THE MURRAY - GOLDBERG CONUNDRUM

The great Charles Murray's touting of Jonah Goldberg on Facebook is puzzling.  I'm tempted to think it's a spoof but no, it appears sincere.  This is but the latest evidence that intelligence is composed of a number of interlocking variable competencies.  Murray's fearless exposition of important realities rendered in graph-able form makes him one of the nations supreme social scientists and public intellectuals.  I suspect that like many people who think numerically, writing such as Goldberg's which depends on glib, inaccurate generalizations cobbled together in the service of neocon pap must seem profound.

Goldberg has no actually thoughts of his own.  He is a product of nepotism.  His writing is essentially the expropriation of the thoughts of better men.  He takes these and either by incomprehension or by opportunism, crafts them into the service of whatever the National Review drones find useful their year.

I suppose that if you are grounded in data, this conflation of old memes, canards and stolen theories must seem like wisdom.

It isn't.

So I hold the Great Charles Murray in very high esteem.  I will continue to buy his books and seek him out on CSPAN.  I will do so in the spirit of those who revere Sir Isaac Newton, who, while being a genius also believed in astrology.