Henry, William. In Defense of Elitism. New York: Anchor,
1994: 142-3

The problem with a genetic basis for intelligence or, more precisely, a genetic basis for economic success, which is what really provokes envy-is that we don't know what to do with it politically. The egalitarian principle underlying most of our social programs, and more pertinently their self-evaluation mechanisms, is that talent is evenly distributed across lines of class, race, and gender and that talent is, or should be, the primary determinant of economic success. If that is so, then a social program can be judged to have succeeded only when life outcomes are more or less equal across these lines. (All but a few extremists are prepared to make some slight allowance for the impact of parenting, neighborhoods, and the like.) If talent is distributed unequally, however, we have no useful means of measuring whether a program is doing any good or, alternatively, whether it amounts to just throwing money at a problem. If intelligence is genetically linked, moreover, then not only the children of the inner cities and rural backwaters, but their children as well, may be by and large doomed to economically stunted lives. Indeed, as low-skill jobs either dwindle in relative wages or disappear outright to automation or to competition overseas, the prospects of this next generation may in fact be even worse.

Some extraordinary people do rise from the ranks of the poor, and a prudent society should maximize their opportunities. What propels nearly all of these surprise achievers, however, is not just brains but an acute sense of being responsible for their own destinies. Indeed, a case can be made that responsible individualism should be considered a component of intelligence. It is the most adaptive practical response to the world in which we live.

Let us assume for a moment that America one day reaches egalitarian heaven, with absolutely equal distribution of wealth and social position across the board. Barring the dead hand of Marxism at the tiller, the economic stratification so deplored by the left would set in again almost immediately- because intelligence varies genetically and because intelligence by and large determines economic success. It is the nature of human society to be stratified. And it is this elitist tendency, far more than theories about heredity, that rankles egalitarians. The idea that life has winners and losers-that something inherent in individuals leads some to create and amass and others to thumb-twiddle and squander-offends egalitarians' sense of fair play. Their outlook reminds me of a nature videotape that I saw being hawked on television as I wrote this chapter. Billed as Great Escapes, the tape consists entirely of animals that are normally preyed upon instead escaping from larger or fiercer predators. "If you love underdogs," the announcer intones, "then this tape is for you." The worldview of the tape conveniently omits the bloody fact that carnivorous predators must kill or starve. The way of nature is combat and conquest, not nurturing communalism.

Carl Gutierrez-Jones,

Department of English

University of California

Santa Barbara, CA 93106

E-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu