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To: Ohioan
"You cannot really think that that is an argument!"

A productive debate depends on resolving conflicting evidence. Ours failed when you refused to cite a source for what you said was “history” and then refused to discuss the timeline that conflicts with it. You then refused to process how racist neo-Nazi web sites conflict with your claim that Nazis are not racists.

Google’s an index to sources, not a source. I showed you one link to 50 google references to racist remarks by your friend rather than post 50 links because you refuse to process anything that disagrees with your claims anyway. Life is short. Whatever honorable military or intelligence record he has in addition to that is no more relevant to the process of resolving our disagreement than are his piano skills.

Reason is the process of non-contradictory identification. There are no contradictions in nature. When you think you find one, examine your premises. Anything less leads to behaving like a kook by posting pontifications from your blog that you refuse to defend.

172 posted on 12/21/2005 4:12:02 PM PST by elfman2
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To: elfman2
You continue to pursue a series of half truths, none of which has the slightest relevance to your utter failure to advance any evidence, whatsoever, that the people in the Near East, today, have equivalent aptitudes to the people in Christian Europe or to Americans of European origins. Without some evidence of that equivalence, your attack on Islam as the reason for Near Eastern stagnation is hopelessly flawed.

You seem unable to grasp the fact that the burden is on you, not I, here. But although no one else seems to have any continuing interest in this thread, I will respond to your latest assertions, briefly.

A productive debate depends on resolving conflicting evidence. Ours failed when you refused to cite a source for what you said was “history” and then refused to discuss the timeline that conflicts with it. You then refused to process how racist neo-Nazi web sites conflict with your claim that Nazis are not racists.

I am sure any of the great Encyclopedias of the 19th Century, in the era when Near Eastern studies started to come back into vogue, would have material on the Mongol slaughters in Mesopotamea. Nathaniel Weyl, in his 1967 article in the Intercollegiate Review, on "Aristocide As A Force In History," cites the Mongol conquest as one of the major dysgenic catastrophes. He also refers to it in several of his other writings, which I do not have immediately at hand.

I have, personally, discussed in this thread, your claims of a time line, which contradicts the hypothesis of Weyl and others; pointing out the capacity of the Islamic Turks in 1571, long after the collapse of the great Arab civilization in the Near East.

What you seem unable to grasp, moreover, is that it would not matter--as an example of the failure of your essayist to offer a convincing case--whether the shortfall in certain aptitudes was the result of a slaughter (genocide) or simply the sort of decline in average aptitudes, which we have witnessed in America, as a result of the Welfare State, and the incentives on the least productive to have the most babies. The burden, again, is on you, not I, to sustain any basis for your underlying assumption of equivalence.

As for your reference to "Neo Nazi" websites? What on earth does that have to do with anything? Have I cited a "Neo Nazi" web site, as part of my argument? Hardly. I have denounced your demonization of Islam, which too closely parallels the real Nazi technique of demonizing Judaism. What whackos post on the web is totally irrelevant. I also cited Col. Gayre's personal testimony, based upon his first hand familiarity with Nazi anthropology, garnered while he was in Germany before the War as a British intelligence operative.

What Gayre was pointing out in the article, which I quoted--was that Nazi anthropology was political, not scientific. It was as flawed as was the Boas/Montagu school over here. While the Nazis did not claim as did Boas/Montagu, that there was such a thing as equality among peoples, they completely abandoned genetics--in the Mendalian sense--by postulating a new Master Race, based upon a type of spiritual rebirth in Nazi dogma (I am paraphrasing for brevity.) That is every bit as much an environmentalist aberration, as the Columbian school here's postulation that after hundreds of thousands of years, apart, we are all still somehow the same (in terms of educable aptitudes).

The Nazis were into the idea of "One Germany," with one leader and one Will. That is hardly consistent with the considerable ethnic diversity of the German population. While the Jews--who were a creative elite were demonized--they were far from the only minority. Nazi "racism" was pure politics--just as Soviet economics was pure politics.

Google’s an index to sources, not a source. I showed you one link to 50 google references to racist remarks by your friend rather than post 50 links because you refuse to process anything that disagrees with your claims anyway. Life is short. Whatever honorable military or intelligence record he has in addition to that is no more relevant to the process of resolving our disagreement than are his piano skills.

Google is a business which sells ranking to anyone--well almost anyone, as there have been complaints from Conservatives who were refused the right to sponsor listings on certain subjects. Col. Gayre, was a major opponent of the Boas/Montagu school of environmentalist propaganda. I am sure that there are those who have smeared him on the web. Does that refute any argument he made. Of course not. His Assistant Editors Henry E. Garrett, the leading Psychologist involved in intelligence testing in America at one point, and R. Ruggles Gates, a British Professor Emeritus at Harvard, who was an outstanding Physical Antropoligist, have also been smeared. That hardly refutes their arguments!

Are you so naive that you are unaware of the recent attacks on the authors of "The Bell Curve?" The Socialists in the life sciences go into a panic mode, whenever anyone seeks to actually study comparative group aptitudes. The reason should be obvious. All Socialist experimentation with human society is premised upon the idea that social environment, culture, molds the individual. Otherwise, Socialism would be understood to be what it is, a war against Nature, and a conspiracy against human excellence. But, while there is an inertia like effect derived from culture, that culture has been created by the people who embrace it--or their immediate progenitors, etc.. It reinforces the group dyanmics already in place, as a result of Nature.

As I pointed out to you, earlier in this thread, Myrdal, the Swedish socialist who wrote an "American Dilemma," is right in his assertion that Conservatives could accept an environmental determinant, and still be Conservatives. But he is silent on the converse. You cannot justify Socialism and acknowledge that the data shows a 2/3 to 3/4 genetic determinant in human performance. (If you doubt it, go to a good Library, and read up on the studies of Identical vs. Fraternal Twins.)

I have also, earlier in this thread, cited numerous examples of the fact that aptitudes trump cultural repression to a considerable extent--as a comparison of the high IQ, but terribly repressed North Koreans--ability to develop the Atomic bomb and rockets of their own--in comparison with the slightly less repressed Iraqis, where with huge Oil revenues, not available to the Koreans, Saddam had to hire French and German technicians, to try to get WMDs. (By the way, you do realize that Baathist Iraq was not the repressive theocracy, your essay was directed towards. The stultification of Iraq was a mixture of Socialism and lower average IQs than the European norms.)

One might also cite the series of Arab/Israeli Wars, where the Socialist Arabs fared more poorly than the more Islamic Monarchial Arabs--although the predominantly European heredity of the Israelis, clearly outperformed in every conflict, despite being outnumbered.

You have bought a pig in a poke. But enough of this. You and I are preaching to an empty auditorium. You may want to keep this going, like a playground taunting match, but I have better things to do. If our paths cross in a more active thread, dealing with Nature/Nurture questions, I will be happy to go into more details.

173 posted on 12/22/2005 12:33:54 PM PST by Ohioan
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