as he described it, approximates the small-town virtues he enjoyed growing up in Newton, Iowa, where, as the son of a manager at Maytag, he could mingle easily with the children of assembly-line workers. 

In Burkittsville, he said, he and his wife attend Quaker meetings and enjoy friendships with both other professionals and blue-collar tradespeople, whose travails he cited to counter the suggestion that the problems described in “Coming Apart” might have something to do with the disappearance of working-class jobs. 

Until the recession hit, Mr. Murray insisted, his blue-collar friends were eager to hire apprentices at good wages but struggled to find anyone willing to do the work. “They are looking at a marked deterioration in industriousness that is real and palpable,” he said."

Professionals; blue-collar tradespeople; mingle easily with children of assembly line workers; blue-collar friends hiring apprentices? What a patronising bunch - I can't relate to that world - little wonder the USA is in a mess.  In the Port Glasgow of my childhood there were still signs of a less egalitarian past - the big houses on the hills, though at most two still occupied as private homes - the smaller villas along Lilybank, still some of them occupied by lawyers, shopkeepers, teachers and shipyard managers.  But my father said of one of Lithgow's directors,  "I used to kick his arse when he was young,"  and that was probably true, for they grew up on the same short street down by the river, and both started in the shipyards as boys.  There was no sense of social class, and we all spoke the same language, all that is, bar the girls who had been to elocution lessons. None of us mingled with assembly-line workers, there being no assembly lines, and blue collars were never in fashion, even at work. James Lithgow was on first name terms with half his workforce, and his draughtsman father lived on the same short working class street (Port Glasgow had no long streets) as my riveter great grandfather.

Hugh.



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