Jewish Intellectuals Endorse Kevin MacDonald's Theory of Jewish Eugenic Breeding!

In The American Spectator, Jay D. Homnick denounces the Cochran-Harpending-Hardy theory for suggesting that Jews got smart via business instead of via eugenic breeding for scholarship:

Any reasonable scientific mind, not catechized by the Church of Latter-Day Determinists [Homnick seems to be under the impression that the U. of Utah-affiliated authors are Mormons, which they aren't], would conclude that if people seemed to have produced very smart work 3,000 years ago and are calculably smart today, then there is likely to be one cause for this long trans-historic run of intellectual excellence.

FURTHERMORE, MANY PARTS of Eastern Europe had socioeconomic conditions which forced the vast majority of Jews to be shoemakers, tailors, and carpenters. Yet the children of those people, once liberated into urban modernity, dominated the academy, the arts and wide swaths of the political arena.

The correct answer is simple enough but difficult to ascertain in the laboratory. The Jews developed their intellect by studying the Torah as a lifetime passion. The moment a young boy showed signs of being bright, the Rabbi would make sure that he was singled out for extra instruction in Talmud. When the kid became too smart for him, he sent him up to a greater scholar and on upwards. Later, after the first Yeshiva opened in Eastern Europe in 1804, this system became more formalized.

It is an open, incontrovertible fact that the hierarchical system of pride and privilege within Judaism was built on intellect, analytical skills, and scholarly knowledge. Indeed this eventually created a backlash in the 1700s, when the Hasidic movement was begun with the explicit goal of deemphasizing scholarship and focusing on simpler virtues.

This was how the genetics of intelligence was fostered. Scholars taught other scholars and their children married each other. There was also a strong culture encouraging beautiful women to marry scholars (unlike de Maupassant's false assertion to the contrary) so that the children would be smart and good-looking. People of wealth were honored to subsidize the intellectual activity with their assets.

It is much more common when reading about a brilliant Jewish author and scientist to find that he came from a family of Rabbinic scholars than from a family of bankers. Just read the signature of Maimonides, one of the great geniuses of history, upon completing at age 30 his commentary on the Mishna: "I am Moses, son of Maimon the Judge (of Jewish Law) son of Rabbi Joseph the Wise son of Isaac the Judge son of Joseph the Judge son of Obadiah the Judge son of Rabbi Solomon the Rabbi son of Rabbi Obadiah the Judge."

This appears to be the most common response. It's fascinating to see how popular with Jewish intellectuals is Kevin MacDonald's theory that medieval Jews practiced eugenic breeding for IQ. Who would have guessed it?

Well, I probably should have guessed it from the enormous popularity of Steven D. Levitt's abortion-cut-crime theory, both to pro-choicers and pro-lifers. Its main appeal is its covert eugenic logic of abortion being most used by blacks and the poor [as Stalin would say, "No man, no problem"]. The historical fact that the youth murder rate skyrocketed among the first generation born after legalization is simply waved away because Levitt's crypto-eugenic reasoning is so appealing to contemporary intellectuals.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer