What you fail to process is that “history” is not in question, only your speculative claim that Arabs are genetically inferior to European Americans because of genocide 600 years ago. Find a historical site that makes that same claim. Find anything, any site, any where on the net the echoes the theory that Arabs are “genetically inferior” to European Americans. You can’t. It’s just your wild speculation from whatever personal issues you have that I have no interest in digging up.
"Class differences do not usually arise from exploitation--as the Marxists and other Socialists hypothecate--but through different traits and different levels of ability."
More thoughtless neo-Nazi consistent babble. In an advanced and free society, there may be a strong correlation between genetically rooted ability and social class. But with few exceptions, Chinese society has been dominated by strict class and clan structures with little or no upward mobility. I wouldn’t want to speculate on how much if any genetic superiority over the population there was among 19th century Chinese leaders.
Islam’s so called golden age was just a step above the dark ages of the West. It was in decline prior to Tamerlane’s conquest. What separates the West’s progress from the stagnation of the Middle East is our reformation. Islam generally solidified into the social and intellectual fundamentalism that it suffers from today, (explained in Allah Attacks Aristotle: The Philosophical Roots of 9-11 ) Many historians believe that ther’s evidence that Islamic stagnation is culturally based, supported by this is from Study Warns of Stagnation in Arab Societies:
The whole Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one-fifth the number that Greece translates," the report said. In the 1,000 years since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun, it concludes, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year… Books are not being translated, in part because of Islamic pressures, said Ms. Abou-Saif, the author of "Middle East Journal: A Woman's Journey Into the Heart of the Arab World" (Scribner, 1990). "A whole gamut of religious literature are best sellers," she said.It’s implausible that your “genetic inferiority” claim is responsible for Islam’s failure to embrace foreign books. Srdja Trifkovic elaborates in The Myth of an Islamic Golden Age
This age was marked by, among other things, intellectual achievement. A number of medieval thinkers and scientists living under Islamic rule, by no means all of them "Moslems" either nominally or substantially, played a useful role of transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic fruits of knowledge to Westerners. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. But in doing this, they were but transmitting what they themselves had received from non-Moslem sources…"All invention is based upon discovery and finding new applications for what already exists. "The problem with turning this list of intellectual achievements into a convincing "Islamic" golden age is that whatever flourished, did so not by reason of Islam but in spite of Islam. Moslems overran societies (Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Byzantine, Syrian, Jewish) that possessed intellectual sophistication in their own right and failed to completely destroy their cultures. To give it the credit for what the remnants of these cultures achieved is like crediting the Red Army for the survival of Beethoven in East Berlin under Walter Ulbricht! Islam per se never encouraged science, in the sense of disinterested enquiry, because the only knowledge it accepts is religious knowledge.
…after the brief period of flourishing, first in Baghdad and then in Spain, the history of Islam has been that of a long decline without a fall. What started as a violent creed of the invaders from the desert soon ran out of steam, but the collective memory of earlier successes lingered on. It was still invoked as the proof of the divine approval and superiority. The fact that history was no longer on the side of Islam was for centuries blurred by the success of Turkish arms. It was not until 1683 that the menace to Europe was finally crushed at the gates of Vienna, but for long before that the Islamic world had little interesting to say, or do. Not even a prime location at the crossroads of the world could supply an antidote to the slow poison of Islamic obscurantism.
Always reliant on the plunder of its neighbors and robbery of its non-Muslim subjects, Islam was unable to create new wealth once the conquerors had run out of steam and reduced the vanquished to utter penury. Pre-Islamic Egypt was the granary of Europe, just like the pre-Bolshevik Ukraine; now both have to import food. Pre-Islamic Syria and Asia Minor suffered a similar fate under Caliph Umar to the highly developed and prosperous East Germany and Czechoslovakia after 1945. Both Islam and Communism oppose the preconditions for successful economic development in principle as well as in practice. In both cases, attempts to copy Western methods of production failed because they were not accompanied by the essential changes of social, political, and legal structure; the problem of Ottoman experiments with modernization were remarkably similar to the tinkering with various “models of socialism” a hundred years later.
That’s inanely simplistic. Invention constructs entirely new and productive systems, technologies and entities that add value from existing primitives, something that continues to be promoted by the intellectual and political freedoms valued in the West since the Renaissance .
