If You Like Phillipe Rushton…
By Searching around in a hurry for some reading material for the gym, I found an issue of Esquire on my magazine pile, and came across this from Certified Teller of Hard Truths James Watson:
Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark? Yes, because some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified. If you can’t be criticized, that’s very dangerous.
Although, as he goes on to make clear, the unspecified “dangers” arising from exemption from “criticism” apply only if you’re engaging in crank racialist stereotypes; criticizing a university president with a bad record of hiring and retaining female faculty for asserting that women lack the genetic necessities to become professors in many fields, on the other hand, is completely beyond the pale of civilized discourse. You can see why people who take Pihillipe Rushton seriously are inspired to claim that Watson is justified by Teh Science…