Forward: Why We Shouldn’t Accept Rabbis Who Marry Non-Jews

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Luke Ford

This seems like an excellent strategy for all peoples who want to preserve themselves, including whites. Can you imagine the uproar if whites published these sentiments about preserving their own group?

Jane Eisner writes:

At some point, however, inclusion leads to diminishment. At some critical point, boundaries become so porous that they no longer function as boundaries, and standards become so vacuous that they lose all meaning. This decision brings the Reconstructionist movement to that point, and to the degree that it places pressure on other denominations — and history suggests that it will — then it risks damaging our religious, moral and spiritual leadership at a time when we need it the most.

Here are some of the comments to this article on the Forward.com:

* This, to me, is a mistake. The deep, new reality of the moment we are in is one in which people inhabit multiple identifies and boundaries at the same time. I am Jewish, and also someone who meditates taking from Eastern religions, who works in an interfaith context, has a Christian mother / Jewish father, and who could theoretically choose to be any religion, actually — but more likely is that I’m going to choose to be multiple things at once in order to piece together a full spiritual life.

Jewish leadership, in this age, is about showing how living a good life is deeply possible within a Jewish framework. Checking membership cards for Rabbis or whomever feels a little silly when we are faced with a crisis of meaning and an age of radical choice (unlike any other context in Jewish history).

I would also say that I know intimately what it feels like to be INCLUDED by decisions like this — rather than excluded, as I have been in different contexts over the years. And wow, a welcoming and invitational approach really shifts how I am able to show up in whatever context. Duh. But stuff like this isn’t an abstract theological discussion, but involving real people and real moral opportunities and tests.

I just wish we’d spend less time policing the boundaries of who is a Jew, and more investigating and learning and publicizing what makes our community’s ethical monotheism so critical as a spiritual technology for this age.

* Indeed you have chosen to be “any religion.” To you this blending of cultures, traditions, rituals and spiritual practices is wonderful.
It may be just peachy for you, but it is not Judaism. It may be personally enriching to you, but while you take from your “multiple identities” It sounds like do not accept the responsibility that comes from living a committed life that builds up those traditions.
You can take what you want and leave the parts that are too challenging, annoying, boring, or whatever because when you do not commit to a religious community, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever, no one can make demands of you or expect anything from you. You are precisely the predictable outcome of RRC’s decision, people of partially Jewish descent
who are not committed to the wellbeing of Jewish life or the Jewish people or civilization. Your post supports the editor’s position by the case you make for syncretism and disconnection.

* Eisner is asking the impossible. She is asking Jews to remain universalists and full participants in diaspora society while remaining a people apart. This deeply misunderstands the fact that we are all temporal beings in a temporal world. Human beings and their contexts change. If we don’t understand that, and figure out a way to deal with that reality, then all the musar-ish lectures by Jane Eisner won’t accomplish a thing.

* How about this. I cannot marry you because our religion commands us to believe in one God, and not in strange gods. Love, unfortunately, cannot do away with this commandment.

If you do not believe in the Jewish religion, fine, marry whom you please. Those of us who regard our commitment at Sinai seriously, have a different answer. Good luck, best wishes, and do not close the door behind you.

* As a non-Jewish partner of an intermarried couple, I’m tired of hearing this discriminatory, fallacious, and short-sighted “argument.” I’m tired of putting up with the racist insult that I’m unworthy of Jews — and worse, the lie that my presence in the community is somehow an existential threat to the people I love.

I’ve been married to a Jew, learning about Judaism, co-creating a Jewish home, attending shul, and marching in the streets with Jews for social justice for ten years. I’ve always been committed to what many Jews tell me are “Jewish values.” My partner and I see eye-to-eye politically, ethically, and theologically about almost everything, and when we don’t, we argue. How Jewish is that?

So why not simply formalize what has already happened anyway in the most important ways and make my conversion to Judaism official?

Because the fact is, while I’m fully committed to living what could easily be defined
as a “Jewish” life, I simply do not identify as a Jew. My own background happens to be diverse, and I refuse to accept the fallacy that I have to renounce or ignore everything non-Jewish about my identity in order to exist among Jews without harming the Jewish community. Not only have I not harmed anyone, I’ve actually seen my perspective as a non-Jewish ally benefit some of the Jews in my life. As an outsider, I’ve asked unexpected questions about Judaism that have prompted us to analyze Jewish texts and rituals together in new ways. It seems like more rabbis should think more critically, carefully, and creatively about Jewish traditions and texts, asking new questions, and that if a non-Jewish partner can particularly assist in that effort, it should be welcomed and encouraged.

I’m not a Jew, but I’m proud to say that Judaism has become my home. I was lucky enough to have been welcomed by many thoughtful, confident Jews who agreed that it doesn’t matter that an Orthodox, male rabbi hasn’t muttered a few brachot over my head and given me a new name. Many progressive Jews will enthusiastically argue that there is no one “true” way to be a Jew, yet there are so many self-appointed gatekeepers. We strangers are here to remind you that “the stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself.” We’re here in love, friendship, and solidarity, and like it or not, we’re not leaving. I’m thrilled that the Reconstructionists have decided to join the proud tradition of iconoclastic Jews who have had the moral courage to reject racism and tear down walls.

