Oh dear, royalty and buggery, politics and jews ... why was I ever born English? Still, it needs to be said, as Peter Phillips just did, that jews have been well assimilated here for a very long time. True, there is said to be a less kind mindset towards the host nation amongst the wave that settled post Nazi Germany. And true, we could do without the very tiresome miscgenetion-fest on children's television. But beyond that, and speaking as only a mildly psychotic white nationalist, out tiny jewish population (250,000 and falling) has, generally, done wonders for the nation's hernias and dental cavities - and produced some jolly good black cab drivers in town. So, if by dint of his dangerously superior Ashkenazic intellect the good Mr Howard can rid us of that deceitful, smiling pixie-faced piece of political fluff in No.10 that's just fine by me.

No, Razib, the interesting bit was about how "men are humstrung by their biology". Yep, it's those unsubtle, sexual dunces with the testosterone and the seven-second recall again. Women, on the other hand, employ nuance. Of course, they've employed topless sunbathing too on every beach in Europe for the last quarter century (and amen to that).

Sex pops back into the mail thought process within that timescale. Females are 12 seconds.

Hanno,

Like you I am white. Unlike you I tend to bat for my own people. I can do that in good conscience because I believe it's normal and I'm not an egalitarian. It makes me less than objective, of course, and opens me up to the usual screeching accusations when (not if) I voice my opinions. Still, I acknowledge the inherent partiality of my position and I do make an effort to listen to all sides of the argument.

Down the years I've heard plenty of doggedly environmentalist argument. Some folks simply have no knowledge of genetics or sociobiology but disbelieve in them anyway. Some have been brainwashed or intimidated into self-censorship by the political-intellectual establishment. Some won't listen because the consequences would be socially or professionally inhibiting or embarrassing. And some won't listen because they hate themselves with a will and, lacking the honesty to confront the reasons for this, externalise their hatred onto their parents, their social class, their race.

I can't prove it - no one can prove it - but I do wonder if among caucasians self hatred and a yearning for moral justification accounts for most agitated and aggressive purveyors of anti-white politics.

The point is that in such polarising issues as race and IQ it's not safe simply to speak from what we may know. We should examine our own motives, all of us. When we are prepared to declare them to ourselves and others then, and only then, should we speak.

David,

I wonder whether the success of Africans at British universities is explained in part, at least, by the proportion of able students coming through the independent sector. A British education remains highly respected throughout the Commonwealth. Educated, moneyed African families seem to be no exception and to send their offspring to board in all the better known prep and senior schools.

Otherwise we are left with hard work alone to explain how so many of these students bridge (on average of course) the equivalent of three standard deviations. The evidence from the last year's first audit of Excellence in Cities does not support this conclusion. Very little worthwhile perfomance gains were achieved in any groups except white females.

The analytical mind tends to be uncomfortable with collective self-identifications, rooted as these are in inchoate emotions that, to it, can seem sincere to the point of pathology. This always suggest to me a certain war between a dominant intellect and suppressed emotion. If one rejects the notion that collective identification is wrong per se, how else can one explain the frequency with which intelligent and educated people are individualist in outlook or collectivise on bogus internationalism? I would suggest that this tendency is nowhere more common than in academia, particularly in the humanities. And there, it's a pretty safe bet that it is most evident among minorities who, in addition to the aforesaid intellectual bias, have virtually no choice but to recoil from that from which they are forever excluded.

The result is what we see: an unending emphasis on the crimes committed in the name of collective identification and on its purportedly retrogressive shadow that darkens the world even today. These could be cogent reasons for rejecting it, for sure. But I prefer not to divorce product from design. The analytical mind adopts its positions from inchoate emotion, too. It is merely gifted with the capacity to rationalise.

In any case, such rationalisation means less than nothing to the common herd. Individualism is a rare orchid, and like an orchid is the very devil to keep alive. It is simply not a meaningful alternative to national and racial identification, with all its historical richness - and its slights, imagined or otherwise.

Sporon,

I rather think that the counterfactualist's riposte to your Reality is illusion. Of course, this means that reality is susceptible to a certain effort of consciousness which, in turn, assigns illusion to the normal waking state.

Now there's one for Darwin - if God does not exist why can we distinguish reality from illusion? Put another way, if man evolves quite nicely (as he self-evidently does) in his ordinary waking state, what is the evolutionary purpose of self-consciousness?

This game is fun.

Razib, thanks for giving this one a push. The story broke nationally in the Telegraph two or three weeks ago. But none of the overtly political sites that I expected to flag it up actually did so. In fairness, it doesn't tell us anything new about the educational establishment in the UK, and it's only one of a number of recent, similarly progressive announcements. Anyway, I suppose it's progress to move on from being a nation of failures to one of nearly men.

It was universally accepted that Heath was not homosexual. He himself always said that the right girl just hadn't come along. Certainly, by the time he was really in the public eye he had no visible sexual life at all, and seemed to prefer yachts and orchestras to women. You can't get much more confirmed than that.

On the question of black advancement in my country, Americans do not always take into account the difference between an immigrant aociety such as American and that of the ancient states of Europe. The first boat carrying West Indian immigrants only arrived in England in 1958. The Conservative government of the time did not see fit to consult the people on immigration because they knew the answer they would have had. Some Americans looking askance today at the south-west and wondering why the Mexican influx is tolerated by the federal government might know something of how the English felt.

Today, liberalism has proscribed all dissent, and the only public message one receives anywhere is multi-culturalist, pro-black, pro-misceganist. You may care to weigh which is the graver offence: for a people to baulk at this state of affairs or for a government to drive its people into it.

Razib,

Your point needs correction on three counts. First, Sub-Saharan African genetic material was present among Celtic peoples of Britain much earlier than you surmise. Back males were in England as Roman legionaries.

Second, their genes did not melt into the Celtic genepool as you of all people must know. Genes are eternal.

Third, your comment has no purchase on modern-day reality. We have seen the ingress of populations, not a scattering of individuals.