When you can post a paragraph, like that, you put yourself outside the compass of rational debate! National Socialism, like other forms of Socialism was premised upon an environmental determinant. (See The Lies of Socialism, in my debate handbook.) Hitler even ranted about the new "Classless/Casteless" Germany.)
It was precisely by denying genetic based aptitudes that Socialist theorists from Marx to Hitler, could justify persecuting the Jews, who test out--on average--well above average in both Europe and America in scholastic aptitudes. Do you think before you write, or simply echo whatever nonsense you were told in college? I do not want to make this personal, but, frankly, your ideological claims closely echo the Ashley Montagu line of cultural dogmatists. Do you realize where they stand in the ideological spectrum? Ever looked at his mentor, Franz Boas Communist Front record?
While upward mobility is a good thing, as individual aptitudes cover a wide range; what is speculative is any idea that, on average, those at the bottom of any society are going to have as useful aptitudes as those at the top. Yes, China would have benefitted--and would still benefit from upward mobility--but even without it, the generally educated Chinese, now here, test out a tad better in Math and Science, than equally educated Americans.
As for Iraqis, you issue this bogus challenge:
Find anything, any site, any where on the net the echoes the theory that Arabs are “genetically inferior” to European Americans. You can’t. It’s just your wild speculation from whatever personal issues you have that I have no interest in digging up.
1. I did not say that anyone was "genetically inferior." That would involve making subjective value judgments, which I avoid.
2. Nor did I generalize as to all Arabs, in stating what happened to the Arab civilization centered in Baghdad. I merely pointed out that those who organized and maintained that intellectual flowering were wiped out--something which you dogmatically choose to argue is of little or no significance. I have no doubt that among the great many Bedouin tribes, still wandering around, one might find some with very different aptitudes than the average urban Iraqi, today.
3. I am not going to waste time, checking on what has or has not been posted on the internet, to make an argument. My argument is based upon the obvious reality, that actions speak louder than words. And the proof is in the contrast between Islamic Mesopotamia in 1300 and in 2005. What has changed is the genocide, I mentioned.
4. Of course, what is demonstrated by action also shows up in intelligence tests--although to be candid, Iraq, while demonstrably behind European and Northern Asian nations, compares quite well with other Islamic nations, for which there is published data. (The data, on this, which I have immediately at hand, is from studies by Lynn and Vanhannen, National I.Q. and Economic Development: A Study Of Eighty-One Nations, The Mankind Quarterly, XLI, 415-435.)
Now again, it is you, not I, who are making adverse value judgments on other peoples. I.Q. tests measure largely what has been found to be important aptitudes for training people to fill useful mental roles in British and American societies. No one suggests that because, for example, the Bushman of the Kalahari might not do well on such a test, that they are therefore unworthy of respect. Few, if any, of us, even the brightest and most innovative, would have an equivalent chance for survival in the Kalahari desert. But you are trying to blame a religion for the failure of modern Iraq, and that is nonsense. We know the area flourished. We know the Mongols slaughtered those they overran there. Again, the religion is the same. It is hardly speculative--certainly not until you come up with something other than a constant--to explain the fall off, for me to point out the obvious.
You might also look at North Korea--perhaps them most rigidly controlled society on earth. Yet it has now developed some terrible weapons. Saddam could only hire foreign technicians to even try to compete on such a level. I could offer other examples of the fallacy of your point, but it would be over-kill.
For the lurkers, I would only point out the Left handed admission, which Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish Socialist who compiled the book, "An American Dilemma," to attack American Race relations, made in 1944. Early in one of his early Chapters (I believe, the book is not in front of me), he laments that he cannot understand why Conservatives tend to reject the importance of environment, since they could still be Conservative and accept an environmental determinant of human performance.
Myrdal is right to the extent of the comment. But what should cry out to any reasonable man or woman, is what he leaves unstated. Sure, we can acknowledge that cultural environment does have a fairly significant effect on how any individual performs--certainly in what direction he performs--and still maintain that it is no business of Government to intervene in that cultural environment. But what is unstated is the converse. You cannot be a Socialist, demanding collectivist engineering of people's social environment, and believe that heredity and genes play a large and determinant role in human performance. Once you accept the importance of the genetic determinant, it becomes obvious that all Socialist levelling schemes are an assault on human excellence. And that is unconscionable.