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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Reagan's hidden historical advantage over Carter: the military enlistment exam misnorming fiasco of 1976-80"

23 Comments -

1 – 23 of 23
Blogger AlbionHistorian said...


I took that GCT test in 1975 before I enlisted in the navy. I made a 72 on it. 75 was the top end score.

68 gets you into Mensa.

That is why you keep censoring my comments, steve. That's why you won't post my comments until you have created another post--because I am a lot smarter than you, steve. Smarter than anyone else here. I have read more books than you will ever open.


10/13/12, 5:58 AM

Anonymous Chicago said...

OK, I'm going to follow your link to Amazon and click on one of their buttons right now.

10/13/12, 6:06 AM

Anonymous newyorker said...

the afqt looks like a good screening tool for job applicants. if the armed forces can use it, why can't employers. (i know it is not allowed, but it seems hypocritical)

10/13/12, 6:21 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

https://twitter.com/SatoshiKanazawa

kana

10/13/12, 6:35 AM

Anonymous dearieme said...

"despite the frustrations of Iraq and Afghanistan.": you're not normally given to euphemisms, Steve.

Afghanistan is clearly going to be an unmitigated defeat.

For Iraq a little longer may be required - it might turn into a peaceful, democratic Greater Belgium, in which case it'll very reasonably be viewed as a victory. More likely it'll be viewed as a costly strategic defeat - turning a potential constraint on Iran into a murderous quagmire of instability.

10/13/12, 6:35 AM

Anonymous AllanF said...

What no Stripes reference? Not even a photo?

10/13/12, 8:39 AM

Blogger agnostic said...

"Where is your drill sergeant, men?"

"Blown up, sir!"
"BLOWN UP, SIR!"

"What kind of training?"

"Arrrrrrmy training, sir!"
"ARMY TRAINING, SIR!"

10/13/12, 9:31 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

On the basis that bureaucracies everywhere stink, I have no reason to believe that the Chinese armed forces bureaucracies are any better, but they have access to more competent raw materials, I think.

10/13/12, 9:53 AM

Anonymous josh said...

The fiasco in Iran was not precipitated by dumb soldiers--unless maybe the helicopters were mainatined by lower IQ mechanics and that played a part--but by the idiots at the top. The plan was way too complex and depended upon everything going right;of course NOTHING went right. The passing of the busload of Iranians--what were the odds? Imagine you are in the desert dying of thirst,can you say to yourself,"Well there should be a busload of people coming by here any minute." You will be food for the vultures. BTW I was in from 73 to 76,and there were lots of dumb guys. One group was especially dumb--and scarey.

10/13/12, 10:14 AM

Blogger pat said...

This is true. I was there I saw it for myself.

In 1963 I decided to enlist in the Washington D.C. National Guard. In those days all young men had a six year obligation. I went for the National Guard option - six months of active duty and five and a half years of active reserves.

At the DC Armory they gave all of us the current admission test. It wasn't a very good test. I complained bitterly because I only scored in the 95 percentile. I had never scored that low on any general intelligence test before.

We weren't told what was the cutoff score. I complained to another potential enlistee about the test. He had also passed and was admitted. He was in the thirteenth percentile, so I guess I wan't in any real danger of missing the cut.

The army in those days was filled with some really incredibly stupid people. That was one of many shocks I was to suffer. In civilian life really stupid people are institutionalized in the Army they were made sergeants.

Albertosaurus

10/13/12, 10:59 AM

Blogger snapperhead soup said...

Maybe, but did US fight any major wars in the 80s? I think the dummy 70s forces could have done what the US marines did in Grenada.

10/13/12, 11:44 AM

Anonymous forest tentacle said...

Funny how we all seem to go quieter in fund-raising times. Having said that, on my way now to buy 4 $50 anonymous Mexican convenience-store cashier's checks.

10/13/12, 1:01 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's interesting, because I know that the only military testing accepted by Mensa as proof of IQ is that conducted before 10/80.

10/13/12, 2:22 PM

Anonymous DirkY said...

I wasn't yet born, but economic statistics point to the 70s as a belle epoque for the middle class. Wages were high, unemployment was low, public debt as a percentage of GDP fell, real economic growth rose except for a few short and mild recessions and economic equality peaked, etc. While inflation has its downsides, the spike in the 70s acted as a sort of debt jubilee, with incumbent fixed rate mortgage holders seeing their incomes and property values increase 5-10% a year while their mortgage payments were fixed.

I think the reason the 80s have a better reputation than the 70s economically was the rich did better in the 80s and they are the ones who write the economic history books. The fact the military easily recruited smart people in the 80s is further evidence. They stuck with the private sector in the 70s. The stock market also did poorly in the 70s in large part because profits gave way to higher wages due to the tight labor market.

10/13/12, 2:59 PM

Anonymous E. Rekshun said...

@agnostic: "That's a fact jack!"

