There is a distinctly unlibertarian note of crazy about the neo-reactionary interest in IQ. Aside from the bad science….

Quantifying human smarts is “bad science,” History major Tim wants us to know. Someone should tell the US Armed Forces, and the administrators of the SAT and the ACT, and those stupid Chinese who think they can find some biological foundation for intelligence. If only they knew more history!

Tim then switches to stern finger-wagging:

There is no line to be walked between reason and racism. Racism and biological determinism are unscientific and immoral, and they have no place in a sane philosophy.

(His emphasis.) Tim is in fact so scrupulously, scientifically anti-racist he eschews biological determinism not merely in the cognitive sphere, but even in the digestive. In a Tweet the following day he asserted that lactose intolerance is a matter of “not liking milk.”

His main aim, though, is to reassure citizens who may have been unnerved by Jamie. To reassure them, but not too much:

The Dark Enlightenment is probably more tragic than it is scary. Or, at least, let’s hope it stays that way.

Oh, let’s hope so! Heaven forbid that the brave and sapient guardians of our national destinies be replaced by weirdos who think lactose intolerance has something to do with biology!

There are two things to be depressed about in these jejune pieces.

The first thing is that they appeared in the Daily Telegraph, which was once a conservative paper. It was in fact once home to the deep-Tory humorist and fantasist Michael Wharton, who claimed that his own preferred daily reading was a broadsheet named The Feudal Times and Reactionary Herald. (The Telegraph was briefly home to me, too, as a book reviewer and op-ed freelancer. I would have been proud to write for the FTRH, but alas! It didn’t exist.)

The other depressing thing is the astonished incomprehension on display when these hipster savants peer out from the lace-curtained windows of Liberal Arts Hotel at the arena of the human sciences, where all the most exciting and challenging ideas of our age are being discussed. Couldn’t they”€”shouldn’t they”€”at least try to keep up to date?

I’m especially vexed with Jamie. The first article I ever read of his, last month, was an upbeat piece about bitcoins, just as I had acquired some of the little suckers. I assumed Jamie knew what he was talking about and that I could look forward to a comfortable retirement. Svani ogni speranza!