Counter-Currents
647 words
Whenever I tell people I favor eugenics they tell me that the state shouldn’t have such power. One thing that’s overlooked is that it already does. As Herrnstein and Murray wrote in The Bell Curve:
we are as apprehensive as most other people about what might happen when a government decides to social-engineer who has babies and who doesn’t. We can imagine no recommendation for using the government to manipulate fertility that does not have dangers. But this highlights the problem: The United States already has policies that inadvertently social-engineer who has babies, and it is encouraging the wrong women. If the United States did as much to encourage high-IQ women to have babies as it now does to encourage low-IQ women, it would rightly be described as engaging in aggressive manipulation of fertility. The technically precise description of America’s fertility policy is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution.
I don’t like government, but one thing it’s proven that it can do for certain is administer objective standardized tests that heavily correlate with g. It would be hard to abuse a law that forcibly sterilized everybody with an IQ under 90 provided that the person scored that low on an objective test blindly graded. Somebody who wants to argue that he had a bad day would have the right to an appeal, which would consist of another IQ test.
If a libertarian wants to propose that even somebody with an IQ of 90 has rights, they would have to oppose government having the power to lock people up in mental institutions. We already let the state decide that some people aren’t fit to participate in society even if they’ve yet to do anything wrong. This is a system open to abuse, but still a necessary evil. Letting unintelligent breed is as surely damaging to society as letting schizophrenics run loose. My plan is less likely than the mental health profession to catch someone unfairly as an IQ test is a more certain measure of intelligence than a psychiatrist’s diagnosis is of a mental disorder worthy of institutionalization. Some doctors have been known to disagree over whether someone needs to be locked up, but no two IQ tests ever differ much about how intelligent someone is.
The libertarian belief that whenever government acts it violates people’s rights and so it should be kept as small and powerless as possible is for the most part correct. We should abide by this maxim, except in cases where doing nothing means a libertarian society can’t continue to exist: for example, allowing low IQ groups to settle in the country or the unintelligent to keep breeding.
There is another modification I’d like to make of the classical theory. Some groups such as children and the insane aren’t considered capable of entering into contracts or being responsible for their actions and are thus not fully entitled to the rights government grants to competent adults. IQ realism forces us to expand the circle of those that need protection (and from whom we need to protect ourselves). It makes no sense to say that someone with an IQ of 65 is ill and one with an IQ of 75 is a responsible, rational actor. Wherever you draw the line between the free citizen and the unfree is going to be to a certain extent arbitrary, as the definition of retarded at 70 and below is. I’m simply convinced that it should be higher. Whatever we classify as the new retarded, and I think it should be at least IQ 80 and probably 90 and below, we need to make sure that there are less of these people so that a free society can continue to exist.
Ideally it wouldn’t be government that ran the eugenics program but private organizations. But that’s a different post.
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18 comments
I’ve got two easy words for what’s wrong with eugenics: UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. Most of it depends on what you want done, Do you merely want to stop single-digit IQ sadcases from having children? That’s one thing. Or are you trying to breed a race of ubermenschen? Then you’re asking for trouble.
If I may: the Jewish state should never have such power.
That’s all.
The Jewish state is already using its power to dumb this society down. If we are ever going to reverse it, we are not going to do it by rejecting the use of state power.
It’s important to point out that dysgenics already exists — the state pays the lowliest scum to breed large broods like animals. Yes, they pay them to do that. That is the opposite of eugenics, it is dysgenics.
Why does the state get away with it? Because it’s “positive.” I doubt the state could get away with precluding the smartest and most virtuous people from breeding– but it can surely get away with paying/helping dummies to breed. It’s the unheroic nature of the current population at work.
So, the solution is to do “soft” or “positive” eugenics. Shoot for what can succeed.
Find a way to pay or help the smartest and most virtuous people to breed more. Currently, the high costs of education, inflation, decrease of purchasing power, and an immense welfare/tax burden keeps the geniuses from having huge broods.
