Chaim Amalek writes: “The Chinese will fully embrace it, as they are a very practical people. In 75 years one will be able to go to a fine restaurant in China and order a white fetus, complete will red hair, to dine on and no one will think it odd.”
Fred Reed writes:
Mention of eugenics inevitably results in whoops of horror, gnashing of hair, rending of teeth, and discussion of Hitler. Occasionally, however, matters of importance merit discussion even if they lead to Hitler. If by “eugenics” is meant both the selective breeding of humans and genetic manipulation of ourselves, we will shortly have to discuss it, Fuehrer or no Fuehrer. Google on “Designer babies.”
To the gnashers and renders, eugenics always involves the killing of genetically inferior children, preferably by uniformed Nazis. A better term for this might be “first-degree murder.” Usually it would be.
On the other hand, medical ambiguities exist. What does one do in the case of genetically-related anencephaly? These babies, literally having no brain, can perhaps be kept alive forever at enormous expense, but nobody is there. What is the correct policy?
Eugenics can mean many things other than the killing of defective babies. Many of us already practice an informal, jackleg, shade-tree eugenics. If kids at CalTech, who are very highly selected for intelligence, marry each other partly in hopes of having intelligent children, this is eugenics. How terrible is it? (Oh god, I shouldn’t have said that. We’ll end up with federally mandated genetic affirmative action.)
In a sense, the concentration of high intelligence in good universities and elsewhere, where marriage almost certainly will occur, amounts to inadvertent eugenics. In general, the bright seek each other out. Eugenics.
Other examples can be found. If a couple discover that they are genetically likely to have hemophiliac children,, and to adopt or use a sperm bank, they engage in eugenics. Should they be prevented from doing this?
A woman who goes to a sperm bank and asks for an intelligent donor is practicing eugenics. Is this not completely her business?
All of the foregoing are informal and pretty much under the radar. However, anyone who even casually follows the technical literature knows that we are rapidly approaching the point of being able to manipulate human genetics at the level of DNA. The thing to watch is what is being done with animals, such as the production of super-strong dogs in China by excising the gene for myostatin.
(CNN)”In a medical breakthrough that is as terrifying as it is extraordinary, scientists in China say they have created dogs that are twice as strong as they would be naturally, through genetic engineering.”
The pooches above are proof of principle. What can be done sometimes, sort of, and riskily in animals today will one day be possible with humans, safely. It is a classic case of not whether but when, and “when” is “real soon.” When “when” arrives, what then? (If you like technoglop, this on CRISPR research at CalBerkeley.)
The progression can be guessed. The advocates (who will not call it “eugenics”) will first argue for the elimination of genetic diseases. It will be hard to argue against the idea. Such things as sickle-cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, and hemophilia have limited charm.
Next (I think) will come calls for the elimination of genes correlated with cancer, macular degeneration, atherosclerosis, and so on at great length. These too could go away without generating torrents of nostalgia.
Eliminating genetic errors will quickly be accompanied by calls for re-engineering the genome for desirable traits: athleticism, superb vision, and….
Intelligence. Uh-oh.
Here is where things will get sticky. Or begin to. There will be worse.
Intelligence beyond question is largely genetic. Yes, I know: The politically correct argue that intelligence doesn’t exist, and they are themselves compelling evidence for the thesis. Most people who actually have brains think that intelligence is a good thing.
Here uneasiness at Playing God enters the picture. Preventing disease seems pretty much like a vaccination. Nothing wrong with that. Editng ourselves for better hearing or athleticism? Maybe a bit creepy but, well, what’s wrong with having a better jump shot? Intelligence, though….
If increased intelligence meant ten or fifteen points of additional IQ, maybe not too much would happen. But if we designed people with IQs of 300, or mean IQs of 300, they would presumably regard the rest of us as little more than pets. I do not know where the upper bound of genetically engineered intelligence might lie. I don’t think anyone else knows either. It is certain that IQs extreme by our standards would instantly dominate the race. Given humanity’s instinctive immersion in corruption, egotism, psychopathy, war, slaughter, totalitarianism, torture, murder and thievery, caution might be advisable in producing people better than we are at these things. It could be a case of finding out what you asked for after getting it.
Here we encounter other thorny problems. A great deal of evidence suggests that behavior is substantially genetic in origin: twin studies, the ease of breeding dogs to be aggressive or pacific, similarities of neural responses in conservatives and other responses in liberals. This would explain why blacks, whites, Jews and the Chinese have exhibited their characteristic personalities over milennia and most of the planet.
Would we then design people to have desirable behavior? Who would decide what was desirable? The virtuous at NPR would want nice, sensitive people with an appreciation of diversity, safe spaces, and opposition to guns, along with an inability to recognize reality. Conservatives would want stern, wary people yearning to fight to the death against nonexistent threats.
Predictably, militaries already are salivating at the thought of phenomenally strong soldiers with Terminator characteristics: (Daily Mail) supertroops who could run over large distances while carrying extremely heavy loads, go for days without sleep, and so on.
Militaries attract men who seem to be genetically disposed to war and to subclinical paranoia, much in the manner of dogs who are alarmed by every passing stranger. The said genetically-modified soldiers would of course need the pugnacity of pit-bulls, and the Pentagon, which sees existential threats in pretty much everything, will warn that we have to develop such myrmidons as otherwise the Chinese will do it first. A psychopathy gap will loom.
MARIAN VAN COURT WRITES:
The story of eugenics has been a tragedy. The basic idea goes back to antiquity – the belief that the world would become a much better place if healthy and intelligent people had the most children. But in the 20th century, in a bizarre and mysterious twist of fate, something went terribly wrong, and what began as an altruistic movement to help future generations ended in the barbaric murder of millions. This fantastical tale has long been the accepted history of eugenics – but is that really what happened?
