Conclusion: Whither Judaism and the West?
by Kevin MacDonald
One conclusion of this volume is that Jews have played a decisive role
in developing highly influential intellectual and political movements that serve
their interests in contemporary Western societies. These movements are only part
of the story however. There has been an enormous growth in Jewish power and
influence in Western societies generally, particularly the United States.
Ginsberg (1993) notes that Jewish economic status and cultural influence have
increased dramatically in the United States since 1960. Shapiro (1992, 116)
shows that Jews are over-represented by at least a factor of nine on indexes of
wealth, but that this is a conservative estimate, because much Jewish wealth is
in real estate, which is difficult to determine and easy to hide. While
constituting approximately 2.4 percent of the population of the United States,
Jews represented half of the top one hundred Wall Street executives and about 40
percent of admissions to Ivy League colleges. Lipset and Raab (1995) note that
Jews contribute between one-quarter and one-third of all political contributions
in the United States, including one-half of Democratic Party contributions and
one-fourth of Republican contributions. The general message of Goldberg's (1996)
book Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, is that American
Judaism is well organized and lavishly funded. It has achieved a great deal of
power, and it has been successful in achieving its interests. There is a great
deal of consensus on broad Jewish issues, particularly in the areas of Israel
and the welfare of other foreign Jewries, immigration and refugee policy,
church-state separation, abortion rights, and civil liberties (p. 5). Indeed,
the consensus on these issues among Jewish activist organizations and the Jewish
intellectual movements reviewed here despite a great deal of disagreement on
other issues is striking. Massive changes in public policy on these issues
beginning with the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s coincide with the
period of increasing Jewish power and influence in the United States. Since the
1950s empirical studies of ethnic hierarchy in the United States have tracked
changes in ethnic group resources, including elite representation (e.g., Alba
& Moore 1982; Lemer, Nagai & Rothman 1996). These studies have often
emphasized the overrepresentation of Protestant whites in corporate hierarchies
and the military, but have failed to take into consideration group differences
in commitment and organization. Salter (1998b) provides a theoretically based
assessment of Jewish influence relative to African Americans and gentile
European Americans based on Blalock's (1967, 1989) model of group power as a
function of resources multiplied by mobilization. Jews are far more mobilized
than these other ethnic populations (one hesitates calling gentile European
Americans a "group"). For example, while specifically ethnic organizations
devoted to the ethnic interests of gentile European Americans are essentially
political fringe groups with meager funding and little influence on the
mainstream political process, Salter notes that the America-Israel Public
Affairs Committee ranked second out the 120 most powerful lobbies as rated by
members of Congress and professional lobbyists, with no other ethnic
organization rated in the top 25. Furthermore, AIPAC is one of the few lobbies
that relies heavily on campaign contributions to win allies. As indicated above,
Jews contribute between one-third and one-half of all campaign money in federal
elections, the donations motivated by "Israel and the broader Jewish agenda"
(Goldberg 1996, 275). Jews are thus over-represented in campaign contributions
by a factor of at least 13 based on their percentage of the population and are
overrepresented by a factor of approximately 6.5 if adjustment is made for their
higher average income. In overseas donations, the Jewish lead is even greater.
For example, in the 1920s, before the post — World War II explosion of Jewish
giving to Israel, Jewish Americans may have given as much as 24 times more per
capita to assist overseas Jews than did Irish Americans to assist Ireland in its
struggle for independence from Great Britain. Yet this was the period of peak
Irish ethnic philanthropy (Carroll 1978). The disparity has become much greater
since World War II. Salter has adopted a preliminary conservative estimate of
Jewish ethnic mobilization as four times that of white gentiles, based on
comparison of per capita donations to non-religious ethnic causes. In the
Blalock equation influence is affected not only by mobilization but also by the
resources held by the group. Salter estimates that Jews control approximately 26
percent of the "cybernetic resources" of the United States (i.e., resources as
measured by representation in key areas such as government, media, finance,
academia, corporations, and entertainment). This average level of resource
control reflects both areas of high (> 40 percent) Jewish representation
(e.g., mass media, high finance, the legal profession, the intellectual elite,
entertainment) and low (< 10 percent) Jewish representation (e.g., corporate
elite, military leaders, religious leaders, legislators). The overall estimate
is comparable to that made by Lemer et al. (1996, 20) based on data gathered in
the 1970s and 1980s. Lerner et al. arrive at a 23 percent overall Jewish
representation in American elites. The results also parallel levels of Jewish
overrepresentation in other societies, as in early twentieth-century Germany
where Jews constituting approximately one percent of the population controlled
approximately 20 percent of the economy (Mosse 1987, 1989) and also had a
dominating influence on the media and the production of culture (Deak 1968, 28;
Laqueur 1974, 73). Substitution of these resource and mobilization values into
the Blalock equation yields an estimate that Jewish influence on ethnic policy
(immigration, race policy, foreign policy) is approximately three times the
influence of gentile European Americans. The results are highly robust for
different weightings of resources. Only an "extreme neo-Marxist" weighting of
resources (i.e., one that weights only the corporate elite, the legislative
branch of government, the military elite, foundations, and total group income)
brings Jewish influence down to approximate parity of influence with gentile
European Americans. As indicated above, there is a broad Jewish consensus on
such issues as Israel and the welfare of other foreign Jewries, immigration and
refugee policy, church-state separation, abortion rights, and civil liberties.
This implies that Jewish influence and Jewish interests dominate these issues--a
result that is highly compatible with the discussion of Jewish influence on
immigration policy discussed Chapter 7 as well as the fact that all of these
areas have seen enormous swings in public policy in accordance with Jewish
interests that coincide with the rise of Jewish influence in the United States.
Salter's estimate that Jewish mobilization may be conceptualized as several
times greater than that of gentile European Americans is well illustrated by the
history of Jewish involvement in immigration policy: All of the major Jewish
organizations were intensively involved in the battle over restrictive
immigration for a period lasting an entire century despite what must have seemed
devastating setbacks. This effort continues into the contemporary era. As
discussed in Chapter 7, opposition to large-scale immigration of all racial and
ethnic groups by large majorities of the European-derived population as well as
the relative apathy of other groups--even groups such as Italian Americans and
Polish Americans that might be expected to support the immigration of their own
peoples--were prominent features of the history of immigration policy. This
"rise of the Jews"--to use Albert Lindemann's (1997) phrase--has undoubtedly had
important effects on contemporary Western societies. A major theme of the
previous chapter is that high levels of immigration into Western societies
conforms to a perceived Jewish interest in developing nonhomogeneous, culturally
and ethnically pluralistic societies. It is of interest to consider the possible
consequences of such a policy in the long term. In recent years there has been
an increasing rejection among intellectuals and minority ethnic activists of the
idea of creating a melting pot society based on assimilation among ethnic groups
(see, e.g., Schlesinger 1992). Cultural and ethnic differences are emphasized in
these writings, and ethnic assimilation and homogenization are viewed in
negative terms. The tone of these writings is reminiscent of the views of many
late-nineteenth- and early -twentieth-century Jewish intellectuals who rejected
the assimilationist effects of Reform Judaism in favor of Zionism or a return to
a more extreme form of cultural separatism such as Conservative or Orthodox
Judaism. The movement toward ethnic separatism is of considerable interest from
an evolutionary point of view. Between-group competition and monitoring of
outgroups have been a characteristic of Jewish-gentile interactions not only in
the West but also in Muslim societies, and there are examples of between-group
competition and conflict too numerous to mention in other parts of the world.
Historically, ethnic separatism, as seen in the history of Judaism, has been a
divisive force within societies. It has on several occasions unleashed enormous
intrasocietal hatred and distrust, ethnically based warfare, expulsions,
pogroms, and attempts at genocide. Moreover, there is little reason to suppose
that the future will be much different. At the present time there are ethnically
based conflicts on every continent, and clearly the establishment of Israel has
not ended ethnically based conflict for Jews returning from the diaspora.
Indeed, my review of the research on contact between more or less impermeable
groups in historical societies strongly suggests a general rule that
between-group competition and monitoring of ingroup and outgroup success are the
norm. These results are highly consistent with psychological research on social
identity processes reviewed in SAID (Ch. 1). From an evolutionary perspective,
these results confirm the expectation that ethnic self-interest is indeed
important in human affairs, and obviously ethnicity remains a common source of
group identity in the contemporary world. People appear to be aware of group
membership and have a general tendency to devalue and compete with outgroups.
