Reflections on My Life as a Eugenicist, Part 4

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Richard Lynn

Part 4 of 4

Richard Lynn   

I have no recollection of when I first got in touch with Richard Lynn except to say that it was a very long time ago. I remember mailing him various papers and clippings that I thought might be helpful to him at least as early as 1980. I’ve always felt it was my “civic duty” to help Richard in any way I can, because he was, and is, the world’s foremost eugenicist. 

In 1990, I finally met Richard in person at a small conference in New York sponsored by the Pioneer Fund. As soon as I got there, I realized that it was a terrific bunch of people. There was Richard, Philippe, Art Jensen, also Hans J. Eysenck, Helmuth Nyborg, Chris Brand, Roger Pearson, Linda Gottfredson, and Dan Vining. Everyone seemed happy to see one another. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray were there, who later went on to write The Bell Curve, a brilliant and wonderfully readable book. I was the youngest person present, and it was exciting for me to meet all these people whose work I’d long admired. On the last day of the conference, I suggested that we take a group photo, so we all marched outside and stood on the steps of a statue. I set up a tripod and aimed the camera, then I scooted back to be with the rest of the group, while Barbara Jensen took the picture. (This photo is on my website, www.eugenics.net, along with some mildly amusing outtakes.)

Over the years, Richard and I frequently corresponded by email, and we saw each other a few times at conferences. Then in 1999, Richard invited me to visit him in England and to go to the Galton Society Conference in London. It just so happened that finally, for the first time since 1984, a medical treatment gave me a significant but precarious state of improved health – I could sit up in a chair for several hours, and even walk 5 or 6 blocks at one time. At first I declined the invitation because I still feared the trip would be too much for me. But Richard persisted, and he understood that I’d have to rest a lot. At this point, I had hardly seen my colleagues, or had any fun at all, in years, so I threw caution to the wind.

I was delighted to see Richard again. On our first day in London, we visited Westminster Abbey, which was magnificent. We were reading the inscription on one elaborately decorated tombstone, when all of a sudden I realized it belonged to one of my distant ancestors! I made a mental note to be sure to tell my relatives. Just walking along down cobblestone streets again was lovely, and I felt more “at home” in England than I do in America, possibly due to my predominantly English ancestry.

At the conference, I was also very glad to see Art Jensen, Chris Brand, and Glayde Whitney. Glayde Whitney may not be as well known as some of the others, but he was a behavior geneticist at Florida State University who did some great work. He also wrote the introduction to David Duke’s My Awakening, which took considerable courage, and for years, he generously answered my numerous email questions about behavior genetics.

Richard and Glayde both presented papers the first day of the conference. The second day, I stayed in my hotel room and rested, but Richard later filled me in on all the details. Apparently, there was a protest in which about a dozen people barged into the lecture hall and marched up on the stage, wielding a giant banner which read “Diversity not Discrimination” (prompting eye-rolling from the audience). The intruders refused to leave, so that was the end of that. I honestly don’t understand how the organizers failed to anticipate and prevent such a disruption. At any rate, most of us got together for a lively dinner that night at the Oxford and Cambridge Club. When I returned to Boston, I adopted an adorable kitten, and I decided to name him “Richard.”

Some years ago, Richard published a fascinating little book entitled Educational Achievement in Japan: Lessons for the West. Their entire system stands in stark contrast to education in the West, especially that in America. The children are all polite, and they work hard. At every level, there are incentives to excel, for students, teachers, principals, and schools. Competition is strongly encouraged. They compete in a variety of ways, between rows, between classrooms, and between schools. They spend less money per pupil and get better results, often with large class sizes. The children keep the school clean themselves, and the brighter children help the slower ones. It’s a model of what school should be.