Recently, John Glad published Jewish Eugenics,[1] which adds important new pieces to this puzzle, and when combined with already-established facts, a radically different picture of the history of eugenics emerges. JE gives an overview of Jewish participation in eugenics which shows consistent support in Israel from its birth in 1948 to the present, and among the majority of Jews in the West until the late 1960s, at which time most Jewish social scientists and journalists reversed themselves to vehement denunciation, which remains their position today. The question immediately arises: “Why the mass reversal?” Glad states matter-of-factly that most Jews in the West altered their position 180 degrees, and then he moves on, offering no explanation for this extraordinary event, but that will be the central focus of this paper.
JE is a scholarly work about an extremely important subject, but there’s also an inescapable element of sensationalism simply because of the topics addressed. Eugenics is widely reviled as “the ideology of the holocaust,” the most diabolical scheme in all of history.Furthermore, the very idea of Jewish eugenics may seem strange, since eugenics is associated in the minds of most people with the Nazis. Nevertheless, eugenics is now, and has always been, practiced in Israel:
Unlike the U.S. situation, this anti-eugenics view never even got off the ground in Israel. Behavioral scientist Aviad Raz (b. 1968) of Ben Gurion University is quite open in pointing out that both the word ‘eugenics’ and the actual practice of eugenics enjoy broad approval in that country, and objections to eugenics – at least as far as genetic screening combined with eugenic abortions – are a ‘non-issue’ in Israel: Eugenic ideologies and practices have persisted in Israel, in a thinly disguised mode, even after the holocaust, because they were an inherent and formative part of Zionism . . . [P]renatal genetic testing was eugenic and was indeed supported precisely for that reason, since ‘eugenic’ for them meant the improvement of the health of progeny and carried positive rather than negative connotations.[2]
Today in Israel, abortion is not a controversial issue. Human embryos are not considered sacred. The new eugenic reproductive technologies – pre-natal diagnosis, abortion of defective fetuses, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy – are all encouraged by the government and widely utilized by the population. (It should be noted, however, that Palestinians are not encouraged to take part, as their fertility is seen as a threat to the state.) In fact, surrogate mothers are paid by the government. There are 16 sperm banks in Israel, and more in vitro fertilizations are performed there per capita than in any other country in the world. Stem cell research is not strictly regulated in Israel. In short, their pragmatic attitude towards issues surrounding human reproduction contrasts sharply with that in America.
Ancient Jewish Eugenics
Jews have practiced eugenics since ancient times. Moreover, eugenics is an integral part of Judaism, and of the evolution of the Jewish people themselves. Eugenics is thought to be responsible for their higher average IQ, and consequently, for their higher incomes and disproportionate success in virtually all fields of endeavor. Richard Lynn has written extensively on this subject, and has estimated the average IQ of Jews worldwide to be 110.[3] Nathaniel Weyl proposed an interesting theory to explain how this IQ advantage came about:
The selective character of the Captivity and the Return was perpetuated by eugenic practices, based on learning and scholarship, which would persist for centuries of Jewish history . . . [which has] sometimes been considered as a vast experiment, in which status was based on intellect serving religion, in which intellectuals were commanded not to be chaste, but to be fertile, in which the rich and successful sought brilliant rabbinical scholars as husbands for their daughters . . . [4]
In addition, in a society that places an enormous premium on learning, it might be expected that those of lower intelligence would be accorded little respect, and little of everything else, so they would have the most to gain by defecting. Also, it might be asked, why did Jews value intelligence so much in the first place? Perhaps they were smarter than the other people around them from ancient times, and they wanted to keep it that way – in other words, a sort of “founder effect.” Finally, the “Shadchan,” or marriage broker, may also have played a significant role in Jewish eugenics:
[T]he Pentateuch raised Eugenics into a matter of religion . . . The much-despised Shadchan or marriage broker as an institution had many obvious faults. Yet, in a quiet, unscientific manner he has been the means of curing mere sentiment and passion in the matter of mating of sons and daughters of Israel . . . The Shadchan is distinctively on the side of Eugenics in ‘regulating’ the union of men and women . . . [5]
Jewish Attitudes towards Eugenics do an About-Face in the West
Glad quotes a Jewish eugenicist in a 1930s journal: “The eugenicist . . . does not aim to establish a race of supermen, but rather, a race of sturdy, intelligent and healthy individuals similar to the large proportion of the human family now in existence.”[6]
Later, he cites another Jewish eugenicist’s 3-point plan:
Social Eugenics will accomplish the following: It will reduce future welfare rolls. It will reduce our prison population. It will reduce future crimes. It will consist of a simple three-point plan: First, the Aid to Dependent Children will be phased out. . . . Second . . . Persons on Welfare who consent to sterilization will receive a one thousand dollar cash bonus. . . Third, all prison inmates will be [given] a three-year reduction in their prison sentences if they consent to sterilization.[7]
In much of the Western world during the 1920s and 1930s, eugenics was a popular cause. Some of its more notable proponents include H. G. Wells, Charles Darwin, Margaret Sanger, Winston Churchill, Francis Galton, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Lindbergh, Alexander Graham Bell, Theodore Roosevelt, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Julian Huxley. Huxley described eugenics as “of all outlets for altruism, that which is most comprehensive and of longest range.” Wells said, “It seemed to me that to discourage the multiplication of people below a certain standard, and to encourage the multiplication of exceptionally superior people, was the only real and permanent way of mending the ills of the world.”[8] It was neither a liberal nor a conservative cause, with supporters along all points of the political spectrum.
