Dear Mr. Lowry,

I am writing to respectfully suggest that the time has come for the National Review to end its relationship with John Derbyshire, a contributing editor at your magazine, and the host of “Radio Derb” on its website. I do not make this suggestion lightly. A magazine of ideas, if it is worthy of the name, employs writers with an understanding that their views on any particular issue may or may not coincide with the magazine’s editorial positions. Intellectuals require a substantial degree of independence, and the National Review has always striven to employ serious conservative intellectuals.

This will be a relatively short letter, because I lack the time and the constitution to explain in detail the exact manner in which each of Mr. Derbyshire’s “arguments” in what you yourself have termed “Derb’s screed” reflects values that I hope are inimical to the National Review. I will, therefore, engage only his first point: Mr. Derbyshire has just argued at length, in a public forum, that white and Asian parents “owe it to” their teenaged children to advise them to avoid groups of black Americans by default, on the basis of no other evidence but their race.

Mr. Derbyshire begins by rehearsing the well-known fact that a disproportionate percentage of individuals arrested in connection with crimes are black. This is not the problem. The problem lies in the totally unwarranted conclusions that Mr. Derbyshire claims follow from this fact–conclusions that he could only reach with the help of a very toxic, unstated additional premise.

“Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally,” Mr. Derbyshire writes, for example, “do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.” Indeed, he adds, “If you are at some public event at which the number of black people suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.” If you plan a trip to a public beach or amusement park on some future date, Mr. Derbyshire advises, “find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date.”

What Mr. Derbyshire fails to address is that we all run small risks all the time in order to engage in worthwhile activities. The chances of being a crime victim at any given event on any given day are exceedingly low, and the marginal difference in that risk that Mr. Derbyshire associates with a particular event being “swamped with blacks” would be trivial compared to the risk of being involved in an auto accident on the way to or from the event.

Mr. Derbyshire, therefore, can only reach his conclusion–that it is a good policy to avoid places and activities that black people disproportionately enjoy–with the aid of the additional, deeply offensive, unstated premise: that places and activities that black people like have so little value to offer that they are unworthy of even very small risks, like those associated with driving, that we routinely undertake any time we go anywhere.

Would Mr. Derbyshire be willing to generalize his point? Young people commit the vast majority of crimes. Does Mr. Derbyshire believe that parents “owe it to” their kids to tell them to avoid “crowds of young people,” perhaps by choosing only events and activities favored by the middle aged? Does he refuse to drive anywhere near a university in order to avoid the enhanced risk that younger drivers represent on the road? Has Mr. Derbyshire forbidden his kids from playing varsity sports? I doubt it. Mr. Derbyshire understands that valuable activities may be worth undertaking despite small associated risks. He just doesn’t appear to think that any undertaking involving “crowds of blacks” is likely to have this kind of value.

The column which has motivated this letter, “The Talk: Nonblack Version,” does not, thank goodness, appear in your publication. Rather, the column was published yesterday on a website called Taki’s Magazine, the editors of which purport to “take our politics like we take life–lightly.” An editorial staff so vacuous that it judged Mr. Derbyshire’s vicious and incoherent essay worthy of publication does not deserve the attention of this letter. You do. You have the honor and responsibility of leading the nation’s foremost conservative magazine of ideas. The writers you choose gather under its masthead send a strong signal to the country about the animating values of the American conservative movement as a whole.

You wrote last night that “no one at National Review shares Derb’s appalling view of what parents supposedly should tell their kids about blacks.” Sadly, that is not currently accurate, because Mr. Derbyshire himself remains at National Review. You clearly would like to have an editorial staff that unanimously repudiates the spiteful and divisive values that underlie his essay. An appropriate personnel decision will be necessary in order to uphold your own, admirable standard.

Sincerely,

Marie Gryphon

UPDATE: Some of you are complaining that I haven’t linked Derbyshire’s article. I guess that’s fair. I was reluctant to send yet more traffic to the site that saw fit to publish it. But, if you are curious, here it is.

UPDATE II: John Derbyshire is no longer employed by the National Review. Congratulations and thanks to Rich Lowry and the rest of the editorial board for a wise and principled choice.

