With the former literary editor of The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier and his formidable Old Testament prophet-meets-Beethoven affect, in the news again, it’s perhaps worth remembering his outraged reaction to The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in TNR in 1994:
Murray and Herrnstein protest that “the fascination with race, I.Q. and genes is misbegotten,” but a few pages later they mutter, about the “environment/genetic debate,” that “the question, of course, is fascinating.” The question, of course, is not fascinating. It is old, dreary and indecent, philosophically shabby and politically ugly. …
The scientism of Murray (I will refer only to him, since he is the principal author of what this magazine has published, and de mortuis nil nisi bonum) is a little quaint.
And it would be kind of silly for Wieseltier to imply that The Bell Curve is anti-Semitic since Herrnstein cowrote it, so Wieseltier gets around that problem by dropping Herrnstein’s name for the rest of his essay and denouncing only Murray. Granted, somebody might make fun of you for such a transparent ploy, but you are Leon Wieseltier so only Bad People would do that.
“The pariah status of intelligence as a construct and I.Q. as its measure,” he writes, “for the past three decades has been a function of political fashion, not science.” As if it were science that drew Murray to the subject! … The occult entity known as “g” is not exactly the sturdy stuff of, say, molecular biology.Or so I imagine. I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics. Before Murray, I had never made the acquaintance of “visuospatial abilities” or “the digit span subtest.” I do not doubt that there is such a thing as intelligence, and that there are better and worse methods of measuring it. But Murray’s enterprise collapses, theoretically and morally, long before he gets to his graphs. For the question of the bearing of science on life is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. There is not a graph in the world that will explain the place of graphs in the world.
That last line sounds like G.K. Chesterton if he smoked crack.
… I am not suggesting, of course, that Murray is an anti-Semite. Still, when I read, on page 275 of The Bell Curve, that “Jews — specifically, Ashkenazi Jews of European origins — test higher than any other ethnic group,” I am repulsed. I am repulsed not only because I would like to believe that what I will achieve in my life will be owed to myself and not to my group, though I am honored by my membership in my group; but also because there have been many scientistic comparisons of Jews and non-Jews during the past two centuries in which Jews did not “test higher,” and the consequences were catastrophic. What if the conclusions that Murray takes from the study that he calls “Storfer 1990″ had turned out differently? How would he explain my failure to express the limitations of my group? Or would it be more appropriate, in the event of psychometric embarrassment, that I stop pretending and start tailoring?
I am, after all, an Ashkenazi Jew of European origins. More to the point, a retreat to tailoring is precisely what Murray would prescribe for a Jew who discovered, as the result of some new “definitive” measurement, that he was a member of the cognitive underclass.
Here’s gossip columnist Lloyd Grove’s 1995 Vanity Fair article about Wieseltier:
In literary terms, Wieseltier might be the Jewish, heterosexual answer to Oscar Wilde. It was Wilde, after all, who lamented, “I have put my genius into my life; all I’ve put into my works is my talent”—an observation that would seem to suit Leon Wieseltier. “Why don’t you take it a step further,” he suggests, “and call me the ‘Oscar very Wilde’?”He’s been at The New Republic since 1982, frequently deploying his considerable influence outside his own section to shape the general content of the magazine. A series of frustrated top editors—whose superior rank on the masthead was no match for Wieseltier’s political muscle—has come and gone. His power flows from Marty Peretz, who lured him down from Harvard, having been dazzled by the young scholar over coffee on the Square.
“He was fluent and learned in almost everything one talked about,” recalls Peretz, who compares Wieseltier to the great Jewish philosopher Spinoza. “He’s pretty unusual in that he’s extremely cerebral and extremely what we used to call ‘hip.’ . . .
Comments at Steve Sailer:
* The most important word is “indecent.” Nature versus nurture is something that’s simply not thought about. That is, if there’s any chance you’ll come down on the side of nature. Otherwise, drive it from your mind! Don’t think about it. Not in front of a lady, certainly, but not in front of anyone. Not even at night, alone under your covers. Foreshame!
I’m not familiar with this modern-day Beethoven’s writings, but something tells me he doesn’t go around calling things “indecent,” or “I say good day, sir!” everyday. Something about the Bell Curve brings out the Victorian scold in them.
* Here is Larry Auster commenting on one particularly odious remark made by Wieseltier.
“When Charles Moore of the London Spectator described how his Muslim neighbors prayed loudly next-door during the Gulf War in 1991, and spoke of his worries of what would happen to England if the number of Muslims kept increasing, an enraged Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, fired off this riposte:
Three cheers, I say, for the neighbors. I hope that they pray noisily, and that they pray five times a day, and that the evening prayer comes just as the Moores and the Mellors are turning to the claret … It is amusing to watch the colonizers complain about being colonized. [The New Republic, January 6, 1992.]”
