June 19, 2008

Libertarian snarkfest over fertility

From Reason magazine (which really ought to look into changing its name to something more appropriate, such as Smugness):

Baby Bust!
The world is panicking over birthrates. Again.
Kerry Howley

As a historical example of panicking over birthrates, we read:
"Waves of birthrate anxiety swept through France at the beginning of the 19th century...

And, of course, all that French hysteria over Germany having a higher birthrate and thus being able to field a bigger army turned out to be just a hallucination as the Germans never ever bothered France again.

The article includes three mentions of Mark Steyn's America Alone, without mentioning the ongoing court battle in Canada over whether the leading newsweekly up there has the legal right to print part of it.

And, of course, there is zero mention in the article of the most prominent public calls for maintaining the quantity and quality of the race -- from Jews.

For example, Elliott Abrams, who served during the first Bush II adminstration as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs and then was promoted to Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, spent the Clinton Administration years trying to keep Jews from marrying shikses. Abrams wrote in Slate in 1999:
"But the accommodationists are wrong. Intermarriage is both inevitable in our open society, and immensely threatening to Jewish continuity here. The Jewish community must avoid excuses and circumlocutions, and recognize that only a powerful Jewish identity built on the faith and practice of Judaism can enable young American Jews to resist the temptation of intermarriage. Only that faith can explain to them why they should resist the melting pot and build a family that takes its place in the covenant of Abraham."

Putting a race warrior like Abrams in charge of America's Near East policy was a little like making Rev. Bob Jones III ambassador to Nelson Mandela's South Africa. But nobody seemed to notice the joke. That's just one of those things you aren't supposed to talk about, especially in Reason.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

47 comments:

KlaosOldanburg said...

Reason = StuffWhitePeopleWhoReadAynRandLike

they like to raise awareness, and know what's best for poor people, and i'd bet a nickel there's not a Windows PC in the whole office.

kurt9 said...

Arguments of a depopulation problem are much like arguments about the accumulation of horse manure in the streets of New York in 1900.

Advances in anti-aging biotechnology such as SENS (www.sens.org) will make irrelevant concerns about depopulation as the invention of the automobile did to the concerns about the accumulation of horse manure in NYC.

This is not a long-term problem

Anonymous said...

As always, the easiest way to analyze the hypocrisy of such a speech is just to imagine what the reaction would be if it were given by the other side. If an Anglo were to write an article in Slate (as if they would ever publish such an article) decrying the mongrelization of people of British descent in the US (as exemplified by me, btw), the sky would come falling down.

Anonymous said...

I'm a Reason subscriber. I was put off by that fertility article you're alluding to. I love Reason, it's very interesting reading but sometimes I just want to tear the pages. Reason is also staffed by open borders fanatics, much to my irritation.

-Vanilla Thunder

agnostic said...

Michael Blowhard wrote a great post on how bad Reason has become:

"The way so many Americans have blimped-up in the last 25 years seems bizarre? Hey, fat is good!"

Anonymous said...

More words of wisdom from Eliot Abrams. A man who helps to set United States policy in the Middle East.

"Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart-except in Israel- from the rest of the population."

agnostic said...

The major flaw of libertarians is that they focus too much on the market, which is an allocation mechanism. They pay no attention to the raw materials -- especially the human raw materials -- that go into production, before anything can get allocated.

non de guerre said...

The reason Americans (that is, thinking, non-impetuous Americans) aren't having many children is because they realize their living standards are going down, and their children's will probably decline even more. If society really wants their countrymen to procreate more, than they will have to be rid of their preoccupation with materialism and economic status.

But a guy like you, Steve Sailer, is obsessed with economic status; so you, of all people, shouldn't blame other Americans for not being enthusiastic childbearers.

Anonymous said...

I don't see the VDare folks suggesting non-Mexican Californians marry Mexican Californians as a way of improving the situation there. Why, that way you wouldn't need a border fence or Minutemen. Just marry them.

The VDare folks (correct me if I'm wrong) seem downright hostile to the large influx of Mexicans into the US. Why they seem to think that the influx actually poses a threat to the US.

Wouldn't call them 'race warriors', would you?

Anonymous said...