The Cato Institute’s co-founder and president, Ed Crane, describes the libertarian think tank as an “idea factory”–an organization of scholars who generate and disseminate important new public policy ideas. Because original ideas require independent thinking, Charles and David Koch’s recent lawsuit against the Institute may cripple its productive capacity. The Kochs have asked the court to order the widow of former Institute chairman William Niskanen to surrender his shares in the non-profit. If they succeed, the Kochs will control the Cato Institute outright, empowered to dismiss fellow board members and sack Mr. Crane, under whose presidency the think tank has flourished for 35 years.

The Koch brothers’ vision for the Cato Institute’s future would destroy much of its value. Slate’s Dave Weigel reports that following Mr. Niskanen’s death, David Koch and a handful of Koch executives met with Chairman Robert Levy to propose changes at Cato. “They said that a principal goal was to defeat Barack Obama,” Mr. Levy told Slate. “The way David [Koch] put it was, ‘We would like you to provide intellectual ammunition that we can then use at Americans for Prosperity and our allied organizations.’” Mr. Levy asked whether Cato didn’t already generate “intellectual ammunition,” but he “never got a satisfactory answer. The only answer that makes sense was that Cato needed to be more responsive to their needs. We would take closer marching orders. That’s totally contrary to what we perceive the function of Cato to be.”

The Kochs’ actions support Mr. Levy’s interpretation of their words. They recently invoked the Cato Institute’s dormant-for-decades shareholder agreement to pack its board of directors with Koch industry executives and allies, including Republican Party activists who do not have libertarian views. Two of these, Virginia GOP vice-chair Kevin Gentry and former McCain spokesperson Nancy Pfotenauer, have reportedly complained that Cato “wasn’t doing enough to defeat President Obama in November and that we weren’t working closely enough with grass roots activists.”

At best, the Kochs and their cohort don’t fully understand how to create working environments that foster good scholarship. But an off-hand word choice in Charles Koch’s March 8^th statement is consistent with a more troubling possibility: that they don’t view Cato as a scholarly organization at all. “With its emphasis on education, Cato has contributed greatly to the marketplace of ideas and is now a respected thought leader,” Mr. Koch writes. If the think tank merely “educated” Congress about things that Mr. Koch already knows, his plans might do less harm. But the Cato Institute produces new research. As the Century Foundation’s Janice Nittoli warns, Mr. Koch’s plans would pressure its scholars to abandon the rigorous research practices that yield genuinely original ideas.

All research builds on basic premises, and the Cato Institute’s scholars are united by certain shared premises: that economic freedom is essential to human freedom, that big government schemes (in either domestic or foreign policy) are intrinsically hobbled by information problems and subject to corruption by special interests, and that state power grows unless liberty is vigilantly guarded. But premises are not results. The results of public policy research–the ideas that Cato’s scholars produce–are based not only on their shared premises, but also on rigorous analysis. Think tank scholars create new models of existing bureaucratic or economic systems, they evaluate the costs and benefits of existing policies, and they craft new policy proposals. All of these tasks can be done well or poorly by standards that are independent of anyone’s electoral agenda, and doing them well is what good scholarship is all about.

Independence does not require isolation. When scholars and activists voluntarily meet to exchange views, the quality of public policy research is not thereby harmed and may sometimes improve. For example, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation fosters dialogue among what the Kochs call “allied organizations” by forming issue-specific working groups, to which they invite think tank scholars, grass roots activists, industry trade group representatives, and congressional committee staffers. Think tankers love to explain their research to anyone who will listen, and they benefit from constructive criticism as long as they are not pressured to tailor their findings to activists’ agendas. If anything, Cato’s scholars would benefit from similar engagement with colleagues and activists on other parts of the political spectrum.

But if the Kochs control the Cato Institute–if they can sack Board members and officers, and therefore scholars, at will–then Koch-facilitated engagement with their “allied” political activists will be neither voluntary nor independent for Cato’s scholars, who will inevitably face pressure to generate research findings that are, as David Koch’s comments suggested to Mr. Levy, “more responsive to their needs.” Whether or not the Koch brothers intend to undermine the quality of scholarship at the Cato Institute, their plans will accomplish just that.

