BYRON ROTH

THE WAR ON
HUMAN NATURE

THE NATIONAL POLICY INSTITUTE

THE WAR ON
HUMAN NATURE
BYRON M. ROTH
Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Dowling College
The National Policy Institute
Research & Analysis
May 15, 2015

Enormous strides have been made

in recent years
in unraveling the evolutionary basis of human nature. Among other thing,
this work totally undermines the Behaviorist view that everything human is
environmentally determined. Behaviorism, for decades, hindered serious
progress in the social sciences; it is well that it be put to rest.
Unfortunately the pervasive influence of Cultural Marxism and the tactics of its
adherents have prevented evolutionary approaches from spreading widely in the
human sciences. This is apparent in the persistent rejection of any discussion of the
biological basis of human racial differences, nowhere more so than in issues relating
to IQ. This rejection in unfazed by the fact that there are few, if any, constructs
in the social sciences more powerful than IQ. It correlates with and predicts an
extremely wide range of social phenomena including, but not limited to, school
and economic performance, criminal behavior, differences in wealth between

2 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

nations, and demographic groups within nations. Among research psychologists

this is well known and not particularly controversial. Equally well-known is that,
based on decades of research, IQ is, in large measure, genetically determined.

Among elite opinion makers, however, the importance and predictive power of
IQ is denied, as is the idea that it is genetically based. This denial is completely
at variance with 100 years of research on IQ and the consensus opinion among
research scientists. For example, the American Psychological Association (APA),
in response to the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve, created a task force
to examine the questions raised, and in 1996 acknowledged the validity and
reliability of IQ tests. In addition, the task force also endorsed the idea that IQ
is, to a significant extent, heritable, though it remained agnostic on the issue of
genetically determined racial differences.[1]

The practical value of IQ is indicated by the reliance in recruitment by two of

the nations most important institutions upon measures that are, for all intents
and purposes, IQ tests. Colleges make extensive use of SAT and ACT scores
in the admission process. Both of these tests correlate very highly with IQ
tests. Likewise, the United States armed forces use the AFQT (Armed Forces
Qualifying Test) in selecting recruits. The test is based on performance on four
subtestsWord Knowledge (WK), Paragraph Comprehension (PC), Arithmetic
Reasoning (AR), and Mathematics Knowledge (MK). Given the similarity of
the abilities measured by the AFQT and standard IQ tests, it is hardly surprising
that the two are highly correlated. Both college admissions tests and the AFQT
are regularly used by researchers as reliable proxies for IQ tests.

[1]

Ulric Neisser, et. al., Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, American Psychologist, 31:2, (1996),
77-101.

3 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

Nevertheless, most intellectuals eschew the idea that important human

characteristics and abilities are genetically determined. The reasons are plain,
since for at least from txhe late 1960s, the social sciences and humanities have
been dominated by self-conscious egalitarians. The journalist John Derbyshire

Given the demonstrable reality of

natural selection and the resultant
evolution that it creates, the notion
that the human mind is a blank
slate is simply untenable.
has called one of the central beliefs of such academics the Dogma of Zero
Group Differences, or DZGD; it holds that there there are no inherent human
characteristics; human nature is a social construct. In this view, human behavior
is culturally determined and the product of social and class conditioning. It
follows that, barring certain inconvenient social distinctions, all people must
be equal in their abilities and temperament; at the very least, they possess equal
human potential. Therefore, any differences in economic or social status are the
result of the social conditioning, and more often than not, attributed to the
exploitation of the powerless by ruling elites. The powerless are, in this view,
induced to accept their oppression because they have been indoctrinated by the
ruling class into thinking that their inferior status is the necessary result of their
inferior abilities. Put another way the working class is induced to accept the
false understanding (false consciousness) that modern societies are meritocratic
rather than organized and manipulated to benefit those in power.[2]
[2]

A different version of this belief system, which is broadly popular among self-described conservatives

4 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

Evolutionary explanations undercut this view since, from the evolutionary

perspective, a substantial number of human characteristics must be determined by
genes shaped by thousands of years of natural selection. Given the demonstrable
reality of natural selection and the resultant evolution that it creates, the notion
that the human mind is a blank slate is simply untenable.[3] Nevertheless this
conclusion is rejected by most all of the left-right spectrum, including many of
those who claim to believe in evolution.

The dogmatic rejection of any genetic explanations for human difference was
glaringly revealed in the lefts response to the publication in 1975 of Sociobiology
by the eminent Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson.[4] Wilson argued
that the nature of animal social behavior, including human social behavior, was
governed by the same rules of evolution that shaped all the other features of living
things; that human behavior is not immune to natural law and that, in effect,
there is a human nature that cannot be easily modified by social conditioning.
From this view, boys like guns and girls like dolls, because that is the way they
are and no amount of conditioning can erase that difference.

Wilson came under attack by the aptly named Sociobiology Study Group of
Science for the People, an attack vigorously supported by the well-known leftwing scientists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. The Study Group did
not simply claim that Wilson was mistaken in his science, but that his position
was morally tainted and a barely hidden assertion of the inferiority of various
and libertarians, holds that human potential varies greatly between individuals; however, there are no
significant differences between races.
[3]

See Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002)

[4]

Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge MA:. Belknap Press, 1975).