* I am a resident of the U.S, here legally. I have never applied for citizenship. It is racist that I am not allowed to vote because some U.S. Federal District Court Judge has not muttered a few words over me.

Posted in Jews, Whites | Comments Off on Forward: Why We Shouldn’t Accept Rabbis Who Marry Non-Jews

Is There Nothing That Elites Can’t Do?

Posted on October 10, 2015 by Luke Ford

If elites can convince much of the world to celebrate same-sex marriage, then is there nothing they can’t do in shifting basic moral values.

Does anyone seriously think that if elites were against same-sex marriage, we would have same-sex marriage?

Jews provide most of the funding for the Democrats, much of the funding for the Republicans, we dominate media and finance, and much of academia and law. We helpset the agenda in America. For instance, we got the country to provide Israel with over $100 billion in aid.

Traditional Judaism is 100% against gay marriage, but only about 12% of American Jews are Orthodox, and most of the rest of Jewry not to mind same-sex marriage.

Are there any significant differences in the same-sex marriage issue between Jewish elites and non-Jewish elites?

Jay Michaelson write for the Forward June 26, 2015:

One of the key points in today’s Supreme Court decision overturning state bans on same-sex marriage is that religious and civil marriage, like church and state, are separate.
And yet, the court’s opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, is itself prophetic in its tone. For the 80% of American Jews who support same-sex marriage, it is a clarion call to our better natures:
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

This is profound spiritual writing, even if it is found in a secular Supreme Court opinion. It seems to understand the humanity of same-sex couples, and the historical import of this 5-4 decision.
In yet another of his childish, intemperate dissents, Justice Antonin Scalia called Kennedy’s language “a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic.” Scalia does have a point, if judicial opinions are meant to be dry, brittle, legalistic documents that never discuss the real lives they affect – like his very dissent.
But as many American Jews enter Pride Shabbat this week, we do so with a text that, while secular in nature, nonetheless takes the moral high ground.
Kennedy outlined four principles, in particular, which color marriage as a fundamental right.
First, “the nature of marriage,” Kennedy wrote, “is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. This is true for all persons, whatever their sexual orientation.”
Second, perhaps echoing Genesis 2:18’s principle that it is not good for the human being alone, Kennedy wrote that “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.”
“A third basis for protecting the right to marry,” Kennedy continued, “is that it safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education.” While this is usually a conservative talking point, Kennedy observed that “as all parties agree, many same-sex couples provide loving and nurturing homes to their children, whether biological or adopted.”
Thus, “excluding same-sex couples from marriage thus conflicts with a central premise of the right to marry. Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser.”
This is a neat, and truthful, inversion of the conservative claim that procreation is the essence of marriage. That is false, according to Genesis, Jewish law, and centuries of lived experience. Not only are many heterosexual marriages childless, happy, and complete, but as Justice Kennedy notes, many same-sex ones bring children into the world, via adoption, IVF, surrogacy, or other means.
Yes, such methods may not seem as “natural” as the birds and the bees. But then again, modern medicine isn’t “natural” either, yet we use it all the time to save and enrich our lives.
Fourth, Kennedy continued, “As the State itself makes marriage all the more precious by the significance it attaches to it, exclusion from that status has the effect of teaching that gays and lesbians are unequal in important respects. It demeans gays and lesbians for the State to lock them out of a central institution of the Nation’s society. Same-sex couples, too, may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage and seek fulfillment in its highest meaning.”
These four principles – the values marriage promotes, its unique bond of companionship, its connection to child-rearing, and the imprimatur of the state – constitute the reasons, according to the Supreme Court, that marriage is a fundamental right, regardless of sexual orientation.

From JTA June 26, 2015:

(JTA) — How often do you get the opportunity to pack “109 years,” #LoveWins and the rainbow colors into 140 characters?
That’s how the American Jewish Committee celebrated the Supreme Court ruling Friday extending marriage rights to gays throughout the United States.
“For 109 years AJC has stood for liberty and human rights,” its tweet said. “Today is a happy day for that proud tradition ‪#LoveWins.” It was punctuated with a heart emoticon splashed orange, yellow, green blue and purple – the gay pride colors.

The contrast between an organization founded at the launch of the last century celebrating the rights embraced by Americans only at the launch of this one was emblematic of the glee with which much of the Jewish establishment reacted to the ruling.

The Anti-Defamation League, in its own tweet, left out its age (102) but also got in the hashtag, #LoveWins, and that funny little heart.

Thirteen Jewish groups, among them organizations representing the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative streams, were among the 25 joining the amicus brief the ADL filed in Obergefell v. Hodges.

The preeminence of Jewish groups among those backing the litigants was not a surprise. In recent decades, much of the Jewish establishment has embraced gay marriage as a right equivalent to the others it has advocated, including racial equality, religious freedoms and rights for women.