Individuals are also keenly aware of the relative standing of their own group in
terms of resource control and relative reproductive success. They are also
willing to take extraordinary steps to achieve and retain economic and political
power in defense of these group imperatives. Given the assumption of ethnic
separatism, it is instructive to think of the circumstances that would, from an
evolutionary perspective, minimize group conflict. Theorists of cultural
pluralism such as Horace Kallen (1924) envision a scenario in which different
ethnic groups retain their distinctive identity in the context of complete
political equality and economic opportunity. The difficulty with this scenario
from an evolutionary perspective (or even a common sense perspective) is that no
provision is made for the results of competition for resources and reproductive
success within the society. Indeed, the results of ethnic strife were apparent
in Kallen's day, but "Kallen lifted his eyes above the strife that swirled
around him to an ideal realm where diversity and harmony coexist" (Higham 1984,
209). In the best of circumstances one might suppose that separated ethnic
groups would engage in absolute reciprocity with each other, so that there would
be no differences in terms of economic exploitation of one ethnic group by the
other. Moreover, there would be no differences on any measure of success in
society, including social class membership, economic role (e.g., producer versus
consumer; creditor versus debtor; manager versus worker), or fertility between
the separated ethnic groups. All groups would have approximately equal numbers
and equal political power; or if there were different numbers, provisions would
exist to ensure that minorities would retain equitable representation in terms
of the markers of social and reproductive success. Such conditions would
minimize hostility between the groups because attributing one's status to the
actions of the other groups would be difficult. Given the existence of ethnic
separatism, however, it would still be in the interests of each group to advance
its own interests at the expense of the other groups. All things being equal, a
given ethnic group would be better off if it ensured that the other groups had
fewer resources, lower social status, lower fertility, and proportionately less
political power than itself. The hypothesized steady state of equality therefore
implies a set of balance-of-power relationships-- each side constantly checking
to make sure that the other is not cheating; each side constantly looking for
ways to dominate and exploit by any means possible; each side willing to
compromise only because of the other sides's threat of retaliation; each side
willing to cooperate at cost only if forced to do so by, for example, the
presence of external threat. Clearly, any type of cooperation that involves true
altruism toward the other group could not be expected. Thus the ideal situation
of absolute equality in resource control and reproductive success would
certainly require a great deal of monitoring and undoubtedly be characterized by
a great deal of mutual suspicion. In the real world, however, even this rather
grim ideal is highly unlikely. In the real world, ethnic groups differ in their
talents and abilities; they differ in their numbers, fertility, and the extent
to which they encourage parenting practices conducive to resource acquisition;
they also differ in the resources held at any point in time and in their
political power. Equality or proportionate equity would be extremely difficult
to attain or to maintain after it has been achieved without extraordinary levels
of monitoring and without extremely intense social controls to enforce ethnic
quotas on the accumulation of wealth, admission to universities, access to high
status jobs, and so on. Because ethnic groups have differing talents and
abilities and differing parenting styles, variable criteria for qualifying and
retaining jobs would be required depending on ethnic group membership. Moreover,
achieving parity between Jews and other ethnic groups would entail a high level
of discrimination against individual Jews for admission to universities or
access to employment opportunities and even entail a large taxation on Jews to
counter the Jewish advantage in the possession of wealth, since at present Jews
are vastly over-represented among the wealthy and the successful in the United
States. This would especially be the case if Jews were distinguished as a
separate ethnic group from gentile European Americans. Indeed, the final
evolution of many of the New York Intellectuals from Stalinism was to become
neoconservatives who have been eloquent opponents of affirmative action and
quota mechanisms for distributing resources. (Sachar
1992, 818ff mentions
Daniel Bell, Sidney Hook, Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Charles
Krauthammer, Norman Podhoretz, and Earl Raab as opposed to affirmative action.)
Jewish organizations (including the ADL, the AJCommittee, and the AJCongress)
have taken similar positions Sachar (1992, 818ff). In the real world, therefore,
extraordinary efforts would have to be made to attain this steady state of
ethnic balance of power and resources. Interestingly, the ideology of
Jewish-gentile coexistence has sometimes included the idea that the different
ethnic groups develop a similar occupational profile and implicitly control
resources in proportion to their numbers. In medieval France, for example, Louis
IX's ordinance of 1254 prohibited Jews from engaging in money-lending at
interest and encouraged them to live by manual labor or trade (see Richard 1992,
162). The dream of German assimilationists during the nineteenth century was
that the occupational profile of Jews after emancipation would mirror that of
the gentiles--a "utopian expectation . . shared by many, Jews and non-Jews
alike" (Katz 1986, 67). Efforts were made to decrease the percentage of Jews
involved in trade and increase the percentages involved in agriculture and
artisanry. In the event, however, the result of emancipation was that Jews were
vastly over-represented among the economic and cultural elite, and this
overrepresentation was a critical feature of German anti-Semitism from 1870 to
1933 (see SAID, Ch. 5). Similarly, during the 1920s when the United States was
attempting to come to grips with Jewish competition at prestigious private
universities, plans were proposed in which each ethnic group received a
percentage of placements at Harvard reflecting the percentage of racial and
national groups in the United States (Sachar 1992, 329). Similar
policies--uniformly denounced by Jewish organizations--developed during the same
period throughout Central Europe (Hagen 1996). Such policies certainly reflect
the importance of ethnicity in human affairs, but levels of social tension are
bound to be chronically high. Moreover, there is a considerable chance of ethnic
warfare even were precise parity achieved through intensive social controls: As
indicated above, it is always in the interests of any ethnic group to obtain
hegemony over the others. If one adopts a cultural pluralism model involving
free competition for resources and reproductive success, differences between
ethnic groups are inevitable; from an evolutionary perspective, there is the
very strong prediction that such differences will result in animosity from the
losing groups. After emancipation there was a powerful tendency for upward
mobility among Jews in Western societies, including a large overrepresentation
in the professions as well as in business, politics, and the production of
culture. Concomitantly there were outbreaks of anti-Semitism originating often
among groups that felt left behind in this resource competition or who felt that
the culture being left behind in this resource competition or who felt that the
culture being created did not meet their interests. If the history of Judaism
tells us anything, it is that self-imposed ethnic separatism tends to lead to
resource competition based on group membership, and consequent hatred,
expulsions, and persecutions. Assuming that ethnic differences in talents and
abilities exist, the supposition that ethnic separatism could be a stable
situation without ethnic animosity requires either a balance of power situation
maintained with intense social controls, as described above, or it requires that
at least some ethnic groups be unconcerned that they are losing in the
competition. I regard this last possibility as unlikely in the long run. That an
ethnic group would be unconcerned with its own eclipse and domination is
certainly not expected by an evolutionist or, indeed, by advocates of social
justice whatever their ideology. Nevertheless, this is in fact the implicit
morality of the criticism by several historians of the behavior of the Spanish
toward the Jews and Marranos during the Inquisition and the Expulsion, as, for
example, in the writings of Benzion Netanyahu (1995), who at times seems openly
contemptuous of the inability of the Spaniards to compete with the New
Christians without resorting to the violence of the Inquisition. From this
perspective, the Spaniards should have realized their inferiority and acquiesced
in being economically, socially, and politically dominated by another ethnic
group. Such a "morality" is unlikely to appeal to the group losing the
competition, and from an evolutionary perspective, this is not in the least
surprising. Goldwin Smith (1894/1972, 261) made a similar point a century ago:"A
community has a right to defend its territory and its national integrity against
an invader whether his weapon be the sword or foreclosure. In the territories of
the Italian Republics the Jews might so far as we see, have bought land and
taken to farming had they pleased. But before this they had thoroughly taken to
trade. Under the falling Empire they were the great slave-traders, buying
captives from barbarian invaders and probably acting as general brokers of
spoils at the same time. They entered England in the train of the Norman
conqueror. There was, no doubt, a perpetual struggle between their craft and the
brute force of the feudal populations. But what moral prerogative has craft over
force? Mr. Arnold White tells the Russians that, if they would let Jewish
intelligence have free course, Jews would soon fill all high employments and
places of power to the exclusion of the natives, who now hold them. Russians are
bidden to acquiesce and rather to rejoice in this by philosophers, who would
perhaps not relish the cup if it were commended to their own lips. The law of
evolution, it is said, prescribes the survival of the fittest. To which the
Russian boor may reply, that if his force beats the fine intelligence of the Jew
the fittest will survive and the law of evolution will be fulfilled. It was
force rather than fine intelligence which decided on the field of Zama that the
Latin, not the Semite, should rule the ancient and mould the modern world."
Ironically, many intellectuals who absolutely reject evolutionary thinking and
any imputation that genetic selfinterest might be important in human affairs
also favor policies that are rather obviously selfinterestedly ethnocentric, and
they often condemn the self-interested ethnocentric behavior of other groups,
particularly any indication that the European-derived majority in the United
States is developing a cohesive group strategy and high levels of ethnocentrism
in reaction to the group strategies of others. The ideology of minority group
ethnic separatism and the implicit legitimization of group competition for
resources, as well as the more modern idea that ethnic group membership should
be a criterion for resource acquisition, must be seen for what they are:
blueprints for group evolutionary strategies. The history of the Jews must be
seen as a rather tragic commentary on the results of such group strategies. The
importance of group-based competition cannot be overstated. I believe it is
highly unlikely that Western societies based on individualism and democracy can
long survive the legitimization of competition between impermeable groups in
which group membership is determined by ethnicity. The discussion in SAID (Chs.