5 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

non-White racial groups. The fact that Wilson never discussed racial differences
in his book (race does not appear anywhere in the index) did not exonerate him
from the charge of malicious intent. Wilsons critics argued that evolutionary
explanations survive because they consistently provide a genetic justification of
the status quo and of existing privileges for certain groups according to class, race
or sex. His book betrayed the personal and social class prejudice of the author.
And he joins a long parade of those whose work has served to buttress the
institutions of their society by exonerating them from responsibility for social
problems.[5] Wilson was hounded for many years by student demonstrators
and was often prevented from speaking before university audiences. In one
well-known incident at a 1978 meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, antagonists commandeered the podium as Wilson
was scheduled to speak, delivered a five-minute diatribe against him and his
works, and concluded by pouring a pitcher of water over him. . . . [6]

It should be stressed that that this was an extreme reaction against any claim
for the biological basis for human differences. Many social scientists accepted
the reality of human biological differences at the level of the individual.
However, no such explanations were acceptable for differences between
groups. If groups differ, on average, in income or school performance or
rates of crime or illegitimacy, these must be due to differential treatment by
society and, in particular, to the ethnocentrism, racism and sexism of the
majority White population. This view on racial differences emerged in the
1960s and had, by the 1970s, become an unchallengeable orthodoxy, even
in supposedly conservative circles and remains so to this day, now under the
guise of political correctness.
[5]

Sociobiology Study Group of Science for the People, SociobiologyAnother Biological Determinism,
BioScience, 26:3 (March 1976), reprinted in Arthur L. Caplan, ed., The Sociobiology Debate (New
York: Harper and Row, 1978), 280-281.

[6]

Arthur Fisher, Sociobiology: Science or Ideology? Society, 29:5, 74.

6 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

The fate of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murrays book, The Bell Curve, which
came out about 20 years after Wilsons book, is instructive.[7] The main thesis
of the book was that group differences in social and economic success could be
based, in large measure, on genetic causes. That book, which spent 15 weeks on
the New York Times best-seller list in 1994-95, has dropped down the memory
hole in elite academic circles, even though at the time it was a major focus
of controversy. In 1994, the Wall Street Journal published a statement by noted
educational researcher Linda Gottfredson, and endorsed by a large number of
individuals readily recognized as the most illustrious researchers in psychology
and related fields. Quoting Gottfredson:
Since the publication of The Bell Curve, many commentators have
offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current
scientific evidence. Some conclusions dismissed in the media as
discredited are actually firmly supported. The following conclusions
are fully described in the major textbooks, professional journals
and encyclopedias in intelligence. Intelligence is a very general
mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability
to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend
complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not
merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking
smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for
comprehending our surroundingscatching on, making
sense of things, or figuring out what to do. . . . Intelligence, so
defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well.[8]

In the 20 years since The Bell Curve was published, the suppression of the
fundamental truths in that book grows even more outrageous. Charles Murray
[7]

Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American
Life (New York: Free Press, 1994).

[8]

Linda Gottfredson, Mainstream Science on Intelligence, Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994.
Reprinted in Intelligence: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 24:11 (1997), 13-23.

7 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

is hardly exaggerating when he argues that in academia, assistant professors

know that their chances of getting tenure will be close to zero if they publish
politically incorrect findings on climate change, homosexuality, race differences,
gender differences, or renewable energy.[9] Simply adopting incorrect views is,
in academia, to be ostracized and shunned by colleagues.

Unfortunately, this kind of suppression of dissent has infiltrated all walks of life
and has had a poisonous effect on the onetime valued ideal of a free exchange of
ideas. For instance, in addressing Black-White gaps in education one must claim
to believe that such differences are always attributable to social causes and never
to any inherent characteristics of individuals. For instance, if Black children
are disciplined more frequently in school, it can only be attributed to teachers
biases. It can never be due to the fact that Black children are many times more
likely to engage in criminal acts on the streets when not in school, and do not
drop their propensities simply by walking through the schoolhouse door.

To argue that group differences have their basis in genetics is to jeopardize ones
career. The case of the otherwise impeccably leftist Lawrence Summers teaches
us a great deal. This economist was forced to resign as president of Harvard
University in 2006 for suggesting a possible genetic explanation for differences
in scientific achievement between the sexes. His suggestion is hardly exceptional,
and, in fact, is based on well-established research that has been well-known for
years, namely that most characteristics are more widely distributed among men
than among women; i.e., there are more males than females at the extreme
tails, top and bottom, of the bell curve. Therefore it is perfectly reasonable to
argue that among those scientists who have made extraordinary contributions,
[9] Charles Murray, In Defense of Jason Richwine, National Review Online, May 15, 2013.

8 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

there are likely to be more men than women.[10] Before assuming the presidency
at Harvard, Summers had been a major economic advisor in the Clinton
administration, and after leaving Harvard served in the Obama administration
and was the key economic decision-maker in President Obamas response to the

Nobel laureate geneticist James

Watson, one of the most celebrated
scientists of our time, came under
virulent attack for expressing a
forbidden opinion on race.
recession of 2007-2008. The fact that he was a respected economist, and one who
had served in a liberal Democratic administration, provided him no immunity
from the wrath of those who deny the reality of human biological differences.

