4um: Ideology and Censorship in Behavior Genetics

Title: Ideology and Censorship in Behavior Genetics
Source: Stalking the Wild Taboo
URL Source: http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/gw-icbg.html
Published: Jun 2, 1995
Author: Glayde Whitney
Post Date: 2009-05-10 11:12:15 by Deasy
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Keywords: race, genetics, environment, marxism
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Ideology and Censorship in Behavior Genetics

Glayde Whitney's Presidential address to the Behavior Genetics Association
The Mankind Quarterly, vol. 35, number 4, pp. 327-342
Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington DC., Summer 1995

Presented below is the entire text of my presidential address presented to the Behavior Genetics Association (BGA) on the occasion of its 25th annual meeting at Richmond, VA on the second of June, 1995. Since the journal Behavior Genetics is sponsored by the BGA, some explanation is required as to why this presidential address is not published in the Association's own journal.

The primary topic of the address was ideologically-based dogma and taboo hampering the pursuit of knowledge in the science of behavior genetics. The response to the address has been such a parody of political correctness that it might appear to be an instance of collusion between the perpetrator and the detractors for the purpose of exposing an absurdity of our times. However sadly, there is no collusion. Both the author and the detractors appear to be sincere.

The address was presented at an evening banquet. The very next morning at a meeting of the BGA Executive Committee the author was shunned except for a brief scolding, and was the recipient of demeaning ad hominem asides. The Executive Committee busied itself with how to distance the BGA from the offensive talk. The editor of Behavior Genetics refused to publish the paper (contrary to understood policy) and the Executive Committee voted (with one abstention - mine) to issue an official statement of denouncement. Then shortly after the meeting there began a call for the author to resign from the BGA. As stated in a public mention of the affair (Science, 1995), officers of the BGA, and a few others, began to post condemnatory "open letters" on the BGA's electronic bulletin board.

The issuers of these calls for resignation seem to have lost track, in the finest Lysenkoist tradition, of the many distinctions between scientific organizations and political/religious organizations. Scientific organizations are composed of scientists with some common interests, wherein science consists of alternative hypotheses, the truth value of which is judged by their congruence with observable data. Typical as a scientific organization, the BGA bylaws state purposes which include the promotion of scientific study, assistance in training of research workers, and dissemination of knowledge. Nowhere in the BGA bylaws is there a creed or a listing of necessary beliefs.

On the other hand, political/religious organizations usually have an official creed, or party platform, to which members swear fealty. Those heretics that violate the faith are typically shunned, expelled, or forced to resign. Science has no heretics, and honest science does not thrive in an atmosphere of inquisitional control (Whitney, 1995). A century ago Andrew White (1896/1965) wrote an excellent historical account of the warfare between science and ideology.Although the battlefields shift, the war continues.

It would be highly misleading to leave the impression that the author is alone, adrift in a sea of condemnation. On the contrary, private letters of support and commendation greatly outnumber the public critics. In view of the attempt at censorship, I greatly appreciate the editors of The Mankind Quarterly providing an archival repository for the address:

TWENTY -FIVE YEARS OF BEHAVIOR GENETICS

Today there are more and better data concerning genetic influences on behavioral and neuroscience variables than ever before in history. We have tremendously benefited from the revolution in molecular genetic techniques - the new genetics. In 25 years behavior genetics has come from being a small field on the fringe of the social sciences to being recognized as central to an understanding of the human condition (Wiesel, 1994). Just a few weeks ago Science noted that the new director of NIMH should be someone who appreciated the role of genetics in mental health (Marshall, 1995). This is an amazing shift from 25 years ago when behavioristic environmental determinism still reigned supreme. We are obviously well into a paradigm shift of major dimensions, perhaps a true Kuhnian revolution in Science and Society (Barker, 1985; 1992; Kuhn, 1970). In the future it might be referred to as the Galtonian Revolution, on a par with the Copernican. The shift is but one illustration of the long-term self-correcting nature of science: Objective investigation of the real world, conducted with integrity and interpreted without intentional ideological bias, can eventually lead to real advance.

As has sometimes been the case for these after dinner talks, I want to take just a few minutes to share with you some personal reminiscences and some personal views. Twenty-five years ago I got my first full-time faculty position. This was after student days at Minnesota, a bit of a time-out for military service, and a post-doctoral stint in Colorado. At Colorado the Institute for Behavioral Genetics was a wonderful setting. Gerry McClearn and John DeFries, along with Jim Wilson, were running the place. There were a bunch of stimulating graduate students around: I recall Tom Klein studying the taste of mice and Boris Tabakoff messing with alcohol. Doug Wahlsten and I were side-by-side post-docs, Joe Hegmann had just left and Carol Lynch was just arriving. Wonderful friends and colleagues, all of them. The best of days in a stimulating environment.

Well then, I got hired to represent behavior genetics in the neuroscience program at Florida State University. A good program but vastly different in orientation. Not a lot of geneticists. I was there only a brief time when one of the old-timers who ran the place came by for a friendly chat. As polite southerners do, he began with a lengthy discussion of weather, trees, traffic, chiggers, and children. And then, finally, by-the-way, he said "Glayde, you know we hired you because we want genetics in our psychology program, but, as a Professor at a southern university, we hope you will have the good sense to keep away from that human business. Because of your location you would have no credibility, and none of us need the flak"!

Well. That in fact was consistent with my plans, I was busy setting up a mouse laboratory at the time and sure-enough had enough good sense to do passably well with mouse research. After all, I've still got the job and I've been invited here tonight.

To understand my mentor's concern, we need to view it in historical context. 1970 was an interesting time. Tallahassee, being a state capital with two state universities, had already had its share of demonstrations, riots, burning and looting. It was in 1970 that Black Panther supporters got around to killing jurors and a judge; 1970 that a mathematics building was bombed on the campus at Wisconsin, also with loss-of-Iife (Collier & Horowitz, 1995).

It was also in 1970 that our colleague Arthur Jensen was taking a lot of flak (Pearson, 1991 ). As everyone in behavior genetics knows, Jensen published an interesting review paper in 1969 (Jensen, 1969). Interesting but hardly ground breaking. As a student at Minnesota, I had had the course in differential psychology .With interesting textbooks (Anastasi, 1958; Jenkins & Paterson, 1961) and team taught by such professors as Lykken and Meehl. We had considered 50 years worth of data, and various interpretative theories. Jensen in 1969 had a few new data, by-and-large consistent with all that had gone before. No big deal scientifically, at least not to any student of behavior genetics from Minnesota. But obviously a great big deal in some circles.

Over the intervening 25 years it has become obvious that Jensen's sins were, and continue to be, two-fold. First, he did not stay within the confines of a reigning dogma, and second, he violated a current taboo.

The dogma of course is that of environmental determinism for all important human traits. This dogma has relaxed in recent years, at least for individual differences, and at least within science. But the dogma has not relaxed for group differences and has not relaxed within politics as differentiated from science. The attacks on Jensen, and by extension on all human behavior genetics, are clearly political, ideological, philosophical.

The Marxist-Lysenkoist denial of genetics, the emphasis on environmental determinism for all things human, is at the root of it (Davis, 1986; Medvedev, 1971; Pearson, 1991; Weiss, 1991). Economic oppression is at the root of all group differences and don't you dare say anything else. The Marxist invasion of left-Iiberal political sentiment has been so extensive that many of us think that way without realizing it.

It has been suggested that I should talk about "Marxitis" that is, the Marxist infection of ideas. Many of the scholars that suffer from Marxitis do not realize that they are infected. The symptoms of this disease include an intellectual bias, an insistence on environmental determinism as the acceptable cause of group differences. In severe cases, it includes an unbending intellectual absolutism akin to medieval scholasticism. It is lethal to honest science.

A couple of quotes from heretics that have left the movement: "the utopianism of the Left is a secular religion ... However sordid Leftist practice may be, defending Leftist ideals is, for the true believer tantamount to defending the ideals of humanity itself. To protect the faith is the highest calling of the radical creed. The more the evidence weighs against the belief, the more noble the act of believing becomes" (Collier & Horowitz, 1995, p. 246).

There is a "readiness to reshape reality to make the world correspond to an idea" (Collier & Horowitz, 1995, P. 37). There is a "Willingness to tinker with the facts to serve a greater truth" (Collier & Horowitz, 1995, p. 37). And so it has obviously been with many of the critics of behavior genetics. Over the last 25 years, as the scientific data accumulate, as the paradigm shifts, the stridency of the critics intensifies. Driven by ideology and not constrained by the truth, when all else fails they engage in misrepresentation and character assassination. They accuse their targets of committing the very propagandistic excesses that they themselves are doing (Avery, et. al.,1994; Beardsley, 1995; Brimelow, 1994; Gould, 1994; Kamin, 1995; Lane, 1994; Miller, 1994; Murray, 1994; Weyher, Lynn, Pearson, & Vining, 1995).

Some one among them coined the term "Jensenism". Near as I can tell "Jensenism" consists of scientific integrity, outstanding technical competence, and objective honesty.

Well, Jensen's first sin was to venture outside the Left-Liberal Marxist dogma of environmental determinism. His second sin was even less forgivable, he violated a Taboo: He mentioned race outside the environmental envelope. The Behavior Genetics Association has been in existence for 25 years. The end of the Second World War was 50 years ago. Peter Brimelow (1995) has suggested that since the second world war we have been suffering what he calls "Adolf Hitler's posthumous revenge on America" (Brimelow, 1995, p. 1). The posthumous revenge is that the intellectual elite of the western world, both political and scientific, emerged from the war "passionately concerned to cleanse itself from all taints of racism or xenophobia" (Brimelow, 1995, p. xv). The aversion to racism has gone so far that the scientific concept of race itself is frequently attacked. The results are often ludicrous. For example, on three adjacent pages of a recent issue of Science we are led to believe that races do not exist, but that it is important to assess the genetic diversity of remaining native populations, and a black scientist at a black university should be funded to investigate the black genome as a route to appropriate treatment of diseases of blacks! (Kahn, 1994). The many and important distinctions between objective investigation of group characteristics, and prejudicial pejorative values are lost in apolitical atmosphere where objective reality is sacrificed to political creed.

Brimelow suggests that the term "racist" is now so debased that its new definition is "anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal". (Brimelow, 1995 p. 10, italics in original). He suggests that we feel uneasy because we have been trained - like Pavlov's dog - to recoil from any explicit discussion of race.

Let's test Brimelow's theory of emotional conditioning with just a couple of illustrations of data. Here and now is the setting for our experimental test. Here we are scientists, sophisticated with regard to behavior genetics. We tell our students that we are the scientists concerned with the causes of individual and group differences (Fuller & Thompson, 1978; Rowe, 1994 ). Any time you observe a phenotypic difference between definable groups, it is a reasonable scientific hypothesis that the difference might be caused by environmental difference between the groups, or the difference might be caused by genetic differences between the groups, or by some combination of genetic and environmental differences. Elementary.

The first figure has data from a UN demographic yearbook (United Nations, 1994). The variable here is murder rate per 100,000 of population, for a few countries. This is a typical representative figure: Among so-called advanced nations, or industrialized nations, the United States suffers a high murder rate. The environmental determinists have many theories, some complex and all critical to aspects of American society. Often we are asked, for instance, "why are Scandinavians in the U.S. so much more murderous than are Scandinavians in Scandinavia?" The answer is that they are not. The premise of the question is false.

The second figure has the same "industrialized" European, largely Caucasian, countries along with an estimate of the murder rate among whites in the U.S. Surely nothing to be proud of, the murder rate among whites is pretty consistent across countries, the rate among U .S. Caucasians is identical to England, and somewhat lower than the two Scandinavian countries. The United States is of course a multicultural, racially diverse country. This same point has been made previously, with data from different sources (Taylor, 1994).

The third figure has the murder rate for the United States across 22 years, by race. Obviously quite consistent, approximately a 9-fold difference averaged across years (Uniform Crime Reporting Program, 1988).

