In 2011, Ben Shapiro produced a video titled “The Myth of the Tiny Radical Muslim Minority.” The purpose of this video is deceptive. There is nothing incorrect about saying that many Muslims throughout the world hold radical views. The problem is that Ben portrays radical beliefs as something unique to Muslims, or at least to a level more extreme than can be found among other nations or religions. He makes this point clear in the beginning of the video:

There’s plenty of violent material in the Old and New Testaments. Hey, I’m an Orthodox Jew, I read the Old Testament a lot. But believers in those particular texts are not currently ramming airliners into towers or beheading journalists or mutilating female genitalia.[1]

There are many Jews who commit similar actions. Rather than suicide attacks with airplanes, Israelis use the weaponry from their planes for terrorist activities, such as the attack on the USS Liberty[2] and the destruction of hospitals in Gaza.[3] Alison Weir writes,

In Israel’s 2009 “Operation Cast Lead” Israeli forces used these weapons systems to carry out more than 2,360 air strikes on Gaza, in its 2012 “Operation Pillar of Defense” Israel carried out 1,500 strikes on Gazans, in it’s 2014 “Operation Protective Edge” Israeli forces launched 4,762 strikes across Gaza, and in 2021’s “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” Israeli forces carried out 1,500  air strikes on Gaza. Altogether, these killed at least 4,288 Gazans, a large percentage of them women and children. Gazan resistance groups during the same “wars” killed 99 Israelis.[4]

Female genital mutilation is not a practice among Jews, but Israelis do engage in organ harvesting of Palestinians. Until 2008, when Israel’s Knesset “banned the purchase and sale of human organs,”[5] Israel was known as one of the top countries where organ harvesting traffickers conducted their business, according to Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the founder of Organ Watch.[6] Targeting of Palestinians for organ harvesting continues to this day.[7]

As for Ben’s specific claims of Muslims “ramming airliners” into towers, he is presumably referring to 9/11. The 9/11 hijackers were members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group espousing an extreme Wahhibist interpretation of Islam that is exported from Saudi Arabia, an ally of the U.S. Although no one would say the U.S. is a Muslim country, it maintained its relationship with Saudi Arabia, even though “The intelligence community identified [Saudi Arabia] as the primary source of money for al Qaeda both before and after the September 11 attacks,” the 9/11 Commission reported.[8]

As Ben lists the beliefs of Muslim countries in support of his claim of a radical Muslim majority, there is a question as to whether nations like the Christian-majority U.S. and Jewish-majority Israel are “moderate” when compared to Muslim-majority nations. It seems that the claims of radicalism can be applied to these Western countries as well.

For example, after President Biden’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, 42% of Americans held that this was the wrong decision.[9] This is in spite of the fact that hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been killed in that war.[10] 48% of Americans believe that torture is acceptable in some circumstances.[11] 62% of Americans say they support abortion.[12] Among Jewish Americans, support of abortion is at 83%.[13]

32% of U.S. Jews “believe God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people,” and among Orthodox Jews like Ben, this number rises to 87%.[14]

56% of Jewish Israelis support abortion.[15] According to Pew Research, “roughly half of Israeli Jews (48%) say Arabs should be transferred or expelled from Israel.”[16] This is a view Ben himself at one point publicly supported. In a 2003 article, he wrote, “If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It's an ugly solution, but it is the only solution. And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum.”[17] Probably due to backlash, he later repudiated this position: “Some on the right have proposed population transfer from the Gaza Strip or West Bank as a solution. This is both inhumane and impractical. Moving millions of Palestinians out of areas they have known for their entire lives will certainly not pave the way to peace.”[18]

Only 21% of Israeli Jews believe there is discrimination against Muslims.[19] This is surprising in light of the fact that Israel imposed a starvation diet on Gaza,[20] continuously bombs Palestinian hospitals and schools, bulldozes their homes, and indiscriminately massacres them under any conceivable pretext. Apparently, Israelis do not believe this radical behavior counts as discrimination.

An October 18-19, 2023, poll given during the assault on Gaza showed that 47% of Israeli Jews thought that Israel should “not at all” “take into consideration the suffering of the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza when planning the next phases of fighting there.”[21] By the beginning of November over 9,000 Palestinians in Gaza were killed, more than 3,700 being children.[22]

Ben says nothing of the Israeli military’s shared belief in the liceity of targeting civilians. For example, a booklet was published by the Central Region Command of the Israeli Army, and included the following quote by the Command’s Chief Chaplain:

When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah they may and even should be killed ... Under no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilised ... In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.[23]

As Israel Shahak notes, influential rabbis with followers in the Israeli army label Palestinians as Canaanites and Amalekites, and advocate genocide by quoting Deuteronomy: “you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them.”[24]

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, said of Gentiles:

“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.”