Nobel laureate geneticist James Watson, one of the most celebrated scientists of
our time, came under virulent attack for expressing a forbidden opinion on race.
In a long interview published in the London Sunday Times, Watson commented
on Western policies with respect to Africa that are based on the fact that their
intelligence is the same as ourswhereas all the testing says not really. Further,
[T]here is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual
capacities of people geographically separated in their evolution
should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to preserve
[10]

Jacob Sullum, Brain Storm: Can we Talk About Sex Differences in Math and Science Aptitude
Without Yelling? Reason Online, January 21, 2005

9 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

equal powers of reason as some universal human heritage of

humanity will not be enough to make it so.

He suggested that new approaches were probably needed to help Africans escape
their unfortunate circumstances. For these perfectly defensible statements, he was
widely vilified and relieved of his duties at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
He had been its director for 35 years and under his leadership it became a
world-leading center for basic research in cancer and molecular biology.[11] In
late 2014, Watson revealed that he was selling his Nobel Prize because he was
short of cash and no-one really wants to admit I exist.[12]

The fate of lesser-known individuals who deviate from egalitarian orthodoxy is

not so widely publicized. Christopher Brand, a highly respected British scholar
published a book on group IQ differences that produced such uproar among his
critics that his publishers cancelled his contract and went so far as to recall all the
books it had already distributed to bookstores. He was subsequently dismissed
from his position at Edinburg University, although the university eventually
settled with him for unlawful dismissal.[13]

In the United States, deviating from accepted opinion about universal natural
equality and biological sameness results in ostracism or loss of employment. In
countries that lack free-speech protections, dissenting from the accepted views
is criminalized. J. Philippe Rushton was investigated by the Ontario police for
[11]

Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, The Elementary DNA of Dr. Watson, The Sunday Times, October 14, 2007.

[12]

Keith Perry, James Watson selling Nobel prize because no-one wants to admit I exist, The
Telegraph, November 28, 2014; accessed January 15, 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
science/11261872/James-Watson-selling-Nobel-prize-because-no-one-wants-to-admit-I-exist.html.

[13]

Ruth Bell and Ehsan Masood, Race and IQ Psychologist in Inquiry over Teaching Conduct. Nature,
381, 6578, (1996), 105.

10 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

possible prosecution for a paper he presented on racial differences at an academic

conference in 1989. According to Jonathan Rauch, writing in Reason magazine,
the police launched a six-month investigation of Rushton under Canadas
hate-speech prohibition. They questioned his colleagues, demanded tapes of
his debates and media appearances, and so on. If prosecuted and convicted,
Rushton might have been imprisoned for two year for using questionable
source data. Rauch explains, In the end, the attorney general decided not to
prosecute and settled for denouncing Rushtons ideas as loony.[14]

All of these sanctions serve to intimidate those who question the prevalent
egalitarian dogma and they appear to be working as planned. To quote Murray
We will never know what scientific work was avoided by scientists who wish
to avoid the scorn, harassment and ostracism that will result if they discover
something that contradicts the prevailing view.(Murray, In Defense of Jason
Richwine.) For those academics without tenure, the penalty for dissenting views
or research that reveals uncomfortable findings will result in the denial of tenure
and very likely in the denial of positions elsewhere. They are, in fact, driven
from positions they have devoted years to obtain and deprived of their very
livelihood. For young instructors supporting or helping to support families such
risks are unacceptably high.

Until now, physical scientists have not had to contend with political correctness,
but that is changing. The completion of the mapping of the human genome
and very recent advances in the ability to decode individual genes has led many
scientists to explore genetic components of disease, including racial differences
in disease patterns. This research has not always been welcomed, even though
[14]

Jonathan Rauch, The Truth Hurts: The Humanitarian Threat to Free Speech, Reason, April 1993.

11 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

it promises to lead to better diagnosis of diseases, which are more common in

some races, and in better treatments, some of which are more effective in some
races than in others.

University of Chicago geneticist Bruce Lahn came under fire for publishing
an important finding that two genes implicated in brain size (and perhaps
intelligence) were more common among people from Asia and Europe but
uncommon among people from Africa. One of the genes seems to have arisen
about 40,000 years ago, roughly at the time when the first modern humans
are thought to have appeared in Europe. The other gene was found mainly
in people from Europe and the Middle East and was thought to have arisen
about 6,000 years ago. Lahn speculated that the first may have been selected for
conditions in northern latitudes and the second may have been the product of,
or the explanation for, large-scale agriculture and the rise of early civilizations.
The clear implication of Lahns research is that these may be among those many
genes thought to influence the various differences between the three large racial
groups found in Africa, Asia, and Europe.[15] Offering biological evidence for
racial differences is, under the current regime, racist by definition. This point
was not lost on Lahns colleagues, whose personal attacks led Lahn to abandon
the study of brain differences.

This sort of ostracism is by no means practiced only on the left. Kevin Lamb was
summarily fired from his job as managing editor of the conservative newsweekly
Human Events when it was discovered that, in his free time, he was writing for and
editing The Occidental Quarterly, a journal that specializes in research and analysis
[15]

Rosenberg, et. al., Genetic Structure of Human Populations; Voight, et. al., A Map of Recent
Positive Selection in the Human Genome; Wade, Before the Dawn, 2006, 185-88; Williamson, et.
al., Localizing Recent Adaptive Evolution in the Human Genome.

