The Oval Office tape of Richard Nixon and Pat Moynihan posted on YouTube and recently noted by Steve Sailer has both men saying that they know the truth about IQ and race–but can never admit it. And look what happened as a result. VDARE.com’s position: the truth shall set us free.
Moynihan had sent Nixon Richard Herrnstein’s September 1971 Atlantic article “I.Q.”[PDF, 18 pp.]. Nixon told Moynihan: “Nobody on my staff even knows I read the goddamn thing,” to which Moynihan replies “Good!”
Nixon went on, regarding ”this Herrnstein stuff”:
Nixon: “Nobody must know we’re thinking about it, and if we do find out it’s correct, we must never tell anybody.”Moynihan: “I’m afraid that’s the case.”
Nixon: “I’ve reluctantly concluded, based at least on the evidence presently before me –and I don’t base it on any scientific evidence—that what Herrnstein says, and what was said earlier by [Arthur] Jensen, and so forth, is very close to the truth.”[MP3]
What both Herrnstein and Jensen were saying—and being pilloried for—was that you can’t close an IQ gap that’s hereditary by Head Start and free school breakfast s. Jensen’s famous 1969 Harvard Educational Review article was called How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? [PDF]
The answer, then and since is “Not much.”
In the course of this conversation, Nixon also reveals that he’s read the September 1971 Commentary article “The Limits Of Social Policy” by Nathan Glazer—all of which made him better informed about the intellectual arguments about race, IQ, and welfare than almost all subsequent Presidents.