Multiple groups, in their statements, cited the passage in Genesis that states humans were created “in the image of God,” which has for decades been used by Jewish civil rights groups to explain their activism.

“Jewish tradition reminds us that we were all created equally, b’tzelem Elohim, in the ‘image of God’ (Genesis 1:27), and also shows us that marriage is a sacred responsibility, not only between the partners, but also between the couple and the larger community,” the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly said in a statement.

Groups also were looking to next steps in advancing LGBT rights, including in the workplace.

“You can now legally marry in all 50 states and put your wedding on your desk and be fired and have no recourse in the federal courts,” Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who directs the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center, told JTA in an interview.

“We hope this will energize and inspire a bipartisan effort to end discrimination in the work place,” he said, specifying the “T” in LGBT – the transgendered. “People should not be discriminated in the workplace because of expression of gender.”

The notion that the decision would propel a broader debate about LGBT rights concerned the Orthodox Union, which in a carefully worded statement noted that it adhered to the traditional definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, but also recognized “that no religion has the right to dictate its beliefs to the entire body politic.”

The OU, like other more conservative religious groups, was wary of new liberties that could infringe on its ability to hire officials who hew to their belief systems.

“Will the laws implementing today’s ruling and other expansions of civil rights for LGBT Americans contain appropriate accommodations and exemptions for institutions and individuals who abide by religious teachings that limit their ability to support same-sex relationships?” the group said in its statement.

The OU did not file an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case. Agudath Israel of America did, opposing the gay marriage side.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the consensus-driven public policy umbrella, recognized sensitivities on both sides in its statement.

“We call for sensitivity and civility in this debate, understanding that the vast majority on all sides are people of good will,” it said. “Adjusting to change is not always easy or swift.”

SCOTUS Marriage Equality

Sam Schulman writes in 2014:

In the mid-20th century, the American Jewish community distinguished itself for the zeal of its commitment to the cause of civil rights. Recently, American Jews have been no less zealous in behalf of another cause that many have likened to its predecessor. This is the movement to advocate, create, and legalize the institution of gay marriage.

Is that a surprise? That American Jews as individuals strongly support gay marriage should come as news to no one. What may be surprising is how much more avidly they support it than do non-Jewish Americans of the same socio-economic profile: educated, affluent, politically liberal. In 2010, the last time the Pew Research Center broke out separate opinion numbers for Jews, over three-quarters supported gay marriage, scoring eight points higher on this issue than liberals in general and 27 points higher than white mainline Protestants. Only the small group of avowed atheists believe more devoutly in gay marriage than do Jews. In a related datum, American Jewish attitudes toward homosexuality itself have long tracked markedly more positive than the attitudes of Americans in general.

Even measured against the standard of other Jewish enthusiasms, gay marriage is remarkable. In 2008, more of California’s Jews voted against Proposition 8, an anti-gay-marriage amendment, than voted for Barack Obama, who happened to be running for President on the same day. As early as 2000, the Reform movement, the largest Jewish religious denomination, authorized its rabbis, at their discretion, to “officiate at same-sex unions [of gay Jewish couples] through appropriate Jewish ritual.” The Conservative movement, the second largest denomination, has followed suit and in some respects, as we shall see, gone farther.

That an American Jew of any denomination, or of none, is significantly more likely to approve of gay marriage than are American liberals in general raises the question of whether there might be something peculiarly Jewish propelling this disposition: some element in American Jewish culture, or in the Jewish religious tradition, or in the Jewish soul or genotype.

From the Jerusalem Post June 28, 2015:

Lutheran pastor says Jews to blame for destroying Christian values after US approves gay marriage

The pastor insists that Jewish influence and money were being used to destroy Christian culture and values globally.

Mark Dankof, a Lutheran pastor and political activist, declared the Jews to blame for the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday which declared any law to ban gay marriage unconstitutional.

Speaking to reporters from Iran’s Press TV, Dankof insisted that Jewish influence and money were being used to destroy Christian culture and values globally.

“It should not be ignored that the victories for abortion on demand and LGBT rights are reflective of the disproportionate influence of Jewish power, money, and activism in the United States,” he declared.

“The key Jewish role played in the mainstreaming of abortion, LGBT, and pornography in the United States may be documented in Google search, especially in looking at the Frankfurt School and its Institute for Social Research,” added Dankof.

Dankof declared that Russian President Vladamir Putin is one of few national leaders who recognize the threat of Jewish power.

“I believe Mr. Putin is a key ingredient in destroying this global threat, and restoring cultural integrity and national sovereignty to his country, and providing a model for defeating the Zionist agenda globally,” he concluded.

Regarding the article below, Ted writes: “Luke, the Jewish population in the US is dominated by European, Jews, who tend to be secular/non-observant and upper class professionals (maybe 60-70% of US Jews). By contrast, secular European Jews (non-Russian) make up around 30% of the Israeli population. This article (which I haven’t clicked on) compares two different populations.”

Posted in Homosexuality, Jews | Comments Off on Is There Nothing That Elites Can’t Do?

How Do We Have Same-Sex Marriage?

Posted on October 10, 2015 by Luke Ford

Comments: I am simply baffled by the remarkable transformation in Western culture for it to have happened. When I was a young man (and I’m not that old now), homosexuality was widely perceived as perverse. I even played a very minor part (essentially, a driver) in having a homosexual removed from military service (incidently, the main mover of that removal is, today, a very powerful member of the establishment, whose name you would all recognize).

There is no denying that that attitude has changed (not completely, but substantially) in about 15 years. Its not as widespread as the media would have us believe: much of the States’ support for gay marriage is really Federal Judge’s support for gay marriage. But it is widespread nonetheless.

And it is objectively mindboggling. Marriage as a covenenant between a man and a woman is about as fundamental a concept as you can get (or could have gotten just 15-20 years ago). I suspect it was overthrown, throughout the Western World, by the opinions of perhaps 5,000 people (a few key television producers, a few key political activists, and a few key judges and law professors)-and all at a time when our culture is supposedly splintering with less media centralization than before.

Based on this issue, I can’t imagine any bedrock moral or political belief that couldn’t be manipulated by elites, and abandoned or changed by the masses, essentially overnight. Humans really are sheep-and not just with regard to the trivial (what detergent to buy, whether to smoke cigarettes). Given the right environment, human beings will do and believe whatever they are told. National media, and national politicians really do have the level of power over the masses that they like to think they have.

Posted in Homosexuality | Comments Off on How Do We Have Same-Sex Marriage?

The Meaning Of Feminism

Posted on October 10, 2015 by Luke Ford

From the Chateau:

Recall the two demonic motivations of feminists:

To teach women to be second-rate men rather than first-rate women.
To remove all constraints on female sexuality while maximally restricting male sexuality.

Feminism is about women who are low on the mating desirability scale ruining the chances for attractive young women to have fulfillment, which they say is to be found in the sterile carpeting, crappy chairs, exhausting commutes, and pre-landfill cubicle partitions that define the totalitarian architecture of Encorpera. Of course feminists don’t know what they are talking about since few actually slog through a career outside of academia. For no feminist offers young women the sensible advice to get an education they can use later in life, find a husband early, bear children, and enter the workforce after their children have grown. Now more than ever with the advent of the internet and online education do people have the opportunities to acquire marketable skills and seek work. You can always get a job and you can start a business or career after the age of 40.

***

Peter Drucker, in his famous essay Managing Oneself, advised strongly the need to understand your strengths and weaknesses, and observed that you can never win by improving your weaknesses, only by improving your strengths. In broader socio-economic terms, feminism has pressured women to build on their weaknesses (ability to compete against men) and discouraged them from capitalizing on their strengths (youth and fertility). Young women have taken up this mantra to the extreme as their innate herd behavior has driven millions of them dominate universities and commit to a life of cubicle drudgery over hearth and home. They would rather have a crappy job with vicious co-workers that provides them money to spend on frivolities than a humble home domain where they rule and experience the joy of children. It is unfortunate that so many of our most intelligent and well-bred women are buying into this lie only to discover just 10 years after starting that they have missed the boat on marriage and childbearing opportunities. Adding to this cruel feminist hoax inflicted on impressionable women, some companies make a spectacle of offering to freeze their female worker’s eggs so they can devote their youth to the corporation and attempt childbirth long after the ideal window for this has passed. This is not to imply that women should not be educated; a woman should have an education as a financial backup and to use after child-rearing.

***

So we have weakened society as a whole by building on women’s weaknesses in attempts to make them the equal of men, rather than encouraging them in their natural strengths. And while this charade is going on, men are encouraged to adopt feminine attitudes and lifestyles at the expense of their own natural strengths, now deemed unnecessary in the new gender-neutral economy. The impact on our society appears in plummeting marriage rates, childless women, fatherless children, inflated home prices, and exploding credit card debt. To cope with the pressures of competing against men as well as their own female competitors, an astonishing 25% of working women are on anti-depressants. While companies make a big deal out of their zero-tolerance drug policies, their female workforce is higher than a kite on prescription medications.

For whatever impact feminization is having on women themselves, it means something else : you have a huge demographic of talented competitors who control the hiring process, are being given advantages over you for job assignments, against whom you cannot fight as you would any other man, and who ultimately promote our downward economic spiral by occupying non-productive tasks while avoiding the risk-taking that is required to stimulate job creation.

And if that’s not bad enough, many male hiring managers and CEOs are eager to place women simply because the women are attractive or they themselves have daughters. These men, usually married, seek to increase their odds for workplace romances either real or imagined as an escape hatch to their marital drudgery and suffocating corporate confines.

Posted in Feminism | Comments Off on The Meaning Of Feminism

The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis

Posted on October 10, 2015 by Luke Ford

From June 2015: “John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and Co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, assesses the causes of the present Ukraine crisis, the best way to end it, and its consequences for all of the main actors. A key assumption is that in order to come up with the optimum plan for ending the crisis, it is essential to know what caused the crisis. Regarding the all-important question of causes, the key issue is whether Russia or the West bears primary responsibility.”

