Blacks and whites agree: Hispanics are the least patriotic

GSS respondents were asked to rate the level of patriotism among different groups. Answers ranged from "patriotic" (1) to "unpatriotic" (7). You can see the means above as rated by black and white participants.

Both groups see Hispanics and then Asians as being the least patriotic. This probably comes from the perception that these groups have loyalties to the Old Country. 

Both groups also see Jews and especially blacks as being less patriotic than whites. Perhaps Jews are seen as having ethnic/religious loyalties that compete with patriotism, while blacks are more critical of the American experience (I'm sure many folks were angry like me when the president of the NAACP said, "Sarah Palin says, 'Let's party like it's 1776.' My white daddy would say be careful what you wish for because the 18th century, Sarah, wasn't good for nobody, even folks like you." By the way, what do we have to be careful about wishing for? Maybe slavery will come back, with blacks as masters this time?)

The southern white numbers surprise me: they're seen as less patriotic than all whites. Maybe that is due to the perception that affection for the Confederacy still lingers.

UPDATE: Let me add that GSS data do not indicate that Americans have some idealistic view of Hispanics (like that pushed by the open borders crowd). They are perceived as comparatively unintelligent, lazy, and unpatriotic.   

Idiocracy is now, baby

What is more pathetic than the 65 percent of American men who cannot name the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court? The 78 percent of women who cannot.

Gay couples teach us that open relationships are awesome!

As elite culture turns homosexuals into our heroes and role models (Do we have a gay superhero yet?), research is documenting that open marriage is common among gay men (shocker, I know). In a study of 566 gay couples, only 45 percent had even made the promise to be monogamous.The findings are so essential to the welfare of American society, the NIH forked out 3.5 million additional dollars to continue the study for five more years.  

And these coupled gay men generate catchy memes for the rest of us. Dean Allemang, who just started a new relationship, dispensed this gem: "I don't own my lover, and I don't own his body," he said. "I think it's weird to ask someone you love to give up that part of their life. I would never do it."

Who's the laziest?

GSS respondents were asked to rate the laziness of various groups, giving them a score somewhere between hardworking (1) and lazy (7). The mean ratings given by blacks and whites are shown above (sample size = 1,226).

Blacks and whites rank other groups differently. For blacks, the laziest to the least lazy goes like this: Hispanics, blacks, whites, southern whites, Jews, and Asians. For whites, it's blacks, Hispanics, southern whites, whites, Asians, and Jews. Based on my own rankings, it would appear that I am a white person.  

It's interesting, given that immigration enthusiasts love to advertise the work ethic of Hispanics, that ordinary blacks and whites perceive them to be comparatively lazy. And you can't respond that blacks and whites are completely self-serving in their rankings: both groups feel that Jews and Asians are harder working than they are.  

GSS respondents were asked to rate the intelligence of various groups, giving them a score somewhere between untelligent (1) and intelligent (7). The mean ratings given by blacks and whites are shown above (sample size = 1,230). 

Blacks and whites agree that Jews are the smartest.  It's reassuring to see that people aren't completely clueless about reality. Blacks think Asians are smarter than whites, but whites think that they are a bit smarter. Blacks view themselves as being almost as smart of whites; whites disagree. Whites consider Hispanics to be less intelligent than blacks--that surprises me--it's possible that the fear of looking anti-black is being reflected here. The fact that whites don't give southern whites a score much higher than blacks might reveal the ease with which so many whites look down on their brothers in the South. Blacks also think they are smarter than southern whites.  

So, whites overestimate their IQs relative to Asians, while blacks do so basically with everyone. They do think whites are smarter, but by only a trivial amount.
 

The phenomenon of the "black angel"

From City Journal:

The first signs of the spiritual zeal that would eventually play a significant part in Obama’s election came not from Washington or Chicago but from Hollywood. Our moviemakers are adept at measuring the zeitgeist of the nation—of its liberal half, anyway—and are a powerful force in shaping it. And for more than a decade, they’ve been churning out what critics call “black-angel” movies. These films feature a white protagonist guided to enlightenment by a black character, usually of divine or supernatural origin or, at the very least, in touch with spiritual experiences that the main character lacks. With the black angel’s help, the white hero finds salvation.