3-5) strongly suggests that ultimately group strategies are met by group
strategies, and that societies become organized around cohesive, mutually
exclusionary groups. Indeed, the recent multicultural movement may be viewed as
tending toward a profoundly non-Western form of social organization that has
historically been much more typical of Middle Eastern segmentary societies
centered around discrete homogeneous groups. However, unlike in the
multicultural ideal, in these societies there are pronounced relations of
dominance and subordination. Whereas democracy appears to be quite foreign to
such segmentary societies, Western societies, uniquely among the stratified
societies of the world, have developed individualistic democratic and republican
political institutions. Moreover, major examples of Western collectivism,
including German National Socialism and Iberian Catholicism during the period of
the Inquisition, have been characterized by intense anti-Semitism. There is thus
a significant possibility that individualistic societies are unlikely to survive
the intra-societal group-based competition that has become increasingly common
and intellectually respectable in the United States. I believe that in the
United States we are presently heading down a volatile path--a path that leads
to ethnic warfare and to the development of collectivist, authoritarian, and
racialist enclaves. Although ethnocentric beliefs and behavior are viewed as
morally and intellectually legitimate only among ethnic minorities in the United
States, the theory and the data presented in SAID indicate that the development
of greater ethnocentrism among European- derived peoples is a likely result of
present trends. One way of analyzing the Frankfurt School and psychoanalysis is
that they have attempted with some success to erect, in the terminology of Paul
Gottfried (1998) and Christopher Lasch (1991), a "therepeutic state" that
pathologizes the ethnocentrism of European-derived peoples as well as their
attempts to retain cultural and demographic dominance. However, ethnocentrism on
the part of the Europeanderived majority in the United States is a likely
outcome of the increasingly group-structured contemporary social and political
landscape--likely because evolved psychological mechanisms in humans appear to
function by making ingroup and outgroup membership more salient in situations of
group-based resource competition (see SAID, Ch. 1). The effort to overcome these
inclinations thus necessitates applying to Western societies a massive
"therapeutic" intervention in which manifestations of majoritarian ethnocentrism
are combated at several levels, but first and foremost by promoting the ideology
that such manifestations are an indication of psychopathology and a cause for
ostracism, shame, psychiatric intervention, and counseling. One may expect that
as ethnic conflict continues to escalate in the United States, increasingly
desperate attempts will be made to prop up the ideology of multiculturalism with
sophisticated theories of the psychopathology of majority group ethnocentrism,
as well as with the erection of police state controls on nonconforming thought
and behavior. I suppose that a major reason some non-Jewish racial and ethnic
groups adopt multiculturalism is that they are not able to compete successfully
in an individualistic economic and cultural arena. As a result, multiculturalism
has quickly become identified with the idea that each group ought to receive a
proportional measure of economic and cultural success. As indicated above, the
resulting situation may oppose Jewish interests. Because of their high
intelligence and resourceacquisition ability, Jews do not benefit from
affirmative action policies and other group-based entitlements commonly
advocated by minority groups with low social status. Jews thus come into
conflict with other ethnically identified minority groups who use
multiculturalism for their own purposes. (Nevertheless, because of their
competitive advantage within the white, Europeanderived group with which they
are currently classified, Jews may perceive themselves as benefiting from
policies designed to dilute the power of the European-derived group as a whole
on the assumption that they would not suffer any appreciable effect. Indeed,
despite the official opposition to group-based preferences among Jewish
organizations, Jews voted for an antiaffirmative action ballot measure in
California in markedly lower percentages than did other European-derived
groups.) Although multiculturalist ideology was invented by Jewish intellectuals
to rationalize the continuation of separatism and minority-group ethnocentrism
in a modern Western state, several of the recent instantiations of
multiculturalism may eventually produce a monster with negative consequences for
Judaism. Irving Louis Horowitz (1993, 89) notes the emergence of anti-Semitism
in academic sociology as these departments are increasingly staffed by
individuals who are committed to ethnic political agendas and who view Jewish
domination of sociology in negative terms. There is a strong strain of
anti-Semitism emanating from some multiculturalist ideologues, especially from
Afrocentric ideologues (Alexander 1992), and Cohen (1998, 45) finds that
"multiculturalism is often identified nowadays with a segment of the left that
has, to put it bluntly, a Jewish problem." Recently the Nation of Islam, led by
Louis Farrakhan, has adopted an overt anti-Semitic rhetoric. Afrocentrism is
often associated with racialist ideologies, such as those of Molefi Asante
(1987), in which ethnicity is viewed as the morally proper basis of
self--identity and self-esteem and in which a close connection exists between
ethnicity and culture. Western ideals of objectivity, universalism,
individualism, rationality, and the scientific method are rejected because of
their ethnic origins. Asante accepts a naive racialist theory in which Africans
(the "sun people") are viewed as superior to Europeans (the "ice people"). Such
movements mirror similar Jewish ideologies that rationalize a powerful concern
with Jewish ethnicity and attempt to produce feelings of ethnic superiority
within the group. These ideologies have been common throughout Jewish
intellectual history, the most enduring embodied in the idea of chosenness and
the "light of the nations" concept. SAID (Ch. 7) reviewed evidence indicating
that Jewish historians and intellectuals, beginning in the ancient world, have
often attempted to show that gentile cultural influences have had specifically
Jewish precedents or even that various gentile philosophers and artists were
actually Jews. This tradition has been carried on recently by two Sephardic
Jews, Martin Bernal (1987) in his Black Athena and Jose Faur (1992) in his In
the Shadow of History: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity. Indeed,
there may well be a general trend since the Enlightenment in which Jewish
intellectuals have been at the vanguard of secular political movements, such as
the movement for cultural pluralism, intended to serve Jewish interests as well
as appeal to segments of the gentile population. Also apparent is a trend such
that eventually these movements fractionate, the result of anti-Semitism within
the very segment of the gentile population to which the ideology attempts to
appeal, and Jews abandon these movements and seek to pursue their interests by
other means. Thus it has been noted here that Jews have played a prominent role
in the political left in this century. We have also seen that as a result of
anti-Semitism among gentiles on the left and on the part of Communist
governments, eventually Jews either abandoned the left or they developed their
own brand of leftism in which leftist universalism was compatible with the
primacy of Jewish identity and interests.' Gore Vidal (1986) is a prominent
example of a gentile leftist intellectual who has been highly critical of the
role of neoconservative Jews in facilitating the U.S. military buildup of the
1980s and allying themselves with conservative political forces to aid
Israel--charges interpreted as implying anti-Semitism because of the implication
that American Jews place the interests of Israel above American interests
(Podhoretz 1986). Vidal also suggests that neoconservatism is motivated by the
desire of Jews to make an alliance with gentile elites as a defense against
possible anti-Semitic movements emerging during times of economic crisis.