Take away the tax burden (huge tax breaks based on IQ, say it’s about national prosperity or something stupid like that). Take away the high costs of education (a couple with a combined IQ of 250 or above gets 1/2 price tuition, something like that).
The point is to use CARROTS for eugenics because then the sheeple will not bleat as loudly. Also, find out a way to shutup Mark Potok as he will definitely jump out from under the bridge and do his whining troll act when this happens.
Intelligence is over-rated. Some of the biggest f***-ups I know have high IQ’s. Of course everyone would like to see the overall quality of our population increase. There are plenty of other factors and aspects of personality that determine the overall quality of a person. I certainly agree that the subsidizing low-functioning individuals is a bad idea. Wouldn’t it be enough to cut out the subsidies?
You also need to answer this question: Why don’t the smarties want to have more children? Isn’t this the real problem? Those who are capable of providing for and correctly raising children, don’t want to be bothered. How smart is that?
Yes, there must be a better way to decide what constitutes a “high quality” person other than just IQ. It can come down to: who’s better as a neighbour in your eyes, the person with 90 IQ who is self-sufficient (to the extent that any human can actually be), hardworking, dependable, helpful, and decent; or the person with 140 IQ who is high-maintenance, mean, hates everybody, cannot even do the basics of personal self-maintenance? Cuz I know both kinds and I know who I would prefer to have around me.
Richard Lynn’s books on IQ and Global Inequality and The Global Bell Curve are remarkable because, although he knows that there is more to human quality than intelligence, and perhaps more to intelligence than can be measured by IQ tests, nevertheless, intelligence is so strongly correlated to every dimension of individual and social well-being that one can pretty much predict these as if intelligence were the only factor that matters. So yes, there is more to human excellence than intelligence, but pragmatically speaking, intelligence is such a powerful predictor of human excellence that it is tempting to ignore the other factors we know are there.
That high IQ paragon of morality Thomas Edison did this to discredit another inventor:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0104
Mr. Hoste’s words:
“Whenever I tell people I favor eugenics they tell me that the state shouldn’t have such power. One thing that’s overlooked is that it already does.”
The power of the state has not been overlooked, certainly not by the chosen tribe and most certainly not by libertarians.
Rather than telling people we favor eugenics, we should tell them that we oppose dysgenics. When they say the state shouldn’t have power one way or the other, we should say that we agree.
The root of the problem we now discuss is not lack of eugenics, but statism. Dysgenics is a function (in the mathematical sense) of state power. The state uses its tax system and fiat banking regime to steal wealth from productive folk, pay its political minions and Jewish overlords, then transfer the rest to its war machine and social welfare recipients. Deny the state its power to enable at our expense those who take more than they give, and the bulk of our troubles would rapidly fade.
“Some groups such as children and the insane aren’t considered capable of entering into contracts or being responsible for their actions and are thus not fully entitled to the rights government grants to competent adults”
Sorry to picky, but semantics really are important. Governments do not “grant” rights. Rights pre-exist the state. They pre-exist constitutions and man-made law. They are unalienable, natural, or God-given.
Maybe we could say that ideally the state would exist to protect individual rights, but, as history has shown again and again, this ideal has never, can never, materialize. Always and everywhere, governments do not defend, but infringe upon, individual rights.
Mr. Johnson’s comment:
“The Jewish state is already using its power to dumb this society down.”
Agree. A centrally planned economic collective and authoritarian central government suits the cultural proclivities and intellectual aptitudes of the chosen tribe IMO.
” If we are ever going to reverse it, we are not going to do it by rejecting the use of state power.”
Consider another perspective.
More than any other race, White Folk are most industrious, innovative, prosperous, and generous when they are individually free to think, say, and do as they wish, when the market place is regulated only by the natural if seemingly chaotic order of mutually voluntary exchange, when entrepeuners are are left alone to solicit their own funding and to experiment, fail, and succeed on their own and in their own way, when private property and the right of self defense are held sacrosanct, and when their associations, particularly those having to do with reproduction and charity, are consensual and free from all state interference. In other words – all the favorable conditions that the state eventually eradicates.