The genre includes, to name just a few, The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), in which Will Smith—playing a caddie who is really, the film hints, God—restores Matt Damon’s golf game and love life; Bruce Almighty (2003), in which Morgan Freeman, as God, bestows his powers on a manic Jim Carrey; and the awful What Dreams May Come (1998), in which Cuba Gooding, Jr. is a wise soul guiding Robin Williams through the afterlife. These movies have been numerous enough, David Sterritt points out in the Christian Science Monitor, to confuse TV’s buffoonish Homer Simpson: in one episode, “Homer mistook a black man in a white suit for an angelic visitor, all because (according to his embarrassed wife) he’d been seeing too many movies lately.”

Far and away the best of the black-angel films is Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile (1999), based on a novel by Stephen King, whose knack for setting his finger on the cultural pulse has made him a multimillionaire. The basso profundo Michael Clarke Duncan plays John Coffey (note the initials), a gigantic black man wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of two little girls in Depression-era Louisiana and sentenced to death; Tom Hanks plays Paul Edgecomb, a prison guard who discovers that Coffey is not only innocent but also a Christlike miracle worker. Coffey’s laying-on of hands restores a dead mouse to life, cures Edgecomb of a bladder infection, and heals the warden’s wife’s brain cancer. Shortly before he is executed—the jeering of the girls’ anguished parents and the weeping of the prison guards who know the truth recall the account of the Crucifixion in Luke—Coffey has this exchange with a tortured Edgecomb:

Edgecomb. Tell me what you want me to do. You want me to take you out of here? Just let you run away? See how far you could get?

Coffey. Why would you do such a foolish thing?

Edgecomb. On the day of my judgment, when I stand before God, and He asks me why did I—did I kill one of His true miracles—what am I going to say? That it was my job? . . .

Coffey. You tell God the Father it was a kindness you done. . . . I want it to be over and done with. I do. . . . I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day.

The writer or director of a black-angel film recognizes the unspeakable injustices once perpetrated by his country on black people; he wants to be forgiven the sins of his fathers. If he is simply a comedian, he makes Bruce Almighty, casting a black man as God in a sort of lighthearted flattery. If his waters run deeper, he understands that no plum role can atone for the crimes that weigh on him. Instinctively, he realizes what thinkers from Aristotle to Marcel Mauss have known: that whenever a gift is given, the prestige of the giver increases and that of the recipient declines. So he tells a story in which a black man gives the greatest gift of all, suffering—like Jesus in Christian theology—for others’ sins, in fact demanding to suffer, and by demanding, forgiving. White America is pardoned its wrongs, while black America, by pardoning, is elevated to godhood.
 
Are these movies ultimately condescending to blacks? After all, the white protagonist, the person who will be saved or damned according to his decisions, is invariably more interesting than the serene black angel hovering nearby. Indeed, the condescension, if such it is, is a cinematic version of affirmative action—a denial to blacks of Everyman’s struggle for salvation; a magnanimous extension to them of paradise.

Immigrants are liberalizing the country

Conservative immigration enthusiasts point to the supposed social conservatism of immigrants. Using varous sources of data, I have shown that Hispanics are the weakest kind of social conservatives. They vote two-to-one for pro-abortion candidates all the time, and according to Pew data, they are more in favor of gay marriage than whites and blacks. 

This kind of analysis typically focuses on Hispanics since they are the largest group of immigrants, but what about the most elite groups? They enjoy power of another sort. Here are the percentages of people who want abortion to be legal for any reason for the five immigration groups with the most prestigious jobs (according to the GSS):   

Percent of immigrants in favor of abortion for any reason

1. Indian 51.4
2. Chinese 49.3
3. Russian (non-Jewish) 78.6
4. Jewish 69.1
5. English 64.7

Forty percent of native-born American favor abortion for any reason. All of the elite immigrant groups are significantly more pro-abortion. The fact is that immigrants are liberalizing the country, not making it more traditional.

Jews and gardening

Reading The Jewish Century made me wonder if Jewish Americans (Mercurians) are less likely to "love the soil" than other groups (Apollonians) because non-agrarian occupations have been a big part of their history (notwithstanding Fiddler on the Roof).  I've noticed that people with farming backgrounds often have a real affection for gardening.

