Saturday, November 21, 2015

Illusions of Managing History: The Enduring Relevance of Reinhold Niebuhr

I am planning on posting a lot more about Reinhold Niebuhr in the future.

To begin here is a lecture given in 2007 at Boston University by Andrew Bacevich,




And, for a change, here it is in text form from Bill Moyer's website.

The video has question and answers, some of which are important.  One that could hardly be more timely is when, in answer to a question about what we owed the Iraqi people from our invasion of their country, he makes a proposal that we allow their refugees to immigrate to our country as a small part in repaying our moral obligation.  It was at about 1:17, hearing him talking about it getting the anti-immigrant people in a swivet was satisfying in a way.  And that was in 2007.

He alluded to it in the beginning, but this lecture was given shortly after his son was killed by an IED in Iraq, in a war Bracevich opposed.

There is so much in this lecture that is even more important today.  I will probably write more about what he said.

The Great Struggle Over Jurgen Habermases Only Alternative

When dealing with what someone else has said, I generally like to refer to exactly what they said, preferably not translated, if possible.  But no one can read every language and people, even important scholars, don't and haven't, from antiquity, said what they say in modern English.  That would seem to be as big a surprise to a lot of college educated people as it is for some fundamentalists that God didn't speak Jacobean English.

I am saying that because, as indicated yesterday, I got into it over that quote by Jurgen Habermas with the mathematics professor, Jeffrey Shallit, again.  We'd tangled before but someone accused another mathematics professor, John Lennox, of lying about the quotation as a means of discrediting everything he says, citing Shallit's blog.   The practice of doing that among atheists, of expanding one disputed thing into a total discrediting is one of the more widely practiced of their dishonest methods.  It's a method which depends on the ill will of others and another thing we all are, limited in what we can know before we consider what someone says about it.  I'd looked into this before, reading through the website article that Shallit obviously depends on.  He claimed in our brawl to be able to read the original statement in German but I don't see any evidence in what he said that he can.  You can read his post in which he accused John Lennox of two things, misquotation, which might be an accurate charge if you don't include freer translations as quotations - I think Lennox's works as a free translation which is faithful to the meaning - and lying about the meaning of what Habermas said.  He quotes a recording of Lennox as saying:

"Prominent German thinker Jurgen Habermas, who calls himself a methodological atheist, says that Christianity and nothing else is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy: the benchmarks of Western civilization. "To this day we have no other options: we continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

You will note that even as Shallit gives it, the only part that is posted in quotations is the last two sentences.  I will say that, reading the original, even as given at the website Shallit depends on, it's not an unreasonable free translation of what Habermas said, which we got into in the argument I'll post up till now, below.

Shallit goes on:

This is a bogus quote, as I've documented before. I now repeat the relevant portions from that blog post of mine:

This quotation is phony, but is very popular among Christians.

Its origins have been carefully traced by Thomas Gregersen, who writes:

But this is a misquotation! The reference is an interview with Jürgen Habermas that Eduardo Mendieta made in 1999. It is published in English with the title "A Conversation About God and the World" in Habermas's book "Time of Transitions" (Polity Press, 2006).

What Habermas actually says in this interview is:

"Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an auonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct heir of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk (p. 150f)."

The misquote rewrites Habermas's statement and changes its meaning:
(1) Habermas talks about the historical origin of egalitarian universalism - not the foundation of human rights today.
(2) Habermas mentions both Judaism and Christianity - not only Christianity.
(3) Habermas says that there is no alternative to this legacy ("Erbe" in German) - not that we have no alternative to Christianity. 
[end of Gregersen]

But that leaves out the first line in the German original, as given at the website,  Here, with my more or less word for word translation of it with the beginning of the next sentence, which is where Gregersen chooses to begin with his interpretation, leaving out the first sentence. :

Das Christendom ist für das normative Selbstverständnis der Moderne nicht nur eine Vorläufergestalt 
Christianity is, for normative understanding of modernity, not only a preformation 

oder ein Katalysator gewesen. 
or a catalyst.  

Der egalitäre Universalismus, aus dem die Ideen von Freiheit und solidarischem Zusammenleben,...  
Egalitarian universalism, from which the ideas of freedom and communal concord, ... 

I
f you leave that out, you lose the subject of what Habermas was talking about, the role that Christianity has played in producing modern egalitarian democracy.   Gregersen apparently, no more than Shallit wanted to have to say what Shallit still won't admit.  Christianity was the thing to which Habermas says there is no alternative to in nourishing egalitarian democracy through its prerequisite moral holdings which are, themselves a product of Christian doctrine, which includes the Jewish doctrine of justice, hardly surprising as the inspiration of Christianity was a Jew who cited Jewish scriptures and expanded their meaning as a development of that justice doctrine.   And the rest of Gregersen's claims, as given by Shallit, are far worse distortions of what Habermas said than Shallit accuses him of.   The entire list of things which Habermas says flows from "egalitarian universalism", itself  - fed by Christianity - what produces egalitarian democracy and because of that, as I say below, any modernity which is worth talking about seriously and valuing.

It takes a bit of going but notice that the atheist blogger doesn't want to really deal with what Habermas said, he wants to discredit John Lennox and he doesn't care how dishonest he has to be to do that.   I will admit that if I'd done  in the beginning what I did in the last of my comment, done a line for line instead of a free translation, a lot of it might have been avoided, on my part, at least.  I can't speak for Shallit for whom accuracy doesn't seem to be the issue.

--------

Blogger The Thought Criminal said...

I looked in on this latest post at the insistence of an atheist, elsewhere. The English translation you gave from that website is very different from the statement itself, in German. 

Das Christendom ist für das normative Selbstverständnis der Moderne nicht nur eine Vorläufergestalt oder ein Katalysator gewesen. Der egalitäre Universalismus, aus dem die Ideen von Freiheit und solidarischem Zusammenleben, von autonomer Lebensführung und Emanzipation, von individueller Gewissensmoral, Menschenrechten und Demokratie entsprungen sind, ist unmittelbar ein Erbe der jüdischen Gerechtigkeits- und der christlichen Liebesethik. In der Substanz unverändert, ist dieses Erbe immer wieder kritisch angeeignet und neu interpretiert worden. Dazu gibt es bis heute keine Alternative. Auch angesichts der aktuellen Herausforderungen einer postnationalen Konstellation zehren wir nach wie vor von dieser Substanz. Alles andere ist postmodernes Gerede".

Jürgen Habermas - "Zeit der Übergänge" (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2001) p. 174f.

Which I would translate:

Christianity is not merely a predecessor or catalyst of the very concept of modernity. Egalitarianism, from which the ideas of freedom and social concord, autonomous life and emancipation of individual moral thought, human rights and democracy spring from the Jewish ethic of Justice and the Christian ethic of love. Unchanged in substance, this has been appropriated again and again and newly interpreted. For this purpose, there is still no alternative. This is even true now in a post-national world, we still eat of this substance. Everything else is just post modern babble.

