I thought liberals wanted a bridge to the 21st century-not a bridge to the past! Nazi, the word carries such opprobrium. It even sounds a bit disreputable rolling off the tongue, the disconcerting mix of German abruptness and sibilance. It has been observed that to be a former Nazi is a far graver crime than being a former Marxist-Leninist. That is a different topic, but let us say that both the Left and the Right have blood on their hands. Humanity is an imperfect species by any measure. But since my evolutionary conservative perspective might have some points of intersection with National Socialist ideals-I am tainted no? And yet somehow, Leftists are never tainted by the fact that Marxist-Leninists killed in the name of egalitarianism.... Why would someone deign to call me a Nazi I wonder? Most of my political positions are generally of the libertarian-conservative slant. Certainly I am not a Nazi for the following reasons:

• I support a woman’s freedom to kill her fetus.
• I support a woman’s freedom to take up arms and fight for her God, nation and family.
• I support the freedom to ingest all sorts of psychoactive chemicals into the body-irrespective of the effects.
• I generally favor a high wall of separation between Church & State (though I will admit the ACLU sometimes makes me feel like a religious conservative!). [1]
• I support the freedom to copulate with man, woman, beast or fowl, what ever tickle’s your fancy.
• I support the freedom to express ideas in whatever medium one chooses without the state’s interference.

Certainly I am a rather “liberal” Nazi if that is what I am. Granted, I do hold many “conservative” views.

• I reject state-mandated affirmative action/quotas.
• I am highly skeptical of anti-discrimination laws.
• I am sympathetic to those who assert that male and female have different strengths. [2]
• I am high skeptical of the Leviathan, I believe that government is a necessary evil. In this case, less is more.
• I reject the dogma of multiculturalism-that all cultures are equal before God and Nature. [3]

But these are standard conservative positions and I don’t expect that liberals will accuse conservatives of being Nazis, at least more than once every month or so. What exactly do I believe that is so heretical? What warrants my label as a Nazi? Perhaps it is that I believe that the preponderance of evidence points to average differences in many phenotypes between different populations. In other words, I do believe race matters. Today this is heretical, but it was not always so. Not only the Nazis believed this, they were no aberration. The idea that races have different temperaments was first elucidated by the Greeks. The Arabs, the Chinese, and so forth followed in the footsteps of the first classical philosophers. The Enlightenment made these beliefs more rigid and “scientific.” Voltaire, Hume and Kant, all these Dead White Men, anti-religious seculars and the bane of the ancient regime, believed in race differences. They were in fact precursors of polygenism, the idea that the different races of man were not descended from Adam and Eve but well nigh separate species. [4] The polygenists were the progressives of their day, hurling contempt at the monogenist yokels who generally hewed to the traditional Biblical interpretation of man’s origin and dispersion during the Tower of Babel. Only with Darwin did the non-religious monogenists rise to the fore and polygenism decline toward insignificance. [5] And yet Darwin himself believed in race differences. Nevertheless he was something of a liberal in his day, and an opponent of slavery. His cousin Francis Galton used the incipient evolutionary science to formulate eugenics, a word that has gone into ill repute. Liberals use it to smear others and spit on it, for its association with the Nazis is clear, no? And yet, Winston Churchill was once a proponent of eugenics. If that’s not anti-Nazi enough for you, what about Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. How many liberals would call Planned Parenthood a Nazi organization? (OK, now there is name-hurling from the Right-we can’t win! I linked to the Planned Parenthood site, they soft-pedal Sanger's views but disavow what they can't deny. Use Google and you'll find plenty of damning stuff) Social Democratic Sweden has also had its fling with coercieve eugenics-as late as the 1976. Oh yes, we all have blood and guilt on our hands. Human hubris allowed the partial insights of Galton and his proteges to mutate into brutal race science. Progressive and Regressive looked toward eugenics and the scientism that underlay it (though true many Progressives like J.B.S. Haldane, a Marxist, pulled back from eugenics after his initial flirtation) . The Modern Synthesis had not yet come to fruition, we did not have PCR in the laboratory and mathematical population genetics in the offices. But the pioneers of the early 20th century thought they knew it all and endeavored to forward the eugenic project. They were trying to “build a better man” with a sledge hammer, reconstituting a work of ages, eons even. And alas, it was as failure as a science and worse, a monstrosity as politics. [6] But godless has pointed out how we are genetic engineers - and thus radically different from the eugenicists of the past. I won’t rehash it too much, I simply want to reiterate, we aren’t shouting, “To the gas chambers go!” to anyone. We offer freedom and liberation for the descendents of those who have not won the genetic lottery. If our assumptions are correct, than it seems a liberal, at least a Rawlsian, position that we should aim toward to help those who were born with fewer endowments through no fault of their own. And this would no doubt help society as a whole (and elevate the level of banter in coffee shops greatly!). While the eugenicists of the past had only crude methods, ascertaining phenotype and attempting to encourage reproduction of those deemed fit, and discouraging that of those deemed not fit, the genetic engineering of the future will be based on the freedom of choice and not government whim. I suspect that people will flock to opt in to the new therapies to improve their germ-line. In fact, what distinguishes godless' project really from the futuristic boosting of genetic engineering that others on the blogosphere engage in? As the estimable Glenn Reynolds notes:

What was bad about eugenics was that it involved overriding people's reproductive choices, typically by sterilizing them so that they wouldn't pass on genes deemed defective. Conflating forced sterilization with voluntary use of reproductive technologies -- a common move among opponents of genetic science -- is either ignorant, or dishonest.

Ron Bailey of Reason warns that many conservatives will also oppose genetic engineering:

Wolfson does, however, alert us to a truly pernicious idea that is lurking in some quarters of the intellectual left: mandatory government-subsidized eugenics in the name of equality. He cites leftist thinker Ronald Dworkin as a strong supporter of such a project. This elitist egalitarian impulse, not biotechnology, is the real threat. Wolfson realizes this and he does properly condemn egalitarianism, but his fear of how egalitarians could misuse biotechnology drives him illogically to condemn the technology as well. That is somewhat akin to arguing that simply because airplanes can be used to bomb cities, we should ban jetliners.

We here at Gene Expression support something different. Bailey ends his piece with a word to conservatives, and this applies to those on the Left and the Right:

Ultimately, the conservative worries about technological progress are rooted in a deep skepticism about human intentions. And we must surely be vigilant against people and ideologies, including conservatism, that might attempt to misuse technology to limit human freedom. But the plain fact is that despite the horrors of the past century, technology and science have ameliorated far more of the ills that afflict humanity than they have exacerbated. In the end, the highest expression of our human nature is our ongoing quest to understand ever more of the world around us and ourselves.

The time is right, the science is here,and we have the technology (almost)! [6.5] Our great sin, godless’ and mine, and those who in the shadows may agree, and those who have come before us, is to think that races do differ, and that it is more than skin deep. Yes, the earth does move, and black men are faster and Asian men more intellectually prepared to handle advanced topology. We dare to say what one does not say. Oh, you whisper, you think, but never, never clarify your opinions lest you be heard by those would accuse you of being a reprobate. I’m going to stand up and say what I believe. And I am not a Nazi. I have many liberal friends, yes, those who voted for Gore and Nader. [7] And yet perhaps the contagion has passed to them, for they will admit in the privacy of their own homes, that perhaps biology does have a role in our behavior, that perhaps differences do exist between races. Not that they would say this aloud, but the voiceless are out there, from Left to Right, they see and think, and they draw their conclusions, right or wrong. Perhaps someone should hunt me down and shoot me in the head, for yes, I am a horrible vector for this dread disease! (please see picture attached-I was so cute once!) I am not a white racialist. But I think what drives those who lean toward white racialism is the anti-Western intellectual climate that pervades many of the halls of academe and media. The white race is more associated with the red blood that it has shed over these past two centuries than the gifts it has given to humanity. [8] Forget the science and government that Europe has bestowed to the world. Others have made the case, I will refrain. But I am not a white racialist, I am not white, how could I be? I was born in Bangladesh. I’ve been jumped by a redneck for dancing with his ex-girlfriend (and oh she was cute-with her curly blonde hair....) and have to deal with the taunts that racists will throw my way on occasion (there are certain streets in many small towns that are frequented by men driving fast in crappy old trucks-I know the epithet "Sand Nigger" will be screamed about once every month-no skin off my back). Such is the burden of living in a rural and white state. But I never forget where I come from. For all the history and richness of the culture of my forefathers, I look around me now and see a country where everyone has at least the chance at greatness. Rather than griping at human faults, I choose to see this country for the glory that it is. Personally, I have no hyphen in my identity. I am a group of one. I have seen the "authentic" existence that can occur in non-Western countries first hand (and smelled it-trust me). My beliefs are the culmination in a long personal evolution. When I was a freshman in college a professor of mine in a human evolution class asked us this question:

If it could be shown through genetic testing that Australian Aborigines were more “erectine” than other branches of the human race, should this knowledge be made public?