The General Social Survey asked people if they've done any gardening in the past year:

Percent who garden (N = 1,242)

Irish Protestant 71.0
German 67.8
Scandinavian 65.0
Scottish 64.0
English/Welsh 63.0
Italian 62.7
Polish 59.0
Irish Catholic 57.4
Mexican 53.6
Black 43.7
Jewish 39.4

Jews are less likely than other groups to garden, but it looks like living in urban areas is a factor. I ran a logistic regression model with gardening as the dependent variable and Jewishness and population size of residence as predictrors. Even after taking into account the effect of population size--and it does matter--Jews are still significantly less likely to garden.

Where people choose to live seems to depend on a love of the land. My dad grew up on a farm and moved us out of a town of 50,000 people when I was 13 because there wasn't enough elbow room! He liked cornstalks for neighbors and was willing to commute to work for the privilege.    

In a similar vein, Jews aren't into guns and hunting either. (This is a trend for all Americans--as Slezkine wrote, we're all becoming Jews.) It was cool (and weird) that the guy who taught me to target shoot was Jewish, and he berated me for not being sufficiently anti-gun control.

Hispanic crime according to the CDC

I ran across another excellent data source that can help answer the question of whether Hispanics have higher crime rates than whites. It's homicide data from the CDC that is based on coroner's reports. I present below homicides per 100,000 per year averaged over the eight most recent years of data--1999 to 2006. Keep in mind that most homicides are intra-racial, so the rate of victimizations mirrors the rate of offenses:

Homicide rate

Blacks 22.5
Amerindians 9.3
Hispanics 8.3
Asians 3.1
Whites 2.9

The Hispanic rate is almost three times that of whites. How is it that Hispanic-white differences don't always look this large when looking at other sources of data, like incarceration rates?

I suspect the answers lies with the fact that most crimes never come to the attention of the criminal justice system if no one reports the crime. And even if someone calls the police, many crimes, to be prosecuted, require victims who are willing to press charges and credible witnesses who are willing to testify. Immigrant communities are famous for their unwillingness to report crimes and to cooperate with the criminal justice system (CJS). 

Blacks, for all their criticisms of police, are quick to call them. It makes sense to focus on homicide data since dead bodies testify for themselves, and the rates shown above suggest that crime in the Hispanic community (and the Amerindian and Asian communities as well) is worse than CJS data indicate. Many of those Hispanic victims are illegals killed by illegals--once again, homicide is typically intra-group. Hispanic illegals are probably more criminal than the CJS data suggest.       

Few Hispanic dropouts earn their GED

From Pew:

Just one-in-ten Hispanic high school dropouts has a General Educational Development (GED) credential, widely regarded as the best "second chance" pathway to college, vocational training and military service for adults who have not graduated from high school. By contrast, two-in-ten black high school dropouts and three-in-ten white high school dropouts have a GED, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of newly available educational attainment data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey.

The relatively low level of GED credentialing among Hispanic high school dropouts is especially notable because Hispanics have a much higher high school dropout rate than do blacks or whites. Some 41% of Hispanics ages 20 and older in the United States do not have a regular high school diploma, versus 23% of comparably aged blacks and 14% of whites.

High-status blacks more violent than low-status whites?

The high rate of violence by blacks is commonly explained with the fact that African Americans are poorer than whites. Ordinary folks don't think about it any more deeply than that. They never ask, for example, why blacks are poor. They never ask, is there some common denominator that makes them poor and violent.  Or they never ask, why a lack of resources would make a person assault somebody. A quick glance at the statistics reveals that people rarely kill each other for money. 

This superficial level of thinking is found even among professional sociologists and criminologists. I once told a sociologist that, according to Marvin Wolfgang's famous study of Philadelphia crime, middle-income blacks were more violent than low-income whites. The guy was completely discombobulated. He asked me, how do we explain it and said sarcastically, "Is it the amount of melanin in the skin?" I told him that I didn't really know (I didn't at the time).    

The ironic fact is that everyone thinks poverty explains black violence, but there are few studies that actually assess the hypothesis.  In 2010, if there is a big hole in the research literature, it is not an accident.

We can take a step to plug that hole by looking at Add Health data. Based on Wolfgang's study, I'm confident enough to predict that the violence of high-status blacks is at least as high as that of low-status whites.  There is no perfect measure of social class, but I will use mother's education. "Low-status" is having a mother who, at most, finished high school or got her GED. "High status" is some college all the way up to grad school. Most of the black sample has mothers with at least a 4-year degree. (By the way, this analysis showed me that ADD Health selected for high-end blacks, so the overall black-white difference in violence in the real world is surely larger than that indicated by Add Health data). Here are the percentages of teenagers who admit to committing the act at least once in the past year:

The percentages are similar.  Where we see a significant difference, high-status blacks are more violent: they are more likely to have pulled a gun or a knife on someone. That is, they are more likely to do this than lower-class whites--you know, "white trash" teenagers.