Then in the late 1960s, the majority of Jewish social scientists and journalists in Europe and North America did an about-face, reversing their position to one of harsh denunciation of eugenics, and since there was no organized opposition, their beliefs became both the academic orthodoxy and the “conventional wisdom.” This has lasted about 50 years to the present day. Although Glad never even speculates about why this remarkable event occurred, he provides the first clue – that it coincided with the birth of the Holocaust Memorial Movement, which can hardly be an insignificant coincidence.
Perhaps the second clue towards explaining anti-eugenics lies in the content and tone of their works – they became more dogmatic, and less rigorously scientific. Their readers were taught that certain opinions are acceptable, even praiseworthy, whereas others are forbidden, held only by screwballs and evil-doers. For example, according to them, all good and decent people believe the following: that heredity counts for nothing; that race doesn’t exist; that IQ is a fraud invented by White men who wanted to feel superior; that everyone is born exactly the same on everything that matters. Obviously, if only the environment determines human behavior, then there’s no point in eugenics.
The Nature-Nurture debate took center stage in public awareness in the latter part of the 20th century because of a media blitz engineered by the political left. It wasn’t much of a “debate,” however, because, for the most part, only their side was presented to the public. Eugenics was given a leading role – along with heredity, environment, race, and IQ tests – in their little “morality play.” Hereditarians believe both Nature and Nurture are important – they were cast as the heartless, bigoted villains. “Environmentalists” (a.k.a. “egalitarians”) should not be confused with those who want to protect the natural environment – in this context, environmentalists are those who believe that all human beings are born exactly equal on everything that matters, and that differences in behavior are determined by the environment. The environmentalists portrayed themselves as the “good guys” who bravely defend the public from the hateful influence of wicked hereditarians and eugenicists.
In 1981, Stephen Jay Gould published The Mismeasure of Man.[9] It received lavish praise all around, and won numerous awards. It was translated into 10 languages, and it became required reading for undergraduate and graduate courses in psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Gould was a staunch environmentalist. He published a new “revised” edition in 1996, but it was the exact same book with extra chapters added to the end. J. Philippe Rushton writes in his review of the new edition:
After carefully reading the book, I charge Gould with several counts of scholarly malfeasance. First, he omits mention of remarkable new discoveries made from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which show that brain size and IQ correlate about 0.40. These results are as replicable as one will find in the social and behavioral sciences and utterly destroy many of Gould’s arguments. Second, despite published refutations, Gould repeats verbatim his defamations of character against long deceased individuals.[10]
Gould was the most popular and prolific of the bunch, but there were a number of other academics who wrote books in the same vein, such as Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin who jointly published Not in Our Genes in 1984.[11] Richard Dawkins aptly described the book as “silly, pretentious, obscurantist, and mendacious.”[12] They agreed with Gould that IQ means nothing, plus it’s not inherited, and furthermore, it doesn’t even exist! These authors, too, believed that science can never be truly objective, never free of bias or political and cultural influence. This is a form of nihilism, and common sense would suggest that nihilists should not be trusted, and that their own motives should come under the deepest scrutiny.
The environmentalists had no remotely compelling evidence that heredity is unimportant in human behavior for the pure and simple reason that this is nonsense. There’s a mountain of scientific evidence on twins and adopted children which proves the importance of heredity. So they merely sniped at the research of their opponents, especially their older, outdated research, while generating none of their own – and herein lies the third clue about the Jews’ about-face on eugenics: most of them have produced precious little (if anything at all) in the way of original research. If they had truth on their side, they should be able to prove their assertions with research, but they didn’t even try, suggesting that they knew all along it would be futile. Their new secular religion was made up of “politically correct” tenets that have become articles of faith. Not only is their set of beliefs true, they insist, it is the only moral stance. Doesn’t this sound suspicious? How can a question of fact become a moral duty to believe?
In 1985, Daniel Kevles published a book entitled In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity.[13] It first appeared in serial form in The New Yorker, and it was also extremely well-received, very influential, and widely cited. In the first chapter, Kevles states that Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin and the “father of eugenics,” believed in eugenics because (1) he was born into the aristocracy, and (as Marx would claim) he was an elitist participant in the “class struggle” of capitalism, and because (2) he and his wife were childless, a psychological need arose which led him to promote eugenics. Kevles writes that “[H]ad [Galton] been more self-aware he might have understood that his proto-eugenic pronouncements celebrated the social milieu – and met the psychic needs – of Francis Galton.” With this one statement, he simultaneously patronizes Galton and insults him. He offers no proof, nor evidence of any kind. He goes on to assert that “Galton may well have diverted frustration over his own lack of children into an obsession with the propagation of Galton-like offspring.”[14] But how can Kevles presume to know what “really” motivated Francis Galton?
The following quote by Lucy Davidowicz provides another example of the uncritical thinking so typical of the anti-eugenics literature: “Negative eugenics was [the Nazis’] program designed first to halt the procreation of persons . . . through sterilization, and then eventually to kill them [sic].”[15] Aside from being untrue, if the goal of the Nazis had been to prevent procreation, it would be absurd to first sterilize people, and then to kill them!