Indeed, fear of anti- Semitism on the left has been the major impetus for
founding the neoconservative movement (see Gottfried 1993, 80)--the final
resting point of many of the New York Intellectuals whose intellectual and
cumulative effect of neoconservatism and its current hegemony over the
conservative political movement in the United States (achieved partly by its
large influence on the media and among foundations) has been to shift the
conservative movement toward the center and, in effect, to define the limits of
conservative legitimacy. Clearly, these limits of conservative legitimacy are
defined by whether they conflict with specifically Jewish group interests in a
minimally restrictive immigration policy, support for Israel, global democracy,
opposition to quotas and affirmative action, and so on. As indicated in William
F. Buckley's (1992) In Search of Anti-Semitism, however, the alliance between
gentile paleoconservatives and Jewish neoconservatives in the United States is
fragile, with several accusations of anti- Semitism among the
paleoconservatives. Much of the difficulty derives from the tension between the
nationalist tendencies of an important segment of U.S. conservatism and the
perceptions of at least some gentile conservatives that Jewish neoconservatism
is essentially a device for pursuing narrow Jewish sectarian interests,
particularly with regard to Israel, churchstate separation, and affirmative
action. Moreover, the neoconservative commitment to many aspects of the
conservative social agenda is half-hearted at best (Gottfried 1993). Most
importantly, neoconservatives pursue what is essentially an ethnic agenda
regarding immigration while opposing the ethnocentric interests of the
paleoconservatives in retaining their ethnic hegemony. The ethnic agenda of
neoconservatism can also be seen in their promotion of the idea that the United
States should pursue a highly interventionist foreign policy aimed at global
democracy and the interests of Israel rather than aimed at the specific national
interests of the United States (Gottfried 1993). Neoconservatism has also
provided a Jewish influence on the American conservative movement to
counterbalance the strong tendency for Jews to support liberal and leftist
political candidates. Jewish ethnic interests are best served by influencing
both major parties toward a consensus on Jewish issues, and, as indicated above,
neoconservatism has served to define the limits of conservative legitimacy in a
manner that conforms to Jewish interests. As anti-Semitism develops, Jews begin
to abandon the very movements for which they originally provided the
intellectual impetus. This phenomenon may also occur in the case of
multiculturalism. Indeed, many of the most prominent opponents of
multiculturalism are Jewish neoconservatives, as well as organizations such as
the National Association of Scholars (NAS), which have a large Jewish
membership. (The NAS is an organization of academics opposed to some of the more
egregious excesses of feminism and multiculturalism in the university.) It may
well be the case, therefore, that the Jewish attempt to link up with secular
political ideologies that appeal to gentiles is doomed in the long run. Ginsberg
(1993, 224ff) essentially makes this point when he notes that there is
increasing evidence for anti-Semitism among American liberals, conservatives,
and populist radicals. The case of multiculturalism is particularly problematic
as a Jewish strategy. In this case one might say that Jews want to have their
cake and eat it too. "Jews are often caught between fervent affirmation of the
Enlightenment and criticism of it. Many Jews believe that the replacement of the
Enlightenment ideal of universalism with a politics of difference and a
fragmented 'multiculture' would constitute a threat to Jewish achievement. At
the same time, they recognize the dangers of a homogeneous 'monoculture' for
Jewish particularity... .
Jews seek to rescue the virtues
of the Enlightenment from the shards of its failures and salvage an inclusive
vision from multiculturalism, where fragmentation and divisiveness now reign"
(Biale, Galchinsky, & Heschel 1998, 7). Multicultural societies with their
consequent fragmentation and chronic ethnic tension are unlikely to meet Jewish
needs in the long run even if they do ultimately subvert the demographic and
cultural dominance of the peoples of European origin in lands where they have
been dominant. This in turn suggests a fundamental and irresolvable friction
between Judaism and prototypical Western political and social structure.
Certainly the very long history of anti- Semitism in Western societies and its
recurrence time and again after periods of latency suggests such a view. The
incompatibility of Judaism and Western culture can also be seen in the tendency
for individualistic Western cultures to break down Jewish group cohesiveness. As
Arthur Ruppin (1934, 339) noted earlier in the century, all modern
manifestations of Judaism, from neo-Orthodoxy to Zionism, are responses to the
Enlightenment's corrosive effects on Judaism--a set of defensive structures
erected against "the destructive influence of European civilization." And at a
theoretical level, there is a very clear rationale for supposing that Western
individualism is incompatible with group-based resource conflict that has been
the consistent consequence of the emergence of a powerful Judaism in Western
societies (see SAID, Chs. 3-- 5). One aspect of this friction is well
articulated in Alan Ryan's (1994, 11) discussion of the "latent contradiction"
in the politics of Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the authors of the
highly controversial volume The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in
American Life. Ryan states, "Herrnstein essentially wants the world in which
clever Jewish kids or their equivalent make their way out of their humble
backgrounds and end up running Goldman Sachs or the Harvard physics department,
while Murray wants the Midwest in which he grew up--a world in which the local
mechanic didn't care two cents whether he was or wasn't brighter than the local
math teacher. The trouble is that the first world subverts the second, while the
second feels claustrophobic to the beneficiaries of the first." The social
structure whose acceptance is here attributed to Murray envisions a moderately
individualistic society, a society that is meritocratic and hierarchical but
also cohesive and culturally and ethnically homogeneous. It is a society with
harmony among the social classes and with social controls on extreme
individualism among the elite. There has been a powerful Western tendency to
develop such societies, beginning at least in the Middle Ages, but also present,
I believe, in the classical Roman civilization of the Republic. The ideal of
hierarchic harmony is central to the social program of the Catholic Church
beginning during the late Roman Empire and reaching its pinnacle during the High
Middle Ages (MacDonald 1995c; SAID, Ch. 5). This ideal is apparent also in a
powerful strand of German intellectual history beginning with Herder in the
eighteenth century. A very central feature of this prototypical Western
hierarchical harmony has been the social imposition of monogamy as a form of
reproductive leveling that dampens the association between wealth and
reproductive success. From an evolutionary perspective, Western societies
achieve their cohesion because hierarchical social relationships are
significantly divorced from reproductive consequences. Such a world is
threatened from above by the domination of an individualistic elite without
commitment to responsible lower-status individuals who may have lesser
intellectual ability, talent, or financial resources. It is threatened from
within by the development of a society constituted by a set of ethnically
divided, chronically competing, highly impermeable groups as represented
historically by Judaism and currently envisioned as the model for society by the
proponents of multiculturalism. And it is threatened from below by an increasing
underclass of people with the attributes described by Herrnstein and Murray:
intellectually incompetent and insufficiently conscientious to hold most kinds
of job; irresponsible and incompetent as parents; prone to requiring public
assistance; prone to criminal behavior, psychiatric disorders, and substance
abuse; and prone to rapid demographic increase. Such people are incapable of
contributing economically, socially, or culturally to a latetwentieth- century
society or, indeed, to any human civilization characterized by a substantial
degree of reciprocity, voluntarism and democracy. Given that the continued
existence of Judaism implies that the society will be composed of competing,
more or less impermeable groups, the neoconservative condemnation of
multiculturalism must be viewed as lacking in intellectual consistency. The
neoconservative prescription for society embraces a particular brand of
multiculturalism in which the society as a whole will be culturally fragmented
and socially atomistic. These social attributes not only allow Jewish upward
mobility, but also are incompatible with the development of highly cohesive,
anti-Semitic groups of gentiles; they are also incompatible with group-based
entitlements and affirmative action programs that would necessarily discriminate
against Jews. As Horowitz (1993, 86) notes, "High levels of cultural
fragmentation coupled with religious options are likely to find relatively
benign forms of anti- Semitism coupled with a stable Jewish condition. Presumed
Jewish cleverness or brilliance readily emerges under such pluralistic
conditions, and such cleverness readily dissolves with equal suddenness under
politically monistic or totalitarian conditions." Jewish neoconservatives
readily accept a radically individualistic society in which Jews would be
expected to become economically, politically, and culturally dominant while
having minimal allegiance to the lower (disproportionately gentile) social
classes. Such a society is likely to result in extreme social pressures as the
responsible lower middle classes are placed in an increasingly precarious
economic and political situation. As in the case of the intellectual activity of
the Frankfurt School, the Jewish neoconservative prescription for the society as
a whole is radically opposed to the strategy for the ingroup. Traditional
Judaism, and to a considerable extent contemporary Judaism, obtained its
strength not only from its intellectual and entrepreneurial elite but also from
the unshakable allegiance of responsible, hardworking, lower-status Jews of
lesser talent whom they patronized. And it must be stressed here that
historically, the popular movements that have attempted to restore this
prototypical Western state of hierarchic harmony, in opposition to the
exploitation of individualistic elites and the divisiveness of intergroup
conflict, have often had intensely anti-Semitic overtones. Moreover, to a
considerable extent the font et origo of the social policies and cultural shifts
that have resulted in the dangerous situation now rapidly developing in the
United States has been the Jewish-dominated intellectual and political movements
described in this volume. I have attempted to document the role of those
movements, particularly the 1960s leftist political and intellectual movement,
in subjecting Western culture to radical criticism; it is the legacy of this
cultural movement that has taken the lead in providing the intellectual basis of
the multiculturalist movement and in rationalizing social policies that expand
the underclass and expand the demographic and cultural presence of non-European
peoples in Western societies. From the standpoint of these leftist critics, the
Western ideal of hierarchic harmony and assimilation is perceived as an
irrational, romantic, and mystical ideal. Western civility is nothing more than
a thin veneer masking a reality of exploitation and conflict---"a vast ecclesia
super cloacum" (Cuddihy 1974, l42). It is interesting in this regard that a
basic strand of sociological theory beginning with Marx has been to emphasize
conflict between social classes rather than social harmony. For example, Irving
Louis Horowitz (1993, 75) notes that one result of the massive influence of
Jewish intellectuals on American sociology beginning in the 1930s was that--"the
sense of America as a consensual experience gave way to a sense of America as a
series of conflicting definitions," including a heightened concern with
ethnicity in general. Historically, this conflict conception of social structure
has typically been combined with the idea that the inevitable struggle between
social classes can be remedied only by the complete leveling of economic and
social outcomes. This latter ideal can then be attained only by adopting a
radical environmentalist perspective on the origins of individual differences in
economic success and other cultural attainments and by blaming any individual
shortcomings on unequal environments. Because this radical environmentalism is
scientifically unfounded, the social policies based on this ideology tend to
result in high levels of social conflict as well as an increase in the
prevalence of intellectual incompetence and social pathology. From an
evolutionary perspective, the prototypical Western social organization of
hierarchic harmony and muted individualism is inherently unstable, a situation
that undoubtedly contributes to the intensely dynamic nature of Western history.