These findings parallel those seen in IQ studies: poor whites score as well or better than privileged blacks.

I thought social class was everything; so vital, an entire discipline--sociology--was built around it. We've been hoodwinked by ideologues masquerading as scientists.

When does a human organism begin?

From pages 69 to 73 in The Clash of Orthodoxies by Robert P. George:

 A human being is conceived when a human sperm containing 23 chromosomes fuses with a human egg also containing 23 chromosomes (albeit of a different kind) producing a single-cell human zygote containing, in the normal case, 46 chromosomes that are mixed differently from the 46 chromosomes found in the mother or father. Unlike the gametes (that is, the sperm and egg), the zygote is genetically unique and distinct from its parents. Biologically, it is a separate organism. It produces, as the gametes do not, specifically human enzymes and proteins. It possesses, as they do not, the active capacity or potency to develop itself into a human embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent, and adult.

Assuming that it is not conceived in vitro, the zygote is, of course, in a state of dependence on its mother. But independence should not be confused with distinctness. From the beginning, the newly conceived human being, not its mother, directs its integral organic functioning. It takes in nourishment and converts it into energy. Given a hospitable environment, it will, as Dianne Nutwell says, "develop continuously without biological interruptions, or gaps, throughout the embryonic, fetal, neo-natal, childhood and adulthood stages--until the death of the organism." 

Some claim to find the logical implication of these facts--that is, that life begins at conception--to be "virtually unintelligble." A leading exponent of that point of view in the legal academy is Jed Rubenfeld of Yale Law School... Rubenfeld argues that, like the zygote, every cell in the human body is "genetically complete"; yet nobody supposes that every human cell is a distinct human being with a right to life. However, Rubenfeld misses the point that there comes into being at conception, not just a clump of human cells, but a distinct, unified, self-integrating organism, which develops itself, truly himself or herself, in accord with its own genetic "blueprint." The significance of the genetic completeness for the status of newly conceived human beings is that no outside genetic material is required to enable the zygote to mature into an embryo, the embryo into a fetus, the fetus into an infant, the infant into a child, the child into an adolescent, the adolescent into an adult. What the zygote needs to function as a distinct self-integrating human organism, a human being, it already possesses.

At no point in embryogenesis, therefore, does the distinct organism that came into being when it was conceived undergo what is technically called "substantial change" (or a change of natures). This is the point of Justice Byron White's remark in his dissenting opinion in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that "there is no non-arbitrary line separating a fetus from a child." Rubenfeld attacks White's point, which he calls "[t]he argument based on the gradualness of gestation," by pointing out that, "[n]o non-arbitrary line separates the hues of green and red. Shall we conclude that green is red?"

White's point, however, was not that fetal development is "gradual," but that it is continuous and is the (continuous) development of a single lasting (fully human) being. The human zygote that actively develops itself is, as I have pointed out, a genetically complete organism directing its own integral organic functioning. As it matures, in utero and ex utero, it does not "become" a human being, for it is a human being already, albeit an immature human being who will undergo quite dramatic growth and development over time.

These considerations undermine the familiar argument, recited by Rubenfeld, that "the potential" of an unfertilized ovum to develop into a whole human being does not make it "a person." The fact is, though, that an ovum is not a whole human being. It is rather, a part of another human being (the woman whose ovum it is) with merely the potential to give rise to, in interaction with a part of yet another human being (a man's sperm cell), a new and whole human being. Unlike the zygote, it lacks both genetic distinctness and completeness, as well as the active capacity to develop itself into an adult member of the human species. It is human cellular material, but, left to itself, it will never become a human being, however hospitable its environment may be. It will "die" as a human ovum, just as countless skin cells "die" daily as nothing more than skin cells. If successfully fertilized by a human sperm, which, like the ovum (but dramatically unlike the zygote), lacks the active potential to develop into a human adult member of the human species, then substantial change ( that is, a change of natures) will occur. There will no longer be merely an egg, which was part of the mother, sharing her genetic composition, and a sperm, which was part of the father, sharing his genetic composition; instead, there will be a genetically complete, distinct, unified, self-integrating human organism whose nature differs from that of gametes--not mere human material, but a human being.