This quote also brings up the important subject of euthanasia. In the years before World War II, Germany had an unusually large institutionalized population, mostly psychotic or severely debilitated by illness. Hitler instituted a program of euthanasia to give them a “merciful death.” The historical record shows that he did this in order to free up medical supplies and personnel which he knew he would need for future military campaigns. Whether this program was wise or unwise is irrelevant to the issue at hand, because euthanasia has nothing whatsoever to do with eugenics. People who are institutionalized do not procreate, so euthanasia would serve no eugenic purpose. Yet somehow, euthanasia has become entangled conceptually with eugenics. It’s difficult to know to what extent this was an accident, and to what extent eugenics may have been deliberately confounded with euthanasia, as the Davidowicz quote might suggest. The unfortunate result of this confusion is that many educated people today still believe eugenics is a program of forcible mass murder of the weak and infirm.
“The Anti-Eugenics Movement is a Hoax.”
The big gun in the arsenal of the anti-eugenicists is their claim that eugenics caused the holocaust, and more generally, that eugenics invariably leads to genocide, and for that reason it’s extremely dangerous and should be banned everywhere. Unfortunately, this belief is often treated as self-evident, as if it needs no proof, but it is hardly self-evident!
Despite the fact that this is accepted as true in much of the Western world, in reality it can easily be proven to be false: (1) It’s well-known that in the 1920s and 1930s, there were numerous eugenics programs in countries around the world, including America and a number of European nations,[16] and that in one of these countries, Nazi Germany, genocide was committed. If eugenics causes genocide – as its opponents claim – then why was there no genocide in all those other countries? Why were there literally dozens of exceptions to this rule? (2) Both before and after the Nazis, mass murder and genocide have been committed many times throughout history. The Communists murdered far more people that the Nazis did, and they vehemently opposed eugenics. History records numerous instances of genocide in the absence of eugenics, and numerous instances of eugenics in the absence of genocide, and only one instance in which they even existed in the same time and place.[17] These are hardly obscure facts of history, nor are they in dispute. The plain fact is that eugenics has nothing whatsoever to do with genocide.
On the face of it, the very notion that a program designed to help future generations is directly responsible for mass murder is preposterous. Assertions of causality – for example, “The influenza virus causes the flu” – need to be backed up with facts if they are to be taken seriously. But in this case, where are the facts? To assert that “Germany had a eugenics program and the holocaust took place there” is wholly inadequate. Furthermore, even a cursory examination of the historical record is sufficient to rule out a causal link. What’s remarkable is that this blatant falsehood has been vigorously promoted to the public for decades – to the point where most people actually believe it – which elevates it from a mere falsehood to the status of a “hoax.” This raises the intriguing question of who is behind this hoax, and what exactly have they been trying to accomplish by it?
The vast majority of Western anti-eugenicists have been Jews. (Of course, only a small minority of Jews were anti-eugenicists.) They denounced eugenics with such remarkable and relentless ferocity that it has become profoundly stigmatized. As a result of their tidal wave of distortions, the image of eugenics was completely transformed in the mind of the public. It seems almost miraculous how they managed to replace the normal, honest, correct, sane image the public has held of eugenics since its inception – that of a transparently altruistic effort to help future generations – into the most vicious form of pure evil ever to scourge our planet.
By the late 20th century, the few beleaguered eugenicists still left, mostly academics with tenure, struggled to carry on their work:
Dissidents are subjected to academic shunning. Their books and articles are not recommended for publication or are ignored if published, and are certainly not assigned to students. Many librarians not only will not order them, but will refuse to accept them as gifts. Such authors are not invited to participate in conferences or deliver guest lectures, are not awarded grants or academic appointments, and even their correspondence goes unanswered. . . This de facto blacklisting easily carries the day in newspapers and on television-radio talk shows, scooping out an ever widening chasm between popular opinion and science. It is a scenario that has been repeatedly played out in academia in the past. Galileo ultimately wins out over the Inquisition, but that can be a very lengthy process [emphasis in original].[18]
North American and European eugenicists were up against an anti-eugenics juggernaut of books, lectures, articles, TV mini-series, museums, interviews, radio talk shows, newspaper stories, and movies. Plagued by hostility and ridicule from colleagues, even ostracized socially for holding “unsavory” opinions, we developed an uneasy sense that the entire world had gone insane. This surreal suppression of truth in supposedly “free” countries created an extremely uncomfortable atmosphere that lasted for decades. Consider the following analogy: imagine you dropped a tennis ball and it flew upwards into the clouds! Naturally, you’d be dumbfounded. Experience and judgment told us that what we were witnessing – right there before our very eyes – should not be happening. Something was profoundly wrong in the world – but what?
Furthermore, it was hard to fathom how the public could be so easily brainwashed about eugenics when science, logic, and morality were all firmly on its side. We wondered: Have they considered even once the alternative to eugenics, which is dysgenics (genetic deterioration)? Do they really want to see each generation become more sickly, more stupid, poorer, and more criminal than the last one?
Among the handful of eugenicists remaining, opinion was divided on the subject of why eugenics was in a shambles. Everyone agreed that it had been unfairly tarnished because of guilt-by-association with Hitler – an extremely unfortunate but nevertheless “natural” result of a confluence of world events – whereas a few suspected more was involved. The anti-eugenicists were not merely mistaken or misguided – by this time, we knew that they knew they were lying. Bear in mind that during the 1970s and 1980s, hardly anyone had even heard about the thriving eugenics program in Israel.
Since virtually all our opponents were Jews, and it was obvious that they had some kind of political agenda they barely tried to conceal, most people thought it was Marxism. The problem was that, at least among a few of us, we also assumed that world events took place as a result of an interaction of factors which unfolded “naturally.” We were idealistic scientists, admittedly naive and trusting, and we hadn’t the faintest clue that the entire Western world was being manipulated for the political benefit of a tiny ethnic minority. Then along came Kevin MacDonald’s trilogy to open our eyes.[19] Suddenly we realized that the world is a far more sinister place than we could ever have imagined, but we understood – finally – what had happened to eugenics.