I believe in my soul that it is in the highest interest of the Aryan Race to reject state power. Inevitably and inexorably, throughout recorded history, it has led to death, destruction, poverty, tyranny, and abuse by the sociopathic few bent on dominion over the rest of us. A centralized, coercive state is our adversary’s instrument of choice. Break it and he has nothing.
My general observations regarding dysgenics:
In an open prosperous society, absent coercive authority, White Folk would feel quite naturally and esthetically inclined to mate in accordance with eugenic principles. IMO we would have no need to worry about it.
For those individuals incapable of carrying their own weight for whatever reason intellectual or otherwise, ultimate responsibility should lie with the parents, families, or a willing benefactor. If the family is itself incapable of paying or bartering for what they need, then they and their offspring will either fail to survive or have to ask for help from a willing benefactor who would then set the conditions and make the hard choices regarding custody, humane care, and possible sterilization. No one could force anyone else to fund the consequences of these choices.
Of course, concerned individuals acting alone or in concert with churches, fraternal organizations, or other voluntary charitable institutions would be free, if so predisposed, to offer aid in this regard.
Rights are like unicorns, they don’t really exist. In Europe and nations that are her offspring, people have exhibited an unusually high willingness to believe in these unicorns called rights since ancient times. It’s as though they were all in the matrix, and their world was defined and constrained by software called Law. Even the agents followed the Law. Occasionally though, the government, or revolutionaries, take the red pill. They see that their rights and laws are an imaginary world that doesn’t really exist. And they start living in the real world, where what you can do is constrained only by your desire to do it and your physical ability to execute.
>>>Intelligence is over-rated. Some of the biggest f***-ups I know have high IQ’s<<<
There is a common fallacy here. I can't find it yet (Google). It involves groups and members of groups. Like this- "Most crime in America is from negroes. That proves most negroes are criminals."
All (or nearly all) the great inventors have high IQ. Therefore all high IQ people are great inventors (or potentially so). IQ is necessary but not sufficient.
That creators are smart does not mean that the smart are creators- it means they may be.
Tabula:
I think you are discussing the specious argument that within-group IQ differences are greater than between-group IQ differences, therefore, group IQ is irrelevant.
Jews don’t think so.
We should do what works for them, until we can do better.
They are engaged in eugenics with a vengeance; at the biological level, dysgenics are eliminated. Everyone gets amniocentesis; positive for Tay-Sachs, “yes” to the abortion.
Better, an example we can adopt, they are skilled in external eugenics; dysgenic social systems, never tolerated, are marginalized as much as possible.
It’s very Family First – “Family” spelled “R-A-C-E.”
Focus Northwest
Monitor,
I’ve got two easy words for what’s wrong with eugenics: UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. Most of it depends on what you want done, Do you merely want to stop single-digit IQ sadcases from having children? That’s one thing. Or are you trying to breed a race of ubermenschen? Then you’re asking for trouble.
Monitor, since you’re known in this part of the blogosphere as something of a crazed Christian conservative, it’s justifiable to pay you back in kind by wondering out loud about some of the “UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES” of dogmatic Christian moral myopia; can a eugenics-based approach really hope do any worse than unrestrained Christian gooberism?
As for your objections, they’re two forms of the most common objection to eugenics: won’t a society in which people judge each other by such oppressively objective measures be unbearable for people found wanting?
I think the answer is that it probably would — if the only people advocating eugenics are creeps like Richard Hoste.
Fortunately, the Richard Hoste’s of the world attitudes can be safely ignored and even outright dismissed.