It has often been remarked that in the history of China nothing ever really
changed. Dynasties characterized by intensive polygyny and moderate to extreme
political despotism came and went, but there were no fundamental social changes
over a very long period of historical time. The data reviewed by Betzig (1986)
indicate that much the same can be said about the history of political
organization in other stratified human societies. In the West, however, the
prototypical state of social harmony described above is chronically unstable.
The unique initiating conditions involving a significant degree of reproductive
leveling have resulted in a highly dynamic historical record (see MacDonald
1995c). The most common threat to hierarchic harmony has been the
individualistic behavior of elites--a tendency that hardly surprises an
evolutionist. Thus the early phases of industrialization were characterized by
the unraveling of the social fabric and high levels of exploitation and conflict
among the social classes. As another example, the slavery of Africans was a
short-term benefit to an individualistic elite of southern aristocrats in the
United States, but it also resulted in exploitation of the slaves and has been a
long-term calamity for the society as a whole. We have also seen that Western
elites in traditional societies have often actively encouraged Jewish economic
interests to the detriment of other sectors of the native population, and in
several historical eras Jews have been the instruments of individualistic
behavior among gentile elites thus facilitating such individualistic behavior.
Of considerable importance to the history of U.S. immigration policy has been
the collaboration between Jewish activists and elite gentile industrialists
interested in cheap labor, at least in the period prior to 1924. Recently,
writers such as Peter Brimelow (1995, 229--232) and Paul Gottfried (1998) have
called attention to an elite 'New Class' of internationalists who are opposed to
the nation-state based on ethnic ties and highly favorable to immigration that
decreases the ethnic homogeneity of traditional societies. The self-interest of
this group is to cooperate with similar individuals in other countries rather
than to identify with the lower levels of their own society. Although this type
of internationalism is highly congruent with a Jewish ethnic agenda--and Jews
are undoubtedly disproportionately represented among this group, gentile members
of the New Class must be seen as pursuing a narrowly individualistic agenda. The
individualism of elites has not been the only threat to Western hierarchic
harmony, however. As recounted in SAID, this ideal has been shattered in
critical historical eras by intense group conflict between Judaism and segments
of gentile society. In the present age, perhaps for the first time in history,
this hierarchic harmony is threatened by the development of an underclass whose
membership consists disproportionately of racial and ethnic minority members and
which has also resulted in intense group-based conflict. In particular, it is
the large disproportion of African Americans in the American underclass that
makes any political solution to this threat to hierarchic harmony problematic. I
have suggested that there is a fundamental and irresolvable friction between
Judaism and prototypical Western political and social structure. The present
political situation in the United States (and several other Western countries)
is so dangerous because of the very real possibility that the Western European
tendency toward hierarchic harmony has a biological basis. The greatest mistake
of the Jewishdominated intellectual movements described in this volume is that
they have attempted to establish the moral superiority of societies that embody
a preconceived moral ideal (compatible with the continuation of Judaism as a
group evolutionary strategy) rather than advocate social structures based on the
ethical possibilities of naturally occurring types. In the twentieth century
many millions of people have been killed in the attempt to establish Marxist
societies based on the ideal of complete economic and social leveling, and many
more millions of people have been killed as a result of the failure of Jewish
assimilation into European societies. Although many intellectuals continue to
attempt to alter fundamental Western tendencies toward assimilation, muted
individualism, and hierarchic harmony, there is a real possibility that these
Western ideals are not only more achievable but also profoundly ethical.
Uniquely among all stratified cultures of the world, prototypical Western
societies have provided the combination of a genuine sense of belonging, a large
measure of access to reproductive opportunities, and the political participation
of all social classes combined with the possibilities of meritocratic upward
social mobility. As an evolutionist, one must ask what the likely genetic
consequences of this sea change in American culture are likely to be. An
important consequence--and one likely to have been an underlying motivating
factor in the countercultural revolution--may well be to facilitate the
continued genetic distinctiveness of the Jewish gene pool in the United States.
The ideology of multiculturalism may be expected to increasingly
compartmentalize groups in American society, with long-term beneficial
consequences on continuation of the essential features of traditional Judaism as
a group evolutionary strategy. There is increasing consensus among Jewish
activists that traditional forms of Judaism are far more effective in ensuring
longterm group continuity than semi-assimilationist, semi-cryptic strategies
such as Reform Judaism or secular Judaism. Reform Judaism is becoming steadily
more conservative, and there is a major effort within all segments of the Jewish
community to prevent intermarriage (e.g., Abrams 1997; Dershowitz 1997; see pp.
244-245). Moreover, as discussed in several parts of this book, Jews typically
perceive themselves to benefit from a nonhomogeneous culture in which they
appear as only one among many ethnic groups where there is no possibility of the
development of a homogeneous national culture that might exclude Jews. In
addition, there may well be negative genetic consequences for the
European-derived peoples of the United States and especially for the "common
people of the South and West" (Higham I 984, 49)--that is, for
lower-middle-class Caucasians derived from Northern and Western Europe--whose
representatives fought a desperate and prolonged political battle against the
present immigration policy. Indeed, we have seen that a prominent theme of the
New York Intellectuals as well as the Authoritarian Personality studies was the
intellectual and moral inferiority of traditional American culture, particularly
rural American culture. James Webb (1995) notes that it is the descendants of
the WASPS who settled the West and South who "by and large did the most to lay
out the infrastructure of this country, quite often suffering educational and
professional regression as they tamed the wilderness, built the towns, roads and
schools, and initiated a democratic way of life that later white cultures were
able to take advantage of without paying the price of pioneering. Today they
have the least, socioeconomically, to show for these contributions. And if one
would care to check a map, they are from the areas now evincing the greatest
resistance to government practices." The war goes on, but it is easy to see who
is losing. The demographic rise of the underclass resulting from the triumph of
the 1960s counter-cultural revolution implies that European-derived genes and
gene frequencies will become less common compared to those derived from the
African and the Latin American gene pools. On the other end of the
IQ--reproductive strategy distribution, immigrants from East Asian countries are
outcompeting whites, especially of the lower-middle and working classes, in
gaining admission to universities and in prestigious, high-income jobs. The long
term result will be that the entire white population (not including Jews) is
likely to suffer a social status decline as these new immigrants become more
numerous. (Jews are unlikely to suffer a decline in social status not only
because their mean IQ is well above that of the East Asians but, more
importantly, also because Jewish IQ is highly skewed toward excelling in verbal
skills. The high IQ of East Asians is skewed toward performance IQ, which makes
them powerful competitors in engineering and technology. See PTSDA,
Ch. 7 and Lynn
1987. Jews and East
Asians are thus likely to occupy different ecological niches in contemporary
societies.) Lower-middle-class Caucasians, more than any other group, are
expected to lose out. If present trends continue, in the long run the United
States will be dominated by an Asian technocratic elite and a Jewish business,
professional, and media elite. Moreover, the shift to multiculturalism has
coincided with an enormous growth of immigration from non-European-derived
peoples beginning with the Immigration Act of 1965, which favored immigrants
from non-European countries (see Auster 1990; Brimelow 1995). Many of these
immigrants come from non-Western countries where cultural and genetic
segregation are the norm, and within the context of multicultural America, they
are encouraged to retain their own languages and religions and encouraged to
marry within the group. As indicated above, the expected result will be
between-group resource and reproductive competition and increased vulnerability
of democratic and republican political institutions in a context in which
longterm projections indicate that European-derived peoples will no longer be a
majority of the United States by the middle of the next century. Indeed, one
might note that, while the Western Enlightenment has presented Judaism with its
greatest challenge in all of its long history, contemporary multiculturalism in
the context of high levels of immigration of peoples of all racial and ethnic
groups presents the greatest challenge to Western universalism in its history.