12 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

on issues involving race, ethnicity, politics and culture. The journal in question
has been denounced as white supremacist since it promotes the idea that Western
Civilization is a product of the unique nature of European peoples.[16]

Jason Richwine was fired from his job as senior policy analyst at the Heritage
Foundation in 2013. This occurred two days after the Washington Post reported
that his Ph.D. dissertation argued that Hispanics have lower average intelligence
than White Americans and questioned current immigration policy. The unseemly
haste with which the Heritage Foundation acted, without even allowing
Richwine to explain the context of his argument, underscores what is now
obvious. A leading conservative think-tank ran to fire someone who questioned
the orthodox leftist position on racial differences.[17]

Well-known commentator and Contributing Editor at National Review, John

Derbyshire was also fired in 2012 because of a satirical piece he published in the
wake of the brouhaha over the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of
Trayvon Martin. The piece was a direct response to a highly publicized talk
that required black mothers to warn their teenage sons about the dangers posed
by White police. In his piece Derbyshire pointed to the hypocrisy of Blacks in
their prejudicial view of White police, when contrasted with the real threat of
Black crime. In his hypothetical talk with his children, he recited the dangers
to Whites posed by black thugs. Instead of taking this for what it was, i.e., a
serious rebuke to Black parents who instill fear of endemic White racism in their
[16]

Kevin Lamb, Forced Out: The Price of Speaking Freely in Multicultural America, Middle American
News, June 2005.

[17]

Michael Barone, In defense of Jason Richwine and Charles Murray, Washington Examiner, May 16,
2013; Murray, In Defense of Jason Richwine, op cit.; Jason Richwine, Why Cant We Talk About
IQ? Politico, August 9, 2013, accessed January 15, 2015, http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/
opinion-jason-richwine-95353.html.

13 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

children, Derbyshire was summarily fired for unacceptable thoughts. Of course,

the only people who should find this unacceptable are those who would deny
the staggering reality of Black crime.[18]

It would be an enormous challenge

to the unspoken consensus of
mainstream left-of-center politics
during the past fifty years. . . .

In explaining the hostility to evolutionary thinking in liberal academic circles,

Harvard evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker notes that findings of a genetic
basis for racial differences would put into question the assumption that all
group-wide social differences (e.g., in crime, poverty, and health) are caused by
discrimination or a rigged economic system. It would be an enormous challenge
to the unspoken consensus of mainstream left-of-center politics during the past
fifty years. . . .[19] In a similar vein, Charles Murray, in a review of Nicolas
Wades A Troublesome Inheritance, maintains that the book will not likely be
welcome since it challenges the orthodox position that genes play no role in racial
differences. Quoting Murray, true believers in the orthodoxy still dominate the
social science departments of the nations universities. I expect their resistance
[18]

John Derbyshire, The Talk: Nonblack Version, Takis Magazine, April 5, 2012; The Daily Caller, John
Derbyshire: National Review Race-Whipped Controversial Anti-Black Column Just Common
Sense, April 11, 2012; Joseph Kay, The Rationality of Firing John Derbyshire: Excess Truth-Telling
must be Stamped Out, American Renaissance, April 9, 2012.

[19]

Darth Quixote, 10 Questions for Steven Pinker, 8.

14 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

to A Troublesome Inheritance will be fanatical, because accepting its account

will be seen, correctly, as a cataclysmic surrender on some of the core premises of
political correctness.[20] It is obvious why the left would object to evolutionary
theories of human behavior that explain national, racial, and class differences,
since the rejection of the particularities of human beings have been a motivating
force of the Left since the French Revolution. The Right has generally been
comfortable with the idea that there is a natural hierarchy of talents among men,
and a spectrum of diverse abilities and temperaments. From this perspective,
nations reflect the particular nature of distinct historic peoples. For the Left,
any national or local attachments are but a retrograde tribalism that undermines
the ideal of a universal human solidarity. Certainly one of the most powerful
conservative argument against communist regimes, and leftism in general, is that,
in their attempt to abolish natural hierarchies and national loyalties, they crush
the diversity and uniquenesses within the human species. After all, if one views
difference as inherently unjust, how can one deny the need to abolish these inequities
and eliminate physically or marginalize those who promote them. Leftism can be
viewed, in this way, as a centuries-long revolt against human nature.

On a more mundane level, the reality of human differences is, as James Watson
suggested, the most powerful argument against the varied wasteful and generally
unpopular policies pursued in the name of fighting inequality. For instance, the
government has continued to spend enormous sums in the attempt to eliminate
racial disparities in educational attainment on the false premise that any such
differences are the result of bias, rather than the result of obvious differences in
ability. Fifty years of this effort have produced no reduction in racial differences
in academic performance. Currently, major efforts are underway to expand the
[20]

Charles Murray, The Diversity of Life, review of Nicholas Wade,A Troublesome Inheritance, Wall
Street Journal, May 3-4, 2014. Emphasis added.