“In Israel, death has no dominion over them… With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.

“This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”

“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat… That is why gentiles were created.”^[25]

Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel, an educator “at the state-sponsored military prep-academy Bnei David in the West Bank settlement of Eli,” spoke of Palestinians as goyim that need to be enslaved:

Abolishing legal slavery has created deficiencies. No one is responsible for that property. With God’s help it will return. The goyim (non-Jews) will want to be our slaves. Being a slave of the Jews is the best. They must be slaves, they want to be slaves. Instead of just wandering the streets, being foolish and harming each other, now he’s a slave, now his life is beginning to come into order.^[26]

The Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, a leader of the Hasidic movement who has been celebrated with a national holiday by every U.S. president since Carter, said, “Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness.” He also said, “The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.”[27]

Many of these Muslim countries that Ben lists as having radical beliefs, such as support of Osama bin Laden or honor killings of women, have been supported by Western nations both economically and politically. If the West is supporting these extremist countries, are they not complicit in radicalism?

Cardinal Sarah is an extremely well-read and insightful prelate, who has displayed his brilliance in books like The Power of Silence and God or Nothing. He was born in northern Guinea, which as of 2020 has an average IQ of 67.[1] Yet, he is a man who speaks three languages fluently, has degrees in theology and Sacred Scripture, and has distinguished himself by his orthodoxy.

He began seminary training at the age of 12 and has continued to avidly learn since then. It is evident that Catholic education is a powerful tool for developing the mind into an industrious intellect that seeks truth and success. And although many in traditionalist circles find refuge in him, he has maintained Catholic orthodoxy, such as when he said that “whoever is against the pope is, ipso facto, outside the church.”[2]

Cardinal Sarah is not some genetic outlier among the Guinea people. A healthy environment and dedication to success can create many more Sarahs.

The category of a Black race is arbitrary due to the spectrum of genetic variation, and the only objective identifier for race is the singular human race. Nevertheless, for ease of discussion this blog post will refer to those who identify as Black/African, although these terms in regard to IQ studies ultimately become meaningless, as will be shown.

According to hereditarians like Charles Murray, low Black IQ is due to genetics and cannot be significantly improved. This position is completely false. The Eyferth study is proof that the primary cause of IQ discrepancies is the environment:

In the 1950s, German psychologist Klaus Eyferth speculated that Black children raised apart from both the racism and ghetto culture that were then unfortunately prevalent in Black America could be expected to perform intellectually on par with whites. To test this thesis, he administered a German-language version of the standard Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) test to hundreds of children fathered by American servicemen with German mothers. Eighty-three of the children were white, and ninety-eight were mixed-race: the daughters and sons of Black GIs and white German girls. As a culturalist would predict, the children had almost identical SAT scores. The white boys beat the Black/mixed boys by four points—101 to 97—but the mixed-race girls whipped the white girls 96 to 93.

…

Some might object that selection by the U.S. Army of only soldiers within a certain IQ range slanted the results of the test, but we know from the work of Sowell and others that the IQ averages of different racial groups within the U.S. Armed Forces have ranged between 80 and 105, and generally reflect the IQ distributions in our larger society.[3]

This wasn’t the only study to show that race had a negligible effect on IQ:

According to a 2017 Brookings Institution report by Jonathan Rothwell, data from the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that there is “no [longer] any test score gap between white and multiracial high school students.” In reading and reading analysis, in fact, “multiracial students outperform other groups, including Asians” by a statistically significant margin.