The historical record indicates that ethnic separatism among Caucasian-derived
groups has a tendency to collapse within modern Western societies unless active
attempts at ethnic and cultural segregation are undertaken, as has occurred
among Jews. As expected from a resource-reciprocity point of view (MacDonald
1991, 1995b,c), in the absence of rigid ethnic barriers, marriage in Western
individualist societies tends to be importantly influenced by a wide range of
phenotypic features of the prospective spouse, including not only genetic
commonality but also social status, personality, common interests, and other
points of similarity. This individualist pattern of marriage decisions has
characterized Western Europe at least since the Middle Ages (e.g., MacFarlane
1986; see PTSDA , Ch. 8). The result has been a remarkable degree of ethnic
assimilation in the United States among those whose ancestry derives from Europe
(Alba 1985). This is particularly noteworthy because ethnic conflict and
violence are on the rise in Eastern Europe, yet European-derived groups in the
United States have an overwhelming sense of commonality. The long-term result of
such processes is genetic homogenization, a sense of common interest, and the
absence of a powerful source of intrasocietal division. To suppose that the
conflict over immigration has been merely a conflict over the universalist
tendencies of Western culture would, however, be disingenuous. To a great extent
the immigration debate in the United States has always had powerful ethnic
overtones and continues to do so even after the European-derived peoples of the
United States have become assimilated into a Western universalist culture. The
present immigration policy essentially places the United States and other
Western societies "in play" in an evolutionary sense which does not apply to
other nations of the world, where the implicit assumption is that territory is
held by its historically dominant people: Each racial and ethnic group in the
world has an interest in expanding its demographic and political presence in
Western societies and can be expected to do so if given the opportunity. Notice
that American Jews have had no interest in proposing that immigration to Israel
should be similarly multiethnic, or that Israel should have an immigration
policy that would threaten the hegemony of Jews. I rather doubt that Oscar
Handlin (1952, 7) would extend his statement advocating immigration from all
ethnic groups into the United States by affirming the principle that all men,
being brothers, are equally capable of being Israelis. I also doubt that the
Synagogue Council of America would characterize Israeli immigration law as "a
gratuitous affront to the peoples of many regions of the world" (PCN 1953, 117).
Indeed, the ethnic conflict within Israel indicates a failure to develop a
universalist Western culture. Consider the disparities between Jewish attitudes
regarding multiculturalism in Israel versus the United States. "From a Jewish
viewpoint, rejection of Zionism as an ideology and a force shaping the state
of Israel is
like rejecting the state itself. The refined distinction between the state and
its character, and that between its Jewishness and Zionism, are neither
understood nor condoned by the Jews. They are not interested in having Israel as
a state, but rather as a Jewish-Zionist state. . . . While it is legal, but not
legitimate, in Israel to reject publicly or act against Zionism, according to
the 1985 amendment of the election law, one may not run for the Knesset on an
election slate which denies Israel as the state of the Jewish people. (Smooha
1990, 397)" "A substantial digression from
the
principle of equality is caused by the special legal status accorded to the
Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund. They perform quasi-governmental
functions such as planning and funding of new rural localities, support for
cultural enterprises, provision of assistance to the elderly and other
disadvantaged groups, and development and leasing of lands. Yet by their own
constitution, these powerful institutions are obliged to serve Jews only. . . .
Discrimination is also embedded in the Jewish Religious Services Law which
provides for publicly funded religious services to Jews only. Most of the
discrimination is, however, rather covert.(Smooha 1990, 401)" Smooha (1990, 403)
also notes that in a 1988 survey, 74 percent of Israeli Jews said that the state
should prefer Jews to Arabs, and 43 percent favored the denial of the right to
vote to Israeli Arab citizens. Whereas American Jews have been in the forefront
of efforts to ensure ethnic diversity in the United States and other Western
societies, 40 percent of the Jewish respondents agreed that Israel should
encourage Israeli Arabs to leave the country, 37 percent had reservations, and
only 23 percent objected to such a policy. Almost three quarters of Israeli Jews
did not want to have an Arab as a superior in a job. Moreover, immigration to
Israel is officially restricted to Jews. It is also noteworthy that whereas Jews
have been on the forefront of movements to separate church and state in the
United States and often protested lack of religious freedom in the Soviet Union,
the Orthodox rabbinical control of religious affairs in Israel has received only
belated and halfhearted opposition by American Jewish organizations (Cohen 1972,
317) and has not prevented the all-out support of Israel by American Jews,
despite the fact that Israel's policy is opposite to the polices that Jewish
organizations have successfully pursued in Western democracies. This phenomenon
is an excellent example of the incompatibility of Judaism with Western forms of
social organization, which results in a recurrent gap between Jewish behavior
vis-a-vis its own group strategy and Jewish attempts to manipulate Western
societies to conform to Jewish group interests. At present the interests of
non-European-derived peoples to expand demographically and politically in the
United States are widely perceived as a moral imperative, whereas the attempts
of the European-derived peoples to retain demographic, political, and cultural
control is represented as "racist," immoral, and an indication of psychiatric
disorder. From the perspective of these European-derived peoples, the prevailing
ethnic morality is altruistic and selfsacrificial. It is unlikely to be viable
in the long run, even in an individualistic society. As we have seen, the
viability of a morality of self-sacrifice is especially problematic in the
context of a multicultural society in which everyone is conscious of group
membership and there is between-group competition for resources. Consider from
an evolutionary perspective the status of the argument that all peoples should
be allowed to immigrate to the United States. One might assert that any
opposition to such a principle should not interest an evolutionist because human
group genetic differences are trivial, so any psychological adaptations that
make one resist such a principle are anachronisms without function in the
contemporary world (much like one's appendix). A Jew maintaining this argument
should, to retain intellectual consistency, agree that the traditional Jewish
concern with endogamy and consanguinity has been irrational. Moreover, such a
person should also believe that Jews ought not attempt to retain political power
in Israel because there is no rational reason to suppose that any particular
group should have power anywhere. Nor should Jews attempt to influence the
political process in the United States in such a manner as to disadvantage
another group or benefit their own. And to be logically consistent, one should
also apply this argument to all those who promote immigration of their own
ethnic groups, the mirror image of group-based opposition to such immigration.
Indeed, if this chain of logic is pursued to its conclusion, it is irrational
for anyone to claim any group interests at all. And if one also rejects the
notion of individual genetic differences, it is also irrational to attempt to
further individual interests, for example, by seeking to immigrate as an
individual. Indeed, if one accepts these assumptions, the notion of genetic
consequences and thus of the possibility of human evolution past and present
becomes irrational; the idea that it is rational is merely an illusion produced
perhaps by psychological adaptations that are without any meaningful
evolutionary function in the contemporary world. One might note that this
ideology is the final conclusion of the anti-evolutionary ideologies reviewed in
this volume. These intellectual movements have asserted that scientific research
shows that any important ethnic differences or individual differences are the
result of environmental variation, and that genetic differences are trivial. But
there is an enormous irony in all of this: If life is truly without any
evolutionary meaning, why have advocates propagated these ideologies so
intensely and with such self-consciously political methods? Why have many of
these same people strongly identified with their own ethnic group and its
interests, and why have many of them insisted on cultural pluralism and its
validation of minority group ethnocentrism as moral absolutes? By their own
assumptions, it is just a meaningless game. Nobody should care who wins or
loses. Of course, deception and self-deception may be involved. I have noted (p.
195) that a fundamental agenda has been to make the European-derived peoples of
the United States view concern about their own demographic and cultural eclipse
as irrational and as an indication of psychopathology. If one accepts that both
within-group and between-group genetic variation remains and is non-trivial
(i.e., if evolution is an ongoing process), then the principle of relatively
unrestricted immigration, at least under the conditions obtaining in late
twentiethcentury Western societies, clearly involves altruism by some
individuals and established groups. Nevertheless, although the success of the
intellectual movements reviewed in this volume is an indication that people can
be induced to be altruistic toward other groups, I rather doubt such altruism
will continue if there are obvious signs that the status and political power of
Europeanderived groups is decreasing while the power of other groups increases.