15 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

efforts of the Head Start program into universal pre-schooling, which all research
has shown to be of no value in improving performance.[21]

A recognition of natural group differences would allow for a serious challenge

to programs of racial preferences in the form of Affirmative Action, minority
set-asides, and disparate impact rulings, all of which are premised on the
assumption that racial differences in ability and temperament do not exist.
An acknowledgment of fundamental differences between the sexes would
allow for a principled stand against the disturbing policy of placing women in
combat roles in the military and rules that require ignoring sexual differences
in hiring decisions. Similarly, rules that require equal expenditures on highschool athletic programs for males and females only make sense if there are
no sexual differences in athletic interests and abilities. The reader can add his
own examples to the list of foolish rulings based on the absurd assumption that
the only differences between boys and girls are secondary sexual characteristics.
Disparate impact rulings that fail to acknowledge racial and sexual differences
often undermine public safety. How could it be otherwise when the recognition
of group differences are made illegal in the recruitment of policemen, firemen,
soldiers and sailors?

Affirmative-action is profoundly contrary to the traditional American principles

of individual autonomy and responsibility, and totally inconsistent with the
bedrock American value of self-reliance. Such a policy is built on the hateful idea
of group guilt, of visiting the sins of the father on the son. Even if one accepts the
[21]

Teachers unions would obviously benefit by such an expansion, but so would American industry
in that it would free more women for entry into the labor force and put added pressure on the
wages of working men. As is true of so many current policies, there is a growing convergence of
interests between labor (natural constituents of the Left) and big businesses (natural constituents of
the Right).

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dubious assertion that Black difficulties are the result of slavery and Jim Crow,
that hardly requires the remedy of handicapping individuals born generations
later, whose ancestors, in almost all cases, had nothing to do with slavery or Jim
Crow. On what basis, furthermore, can a claim be made that recent Asian and
Hispanic immigrants are entitled to special consideration? Such a claim rests on
the patently false assertion that most Whites cannot be trusted to treat people
of different races fairly.

Differences in ability between groups have obvious social implications, but so

too do differences in temperament. The refusal to accept the reality of such
differences obfuscates the reasons for the great racial and sexual disparities in
criminal conduct. For instance, recent research indicates that certain variants
of the MAO gene are very much implicated in criminal behavior, and are
much more common in some racial groups than in others.[22] Likewise, the
huge disparities in violent criminal behavior between men and women are
inexplicable, absent an understanding of important temperamental differences
between the sexes. Denial of such differences hinders effective measures of crime
control. For example, the proactive crime prevention stop and frisk policies
of the New York City Police department necessarily leads to a racially disparate
impact in the people questioned by police. That practice, which obviously
must be partially based on racial and sexual profiling, is falsely claimed to be
evidence of racial discrimination. Of course, nobody questions why more men
than women are stopped and frisked by police. Why not? The answer, in the
case of sexual differences is obvious, but so is the answer in the case of racial
differences. Proactive policing in New York City dramatically reduced violent
crime, but that seemed to be of no consequence in a judges decision, rightly set
[22]

Lewis, P., The World Today, ABC Radio (Transcript) August 9, 2006; New Zealand Herald, Maori
Crime Rate Concerns Government. October 28, 2005; TVNZ, Police Tackling Maori Crime Rates.
November 10, 2005.

17 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

aside, that forbade the New York City police from continuing the use of this
highly effective tactic. In other words, public safety had to be compromised
on the dubious grounds that effective policing is racially motivated, no matter
that most perpetrators of violent crime, and most of its victims, are members of
racial minorities.[23]

An admission of important group differences would allow for a serious

examination of an immigration policy, opposed by most Americans, based on the
flawed multicultural notion that human beings are everywhere the same and can
be moved about the world without serious, and often negative, consequences.
For instance, the denial of differences between the human capital of North and
Central Americans results in the unquestioned support for family unification in
immigration policy and for continued support for birthright citizenship. The
entirely foreseeable consequence of this denial has been the flooding of America
with disproportionate numbers of Hispanic immigrants, who have educational
and economic difficulties.

One would think that the left, which makes so much of rising income inequality,
would be champions for curtailing mass immigration, which drives down wages
and employment, especially for those with limited academic skills. Surely massive
immigration is a major contributor to the wage stagnation afflicting American
workers. The Lefts attachment to open borders is plain and clearly reflects the
Lefts universalist multicultural ideology, but also reflects their venal desire
for boosting the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party. Poorly educated
Hispanic immigrants are ready-made recruits for the Democratic Party and
represent a vast source of clientele for those employed at all levels in an ever[23]

Joseph Goldstein, Judge Rejects New Yorks Stop-and-Frisk Policy, New York Times, August 12, 2013;
Goldstein, Court Blacks Stop-and Frisk Changes for New York, New York Times, October 31, 2013.

18 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

growing welfare state bureaucracy. Here, as in so many cases, the interests of labor
and industry converge.[24] Those immigrants, many of whom serve as clients in
the welfare state, are also an abundant source of labor, which, in depressing wages,
bolsters the bottom line of industrial and farm enterprises. It is important to
emphasize that it is not merely cheap manual labor that explains the eagerness of
the United States Chamber of Commerce to expand immigration. The leaders of
technology firms are among the most vociferous in claiming the need for increased
immigration quotas (and H1B visas) for STEM (science, technology, engineering
and mathematics) employees, on the false argument that such technically trained
people cannot be found among Americans. But this is a chicken-and-egg problem
of the industrys making. The easy availability of less expensive foreign technology
workers drives down wages and serves to discourage American students from
pursuing difficult and expensive educations. How can they be expected to compete
with foreigners for whom even low wages by American standards are much better
than anything they could have gotten at home.[25]