This high performance was not due to any uniquely high level of socioeconomic status enjoyed by biracial teens; the average multiracial high school student comes from a family making $72,000, as opposed to $118,107 for whites and about $60,000 for Blacks. Nor are multiracial children an “exotic” population, resulting mainly from marriages between small high-performing groups like Asians and Jews. Most are just Black and white. According to Rothwell, “[n]early half of multiracial students aged fifteen to eighteen report having Black ancestry, and Black-white combinations are the most frequent interracial origin of multiracial children.”[4]

Reliable adoption studies have shown no significant difference in IQ:

A superior adoption study and one not discussed by the hereditarians was carried out at Arizona State University by the psychologist Elsie Moore, who looked at black and mixed-race children adopted by middle-class families, either black or white, and found no difference in I.Q. between the black and mixed-race children. Most telling is Dr. Moore’s finding that children adopted by white families had I.Q.’s 13 points higher than those of children adopted by black families. The environments that even middle-class black children grow up in are not as favorable for the development of I.Q. as those of middle-class whites.[5]

Further studies into IQ have elucidated other reasons for the apparent gap:

Important recent psychological research helps to pinpoint just what factors shape differences in I.Q. scores. Joseph Fagan of Case Western Reserve University and Cynthia Holland of Cuyahoga Community College tested blacks and whites on their knowledge of, and their ability to learn and reason with, words and concepts. The whites had substantially more knowledge of the various words and concepts, but when participants were tested on their ability to learn new words, either from dictionary definitions or by learning their meaning in context, the blacks did just as well as the whites.

Whites showed better comprehension of sayings, better ability to recognize similarities and better facility with analogies when solutions required knowledge of words and concepts that were more likely to be known to whites than to blacks. But when these kinds of reasoning were tested with words and concepts known equally well to blacks and whites, there were no differences. Within each race, prior knowledge predicted learning and reasoning, but between the races it was prior knowledge only that differed.[6]

Eugenicist Richard Lynn has noted that Scrabble is a cognitively demanding activity:

Scrabble is another cognitively demanding game involving combining letters to make words. It has been shown by Toma, Halpern and Berger (2014) that top scrabble experts have “extraordinarily high levels of visuospatial and verbal working memory capacities” and score 1.23d higher than elite college students who scored at the 93rd percentile of the quantitative SAT. There have been 38 winners of the American National Scrabble Championships 1978-2016 and 16 winners and runners-up of the Canadian National Scrabble Championships 1996- 2013. All of these have been men.[7]

Although the top players in Scrabble have high IQs, it turns out that Nigerians dominate competitive Scrabble, even though many live in poverty. Two of the top ten ranked players are from Nigeria, and 28 are in the top 100.[8]

James Flynn wrote of the closing Black-White IQ gap, noting how for the years 1970-2002, “Blacks gained 4 to 7 IQ points on non-Hispanic Whites between 1972 and 2002.”[9]

Rick Nevin has identified what may be the main cause of the Flynn effect: lead poisoning. It is known that “additive exposure to urban air lead and lead paint in deteriorated housing” has severe effects on the brain. An increase in violent crime is one example, and decreasing IQ is also drastic:

Extensive research shows a dose-response relationship between blood lead and IQ later in life. Preschool blood lead of 10 mcg/dl is associated with 7.4 IQ points lost relative to blood lead of one mcg/dl. Another 1.6 IQ points are lost with blood lead of 15 mcg/dl relative to 10 mcg/dl, and each mcg/dl over 15 lowers IQ by 0.23 points, on average. Therefore, blood lead of 40 mcg/dl is associated with an average loss of 15 IQ points, and a 60 mcg/dl level lowers IQ by almost 20 points.

…

The percent of children ages 1-5 with blood lead over 5 mcg/dl fell from over 31% in 1988-1991 to 2.6% in 2007-2010.

…

In the late-1970s, the average blood lead for black children under age 3 was 50% above the average for white children, but black children were six times more likely to have blood lead of 30–39 mcg/dl and eight times more likely to be over 40 mcg/dl. Those children were juveniles in the early-1990s, when the black juvenile burglary arrest rate was 60% higher than the white rate, but the black juvenile violent crime arrest rate was five times higher, and the black juvenile murder arrest rate was eight times higher than the white juvenile rate. The percent of black preschool children with blood lead above 30 mcg/dl fell by 90% from the late-1970s to the late-1980s, and the black juvenile murder arrest rate then fell 83% from the early-1990s through 2004, and fell to 87% below its early-1990s peak in 2012. The “chaotic families” hypothesis provides no insight into this stunning decline in black juvenile homicide arrests over the past two decades: The percent of black children living in two-parent families was 38% in 1990 and in 2012.[10]

As regulations to remove lead were incorporated in US law, the average IQ of Americans rose. The toxic chemical problem, while still not being completely eradicated from older homes and so low blood-lead levels in children still exist, has largely been solved. There have also been major improvements in developing countries. The United Nations reported in 2011 how a

California State University study cites the massive benefits the phase-out has brought, including more than 1.2 million fewer premature deaths annually, 125,000 of them of children, with tests showing lead in blood levels dropping dramatically by 90 per cent or more, particularly in cities.