Posted in Ukraine | Comments Off on The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis

158 Families Fund The 2016 Race, How Many Are Jewish?

Posted on October 10, 2015 by Luke Ford

Searching the comments on this story at NYTimes.com I notice zero mentions of “Jew.” I guess such comments are deleted immediately.

Talking about politics in America without mentioning Jews is like talking about football without mentioning the quarterback. Jews are to American politics as the quarterback is to the New England Patriots.

Steve Sailer writes: The NYT’s article is full of demographic breakdowns regarding these 158 donors, but the word “Jewish” doesn’t appear in the article.

Comments:

* Isn’t this the sort of thing Maoist China did?

“Look at the these rich folk, they are the enemy!”

* I think the power of the media is more important than the power of people that write checks every four years.

* Wikipedia…. Israel lobby
“In 2006, 60% of the Democratic Party’s fundraising and 25% of that for the Republican Party’s fundraising came from Jewish-funded Political Action Committees. Democratic presidential candidates depend on Jewish sources for 60% of money from private sources.[49]”

Also Mearsheimer and Walt, Israel Lobby, p.163
“Despite their small numbers in the population (less than 3 per cent), American Jews make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties”
footnote 55 “In 1976, over 60% of the large donors to the Democratic Party were Jewish; over 60% of the monies raised by Nixon in 1972 were Jewish…..”

* The media is run by the same class of billionaires. As George Carlin said “it’s a big club and you and me aren’t in it”.

Their job is to convince us – the masses, that the kabuki theater we call politics is really decided by us and not a bunch of nasty rich people who own the political and intelligentsia class lock, stock and barrel. They also keep a lot of stories out of the news that can impact the narrative they feed us on a daily basis as well.

* I recall Charles Murray’s narration in his great sociological study, “Coming Apart”. In Part II (on the White Working Class), Murray seemed baffled about why all the social indicators showed pretty serious social decline among lower status Whites, men especially. Lower status White men had been steadily socially/civically/economically disengaging between the 1970s and 2010s.

It is easily explainable. Young White U.S. men see and hear this sort of this thing daily or semi-daily (as in NY Times article — White Man, undesirable, White Man, evil, White Man, the world’s foremost problem, etc.). They hear no one pushing back. A part of them realizes, “I’m not wanted,” so they stop trying as hard. They disengage.

Maybe Murray knows this and was being coy. His narration came off at times almost as if he viewed the phenomenon as unexplainable.

It is explainable. All people respond to incentives.

* “In a nation that is being remade by the young, by women and by black and brown voters.”

I’m not sure that “remade” is the word I would choose. It implies an element of construction & creation that I don’t see.

“Re-purposed,” perhaps.

* Only counting the obvious Jewish names, plus a few others I’m pretty sure are Jewish, I counted 35 of the 154*, or 23%, which is much higher than the 2-3% of the population that is Jewish, but much lower than the ~35% or so of the Forbes 400 who are Jewish.

Jews might be even more heavily represented than that if the Democratic primary were more competitive. Indeed, one could argue that the fact that the Democratic primary is so uncompetitive is the fact the the Jewish lobby’s preferred candidate pretty much has the nomination already sewn up, despite her huge and obvious weaknesses.

Bill Clinton was probably closer to the Jewish lobby than any president in history. Both of his Supreme Court nominees were Jewish, 25% of his cabinet (in terms of man years) was Jewish, and four of his six nominees to the Federal Reserve Board were Jewish, while only one was (possibly) a white gentile and the other was black. And, of course, his only child married into a Jewish family.

* You’ll notice they say ‘mostly finance and energy’, when finance way outpaces energy and the other fields; energy’s a distant 2nd and close to #3. Trying to create a false equivalence–if there’s a story here it’s the dominant role of finance.

* These 158 families are lucky to live on islands of wealth that isolate them from a country whose shifting demographics they cannot possibly understand.

* A Jew in Mao’s China

July 9, 2012 By Laura Goldman

Even when I have been disenfranchised from God and synagogue, I have always been culturally proud to be a Jew. A source of that pride is the Jewish tradition of helping the oppressed, and our involvement in social movements such as labor and civil rights.

Until I saw the documentary “The Revolutionary” at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, I mistakenly thought that China during the revolutionary period was one country that had not felt the Jewish embrace. In fact, 85 to 90% of the foreigners helping the Chinese at the time of the Communist takeover were Jewish. This included the daughter of the founder of the brokerage firm Goldman Sachs, who left the comfort of her Park Avenue home to assist the Chinese.

* You would be shocked at how many people don’t know that jewish donors dominate both parties. The media certainly aren’t going to tell them…

* I imagine it’s very hard to keep your campaign going if you say things that those 158 families (or the subset that might support you given your party and ideology) don’t like to hear. My guess is that this explains a fair bit of the deference to Israel of pretty-much all serious candidates, and probably the lack of desire to restrict immigration.

* 64 of the top 158 donors made their money in finance. That’s almost as many as the number of donors (66) from the next five categories combined – energy & resources, real estate, media, health, and technology. That’s pretty damn impressive when you consider the massive share of the average family’s income that gets sucked up by housing, fuel, and healthcare.

