Steve Sailer links to an article that encapsulates Ahmad Chalabai’s response to his piece in The American Conservative on cousin marriage-“”The Jews have had cousin marriages galore, and it hasn’t hurt them.” When I asked a friend of mine who is half-Israel Arab (his father’s family are Arabs from Nazareth who have Israeli citizenship) about cousin marriage-his response was, “Cousins are the only people of the opposite sex that you get to meet, so it makes sense….” His own sister, who moved to Israel to live with her retired mother (who is of Scottish ancestry), ended up marrying a first cousin. As for Jews marrying relatives, perhaps there is something cultural that explains it, but obviously the small number of potential mates of appropriate background had something to do with the inbreeding. The prevention of fraternization between men and women of the opposite sex who aren’t related has the same practical effect-shrinking the possible options for marriage down to a small tightly knit circle.
I guess realist American conservatives are in the position of asking Arabs to be just a bit more slutty, though they wouldn’t want them to be as slutty as this. The Golden Mean was forgotten long ago….
Read ParaPundit’s article which spawned much of the blogospheric debate on this topic.
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