Like it or not, it is a reasonable scientific hypothesis that some, perhaps much, of the race difference in murder rate is caused by genetic differences in contributory variables such as low intelligence, lack of empathy, aggressive acting out, and impulsive lack of foresight.

The United Nations has a lot of indexes; another one is the HDI (that is, Human Development Index). The HDI is meant to index a bunch of desirable characteristics (such as longevity, knowledge, real income, etc. ). Overall, the U .S. ranks fifth among the nations in the HDI. To get fifth on the international list, you combine U.S. whites, who rank first, with US blacks who rank 3lst, a level similar to some other black countries (Eisenberg, 1995), and this after more than a generation of racially preferential social policies. If you equate for IQ, U .S. blacks are actually doing at least as well as U.S. whites (Hermstein & Murray, 1994).

Back to murder rates. Environmental determinists seem generally befuddled by murder, and most of their social policy suggestions, when implemented, seem to make matters worse rather than better. Of course environments do matter, and environmentalistically based policies do have an impact. In 1994, the murder rate in New Orleans, LA, reached 86.5, while in Richmond, VA, the murder rate was 77.9, for second-worst large city in the United States (Perlstein, 1995). Obviously, the environmental determinists are not benign; they do not occupy amoral high ground; their policy recommendations do have consequences.

We can do a pretty good job of predicting differential murder rates, simply by considering racial composition of the population. For example, in the fourth figure we have aggregate data across the 50 states of the United States. The simple correlation between murder rate and percent of the population that is black, is r= +0.77. For Figures 4 and 5, the homicide data are from the U .S. Department of Justice (1981), while the population percentages are from the 1980 census (Race, 1981). I know of no environmental variable that accounts for more of the variation. Rather than the 50 states, we can look at all of the 170 cities in the United States that had a 1980 population of at least 100,000. With 170 data points, it would make a messy scatter-plot; the overall correlation between murder rate and percent of the population which is black is r= +0.69 (Kleck & Patterson, 1993; Kleck, 1995).

Simply for illustrative purposes, the fifth figure is the rate-by-state as in figure 4, but with the values for Washington, DC included. As you can see, the very high murder rate for Washington, DC is simply what one would predict, given knowledge of its population composition.

We could go on-and-on, there are books-full of variables (Baker, 1981; Rushton, 1995). But this is enough to conclude the Brimelow Test.

Do you have an emotional reaction? I know I do: Uncomfortable to even consider; Anxious; Repulsed; Upsetting. I conclude that I have been quite thoroughly conditioned. The Taboo against considering race runs deep. But some of our social problems continue to get worse.

I would like to conclude on an uplifting and happy note. But what to say? Perhaps the optimistic prediction that over the next 25 years, as we get further into the second century of the Darwinian revolution, we in behavior genetics will do for group differences what we already have accomplished with individual differences.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Richard Hagan for thoughtful comments on an earlier draft, Sharon Wittig for assistance in preparation, and Paul M. Hammersten for valuable assistance with references.

References

Avery, R. D., et. al. (with 51 co-authors)
1994 Mainstream science on intelligence. The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994, A-18

Baker, J. R.
1981 Race. Foundation for Human Understanding. Athens, GA. (original work published 1974, Oxford, U.K, Oxford University Press. Not available in U.S.).

Barker, J. A.
1985 Discovering the Future. St. Paul, MN: IU Press
1992 Future Edge. New York: William Morrow & Co.

Beardsley, T.
1995 For whom the bell curve really tolls. Scientific American, January,
1995, 14-17

Brimelow, P.
1994 For whom the bell tolls. Forbes, October 24, 1994, 153-163
1995 Alien Nation. New York: Random House Collier, P.,

& D. Horowitz
1995 Destructive Generation. Los Angeles, CA: Second Thoughts Books Davis, B. D.
1986 Stonn over Biology. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books

Fuller, J. L, & W. R. Thompson
1978 Foundations of Behavior Genetics. St Louis: C.V. Mosby Eisenberg, L
1995 Is the family obsolete? The Key Reporter, 60, No.3, 1-5

Jenkins, J. J. & D. G. Paterson (Eds.)
1961 Studies in Individual Differences. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.