A number of modern Jewish intellectual movements have used wholesale deception to mold public opinion to create a climate favorable to their own interests to the detriment of society at large (see MacDonald, 1998b). A broader perspective can be achieved with regard to the anti-eugenics hoax after stepping back and viewing it in this context.When it is seen alongside these other movements, the anti-eugenics hoax begins to make more sense. Examples: Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, “open immigration,” and most recently, neo-conservatism. The neoconservatives lied America into war with Iraq (Israel’s enemy), and their campaign for war, significantly, has also been characterized as a “hoax.”[20]
Not just “many” or “most” anti-eugenicists have been Jews, but the “overwhelming majority,” and this distinction is crucial because it defines anti-eugenics as a Jewish movement, and makes it reasonable to assume that it was intended to benefit Jews in some way. Also, they engaged in massive fraud for a period of 50 years to accomplish their goal, so the anti-eugenics hoax clearly “fits” alongside the other Jewish intellectual movements which MacDonald has written about. Now at least we have the beginnings of an answer starting to take shape, a preliminary step closer to solving the puzzle. We’re still left with the question of how destroying eugenics could possibly help Jews, but this will be answered below.
As touched on earlier, eugenics is part of a cluster of issues along with IQ, race, and the Nature-Nurture question. These, in turn, are part of a larger matrix known as “political correctness,” or “leftist fascism,” and this includes immigration, intermarriage, diversity, and multi-culturalism. Much has been written about political correctness – nobody knows quite where it came from, and why it has taken over the Western world with a vengeance. Political correctness didn’t just occur arbitrarily like a change in the weather, it happened because people made it happen, people who derived (and continue to derive) benefit from it. MacDonald believes that the current Zeitgeist, with its various manifestations, is the product of Jews and Jewish organizations working for decades to re-create the social and political landscape, bit by bit, into one which benefits their own narrow ethnic interests.
Case in point: Immigration. Jews have been persecuted throughout their long history, and quite understandably, their paramount concern is making sure that it doesn’t happen again. In a confident, united, ethnically homogeneous society – like Nazi Germany – Jews are much more vulnerable as conspicuous outsiders, and they know this both consciously and unconsciously. They are safer and more powerful in a society which is divided and disorganized, where they are more free to advance their own agenda, unnoticed and without interference. In Israel, immigration is closed to everyone except Jews, regardless of their need for refuge. But in America, where Balkanization is to their advantage, Jews spearheaded the fight for “open immigration,” ostensibly on “humanitarian” grounds, and this allowed many different nationalities and races into the country. They promoted the belief that the environment is all-powerful and heredity counts for nothing, and this led directly to political policies which benefited themselves. According to their reasoning, if millions of Pygmies immigrate to America, they are bound to become good citizens sooner or later, since race doesn’t exist and all behavior is determined by the environment. But lofty-sounding universalist ideals espoused when in the minority are forgotten in Israel, where it’s no longer to their advantage.
Decline in Our Intelligence: Dysgenic Fertility for IQ
Historically, eugenicists have been concerned with promoting good health and increasing intelligence, or at least preventing its decline, because of its profound importance to a strong economy, a low level of crime, progress in every field, and the overall quality of life. Scientific research on fertility and IQ gives us a clearer picture of the importance of eugenics, and the consequences of dysgenics.
Richard Lynn is the world’s foremost authority on eugenics and dysgenics. In his book, Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Societies,[20] he explains that before 1800 in America and Europe, there was “natural fertility,” i.e., no effort was made to prevent conception. Married couples often had large families, but men with little income couldn’t marry so they remained childless, and the net result was a slight positive correlation between number of children and intelligence.
The problem of dysgenic fertility arose with the advent of contraception. Several books were published in the mid-1800s which gave advice on how to prevent pregnancy, and of course they influenced those who could read disproportionately. Goodyear perfected the vulcanization of rubber in 1839, condoms and diaphragms became available, and the middle and upper classes began having fewer children. This caused widespread alarm that intelligence might be declining, and in the late 1800s and early 1900s, various studies were conducted to test this hypothesis. For example, in England a negative correlation was reported between the IQs of school children and the number of their siblings, which seemed to confirm worries about dysgenics. However, the objection was raised that no one knew about the childless, whether they were more or less intelligent than people with children. A number of American studies were conducted in the early- to mid-1900s, but their samples were not representative of the population as a whole – either they were restricted geographically, or restricted in age-range, or they did not include minorities, so they were of limited value. By the mid-1900s, the question was still unresolved.