Wieseltier is not exactly shy in his hatred. He mocks an Englishmen’s fears about the survival of English culture. He rejoices at the thought of Englishmen being discomforted, disoriented, and displaced in their own country by Muslims. If anyone is driven by an ethnic animus, surely it is Wieseltier and the many Jews who think and feel as he does.
I was never a huge of fan of Larry Auster (especially not after I was ‘Austericized’ from his circle for some Jew-critical commentary that cut a bit close to the bone), but I’m hugely supportive of his attitude towards his fellow Jews – which was essentially, we had a good thing going here, why’d you have to go and wreck it?
* Speaking of Peretz though, now that the dam is breaking everywhere else, when will the dirty details come out about him and his proteges? Which ones (if any) did he have homosexual relations with?
* There are really two school of Jew-crit. Call them the ‘behavioral’ and the ‘existential.’
The behavioral school criticizes Jewish behavior, with a view to changing prevailing Jewish behavioral patterns. When the behavior changes, so does the criticism. (As Keynes might have said had he applied himself to a bit of Jew-crit, “When the behavior changes, so does my attitude – what does yours do so, sir?”)
The existential school criticizes Jewish existence. Sure, they will criticize behavior a la the behavioral school too, but that’s only because Jewish behavior adds insult to injury: it’s the fact that Jews are here, walking among us, that is the actual problem.
Larry Auster was on the verge of comprehending this crucial distinction just before he died. Very few other Jews understand it – or, more importantly, trust it – at all. Paul Gottfried would surely be one, but how old is he now? Our esteemed host, Mr. Unz, is very likely another. Such men are clearly few and bar between, however.
In terms of critics, I would place Sailer firmly in the behavioral school. So too Derbyshire (I mean, what little emanates from him in this regard). Kevin MacDonald is a tougher to categorize. I think he started out in the behavioral school, but his trials and tribulations are pushing him to the existential school.
Groups like the ADL understand this only too well. Yes, most of them start out as behavioralists, they’ll tell you, but it’s only a matter of time before they transform into snarling Hitlerite existentialists. And frankly, there’s considerable evidence – which I’ve seen with my own eyes – to support this contention.
So what’s a good behavioralist to do then? Alas, I don’t have any definitive answers, except: press on.
* Decades spent rationalizing to oneself the kind of behavior that has recently come to light has a way of dulling the sharpest intellect and degrading the finest character. It’s no surprise that by the time the Bell Curve came around Wieseltier had too little of either left to tell decent from indecent.
* 1. The worst thing a gentile can do to a Jew is notice he’s a Jew.
2. The worst thing a Jew can do to a fellow Jew is not notice he’s a Jew.
3. The second worst thing a Jew can do to a fellow Jew is alert the goyim that either of them are Jews and different from the goyim.
Everything Leon Wieseltier wrote about The Bell Curve above is covered by those three rules.
* Reminds me of George Costanza. Jon Lovitz plays a character in an episode of Seinfeld who’s been pretending to suffer from cancer. He says, “I’ve been living a lie.”
George responds, “Just one? I’m living like 20.”
* He thinks the act he puts on (of which the hair is a part) and the complete certainty with which he makes every unsubstantiated sweeping statement raises him to the level of a literary genius. It does not. I would like to see a Takimag article slicing and dicing this guy. It shouldn’t be that hard.
* Steve is a great man.
In every way.
It seems to me however Steve that when Jews do something bad, they are Jews. When they do something tou approve of they are Whites.
You made much of Nobels-too-white when im fact they are nobels-too-jewish.
In terms of achievement Jews are to Whites as Whites are to Blacks.
It’s clear as day. Nothing from the social sciences is clearer.
Is that why your readers love reading every example of “Jews Behaving Badly”? Because, in more literate terms they are nuttily The Man keeping them down?
You know very well, even if many of your readers do not, that the matter of Israel aside, Jews perform no worse than anyone else among the elite. And those Jews part of the lower classes crime no more than their socioeconomic compatriots either.
Roger Alies got a pass. No mention. He doesn’t fit The Narrative.
Bill’O has been paying off women – publicly – for over a decade. How much have you played that up?
It’s almost like you have a third antenna to sniff out any potential wrongdoing by a member of this tribe. It feeds The Narrative that is so popular in this local echo-chamber. Throwing in a commensurate number of goyim would ruin it.
Better yet, does anyone imagine for a moment (anyone remotely sane that is) that Trump has been more appropriate with women than Weinstein? Even for a moment??
But making a big deal of it locally would confuse people locked into the narrative. So it only gets – at best – a couple of asides. No stuttering and pointing. Unlie those pervy Jews (we all know how pervy they are, just ask julius streicher and hefner and flynt and glitter and 10 thousand Catholic Priests. They tell ya.