Jensen, A. R.
1969 How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement? Harvard Educational Review, 39., 1-123

Kamin, L J.
1995 Behind the curve. Scientific American, February, 1995, 99-103

Kleck, G.
1995 Personal communication, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, February 17, 1995

Kleck, G., & E. B. Patterson
1993 The impact of gun control and gun ownership levels on violence rates. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 9, 249-287

Kuhn,T. S.
1970 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Lane, C.
1994 The tainted sources of "The Bell Curve". The New York Review of Books, December 1, 1994, 14-19

Marshall, E.
1995 NIMH: Caught in the line of fire without a general. Science, 268, 632.

Over two hundred years ago, one of the most influential of the social critics that made the Enlightenment was Francois Marie Arouet. Even though Voltaire deemed it prudent to write anonymously under a pen name, still he was imprisoned for eleven months and spent years in exile. One of his most famous quotations became a central pillar of American freedom. It was in 1770 that Voltaire wrote, "Monsieur l'Abbe, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write."

Now over two hundred and twenty five years later, with the great good fortune to be living in the "Land of the Free", under the protection of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, and with the further umbrella of academic tenure -- an institution whose only purpose is to make possible the speaking of truth to power -- it is still with great trepidation that I pen this preface.

David Duke has the distinction of being the only American politician to be smeared more viciously than Patrick Buchanan. With the entire establishment against him: press, church and state, he won public office as a state representative. In a bid for Governor, he defeated in the first primary, the sitting republican Governor, and then lined up against a dubious democrat character with a reputation for graft and corruption. Vastly outspent, one of the prime slogans against Duke that appeared on bumper stickers throughout the state was "Vote for the Crook --It's Important." The crook won. Corruption was preferable to political apostasy. Even so, Duke won a landslide of more than 60 percent of European-American voters in each of two statewide races.

Duke has endured an intense and unrelenting smear campaign for decades. Once you read this book you will know why he has been attacked by those of immense power. He challenges all the sacred cows of modern life, and he does so with intelligence and emotion.

Voltaire and David Duke are warriors in a conflict that is as old as civilization. The Harvard biologist, historian and philosopher of science Ernst Mayr suggested that as human populations evolve from savagery to civilization their approach to knowledge takes one or another of two paths. One approach leads to modern rationality, including the values of post-Enlightenment free societies and the questing after truth that forms the basis of modern science. The other approach leads to totalitarianism based in dogmatic authority. The direction toward freedom, traceable back to the philosophies of ancient Greece, is unique to Western European Civilization.

The direction toward rationality and science traces to the first recorded Western philosopher, Thales of Miletus (c.636 --c. 546 BC). Thales maintained that to gain knowledge and understanding one should start with naturalistic observation, that is, descriptions of events as they exist in the real world. We should then seek natural explanations for natural phenomenon. A third major position was that it is acceptable, even encouraged, to question existing explanations, to entertain diverse viewpoints, to have the freedom to use criticism in order to improve knowledge and theories. These three principles, which trace to the beginnings of recorded Western thought, capture the essence of modern freedom and science. Alas, from Thales' time down to the David Duke of today, this approach has been a minority position under constant attack.

The road to dogma starts with assertions of knowledge based in authority. Marxian economics, Boasian egalitarianism, and Freudian psychoanalytic theory equally well illustrate dogmatic belief systems. Not only are criticism and questioning not encouraged, they are condemned. The questioner is shunned, outcast, outlawed and labeled a heretic, hater and evil sinner. David Duke is a questioner.

It is clear from David Duke's autobiography that he was an intelligent, indeed a precocious child, and much of a free-thinker from the beginning. An impartial clinical psychologist might detect elements of an oppositional personality in his self-description. An essential feature of such a child is a provocative opposition to authority figures. When told how things are, such a child asks "why" a bit more than is usual. If bright enough, the child might take great delight in checking the facts for himself. Rare is the student that digs in the library for the original sources. DSM-3, a now somewhat dated psychiatric diagnostic manual says, "The most striking feature is the persistence of the oppositional attitude even when it is destructive to the interests and well-being of the child or adolescent." Seekers of truth, shifters of paradigms, innovators in civilization, have shared such traits, and have often failed to outgrow them, whether they be Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, William Shockley or David Duke.