These considerations also make clear that it is incorrect to argue (as some pro-choice advocates have argued) that, just as "I" was never a week-old sperm or ovum, "I" was likewise never a week-old embryo. It truly makes no sense to say that "I" was once a sperm (or an unfertilized egg) that matured into an adult. Conception was the occasion of substantial change (that is, change from one complete individual entity to another) that brought into being a distinct self-integrating organism with a specifically human nature. By contrast, it makes every bit as much sense to say that I was once a week-old embryo as to say I was a week-old infant or a ten-year old child. It was the new organism created at conception that, without itself undergoing any change of substance, matured into a week-old embryo, a fetus, an infant, a child, an adolescent, and finally, an adult.

But Rubenfeld has another argument: "Cloning processes give the non-zygotic cells the potential for development into distinct, self-integrating human beings; thus to recognize the zygote as a human being is to recognize all human cells as human beings, which is absurd."

It is true that a distinct, self-integrating human organism that came into being by a process of cloning would be, like a human organism that comes into being as a monozygotic twin, a human being. That being, no less than human beings conceived by the union of sperm and egg, would possess the human nature and the active potential to mature as a human being. However, even assuming the possibility of cloning human beings from non-zygotic human cells, the non-zygotic cell must be activated by a process that effects substantial change and not mere development or maturation. Left to itself, apart from an activation process capable of effecting a change of substance or natures, the cell will mature and die as a human cell, not as a human being.

TCM: Happy Sweet Sixteenth

Ted Turner has managed to do one positive thing in his long career--he started Turner Classic Movies 16 years ago. TCM is far and away my favorite channel. It connects me to an America I recognize. You can have all your idiotic reality programming. 

Once again, stereotypes turn out to be true

A study published in the current issue of Evolution and Human Behavior shows us, once again, that people should respect stereotypes and the sub-rational gut. 

The authors found that college students could look at photos of sex offenders for only two seconds and then predict whether the person was a violent or non-violent offender. 

Analysis revealed that students were focusing on signs of testosterone and masculinity (e.g., heavy brows, apparent physical strength, youth). 

Women were more likely than men to perceive the the offenders to be violent. The authors concluded that results support the view that humans have evolved the ability to quickly size up the physical threat of another person because heavy costs would accompany the inability to do so, and that women would be particularly likely to perceive a man as a physical threat because of the risk of sexual violence. 

These stereotypes find their way into fiction all the time. Marv in Sin City (shown above), played by Mickey Rourke, might be a good example from the past few years. Someone who looks like Marv might actually be a pussycat, but I'm not going to call him an asshole to his face.  


UPDATE: Two other points: 1) Non-violent sex offenders are typically depicted as small, weak weasels. Think of the pedophile played by Jackie Earle Haley in Little Children. 2) The study deliberately avoids race, stating that research indicates a bias against photos of non-whites. But the study's findings can easily be used to explain the fear that people feel toward blacks. African Americans are perceived as having higher levels of testosterone as indicated by physical traits. Size and apparent physical strength; hard muscle tone; narrow hips and broad shoulders; long limbs--all are masculine characteristics.

John Manning in The Finger Book also claims that dark skin is a sign of testosterone. Men are darker than women, and he presents the case that abundant melanosomes and melanin inhibit the invasion of bacteria and fungi through the outer surface of the skin and are found in people whose immune systems are weakened by high levels of testosterone. 

Nurturists would explain the perceived dangerousness of blacks as a myth taught to kids by prejudiced parents and peers. But Asians are racial outsiders: why don't whites have any fear of them? Why are blacks afraid of blacks? Why are race-virgin immigrants--white or Asian--afraid of blacks?    

Were the Village People really lesbians?

The Village People were always meant as a joke, right?  It must have been camp, all in good fun. The group could not have been saying that ordinary gay men are cops, cowboys, and construction workers; that they actually resemble "village people." (Brokeback Mountain, on the other hand, cannot escape mockery.)

Looking at the General Social Survey, I see that 0 out of 121 police officers, security guards, and fire fighters are gay.  On the other hand, 15 percent of females with these jobs say they are lesbians (while less than 2 percent of the general female population is). 

Only one percent of male construction workers are homosexual, but 21 percent of women in this field are (sample size = 739). 