Steve, please apply your statistical powers to the theory that Greece and Rome simply depopulated themselves via infanticide and birth control

Anonymous said...

Smugness... Kerry Howley earns that title more than most

Anonymous said...

Steve,

As the child of an interfaith marriage, trust me, Elliott Abrams and his ilk (i.e., Jews who try to tell other Jews whom they should and shouldn't marry) aren't exactly race warriors--they're just busybodies. Moreover, judging by the out-marriage rates of American Jews, they appear to be rather ineffective busybodies. Try not to let your "issues" with Jews get in the way of your otherwise insightful analysis.

Anonymous said...

Great column Steve!

Some great lines.
I will now forever think of Reason Magazine as "Smugness" magazine. And I didn't know that about Abrams. Very interesting.

punnett square said...

You think the fertility rate is low now? Just wait until male birth control hits the market. Women have a long history of tricking eligible males into impregnating them. That game is in the last 2 minutes of the 4th quarter.

Anonymous said...

Great analysis. I totally agree and am glad someone is willing to write about it.

Anonymous said...

Yikes! Its hard to believe Abrams actually wrote that in Slate.


Can you imagine if Pat Buchanan came out and said something like "we need to convince all European-descended Americans not to interbreed with Hispanics, Asians, or Blacks, because we need to keep the spirit of 1776 alive and since we are descended from the fighters and crafters of the Revolution and its Bill of Rights, we alone can continue that imporant tradition and use it as an example for democracy to the rest of the world"??????

It would go over like a lead-balloon. Meanwhile, they still hate us for our freedoms, but dont assimilate well here because we aren't accomodating enough, and Juan Dominguiez, illegal and MS-13 member, is just as patriotic as I am, and its racist for that cop to actually ask for proof of citizenship when Juan gets pulled over for a traffic violation and the officer smells alcohol---because Juan is like-so-needed at the kosher slaughterhouse for seven-bucks-an-hour and so important to North American Economy so we can continue to fight terror and not profile tunic-wearing muslims with bulges in their attire boarding airplanes.


I know, I know...........Im mean, cruel, a right wing xenophobic extremist that insists pesky things like borders, language, and culture probably really do matter over the long haul.

C. Van Carter said...

It's funny how the 'imagine there's no countries/borders/peoples' Reasonoids aspire to the stateless, 'rootless cosmopolitan' status Jews had prior to WWII.

TGGP said...

At Will Wilkinson's post on his girlfriend's article I provided evidence against his belief that our culture is winning or will win the "argument" and challenged him to provide some on the contrary. As he commented several times below it but did not respond, I conclude he is either unable or uninterested in doing so.

Unknown said...

Thanks to Agnostic for remembering my posting about giving up my Reason subscription. It can be read here -- I hope it's still worth a giggle or two.

A funny thing happened when I published that posting. One Reason staffer got in touch via email. It was such a Reason moment. He wasn't writing to say he was sorry I was giving up the subscription, or to ask what my problem was with the magazine. He was writing to tell me that I was wrong. He wanted to argue me out of my lack of enjoyment of the magazine. He apparently thought he could use intellectual means to correct my reaction. And ain't that just like a Reasonoid?

Come to think of it, I'm still receiving Reason in the mail. It's the subscription that keeps on giving, I guess.

Anonymous said...

Reason has got a point. Demographics may be destiny, but too many projections are made from linear extrapolation. Birthrates are falling everywhere. Muslims are not going to be having 5 kids per woman indefinitely. By mid-century populations may be stagnant or declining almost everywhere. It will be a new reality and human beings will have to adjust -- as we always have. The sky is not falling.

J said...

Steve, you cannot talk all the time a Jewish conspiracy and at same time, keep being scandalized by Jewish stated desire to survive as an ethnic group. When Napoleon Bonaparte, two hundred years ago, offered civil equality to French Jews on the conditions they adopt the French language, culture, military service, etc., the Jewish answer was positive to all demands except one: intermarriage. When somebody publicly reiterate the Jewish position (clearly defined in the Book of Ezra and Nehemiah 3,000 years ago), Mr Sailer is scandalized. A large majority of American Jews are intermarrying and they will dissolve in America's human mass, and a minority will pass on traditions to future generations of Jews. Very open and very clear.

Anonymous said...

Its no secret that Europeans and Jews have had their problems in the past. But I think we better look past those problems for the best of both of our peoples.

We both face demographic issues and the fact that the Islamic world would like to destroy us both. How about the Jews turn off their bad attitudes and paranoia towards us and start using their media power to help spread a pro-Euro message?

After all, when the US becomes non-white, do you(Jews) really think it will be pro-Israeli? I guess you're(Jews) relying on your ability to "lobby" future politicians as you do now?

Well, think this through, because if you haven't noticed, the non-whites of the world generally consider you to be white, while they also consider the Arabs to be "people of color."

So Aufwachen Jews! We don't want to gas you. We, like you, only want our own living space and ability to survive in the future. There's no reason why we can't work together and even share a bottle of Manneschevitz afterwards.

Anonymous said...

I'm still trying to figure out what a libertarian is. Surely the ultimate logic of a libertarian must be a one world government, or maybe a one-world anarchy?

Anonymous said...

Kerry Howley:
"Every pro-fertility policy is an effort to... ...ossify a current conception of a national culture by freezing the genetic makeup of a nation"

From Howley's external 'scientific' aspect, the genetic makeup of a nation doesn't matter. But then, nothing matters. She seems totally incapable of looking at it from the internal aspect of a group threatened with extinction - or, alternatively, using its higher reproductive rate to expand. For one thing, she's factually incorrect that it's necessarily about 'ossifying a current conception'. Hamas and Hezbollah don't seek to ossify anything, they see the high Palestinian and Lebanese Shia birth rates as highly dynamic agents of change, as weapons against their less fertile enemies. People have thought like this since pre-history: "Go forth and Multiply".

Anonymous said...

"Can you imagine if Pat Buchanan came out and said something like "we need to convince all European-descended Americans not to interbreed with Hispanics, Asians, or Blacks, because we need to keep the spirit of 1776 alive and since we are descended from the fighters and crafters of the Revolution and its Bill of Rights, we alone can continue that imporant tradition and use it as an example for democracy to the rest of the world"??????"
Since this site is somewhat obsessed with ethnicity, why are differences among White Gentiles ignored? "all European-descended Americans" are not "descended from the fighters and crafters of the Revolution and its Bill of Rights". The American revolution was made almost exclusively by Protestants whose origins were in the British Isles. The English political tradition on which it drew was established in struggle against most of continental Europe (except the Netherlands, which was very similar to England politically). To extend this literal heritage to the descendants of the mass European immigration to the United States of a century ago simply on the basis of a common skin-color strikes me as a form of racism - or is it just the actually-existing political correctness?
Obviously, all Americans, of whatever ethnicity, are the heirs of those who determined the form of the United States, but it doesn't make sense to privilege degrees of similarity to the founders.

Anonymous said...

"Elliott Abrams, ... spent the Clinton Administration years trying to keep Jews from marrying shikses."

I find this amusing because when I travelled Israel with my blond sister she told me the Jews there, especially the Orthodox ones, were just gazing at her. And whenever we sat in a bus she would by chatted up by one of them. I think she also got a marriage offer. Anyway, it sorta reminds me in a twisted way of the Jews on this site who like to promote black-white interracial marriage (of course at the detriment of whites). Looks like they have a few problems of their own.

Anonymous said...

Steve -- Sometime you should write an article about exactly what the Talmud says about the goyim, and how they should be treated. If you've already written such an article, forgive me.

Anonymous said...

You think the fertility rate is low now? Just wait until male birth control hits the market. Women have a long history of tricking eligible males into impregnating them.

This is a hugely under-appreciated issue and a whole lot more imminent than sci-fi fantasies about longevity. Male contraception will allow financially secure, forward-thinking men (ie the ones who would be most likely to make good fathers) to opt out of baby making to protect themselves from the whole child support/divorce scam. It seems obvious that the birth rate will take another dive. However, that reckons without women taking counter measures. They might opt to get pregnant by artificial insemination or by some man who isn't vulnerable to child support costs (eg because he lives on the other side of the world) and then demand that the state finance their children. This combination would leave governments facing a further drop in total fertility rate plus a steady rise in the number of children (and women) dependent on state subsidies. And then of course you have to add in the statistical observation that children of single mothers have worse life outcomes than children of intact families ...