It is easy to imagine how a brilliant child from a traditional Christian background, but with oppositional tendencies, might be profoundly affected by growing up in a southern city through the turmoil of the civil rights movement. Starting from an unquestioning acceptance of Christian and American ideals [and still a believer in both, I should add] as learned from home, church, school, and media: equality for all, loving brotherhood of all men, turn-the-other-cheek, the sermon-on-the-mount, and do unto others. Imagine the life-wrenching shock for such a precocious child who relates intellectually, as well as with deep emotion, to the inscription on the Jefferson Monument, "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [Negroes] are to be free.", but then uncovers for himself the full context of the quote, the next sentence from which was taken the inscription: "Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government." But David Duke tells this tale of his awakening much better than I can paraphrase.

David Duke's awakening is presented here in three interconnected major themes of his discoveries of honest truths that are politically incorrect. One of his honest truths is that from a thorough immersion in modern science he became convinced that racial egalitarianism is the scientific equivalent of the flat-Earth theory. He rejects the smear of "racist" while maintaining that the true data are very different from those that most of us have been led to believe. A second of his sets of honest truths is that a powerful and cohesive self-serving group has promoted a dishonest and hypocritical version of egalitarianism that is inimical to the interests of Western Christian Civilization He rejects the smear of "anti-Semite" while maintaining that the true data are very different from those that most of us have encountered through the mass media.

In a style to be expected from a sincere oppositional who is truth-telling as best he can, David Duke's ultimate challenge to his reader not to take his word for it, but to check it out for yourself. Toward that end he provides on the order of a thousand references and footnotes. The gauntlet is clearly thrown down Here is the evidence, here are the sources: Check it out for yourself.

It is a powerful approach. It is the approach of Western Civilization traceable right back to Thales. No amount of dogmatic name-calling, no smear, no hate-speech laws, no internet filters, no criminalization of history, not even total quarantine and book-banning, can stand against a simple guide to where the truth is to be found. If read by his fellow citizens David Duke's story of his own awakening might awaken them as well, and in so doing rattle civilization to its very core.

How is it that I came to write this preface to a book written by a man that I have never met in person? David Duke tells us how he dreamed to become a scientist and instead, growing in the turbulent urban south, he was diverted into a life of politics. I, on the other hand, had the fortune, good or bad, to be born in Montana and raised in Minnesota. I was fully adult before I had many real encounters with racial or ethnic diversity and have never been into politics. Fascinated since childhood by animal diversity, and also an avid birdwatcher, I trained toward a scientific career at the interface of evolution, genetics, and psychology. Raised in Minnesota I became a Hubert Humphrey liberal - and remain one to this day. Equality of opportunity for each individual, equal treatment before the law, in an orderly society with rule-of-law, these are ideals I treasure.

The social disruptions of the middle and late 1960s that formed David Duke were never a real part of my personal experience. At Alamogordo New Mexico, just down the road from the Trinity Site and on the edge of the White Sands Missile Range, we were helping to reach for the Moon Research preparatory for the Apollo Missions was a heady assignment for a young scientist. By the time I returned to civilian life and to a position as a faculty member at a state university, the worst of the troubled times were over.

One of my favorite senior colleagues, a mentor at my new university, cautioned that although I was into behavior genetics, it would be prudent to avoid that "human business." He said that being at a southern university I would have no credibility, and that none of us needed the flak. He had once published a scholarly paper dealing with the tested intelligence of black and white school children - and had been savaged by vicious ad hominem attacks and personal threats. Those were hassles that I did not need, especially since there were so many other intellectually challenging research opportunities. It was easy to climb into the ivory tower of basic research.