One of the most tragic consequences of the denial of human diversity has been
the decline of cities and the access to urban amenities for people of modest
means. Everyone is familiar with the depressing fact that large stretches of major
American cities are dysfunctional, ugly, and dangerous places, barely tolerable by
those who, for any number of reasons, are unable to leave. Not so well publicized,
[24]

See Peter Brimelow, Immigration is the Viagra of the State, Vdare.com, June 4, 2008, http://www.
vdare.com/articles/immigration-is-the-viagra-of-the-state-a-libertarian-case-against-immigration

[25]

Norman Matloff, On the Need For Reform Of the H-1B Non-Immigrant Work Visa in ComputerRelated Occupations (Invited Paper), University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Fall 2003,
Vol. 36, Issue 4, 815-914, 19-31; Patrick Thibodeau, Norman Matloff Tells Whats Wrong with
the H-1B Visa program, Computer World, September 8, 2008; Ron Hira, Do we Need Foreign
Technology Workers? The New York Times, April 8, 2009; William Branigan, Visa Program, HighTech Workers Exploited Critics Say, Visa Program Brings Charges of Exploitation, Washington Post,
July 26, 1998; National Academy, Brain Mobility, Issues In Science and Technology, Winter 2006;
Ralph E. Gomory and Harold T. Shapiro, Globalization: Causes and Effects, Issues In Science and
Technology, Summer 2003.

19 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

but obvious to the observant traveler, has been the havoc visited upon the urban
enclaves of the American heartland. Just about every mid-size American city has
seen its downtown hollowed out and its middle-class population relocated to
the suburbs. The term relocated is not used arbitrarily, but is chosen to highlight
the fact that this migration out of cities was not the result of some spontaneous
impulse, but rather the direct result of government policies that made those

One of the most tragic consequences

of the denial of human diversity has
been the decline of cities and the
access to urban amenities for people
of modest means.
cities uninviting and in many cases unlivable for middle-class individuals. What
good is it to live in a place where your child can walk to school, if the school is
all but useless academically, and if the walk to school is through neighborhoods
that are both aesthetically disfigured and unsafe. From Richmond, Virginia, to
Florence, South Carolina, in the south, to Buffalo, New York, and Camden,
New Jersey in the north, the pattern is sad and undeniable. The heroic efforts of
civic minded, usually older, individuals to revitalize their downtowns are often
to no avail. Their children and grandchildren, who were carried to the suburbs,
do not even know what has been lost.

Civil-rights advocates and bureaucrats who are unaware or ideologically blind

to the reality of human differences are, under Section 8 guidelines and antidiscrimination edicts, requiring the relocation of dysfunctional minority

20 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

families into the suburban enclaves to which many less-than-wealthy middleclass people retreated in an attempt to escape the depredations that beset many
urban neighborhoods. This effort is being pursued under the false assumption
that it is chaotic neighborhoods that create dysfunctional families. But research
clearly shows that it is the other way around: Dysfunctional people are simply
incapable of creating healthy communities.(ft: Hanna Rosen, American Murder
Mystery, The Atlantic, July/August 2008.) Common decency requires a concern
for, and need to assist, people who have difficulty in creating well-functioning
communities. It is sheer folly, however, to imagine that seriously maladjusted
people can be magically transformed by a ride down the road in a moving van.
This is, of course, the same mentality that imagines that a native of Somalia can
be metamorphosed into a blue-eyed Scandinavian by moving him to Minnesota.

It is not only the unfairness of Affirmative Action and other leveling policies
that should be of concern to thoughtful people. More important is that these
policies tend to obscure the far more serious problem of how to deal with the
problems technological progress present for people with limited intellectual
resources. In the past, such people could support themselves with menial jobs
on farms and in factories, and in a host of semi-skilled trades. But these sorts of
jobs are becoming increasingly rare. Lower and middle-class Americans with IQs
below the White average are caught in the pincers of labor-saving technologies,
off-shoring, outsourcing and the massive importation of labor. One result is a
growing underclass described so clearly by Charles Murray in his book Coming
Apart.[26] It has also led to a stagnation of wages for the middle-class and growing
income inequality. A serious conservative movement would wish to confront
this problem directly and attempt to find ways to deal with it. This is so because
a concern for the problems of ones less talented countrymen is rightly seen as a
[26] Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (New York: Crown Forum, 2012).

21 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

patriotic duty. The myth of equality serves to free elites from any real obligation
to those who have been less lucky in lifes genetic lottery. In this view, people
lacking marketable skills need only avail themselves of the unlimited educational
opportunities that America provides. It is facilely asserted that people who used
to assemble automobiles and television sets should be able to advance, through
education, to more technical remunerative occupations. But this supposes that
there will be many high-skilled jobs that cant be outsourced or off-shored, and
that almost all Americans have the capacity to be trained for such jobs. The first
supposition is highly unlikely; the second is patently absurd.