Finally in 1985, Van Court and Bean published the results of their study of fertility and IQ which used a large representative sample of the U.S. population that provided an overview of this relationship for most of the 20th century. In all 15 of the 5-year cohorts, correlations between IQ and number of children were negative, and 12 of 15 were statistically significant.[21] More recently, Lynn and Van Court did a follow-up study using the same data set which included new data collected in the 1990s, and the results were very similar.[22] Paradoxically, James Flynn, a New Zealand political scientist, has provided evidence that phenotypic IQ has actually increased over part of this period,[23] but his findings were challenged by Rushton and Jensen who reported that the IQ sub-tests which improved most over time were the least highly g loaded,[24] which means they measure mental processes that are not highly correlated with general intelligence. At any rate, from 1880 to 1979, dysgenic fertility for IQ in America has resulted in a loss of .9 points per generation (= 25 years). Multiplying .9 IQ points x 4 generations = 3.6 points, thus we find that genotypic intelligence declined in America during this period by 3.6 points. A loss of this magnitude approximately doubles the number of retardates (IQ < 70), and halves the number of gifted (IQ > 130).[25]
In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray wrote about the effects of a small IQ loss in populations:
[A]n apparently minor shift in IQ could produce important social outcomes. Three points in IQ seem to be nothing (and indeed, they are nothing in terms of understanding an individual’s ability), but a population with an IQ mean that has slipped three points is likely to be importantly worse off. Furthermore, a three-point slide in the near-term future is well within the realm of possibility. The social phenomena that have been so worrisome for the past few decades may in some degree already reflect an ongoing dysgenic effect. It is worth worrying about, and worth trying to do something about.[26]
Thus a loss of 3.6 IQ points for a population of millions is hardly a mere scientific curiosity. To understand how this loss affects the real world, consider the following: Herrnstein and Murray reported that all social problems were exacerbated when they moved the average IQ down in their sample statistically by just 3 points, from 100 to 97. The number of women chronically dependent on welfare increased by 14%; the poverty rate increased by 11%; illegitimacy increased by 8%; men who were incarcerated increased by 13%; and permanent high school dropouts increased by 14%.[27] Needless to say, such social pathologies create unhappy lives for many thousands of real people, plus a major tax burden for many more.
Herrnstein and Murray calculated the effect of an increase of 3 IQ points, from 100 to 103:
For starters, the poverty rate falls by 25 percent. So does the proportion of males ever interviewed in jail. High school dropouts fall by 28 percent. Children living without their parents fall by 20 percent. Welfare recipiency, both temporary and chronic, falls by 18 percent. Children born out of wedlock drop by 15 percent. . . . Children who live in poverty for the first three years of their lives drop by 20 percent.[28]
Next they calculated the effects of raising the average IQ by 6 points – from 97 to 103:
A swing from an average IQ of 97 to 103 in the NLSY [National Longitudinal Survey of Youth] reduces the proportion of people who never get a high school education by 43 percent, of persons below the poverty line by 36 percent, of children living in foster care or with non-parental relatives by 38 percent, of women ever on welfare by 31 percent.[29]
Herrnstein and Murray’s findings demonstrate – very clearly, and very powerfully – the critical role of IQ in human society. They also show the importance of small gains or losses, and they provide a glimpse of what an over-arching beneficence eugenics could be. Probably nothing else encapsulates it better because hardly anyone can fail to be impressed by the rise and fall in social problems resulting from a small number of IQ points lost or gained.
However, the consequences of a decline in average national IQ are hardly confined to increases in specific social problems. Dysgenics erodes the quality of life for everyone. Various “epidemics” appear, seemingly from nowhere – learning disabilities, obesity, medical problems, behavior disorders – while the percentage of unemployables grows ever larger. Loss of IQ over time would be expected to manifest itself in economic woes, crime, corruption, and government gridlock, to mention just a few. The collective mood becomes alienated and confused, with a diffuse, restless sort of anger in search of a target (such as “the government”) and a vague sense of unease and pessimism about the future. Although changes may be gradual (as opposed to abrupt or sudden), they’re not exactly slow in the sense that they are clearly visible within one lifetime – most Americans over the age of 50 can look back and remember when their country was safer, more peaceful, and more civil. Pundits try but fail to identify “the real problem” (“spiritual malaise,” “a crisis of will”). There’s a great deal of frenzied but utterly misguided finger-pointing. Tragically, when one problem is analyzed, a so-called expert will point to some other related problem as its “cause,” when in fact, generation after generation of genetic deterioration of the population (dysgenics) is the single invisible “mega-cause” underlying them all.
Extended Time Frame for Dysgenic Fertility
Lynn and Van Court have solid data for 1880 to 1979 in the U.S., as discussed, but it is possible to make strong inferences about an extended time frame. For the 25-year interval just preceding these years, and for that just following these years, there are no precise data, but there is every indication that these periods were equally dysgenic, if not more so. Therefore, extrapolating from the existing data results in a probable loss from 1855 to 2004 of .9 IQ points x 6 generations = 5.4 points. With a bell-shaped distribution like IQ, moderate shifts in the mean produce large changes at the tail ends, and a population loss of this magnitude results in a greater than 5-fold increase in the number of retardates (IQ < 70), and a decrease in the number of gifted (IQ > 130) to 1/5 their previous number.[30] The economic burden of such an increase in retardates is huge, but the precipitous decline in the gifted population may be even worse because the gifted contribute a vastly disproportionate number of all the positive things that enrich our lives – the great novels, beautiful music, fascinating scientific discoveries, profitable business ventures, life-saving medicines, and new inventions.
Richard Lynn has found that dysgenic fertility is the rule rather than the exception around the world except in sub-Saharan Africa, where birth control is not used. Europe appears to be roughly on par with America in terms of severity of dysgenics, whereas South America appears to be a good deal worse.[31]
The two main causes of dysgenic fertility are: (1) high-IQ women frequently don’t have as many children as they would ideally like to have, often because of career conflicts, and (2) (more importantly) low-IQ women on average have a very large number of accidental pregnancies. Low-IQ women are less likely to use any form of contraception, and when they do, they don’t use it as consistently and as successfully as women with higher IQs. Furthermore, when they get pregnant, low-IQ women are less likely to have abortions. (The situation is exacerbated by welfare grants for having babies that can exceed what a low-IQ woman might earn herself.) For these reasons, they end up having more children – often many more children – than they ideally would like to have. Surveys have shown that women of all IQ levels want, on average, about 2.3 children.[32] These results are quite significant because they indicate that a eugenics program could have made real strides towards reducing or even reversing dysgenic fertility – if there existed the collective will to do so – simply by helping women to achieve their desired family size. This is an entirely workable proposition which would save taxpayers a great deal of money in the long run (not having to support mothers and children to the age of 18), and it surely would have had widespread public support. Evidence suggests that correlations between planned children and IQ are slightly positive. Therefore, if the eugenics movement had been able to run its natural course, a comprehensive family planning program might well have reversed the negative correlation between IQ and number of children, thereby reducing poverty, crime, and virtually all other social problems.
