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Review of John Glad’s “Jewish Eugenics”

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Jewish Eugenics, by John Glad. Washington, DC: Wooden Shore Publishers, 2011; 464pp. (Downloadable at either www.whatwemaybe or www.woodenshore.org. These sites also have Glad’s Future Human Evolution.)

John Glad begins Jewish Eugenics by noting that “much of what might be termed  ‘accepted eugenics narrative’ is in crass discordance with the historical facts” (p. 8). In other words, we are about to enter one of those academic minefields where “truth” is rigorously cleansed to make sure it is compatible with ethnic interests. Indeed, “writing books about Jews used to be a far easier undertaking than it is today, with Jewish anxieties over ‘anti-Semitism’ having been so elevated as to render dispassionate scholarly discourse nearly impossible” (p. 8).

I am not so sure that dispassionate scholarship is impossible, but it is surely the case that findings that diverge from the self-image desired by any ethnic group will surely be vigorously contested by academic activists or, more probably, consigned to oblivion. Dr. Glad assures me that in his case, it is the latter, writing of his frustration at the silence that has greeted his work. Welcome to the club.

As a university professor, Glad is quite attuned to the politics of having a good career. Critics of eugenics, like the notorious Ashley Montagu (a disciple of Franz Boas), get fat honoraria for delivering superficial, factually challenged lectures sponsored by numerous academic departments and programs. (Glad characterizes a lecture by Montagu as “an impressive demonstration of indoctrination” [p. 91].) On the other hand, those who defend eugenics “are subjected to academic shunning” (p. 91), their books are not used in classes and not purchased by academic libraries. They get no invitations to attend conferences or deliver lectures. Read more

The Tony Kushner Affair: Jeffrey Wiesenfeld’s Faux Pas

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It is nothing new when someone gets blacklisted or relentlessly attacked for challenging Jewish interests. When it comes to actual Jews challenging the interests of the “tribe” regarding Israel, a different tack must be taken. After all, destroying the career of a fellow Jew is not desirable to most other Jews; but some degree of punishment mixed with reward must be introduced to correct undesirable behavior and it should be done behind the scenes so as not to draw media attention.

The recent events surrounding Richard Goldstone backtracking on the Goldstone Report go a long way to illustrate how the Jewish community deals with someone how strays outside the playbook on Israel. However, another example has recently cropped up which further illustrates how members of the “tribe” are dealt with when they criticize the Jewish State. The New York Times reports that Tony Kushner, a Jewish playwright and screenwriter, who wrote Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (a mediation on gay themes that is a contribution to destruction of traditional cultural attitudes on sexuality), was recently denied an honorary degree from the City of New York University system for statements critical of Israel. However, in this case, it seems that the main antagonist aligned against Kushner, a fellow Jew, crossed the line, or at least did not go about his business in an acceptable manner. Indeed, his efforts ultimately backfired: Kushner will receive the degree, and the faculty union demanded that Weisenfeld resign from the CUNY board. Read more

“During 1917”: Chapter 14 of Solzhenitsyn’s “200 Years Together”

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Chapter 14 of Solzhenitsyn’s 200 Years Together (available here) recounts the events of 1917, a pivotal year in Russia. The main impression conveyed throughout the chapter is the sheer energy of the Jews—what I have elsewhere (pp. 24–26) labeled the psychological intensity of Jewish activism.

1917 in Russia was a year of rapid change, uncertainty and chaos—exactly the situation where even a relatively small but well-organized, energetic and highly motivated force may have a very large impact. As an analogy, consider how relatively easy it would have been to influence the structure of the U.S. government in the unsettled period after the Revolutionary War than it is today.

Jews developed a huge range of organizations of all types. Politically, they ranged from the center to the far left.

From the very first days after the February Revolution, central newspapers published enormous number of announcements about private meetings, assemblies and sessions of various Jewish parties, initially mostly the Bund [a socialist-labor party with a strong Jewish identity], and later of Poale Zion, Zionists, Socialist Zionists, Territorialist Zionists, and the Socialist Jewish Workers’ Party (SJWP). Already by March 7 we read about an oncoming assembly of the All-Russian Jewish Congress.

The various Zionist groups were the most popular among Jews; these groups tended to support socialist candidates in the Russian milieu. As an aside, one can’t help but notice the irony in the fact that Jacob Schiff, who had bankrolled Jewish revolutionary groups in Russia (see here, p. 36), announced that he had decided to join the Zionists “because of fear of Jewish assimilation as a result of Jewish civil equality in Russia. He believes that Palestine could become the center to spread ideals of Jewish culture all over the world.”

Would that he had directed all his financial support to Zionist causes rather than at attempts to topple the Czar. Wasn’t it obvious that Jewish civil equality would make assimilation and intermarriage more likely? Read more

Schrödinger’s International Terrorist Cat: A Philosophical View of Bin Laden’s Death

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In 1935, the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger conceived a famous thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s Cat to express a paradox that exists between unverified states in quantum mechanics. The basic idea Schrödinger wished to ridicule was that with two unobserved possibilities – in this case a cat in a box that was either dead or alive – both exist until the box is opened.