A problem of enormous human difficulty for modern societies is thus

confounded with what is a transient problem of race relations. The absurdities
of Affirmative Action can only be defended by a denial of the unfairness of lifes
lottery. Imagine anyone claiming that placing a short player on a professional
basketball team would enable him to overcome his disadvantage in height. That
is hardly different from claiming that a Black persons academic weakness can be
overcome by admission to an elite college. In both cases, the remedy is absurd
because the premise is absurd. Playing basketball with superior players will
not make the short man tall, nor will going to school with superior intellects
make the dumb student smart. Placing people in positions on artificial grounds
merely postpones the need to find practical means to address the base cause of
differential performance, and find ways to help people with lesser ability lead
self-sufficient and gratifying lives. This is a problem for all advanced societies
and not one unique to mixed race societies.

A serious attempt to assist less-capable Americans would require addressing the

sources of their difficulties, a primary source of which is American industrys
attachment to the doctrine of free trade, facilitated by the breakdown of national

22 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

borders. This allows for the location of production to low-wage countries

and increases corporate profits, the benefits of which accrue to investors
and industrial managers. Free trade, therefore, requires American workers
to compete with workers in countries with much lower standards of living,
resulting in lower wages and reduced employment opportunities. This wellknown phenomenon is treated as a natural and inevitable outcome of the laws
of economics. Recently, however, respected economists, such as Ian Fletcher,
have provided strong arguments that the theory of free trade is deeply flawed
and some form of protection is necessary to keep industries in America, where
they can provide decent salaries for American workers.[27] Ricardos principle of
comparative advantage, upon which the doctrine of free trade is based, claims
that every countrys prosperity can be maximized by doing what each does best.
Fletcher argues that Ricardos theory was based on a set of highly restricted
assumptions that are rarely satisfied today. Moreover, whatever the basis for a
countrys prosperity, there is no assurance that all individuals within a prosperous
country will prosper. In a global economy, just the opposite may be true; the
worlds most talented will prosper, while others will fall by the wayside. It little
matters to those unable to compete in a world market if they live in a prosperous
country but are impoverished nonetheless. It is hard to deny that an American
worker has a difficult time competing with workers who can live comfortably
on one-half to one-tenth the wage a reasonable living would require in America.

It bears repeating that our open-borders policy exacerbates the problem by

flooding the United States with low-skilled workers from Mexico and Central
America, who compete directly with similarly skilled Americans. The same is
true, as mentioned earlier, for middle-class Americans, who are squeezed by
[27]

Ian Fletcher, Free Trade Doesnt Work: What Should Replace It and Why (Washington: U.S. Business
and Industry Council, 2010).

23 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

competition from talented immigrants from almost every continent in the world.
The result, as Edwin Rubenstein has amply documented, is the erosion of wages
and employment opportunities for native-born Americans.[28] The argument
that a more populated America is a more prosperous America for all workers
was true so long as American enterprise dominated the world and the American
market was, in large measure, insulated from world competition; a rising GNP
could almost guarantee a rising per capita GNP. A bigger pie provides bigger
slices for everyone involved, but only so long as the population grows more
slowly than the size of the pie. However, if the number of people wishing to sup
grows, while the pie does not, many people must leave the table hungry, and
economic activity comes to resemble a zero-sum competition. In recent years,
the American share of world industry has been shrinking, but the number of
people seeking employment in American industry is rising.

A primary responsibility of a nations leaders is to forward the interests of all citizens.

A concern with the nations industrial competitiveness is certainly legitimate, but
must be tempered by a moral imperative to provide opportunities for less talented
individuals. No constitutional republic can remain healthy without a citizenship
made up of of self-sufficient and self-respecting individuals. A citizenship that
depends on government largess must inevitably descend into a debased democracy
and finally into tyranny. Too often such concerns are dismissed by both the Left
and the Right as relics of discredited theories of protectionism, and of xenophobia,
racism, sexism and all the other bogymen of political correctness.

Most of the policies that frustrate significant majorities of Americans could be

resolved by the simple admission that racial groups differ in important ways
[28]

Edward S. Rubenstein, National Data: September Data Shows Immigrants Displacing American Workers
Especially Blacks, Vdare.com, October 5, 2008.

24 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

and that such differences are as fixed as are differences in physiognomy; they
are simply not amenable to elimination by government edict. No amount of
government intervention can possibly eliminate group disparities in educational,
economic and social attainment. Any and all attempts to do so are not only
fraught with dangers to a free society but are bound to fail. Denying this reality
is to invite a heavy-handed totalitarianism that imposes a superficial and false
equality at the cost of human freedom and well-being. The history of the 20th
century bears undeniable evidence for this assertion: The leveling impulse, taken
to its ultimate conclusion. has not produced human equality; instead it has
destroyed societys decency and the dignity of its people.

Why, for instance, have mainstream

conservatives not endorsed the
growing consensus that real and
important differences exist between
the races?
Given the unpopularity of so many multicultural and other left-wing policies
it is difficult to understand why the conservative establishment is reluctant
to challenge the bases of these policies. Why, for instance, have mainstream
conservatives not endorsed the growing consensus that real and important
differences exist between the races? Acknowledgement of these differences would
allow for a principled stand against the left-wing drift in American social policy.
Why not forcefully reject the doctrine of multiculturalism? That doctrine is
not only ahistorical and utterly incompatible with conservative philosophy but
corrosive of national unity. How are we to understand the refusal of conservatives

25 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

to forthrightly argue for a natural diversity of abilities and temperaments and

for the preservation of the historic American nation, rooted in European custom
and ancestry?

