Some waffle-stuffed Belgian judge has threatened to toss little Nate Cofnas into a Belgian hoosegow, presumably on the French side where they serve stale cheese, bad baguettes and English wine, because Cofnas committed the unpardonable sin.
No, not the one against the Holy Ghost. Confas said people—ladies, avert your eyes—are unequal.
Shocking!
Pierre Thiriar thinks so. He wrote the article “Not an opinion but a crime: why Cofnas’ discourse is punishable”, in which he claims:
The discourse of American philosopher Nathan Cofnas is often defended in public debate under the banner of academic freedom and free speech. That framing is legally misleading. When one carefully analyzes his concrete statements and writings in the light of Belgian criminal law and more specifically the anti-racism law of 30 July 1981, one comes to a different conclusion. This is not about the borderline case of protected expression, but about a coherent discourse that can be qualified as punishable under Articles 20 and 21 of that law.
My ignorance of Belgian law is profound, so I’ll take Thiriar’s word that Cofnas is an arch criminal. Yet Thiriar himself, however learned in the law he is, is an idiot. Which he proves himself right here:
That step is crucial. Once a discourse systematically postulates a hierarchy between racial groups, it goes to the heart of what Article 21 envisages: ideas based on racial superiority. Cofnas’ writings contain just that. When he argues that genetic variants that influence intelligence can be unevenly distributed across populations and that this can explain differences in cognitive performance, it is not merely a neutral hypothesis, but the empirical basis for a hierarchical view of humanity. In his further texts, this basis is explicitly translated into social and political implications.
This is particularly clear from his statements about meritocracy. Cofnas argues that in a “true meritocracy”, black people “would disappear from almost all prominent positions outside sports and entertainment” and the number of black professors at top universities would tend to zero. This statement cannot possibly be reduced to a descriptive observation. She presents a society in which an entire racial group is quasi absent from intellectual and managerial positions as the logical and even desirable consequence of its alleged lower cognitive abilities.
That any two people, or peoples, differ in intelligence singly or in distribution does create a hierarchy, but only to the extent that one values intelligence in whatever aspect it is deployed. The value is key. Take height. If two people differ in height, a hierarchy is created if, and only if, someone values greater (or lesser) height. Without the value, there is only difference, not hierarchy. The ordering comes from the value, not the difference.
Thiriar’s idiocy does comes not in supposing all people or peoples are equal, which is obviously false and preposterous. All right-thinking people claim to believe Equality, and except for a few raving academics, and perhaps even Thiriar himself, all of them are lying.
Look, even Thiriar cannot help but value some aspect of human life. And the moment he does, the very instant, he creates a hierarchy. He is thus guilty of the same crime of which he accuses Confas. Thiriar says “Cofnas is not limited to formulating a hierarchical view of humanity, but draws explicit normative conclusions from it.” It is the exact other war around. We being the normative judgments to the differences, and it is these that create the hierarchy.
This is where Thiriar proves himself to be an idiot, because he does not see this, although he obligated to do so in his role of judge.
The only possible defense Thiriar can offer against the accusation of gross negligence of duty, aggravated by criminal stupidity, is that he does not value any aspect of human life. That means, for instance, he would have to argue infants would be just as good at his job as he was. He might have a case there, and say this not because he values age, but experience, and experience is something external and not innate to people.
But that means he’d have to argue that only lack of experience accounts for why men cannot become pregnant. Or he’d have to say all five year olds given five years weight lifting training could lift the same as all thirty year old men given the same training duration, or all 100 year old men, come to that. Or that women were not taught properly to excel to the same height as men. Not metaphorically. By tape-measure standards.
If you favor short people, or those with brown skin, as for instance academics do, and as is likely Thiriar does, then you again have created a hierarchy, and are guilty of a crime. Or if you prefer great brains, as Cofnas does, you create a hierarchy, and are guilty of a crime. If you deny there are differences, which any person not an academic can see and see as plainly as the sun at noon in Death Valley in June, then you are wrong. Or worse.
It doesn’t matter why differences exist, because they are observed to exist, though it’s nice to have an explanation. Cofnas says “genes”, perhaps leaning too heavily on the machine-metaphor of life (which I say is false). Thiriar calls this “pseudoscientific”, but offers no explanation why, for instance, there are males and females. It’s anyway clear there is no eradicating most differences. They are there, and will always be there in the population.
Yet attach value to even one of these, and get caught doing do in Belgium, then it’s off with your head. If you want to stay out of stir, best to lie instead, like rulers want you to. Or get rid of the rulers.
Here are the various ways to support this work:
"Yet Thiriar himself, however learned in the law he is, is an idiot."
All else follows as naturally as night follows day.
Is he writing criminal complaints against professional basketball teams?
No, because he is not THAT MUCH of an idiot. He KNOWS this is not racial supremacy but a purely descriptive observation, and one that he personally does not like, and thinks that the political and legal situation favours the propagation of his opinions while suppressing alternative opinions.
In other words, not only is he an idiot, he is also a total jerk.
There is genus. Under that there is (are?) species. Under that, there are "varieties." One criterion used to define whether animals are of the same species is their ability to interbreed.
Dogs have varieties; nobody would say that a Shepherd is the same as a Labradoodle, though in theory, at least, they can breed - to produce a LabraShepraDoodle, I suppose. Nobody would say that my lovely and affectionate Springer has the same capabilities - and intellect - as a Belgian Malinois.
AND NEITHER DO VARIETIES OF HUMANS.
Unfortunately for those judges who get their mail in the Low Countries, IQ tests - and numerous real-world jobs that test people every day - confirm that fact. It's time for these silly people to shed the Nazi guilt that informs their entire lives and move on. That was a long time ago; it's a new day, and one that is not kind to the credulous and foolish. Like them.