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An Odinist Reader (Aargh!) Surfaces To Reprove Tom Fleming

VDARE.COM comments: As VDARE.COM has gained momentum, it has become hearteningly apparent how much journalistic talent is lying unused out there in Middle America. Contrary to what might be suggested by an unvaried diet of the Wall Street Journal Edit Page/Washington Times Edit Page/Goldberg [formerly National] Review/ Weekly Standard, it is not necessary to be the scion or house elf of one of the great Neconservative families to be able to perceive the importance in current affairs, and write succinctly about it.

One the great services our new friends do for us is to spare us the task of reading and flagging the outrageous rubbish so frequently to be found in what are nominally  "conservative" publications. Today's letter is a case in point.

Peter Wood has been writing a series of mild whimperings about the state of the universities in the G(formerly N) Review  over the last six months. Unfortunately, as our friend Upton Nichols notes, he appears to be part of the problem, not the solution.  The article Nichols here dissects might possibly be excused on the part of a non-specialist ignorant of the area (although it's not difficult to follow), but Wood (email him) teaches a required course on ethnology for first year graduate students. 

The underlying issue here, of course, is not that yet another academic turns out to lack elementary intellectual integrity, but what was it about this absurd article that induced the G [formerly N] R editors to publish it?

FROM:  Upton Nichols

In the aftermath of the Ann Coulter debacle, the editors of National Review are obviously very eager to display their ethnic/racial tolerance—so eager that they have published an amazingly irresponsible article suggesting that science has disproven the concept of race.  "The Race Card" by Peter Wood is at best an egregiously sloppy piece of journalism or more likely a classic piece of neocon propaganda—you decide.

Woods' basic premise is that the Left uses race to divide the country and obtain political power. No argument here.

He then goes on to reject the legitimacy of racial politics on the faulty grounds that racial classifications have no real biological basis. I will limit my focus to Wood's outrageous summary of The Seven Daughters Of Eve:

It offers mixed news for racists. On one hand, science has now found definite proof   that humans belong to several distinct non- overlapping lineages. On the other hand, those lineages are located exclusively in mitochondrial DNA and have nothing to do with our outward appearance or ability

Three questions for Mr. Wood and the (scientific) editors at National Review: 

1. If scientists have proven several distinct lineages, how is it possible for nuclear DNA to jump these lineages evidenced by mitochondrial DNA?
2. Is National Review therefore proposing a new major genetic paradigm other than transfer of genes from parent to child?
3. If mitochondrial DNA is the only racial DNA, but it has nothing to do with physical appearance, then where are the genes responsible for characteristic racial appearance and how do they mirror mitochondrial DNA lineages?

This article is so bad and illogical that someone should be fired at National Review for letting this pass as reasonable journalism.

But the scientific sophistry of the neocons can only last so long. One only has to read any medical journal to see the future.

Recently the New England Journal of Medicine published research [i]demonstrating that different polymorphisms (gene subtypes) more prevalent in blacks than whites resulted in hypertension resistant to medications. Also this month, the Journal of Infectious Diseases [ii]reported that a certain cell receptor confers resistance to HIV infection. The polymorphism (gene subtype) that encodes this receptor exists in 15 % of whites and occurs at a much lower prevalence in some other racial groups.

I guess the New England Journal of Medicine has not read the National Review's cutting edge scientific proclamation that race is only a biological reality within mitochondrial DNA.

The Left in America understands the reality of race and uses it to its advantage.

The Right must reject the starry-eyed neocon dreams if it ever wants to beat the Left.

************

December 18, 2001