If I were Osama Bin Laden I'd forget the whole suicide-bombers-on-airplanes thing and just offer Western men free contraception.

togo said...

I don't see the VDare folks suggesting non-Mexican Californians marry Mexican Californians as a way of improving the situation there. Why, that way you wouldn't need a border fence or Minutemen. Just marry them.

At least some major "Vdare folks" are very concerned about the congestion and environmental degradation caused by immigration-fueled population increases. Intermarriage (and it really sounds like you are "proposing" another government social program akin to "forced busing") would do nothing to solve those problems.

Anonymous said...

"Since this site is somewhat obsessed with ethnicity, why are differences among White Gentiles ignored?"

Because the whole point is to isolate Jews so they can be uniquely targetted with offensive slander. Indeed, treating Jews on the one hand, and the entirety of "white gentiles" on the other, as if the two categories were somehow comparable and analogous, is one of the routine methods of prevarication on the anti-Semitic right.

Anonymous said...

Y'all saw the War Nerd's article on demography back in May, right?

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/war_of_the_babies_when_modern_warfare_and_demography_square_off_demography/

Anonymous said...

Elliott Abrams and his ilk = aren't exactly race warriors--they're just busybodies.

Nice reframe. On my side? Busybodies. On the other side? Naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

judging by the out-marriage rates of American Jews, they appear to be rather ineffective busybodies.

You mean, these ratesI?

The Jewish rate of intermarriage is far lower than other groups. Jews only permit Jews to count Jews; Jews have a vested interest in creative accounting.

Anonymous said...

Because the whole point is to isolate Jews so they can be uniquely targeted with offensive slander.

So I suppose I'm a philo-Semite, since my argument above hinges on precisely the opposite?

Anonymous said...

Just to clarify, vis-a-vis an issue that has come up in this thread and seems to come up a lot:

No, the point is not to slander Jews. The point is not to heap opprobrium on Jews for being racists. The point isn't even to show them as hypocrites for doing precisely what organized Jewry works tirelessly to prevent in Europeans (despite the fact that so many pro-Euros seem to think it is).

The point is to a) slap some of the stupid out of nitwit Euros (sauce for the goose/sauce for the gander) and b) persuade them to put pressure on Jewry for quid pro quo.

The fact that Jews call this "slander" is a good example of how twisted their thinking is on this issue. When Jews erect a culture of critique where the European is the central bad guy, they call it "academia." When they get a tiny dose of their own medicine, it's "slander" and "anti-Semitism."

Anonymous said...

KlaosOldanburg: and i'd bet a nickel there's not a Windows PC in the whole office

Okay, I clicked on this thread expecting to be whipped up into a blind rage [scratch a libertarian, get a stalinist], but man, that was funny.

Anonymous said...

Its no secret that Europeans and Jews have had their problems in the past. But I think we better look past those problems for the best of both of our peoples.

We both face demographic issues and the fact that the Islamic world would like to destroy us both. How about the Jews turn off their bad attitudes and paranoia towards us and start using their media power to help spread a pro-Euro message?

After all, when the US becomes non-white, do you(Jews) really think it will be pro-Israeli? I guess you're(Jews) relying on your ability to "lobby" future politicians as you do now?

Well, think this through, because if you haven't noticed, the non-whites of the world generally consider you to be white, while they also consider the Arabs to be "people of color."

So Aufwachen Jews! We don't want to gas you. We, like you, only want our own living space and ability to survive in the future. There's no reason why we can't work together and even share a bottle of Manneschevitz afterwards.


You got me. Good luck on the other 13,999,999, and I'm not even full-blooded. Shoot, I thought I was white until I read this website. I pretty much knew who I was afraid of growing up in NYC and didn't understand why everyone was so against the police and for the poor when the poor seemed to want to kill them.

Honestly, though, Europe and America are separate issues. I don't think Jews have much influence in Europe anymore; there are what, a few thousand of them outside France? America's another story and I think the Israel lobby's about to take a big hit in influence after this Iraq business.

I do have to say Sailer's coming a little bit unhinged with the anti-Semitism here. Is Kerry Howley even Jewish? I'd be the last to deny the libertarians are a little silly but still.