Over his lifetime, Richard has been extraordinarily prolific. The bulk of his research falls squarely in the realm of differential psychology – genetic and environmental influences on race differences, sex differences, and individual differences in IQ, personality, and behavior. He usually tackles the big questions, questions that matter to the world, whereas a good deal of psychological research deals with minutiae. (This may be deliberate because there’s refuge from the PC Police in insignificance.) The third salient characteristic of Richard’s work is that almost all of it is very interesting (objectively speaking!) Some of his major works include Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Society, and Eugenics: A Reassessment (both a “must read” for serious eugenicists), and (with Tatu Vanhanen) IQ and the Wealth of Nations, in which they report that over 185 countries, the average IQ of the population is the single most important predictor of the economic prosperity of a nation, with free enterprise and presence of natural resources ranked second and third, respectively.

Demographers routinely omit under-class men from their fertility studies because they tend to be promiscuous, so they really don’t know all their offspring. However, Richard did a study of the fertility of London criminals using the number of children they reported, and even with what was surely an underestimate, and despite their lengthy sojourns in prison, London criminals still had more children, on average, than other Londoners. Then, using the heritability of criminality, he calculated how much their excess fertility would be expected to increase crime in London in the future.[1] I’ve always thought this was a terrific little study, and I think it’s a shame that political correctness forbids anything about genetics and behavior from getting to the public because so much of it is both fascinating and enlightening.

Richard and I did a research study together on fertility and IQ which essentially replicated my 1984 study (with Frank Bean) using the General Social Survey, but with additional, more recent data collected between 1990 and 1996. The results were quite similar, and we calculated a loss of .9 IQ points per generation. Like the original study, we also published our report in the journal Intelligence[2] Our results show that genetic deterioration is not only a problem that will exist in the future, rather, that it has existed in the recent past, and that it exists today.

While working with the GSS, we ran across an interesting question about values: “Which of these traits would you most want to see in your children?” The following 13 choices are written on a card and handed to each respondent: “good manners, tries to succeed, honest, neat and clean, good sense and sound judgement, obedient, self-control, behaves appropriate to gender, responsible, considerate, studious, interested in how and why things happen.” Of particular interest to me is honesty. There are some tests of honesty which employers use in an attempt to screen prospective employees, but their validity is uncertain. The GSS question is revealing, however, because it tells us what the respondents value most – what their priorities are. In one of Richard’s GSS studies about the Jews (with Satoshi Kanazawa), they found that those who placed honesty first were: Protestants 38%, Catholics 34%, and Jews 26%.[3] It’s almost axiomatic that people who value honesty highly will be more honest themselves.

In recent years, Richard has done research reporting that men, on average, are somewhat more intelligent than women.[4] He asked me a while back if I would find this upsetting, and I said, “Of course not! What’s true is true!” secretly hoping that by some screwball twist of logic this might make me smarter. Boys and girls average the same IQ until puberty, but after puberty, boys gradually become somewhat smarter than girls, between 2½ and 5 IQ points, depending on the test. This conclusion is a radical departure from a century of IQ testing, and, like Richard’s work as a whole, it’s highly original. Richard used meta-analysis to combine many studies so that differences which may not be statistically significant with a small sample became significant. I haven’t studied this question in depth, but with what little I know about it, I’m inclined to agree with him.

As far as I know, I agree with Richard on just about everything else, except that I believe in God and an afterlife (he doesn’t), and I think the Jews are destroying the Western world (he doesn’t – even after reading MacDonald! He thinks I’m paranoid!). He thinks China is going to take over the world, and he may be right (with eugenics and phenomenal economic growth rate, how could it be otherwise?) But Richard doesn’t care a great deal, whereas I care plenty.

Everyone agrees that people of European descent have made a vast and unique contribution to the world, and if they die out, it will be a terrible loss. The Chinese could never write Shakespeare’s plays or compose Verdi’s La Traviata because it’s not in their DNA. But quite frankly, I’m not nearly as concerned about the poor rest-of-the-world having to do without them (us) – I’m concerned about us! I’m concerned about our not being there! Our dying out (or becoming marginalized) would be the disaster, pure and simple. For one thing, people of European descent are physically the most beautiful people on earth, and most other races will concede this if they’re honest. I realize full well that this point may seem superficial, but it’s not, because beauty matters! Not only sunsets and rainbows, but beautiful faces! More importantly, they (we) are the most creative, altruistic, idealistic, generous, noble, and inventive. Imagine if we celebrated “European-American Week” in the United States – we wouldn’t have to make up things to be proud of because people of European ancestry have already invented most of the things worth inventing.