I will point out that John Lennox is fluent enough in German to give the same fluent lectures he gives in English in German and, more impressive to me, can hold his own in unscripted interviews. Most of the atheists I've seen comment on this couldn't read Habermas in the original. I don't see any actual substantial difference between what he's quoted as saying and the original, given at the website you use.

1:04 PM, November 19, 2015 Delete
Blogger Jeffrey Shallit said...
I think there's a huge difference. Translators and translations may differ, but even in your version, there is nothing like the assertion that "Christianity and nothing else is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy". 

I would not say I am absolutely fluent in German, but I can hold my own.

2:19 PM, November 19, 2015
Blogger Bert Brouwer said...
Anti-semitism is deeply routed in christianity, and not something for christians to be proud of.

10:45 AM, November 20, 2015
Blogger The Thought Criminal said...
So can I, when Habermas was asked, in English about the alleged "misquotation" he didn't say that it had misrepresented what he said, though he cited a conversation he'd had with Pope Benedict XVI. Since he's been asked about this, I would like you to produce Habermas disavowing the quotation as given by Lennox.

In the German as given at the website you cite, it says "Dazu gibt es bis heute keine Alternative. Auch angesichts der aktuellen Herausforderungen einer postnationalen Konstellation zehren wir nach wie vor von dieser Substanz." 

"Gibt es bis heute keine Alternative". "There is up to today, no Alternative" to the concept of justice in Judaism and the doctrine of love in Christianity that produces the sense of universal egalitarianism from which are derived the entire host of attributes that are the foundation of democracy and, in Habermas' analysis, which I agree with, any modernity that deserves serious consideration. 


You can hear Lennox lecturing in German to a German university audience and, as I noted, even more impressively, fluently holding his own in spontaneous interviews in German. He far more than holds his own. Translation is hardly a uniform practice, but I can see no way to interpret what Habermas said so as to reduce the strength of his attribution of the precursors of egalitarian democracy and that significant, as opposed to superficial and ephemeral, modernity. 

I think your atheist, anti-Christian framing colors your translation as much as you accuse Lennox of distorting it.

10:49 AM, November 20, 2015 Delete
Blogger Jeffrey Shallit said...
So can I, when Habermas was asked, in English about the alleged "misquotation" he didn't say that it had misrepresented what he said, though he cited a conversation he'd had with Pope Benedict XVI.

If you look at the tape where he is asked about it, it is clear Habermas did not completely hear the question, nor understand exactly what it was addressing.

Since he's been asked about this, I would like you to produce Habermas disavowing the quotation as given by Lennox.

This is clearly an unreasonable demand. How can I produce something that I don't have?

Look, Lennox was clearly taken in by the phony translation. There is no evidence Lennox ever looked at Habermas in the original; he was just quoting someone else's lousy translation (see http://recursed.blogspot.ca/2011/02/pascal-lecture-another-year-another.html ), which was exposed quite some time ago as bogus by Thomas Gregersen. See http://www.habermasforum.dk/index.php?type=news&text_id=460 .

It just goes to show how far Christians are willing to go in forsaking their intellectual credibility, that you continue to defend Lennox's use of the bogus translation even after it has been exposed in detail.


11:50 AM, November 20, 2015
Blogger The Thought Criminal said...
I listened to the tape, Habermas in English at that sound fidelity is hard going. The tape proves one thing, that Habermas was aware of the controversy due to having been asked the question. 

Habermas is entirely able to defend the integrity of what he said if he thought he'd been misrepresented. I would like you to show that he is on record as having accused Lennox of what you are. 

I am unaware of Lennox addressing this issue, are you? I can say that in the German original there is nothing for dogmatic atheists to take comfort in, considering that Habermas is both an atheist and one of the most prominent of living intellectuals in this area. Just addressing what your own citation says he says in German shows that what Lennox said is a rough paraphrase of what the original German says. To deny that either shows an inability to read German or an unwillingness to admit what it says. 

When Habermas said, "Dazu gibt es bis heute keine Alternative. Auch angesichts der aktuellen Herausforderungen einer postnationalen Konstellation zehren wir nach wie vor von dieser Substanz." that means in all of his voluminous reading of philosophy, atheist, secular, scientific, etc. THEREFORE TILL TODAY THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE, to the Jewish ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. No alternative, and those, despite contemporary conditions (challenges?)in a post-national world, are what nourish us. 

Clearly Habermas is saying that materialism and atheism don't do that, which is hardly a shock, considering the mainstream of materialism and atheism which deny the reality of both those forms of justice and love and the ethical consequences of them. Atheism is more likely to undermine a confidence in democracy through denying the possibility of free thought and free will.

4:28 PM, November 20, 2015 Delete
Blogger Jeffrey Shallit said...
The tape proves one thing, that Habermas was aware of the controversy due to having been asked the question. 

Not clear at all - it is not even clear he is sure what particular passage is being referred to.

I would like you to show that he is on record as having accused Lennox of what you are. 

I can't even parse this. Is English your native language? I doubt Habermas has any knowledge of Lennox.

I am unaware of Lennox addressing this issue, are you?

Yes, I've personally brought it to Lennox's attention. I have a message from one of Lennox's aides saying (more or less) that Lennox is aware that he used an incorrect translation of the quotation and he now only uses the correct one. The aide says, "Unfortunately these things happen from time to time, even in academia (I have had to change a few things from earlier work myself!)" so it is clear that Lennox or at least his aide concedes my point.

Just addressing what your own citation says he says in German shows that what Lennox said is a rough paraphrase of what the original German says. 

No, it doesn't. Quit lying. The phony quote used by Lennox attributes it to "Christianity and nothing else" and this is NOT what Habermas said. Did you even read the analysis by Gregersen?

The contortions you have to go through to deny what Lennox (or his aide) admits are pretty funny, though, I have to admit.

4:47 PM, November 20, 2015
Blogger The Thought Criminal said...
OK, you tell me where in the German the meaning of what Lennox said that is radically different in meaning. Show me exactly where you find a refutation of what I translated, then paraphrased.

I gave you the exact sentence that in context of the entire passage, since Habermas begins by identifying Christianity, which he is referring to, I would assume he noting that Christianity must include the Jewish doctrine of justice, would make what Lennox said an accurate paraphrase if not a free translation of what Haber said, Dazu gibt es bis heute keine Alternative. "Therefore, till today, there is no Aternative" than Jewish justice and Christian love, which produce the entire range of things, beginning with "egalitarian universalism" - I'd translate that universal egalitarianism - from which freedom and communal concord, autonomous living and and in individual moral conscience, the rights of humans and democracy, for which those are obviously given as a prerequisite, but he, in no uncertain terms identifies those in the wider world as a product of Christianity. 

Der egalitäre Universalismus, aus dem die Ideen von Freiheit und solidarischem Zusammenleben, von autonomer Lebensführung und Emanzipation, von individueller Gewissensmoral, Menschenrechten und Demokratie entsprungen sind.

Show me in the original, German that that is not what is said. There is absolutely nothing in that statement to give an atheist who hates Christianity any joy.