The prediction, both on theoretical grounds and on the basis of social identity
research, is that as other groups become increasingly powerful and salient in a
multicultural society, the European-derived peoples of the United States will
become increasingly unified; among these peoples, contemporary divisive
influences, such as issues related to gender and sexual orientation, social
class differences, or religious differences, will be increasingly perceived as
unimportant. Eventually these groups will develop a united front and a
collectivist political orientation vis-a-vis the other ethnic groups. Other
groups will be expelled if possible or partitions will be created, and Western
societies will undergo another period of medievalism. Jewish interests in
immigration policy are an example of conflicts of interest between Jews and
gentiles over the construction of culture. This conflict of interests extends
well beyond immigration policy. There is a growing realization that the
counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s is a watershed event in the history of
the United States. Such a conceptualization is compatible with the work of Roger
Smith (1988), who shows that until the triumph of the cultural pluralist model
with the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s, there were three competing
models of American identity: the "liberal" individualist legacy of the
Enlightenment based on "natural rights"; the "republican" ideal of a cohesive,
socially homogeneous society (what I have identified as the prototypical Western
social organization of hierarchic harmony); the "ethnocultural" strand
emphasizing the importance of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity in the development and
preservation of American cultural forms. . From the present perspective no
fundamental conflict exists between the latter two sources of American identity;
social homogeneity and hierarchic harmony may well be best and most easily
achieved with an ethnically homogeneous society of peoples derived from the
European cultural area. Indeed, in upholding Chinese exclusion in the nineteenth
century, Justice Stephen A. Field noted that the Chinese were unassimilable and
would destroy the republican ideal of social homogeneity. As indicated above,
the incorporation of non-European peoples, and especially peoples derived from
Africa, into peculiarly Western cultural forms is profoundly problematic. As
discussed at several points in this volume, the radical individualism embodied
in the Enlightenment ideal of individual rights is especially problematic as a
source of long-term stability in a Western society because of the danger of
invasion and domination by group strategies such as Judaism and the possibility
of the defection of gentile elites from the ideals represented in the other two
models of social organization. These latter two events are particularly likely
to destroy the social cohesiveness so central to Western forms of social
organization. As Smith notes, the transformations of American society in the
post--Civil War era resulted from the "liberal" cultural ideal "that opposed
slavery, favored immigration, and encouraged enterprise while protecting
property rights" and that posed a severe threat to the collective life at the
center of American civilization. It is this liberal legacy of American
civilization that the Jewish intellectual movements reviewed in this volume have
exploited in rationalizing unrestricted immigration and the loss of social
homogeneity represented by the unifying force of the Christian religion. As
Israel Zangwill said in advocating a Jewish strategy for unrestricted
immigration, "tell them they are destroying American ideals" (see p. 267). The
effect has been to create a new American ideal that is entirely at odds with the
historic sources of American identity: "This ideal carries on the
cosmopolitanism, tolerance, and respect for human liberty of the older liberal
tradition, and so it can properly be termed a modern version of the liberal
ideal. It is novel, however, in its rejection of Lockean liberalism's absolutist
natural law elements in favor of modern philosophic pragmatism and cultural
relativism. And one of its chief theoretical architects, philosopher Horace
Kallen, argued that cultural pluralism better recognizes human sociality, our
constitutive attachments to distinctive ethnic, religious, and cultural groups.
It therefore envisions America as a "democracy of nationalities, cooperating
voluntarily and autonomously through common institutions in the enterprise of
self-realization through the perfection of men according to their kind" (Kallen
1924, 124). Since all groups and individuals should be guaranteed equal
opportunities to pursue their own destinies, the nation's legacy of legal,
racial, ethnic and gender discriminations is unacceptable according to the
cultural pluralist ideal. At the same time, there must be no effort to transform
equality into uniformity, to insist that all fit into a standard Americanized
mold. The ideal of democratic cultural pluralism finally came to predominance in
American public law in the 1950s and especially the 1960s, finding expression in
the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the liberalizing 1965 Immigration and Naturalization
Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, in new programs to provide educational
curricula more attuned to the nation's diverse cultural heritage, in bilingual
ballots and governmental publications, and in affirmative action measures.
(Smith 1988, 246)" Within this perspective, there is tolerance for different
groups but the result is a tendency to "deprecate the importance or even the
existence of a common national identity" (Kallen 1924, 59). Kallen, of course,
was a very strongly identified Jew and a Zionist, and it is not at all
surprising that his cultural ideal for the United States represents a
non-Western form of social organization that conforms to Jewish interests and
compromises the interests of the European-derived peoples of the United States.
It is a social form that guarantees the continued existence of Judaism as a
social category and as a cohesive ethnic group while at the same time, given the
characteristics of Jews, guarantees Jews economic and cultural pre-eminence.
Public policy based on this conceptualization is having the predictable
long-term effect of marginalizing both culturally and demographically the
European-derived peoples of the United States. Because the Europeanderived
groups are less organized and less cohesive than Jews and because a therapeutic
state has been erected to counter expressions of European-American
ethnocentrism, it raises the distinct possibility that in the long run European
Americans will be fragmented, politically powerless, and without an effective
group identity at all. The conflict of interest between Jews and gentiles in the
construction of culture goes well beyond advocacy of the multicultural ideal.
Because they are much more genetically inclined to a high-investment
reproductive strategy than are gentiles, Jews are able to maintain their
high-investment reproductive strategy even in the absence of traditional Western
cultural supports for high-investment parenting (Ch. 4). Compared to gentiles,
Jews are therefore much better able to expand their economic and cultural
success without these traditional Western cultural supports. As Higham (1984,
173) notes, the cultural idealization of an essentially Jewish personal ethic of
hedonism, anxiety, and intellectuality came at the expense of the older rural
ethic of asceticism and sexual restraint. Moreover, traditional Western supports
for high-investment parenting were embedded in religious ideology and, I
suppose, are difficult to achieve in a postreligious environment. Nevertheless,
as Podhoretz (1995, 30) notes, it is in fact the case that Jewish intellectuals,
Jewish organizations like the AJCongress, and Jewish-dominated organizations
such as the ACLU have ridiculed Christian religious beliefs, attempted to
undermine the public strength of Christianity, or have led the fight for lifting
restrictions on pornography. Further, we have seen that psychoanalysis as a
Jewish-dominated intellectual movement has been a central component of this war
on gentile cultural supports for high-investment parenting. Whereas Jews,
because of their powerful genetically influenced propensities for intelligence
and high-investment parenting, have been able to thrive within this cultural
milieu, other sectors of the society have not; the result has been a widening
gulf between the cultural success of Jews and gentiles and a disaster for
society as a whole. The countercultural revolution of the 1960s may well be
incompatible with traditional American freedoms. Traditional American freedoms
such as the First Amendment freedom of speech (deriving from the Enlightenment
liberal strand of American identity) have clearly facilitated specifically
Jewish interests in the construction of culture, interests that conflict with
the possibility of constructing a cohesive society built around high-investment
parenting. Given that the popular media and the current intellectual environment
of universities thrive on the freedom of elites to produce socially destructive
messages, the political movements attempting to restore the traditional Western
cultural supports for high-investment parenting will undoubtedly be forced to
restrict some traditional American freedoms (see, e.g., Bork 1996). Cultural
supports for high-investment parenting act as external forces of social control
that maximize high-investment parenting among all segments of the population,
even those who for genetic or environmental reasons are relatively disinclined
to engage in such practices (MacDonald 1997, 1998b). Without such cultural
controls, it is absolutely predictable that social disorganization will increase
and the society as a whole will continue to decline. Nevertheless, the
continuity of peculiarly Western forms of social organization will remain a
salient concern even if one ignores issues of ethnic competition entirely. I
have emphasized that there is an inherent conflict between multiculturalism and
Western universalism and individualism. Even were Western universalism to regain
its moral imperative, whether all of humanity is willing or able to participate
in this type of culture remains an open question. Universalism is a European
creation, and it is unknown whether such a culture can be continued over a long
period of time in a society that is not predominantly ethnically European. When
not explicitly advocating multiculturalism, the rhetoric in favor of immigration
has typically assumed a radical environmentalism in which all humans are
portrayed as having the same potentials and as being equally moldable into
functioning members of Western universalist and individualist societies. This
premise is highly questionable. Indeed, one might say that the present volume in
conjunction with PTSDA and SAID is testimony to the extremely ingrained
anti-Western tendencies that occur among human groups. Given that a great many
human cultures bear a strong resemblance to the collectivist, anti-assimilatory
tendencies present in Jewish culture, it is highly likely that many of our
present immigrants are similarly unable or unwilling to accept the fundamental
premises of a universalistic, culturally homogeneous, individualistic society.
Indeed, there is considerable reason to suppose that Western tendencies toward
individualism are unique and based on evolved psychological adaptations (see
PTSDA, Ch. 8). This genetic perspective proposes that individualism, like many
other phenotypes of interest to evolutionists (MacDonald 1991), shows genetic
variation. In PTSDA (Ch. 8) I speculated that the progenitors of Western
populations evolved in isolated groups with low population density. Such groups
would have been common in northern areas characterized by harsh ecological
conditions, such as those that occurred during the ice age (see Lenz 1931, 657).
Under ecologically adverse circumstances, adaptations are directed more at
coping with the physical environment than at competition with other groups
(Southwood 1977, 1981). Such an environment implies less selection pressure for
collectivist, ethnocentric groups as embodied by historical Judaism.