It looks like the Village People were pretending to be lesbians.

A very strong association between percent white and trust

As a follow-up to the last post, I calculated across the nine General Social Survey regional divisions the correlation for the past decade between trusting people in general and the percent of the population that is white. It is .82--a very strong link.

Falling level of trust

General Social survey respondents have been asked the following question each survey year since 1972: "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in life?"

The graph shows that trust among Americans has been slipping for four decades (sample size = 34,790). The red section shows the percent who say that people can be trusted: this has dropped from around 50 percent in the early 70s to less than 40 percent currently. The trend has paralleled the post-1965 ethnic diversification of the country.

Falling trust is not a good sign since a flourishing society depends on a certain amount of confidence that contracts can be made and will be honored.

I'm putting together a cross-national data set and plan to identify the social correlates of ethnic diversity. I predict the results will not be pretty.

Twenty percent of white women past the age of childbearing have no children

This Pew graph shows that childlessness is most common among white women. It was so nearly 20 years ago, and it still is. One in five white women in her early 40s has no children and probably never will.  Many of the most capable women say no to kids while most of those least fit to be mothers have plenty.  Just look below:

At least the trend among educated women is not as bad as it was.

Libertarianism and hedonism

Bruce Charlton has a great post up about why libertarianism is not the future. Here's a quote:

The libertarian ethic is that the highest value is each individual being maximally free to take the choices which best enable self-gratification. While the libertarian may sincerely *hope* that other people will exercise these choices in a way which promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number (however that might be measured) it is a more direct route to personal gratification simply to seek gratification for oneself rather than for society. Even in the ‘perfect’ libertarian society it is always possible for an individual to further increase their own gratification at the expense of others – while some choices (e.g. to be the highest status, most desired, most creative) intrinsically entail the deprivation of others.

And if gratification is the goal of human life, because human life is unpredictable then *immediate* gratification – right here, right now - is vastly surer and more dependable than undergoing the risks and uncertainties involved in pursuing long term gratification. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Let's see if GSS data support the view that libertarians tend to be amoral, short-term hedonists. Two questions come immediately to mind: 1) do you ever drink too much, and 2) have you ever strayed. Here are the percent of whites answering yes by political orientation as I defined it in the last post:

Percent who drink too much (sample size = 5,431)

Libertarian 41.8
Conservative 28.6
Traditional Moderate 31.8
Permissive Moderate 51.6*
Traditional Liberal 34.1
Permissive Liberal 51.9*


Percent who've strayed (sample size = 3,806)

Libertarian 29.9*
Conservative 11.4
Traditional Moderate 12.1
Permissive Moderate 29.3*
Traditional Liberal 14.6
Permissive Liberal 26.2*

*significantly more than conservatives

Libertarians and especially people with a permissive orientation are more likely to drink too much and to have cheated on their spouses. A "do whatever you want" worldview might encourage a person to behave badly.

Libertarians are the smartest?

I would guess that libertarians are the most intelligent political category, but let's look and see.  I'll use two GSS questions to create categories. Participants were asked if they thought that marijuana should be illegal or illegal. They were also asked if the federal government spends too little, too much, or the right amount on improving education. There are six combinations possible. I label them as follows:

marijuana legal/spends too much = libertarian
marijuana illegal/spends too much = conservative
marijuana illegal/spends right amount = traditional moderate
marijuana legal/spends right amount = permissive moderate
marijuana illegal/doesn't spend enough = traditional liberal
marijuana legal/doesn't spend enough = permissive liberal

First, let's list the percent of the total white sample in each category (sample size = 2,440):

Percent  

Libertarian 1.7
Conservative 4.6
Traditional Moderate 17.3
Permissive Moderate 5.4
Traditional Liberal 47.2
Permissive Liberal 23.8
 
The most popular category, by far, is of people who favor more federal spending on education, but who are against legalization of pot.  Libertarians and conservatives, as I have defined them, are rare.  Now let's look at mean IQs:


Mean IQs--whites only 

Libertarian 102.5
Conservative 101.8
Traditional Moderate 98.6*
Permissive Moderate 99.3
Traditional Liberal 100.3*
Permissive Liberal 103.0

* significantly lower mean IQ than permissive liberal

I guessed wrong: permissive liberals have a slightly higher mean than libertarians (although the difference is not statistically significant). People with extreme positions tend to be smarter.