5:38 PM, November 20, 2015 Delete
Blogger Jeffrey Shallit said...
You seem extremely confused. I don't "hate Christianity"; I was raised as a Christian and have a lot of respect for many Christians. I don't have respect for the few Christians who have to lie to support their faith.

I have said over and over again that Habermas never said anything like "Christianity and nothing else". I cannot show you *that* in the original German because IT IS NOT THERE. 

Do you understand the difference between "ein Erbe der jüdischen Gerechtigkeits- und der christlichen Liebesethik" and "Christianity and nothing else"? Is the absence of "Jewish" a hint? Do you understand the difference between attributing human rights to "Der egalitäre Universalismus" and attributing it to "Christianity and nothing else"? These are rhetorical questions, because of course you *don't* understand it and never will. You're willfully misunderstanding the point of Gregersen.

The discussion by Gregersen is definitive. Read it, then go argue with him if you like. I think you're just being silly, and I don't enjoy arguing with silly people. Even Lennox's aide - whom you seemed so keen in defending - admitted to me that the translation that Lennox used was bogus. And Gregersen even produced its probable source. What the heck is wrong with you that you cannot admit that?

8:04 PM, November 20, 2015
Blogger The Thought Criminal said...
Oh, where in that statement do you find the alternative in what he said that that the line of things beginning with egalitarian universalism .... democracy comes from? If you can locate that it would make him saying "there is no alternative" rather hard to account for.

I find it rather hard to understand where you're going to pull this alternative from and make it square with Habermas' statement that there is no alternative to it when he has already named the source of it as Christianity, respecting the component of Jewish tradition that is inherent to Christianity. By the way, that is something which large number of Christian theologians would agree with, including the man he reiterated the idea to, Pope Benedict XVI who is probably the most accomplished academic theologian in the history of the papacy. I will tell you that though I didn't like him as Cardinal Ratzinger or as Benedict XVI that doesn't change that fact or that on matters of economic justice, political rights, things like the death penalty and various military adventures, he was farther left than most American politicians who are reputed to be center left and some who are consider left, left. 

You're playing games, the statement makes absolutely no sense, at all, in your characterization of it. Habermas obviously knows enough to realize that since the ultimate authority in Christianity, Jesus, was Jewish, his entire gospel was predicated on the Jewish tradition, justice being the foremost of all aspects of Jewish morality. Leviticus 19:18 and numerous other verses, which are the very essence of the Jewish justice tradition, are taken up and expanded by Jesus. They became culturally influential in the West through Christianity and from those came the political concept of equality before God, the endowment of equal rights, the moral obligation to respect those rights equally, from which all the rest flows, including democracy in the modern meaning of the term, including universal enfranchisement and the protection of equality not only before the law but in commercial and other areas of life. And that's what he said. 

I read what Gregersen said and it obviously doesn't change the meaning of that. The only one able to give this a "definitive" answer is Habermas as it is his meaning which is being argued. In the absence of that definitive answer, there are interpretations that take into account all of the statement and those which don't, yours seems to end with "Lennox is lying". 

Name what Habermas said there was no alternative to.

8:30 PM, November 20, 2015 Delete
Blogger Jeffrey Shallit said...
I never said Lennox was lying; he was obviously taken in by a bogus translation and never bothered to check it himself. You seem to have a great deal of trouble parsing written English, or you have some mental pathology. I'm beginning to suspect the latter. Go bother someone else.

\]

9:04 PM, November 20, 2015
Blogger The Thought Criminal said...
Oh, for crying out loud. Identify what Habermas said there was no alternative for. Here I've translated it word for word.

Das Christendom ist für das normative Selbstverständnis der Moderne nicht nur eine Vorläufergestalt 
Christianity is, for normative understanding of modernity, not only a preformation 

oder ein Katalysator gewesen. 
or a catalyst.  

Der egalitäre Universalismus, aus dem die Ideen von Freiheit und solidarischem Zusammenleben, 
Egalitarian universalism, from which the ideas of freedom and communal concord

von autonomer Lebensführung und Emanzipation, von individueller Gewissensmoral,
of autonomous life and emancipation, of individual moral conscience

Menschenrechten und Demokratie entsprungen sind, 
human rights and democracy have sprung from,   

ist unmittelbar ein Erbe der jüdischen Gerechtigkeits
is an unmittigated inheritance from the Jewish doctrine of justice

-und der christlichen Liebesethik. 
and the Christian ethic of love.

In der Substanz unverändert, 
In unchanged substance 

ist dieses Erbe immer wieder kritisch angeeignet und neu interpretiert worden. 
this inheritance has been critically adopted, over and over, and newly interpreted. 

Dazu gibt es bis heute keine Alternative.
For that [meaning for producing all those things] there is till today no alternative.

Auch angesichts der aktuellen Herausforderungen einer postnationalen Konstellation 
Even given the present challenges [to Christianity] in a post national world, 

zehren wir nach wie vor von dieser Substanz. 
we feed from this substance [ the combination of Jewish justice and love in Christianity]

Alles andere ist postmodernes Gerede".
Everything else is postmodern babble. 

In other words, Christianity isn't a mere precursor or a catalyist for those things listed, it is the very thing that nourishes them, even today, there is no alternative source of those things.  

Habermas is talking about the culture of Europe and the Western world in general,  by an overwhelming margin, of the two things listed which could be the direct source of that long list of things we enjoy in modern egalitarian democracy, the direct source of its prerequisites, is identified in the subject of the first sentence, Christianity.  

With German intellectuals, you don't get the whole meaning of a passage if you choose to ignore everything that is said.  They don't have the current Anglo-American superstition that complex ideas can be conferred in 4th grade language and simple sentences, you've got to read every word. 

Oh, and I withdraw the word "lying" as applied to Lennox, show where it applies to anything I've said. 

I'm going to post this so unless you want this to be the last word, feel free to answer my points and my questions. 

9:19 PM, November 20, 2015  
 Jeffrey Shallit said...
I've already answered them, as has Gregersen. The fact that you don't like the answers doesn't change that. 

Even Lennox (or at least his aide) acknowledges the translation he used is bogus. He seems to have a shred of intellectual honesty. You do not.

------

I'll leave it to you to judge who has shreds of intellectual honesty based on what was said, I will post any responses he makes to my last challenge to him to identify what it was Habermas said there was no alternative to,  which makes Lennox's translation of Habermas make complete sense when consulting the original. 