This thought experiment with its element of the absurd is rather similar to the case we have today of whether Osama Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad or not, especially as the process by which this was ‘perceived’ by the outside world is so suspect. While some people believe the story, others subscribe to a growing number of conspiracy theories. Just like Schrödinger’s unobserved cat therefore, the murky news from Abbottabad is helping to generate alternative Bin Ladens – some walking around, some already long dead, some even chuckling away with their CIA controllers. Read more

Helmuth Nyborg on the Genetic Decline of Western Civilization: Denmark as a Case Study

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Prof. Helmuth Nyborg

The Danish psychologist Helmuth Nyborg has an academic paper soon to be published in Personality and Individual Differences (“The decay of Western Civilization: Double Relaxed Natural Selection“). Nyborg is well-known for his work showing a sex difference in IQ favoring males, a paper which resulted in an investigation of his work and a reprimand from his university. (Nyborg describes the “witch hunt” he endured  here.)

Nyborg’s latest paper charts past trends and projects IQ changes in Denmark as a result of two trends: relaxation of natural selection among the traditional Danes, and an influx of low-IQ immigrants. These two trends together amount to what he terms a “double relaxation of natural selection” (DRNS).

Relying on Richard Lynn’s work Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, the relaxation of internal selection is thought to have begun around 1850 as the fertility of the lower classes exceeded the upper classes because of improvements in hygiene and reduction in diseases. He cites Lynn’s estimate that England lost 6.9 IQ points over 90 years (1920-2010) and estimates that Denmark’s average IQ dropped around 10 points since 1850 due to internal relaxation of natural selection. Read more

A. M. Burovsky on the Jewish “Empire of the Intellect”

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Andrei Burovsky's "Are the Jews the Most Advanced People on Earth?

Professor Professor Andrei Mikhailovich Burovsky, academic, writer, slaughterer of sacred cows, and, it must be admitted straight off, a hyperactive revisionist, has a cornucopia of interests ranging from archaeology, the interaction between nature and societies, the formation of the noosphere, and cross-cultural contacts, right up to the Jewish question in Russia and worldwide. On all of these topics the professor has taken strong, minority opinions. Politically, Burovsky is a member of the All-Russian Socio-Political Eurasia Movement and has authored several very popular books about Siberia.[1]

Burovsky writes about Jews in the way H. L. Mencken wrote about certain Christian sects and pompous celebrities, i.e., boldly and without fear of consequences. Like Mencken, Burovsky is a well-known disturber-of-the-peace, iconoclast, and a prolific writer on subjects both profane and sacred. But whereas Mencken dealt with the relatively venial offences committed by members of what he called the ‘Boobeoisie’, Burovsky deals with much heavier issues with far more serious consequences. Unfortunately, Professor Burovsky lacks the literary skill and sense of humor of the Bard of Baltimore and has attracted many enemies from the ranks of his literary targets.  But, most importantly, it must be said that so long as the likes of Mencken in America, Burovsky in Russia, and their like elsewhere are permitted to write and be published, it is proof enough that freedom of speech and of the press truly exists.

Burovsky does not write in the style of an academic but as a populist. He does not try to convince by patient logical argument but by hammering home his message. Sophisticated readers find his style rough and sloppy while the common folk enjoy it. Read more

Superman Shrugged

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The recent release of a film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged has brought Ayn Rand’s fantasy of the world’s supermen abdicating from the role of stewards and leaders to a much wider audience. Within her frame, these men are noble and their decision to retreat into “Galt’s gulch” is an honorable response to the indignity and exploitation they’re exposed to. As others have noted, this fantasy doesn’t jibe with the current situation. While elites of yesteryear may have actually created wealth as titans of industry or ambitious innovators, today’s elites don’t make wealth, they take wealth.

To borrow from another book by Ayn Rand, today’s elites are Ellsworth Toohey, not Howard Roark.

And the “shrugging” that our White American elites are doing is less of a principled boycott than a manic fit of self-glorification. In the animated blockbuster Megamind, the presumptive hero “Metro Man” abandons Metro City to become “Music Man”, leaving the city to burn in the hands of the villains while indulging his juvenile hobby. This is a much better metaphor for the collective decision by our overlords to turn their backs on their stubborn and myopic White American minions. They’re not buckling under our burdensome demands as John Galt had been. They’re hellbent on making minions of the entire world, of upgrading from mere American elites to global elites.

Superman renounces his citizenship

In an emblematic case of art imitating life, Superman will be renouncing his U.S. citizenship in the upcoming edition, stepping up from the lowly post of being the steward of a nation (and thus an implicit nationalist) to becoming an exciting new global superhero. He doesn’t answer to us — he answers to the United Nations. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Barack Obama, and the rest of America’s elite have preceded Superman in their own quests to take the wealth and power they amass in America and pour it into the “developing” world. It’s a truly bipartisan effort, with Former President George W. Bush and his wife lobbying for the Middle Eastern women they haven’t buried alive or vaporized to have more “women’s rights“.

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