Anonymous said...

I think that out-marriage is a good thing, and I have practiced it myself. I am a white American man who has married a woman from India, and I have to say that she has been the best wife a man could want. I am much happier now than when I was wasting my time on white American women. Of course, we live in India, because I do not want her to become Americanized. My children are not white, but so what? They are still my children.

Anonymous said...

John of London, your history isn't completely off-base but you're replying to a completely hypothetical speech that Mr. Buchanan never made. I bet the poster who made it up didn't really edit it that heavily for content (i.e. "all whites" vs. "descendants of framers of Constitution").

I surmise that the point that a lot of people are getting hung up on is the idea the Jews are simultaneously arguing (a) that their people shouldn't intermarry and (b) that everyone else should. I'm not convinced, myself. My guess is that some Jews are arguing (a) and others are arguing (b). Jews are under no obligation to agree with each other, no more than anyone else. You've got Elliot Abrams arguing against intermarriage while the older Podhoretz argued for (at least in the 1960s).

So freakin' what? If you find some sort of double standard articulated by the same person, expose it. I was in my twenties, several years into being a political junky, before I figured out what the stereotypical Jewish stance on politics was. I knew plenty of apolitical Jews, a few lefties, a few Conservatives. Sure, mix them together, you get hypocrisy, but it doesn't matter because it makes no sense to mix them together.

I always thought Sailer's position on marriage was pretty clear, and nigh-unassailable - either you condone people marrying who they want to, or you don't. Abrams gave his opinion on whether or not his numerically-small ethnic group should allow itself to be dissolved in the human ocean. AFAIK he didn't try to pass any anti-miscegenation laws.

Trouble for me is, I can't figure out if Sailer is insinuating that (a) white gentiles should follow the Jewish traditionalist lead and discourage one another from intermarrying, or (b) Jews who oppose intermarriage should pipe down until some sort of national debate on ethnicity-mixing is settled.

New idea: this is not about Abrams opinion, it is meta to Abrams opinion. It's about the media's unwillingness to criticize Jews and gentiles for the same remarks.

kurt9 said...

I rarely read Reason Magazine. However, I just read this article on fertility by clicking through from this blog. The article is, for the most part, quite reasonable (pardon the pun). I fail to see what exactly in this article is so objectionable to everyone here.

Anonymous said...

Libertarians like that are clowns. All pose, no action. If they'd get their way and the state would be abolished, they'd probably switch to communism pretty soon after. A whole new niche would open up for them.

People in the West, who even now are still unserious about fertility and demographics are either stupid, insincere, ridiculous or just high.

Which pretty much sums up Reason, I guess..

Anonymous said...

Is Kerry Howley even Jewish?

No, she's not, which makes Steve's digging up Abrams quotes in response to her article all the more incongruous. Reason isn't a particularly Jewish or Zionist magazine. If you read their blog, you'll find that on those rare threads that reference Israel-Palestine, there's not a great deal of sympathy for Israel among Reason's readers, who are mostly post-nationalist cosmopolitan freaks (the latter word I use in both the positive and negative sense).

Anyway, Reason can be criticized and mocked for its smug open borders, "anti-racist" Whiter People stance without bringing the Jewish Issue into it.

Anonymous said...

I surmise that the point that a lot of people are getting hung up on is the idea the Jews are simultaneously arguing (a) that their people shouldn't intermarry and (b) that everyone else should.

What I'm hung up on is a people with the world's longest, strongest tradition of ethnonationalism - 3000 years and going strong - and the only (western, or European, or first world) ethnostate doing everything it can (which is a lot under the circumstances) to demonize ethnocentrism and glorify ethnic suicide in Europeans, while Europeans are oblivious.

Europeans are my concern, not Jews, but the former make the latter my concern, too. So you see, it has nothing to do with who's arguing what, and everything to do with who's successfully arguing what. You make the whole thing sound so hypothetical, when it's not.

