Wednesday, August 15, 2007

More on the good Dr. Clark

Via Ezra Klein, I see that Andrew Sullivan is all hot and bothered about A Farewell to Alms. I have to agree with one of Klein's commenters: "Easily Sullivan's most obnoxious tic - far worse than his know-nothing brand of big pharma advocacy - is his excitement at the possibility of reinvigorating eugenic science."

On a related note, it is worth mentioning that another place where Clark's book is getting a warm welcome is VDARE--a racist gorup of the decidedly Anglophilic variety. Clark's claims that a) the population of England is largely decended from the medieval aristocracy and that b) this aristocratic lineage bestows an economic advantage upon Anglo-Saxons is exactly the sort of pseudo-scientific race-baiting that has legs on the Right.

I predict that Clark's hogwash will join The Bell Curve in the stable of right-wing "science" references. As I recall, Sullivan (a Brit) is a big fan of Charles Murray, too.