* The primary purposes of SSM’s backers was the removal of any legal stigma against homosexuality. It was also an incredibly convenient weapon to attack traditional religious belief and morality–the best stigma to beat the dogma. Finally, it’s a perfect 1%er issue, both because it allows easy virtue whoring and its practical benefits are for the convenience or pleasure of an infinitesimally small minority at the expense of the middle and under classes for whom robust traditional marriage and family are perhaps their only lifeline from drowning in destitution.

* It’s funny that “white privilege” is a phrase that can be uttered anywhere but “Jewish privilege” – which is much more ostensibly true – must be uttered pseudonymously. Oy vey!

* Steve, are you actually implying that some Jews are wealthy? Don’t you know that is noting more than a vicious, anti-Semitic canard? All right-thinking people know that the Jews are the poorest, weakest people in the entire universe.

* Money controls the political process.

Smart people tend to make more money than the dumber ones.

As a group, Jews grade out smarter than the average bears.

More smarts, more money, more political influence.

Wow! The stuff you can learn at Unz is just mind-blowing.

* Jewish, I counted 35 of the 154*, or 23%

This is sort of an iron law of American life (or was until recently – the next generation won’t do as well due to intermarriage and other factors) just like the 1 SD spread in IQ between blacks and whites. Ashkenazim have earned 27% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans, 25% of ACM Turing Awards, and 26% of the Fields Medals. Ashkenazic Jews, 2 percent of the US population, make up 30% of elite-college faculty, 30% of Supreme Court law clerks, and 27% of Ivy Leaguers, etc.

These (including being a billionaire) are all “g loaded” activities. All of them are just a statistical artifact of the difference in IQ ( BTW, how many of the 154 were black?), not some nefarious plot by the Elders of Zion. If you shift a population mean almost 1 SD to the right, when you get out to the right tail their tail will not be as skinny by about 1 order of magnitude – instead of 1 in 500 having an IQ of 145+, you will have 1 in 50. So Jews show up in these g loaded occupations at about 10x their frequency in the general population. This is about as surprising at this point as learning that the sun rises in the east or that the gold medal for the 100M sprint has been won by a black guy. I could have given you that % right off the bat without all that laborious effort at counting ‘bergs and ‘steins. In fact I bet you missed a few and the real # was around 27% and not 23%.

* “This is about as surprising at this point as learning that the sun rises in the east or that the gold medal for the 100M sprint has been won by a black guy.”

True, but the discussion centers more on the Times’ obsession with how white the list is while it pretends not to notice how Jewish it is. Your argument could be applied to both – of course it’s whiter than America on average, because whites are smarter and richer than average; of course it’s full of older people, because older people tend to have higher incomes and greater wealth.

If they’re going to obsess about the importance of demographic disparity in political contributions then they have no right to ignore the elephant in the room. Personally, I think Jews are a lot more conscientious about contributing to political campaigns, and the gap isn’t entirely explained by income disparity. Even if you controlled for wealth and income, I’d wager that Jews are still more likely to donate to political campaigns. But that’s shame on us, not on them (though it’s a lot easier to justify campaign contributions when you know the guy you’re donating to is unlikely to betray you on your pet causes).

* I’d reiterate that tallying the Jewish share of large donors kinda misses the point when you consider that about 70-80% of Jews are Democrats. Until only very recently, it’s been taken for granted that Hillary would be the Democratic Party’s nominee – in large part because she has so many of the party’s Jewish donors in her corner. That means a lot less money going to the Democratic field (for now) since this money is all for the primary. If it heats up we’ll get a better overall picture. If it does, the Jewish share of large donors will go way beyond 25%. And if you want an even better picture of who the large donors are, you really need to wait for the general election. One out of four? That’s not the ceiling, that’s the floor.

Posted in America, Jews | Comments Off on 158 Families Fund The 2016 Race, How Many Are Jewish?

Musings

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Luke Ford

* I couldn’t wait to see my friend this morning to tell him how I took Inglewood Blvd south to Jefferson east to get to the party last night in Culver City in just 25 minutes (7 miles).

* One side of the card reads: “I’d rather do business with 100 Arabs than one Jew.” The other side of the card reads: “Goldman’s Funeral Home.”

* “Libertarianism only works if it’s libertAryanism.” (Friend)

* Libertarian = Fantasist who believe that “free markets” suffice to get us to where we need to be, and in favor of open borders. If you favor totally free markets, then why not one for labor too?Libertarianism isn’t a major thing in ethnically based nations. Even Israel with loads of minorities doesn’t worry about libertarianism.

To paraphrase Milton Friedman, you can have a welfare state, or you can have haredim. I will concede that capitalism is inherently less vulnerable to social democracies and especially welfarist economies. Welfarist economies are an extremely bad idea in multicultural societies. If you even have Orthodox Jews, you can’t have welfarist societies, because many will become haredim and live off the state and multiply.