I mean, you even had to dig up some director nobody ever heard of and show us his slimy jewish visage. And of course you made sure to get his Jewishness in there. Making a big deal of him and expecting people to wiki him won’t suffice.
As for these men…
What the fuck did they do already?!
Their unfortunate Jewish consciences has them falling over in apologies and shame. Fucking portnoyesque neurotics feeling guilty about anything to do wiyh sex so that the moment they’re exposed of having – uh, what? – they prostrate, weep and beg for forgiveness. No Trumpian comfort in one’s own skin there.
* The hilarious thing about that 1995 Vanity Fair profile is that they only put it online *today*. It was so devastating, apparently, that although it ran in the print edition Wieseltier got his friends at VF to hide it. Apparently journos used to pass photocopies of it round. (See David Graham’s Twitter feed.)
* I think Wieseltier’s problem is all too common among Jewish Liberals. On the one hand, they sincerely do want to be cosmopolitan individualists, ‘citizens of the world’. So, they have a tendency to denigrate any sign of ‘atavistic’ nationalism or anti-intellectual populism.
However, their undying and even fanatical support for Zionism and Jewish pride makes us wonder if their anti-gentile-nationalism is really sincere and principled OR strategic and opportunistic to favor Jewish interests above all.
It’s possible that these Jewish Liberals don’t really know themselves because they are so deeply invested in cosmopolitan liberalism and Zionist tribalism.
Peretz himself was a deeply contradictory figure, an ardent Zionist nationalist editing a premier magazine of Liberal Ideas.
* To his credit, Wieseltier actually managed to walk the walk – he tossed away the yarmulke and married a muslim Pakistani.
It didn’t last, and as outrageous as it sounds, I suppose there is some possibility that he only did it so he could deflect later criticism.
As an ardent ethnocentrist myself, I’ve long felt that there is no lie so vile I wouldn’t tell it, no act so low I wouldn’t stoop to it, if it was a matter of defending my vital racial interests…
* So, to sum up, give up the money, white man. Give up the pussy, white woman. That’s it, in a nutshell. Anti-racism is the con man’s racist colonialism, done by guile instead of brute force, but with the same goal of exploitation. Without that exploitation, without the robbery, modern anti-racism is essentially meaningless, except as naked hatred and aggression.
How ’bout that Israel, Leon? Kind of apartheidy and racisty, isn’t it? What’s that, you support the Jewish state? As I say, no real principles but hate and exploitation.
* Existentialist critics of Jews like Mike Enoch and Andrew Anglin are the first to acknowledge the obvious Ashkenazi genetic gift of high verbal intelligence. Or is it really just verbal combativeness in defense of one’s in group?
But also there is also the question of the often total lack of self-awareness exhibited by “high intelligence” Jews of the consequences of their actions if they were to be extended beyond the in group to be a universal norm. A very useful genetic trait or adaption if one is comfortable with their group’s role as outsiders or even parasites.
Hence Steve Sailer’s comments about the difference between Goyim and Jewish concepts of guilt. For the Goyim, guilt is a question of not living up to some universal moral ideal. For Jews is not being ethnocentric enough.
If the lack of self-awareness exhibited by even highly intelligent Jews is in part genetic as an “arch Nazis” like Andrew Anglin suggests then hopes of ameliorating Jewish subversive behavior through ridicule and shaming alone is very limited in deed.
Then only existential remedies are likely to work. The least violent and repressive ones would be those recommended by old school Catholic apologists like E. Michael Jones.
* According to the article, Wieseltier’s over-indulgence in coke and booze during that period was brought on by the disintegration of his marriage to a Pakistani heiress and then-international relations graduate student. Explaining the attraction, Wieseltier said, “Look, I have always had a great appetite for The Other. The Other means the sexual other as well as the ethnic other and the intellectual other.”
Ok, fine, but he evidently had no intention of remaining monogamous, and what was the likelihood of marriage to this allegedly beautiful and no-doubt pampered merchant princess standing the test of time? I ask this because I think it goes to the mindset of a good many bright but arguably deluded liberals. They have very little interest in the nuts-and-bolts workings of human relations. Ideas, plans, fantasies, and philosophies they have aplenty, but they wash their hands of the sometimes mundane but generally inescapable realities of human nature.
Having taken a bit of an interest in this Wieseltier character during the current dustup, I watched a video of a discussion he had with Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard president, at the Aspen Festival of Ideas. The title was “Do We Need to Rescue the Humanities?” The answer was “Boy, do we ever!”