"I got no place else to go."

10/13/12, 3:00 PM

Anonymous Ex Submarine Officer said...

I joined the USMC in 1976, a year in which I'm pretty sure less than half of the enlistees were at least high school graduates.

There were some achingly stupid people in there. Interestingly, though, there was a sprinkling of fairly bright guys, like me I suppose, off on their youthful, macho, romantic adventure.

Drugs were everywhere, it was absolutely endemic, but that was just like the greater society.

Sometimes, though, I think a lot of the problems really weren't so much as from stupidity as from apathy, which permeated the fabric of American society in the 1970's.

Nobody cared about doing a good job on anything back then, not just the military. The fact that the military cared enough about its performance to raise enlistment standards may be just as, if not more, responsible for the improvement as the the raising of enlistment standards.

They started doing lots of other stuff then too, like drug testing, improving esprit de corps, more actively throwing out non-performers.

The fact that Reagan also had launched a new crusade against the Reds also gave the military a sense of mission.

So still attribute the 70's military to overall American crumminess during it's golden age in the 70's. Letting in lots of dopes was perhaps more of an effect, w/a feedback loop to be sure, of military crumminess then than an underlying cause.

Yes, incomes were relatively high in the 70's, but apart from that, I still haven't figured out why everything was so crummy then.

Sometimes I think it goes back to the postwar philosophy that led to McNamara and his "best and brightest", the notion that mass production and "scientific" bean counting management devoid of underlying expertise, was the wave of the future.

This certainly led to conglomerates, like the ones that ate and nearly destroyed Harley, Gibson, etc, buying up everything in sight regardless of whether it had any sort of connection to its underlying business.

It is still a puzzlement, though.

10/13/12, 3:44 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't blame Carter for the state of the military in the 1970s. Back then, the military was extremely unpopular, and they had to lower the bar to unprecedented depths simply to have enough troops. That wasn't a problem a decade later - and consider that Volkman's trade of inflation for unemployment sent quite a few young men to the recruiting stations.

10/13/12, 8:28 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"... I still haven't figured out why everything was so crummy then.

Sometimes I think it goes back to the postwar philosophy that led to McNamara and his "best and brightest..."


The Moron Corps, aka, the "McMamara 100,000". Looking into the abysmal state of the US military, intelligence of troops, and admissions/IQ tests in the 70s (I also saw it) eventually leads to the "McMamara 100,000". That ol'boy really knew how to... uh... mess up:

"Project 100,000 was initiated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ... ended in December 1971. ...

Considered part of Johnson's Great Society by giving training and opportunity to the uneducated and poor, the recruited men were classified as "New Standards Men" (or pejoratively the Moron Corps) and had scored in Category IV of the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which placed them in the 10-30 percentile range. ... reportedly recruited ... 320,000[3] to 354,000, .... insisted ... put into virtually all fields, and this was a disaster. ..."


They didn't go down so well toward the end in Vietnam. Probably one reason we now have a professional, all-volunteer military. Ah, the citizen-farmer yeoman militia-man, we hardly knew ye. Might we have a little humility about what can be accomplished by utopian fantasies such as the Great Society? Ah... Nobody larns nothing. It don't mean a thing.

10/13/12, 10:58 PM

Anonymous E. Rekshun said...

"I feel the need for speed." Maverick, USN, 1986.

10/14/12, 3:27 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

As a platoon leader in 1978 I was constantly chided to focus on re-enlisting any warm body. As a company commander in 1984 I had a 100% re-enlistment rate for 24 months in a row. Even minor infractions could earn someone a "bar".

10/14/12, 9:41 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Considered part of Johnson's Great Society by giving training and opportunity to the uneducated and poor, the recruited men were classified as "New Standards Men" (or pejoratively the Moron Corps) and had scored in Category IV of the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which placed them in the 10-30 percentile range. ... reportedly recruited ... 320,000[3] to 354,000, .... insisted ... put into virtually all fields, and this was a disaster. ..."

I can guess ... discipline was also relaxed for the Moron Corps, was it not? That's the same old story of how "progressives" coddle dumbos, especially when it comes to discipline and justice.

10/14/12, 11:21 AM

Blogger Norville Rogers said...

AlbionHistorian, have you heard from RhodesiaFarmer recently? He was supposed to help me unload several dozen cases of '82 Lafite Rothschild for transfer to our NGO buyer in Durban, unfortunately it seems his Internet is on the blink

10/14/12, 11:28 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"They started doing lots of other stuff then too, like drug testing,.."

When some computer eventually writes the history of the 20th century, a large role will probably be played by the US military world-wide medical establishment. Kind of like the CDC, but the US military had to worry about world-wide epidemiology. They also could track/study the medical history of their entire "population" and "do things". The drug testing really started working by the mid-to-late 70s. It was getting cheap, accurate, and widely used. A good way to ease the Project 100K types out.

10/14/12, 8:08 PM

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