The Bell Curve: Intelligencenand Class Structure innAmerican Lifenhy Richard j. Herrnstein andnCharles MurraynNew York: The Free Press;n845 pp., $30.00nRace, Evolution, and Behavior:nA Life History Perspectivenhy j. Philippe RushtonnNew BrunswicknTransaction Publishers;n334 pp., $34.95nFor about four years before the publicationnof The Bell Curve last fall,noccasional news reports dribbled out tidbitsnof information about the book andnits coauthor. The stories were oftennpegged to Charles Murray’s departurenfrom the neoconservative Manhattan Institutenin 1990 because of the institute’sndiscomfort with his plans to research andnpublish on the verhoten topic of racialndifferences in intelligence. When thenbook finally appeared, at almost exacdynthe same time as Philippe Rushton’snwork on the evolution of racial differences,nit was the immediate subject ofnextended and usually vituperative discussionnin the country’s major newspapersnSamuel Francis is a nationally syndicatedncolumnist for the Washington Times.n28/CHRONICLESnOPINIONSnUp From the Ice Agenby Samuel Francisn”Nature knows no equality.”n—Luc de Varvenarguesnand magazines for a month or more—bynwhich time it had ascended to the dubiousnbut lucrative dignity of the best-sellersnlist. One of the rcmarkaljle featuresnof the book’s reception was the utter vapiditynand dishonesty of most of the criticism,nwhich ranged from the merelynstupid (e.g., Richard Neuhaus’ pompousncomment in National Review that “societyndepends upon taboos and interdictions”nand that therefore the authorsnshould not have published their conclusions)nto the outright vicious (e.g., thenunfounded claim in the New Republicnand the New York Review of Books,namong other publications, that Herrnsteinnand Murray were, or had relied upon,n”neo-Nazis” for their research). Butnthe most remarkable feature of the commentarynon The Bell Curve was that thenobviously coordinated attacks on thenbook in several different places at almostnthe same time showed clearly that thennational intellectual and verbalist classnhad been lying in ambush for it fornmonths, if not for years.nThe ambush, which on a lesser scalenwas also sprung on Rushton’s work, isnunderstandable, since both books directlynchallenge the egalitarian and environmentalistnideologies on which the powernof the liberal managerial state is founded.nUnless the dogma that humannbeings and their behavior are almostncompletely the products of their socialnenvironment is accepted without question,nthen the central faith of the man­nnnagerial state—the feasibility of the ameliorativenplanning, reconstruction, engineering,nand management of social andneconomic institutions by centralized government—isnin vain, and the apparatusnof the state ceases to have any ]Durposenother than the preservation of the politicalnand cultural power of elites that dependnon the a])paratus. Obviously, then,nthe violation of taboos and interdictionsnwas perceived not just as an intellectualnfaux pas but as a direct assault on the intellectualnclass itself and the mythologiesnthat undergird its hegemony, just asnmuch as a book published in the SovietnUnion defending free market economicsnwould have represented an assault on thencommunist hegemony. As the counterattacksnon Murray and Herrnstein escalated,nthe vanguard of the managerialnstate looked increasingly like a trappednanimal, whose desiderate and frightenedneyes dart frantically for some means ofnescape.nThe Herrnstein-Murray thesis is bynnow pretty well known. The authors arguenthat intelligence is real and notnmerely an artificial construct or an ill-definednpopular term that has no objectivenfoundation, that intelligence is significantlynhereditary and only in part thenproduct of environmental influences,nand that intelligence is important becausenit goes far to determine not onlynsuccess in life (as measured by educationalnand occupational achievementnand income) but the manifestation orn