Richard publishes books and papers faster than I can read them. I envy his extraordinary capacity for sustained intellectual work. And after working all day, he devours novels at night. His brain should be studied! As of today, Richard is 85 years old, and still going strong. Recently I suggested to him that he save some of his DNA for the future, because almost certainly cloning will be perfected someday, and the world would benefit greatly with lots more of him. Then I sent him an email with a simple plan for how he could accomplish this – by pulling out a little bit of his hair with pliers (cut hair is no good – it has to have the roots to get DNA), placing it in a clear plastic bag, and giving it to his daughter for safe keeping. (He agreed.) Note: This may be a good plan of action for great creative minds in any field!

A number of other brilliant scientists who’ve done research in differential psychology and behavior genetics – such as Jensen, Rushton, Whitney, and Cattell – are now gone. We honor their memories, along with their invaluable research, made all the more precious by the fact that it may well be the last of such work for quite some time. Recently the coffers of the Pioneer Fund, the source of grants for this research, have shrunk. Richard Lynn, Michael Woodley and others are still doing important and fascinating work, but the quantity of such research is already diminishing, and could dry up entirely in the foreseeable future.

Because the universities in the West are no longer free, the “science contingent” of our movement is getting old and dying off with no graduate students waiting in the wings. The “activism contingent” has sustained several serious losses, but on the whole it seems to be thriving with some frankly impressive brainpower, drive, and guts, and it’s actively working to promote eugenics and to free us from the yoke of the Jews, so therein lies hope.

The Anti-Eugenics Hoax

The question of why the opponents of eugenics have tried so hard to discredit it has tormented me for decades. I began to understand after reading MacDonald. Then, finally, I stumbled upon the last pieces to the puzzle in 2014, and I was thrilled. What I discovered was monstrous, of course. But there was a sense of “coming full circle,” having begun my life’s work in a state of total naïveté, discovering dysgenics over 20th century America, and then finally figuring out why this devastating blow has befallen us all. I excitedly wrote up the paper, but then it seems that nobody wanted to publish it! Finally I sent it to Greg Johnson, which turned out to be a most fortuitous act.

It’s clear that the Jews want eugenics for themselves, and dysgenics for everyone else, especially whites of European descent, both in North America, Europe, and elsewhere. When I write “Jews” here, I do not mean all Jews, or even most Jews, I mean a very small, very powerful core of Jews. But it’s important to note that this core (amazingly) endures from generation to generation, or, put more accurately, it is replenished, and that a vastly larger number of Jews willingly cooperate with it. At the present time in America, we don’t control our own destinies because we don’t live in a democracy, it’s more like an oligarchy. The crime that the Jews have committed (and continue to commit) against us – that of deliberately causing the genetic deterioration of millions of our people by perpetrating the anti-eugenics hoax – is almost incomprehensible because the suffering it inflicts is incalculable. It is positively surreal, the struggle we face. We need to remind ourselves that there have been countless oppressive regimes since the beginning of time that appeared completely impenetrable until unforeseen events conspired to break them wide open. There’s really nothing else to do but to soldier on. But having righteousness on our side hardly means that we will prevail. History is replete with struggles in which Good fails to triumph over Evil.

Beyond our own innate strengths, what is there to give us reason for hope? I’d be glad to be proven wrong, but I doubt moral goodness has any inherent power whatsoever. Despite being indispensable to all honorable people, in terms of helping to achieve power, it may well be a net liability. Imagine a fight-to-the-death between twins who are identical in every respect except that one is a psychopath, and the other is an honorable man. The smart money would be on the psychopath. But many people have cared about righteousness in the past, and will continue to care in the future – add this to the fact that there’s power in numbers – so maybe this constitutes an advantage for us.