* There’s a good reason that the F level in the Century City twin towers is called the F Level. It used to be expected that bosses would truly get to know their secretaries. Then Anita Hill came along and spoiled all the fun.

* Real Yidden are as pale as the white potatoes Moshe Rabbenu ate on Mount Sinai. (Chaim Amalek)

* “Race War” would be a great name for a punk rock band.

* Koreans, is there a derogatory nickname for Koreans? Does anyone tell you, “You belong in Pyongyang!” Can Nips tell just by looking at you that you’re Korean?

* I’m thinking of relaunching myself. Perhaps go on a listening tour.

* Buddy: “I think you should find a Japanese wife and settle here in Japan. You would find it very calming and orderly and you would find inner peace.”

Posted in Politics | Comments Off on Musings

Why Do Politicians Have Affairs?

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Politicians are eerily similar to actors and actresses in that they crave mass adulation. And they are seldom content with what they already have. I am not original in stating that politicians (rather like actors, again) are all too frequently people for whom they are the stars while their family and friends – even their children – are mere satellites.

They are not normal people.

As the great sci-fi writer Frank Herbert wrote, “It’s not that power corrupts – it’s that power attracts the corruptible.”

* What I don’t get is if you’re going destroy your marriage and your career, why not at least got for some beautiful young woman, not some 51-year old that looks like she’s been rode hard and put away wet?

Posted in Adultery | Comments Off on Why Do Politicians Have Affairs?

Why can’t we talk about IQ?

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Luke Ford

Jason Richwine writes for Politico:

“IQ is a metric of such dubiousness that almost no serious educational researcher uses it anymore,” the Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox wrote back in May. It was a breathtakingly ignorant statement. Psychologist Jelte Wicherts noted in response that a search for “IQ test” in Google’s academic database yielded more than 10,000 hits — just for the year 2013.

But Cox’s assertion is all too common. There is a large discrepancy between what educated laypeople believe about cognitive science and what experts actually know. Journalists are steeped in the lay wisdom, so they are repeatedly surprised when someone forthrightly discusses the real science of mental ability.

If that science happens to deal with group differences in average IQ, the journalists’ surprise turns into shock and disdain. Experts who speak publicly about IQ differences end up portrayed as weird contrarians at best, and peddlers of racist pseudoscience at worst.

I’m speaking from experience. My Harvard Ph.D. dissertation contains some scientifically unremarkable statements about ethnic differences in average IQ, including the IQ difference between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. For four years, the dissertation did what almost every other dissertation does — collected dust in the university library. But when it was unearthed in the midst of the immigration debate, I experienced the vilification firsthand.

For people who have studied mental ability, what’s truly frustrating is the déjà vu they feel each time a media firestorm like this one erupts. Attempts by experts in the field to defend the embattled messenger inevitably fall on deaf ears. When the firestorm is over, the media’s mindset always resets to a state of comfortable ignorance, ready to be shocked all over again when the next messenger comes along.

At stake here, incidentally, is not just knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but also how science informs public policy. The U.S. education system, for example, is suffused with mental testing, yet few in the political classes understand cognitive ability research. Angry and repeated condemnations of the science will not help.

What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand, is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions that still seem controversial to journalists.

For example, virtually all psychologists believe there is a general mental ability factor (referred to colloquially as “intelligence”) that explains much of an individual’s performance on cognitive tests. IQ tests approximately measure this general factor. Psychologists recognize that a person’s IQ score, which is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, usually remains stable upon reaching adolescence. And they know that IQ scores are correlated with educational attainment, income, and many other socioeconomic outcomes.

In terms of group differences, people of northeast Asian descent have higher average IQ scores than people of European lineage, who in turn have higher average scores than people of sub-Saharan African descent. The average score for Hispanic Americans falls somewhere between the white and black American averages. Psychologists have tested and long rejected the notion that score differences can be explained simply by biased test questions. It is possible that genetic factors could influence IQ differences among ethnic groups, but many scientists are withholding judgment until DNA studies are able to link specific gene combinations with IQ.

How can I be sure all of this reflects mainstream thinking? Because, over the years, psychologists have put together statements, reports, and even books aimed at synthesizing expert opinion on IQ. Many of these efforts were made in explicit response to the periodic media firestorms that engulfed people who spoke publicly about cognitive science. It’s worth reviewing some of those incidents and detailing the scholarly responses — responses that are invariably forgotten before the next furor begins. I’ll place my own experience in that context.

Let’s start 25 years ago, with the publication of The IQ Controversy, a book by Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman. The authors surveyed more than 1,000 experts in the field of cognitive science to develop a picture of what the mainstream really looks like. It was very similar to the description I’ve supplied above.

Snyderman and Rothman then systematically analyzed television, newspaper, and magazine coverage of IQ issues. They were alarmed to find that the media were presenting a much different picture than what the expert survey showed. Based on media portrayals, it would seem that most experts think IQ scores have little meaning, that genes have no influence on IQ, and that the tests are hopelessly biased. “Our work demonstrates that, by any reasonable standard, media coverage of the IQ controversy has been quite inaccurate,” the authors concluded.