Friday, November 20, 2015

In Memory of Robert Craft - Stravinsky - Abraham and Issac


David Wilson, baritone
Orquesta Filarmonia
Director: Robert Craft

Text:

1And it came to pass after these things, that God tested Abraham, and He said to him, "Abraham," and he said, "Here I am."אוַיְהִי אַחַר הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה וְהָאֱלֹהִים נִסָּה אֶת אַבְרָהָם וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו אַבְרָהָם וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּנִי:
2And He said, "Please take your son, your only one, whom you love, yea, Isaac, and go away to the land of Moriah and bring him up there for a burnt offering on one of the mountains, of which I will tell you."בוַיֹּאמֶר קַח נָא אֶת בִּנְךָ אֶת יְחִידְךָ אֲשֶׁר אָהַבְתָּ אֶת יִצְחָק וְלֶךְ לְךָ אֶל אֶרֶץ הַמֹּרִיָּה וְהַעֲלֵהוּ שָׁם לְעֹלָה עַל אַחַד הֶהָרִים אֲשֶׁר אֹמַר אֵלֶיךָ:
3And Abraham arose early in the morning, and he saddled his donkey, and he took his two young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for a burnt offering, and he arose and went to the place of which God had told him.גוַיַּשְׁכֵּם אַבְרָהָם בַּבֹּקֶר וַיַּחֲבשׁ אֶת חֲמֹרוֹ וַיִּקַּח אֶת שְׁנֵי נְעָרָיו אִתּוֹ וְאֵת יִצְחָק בְּנוֹ וַיְבַקַּע עֲצֵי עֹלָה וַיָּקָם וַיֵּלֶךְ אֶל הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר אָמַר לוֹ הָאֱלֹהִים:
4On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.דבַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי וַיִּשָּׂא אַבְרָהָם אֶת עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא אֶת הַמָּקוֹם מֵרָחֹק:
5And Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go yonder, and we will prostrate ourselves and return to you."הוַיֹּאמֶר אַבְרָהָם אֶל נְעָרָיו שְׁבוּ לָכֶם פֹּה עִם הַחֲמוֹר וַאֲנִי וְהַנַּעַר נֵלְכָה עַד כֹּה וְנִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה וְנָשׁוּבָה אֲלֵיכֶם:
6And Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering, and he placed [it] upon his son Isaac, and he took into his hand the fire and the knife, and they both went together.ווַיִּקַּח אַבְרָהָם אֶת עֲצֵי הָעֹלָה וַיָּשֶׂם עַל יִצְחָק בְּנוֹ וַיִּקַּח בְּיָדוֹ אֶת הָאֵשׁ וְאֶת הַמַּאֲכֶלֶת וַיֵּלְכוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם יַחְדָּו:
7And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father, and he said, "My father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." And he said, "Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"זוַיֹּאמֶר יִצְחָק אֶל אַבְרָהָם אָבִיו וַיֹּאמֶר אָבִי וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֶּנִּי בְנִי וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּה הָאֵשׁ וְהָעֵצִים וְאַיֵּה הַשֶּׂה לְעֹלָה:
8And Abraham said, "God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And they both went together.חוַיֹּאמֶר אַבְרָהָם אֱלֹהִים יִרְאֶה לּוֹ הַשֶּׂה לְעֹלָה בְּנִי וַיֵּלְכוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם יַחְדָּו:
9And they came to the place of which God had spoken to him, and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood, and he bound Isaac his son and placed him on the altar upon the wood.טוַיָּבֹאוּ אֶל הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר אָמַר לוֹ הָאֱלֹהִים וַיִּבֶן שָׁם אַבְרָהָם אֶת הַמִּזְבֵּחַ וַיַּעֲרֹךְ אֶת הָעֵצִים וַיַּעֲקֹד אֶת יִצְחָק בְּנוֹ וַיָּשֶׂם אֹתוֹ עַל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ מִמַּעַל לָעֵצִים:
10And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife, to slaughter his son.יוַיִּשְׁלַח אַבְרָהָם אֶת יָדוֹ וַיִּקַּח אֶת הַמַּאֲכֶלֶת לִשְׁחֹט אֶת בְּנוֹ:
11And an angel of God called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham! Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."יאוַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו מַלְאַךְ יְהֹוָה מִן הַשָּׁמַיִם וַיֹּאמֶר אַבְרָהָם | אַבְרָהָם וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּנִי:
12And he said, "Do not stretch forth your hand to the lad, nor do the slightest thing to him, for now I know that you are a God fearing man, and you did not withhold your son, your only one, from Me."יבוַיֹּאמֶר אַל תִּשְׁלַח יָדְךָ אֶל הַנַּעַר וְאַל תַּעַשׂ לוֹ מְאוּמָה כִּי | עַתָּה יָדַעְתִּי כִּי יְרֵא אֱלֹהִים אַתָּה וְלֹא חָשַׂכְתָּ אֶת בִּנְךָ אֶת יְחִידְךָ מִמֶּנִּי:
13And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and he saw, and lo! there was a ram, [and] after [that] it was caught in a tree by its horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.יגוַיִּשָּׂא אַבְרָהָם אֶת עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה אַיִל אַחַר נֶאֱחַז בַּסְּבַךְ בְּקַרְנָיו וַיֵּלֶךְ אַבְרָהָם וַיִּקַּח אֶת הָאַיִל וַיַּעֲלֵהוּ לְעֹלָה תַּחַת בְּנוֹ:
14And Abraham named that place, The Lord will see, as it is said to this day: On the mountain, the Lord will be seen.ידוַיִּקְרָא אַבְרָהָם שֵׁם הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא יְהֹוָה | יִרְאֶה אֲשֶׁר יֵאָמֵר הַיּוֹם בְּהַר יְהֹוָה יֵרָאֶה:
15And an angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven.טווַיִּקְרָא מַלְאַךְ יְהֹוָה אֶל אַבְרָהָם שֵׁנִית מִן הַשָּׁמָיִם:
16And he said, "By Myself have I sworn, says the Lord, that because you have done this thing and you did not withhold your son, your only one,טזוַיֹּאמֶר בִּי נִשְׁבַּעְתִּי נְאֻם יְהֹוָה כִּי יַעַן אֲשֶׁר עָשִׂיתָ אֶת הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה וְלֹא חָשַׂכְתָּ אֶת בִּנְךָ אֶת יְחִידֶךָ:
17That I will surely bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand that is on the seashore, and your descendants will inherit the cities of their enemies.יזכִּי בָרֵךְ אֲבָרֶכְךָ וְהַרְבָּה אַרְבֶּה אֶת זַרְעֲךָ כְּכוֹכְבֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם וְכַחוֹל אֲשֶׁר עַל שְׂפַת הַיָּם וְיִרַשׁ זַרְעֲךָ אֵת שַׁעַר אֹיְבָיו:
18And through your children shall be blessed all the nations of the world, because you hearkened to My voice."יחוְהִתְבָּרֲכוּ בְזַרְעֲךָ כֹּל גּוֹיֵי הָאָרֶץ עֵקֶב אֲשֶׁר שָׁמַעְתָּ בְּקֹלִי:
19And Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beer sheba; and Abraham remained in Beer sheba.יטוַיָּשָׁב אַבְרָהָם אֶל נְעָרָיו וַיָּקֻמוּ וַיֵּלְכוּ יַחְדָּו 

Update:  Sorry, I can't get the Hebrew text to fit, you can read it here.

