“Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question“, source of the phrase ‘dismal science’.

. . . with regard to the West Indies, it may be laid down as a principle, which no eloquence . . . can invalidate or hide, except for a short time only, that no black man, who will not work according to what ability the gods have given him for working, has the smallest right to eat pumpkin, or to any fraction of land that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land may be, but has an indisputable and perpetual right to be compelled, by the real proprietors of said land, to do competent work for his living. This is the everlasting duty of all men, black or white, who are born into this world. To do competent work, to labor honestly according to the ability given them; for that, and for no other purpose, was each one of us sent into this world; and woe is to every man who by friend or by foe, is prevented from fulfilling this, the end of his being. That is the “unhappy” lot – lot equally unhappy cannot otherwise be provided for man. Whatsoever prohibits or prevents a man from this, his sacred appointment, to labor while he lives on earth – that, I say, is the man’s deadliest enemy; and all men are called upon to do what is in their power, or opportunity, toward delivering him from it. If it be his own indolence that prevents and prohibits him, then his own indolence is the enemy he must be delivered from; and the first “right” he has – poor indolent blockhead, black or white – is, that every unprohibited man, whatsoever wiser, more industrious person may be passing that way, shall endeavor to “emancipate” him from his indolence, and, by some wise means, as I said, compel him to do the work he is fit for. This is the eternal law of nature for a man, my beneficient Exeter Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted, encouraged, and, if need be, compelled, to do what work the Maker of him has intended, by the making of him for this world.

These pix, while appealing in an odd way, raise a number of questions.

Roderick Long defends Herbert Spencer:

So what common ground could there be between Spencer and the eugenicists? Both, to be sure, were “Social Darwinists,” if that means that both thought there were important sociopolitical lessons to be drawn from evolutionary biology. But Spencer and the eugenicists drew opposite lessons. For the eugenicists, the moral of evolutionary biology was that the course of human evolution must be coercively managed and controlled by a centralized, paternalistic technocracy. For Spencer, by contrast, the moral was that coercive, centralized, paternalistic approaches to social problems were counterproductive and so would tend to be eliminated by the spontaneous forces of social evolution, which would instead favor a system of fully consensual human relationships.

Admittedly, industrialist Andrew Carnegie was an admirer of Herbert Spencer, and the Carnegie Institution appears to have played an important role in the eugenics movement. But so what? I do not know how far Carnegie himself personally supported the tyrannical policies that Black discusses, but suppose he supported them up to the hilt; if Carnegie said nice things about Spencer, but also supported policies antithetical to everything Spencer stood for, this can hardly be laid at Spencer’s door.

Ouch. Paul Krugman writes:

It’s all coming true. Before the war, hawks insisted that Iraq was a breeding ground for terrorism. It wasn’t then, but it is now.

I’m surprised to find that I haven’t linked this before: The Social Life of Paper by Malcolm Gladwell

This idea that paper facilitates a highly specialized cognitive and social process is a far cry from the way we have historically thought about the stuff.

(Later: Ah, I did link to the same content before.)

Plato’s TV room

Bumper Hornberger denounces Ilana Mercer’s innuendo against Sheldon Richman