Why does the Republican Party refuse to take such a principled position?
One obvious reason is that those who object to the leftward drift in American
society are overwhelmingly White and of European descent. Most Whites have
little to gain, and much to lose, by the continuation of current trends. Most
non-Whites, on the other hand, have no difficulty with leftist policies, since
a considerable proportion benefit from them. There is no doubt that, should
the Republican Party champion the interests of the majority White Americans,
the dominant media would demonize the Republican Party and paint them as
endorsing a divisive and ugly racist strategy. But it is foolish to worry over this
since the Republican Party is already so characterized in the media. Indeed, the
Democratic Party claims to represent the interests of all minorities and the other
casualties of oppressive White privilege and have clearly defined themselves
a vehicle for the aggrieved, whatever their class, race, or sex. How would it do
Republicans any harm to accept the lefts characterization as the defenders of
the historic (European) nation? It takes a curiously benighted vision to imagine
that standing by the historic America is somehow un-American! Without
belaboring an argument made so cogently by Steve Sailer, it only takes a modest
majority of White Americans to win most elections.[29] The reason is simple;
the overwhelming majority of the electorate is White and will be so for some
[29]

See Steve Sailer, Election 2010 and the Unmentionable Sailer Strategy: White Vote Still Key, VDare.
com, November 4, 2010, accessed March 15, 2015, http://www.vdare.com/articles/election-2010and-the-unmentionable-sailer-strategy-white-vote-still-key; Sailer, The Sailer Strategy Updated:
Three Steps to Save America, VDare.com, October 9, 2011, accessed March 15, 2015, http://www.
vdare.com/articles/the-sailer-strategy-updated-three-steps-to-save-america; Richard Spencer, The
Majority Strategy, The National Policy Institute, accessed January 15, 2015, http://www.npiamerica.
org/research/category/the-majority-strategy.

26 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

decades to come. Minorities are, after all, in the minority, especially among
those who are active participants in electoral politics. Pursuing a chimerical
attempt to garner more minority votes by supporting policies opposed by most
Republican core voters is, quite simply, self-defeating.

It is difficult not to conclude that those who carry the mantle of conservatism are,
in fact, not conservative at all, but are closer to apolitical apparatchiks of what
has become an oligarchic social order. They include members of a professional
governing class that thrives so long as they forward the interests of those who pay
the exorbitant bills for their reelection. They are the educators and media elites
whose generous salaries and outsized prestige are preserved so long as they support
the existing order that rests on the doctrines of multiculturalism and unfettered
free trade. It is an order that richly rewards those who throw in their lot with
multinational corporations or the ever widening reach of the bureaucratic state.
Such people are an internationalist vanguard, as it were, heralding a new world
order of supranational organizations such as the European Union. Theirs is a
vision conditioned by the economic benefits of ever widening and interwoven
markets, while ignoring the social and political disruptions such developments
must necessarily entail. In such a vision, a North American Union composed of
Canada, the United States and Mexico, in time joined by the nations of Central
America and the Caribbean, has much to recommend it. That such a program
would undermine the historic European heritage of the United States is of small
consequence. How could it be otherwise for those who have worked so assiduously
to render the United States a borderless nation, in fact, if not yet in law.

According to Francis Fukayama postmodern elites . . . feel that they have

evolved beyond identities defined by religion and nation and have arrived at

27 | BYRON ROTHTHE WAR ON HUMAN NATURE

a superior place.[30] British philosopher Roger Scruton observed that such

thinking explains the acceptance of subsidized immigration, and for attacks on
customs and institutions associated with traditional and native forms of life. A
typical member of this elite, according to Scruton, repudiates national loyalties
and defines his goals and ideals against the nation. . . . He sees himself as a
defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. It follows then
that such a person defines his political vision in terms of cosmopolitan values
that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real
historical community. [31]

Getting on today in the elite circles of academia, the media, politics, and
corporate America requires allegiance to this deracinated vision and a disdain
for the concerns of the benighted and recalcitrant Americans, who cleave to
their bibles and their nation and their other assorted superstitions. This explains
the vicious attacks on those who believe human differences are real and express
reservations about the benefits of multiculturalism, unfettered immigration, and
the internationalist agenda. Those that do so challenge the essential underpinnings
for the privileges, both honorary and pecuniary, of statist bureaucrats and
managerial elites and their enablers in academia and the media.

The dissolution of the historic American nation is well underway, and there is
little on the horizon to give hope that it would be otherwise. One must remain
in the dark as to what comes after, but perhaps it will be less bleak than reason,
at present, dictates. r
[30]

Francis Fukuyama, Identity and Migration, Prospect Magazine, Vol. 131, February 2007, 7.

[31]

Speech by Roger Scruton, Antwerp, 23 June, 2006; Scruton, Roger Scruton on immigration,
multiculturalism and the need to defend the nation state, Brussels Journal, July 8, 2007, http://
www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1126.

BYRON M. ROTH
is Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Dowling College. He
received his BA from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. from
the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research.
His work has appeared in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, The
Public Interest, Academic Questions and Encounter. His previous
books include, Decision Making, Its Logic and Practice, coauthored with John D. Mullen and Prescription for Failure: Race
Relations in the Age of Social Science. The latter was described by
the editors of the Journal Political Psychology as a book of major
importance to the science and the applications of political
psychology.