The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care abou… - John Derbyshire

The arc of US development this past hundred years once again teaches us history's hardest lesson: A nation can survive anything except success. Mid-20th-century America's stupendous success engendered the softness, idleness, and lack of seriousness that was perceptible to me in 1975 — though the nation I came from was only a decade or so behind.

Starting with the Minnesota twin study thirty-five years ago, and now with a mountain of data from twin, sibling, and adoption studies, we know that pretty much anything you can quantify about human personality, behavior, and intelligence is to some degree heritable, average-average at around the fifty percent level but sometimes much higher. We now in fact have a busy and exciting field of study called “behavioral genetics.” Given that all these traits are heritable, it follows from the ordinary laws of biology that different races will exhibit different statistical profiles on them. That’s not astonishing, mysterious, or horrible: It’s just first-floor-level science.

The happy talkers tell us that diversity is a boon, making our society stronger and better. Our own lying eyes tell us that it is the source of continual trouble; not merely the solitary "hunkering down" that Robert Putnam discovered, but rancor, disorder, litigation, and violence.