(Not that you've done so, but the usual argument seems to be that when Jew-critics shout "fire," it's anti-Jewish animus, but when blacks or anyone else cry "fire," that's justice (not anti-European animus). The double-standard is perfectly understandable when viewed through the lens of Jewish ethnocentrism and ingroup morality. I guess holding that lens up is my whole point. Not to "slander" Jews, but to get Euros used to seeing the world through this lens, rather than the rose-colored, establishment-approved lens.)

(Btw, I don't give a pass to white Uncle Toms falling all over themselves to aid and abet this process, not by a long shot; it's easy to miss, but I don't actually bring Jews up much here, unless there's obviously an elephant in the parlor. Usually someone else brings it up, and I respond to what I perceive as disinformation. Note: I acknowledge the plausible deniability factor here - see below)

I'm not convinced, myself. My guess is that some Jews are arguing (a) and others are arguing (b). Jews are under no obligation to agree with each other, no more than anyone else. You've got Elliot Abrams arguing against intermarriage while the older Podhoretz argued for (at least in the 1960s).

This is a canned obscurantist response. I hear it all the time ("there's good and bad in all groups," "show me the group that doesn't commit crimes," "I've met many tall women and short men," "there are lots of smart blacks and dumb Jews," etc., etc., ad infinitum), but what concerns me is the specifics. Yes, there is an argument within Jewry about assimilation and intermarriage. But, as far as I can tell, organized Jewry is anti-assimilationist and opposed to intermarriage. And try to imagine the uproar from the usual suspects if there was any similar argument within European communities, whatever the terms in which it was couched! The very existence of the Jewish argument over intermarriage is telling.

So freakin' what? If you find some sort of double standard articulated by the same person, expose it.

Ahahaha! Sorry, I call foul. This is a discussion about ethnies and races, not individuals. Like organizations, one hand need not know of what the other is doing to benefit from it. In fact, plausible deniability is adaptive.

I was in my twenties, several years into being a political junky, before I figured out what the stereotypical Jewish stance on politics was. I knew plenty of apolitical Jews, a few lefties, a few Conservatives. Sure, mix them together, you get hypocrisy, but it doesn't matter because it makes no sense to mix them together.

Now that you mention it, there's plenty of hypocrisy within Jewish individuals. In fact that's the overwhelming rule, not the exception; most support the dual standard "for thee but not for me" practice (Israel for the Jews, ethnostates and ethnonationalism verboten for the "gentiles").

I always thought Sailer's position on marriage was pretty clear, and nigh-unassailable - either you condone people marrying who they want to, or you don't. Abrams gave his opinion on whether or not his numerically-small ethnic group should allow itself to be dissolved in the human ocean. AFAIK he didn't try to pass any anti-miscegenation laws.

The "numerically-small" argument is another convenient, self-serving bit of "logic." It's nothing more than Jews arbitrarily tilting the field to serve their interests. Big groups have as much right to self-preservation as small ones.

(same goes for most of the effective arguments Jews have in this context (in my experience), like the diversion that Jews couch their ethnonationalism in religion, not race; well, that's mighty convenient, isn't it? If only "gentiles" could go back in time 3000 years and create an ethnonationalist religion for themselves, they could pursue ethnonationalism on religious grounds too! But they can't, so they can't, oh well, thanks for playing and please come again!)

As for anti-miscegenation laws, I don't get your point. Could you expand?

Trouble for me is, I can't figure out if Sailer is insinuating that (a) white gentiles should follow the Jewish traditionalist lead and discourage one another from intermarrying, or (b) Jews who oppose intermarriage should pipe down until some sort of national debate on ethnicity-mixing is settled.

I wouldn't know. I'm stating that (a) Europeans should reevaluate their ethnic worldview and behavior, and that Jewry is a good model to use as a start, and, (b) as a consequence, European support (material, rhetorical, and otherwise) for Israel in particular and Jewish ethnonationalism in general should be predicated on reciprocity.

Anonymous said...

"To extend this literal heritage to the descendants of the mass European immigration to the United States of a century ago simply on the basis of a common skin-color strikes me as a form of racism - or is it just the actually-existing political correctness?"

It is the recognition of a reality. Namely, that this country worked pretty well as a white pan-european descended country up until the 1960's. As an anglo-saxon, I have a hell of a lot more in common with a norwegian, an italian, or a pole, than I do with a guatemalan or a nigerian.