Evolutionary conceptualizations of ethnocentrism emphasize the utility of
ethnocentrism in group competition. Ethnocentrism would be of no importance in
combating the physical environment, and such an environment would not support
large groups. We have seen that Western individualism is intimately entwined
with scientific thinking and social structures based on hierarchic harmony,
sexual egalitarianism, and democratic and republican forms of government. These
uniquely Western tendencies suggest that reciprocity is a deeply ingrained
Western tendency. Western political forms from the democratic and republican
traditions of ancient Greece and Rome to the hierarchic harmony of the Western
Middle Ages and to modern democratic and republican governments assume the
legitimacy of a pluralism of individual interests. Within these social forms is
a tendency to assume the legitimacy of others' interests and perspectives in a
manner that is foreign to collectivist, despotic social structures
characteristic of much of the rest of the world. Another critical component of
the evolutionary basis of individualism is the elaboration of the human
affectional system as an individualistic pair-bonding system, the system that
seemed so strange that it was theorized to be a thin veneer overlaying a deep
psychopathology to a generation of Jewish intellectuals emerging from the ghetto
(Cuddihy 1974, 71). This system is individualistic in the sense that it is based
not on external, group-based social controls or familial dictate but, rather, on
the intrinsically motivated role of romantic love in cementing reproductive
relationships (see pp. 136--139). The issue is important because Western
cultures are typically characterized as relatively individualistic compared to
other societies (Triandis 1995), and there is reason to suppose that the
affectional system is conceptually linked to individualism; that is, it is a
system that tends toward nuclear rather than extended family organization.
Triandis (1990) finds that individualistic societies emphasize romantic love to
a greater extent than do collectivist societies, and Western cultures have
indeed emphasized romantic love more than other cultures (see PTSDA, 236-245;
MacDonald 1995b,c; Money 1980). This system is highly elaborated in Western
cultures in both men and women, and it is psychometrically linked with empathy,
altruism, and nurturance. Individuals who are very high on this
system--predominantly females--are pathologically prone to altruistic, nurturant
and dependent behavior (see MacDonald 1995a). On an evolutionary account, the
relatively greater elaboration of this system in females is to be expected,
given the greater female role in nurturance and as a discriminating mechanism in
relationships of pair bonding. Such a perspective also accounts for the
much-commented-on gender gap in political behavior in which females are more
prone to voting for political candidates favoring liberal positions on social
issues. Women more than men also endorse political stances that equalize rather
than accentuate differences between individuals and groups (Pratto, Stallworth
& Sidanius 1997). In ancestral environments this system was highly adaptive,
resulting in a tendency toward pair bonding and high-investment parenting, as
well as intrinsically motivated relationships of close friendship and trust.
This system continues to be adaptive in the modern world in its role in
underlying high-investment parenting, but it is easy to see that the relative
hypertrophy of this system may result in maladaptive behavior if a system
designed for empathy, altruism, and nurturance of family members and others in a
closely related group becomes directed to the world outside the family. The
implication is that Western societies are subject to invasion by non-Western
cultures able to manipulate Western tendencies toward reciprocity,
egalitarianism, and close affectional relationships in a manner that results in
maladaptive behavior for the European-derived peoples who remain at the core of
all Western societies. Because others' interests and perspectives are viewed as
legitimate, Western societies have uniquely developed a highly principled moral
and religious discourse, as in the arguments against slavery characteristic of
the nineteenth-century abolitionists and in the contemporary discourse on animal
rights. Such discourse is directed toward universal moral principles--that is,
principles that would be viewed as fair for any rational, disinterested
observer. Thus in his highly influential volume, Theory of Justice, John Rawls
(1971) argues that justice as objective morality can only occur behind a "veil
of ignorance" in which the ethnic status of the contending parties is irrelevant
to considerations of justice or morality. It is this intellectual tradition that
has been effectively manipulated by Jewish intellectual activists, such as
Israel Zangwill and Oscar Handlin, who have emphasized that in developing
immigration policy Western principles of morality and fair play make it
impossible to discriminate against any ethnic group or any individual. Viewed
from the perspective of, say, an African native of Kenya, any policy that
discriminates in favor of Northwestern Europe cannot withstand the principle
that the policy be acceptable to a rational, disinterested observer. Because
Zangwill and Handlin are not constrained by Western universalism in their
attitudes toward their own group, however, they are able to ignore the
implications of universalistic thinking for Zionism and other expressions of
Jewish particularism. Because of its official policy regarding the genetic and
cultural background of prospective immigrants, Israel would not be similarly
subject to invasion by a foreign group strategy. Indeed, one might note that
despite the fact that a prominent theme of anti-Semitism has been to stress
negative personality traits of Jews and their willingness to exploit gentiles
(SAID, Ch. 2), a consistent theme of Jewish intellectual activity since the
Enlightenment has been to cast Jewish ethnic interests and Judaism itself as
embodying a unique and irreplaceable moral vision (SAID, Chs. 6-8)--terms that
emphasize the unique appeal of the rhetoric of the morality of the disinterested
observer among Western audiences. The result is that whether Western
individualistic societies are able to defend the legitimate interests of the
Europeanderived peoples remains questionable. A prominent theme appearing in
several places in this volume and in PTSDA (Ch. 8) and SAID (Chs. 3--5) is that
individualistic societies are uniquely vulnerable to invasion by cohesive groups
such as has been historically represented by Judaism. Significantly, the problem
of immigration of non-European peoples is not at all confined to the United
States but represents a severe and increasingly contentious problem in the
entire Western world and nowhere else: Only European-derived peoples have opened
their doors to the other peoples of the world and now stand in danger of losing
control of territory occupied for hundreds of years. Western societies have
traditions of individualistic humanism, which make immigration restriction
difficult. In the nineteenth century, for example, the Supreme Court twice
turned down Chinese exclusion acts on the basis that they legislated against a
group, not an individual (Petersen 1955, 78). The effort to develop an
intellectual basis for immigration restriction was tortuous; by 1920 it was
based on the legitimacy of the ethnic interests of Northwestern Europeans and
had undertones of racialist thinking. Both these ideas were difficult to
reconcile with the stated political and humanitarian ideology of a republican
and democratic society in which, as Jewish pro-immigration activists such as
Israel Zangwill emphasized, racial or ethnic group membership had no official
intellectual sanction. The replacement of these assertions of ethnic
self-interest with an ideology of "assimilability" in the debate over the
McCarran-Walter act was perceived by its opponents as little more than a
smokescreen for "racism." At the end, this intellectual tradition collapsed
largely as a result of the onslaught of the intellectual movements reviewed in
this volume, and so collapsed a central pillar of the defense of the ethnic
interests of European-derived peoples. The present tendencies lead one to
predict that unless the ideology of individualism is abandoned not only by the
multicultural minorities (who have been encouraged to pursue their group
interests by a generation of American intellectuals) but also by the
European-derived peoples of Europe, North America, New Zealand, and Australia,
the end result will be a substantial diminution of the genetic, political, and
cultural influence of these peoples. It would be an unprecedented unilateral
abdication of such power and certainly an evolutionist would expect no such
abdication without at least a phase of resistance by a significant segment of
the population. As indicated above, European-derived peoples are expected to
ultimately exhibit some of the great flexibility that Jews have shown throughout
the ages in advocating particular political forms that best suit their current
interests. The prediction is that segments of the European-derived peoples of
the world will eventually realize that they have been ill-served and are being
ill-served both by the ideology of multiculturalism and by the ideology of
deethnicized individualism. If the analysis of anti-Semitism presented in SAID
is correct, the expected reaction will emulate aspects of Judaism by adopting
group-serving, collectivist ideologies and social organizations. The
theoretically underdetermined nature of human group processes (PTSDA, Ch. 1;
MacDonald 1995b) disallows detailed prediction of whether the reactive strategy
will be sufficient to stabilize or reverse the present decline of European
peoples in the New World and, indeed, in their ancestral homelands; whether the
process will degenerate into a selfdestructive reactionary movement as occurred
with the Spanish Inquisition; or whether it will initiate a moderate and
permanent turning away from radical individualism toward a sustainable group
strategy. What is certain is that the ancient dialectic between Judaism and the
West will continue into the foreseeable future. It will be ironic that, whatever
anti-Semitic rhetoric may be adopted by the leaders of these defensive
movements, they will be constrained to emulate key elements of Judaism as a
group evolutionary strategy. Such strategic mimicry will, once again, lead to a
"Judaization" of Western societies not only in the sense that their social
organization will become more group-oriented but also in the sense that they
will be more aware of themselves as a positively evaluated ingroup and more
aware of other human groups as competing, negatively evaluated outgroups. In
this sense, whether the decline of the European peoples continues unabated or is
arrested, it will constitute a profound impact of Judaism as a group
evolutionary strategy on the development of Western societies. This book is the
final volume in the series on Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. A future
comparative book, tentatively titled Diaspora Peoples, extends the focus to
groups other than Jews and European peoples--the Romany, Assyrians, overseas
Chinese, Parsis, and Sikhs, among others. It will test the extent to which the
concepts and analyses employed in this series expand our understanding of group
interaction, cooperation, and competition, and therefore human evolution in
general.