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Showing posts with label Justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Justice. Show all posts

Saturday, December 24, 2011

The left's manly intelligence (distribution)

In a blatant but understandable attempt to gain electoral advantage (anything that makes voting more restrictive benefits Republicans, and anything that makes it easier to do benefits Democrats), the Justice Department rejected South Carolina's version of a voter-ID law requiring putative citizens to produce proof that they are indeed citizens eligible to vote in their respective state and federal elections:
The Obama administration entered the fierce national debate over voting rights Friday, rejecting a South Carolina law requiring photo identification at the polls after determining the statute discriminates against minority voters. ...

In its first ruling on the voter-ID laws, Justice's Civil Rights Division said South Carolina's statute is discriminatory because the state's registered minority voters are nearly 20 percent more likely than whites to lack a state-issued photo ID.
This is, of course, a predictable and inevitable consequence of treating 'disparate impact' as evidence of unequal treatment. The Establishment wants to maintain that isonomy is of paramount importance, but simultaneously (and incorrectly) assumes that all people--and by extension, all groups of people--are the same, so that any unequal outcome must necessarily be the result of unequal treatment (ie, an isonomic breach has occurred) irrespective of whether or not such an occurrence can be definitively proved.

In the case of a discrimination settlement with a mortgage lending company, this line of reasoning may go mostly unchallenged, but when it comes to something as simple as presenting a photo ID--something that most people do on a regular basis, be it to write a check or drive a car--the assertion that certain groups are being treated unfairly in being required to do as much strikes an overwhelming majority of the public as absurd.

Putting aside the question of intentional voter fraud, the reason voter-ID requirements hurt the left more than they hurt the right is because voters at the left end of the IQ and future time orientation spectrums are mostly Democrats, not Republicans. I've seen multiple facebook posts over the last couple of days in reaction to the Justice Department's actions along the lines of "liberals are too unorganized and stupid to vote".

In fairness, it's more because the left's intelligence distribution is wider than the right's is, with more lefties at the bottom and top and more conservatives in the middle, not because liberals are less intelligent on average than conservatives are (in fact, the IQ means by political orientation are essentially equal). That distributional difference, in turn, is due primarily to the left's racial diversity. So, if the FB posters wanted to be more precise (and more crass), they'd say "NAMs are too unorganized and stupid to vote". SWPLs, who would generally be happy to accuse conservatives of believing as much, are in tough spot if they assert as much though, because based on the Justice Department's accusations, it is transparently true. Oh how political correctness makes us stupid.

To dredge up a bit of evidence to back up the assertion that the disproportionately female political left sports a more manly intelligence distribution than the mostly male right does, consider that the GSS shows that one standard deviation in wordsum score for all liberals is 2.18 points, while for all conservatives it is only 1.99.

GSS variables used: WORDSUM, POLVIEWS(1-3)(5-7), YEAR(2000-2010)

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Spare and spoil? Not in the US

Recently, a woman in Texas lost custody of her two children and was sentenced to five months of probation for spanking one of them, aged two, hard enough to leave the kid with red marks. In his ruling, the judge in the case apparently set court precedent that the spanking of a child is a criminal act:
"You don't spank children today," Judge Jose Longoria told Rosina Gonzales.

...

"In the old days, maybe we got spanked, but there was a different quarrel," Judge Longoria of 214th District Court told Gonzales. "You don't spank children. You understand?"
The Derb is understandably incensed by this blatant instance of judicial activism:
It seems to me that the judge is out of line. It may indeed be that our standards have shifted so much that the generality of citizens would like spanking banned. If that's the case, let them press their representatives to pass appropriate legislation. The current situation in the U.S.A. is that spanking in the home is legal in every state; 19 states, Texas among them, also permit spanking in schools. This judge, name of José Longoria, is therefore legislating from the bench — a far more serious offense against public standards, in my opinion, than smacking a 2-year-old on the rear end.
While the idea of corporal punishment horrifies many SWPLs no matter how deserving of it a child may be (and despite being named Jose, the judge looks enough like a SWPL), the general public does not share the court's thoughts. The GSS has asked respondents if they think it is sometimes necessary to give a child a "good, hard spanking". In 2010, 69% of those surveyed agree that it is, compared to only 31% who do not. In 1986, the first year the question was posed, spanking was favored 84% to 16%, so there has been a little shifting towards wussification in the last couple of decades, but a substantial majority of Americans still believe a swat on the ass is justified at times. The Derb does not need to entertain the thought that the judge may have been channeling public sentiment in his authoritarian ruling.

If this precedence becomes relevant by way of other court rulings referencing it I suspect there will be public push back, and the advocates of outlawing spanking will run across the same minefield that those calling for Michael Vicks' head following revelations of the brutality he inflicted upon pit bulls ran through. Spanking, too, has a racial component. Namely, blacks are its strongest advocate. The following table shows the percentages who agree that spanking is justifiable, by race. For both contemporary relevance and ample sample size for Native Americans and Asians, responses are from 2000 onward (n = 7,393--all proceeding tables have the same parameters):

Blacks
83.2%
Native Americans
79.6%
Whites
70.7%
Asians
64.7%
Hispanics
64.9%

There is a political component as well, and as is rather often the case on social matters, reliably Democratic blacks and reliably Democratic SWPLs are not on the same page (n = 8,026):

Conservatives
77.4%
Moderates
73.0%
Liberals
63.0%

Even among white liberals, though, spanking has majority support (56.4% to 43.6%). Banning corporal punishment may be a progressive issue, but intruding on parental rights is not a popular one.

Parenthetically, spanking also finds relatively greater support among men than it does among women, and among those of more modest intelligence than it does among the more intelligent (and, surprisingly, the least intelligent):

Men
76.5%
Women
68.2%

Really dumbs*
69.5%
Pretty dumbs
77.4%
Normals
72.9%
Pretty smarts
69.2%
Really smarts
56.7%

GSS variables used: SPANKING(1-2)(3-4), YEAR, SEX, RACECEN1(1)(2)(3)(4-10)(15-16), POLVIEWS(1-3)(4)(5-7), WORDSUM

* Respondents are broken up into five categories; Really Smarts (wordsum score of 9-10, comprising 13% of the population), Pretty Smarts (7-8, 26%), Normals (6, 22%), Pretty Dumbs (4-5, 27%), and Really Dumbs (0-3, 12%).
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