To my shock, three fourths of the class of two hundred said no, let the knowledge lie fallow. Being in the minority, I began to reflect on this. I believed that one should follow the data, always, and that one could make an informed decision based on the data. If Australian Aborigines were genetically disfavored (and I’ve talked to Australians personally who hold this opinion, and in a rather more crude fashion than I’ve just expressed), then it would be better to know so that something could be done (genetic engineering-not old school eugenics!). My fellow blogger godless has made this a long-term project of his. While we believe liberals deny the evidence of their eyes, the evidence that rattles and percolates in the back of their brains, we face up the often cruel and hard facts that this godless (excuse the pun) universe throws at us. Skepticism, empiricism and rationalism. These are the three jewels of the West that have been bequeathed to us by chance and happenstance. We are skeptical of the axiom of equality. We see around us pervasive trends, Rushton’s Rule explicated ad nauseam. And we formulate an appropriate paradigm rationally. Evolution gave us minds for a reason! The West pioneered science, but now I wonder, will the children of the West become the ostriches sticking their heads in the sand, or perhaps even the dodo, passing away over the horizon. Will they forget their heritage, and refuse to apply the cold and brutal knife of reason to the problems that confront us today? If we are right, if races do differ on a genetic level, the implications are colossal. To refuse to listen to the possibility, now that is monstrous. [9] To find the answer, you first have be open to the question. And some answers are world-shattering. Paradigm-shifting....you get the picture. I hope. [1] Ask Chris Mooney of Tapped. I e-mail him whenever he brings up anything that has to do with Church & State separation. Like him, I was active in the secular movement in my younger days. Perhaps I'm naturally heterodox? [2] It does not follow that I reject equality before the law, I simply give a nod to the reality of evolution. [3] I believe that understanding other cultures is fruitful, but each culture exists within a certain finite span of space and time. In other words, North America, Australia/New Zealand and western Europe (I’ll be generous here) are the core of the liberal democratic culture that has a hegemonic presence throughout the world. I believe that this cultural-political core must be vigilant against erosion of the freedoms hard-won over 500 years of bloody history. The idea that all cultures are equal is nonsensical since each culture has different values, so comparing them in ridiculous. Certain cultures suffer less when judged under any given criteria. Since I repeat the word freedom many times in the above text, I suspect you can intuit what my inclinations are when using normative methods. [4] Voltaire’s Deism and Hume’s atheism (agnosticism) are well attested. Until recently I believed Kant to be a liberal, but pietistic Lutheran, but recent reading of a biography on Kant indicated that in fact that though he genuflected to the orthodoxy of his day (he was a academic in eastern Prussia after all), he was personally skeptical of religious claims. This jives well with his demolition of the proofs of God (following up Hume). [5] See Wolpoff’s book Race and Evolution on this controversy. Wolpoff talks about the multi-regionalism vs. Out-of-Africa controversy a lot. Interestingly, both camps try to portray the other as racist and genocidal. [6] Conservatives love to point out that forced sterilization found a ready and willing home in the Left-wing Scandinavian social democracies. More so (though still something of a foothold before World War II) than in the reactionary United States. [6.5] See the links on the left under Human Biodiversity and Genetic Engineering, or go through some of our old posts. [7] Actually, I don’t know anyone personally who voted for George W. Bush. That says something about my crowd I guess, for good or bad, it’s your call. [8] The European culture is a product of synthesis and borrowed innovation. Humanity as a whole can take some pride in it. But that does not negate the fact that the scientific method and liberal democracy took hold in Europe first. I would like to add one thing though: I was asked by a friend what Sub-Saharan Africa had contributed to humanity. I started to prattle on about iron metallurgy in the Sudan-and then I stopped. I realized there is one monumental answer to this: Homo Sapiens Sapiens. [9] Reasonable people can disagree, but read our blog, and follow our links, I think you will agree that we make a case that does not draw from emotional hatred, but more from the facts at hand. We try to synthesize various fields of learning-genetics, molecular biology, engineering, history and economics, and frame it within an evolutionary paradigm. Culture can explain much. So can history. But don’t deny the truth of the blood in your own veins and the genes that encode the fiber of your being. As for the implications of our theory, that races do differ substantially in intellect and personality, keep reading the blog. Or just sit down and think about it, you don’t need to be a genius to figure it out! P.S. To Mark Weiner on male criminality-male vs. female differences are kosher to talk about. It is a big part of modern Evolutionary Psychology. Get any of Matt Ridley's books if you're curious-and I'm sure you are. Why should we spend time addressing stuff that won't get the Nazi charge hurled at us after all? In addition, men are profiled. Steve Sailer has also addressed this topic in terms of positing a future where feminists and Left-liberals try their handing at genetically engineering less aggressive males. I say let a thousand-flowers bloom.... Oh, and here is proof I'm not white-me when I was 3. Sorry about the black and white-but we were a poor Bengali family after all....