Anonymous said...

evil neocon asked,

Why is Abrams a "race warrior"

Because he condemns miscegenation in his kind. He airs this vile viewpoint publicly and refuses to renounce it and apologize. Adding insult to injury, he attempts to mask it with a dishonest term, "assimilation."

why is it bad for a Jew who wants more Jews to be involved in ME policy?

Because a racist is unlikely to be sympathetic to concepts such as "universal rights," and is thus forever unfit to influence Middle Eastern or any other kind of foreign or governmental policy.

Is Abrams asking there for reparations, special privileges, or endless guilt from whites like Sharpton? No. He's asking for Jews to marry Jews[...]

Opposition to miscegenation is vile. Racists should be driven from public life and, in a just society, would receive jail terms.

For all the reasons Bob Jones University, Jim Crow et al. were wrong, Abrams is wrong - he's wrong, wrong, wrong.

Unless you think that America's policy ought to restrict Jews from public life

The ADL works to restrict White Nationalists from public life. Why not restrict Jewish Nationalists as well?

Eliot Abrams = David Duke: the principle difference between them is whose ox is being gored.

What's good for the goose is good for the Gefilte fish.

Anonymous said...

A funny thing happened when I published that posting. One Reason staffer got in touch via email. It was such a Reason moment. He wasn't writing to say he was sorry I was giving up the subscription, or to ask what my problem was with the magazine. He was writing to tell me that I was wrong. He wanted to argue me out of my lack of enjoyment of the magazine. He apparently thought he could use intellectual means to correct my reaction. And ain't that just like a Reasonoid?

Rather like the "reasoning" Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden employed in deciding that it was only "logical" that they commit adultery and sleep with each other (with each others' spouses' full knowledge). Had I been alive at the time I probably would have called that high-water mark of libertardism, but as we've seen it can get a whole lot worse.

Anonymous said...

Svigor, the reason I brought anti-miscegenation laws into it is that's the only time sticks and stones come into this whole matter. The rest is all words; I don't know why Abrams's opinion matters so much. People say things to their own co-ethnics all the time that don't mean too terribly much to the outside world, and I don't know why they should.

I agree with (a) in your second paragraph. As to (b), well, I agree with Ilana Mercer that Israel has a right to exist and no right to aid from any country. They'll stand on their own just fine, and if/when Europe and the US quit endlessly debating subsidies to the Near East, we can get on with our own histories.

The people imposing the "white gentiles must mix racially" standard on white gentiles should have their ideologies criticized, end of story. You and I can make guess and counter-guess as to how many people imposing the double standard are Jews and how many are secularized descendants of New England Protestants. I don't see how that is obscurantist and if it doesn't strike you as a valid viewpoint, well, sorry.

Anonymous said...

Something does indeed need to be done to raise the fertility rates of Whites in Europe, America, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere or else in a few decades Whites/Europeans will begin to become minorities in the countries which they have settled, built, and maintained (or, in the case of Europe, areas which they are native to).

This means that Whites in America and Europe (who are envied by people the world over for their prosperity, intelligence, and know-how) will basically cede all which they have invented and built in the last few centuries. Whites/Europeans will simply abandon the Western tradition to non-Westerners, which has heretofore been the most advanced in the world BY FAR, including huge advances in technology, medicine, government, agriculture, engineering, economics, transportation, etc., social/cultural/technological advances which are now copied by non-White peoples across the world but which were invented by those of White/European descent.

This is simply pitiful...Whites in Europe, America, Australia, and other nations just giving up and allowing themselves to be outbred and eventually displaced by a bunch of immigrants and their offspring who have not contributed as much to the advance of humankind as they have.

How fair is that immigrants move in to White/European majority nations by the millions (and often breed like feral rabbits when they get there) and get to enjoy all of the social/cultural/technological amenities in these societies which they have not settled, built, and maintained?

Why do you think so many immigrants are flocking to Europe, America, Australia, and other White/European majority nations? It's because the native countries of these immigrants are very often complete hellholes (full of poverty, crime, ineptitude, chaos, pollution, non-governance, etc.) while the White/European majority nations are not! So what do think will happen when these immigrants eventually become the majority in formerly White/European majority nations? I think we all know the answer to that.