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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Persuasive Antidote to Egalatarian Dogma, 28 Jul 1999
By A Customer
This book was nothing less than a masterful polemic against every conceivable egalatarian doctrine that permeates public policy, academia, the media, and all other vestiges of modern society. With characteristic boldness, Levin throws down the gauntlet and declares fourthrightly: the problems that ail the black community are singularly due to genetic factors, and not the popular (and unsupported) notion that black impoverishment is the result of their uniquely oppresive history in the United States. In supporting this thesis Levin draws on a broad range of fields to expose, to borrow a phrase, the nonsense on stilts that underlay modern egalatarian assumptions. As has been said elsewhere the racial differences in IQ, crime, illegitimacy, life-expectancy and a host of other factors are empirically proven and persist stubbornly over time. For those who make hay over the questionable merits of IQ tests in actually measuring a true biological quality (g), Levin shows this to be a complete non-sequitur. Even if IQ tests did not exist, we can still rank racial differences by looking at the various cultural achievements the respective races have managed to produce, and what this suggest about inherited racial differences. Levin notes that one of the key flaws in egalatarian assumptions is that it exclusively focuses on the United States and its history, and does not take a global pespective on racial differences. For the egalatarian it is essential to keep the debate on the United States and its history of slavery because it offers, at minimum, a plausible explanation on why whites are wealthier and more intelligent than blacks. However, when the lens of analysis moves away from the United States egalatarian dogma begins to start looking like the Flat-Earth theory. For instance how can egalatarian dogma explain the fact that Europeans (whites) were able to build a complex society, develop advanced mathematics (Newton and Leibniz), discover the motions of the planets, build huge cathedrals and decorative castles, chart the seas, use abstract philosophic concepts (Natual law, apriori knowledge), and triumphantly leave a footprint on the moon, while blacks never invented the wheel, had no written language, routinely practiced slavery, and could build nothing more than a simple mud hut for shelter. Since there was such a profound difference in civilizational achievement between the races when they lived in geographic isolation of each other, why should we expect the differences to vanish when they share the same geography? This book also delves into meticulous philosophic disputation when dealing with the issue of slavery and what, if anything, whites owe blacks as compensation. After a lengthy inquiry Levin concludes that whites owe nothing to blacks on the grounds that thousands of whites died in the civil war to free blacks, that whites have pumped huge sums of money into floundering black communities, and controversially suggests that since whites have suffered huge criminal activity (murder, thievery) at the hands of blacks nothing is justifiably owed. After devoting numerous pages to slavery and its periphereal issues he misses the most clinching argument against the Afro-centrists who demand compensation. For instance, Julian Malveux, a famous black syndicated columnist, argues that although whites today are not personally responsible for slavery, they have nevertheless benefited from it, and thusly owe blacks compensation. The most effective rebuke to this line of reasoning would be to simply acknowledge the historical record and note that EVERY single group in history has practiced slavery in some form or another. Blacks enslaved other blacks in Africa, Native Americans enslaved each other as well as other blacks. If a group necessarily benefits from slavery why didn't those tribes in Africa that practiced slavery achieve the greatness of Europe? Why are Europeans the only ones accused of benefiting from slavery? The point is that whites would have achieved greatness whether or not they practiced slavery, and no matter how many centuries Africans enslaved other Africans they would never benefit from slavery. Actually, the only group that can be empirically shown to have benefited from slavery are the descendents of blacks who were brought to the Americas during the slave trade. In a chapter dealing with crime Levin busts the old saw that crime is due to poverty. The evidence is almost just the opposite -- crime declined during the Great Depression, but started to go out of control in the 1960's -- an age of relative prosperity. It would be impossible to cover all the points that Levin so brilliantly makes, but anyone who still clings devotely to egalatarian dogma needs to ask himself which theory, racial oppression (sociology)or genetics (evolution), best fits the accumulated global and historical evidence of chronic and significant differences in the human races?
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is the best book ever written on the Race problem., 2 Sep 1999
By A Customer
Like Professor Levin's earlier works including, "Why Homosexuality is abnormal" and "Feminism and Freedom", he brings his outstanding scholarship and errudition to the subject of the Race problem. His views are so politically incorrect, that I would bet that even his Conservative allies in such publications as National Review or The American Spectator will refuse to review his book. But anyone interested in the Race problem should read it. Levin's main skill, in my opinion as someone with an M.A. in Philosophy, is to show how useful the logical skills one picks up in this discipline can be used to analyze moral and social problems.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An integral approach to the race issue, 28 Jun 1999
By A Customer
The true virtue of this book, besides its candor, is its careful analysis of all aspects of racial difference. Some books focus solely on the facts regarding racial differences in intelligence without presenting evidence detailing the effects these differences have on lived social reality. The fact that blacks do not on average possess the same level of intelligence as whites or Asians is so well established by extensive documentation in statistical analysis, recorded social phenomena, and the empirical witness of experience that the burden of proof clearly rests on egalitarians. Levin wisely does not reinvent the wheel, but instead provides a masterly summary of the evidence and moves on to a much more controversial, but equally well-grounded conclusion: that intelligence does not just predict test scores, academic grades and career attainment, but it also has important implications for personality traits and moral codes. Our moral choices, and the standards of morality in our culture, are dictated by many factors which depend upon intelligence. As Levin argues, intelligence has a clear relationship with the ability to make abstract plans for the future. Such traits as honesty, which are central to our cultural norms of morality, are directly correlated with our ability to plan. Everyone knows that in every interpersonal exchange which involves trust, such as the sale of goods and the provision of services, the person who acts dishonestly can usually achieve a short term advantage through deception or violence. Intelligent persons, who have a correspondingly abstract and longer-term grasp of social interaction, will normally choose honesty - a response which will facilitate continued interactions, and thus mutually beneficial transactions. A less intelligent person will be more inclined to assault, steal, rob or kill because they have a correspondingly shorter-term conception of the relationship between effort and reward. All the social programs in the world, except perhaps negative reinforcement utilizing physical sanctions, will never extend the internal time-horizon of the less intelligent and therefore will never significantly alter their behavior. Levin further argues that if attenuated intelligence contributes largely to economic failure and antisocial behavior, it is unjust, dishonest and immoral to blame those of higher intelligence, to redistribute their life opportunities to others unqualified to undertake them, and to submit more intelligent groups to exorbitant financial sacrifice and moral opprobrium. This is where Levin departs from the dry scientism of Jensen and the minimalist social analysis of Herrnstein and Murray - it is also where his work provides its most important contribution. The expensive and oppressive web of lies, lawsuits, disabilities, animosity and guilt perpetuated by the advocates of the egalitarian fairy-tale are logically and irrefutably exposed here as irrational and immoral. Every one of the objections raised against Prof. Levin's thesis, on this website or elsewhere, is addressed and refuted in this remarkable volume. Buy it, read it, and ask yourself why our government, our media and our universities are afraid to answer his arguments except by insult and evasion.
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