Such a program would be expected to help Blacks most of all. Today the average IQ of Blacks is 85, compared to 100 for Whites, but correlations between IQ and number of children for Blacks are even more strongly negative than they are for Whites. In other words, genotypic intelligence among Whites has declined in the recent past, and continues to decline, but among Blacks it’s declining twice as fast, making the already-large IQ gap between Blacks and Whites even larger.[33] Disparities in real-world correlates of IQ – socioeconomic status, crime, and welfare dependency – will become even greater if nothing is done to alter this trend. Family planning assistance would be expected to help Blacks most because they have by far the highest illegitimacy rates, as well as highest rates of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies, and raising the IQ of Blacks would help the larger society as well.
The Eugenics Boogie Man
A compelling case can be made that many of our most serious social problems would have been alleviated – not eliminated entirely, but significantly alleviated – if eugenicists had been able to carry on their work into the 21st century. Early eugenics programs have been sharply criticized, often with justification, but a great deal of what existed in the 1920s and 1930s – Model T Fords, rumble seats, Prohibition – has changed for the better since then. It would be a mistake to assume that eugenics-in-its-infancy is eugenics. Not only has Israel had a long-standing and successful eugenics program, other countries, such as Sweden, have too, consisting of education, incentives and disincentives, plus medical advances. There is every reason to expect that the early eugenics programs in North America and Europe would have matured from their simple beginnings to become more sophisticated and more effective as various policies were openly debated and new discoveries in genetics and reproductive biology were made.
Jews used eugenics most recently to virtually eradicate Tay-Sachs disease worldwide, which is a great benefit to them, but it is disheartening to imagine the much larger populations of non-Jews and all the blessings which eugenics might have bestowed on them over the past half-century, but couldn’t – the greater prosperity, the violent crimes prevented, the better health – and for what purpose were these benefits prevented? From studying MacDonald’s work, we see that the anti-eugenics hoax fits a well-established pattern of behavior in which Jews use large-scale deception to advance their own ethnic interests to the detriment of other citizens. They’ve been warning the Western world for 50 years now about the dreaded “Eugenics Boogie Man,” ready to devour the world if set free, and they’ve succeeded – the public has been thoroughly brainwashed, and appropriately terrorized.
So the final remaining question is: “How was destroying eugenics in the West supposed to benefit Jews?” Was it merely to add another element of sensationalism to the holocaust narrative? Or is it possible, God forbid, that by destroying eugenics, they have been deliberately promoting dysgenics – genetic deterioration – among gentiles? MacDonald’s research[34] has shown that a cadre of Jewish intellectuals has been actively working for decades to destroy gentile culture, so is it such a leap to think they’re trying to destroy the population genetically as well? As shocking as this sounds, why else would they have spent decades fanatically attacking eugenics in the West?
In his review of Glad’s book, MacDonald notes:
The fact that Jewish activists have dominated the anti-eugenics movement in the West and that they tend to hold hostile views toward the traditional people and culture of the West suggest that their opposition to eugenics may also have another motive lurking in the background besides their hatred for anything associated with National Socialism: facilitating the genetic decline of the West as an outgroup. Jewish promotion of massive non-White immigration may also be similarly motivated.[35]
When eugenics is eliminated, dysgenics automatically takes its place, and this is totally predictable. By definition, dysgenics is the weakening of a population genetically. Reason dictates that their intention was to do exactly what they did – they destroyed eugenics and genetically weakened Europe and North America. There’s no point in searching high and low for a tortured or convoluted alternative explanation for something that is so simple and so obvious.
Worldwide, Jews are much smaller numerically than the populations of the Western nations, and they are far more homogeneous genetically. This means that a eugenics program in the West would produce improvements in health and IQ, plus alleviate all social problems, faster than a comparable eugenics program in Israel. The reason is that selection on a large, heterogeneous population (of any organism) operates much more effectively than on a small, homogeneous one. In addition, Jews have been practicing eugenics for thousands of years, so they are very probably nearer to their peak in terms of what they can attain in IQ than gentiles are, and presumably the anti-eugenicists are well aware of this.
The fact that Israel is a Jewish state, whereas North America and Europe have only a tiny percentage of Jews, is a distinction of crucial importance to the anti-eugenicists, although, almost certainly, they would deny it. In fact, that’s the reason there’s eugenics in Israel today, and dysgenics in North America and Europe. If they had no intention to secretly inflict harm on other ethnic groups, and if they honestly wanted to protect the world from eugenics, then why is it the case that all this time, the anti-eugenicists never lifted a finger to “save” the poor Israelis? They are not merely threatened by the Eugenics Boogie Man – the Israelis are under attack! Perhaps miraculously, after 65 years of eugenics, the Israelis have managed to stave off genocide all on their own. But the point here is that if the anti-eugenicists had no ulterior motives, wouldn’t they have tried to dismantle an actual eugenics program in Israel instead of spending decades warning Western countries about its potential horrors?
People might wonder why some Jews would want to weaken the gene pool of the West, while simultaneously strengthening the gene pool of Israel. The answer, in a word, is “power.” Some Jews tend to be quite ethnocentric, with an “us versus them” mentality, viewing other racial groups as competitors, adversaries, or even enemies, and presumably the anti-eugenicists wanted their perceived “enemies” (most importantly, gentiles of European descent) to “breed themselves down” so they will pose less of a threat, making it easier for Jews to dominate them politically and economically long into the future.
Suddenly, with this new understanding, the anti-eugenics hoax seems extraordinary in so many ways. It brings to mind the old adage, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” because this is genuinely strange! All these years, no one had any inkling that a nefarious plot was secretly unfolding. The word “conspiracy” hasn’t been used yet, but make no mistake, a conspiracy it was, and is. It shows how far they will go to create an advantage for fellow Jews whom they will never even see, and this reveals a degree of ethnocentrism unheard of in any other group. It shows that some core Jews are genuinely at war with the rest of the world. It shows their phenomenal talent for propaganda, and their extraordinary ability to act in concert over large expanses of space and time.
It’s disturbing to realize how well the actions of the anti-eugenicists conform to the worst anti-Semitic stereotype: that Jews acquire power far in excess of their numbers which they use to advance their own narrow interests, while producing a harmful effect throughout the larger society; that they show deep concern for other Jews but indifference (at best) to the well-being of fellow citizens; and finally, that they engage in massive dishonest practices and double-dealing. It can’t be denied that the “anti-eugenics hoax” further strengthens this negative stereotype, demonstrating – along with the disastrous Iraq war – that it may not be an entirely irrational vestige of a bye-gone era with no relevance to the world today. Americans might seriously reconsider whether we have a true democracy when so few control so many, and wonder what other hoaxes and frauds they may be peddling. To this point, Glad writes that “So obviously and so radically is [the] accepted holocaust narrative out of whack with reality.”[36]
A Crime against Humanity?
Recall that before 1960, eugenics still had a fairly good reputation. After World War II, it was tarnished by the association with Hitler, but there were still eugenics journals, eugenics conferences, and eugenics programs in a number of countries. The public knew the purpose of eugenics is to make future generations healthier, smarter, richer, and less violent – so how could the anti-eugenicists argue against that? Since eugenics is an altruistic endeavor, the anti-eugenicists would have to convince the public that it causes something downright catastrophic in order to turn everyone against it. What’s the worst thing in the whole wide world? Genocide! Eugenics causes genocide! This ruse was convenient because Hitler had been a particularly ardent proponent of eugenics. Of course, the assertion that “eugenics causes genocide” doesn’t even make sense – it’s kind of like saying “Accounting causes mass murder,” or “Gardening is responsible for train wrecks.” Moreover, those making this nonsensical assertion never seem to feel the slightest obligation to explain how eugenics causes genocide. The road from eugenics to genocide is filled with emotion-laden narratives, but a specific, concrete causal link is conspicuously missing. Yet the anti-eugenicists succeeded in convincing the public in spite of it because they repeated their message hundreds of thousands of times, along with their extensive network of “fellow travelers” among academics and journalists – on TV, in the universities, movies, magazines, books, journals, and newspapers – so how could it be wrong?
The bottom line is that the 50-year-long “Jewish assault on eugenics” is an assault on the health and well-being of literally millions of people. It’s difficult even to grasp something so vicious as secretly degrading entire populations genetically because it should be obvious to any normal person that this produces a vast amount of suffering. Readers can decide for themselves whether the anti-eugenics hoax constitutes a crime against humanity:
Crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, ‘are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings . . . Murder; extermination; torture; rape; political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice.’ [my emphases][37]
Conclusion
The old history of eugenics as “altruistic endeavor which mysteriously led to mass murder” was based on an unstable foundation. Inherently, it was highly implausible, and more importantly, it was demonstrably false. The new interpretation offered here tells a startling new story, one which is a radical departure from the previously-accepted version.
To summarize: (1) The anti-eugenicists’ claim that eugenics invariably leads to genocide is completely at odds with the established historical record, yet it’s been vigorously promoted to the public for decades, which qualifies it as a “hoax.” (2) As a result of an incredibly long, very impressive, but thoroughly dishonest propaganda campaign, eugenics has been dead for half a century now in the West. (3) Nearly all anti-eugenicists have been Jews. By destroying eugenics in the West, they succeeded in genetically weakening North America and Europe. During this very same time period, Israeli Jews strengthened their gene pool through the widespread practice of eugenics there.
Nothing about the anti-eugenics hoax was written in Jewish Eugenics, but Glad’s book provided crucial pieces of information for the conclusions drawn in this paper. Before JE was published, the eugenics program in Israel was largely unknown, and the extent of Jewish involvement in the anti-eugenics movement in the West was not fully appreciated. Also, the extraordinary 1960s about-face of Jewish social scientists and journalists was a revelation. Add these to MacDonald’s paradigm and the facts of history which give the lie to “eugenics causes genocide,” and suddenly there emerges “who-what-when-where-why” in one tidy little package.
If popular and ambitious eugenics programs like the one in Israel had operated in the West during the 50-year period of the anti-eugenics movement, both North America and Europe would be healthier, smarter, richer, and less crime-ridden than they are today. All the generations that follow would be better off, too – not only our children’s generation, but our grandchildren’s, and our great-grandchildren’s – because our gene pool, and our culture, are springboards for all of them. The public has been conditioned to react like Pavlov’s dogs and reflexively picture mass murder at the mere mention of the word “eugenics.” Were it not for relentless anti-eugenics propaganda, we could have bequeathed to future generations not only a healthier gene pool, but a culture that understands both the power and the kindness of eugenics, and thus we would have left them a far better legacy than the one we are leaving them today.