Over the years I did my research and followed that of others, raised a family and had little or no interest in politics. Still, there were discussions of some pretty silly things. Like blatant racial discrimination under the label of "affirmative action" Embarrassingly unprepared and incapable people being cajoled into situations for which they were unsuitable while competent potentials were being turned away. As time went on, the public rhetoric became ever more distant from the scientific realities. The technical questions had always been why -- what were the reasons for the large intellectual gap between blacks and whites? As the hard scientific data came in, it became more certain that genetic differences (heredity) played a large role in the discrepancy. But in public it became politically incorrect to even acknowledge that there was a difference.

It was disturbing that some of my respected scientific colleagues seemed to be less than candid. The private discussions at scientific meetings became weirdly disjointed from public pronouncements. Simply, scientists lied by omission and by commission Some had a frankly elitist attitude, that "the masses" could not be trusted with the truth. The famous Richard Lewontin is quoted as having written "Sometimes even scientists tell conscious lies to make a point." He should know. Honesty had always been to me the first and the highest of scientific requirements. But some of my colleagues in science had a different agenda.

Completely separately from David Duke, my inquiries led to essentially the same places and some of the same conclusions, that he spells out in this book. My own "awakening" involved a second major wake-up call on that most forbidden of subjects. It resulted from a close friendship with an extended family, Americans of Christian Lebanese ancestry. Through long talks with "Uncle Mike", a kindly physician who was the family patriarch, I learned of the naked aggression of Israel against the Palestinian people. Slowly, my eyes were opened to an international racism that was at least as pernicious as that alleged against David Duke. At the same time, I discovered that Duke's "racism" was not born of hatred, but of science and of history.

At the present time in Western science, I believe that an important distinction must be acknowledged between individuals and Judaism as a group endeavor. As individuals, scientists of Jewish ancestry cover the entire spectrum of interpretations and approaches to race and heredity. To mention just two individuals, the late Richard Herrnstein was a co-author of The Bell Curve, (1994), while Michael Levin, author of Why Race Matters, (1997), has withstood much wrath for his truth telling. From personal experience in academia, it is sometimes hard to believe that Jews constitute only 2% or 3% of the general population Individuals of Jewish ancestry are vastly overrepresented in the ranks of highly successful scientists. They are among my best students and closest friends.

Organized Jewry, on the other hand, dogmatically attempts to keep the general population from awareness of the findings of modern science. The Anti-Defamation League [ADL] of B'nai B'rith [BB] was founded in 1913 from its father organization the B'nai B'rith. The B'nai B'rith promoted socialist and egalitarian revolution It was founded in the decade of The Communist Manifesto amid widespread unrest throughout Europe. From that time Jewish chauvinism, communism and Zionism were all intertwined.

The confounding and confusion of Semitism and socialism that occurred at the beginning continues to the present day. Anti-liberalism is apparently often confused with anti-Semitism within the present-day Jewish community. To illustrate, in the newsletter Details for July 1997, published by "The Jewish Policy Center", Rabbi Daniel Lapin explained why he thought anti-Semitism and Jewish liberalism are intertwined: "They realize that liberalism . . . is largely responsible for the fact that life in America has become more squalid, more expensive and more dangerous over the past 30 years. Thus, many decent Americans are disturbed by Jewish support for liberalism and liberal causes. Though virtually all Americans are too decent to let this blossom into full-fledged anti-Semitism, there is always that threat. We can 'tweak the lion's tail' only so long." (p.1-2).

Early on, Jewish intellectual leaders boasted of the racial distinctiveness and superiority of the Jewish people. Only later did the strange strategy evolve that Jewish distinctiveness could only be preserved by eliminating distinctiveness among non-Jews. Franz Boas and other Jewish intellectuals believed that the Jewish people would only be safe with the elimination of all vestiges of racism among the Gentiles. From there, it was a short step to using other groups in furtherance of the Jewish agenda, such as founding the NAACP, and adopting cryptic "behind the scenes" financing and control of Black and Gentile front organizations. David Duke provides many of the references, in the Jewish triumphalist literature.

The Anti-Defamation League may have been founded to counter bigotry, sadly it has transformed into one of the most bigoted of organizations. Wielding the two mega-smears of "racist" and "anti-Semitic" it attacks whomsoever it dislikes. Just as Peter Brimelow (in Alien Nation) pointed out that the new definition of "racist" is anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal," so an "anti-Semite" has become anyone out of favor with the ADL.