The Cato Institute’s commitment to non-partisanship fosters scholarly integrity. For example, senior fellows Peter Van Doren and Jerry Taylor recently published an article in U.S. News & World Report titled, “It’s Not Obama’s Fault That Crude Oil Prices Have Increased.” This is a textbook example of independent scholarship: Van Doren and Taylor analyzed the crude oil market and concluded that a change in marginal supply from the North Sea–not Obama’s energy policy–had triggered the pain at the pump. In a Koch-controlled Cato Institute, for which “a principle goal was to defeat Barack Obama,” such an article would be contrary to the Institute’s declared mission.

If activist groups like Americans for Prosperity choose to promote the Cato Institute’s ideas, so much the better. But activists cannot simply order up what they want from any think tank worthy of the name. While new insights require rigorous scholarship, a mandate to produce talking points in support of someone else’s agenda would actually preclude it.

The Cato Institute is not a public relations shop. To ensure that it does not become one, the Institute’s shareholders should reorganize the non-profit along more conventional lines, with a self-perpetuating board of directors. This would not be a functional change. The Cato Institute was run this way for 27 years. Between 1981 and 2008, during which time the think tank swept to prominence, its shareholders did not meet even once.

The legal issues raised by the Kochs’ lawsuit are complex. The Koch brothers may or may not be entitled to pursue their plans under Kansas law. But those who value the Cato Institute’s unique contribution to the public policy debate should encourage the Koch brothers to change course before they devalue an institution in which they and others have invested so much.

Saks and Neiman’s limit purchasers of high-end handbags to three apiece. Aging Boomer spouses sigh with relief.

I watched the New Hampshire returns last night feeling shellshocked by The New Republic’s disclosure that afternoon of racist screeds printed under presidential candidate Ron Paul’s name in the 1980s and 1990s. I was at a gathering of DC journalists and, two beers in, was ventilating about my disappointment to progressive analyst and journalista Ali Savino. She looked at me as though I had just announced my startling discovery that there was a war in Iraq or genocide in Dafur. This has been around for months, she replied quizzically, as though I must never read the news.

“Well, I had read some vague allegations of racism in blogs,” I stumbled, “but I was happy to ignore vague allegations. The New Republic produced documentary evidence!”

It seems that many left-of-center types had read such allegations and believed that they were probably true, while my fellow-travellers had generally brushed them off as baseless. The simple and obvious explanation for this discrepancy is that people tend to believe what they want to believe, but I think there may be more to it.

Free-market types are particularly skeptical of charges of racism, no matter at whom they are levelled, because almost all of us have been the target of such accusations at least once or twice in our lives, usually by college or grad school classmates. Ann Althouse’s bizarre meltdown at a Liberty Fund event, during which she tearfully demanded that everyone at her table prove that they were not racists, was all too familiar and illustriative.

I don’t think that most people with left-of-center political views casually slander those with whom they have reasonable, legitimate disagreements. Most don’t. But the small minority who do have unfortunately undermined the credibility, at least among non-progressives, of all such charges.

Oh My.

This ought to end the revolution.

This latest quasi-gaffe mostly demonstrates that everyone is getting very tired, I think. Still, the Mayor remains stubbornly out of touch with the sentiments of the public who, if the Obama surge means anything, thinks that we’ve offended quite enough for the time being.

The candidates have just received a tape-recorded question, of sorts, from President Bush about the importance of being guided by fundamental principles.

Romney appeals to security Moms: His fundamental guiding principle is “keeping America strong.”

Giuliani appears not to understand the question: he offers a laundry list (12 points!) of policy reforms, from immigration reform to appointing originalist judges.

Huckabee trys to quote from the Declaration of Independence and flubs it — at least he has the right idea. He ruins it, though, by cycling back to the immigration issue (damn that Lou Dobbs).

Thompson laconically weighs in in favor of the Constitution.

Paul does the same, but with far more energy and credibility: “You can’t pay lip service to the Constitution without following it.”

We’re 15 minutes into the ABC/Facebook Republican debate, and I’m fascinated by the audience reaction, or complete lack thereof, to Mitt Romney’s remark, which went roughly thus:

The President is not arrogant. He does not have a bunker mentality. He has kept us safe, and we all owe President Bush a debt of gratitude for that.

I’m enjoying the Obama thing, but I think it’s going to hurt Ron Paul in New Hampshire, as Obama inspires young independents to request a Democratic ballot on Tuesday.

DC-area Metro riders should grab a copy of the Washington Examiner on Wednesday and check out my education reform advice to Mayor-elect Fenty. It’s part of a five-part series running this week.