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He’s baaaack…. And he continues to repudiate the American ideal of equal opportunity.

In his 1994 book The Bell Curve, Charles Murray infamously attributed achievement gaps to inherent genetic differences among racial groups. His most recent book, Real Education, extended the argument, calling for education policies that build on ostensible differences in students’ capacity. He believes we should put low-performing students out of their academic misery by shunting them off into less demanding vocational courses. He is content to see demography as destiny, counseling us to abandon our “romantic” notion that we can narrow or close achievement gaps.

In a dyspeptic op-ed for Sunday’s Washington Post, Murray extends his argument again by railing against European-style social programs that seek to level social and economic playing fields.

The Washington Post op-ed argues, in effect, that European social programs drain life of its purpose by coddling people. To illustrate his point, Murray recalls reactions to a speech he delivered in Zurich: “Afterward, a few of the 20-something members of the audience came up and said plainly that the phrase ‘a life well-lived’ did not have meaning for them.” Now there’s a representative sample: a few Swiss 20-somethings who (1.) attended a Charles Murray speech and (2.) actually wanted to speak with him afterwards. Murray claims that these aimless souls confirm the conclusions of other “journalistic and scholarly accounts” he neglects to cite: Namely, that “the purpose of life [in Europe] is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible.”

Please.

Apparently, even hollow-eyed Europeans can learn to embrace life’s higher purpose--provided they have more chances to live at the edge of catastrophe, sink into deep poverty, face more life-threatening illnesses without health care, or begin life with staggering economic and social disadvantages.

In a particularly unsettling passage, Murray waxes nostalgic for the good old days before European social policies took hold: “I stand in awe of Europe's past. Which makes Europe's present all the more dispiriting.” So, exactly what European golden age makes the present pale by comparison? The time of the Crusades? The Spanish Inquisition? The era of indentured servitude and enforced social inequality? The flourishing of Eugenics in European social and political policies? During all of these periods, people in power justified or enforced inequality with claims that some groups of humans possessed greater virtue or higher capacities than others. In the past two centuries, they used pseudo-science to buttress those claims.

It is in fact Murray’s use of science that gets him in trouble with some of his fiercest critics. In a recent review of Real Education, the National Research Council’s Michael Feuer takes Murray to task for his “mean-spirited rhetoric and faulty science.” For example, Feuer lambasts Murray for his reliance on IQ tests as a mechanism for sorting students into academic and non-academic tracks:

The bottom line in a vast and easily accessible literature is that almost no one in the testing profession, regardless of political predisposition, is as convinced as Murray of the utility of IQ scores for the kind of lockstep sorting and selection that he envisions.

IQ is malleable and can respond dramatically to changes in environment. It is a measure of current social and economic disadvantage, not a determinant of future academic prospects.

And there’s the rub. Murray uses the very American argument that "people must be treated as individuals" to mount an attack against the American ideal of equal opportunity.

As Murray likes to point out, not all children will be above average, and different children learn differently. But that's no reason to keep stacking the deck against poor students and students of color.

[Hat tip to Eduwonk for the link to Michael Feuer's article.]