Eugenics, I would argue, is best regarded as “demographic management,” and since “demographics is destiny,” managing a territory’s or an ethnicity’s (ideally both, but that’s the project of “WN”) demographics should be considered among the most important tasks of government, if not the most important. Eugenics in the sense would simply consist of the government passing what could be considered the most effective eugenic policies balanced against the legitimate concerns of the public, rather that setting out to “punish” people for the crime of daring to exist with an undesirable genetic profile, or to lavish totally unearned praise and rewards on a handful of genetic worthies. Ideally, such policies would hum along in the background doing their good work with scarcely anyone the wiser.
My preference would to reward people for making positive eugenic decisions rather than to punish or ostracize those who do not. Not only should incentives for limiting wanton procreation among the poor be put in place, but incentives should also exist for “intentional eugenic procreation” — ie “designer babies.”
The obvious objection is that no one would want a bunch of “ubermenschen” running around feeling superior to everybody. This is a reasonable fear but it’s unjustified by a rational consideration of human behavior. Very few people who could justifiably feel superior actually go about feeling superior. People certainly enjoy being stroked, but how many who realistically could make other people feel miserable about their existence (because they’re “inferior”) actually do that (at least after high school)? Not many. Lifting up other people, giving them a hand, showing them how they could do things better is infinitely more enjoyable than the silly game of asserting superiority or demanding it be recognized.
As to the objection of who could ever want to have or raise kids not of his own genetic material, plenty of people already do. There’s never been any serious sort of moral outcry about adoptions and adoptive parents appear to be satisfied with their adoptions. Procreative eugenics merely shifts the adoption event farther back in time. Some will argue that such “parents” might come to feel dissatisfied with their “purchases,” but both “standard” adoptive parents and natural also do and have developed ways of dealing with it, so no new moral concerns are created by procreative eugenics in this respect.
Finally, consider all the people you know or know of today who you think could reasonably be considered to possess desirable traits. What if you learned that they owed their existence to procreative eugenics? Would that substantially change the way you felt about them? Could you honestly say they are negatively impacting your life or the lives of the masses over and above the negative impact that “normal” humans otherwise have? If not, shouldn’t you agree that at least some of the “nightmare scenarios” you’re imagining would result from a society in which eugenics was present and common are decidedly unlikely?
Fourmyle
Were you New America on VNN?
I am thinking of something else- closer to group or set theory. Draw a large circle (N), and inside a smaller circle (M). We may conclude that all M is N, but can we conclude that all N is M? No. N=negroes, M=murderers. For this example only, all murderers would be black. But this cannot be reversed to all blacks are murderers. (All achievers are smart, not all smart are achievers). The fallacy occurs often with percentages. What we need to know is- what fraction of a group does x type of crime? But what we often get is the fraction of crimes committed by various groups- a very different statistic. What percent of homicides is committed by blacks is a bogus number.
We need to know- what percent of blacks commit homicide?
Eugenics seems to be the sort of thing that could replace Nationalism. If high IQ is the thing, then, well, high IQ it is. It fits in with universalism just fine, maybe even multi-ethnicity.
Eugenics is better addressed by culture. If we are all part of a culture that has a sense of those higher things then those who possess such endowments will flourish. And those that don’t, over time, will dwindle. The actual tinkering with genes seems to me like so much of the quick fixes of our modern era, take a pill, increase your sex drive, grow a head of hair, start an over sixty-five rock band etc.
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Sometimes Mr. Hoste your arguments are a little flimsy. Simply because the state engages in dysgenics via welfare payments, one then cannot in turn justify any and all actions by the state in regard to eugenics.
If the same forces that exert the most control over the government now get to operate some kind of IQ-testing bureau in the future then the same underhanded bending of the rules we see now will be making excuses/allowances for blacks and screwing whites who (might) occupy the bell curve’s left side.
The best idea I’ve heard is to provide financial incentives for both people who shouldn’t have children and people who should – large sum + sterilization for the former and large sum/other benefits for the latter. Of course, determining who should have children would involve more than just IQ. I don’t want more Bill Clintons.
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