One of the most chilling documents that I have encountered in many years is B'NAI B'RITH Reports and Analyses (available on the Internet at bnaibrith.org). It goes on for page after page listing legislative initiatives in many countries to criminalize -- whatever they dislike! Much of what Voltaire and the American First Amendment is dedicated to, as well as Thales' approach to civilization, are completely alien to this mindset. Dislike a book (there are quite a few titles that are disliked), criminalize its distribution. Go to jail for possession Speech -- say something insensitive or unpopular, go to jail and pay a fine. Newspaper--shut it down, go to jail, pay a fine, for possession or distribution Question a "sacred truth" of History --don't you dare, go to jail, pay a fine, lose your passport, no visa. Distasteful symbols, flags, jewelry --go to jail, etc. etc. What they have not yet managed to have outlawed, they say they are now "monitoring." And these same people are avidly pushing for federalization of newly invented crimes and "hate offenses" in the United States. The activities listed in this document, if nothing else, would induce me to heartily recommend the book written by David Duke.

As we approach the beginning of the third millennium from the birth of Jesus, western society is poised on a cusp. We are toying with a path that leads to another Dark Age; a possible millennium of censorship, speech codes and hate thought laws. Blasphemers, free thinkers and honest people could be suppressed. Thought-crime and hate-speech law advocates are substituting ideological suppression for honest science. We could fall into another totalitarian Dark Age, or rational freedom could prevail. The balance of past history does not encourage blind optimism. Alternatively, the path from ancient Greek philosophy to freedom and modern science, which is unique to Western Christian Civilization, could lead to a greater Golden Age.

As a scientist who specializes in the field of Behavioral Genetics, I must tell you that I have gone over David Duke's considerable data on genetics and race and find it in line with the latest scientific discoveries and knowledge in this area. His grasp of this area of research is quite remarkable for having a degree in History rather a doctorate in the biological disciplines. As to the meaning he poses for the racial truth he tells, politics is his realm, not mine. But, it is fascinating to see how his political life has been an outgrowth of an intimate relationship with the natural world as a child, and then later his study of it in scientific books and extracts.

As I read this book and prepared for this preface, one word kept coming to my mind: powerful. Indeed, even though I know that contributing this preface could lead to some discomfort from those who hate free speech, it seemed to me that this book was more than just a book. It is a painstakingly documented, academically excellent work of sociobiological-political history that has the potential to raise tremendous controversy and change the very course of history. My Awakening has the prospect of becoming to the race issue, what Wealth of Nations is to capitalism or Das Kapital is to Marxism. Moreover, David Duke's notoriety gives this book the chance to be read. It will not easily be hidden away.

What of politics, and what of David Duke? About the path of politics from the cusp on which we are perched, I cannot say. Scientists have never been particularly adept at politics. History could come to treat David Duke in many different ways. Perhaps he will be remembered as a Moses-like prophet who upon awakening them, led his people out of bondage. Perhaps he will be remembered not at all: down George Orwell's memory hole as civilization sinks into another Dark Age. Perhaps he will be remembered as a John-the-Baptist, a wee bit too early, one who awakened his people and paved the way for the future.

"Stand Up and Tell the Truth," a line from this book, could just as well be the title of this remarkable autobiography from a remarkable man. He has had the courage to live it and to write it, to lay down on paper the results of a lifetime of study, reflection and activism. We can only hope that many of his fellow citizens will have the courage to read and discuss it.

Glayde Whitney, Tallahassee, August 1998 (Glayde Whitney is a past president of the Behavior Genetics Association).

If memory serves, D'Alemberte was a Rhodes Scholar. While that usually implies a high measure of intelligence, it also should imply a high measure of ultra- liberalism and all its adjuncts. In short, D'Alemberte would be expected to denounce the author's views - or lose his place among The Kings.

Ideology and Censorship in Behavior Genetics

TWENTY -FIVE YEARS OF BEHAVIOR GENETICS

Acknowledgments

References

Glayde Whitney, 62; Author of Controversial Theory on Race, Genes