In conducting the expert survey and contrasting the results with media depictions of IQ research, one would think Snyderman and Rothman had performed a valuable service. Surely public discussion of IQ would now be more firmly grounded in science?

It didn’t happen. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve was published in 1994, and real science was hard to find in the media circus that ensued. Herrnstein and Murray’s central claim about IQ differences shaping class divisions continues to be the subject of reasoned debate among social scientists. But non-experts in the media questioned whether IQ is even a valid concept. Intelligence research – psychometrics — is a pseudoscience, they said. The tests are meaningless, elitist, biased against women and minorities, important only to genetic determinists. And even to discuss group differences in IQ was called racist.

In short, the media did everything Snyderman and Rothman had warned against six years earlier. As a consequence, the interesting policy implications explored by Herrnstein and Murray were lost in the firestorm.

Jason Richwine: All of my public statements on the media controversy surrounding my dissertation are collected on this page.

May 13, 2013: A talk with Jason Richwine: ‘I do not apologize for any of my work’ 
(interview with Byron York of the Washington Examiner) 

May 20, 2013: About that dissertation 
(article in National Review)

May 21, 2013: Race and IQ at Harvard 
(radio interview on Boston NPR) 

May 24, 2013: Jason Richwine responds on race, IQ, and his dissertation 
(article in Think Progress)

May 30, 2013: Response to Peter H. Irons  
(unpublished letter to the Harvard Crimson) 

 August 9, 2013: Why can’t we talk about IQ? 
(article in Politico)

June 3, 2014: Run out of the think tanks
(radio interview with Vicki McKenna)

October 12, 2014: Dr. Jason Richwine on human intelligence and American politics
(radio interview with Joseph Cotto)

October 5, 2015: IQ and immigration policy
(radio interview with Stefan Molyneux)

To learn about my professional background and my personal experiences during the firestorm, I specifically recommend “About that dissertation.” For a more detailed discussion of the dissertation’s content and approval process, see “Jason Richwine responds on race, IQ, and his dissertation.” For a critique of the media’s handling of IQ issues, please read “Why can’t we talk about IQ?”

Posted in IQ, Jason Richwine | Comments Off on Why can’t we talk about IQ?

The Costs Of Immigration

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Luke Ford

Jason Richwine writes: A recurring theme of my writing is that, first, immigration has both benefits and costs, and, second, that the costs are systematically downplayed by immigration boosters. For example, back in the spring I wrote about the fiscal cost of immigration in “The Amnesty Numbers Game”:

Consider a congressional hearing held March 17 by the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The purpose was to determine
the fiscal impact of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration,
specifically the granting of work authorization via executive order to
millions of illegal immigrants. Witnesses opposed to amnesty presented
serious reasons why the president’s actions could impose a cost on
taxpayers. At every stage of the hearing, however, Democrats responded
with dismissive grandstanding and appeals to authority.

Earlier this summer I discussed the cultural cost of immigration in a piece for Real Clear Policy called “Are Low-Skill Immigrants Upwardly Mobile?”:

The desire to increase social mobility has taken center stage in
recent years, as lower-skill workers and their families struggle to join
the middle class. A recent New York Times poll
found that only 35 percent of Americans agree that “everyone has a fair
chance to get ahead in the long run.” The explanations for insufficient
mobility are many and varied…. But whatever the root causes of class stratification, the political
class tends to ignore a major policy that worsens the problem — namely,
the mass immigration of low-skill workers.

Two of my most recent pieces focus on the distributional costs of immigration. Increasing the supply of labor lowers production costs, but the savings come in the form of lower wages for the workers competing with immigrants. The direct connection between the economic benefits (lower consumer prices) and distributional effects (lower wages) is sometimes denied by immigration boosters. But, as I wrote in a National Review piece, other times they are honest — perhaps inadvertently honest:

The [farm lobby’s] report is clear about the … desire to keep wages low
by increasing the supply of labor. It describes wage increases as “a
strain on many U.S. farms” that other industries have managed to avoid.
It shows that real wages for food preparers, housekeepers, cashiers, and
other low-skill workers outside farming have decreased since 2002. The
reason, according to the report, is that “employers in non-agricultural
industries have been able to find enough workers to fill job vacancies
without upward pressure on wages.” Farm owners wish they had the same
privilege.

Finally, I wrote about an important new paper from George Borjas (my advisor in graduate school), who has re-examined the wage impact of the Mariel boatlift:

There is perhaps no economic study more often cited by immigration
advocates than economist David Card’s 1990 analysis of the “Mariel
boatlift.” After Fidel Castro announced in 1980 that anyone wishing to
leave Cuba could do so via the port of Mariel, 125,000 Cuban immigrants
came to Miami in a matter of months that summer. The sudden influx of
young, able-bodied workers generated an unusually good test of how
immigration affects wages. Economic theory predicts wages should have
declined in Miami after the boatlift, but Card was surprisingly unable
to detect any wage impact at all.

Borjas found that there was a decline in wages, concentrated among the least skilled natives.

Posted in Immigration | Comments Off on The Costs Of Immigration