3 Comments Little Time to Write

I don't have much time today, for some reason a lot of people with make-up work showed up yesterday and today.   Here's a current disagreement I'm having at Religion Dispatches on a post rather appallingly titled, "OUT OF OPTIONS: CHRISTIANS’ LOSING BATTLE OVER EQUALITY".   That is dishonest because without a majority of Christians supporting equality for lesbians and gay people, equality couldn't be won through legislation or sustained.  When transgendered people win the support for their rights from the majority of Christians is when it will be the day when their legal rights are secured.   Lots of us are hoping that will come very soon, as surprisingly soon as it happened for lesbians and gay men.  Of course, the wider equality in society which the law can't ensure has to be achieved the same way,  Christians being a large majority in this country.

Camera Obscura • 3 hours ago
The many Christians who favor equality, including those in denominations who oppose equality, are not losing out.

This article makes a number of mistakes as well as getting some things right. First is taking the category "nones" seriously. "Nones" is the invention of the actively anti-religious Barry Kosmin, who is active in the anti-religious group Center for Inquiry. He explicitly invented the category so he could pretend that what his data showed wasn't the case, that in the United States religious affiliation is the norm. I would be put in the category if I answered a Pew survey on religion and I would certainly not put myself in that category.

The use of the word "Nones" as if it meant anything, characterizing what "nones" think or do is a sign of flawed reasoning.


Jim Reed  Camera Obscura • an hour ago
It doesn't matter where the term "nones" came from. The important thing is we like the term, and we take it to mean we believe in none of the religions.

Camera Obscura  Jim Reed • a few seconds ago
Yeah, it does matter because Barry Kosmin announced his dishonest intentions in inventing it and because they never asked those of us who would be put into it if we considered ourselves to be "Nones". The other categories in the Pew study aren't put together that way, it is based in peoples' identification of themselves so it is a phony category invented by an atheist ideologue for a political purpose.

Hate Mail - That's Not FAIR!

You haven't raised any new issues that I haven't already dealt with in the posts about eugenics, Darwinism, Nazism and neo-Nazism in October and November.  If' you're not going to read what I've already written, I don't see why I should write it again for you to fail to read it in the future.  Especially as this new venue of research is quite eye-opening in ways that you certainly won't like any better than my documenting the use of Darwin's Natural Selection by probably the most scientifically qualified of the hard core neo-Nazis, William L. Pierce.  His use of what Daniel Dennett called "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" to promote his neo-Nazi program, including, beyond doubt, his atheist-millenialist vision of the extermination of most of the world's population in favor of those who would have had Hitler's approval has certainly added an ironic potency to Dennett's forumlation.

"In dieser Funktion nahm er Selektionen vor."

There is nothing, nothing whatsoever that's unfair about pointing those things out.  And there is nothing unfair about the fact that you can't refute the fact that the neo-Nazis have found Natural Selection so useful for their purposes and that they still do.   Selection was what it was all about, the judgement of those such as Dr. Joseph Mengele replacing alleged Natural Selection.    The job description of the medical officers at Auschwitz, if I remember correctly,  included that word in doing what Natural Selection is supposed to do, select those who will die by its action.   If you read the neo-Nazi websites, again, at your own risk, you will see that they're big on selection, they being the selectors.



Someone Else Seems To Have Had The Same Idea

Peter Laarman posted his rewritten version of the Emma Lazarus poem to reflect the unamericanism of those I wrote about yesterday.


Just like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land,
Here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand
A fearsome watcher with a torch whose flame
Sparks paranoid frightening, and her name
Purger of Exiles.

From her clenched hand
Flows world-wide warning; her cold eyes command
A guarded harbor that shows our shame.
“Keep in ancient lands, you filthy scum,” cries she
With savage lips. “Give me your white, your rich,
Your lads and lasses yearning to earn fees,
The choicest claimants we have known before.
Send just these, the vetted and well-glossed to me,
I wave my lamp beside the bolted door!”

Peter Laarman is a United Church of Christ minister and activist who recently retired as executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting in Los Angeles. He remains involved in numerous justice struggles, in particular a campaign known as Justice Not Jails that calls upon faith communities to critique and combat the system of racialized mass incarceration often referred to as The New Jim Crow.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Johnny Griffin Septet - Smoke Stack



Lee Morgan - Trumpet
John Coltrane, Johnny Griffin, Hank Mobley - Tenor Sax
Wynton Kelly - Piano
Paul Chambers - Bass
Art Blakey - Drums

Dazu gibt es bis heute keine Alternative.

steve simelsNovember 19, 2015 at 1:45 PM
"There is nothing in science, in materialism, in an atheist-secular society which has the strength to tame and restrain such ideas."

I hate to break it you, Sparky, but there's nothing in religion to tame and restrain those ideas either. Compliance is voluntary last time I looked.

Well, I wasn't going to post this but, reconsidering, I can point out several typical atheist habits of dishonest thinking in it. 

1.  Notice that even someone as ignorant as Simels isn't so stupid as to claim that science, materialism, atheist-secular society has any definitive holdings that can restrain the ideas that in their least extreme forms lead to inequality and in their most extreme form call for the mass murder of anyone but the whitest of the white people.    That is, of course, because there isn't anything. That doesn't keep even some of the most famous atheists, notably Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, pretend those can do what it so much can't do.  I'd go into Harris taking on Hume over that question but I really don't want to have to read more ignorant and irrational thinking this week.   

2. Notice even someone as dishonest as Simels doesn't deny that religions do have prohibitions on such things.  That is certainly true of the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  As the prominent atheist intellectual and historian Jurgen Habermas noted, 

"Das Christendom ist für das normative Selbstverständnis der Moderne nicht nur eine Vorläufergestalt oder ein Katalysator gewesen. Der egalitäre Universalismus, aus dem die Ideen von Freiheit und solidarischem Zusammenleben, von autonomer Lebensführung und Emanzipation, von individueller Gewissensmoral, Menschenrechten und Demokratie entsprungen sind, ist unmittelbar ein Erbe der jüdischen Gerechtigkeits- und der christlichen Liebesethik. In der Substanz unverändert, ist dieses Erbe immer wieder kritisch angeeignet und neu interpretiert worden. Dazu gibt es bis heute keine Alternative. Auch angesichts der aktuellen Herausforderungen einer postnationalen Konstellation zehren wir nach wie vor von dieser Substanz. Alles andere ist postmodernes Gerede"

Which I recently translated as:  

Christianity was not merely a normative understanding or catalyst of the very concept of modernity. Egalitarian universalism,  from which the ideas of freedom and social concord, autonomous life and emancipation of individual moral thought, human rights and democracy spring from the Jewish ethic of Justice and the Christian ethic of love.  Unchanged in substance, this has been appropriated again and again and newly interpreted.  For this purpose, there is still no alternative.  This is even true now in a post-national world, we still eat of this substance.  Everything else is just post modern babble.

I have seen it mis-translated on several atheist sites in a manner which diminishes the credit which Habermas explicitly gave to Judaism and, especially Christianity, through which that tradition became culturally influential in Europe.  In all of the intellectual cogitation and agitation by science, materialist philosophy, secularism, nothing else has been found that feeds the very substance of egalitarian, democratic, civil society.  And if anyone is likely to know what that would be, it would be Jurgen Habermas. 