Needless to say, Drew Gilpen Faust and Leon Wieseltier have plenty of ideas about what needs to be done. They have, however, far fewer ideas about how these things are to be done, and fewer still sensible or implementable ideas. Some of their observations I agreed with, but identifying a problem and fixing a problem are two different things. Worse yet — particularly in academe — you may actually have a pretty good idea, and it may actually be impossible to implement. Not everybody gets that.
Here is the Aspen video:
https://www.aspenideas.org/session/do-we-need-rescue-humanities
For the record, Leon Wieseltier is significantly more interesting than Faust (Gilpen Faust?), not to mention funnier. You can see whay she is a bureaucrat and he isn’t. I’m sure he would suck at being a university president.
* I agree – but if you listen into the above linked discussion, you hear from ca. minute 12:40 on Wieseltier struggle with the same question he struggles with in the NRP-quote about The Bell Curve in Steve Sailer’s post above. Wieseltier’s (big) mistake is to claim that the humanities teach to negate scientific insights into human nature. (That’s philosophically wrong, too – see Jürgen Habermas’ Between Naturalism and Religion and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s classic Truth and Method).
Another aspect: In Aspen too, Wieseltier might by and large be following Stephen Jay Gould’s wrong ideas about IQ in his book The Mismeasure of Man and in Gould’s attack on their work in the NYT and various other places.
Wieseltier is right, when he stresses, that the humanities can’t be replaced by the hard sciences, but he is wrong when he claims, that no insight into the behavior of man is useful at all, that comes from the hard sciences or from the counting branch of the social sciences.
Habermas’ way out is right, and he found the formula, that a weak naturalism is, what enables to hold both perspectives – those of the artist, the novelist, the actor, the director on the one hand – and – lets say Murray/Herrnstein et. al. on the other valid and – most important point: In a productive dialogue/exchange!
* It strikes me that to deal with reality lefties always need a brain-altering chemical, whether legal or illegal, prescribed or imbibed.
One of Woody Allen’s long tropes is how everyone is see therapists. Of course, the people see analysists and these quacks give them all some form of medication to deal with reality being too hard on them.
And of course all the Lefty women use artificial birth control (the pill), which severely messes with their natural hormones. And the Lefty push for pot and other drug legalization also comes from this desire for easy access to a drug that confuses their reality and makes them numb to truth.
These days, any female lefty writing a story about an emotional point in her life will throw in how she was taking some form of medication as a result, or else was institutionalized.
During my time living in Lefty cities as a younger man I had yet to to meet a Lefty girl there who didn’t have a drinking problem or who didn’t use pot/cocaine/stolen prescription meds semi-regularly.
A real question future historians will have about our era is how many of the social Lefty pushes were led by people who were constantly high as a kite and/or suffering from mental problems that put them out of touch with reality.
* Leon Weasel-tier has been a public advocate for the various neo-con wars which have cost the US thousands of dead, many billions in cost and, let’s not forget, millions of people thrown into misery overseas. But yet this long-haired dandy is supposed to be an “intellectual” even though the results of his politics have been such a disaster. Must be his nifty writing style, then. But hey, what’s just some dead people as compared to Weasel’s hairstyle? The American servicemen died for a good cause which, of course, is his cause even as he would never have hung around with any of them since they’d be too low-class for his tastes.
*
Jeffrey Goldberg: “If the tragic outcome of this [i.e. the importation of Africans and Middle Easterners] is that the Jews in fact do all need to leave Europe, what would be the most Jewish thing for the last Jew to do, the most appropriate fitting thing?”
Leon Weiseltier: “One[?] said that the last thing a Jew should do when he or she leaves Europe is spit.”
Another funny instance in this video is when Golberg, Weiseltier, and Bennett (all three are Jewish), blame the Tragic Dirt of Europe for the anti-semitism of the Muslim arrivals.
* I have a suspicion this account of Wieseltier as a hipster lothario has no reality outside of Lloyd Grove’s imagination. Wieseltier’s a physically ugly man and was unattractive a generation ago. His voice has a sibilant quality you ordinarily see in male homosexuals. His grooming is wretched. It’s very difficult to believe that someone with such a history of ponderous if not pretentious writing is a great wit in private conversation.
Richard John Neuhaus once disputed the contention that Bilge Clinton was a ‘very good liar’ with this retort, “A man who is a very good liar would not have a reputation a reputation for being ‘a very good liar’”. (In P.J. O’Rourke’s account of meeting with him and conversing with him, Clinton emerges as a ready and glib liar, not a successful one). Here’s a similar hypothesis: men who are capable seducers do not acquire a reputation for being mashers. Applied here, Wieseltier’s success, such as it was, was in being put in pigeonhole marked ‘disconcerting’ rather than the pigeonhole marked ‘creep’.
* I think Gore Vidal had it right when he said that Wieseltier’s big accomplishment was having “important hair.”