Also, our side possesses truth, which has a peculiar habit (almost an internal impetus) of popping up when it’s suppressed. Truth seems to possess some power, maybe because people just naturally seek it out, since truth is a far better foundation for making decisions than falsehoods or ignorance. Finally, historically, the Jews have made many mistakes, often born of arrogance, so we can expect them to make more in the future. Currently they have a near-stranglehold on government, the media, and academia, but not on the internet, our last bastion of freedom, and the world is getting wise to them. There’s been an increasing number of books, articles, websites, videos, radio programs and conferences exposing their many crimes including their role in instigating the Iraq War, the Jewish origin of Communism, and the tens of millions they murdered. Even the formerly sacrosanct Holocaust (or “Holohoax,” as it’s sometimes called) is beginning to stagger under the growing weight of historical facts, common sense, and scientific evidence.

As eugenicists, our biggest asset will always be the basic concept of eugenics itself, which is a gem. It is common sense backed up by a mountain of unassailable scientific evidence, and it’s elegant in its simplicity. Most people find it compelling when they are told the truth – that’s why it used to be very popular, and that’s why it may well be popular again someday. Bear in mind that eugenics didn’t fizzle out because of inherent defects or failure to inspire – it had to be murdered in a heinous plot. Eugenics offers a unique and powerful way to improve the world and alleviate suffering, and our desire to do those things has existed for thousands of years, and shows no sign of letting up.

As long as the egalitarian, anti-eugenics Lie Machine rolls on, however, it’s next-to-impossible for us to implement a comprehensive nation-wide eugenics program like the one in Israel, for example, so we need to do all we can to expose the tyranny of the Jews (any and all tyrannies), and specifically the anti-eugenics hoax. That’s a tall order, and it could take years or even decades to free ourselves from their yoke and turn public opinion around.

In the meantime, there are components of eugenics – in more circumscribed realms – which we can influence. Of course, a “eugenics ethic” means that the bright and healthy among us should have as many children as we can afford. In addition, our most accomplished men should think about becoming sperm donors (and comparable young women may likewise consider becoming egg donors). A eugenics ethic also suggests that we consider expanding our paternal or maternal embrace to include our extended family, especially as we get older, taking what steps we can (financially or with child care) to help bright young relatives who want to have large or medium-sized families.

Recently, Republicans have taken control of many state governments in America, and they’ve been shutting down women’s clinics and limiting access to contraception, which is horribly, horribly dysgenic. Smart, responsible women with initiative and drive will always find a way to get contraception and abortions, whereas less-capable women often do not, so they end up having many unplanned, unwanted children who have both genetic and environmental disadvantages. “Pro-life” is a superficially attractive slogan that really means unequal access to contraception and abortion, which invariably causes genetic deterioration. Eugenicists support Planned Parenthood, and vigorously oppose “Pro-Life” candidates and the preposterous “Personhood” amendments.

In Conclusion

I became a eugenicist not only because I care about intelligence, but because (just like when I was 12 years old), I also care about honesty and kindness. The anti-eugenicists were flagrantly dishonest, I could see that from the beginning. It was obvious that they weren’t so stupid as to believe the lies they were peddling, and their lies were hurting real people. And in my opinion, the natural and appropriate response of any honorable person to dishonesty and cruelty is anger. Anger is a good and necessary emotion when it motivates people to fight against tyranny.

Readers might assume that my interest in eugenics stems from my father’s influence, but it only amounted to that one brief conversation when I was a child, and there were a number of other things I was told back then (such as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny) that I had no problem rejecting. I suspect that my father’s father believed in eugenics, too, so at least an equally good case can be made that my interest is the result of a genetic predisposition.

As I look back over my life as a eugenicist, I’m enormously glad that I was able to devote myself to one profoundly misunderstood cause in desperate need of a champion. Even though it’s resulted in a great deal of trouble over a very long time, I’d do it again without hesitation. I’ve paid a price, but so does most everyone who tells the truth in an age of lies, and my troubles have been trivial compared to those of Robert Faurisson, Ernst Zündel, and countless others who have been beaten up and imprisoned. I’m proud to have been able to shine a light on the disastrous, century-long dysgenic fertility in the United States, and to have exposed the anti-eugenics hoax. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have known some brilliant and fascinating men, and I’ve experienced much joy and satisfaction in my research and my writing.

Unfortunately, however, I can’t claim to have had a great deal of success – in fact, I can’t claim much success at all! When I was in my 20s, my long-term goal was to see eugenics programs implemented, and I fully expected this would come to pass. It never occurred to me that before we could even talk about eugenics calmly and rationally, we must first free ourselves from political oppression by a tiny ethnic minority! This came as a complete shock – and a huge disappointment! I thought we lived in a free country! Now I realize that as long as we’re under Jewish domination, a nation-wide eugenics program in North America or Europe is virtually impossible.

There’s no denying that the overall picture for eugenics today in the West is bleak, but there are still a few pieces of good news:

1. Research in genetics has been proceeding at a dizzying pace in the recent past, and it continues to do so today. Now, prospective parents can avoid literally thousands of disorders in their children, whether by in vitro testing or pre-natal testing.
2. New improvements in contraception, such as the patch, the cap, and tubal ligation, have also been made. The IUD (intra-uterine device) has been perfected over the past 40 years – after being inserted by a doctor, it can prevent pregnancy for as long as 10 years. This is important because it doesn’t require the woman to do anything, and it’s covered under the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid in most states.
3. There’s been a significant increase in the use of artificial insemination, and this has been quite eugenic for several reasons. To begin with, mothers who plan their pregnancies tend to be a good deal brighter than mothers who have children because of a series of “accidents,” so the former (on average) provide both better heredity and better environments for their offspring. Obviously, all pregnancies by artificial insemination are planned, so this gives these children several advantages from the outset. Even more importantly, there’s been a dramatic improvement in the quality of sperm donors as a result of the path-breaking Repository for Germinal Choice. It’s shocking to consider the laxity of artificial insemination before the Repository, back when sperm was just sperm, as if it made little difference whether the donor was a drunken bum or a Nobel Prize winner. The Repository showed that there’s enormous demand for high-quality sperm, and this revolutionized artificial insemination. Now all sperm banks are eugenics sperm banks, with over a million births and counting.

I’d like to leave the reader with one final thought. It’s natural for courageous people engaged in a noble fight to succumb to despair and hopelessness from time to time, especially when they confront seemingly-insurmountable obstacles, and when their goals take decades to achieve. But fortunately, eugenics is not an “all or nothing” endeavor – in fact, it’s just the opposite – so that every minuscule bit of progress we make helps real people, and when we improve our species genetically, the benefits extend for generations. Today, we need to step back for a moment and reflect on the fact that we are linked to a long succession of generations reaching far back to the distant past, and forward far into the future, and this bestows upon us responsibility – and opportunity! No matter how good our situation is now – or how bad – we can always make things better in concrete ways that improve the world and alleviate suffering, and soon. This is almost mystical, because it means that every effort we make to that end, large or small, is meaningful.

Compare this to working to elect a political candidate, for example – which may be very worthwhile and important. Maybe he wins, that’s great. Or say he loses – well, that’s all there is to that. Or trying to get a bill passed in the legislature – if it doesn’t pass, or is never brought to a vote – there’s a sense of futility, a feeling that all that hard work was wasted. Not so with eugenics. Keeping one more women’s clinic open is worth fighting for! Spreading the word, contributing regularly to pro-eugenics websites, exposing Jewish treachery, supporting Planned Parenthood, voting out the Pro-Lifers, helping bright young couples and their families – all these have value and meaning. The realization that our efforts are not in vain is heartening and uplifting. Even if we can only reduce the severity of dysgenics for now, this is a totally worthwhile endeavor because many lives will be improved.

Notes

1. Lynn, Richard (1995), Dysgenic fertility for crime, Journal of Biosocial Science, 27: 405-408.

2. Lynn, Richard, and Van Court, Marian (2004), New evidence of dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States, Intelligence, 32: 193-201.

3. Lynn, Richard and Kanzawa, S. (2008) How to explain Jewish achievement: the role of intelligence and values, Personality and Individual Differences, 44: 801-808.

4. Lynn, Richard and Irwing, P. (2004) Sex differences in the Progressive Matrices: a meta-analysis, Intelligence, 32: 481-498.