3.  Since religion is not uniformly successful in making people practice those things which Habermas attributes to religion,   Der egalitäre Universalismus, aus dem die Ideen von Freiheit und solidarischem Zusammenleben, von autonomer Lebensführung und Emanzipation, von individueller Gewissensmoral, Menschenrechten und Demokratie entsprungen... 
that failure is the fault of religion which asserts those values instead of the forces, such as atheism, materialism, consumerism, etc. which discredits and militates against them.   A good example of that is the infamous statement of Richard Darwkins, 

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

If there is anything which is to blame for the failure of people to respect the rights of other people, of other living beings, of the environment, it is absurd to blame those who insist that that is the definition of good, it is those people who claim there is no objectively real category as good and that the ultimate truth holds, not moral standards to live by but "nothing but pitiless indifference".  

5.  People like Simels would be the first to howl at the top of his lungs if religion tried to enforce even its most universal and obviously beneficial of religious moral holdings.   Nor is that the way it should be done.  The way religious morality becomes effective is through people accepting the restrictions on what they might want to do to the extent that they don't do bad things.  From there comes the communal adoption of those standards as laws through democratic politics.   Christian authorities have no more right to take political power as religious authorities when no less an authority for Christians than Jesus said that he wasn't an earthly ruler, that his realm was not of this world.  

I find it funny when atheists whine and complain that religious people aren't universally successful in enforcing their morality on society when the only means for them to do that would be things that atheists whined even harder at them attempting to do.   Look at the absurd whining today about the past history of blue laws, restricting the opening of stores, bars, etc. on Sunday and the whining about those vestiges of that which are left, if they are anywhere.  And that's nothing compared to what Simels is pretending he wants religion to be able to do.  

Atheists mostly whine and complain and pose and pretend.  Believe me when I tell you that Simels' atheist buddies will pretend to have read this when he dishonestly presents it to them. They seldom read and even more seldomly research and almost never make tight logical arguments.  Mostly they just lie. 

Update:  Blah, blah, blah, Neil Degrasse Tyson blah, blah..... 
Get back to me when he says something on more than a Discovery channel educated high school sophomore level.

Not With Conquering Limbs Astride From Land to Land: I Accuse Paul Ryan of Unamerican Activities

     THE NEW COLOSSUS.
     
     Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
     With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
     Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
     A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
     Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
     Mother of Exiles.  From her beacon-hand
     Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
     The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
     "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
     With silent lips.  "Give me your tired, your poor,
     Your huddled masses yearning to be free,
     The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
     Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
     I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

     Written in aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund, 1883.

Emma Lazarus

Last night, hearing what Paul Ryan said about President Obama's decision to allow into the United States 10,000 Iraqi and Syrian refugees who have fled the aftermath of America's conquering limbs, the invasion of Iraq and the foreign policy and military blunders in the Middle East,  the first thing that came to mind was the fine poem of Emma Lazarus.   To me there is more of genuine Americanism in the finest sense of that word in her poem than there is in vast stretches of quotation from the political class, from the founding generation till today.   Democracy is so great, so vast, that it is unsafe to allow the public understanding of it to reside in the politically interested statements of those with power.  

The practice of allowing politicians to define democracy is an anti-democratic act, it puts the emphasis and power of definition in the wrong place. That a politically excluded, disenfranchised woman, a member of an ethnic-religious minority and of the gender who was generally taken as not being a serious thinker was able to say it so well, so much better than almost anyone else at the time demonstrates that point.  

A new Emma Lazarus could, very likely be a refugee from Iraq or Syria who took seriously the moral heart, the central aspiration of democracy, that all people are created equal and endowed with equal rights by their Creator seriously and to heart, making it their own.   There is something about the mystical aspect of democracy which is far closer to a religious view of reality than a materialistic view of reality can get to.   I have lost my previous faith that materialism can be the basis of democracy, I mean the intellectual form of materialism, not the vulgar materialism of the accumulation of wealth, the kind of materialism which Paul Ryan is so devoted to, I never believed that was compatible with democracy. 

Last night I started doing something I've never done before, reading more of her poetry than was put on the base of the Statue of Liberty, I've found in other cases when I did that, the poets who are eclipsed by one poem turned into an icon, ignoring what they so passionately and intelligently said in even that one poem,  often had a lot more to them than that.  You can use the internet to further degrade yourself or you can use it for something better.  It's your choice. 



Update:  Rereading the poem, I can't help but note that the list of those she asked for exactly corresponds to those who the eugenicists said needed to be wiped out.  The very people who had to flee Europe and other places made the country which rose as the European powers, Darwin's Britain, faded.  Yet Natural Selection is held to be a law of nature.   I will provide a documented list if necessary.  

Linked Index To The Posts on Recent Darwinian Citation By Neo-Nazis

Looking Backward 2015 -1859

The "Aid We FEEL Impelled to Give" Dodge Yet Again And Why It Is A Denial Of The Real History of Applied Darwinism

Answers To Accusations

The Failure Of Scientific Review And Of Learning From History


An Introduction For What Follows

Neo-Darwinism As A Tool of Neo-Nazis

I think that these pieces are important in that they document the use by neo-Nazis of Darwinism and its developments in Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology.  What some of the critics of those two innovations of the 1970s call "ultra-Darwinism", with complete justification.   All of the developments of Natural Selection are based in the concept of adaptations and maladaptations, producing individuals which are more "fit" the very basis of Darwin's theory.  That along with his assertion that the deaths of groups of people, on the basis of disability and of class and ethnicity will render the surviving population superior to what it would have been had they and their children lived, is useful to Nazism and its related genocidal political ideas.  That is and should be admitted to be true beyond any possibly acceptable, allegedly rational,  allegedly honest denial.

It should be obvious from the survival and even intensification of those aspects of Darwinian Natural Selection in the 70s, and the adoption of the results by Dr. William L. Pierce*, the neo-Nazi with, likely, the strongest background in science, as well as the scientific racists who William Pierce cited such as the psychologist Arthur Jensen and his fellow physicist, the Nobel Laureate, William Shockley.   I can't say that I'm looking forward to combing through the apparently volumenous writing of William Pierce and other neo-Nazis, white supremacists, scientific racists and current eugenicists but I will be doing that to see how that use and proposed application of Natural Selection continues, seventy years after the revelation of the Nazi's scientifically operated death industry.

If someone as influential to contemporary mass killers as Timothy McVeigh and Dylan Roof used that idea to inspire his would be followers, here and elsewhere in the world, that makes it important to understand it. And those are only two of the killers who William Pierce is either known to have or is strongly suspected to have inspired.  And that is only the officially seedy, the safely regraded low-class, "blue collar" presence of Natural Selection in proposed application today.  That idea is also used by the clean-handed academics to promote their own racism that is as important.  Eugenics never died, it just went underground.  Francis Crick shared that in common with William Pierce, he was one of Arthur Jensen's champions among his fellow scientists, writing letters soliciting support for Jensen and his scientific racism, and there are few figures more respectable in post-war science than Francis Crick.  It is the idea behind so much of today's petty racism by big name columnists in the New York Times and The Washington Post and other reputable venues of opinion and alleged fact.  I can almost guarantee you that you will hear some such scientific classification of different groups on alleged differences in mental faculties, abilities or alleged traits on NPR, it's always all over the web.  I think it's important to point out what such thinking has in common with that of William L. Pierce.  The history of the past century certainly should have taught us that, by now.

* He styled himself Dr. Pierce on the basis of the doctorate granted to him by his fellow scientists and I think it's important to remember that his diseased thinking was no impediment to his scientific career until he chose to leave science to pursue hate politics full time.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Kenny Drew - Ballade


Kenny Drew, piano
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet
Hank Mobley, tenor sax
Sam Jones, bass
Louis Hayes, drums

Music for the afternoon with the low November sun coming full through the window.  I should have posted it an hour ago for Eastern Time but you'll get it in time for Central Time.

Neo-Darwinism As A Tool of Neo-Nazis

While he penned The Turner Diaries more than two decades ago, Pierce continues to champion its ugly vision of a world for whites only. A National Alliance radio broadcast aired in early 1997 provides one of many examples:

In 1975, when I began writing The Turner Diaries...I wanted to take all of the feminist agitators and propagandists and all of the race-mixing fanatics and all of the media bosses and all of the bureaucrats and politicians who were collaborating with them, and I wanted to put them up against a wall, in batches of a thousand or so at a time, and machine-gun them. And I still want to do that. I am convinced that one day we will have to do that before we can get our civilization back on track, and I look forward to the day.


The other day I excerpted an article which William Pierce published the same month he published The Turner Diaries in book form for the first time.   I noted that he had previously published it in serial form in his National Vanguard tabloid, ATTACK.   That same month Pierce published a piece in ATTACK #55 in which he lavished praise on E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology and joined in attacking Sociobiology's critics, a counter-attack which other supporters of Sociobiology had been at for a couple of years already. While I think some of them implied the same things, Pierce, even writing in his cover-story style, got right into the Jewish identity of a number of those critics. 

THE AUGUST 1 issue of Time magazine carried a six-page cover story on sociobiology, which is just a fancy name for the biological study of groups of interacting organisms — including human societies.  Charles Darwin demolished one Jewish myth, and his successors are now finding the courage to tackle another: that of the infinite malleability of human nature.)

It is one of the things I've noticed in this latest review of the material that Darwinists such as Pierce are remarkably able to hold opposite views of reality, depending on who and what they are talking about.  In his piece I analyzed the other day, he lauded the view that the universe is always changing, evolving to a higher state, which he contrasts to the popular mischaracterization of Jewish-Christian thinking that the universe is static and unchanging.  However, as is typical of neo-Darwinist conceptions of such things, they loathe the idea that human beings can change, that their characters and limits are not set by the character of their chromosomes at conception.  

A book or more of such contradictions held by the proponents of Natural Selection could be written.  A chapter discussing the self-interest of those who hold such contradictions, depending on who or what is being granted dispensations from their rigidly held beliefs would be necessary for a full treatment of the subject. 

The Time story has many flaws. In addition to its inevitable bias, it treats its subject in the typically jazzy, junky style we have come to expect whenever one of the controlled media gets its grubby paws on something of real value. Yet, the Time editors left enough solid truth in their story that the intelligent reader must scratch his head and wonder whether they have suddenly developed suicidal tendencies; the article is a loaded and cocked revolver pointed straight at their black hearts.

Of course, it is possible that the media masters are too busy counting their shekels these days to worry about the deeper implications of some of the things they allow to appear in print. In any event, they do include in the sociobiology article a sampling of the rantings of their “court scientists,” all of whom viciously denounce sociobiology and the scientists working in this discipline: “Dangerously racist,” screams Harvard’s 1984-style Committee Against Racism; “genetic capitalism,” scoffs the University of Chicago’s Marxist-Jewish anthropologist Marshall Sahlins; “bullshit,” exclaims Harvard’s worried neo-Lamarckian biologist Richard Lewontin.

In doing this Pierce echos the mainstream of criticism of the critics of Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology.  Notably, many of its critics are Jewish, hardly surprising considering the recent events which most of those Jewish people had witnessed in their lifetime.  Though the mainstream accusations against them focus on their alleged or past or admitted Marxism.  Though many of the critics of Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology are not Marxists, at all.  But the angry retorts of Wilson, Pinker and others within that camp generally focus on that canard instead of addressing the observations and concerns of their critics.  

Considering the warnings of the 1975 statement of the Sociobiology Study Group, in the passage posted here yesterday, that Sociobiology and its associated sciences would serve a revival of eugenics and posed a risk of neo-Nazi violence, that William L. Pierce was so quick to see its potential for his ideology was rather rapid confirmation of those fears which have not yet been taken seriously in science and certainly not in the media which has adopted the most obvious of eugenic thinking as a result of these sciences.  

Pierce continued:

The simple reason for the intemperate denunciations — and the reason why Time Managing Editor Henry Grunwald erred badly in judgment when he OK’d the article — is that the already shaky credibility of the entire pseudoscientific rationalization for current liberal dogmas on racial equality and human nature can be sustained only so long as those dogmas are scrupulously shielded from any contact with scientific truth. Recent developments in sociobiological research put the racial equalitarians and the “environment is everything” mythologists in the same untenable position in which Darwin’s theory of evolution put the believers in Genesis a century ago.

And like any Darwinist, Pierce was eager to give credit to Charles Darwin in anticipating this extension of Natural Selection. 

Despite Time’s headline description of sociobiology as “A New Theory of Behavior,” the discipline is not really new. Darwin himself laid the cornerstone of sociobiology in his little-known “third book,” The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872. Since then many scientists have explored one aspect or another of group evolution. Three decades ago the eminent British anthropologist, embryologist, and anatomist, Sir Arthur Keith, published his A New Theory of Human Evolution, dealing with the genetic basis of altruism, xenophobia, and other inherited social traits. What is new is the emergence of the sociobiologists from their closets after more than 30 years of moral intimidation.

It was 33 years after the fall of the Third Reich and the revelation to the wider world of the Nazi eugenic murders in hospitals and in industrial murder facilities.   I will remind you that this piece was published the same month Pierce put out The Turner Diaries in book form for the first time which were an encouragement to future Einsatzgruppen who he hoped would continue and finish the extermination of most of the world's population, leaving his master race the only people in the world. 

Where could he have gotten such an idea from?  Well, as he read Darwin's 'little-known "third book," it's pretty safe to guess he read his "second book" The Descent of Man, the one which contains such ideas.  This infamous passage, for example. 

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. 'Anthropological Review,' April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.*

I have seen this passage twisted through the most ridiculous contortions by Darwin's defenders but it's clear that the mainstream understanding of Darwinism admits what it plainly says, that when the "civilised races of man" "exterminate, AND REPLACE**, the savage races throughout the world" it will produce "man in a more civilised state, as we may hope  even than the Caucasian" meant that white folk were destined to rule the world and the results would be a superior species of humans.   That, to state it baldly, is exactly what the Nazis and neo-Nazis such as Pierce find scientific support of their dream in.  What Charles Darwin said, the" hope" he expressed is exactly their hope, stated in no uncertain terms as science. 

And, I will point out, that the only motive for Darwin to have come to those horrible and most extreme conclusions isn't in some kind of exhaustive confirmation from carefully collected data carefully and exactingly quantified and analyzed, it is through assumptions leaped to on the basis of his Natural Selection.  As I said yesterday, the foremost use of Natural Selection has been as an oracle to "see" what cannot be seen, only, as physicists learned in the early part of the 20th century, what you use to "see" such things with have an inevitable part in determining what you see with it.  It is one of the great discoveries of physics in the past century that the means of seeing things inevitably determines the character of what you see.   Clearly the physicist Pierce didn't take that seriously into account in his view of Natural Selection, something which is practically ubiquitous in its use as a frame through which to view evolution.

Continuing with Pierce isn't pleasant but it is a real eye opener and confirmation of what the Sociobiology Study Group warned about the consequences of reviving biological determinism as science in the real world.  

The outbreak of the Second World War gave the pseudoscientists an advantage in silencing their critics which they exploited with true chutzpah: anyone who questioned their doctrines or who dared to report scientific findings contrary to the liberal-Jewish doctrine of racial equality and the infinite malleability of human nature was accused of having Nazi tendencies and being subversive.

In the immediate postwar years the myth of the “six million gassed Jews” was given an enormous buildup by the controlled media, and the pseudoscientists never hesitated to suggest that anyone who accepted the scientific facts which the German National Socialists had accepted must share the Nazis’ “guilt.” To cite evidence, for example, that Blacks and Whites are not only physically different but also psychically different, implying that racial differences in behavior are, to a large extent, genetically determined, was considered equivalent to putting on a Nazi armband and calling for the extermination of all Blacks.

I will remind you of Pierce's commentary on The Turner Diaries quoted by the ADL above, reminding you that he first published it in the same tabloid this piece appeared in. 

Jewish gas-chamber propaganda is still trotted out regularly by hecklers at lectures by the University of California’s psychologist Arthur Jensen and Stanford University’s physicist-turned-geneticist William Shockley, both of whom have presented hard evidence that Negro mental inferiority is hereditary. After more than 30 years, however, the time-worn fables of the Nazis’ human soap and lampshades have lost much of their bite, and since Jensen’s courageous first venture into taboo territory in 1969 dozens of other scientists have followed.

One of the greatest shames of our race is that, as a whole, we showed so little moral backbone for so long. We allowed ourselves to be intimidated by an alien gang of hucksters posing as scientists into going along with their suppression of truth and promotion of self-serving lies for nearly 40 years. What makes the shame even greater is that we displayed our cowardice most abjectly in the very places we have always most proudly boasted of our bold and fearless independence: in our great universities.

Out of the thousands of our scholars who saw through the Jewish-liberal fakery, only a handful had the courage to challenge the liars, deceivers, and obscurantists openly. The vast majority swallowed their pride — and their honor — and put salary and social acceptance ahead of their obligation to truth and their people. Even today a substantial portion of our most distinguished, degree-laden savants tremble in fear that someone may publicly label them “bigots” or “Nazis,” and they nervously hasten to assure anyone who will listen that they are not really racists.

The recent work of Harvard sociobiologist Edward Wilson and others which is cited in Time is a welcome new wave of truth over the top of the dam of lies, censorship, and repression, but it is only a precursor of the flood which will follow as the dam inevitably crumbles under the growing pressure behind it, and the alien filth is swept away forever in a cleansing rush.

The great science of life, the foundations of which were laid by Charles Darwin and Gregor (Johann) Mendel more than a hundred years ago, will finally be free of the fetters placed on it by evil men and their soul-sick disciples. Our people will then have at their disposal a mighty tool in their never-ending quest for their unlimited Destiny, a tool which will transform not only the lives of our children and our children’s children, but all of Creation.

I think I won't analyze that right now.  

I certainly doubt that E. O. Wilson, if he knew about it, could have been happy to have William L. Pierce's support and endorsement and I certainly don't accuse him of being a racist or an antisemite.  I doubt in the extreme that he has any desire to kill anyone or even express as much enthusiasm for the result of mass slaughter as Charles Darwin and so many of those whose thinking was changed by such ideas as H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw (remembering Pierce's use of Shaw's Man and Superman and Shaws witty advocacy of mass murder in gas chambers noted here the other day). Wilson is a 20th century American who worked in a milieu which, one would think, would never continuance such talk.  The very culture of egalitarianism that Pierce hated so much that his followers hate today as can be seen online and in the news when such incidents as the mass murders of Dylan Roof are committed.  

But a mere lack of desire to consider oneself as superior on the basis of race shouldn't be counted on to act as a governor on the application of such assertions by scientists as Wilson, Dawkins, etc. make. The mere social disapproval of such talk didn't even keep it out of the formal literature of such science, as the Kevin MacDonald scandal proves beyond a shadow of a doubt.   There is nothing in science, in materialism, in an atheist-secular society which has the strength to tame and restrain such ideas.  Even a nominal belief that "all men are created equal and endowed with rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" didn't prevent eugenics from being the Supreme Court sanctioned law in the United States, whose eugenics programs were an inspiration to the Nazis.  

Natural Selection is inevitably linked to the idea that the deaths of groups of people, the disabled, those deemed to be inferior from their biological characteristics due to ethnicity or race, will be a benefit to the species in the wake of their deaths.   That is the inevitable meaning of it as applied to the human population.  That result is more massively evidenced in the history of eugenics in German and other languages, it is the reason that William Pierce found Darwinism and its extension in Sociobiology in the 1970s, after eugenics had been suppressed in the wake of World War Two, such good news. 

* When I was looking up Darwin's citations, trying to find the passage he described, I didn't find it but I did find evidence that Darwin likely lied about what Schaaffhausen said.   I have never found any passage of Schaaffhausen that said what Darwin alleged he did in that statement in The Descent of Man. If any of Darwin's defenders would like to produce the document where Schaaffhausen said what Darwin claims he did in that incredible proto-Nazi statement I would welcome having it and I will post a retraction of my suspicions. 

**  In short, they would take over the territory of those they had exterminated, exactly the Nazi policy of  Lebensraum

Note:  I will pause in posting on this issue unless someone brings something up that I feel needs to be addressed.   I suppose I should thank my enemies for making me feel this was necessary to go into, "Skeptic Tank" particularly who made me realize that I hadn't looked at explicit Darwinism in American neo-Nazis, in English, without any problems of translation.  In William L. Pierce, the link between a scientists reading of Darwin and neo-Nazi murder is undeniable except by the most massive of lies.