Some 58 million crimes have been averted and IQs (intelligence quotient) have risen, with research indicating that children with lots of lead in their blood are much more likely to be aggressive, violent and delinquent. It is estimated that $2.4 trillion in costs have been saved each year, equivalent to 4 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP).

…

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that between 15 and 18 million children in developing countries currently suffer from permanent brain damage due to lead poisoning and, according to the results of the research, leaded petrol was responsible for some 90 per cent of human lead exposure.[11]

With improvements in the standard of living, it appears the trend of increasing Black IQ will continue.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

[2] https://www.archbalt.org/cardinal-sarah-to-oppose-the-pope-is-to-be-outside-the-church/

[3] Reilly, Wilfred. Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About (p. 68). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[4] Reilly, Wilfred. Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About (p. 69). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/opinion/09nisbett.html

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/opinion/09nisbett.html

[7] https://www.unz.com/article/nigerians-jews-and-scrabble-an-update-on-the-iq-debate/

[8] https://www.unz.com/article/nigerians-jews-and-scrabble-an-update-on-the-iq-debate/

[9] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01802.x

[10] Nevin, Rick. Lucifer Curves: The Legacy of Lead Poisoning. BookBaby. Kindle Edition.

[11] https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/10/393292-phase-out-leaded-petrol-brings-huge-health-and-cost-benefits-un-backed-study

The American Revolutionary War is a source of celebration for all Americans. The claims of the Declaration of Independence are taken for granted, and it is considered to have been a just war. However, under scrutiny, this war cannot be considered just.

John D. Roche writes,

Historically, Christian thinkers have held that biblical passages such as Romans 13 clearly prohibit rebellion. Although a few Catholic writers such as John of Salisbury argued that tyrannicide may be justified in extreme circumstances, prior to the Protestant Reformation the vast majority of Christian thinkers rejected its legitimacy. Early Protestant leaders, including Martin Luther and John Calvin, initially accepted this view, but by most accounts they eventually embraced the position that inferior magistrates may actively resist tyrants. Within a generation, Calvinist thinkers such as John Ponet, Christopher Goodman, George Buchannan, and Samuel Rutherford had embraced this position. That Calvinists developed such a robust resistance ideology is particularly important in the American context as this tradition was, according to Sydney Ahlstrom, “the religious heritage of three-fourths of the American people in 1776.”

But it was not only Calvinists who argued that tyrants may be resisted. Particularly important in the American context is John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689). Locke was likely influenced by earlier Calvinist thinkers, but he secularized and helped popularize the idea that the people themselves could justly overthrow tyrannical governments. As well, patriot colonists were influenced by the Whig political ideology which developed between the turn of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century.[1]

It was this Protestant perversion of just-war theory which fermented in Britain and adopted by Americans that allowed the latter to justify what they claimed was resistance of tyranny.  Protestant clergy in the colonies preached that resisting tyranny was a duty, one such figure being the Boston Congregationalist minister Jonathan Mayhew who stated that “Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not entitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of anything here laid down by the inspired apostle.”[2] There were other influential pastors like

the Presbyterian Abraham Keteltas. Keteltas preached a sermon entitled “God Arising and Pleading His People’s Cause” in 1777 during which he expounded upon the religious dynamics of the American struggle, arguing that “the cause of this American continent, against the measure of cruel, bloody, and vindictive ministry,” was “the cause of God” and that, since the colonies were God’s chosen people, Britain’s war against the colonies was “unjust and unwarrantable.”[3]

For American patriots, “the interrelated issues of taxation, representation, and Parliamentary sovereignty formed the central crux of the imperial debate and justification for their rebellion.”[4] But simply put, the tax situation did not justify armed rebellion.

When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, the colonies were only paying £1,800 annually. Although Parliament did seek a thirtyfold increase, £60,000 annually with the Stamp Act, this amount would only cover seventeen percent of the £350,000 required to keep ten thousand regulars in the colonies. More importantly, the colonists’ tax burden paled in comparison to that of those living in England. Following the Seven Years’ War, Britons in the home islands paid an average of twenty-five shillings annually versus the colonists’ six pence of imperial taxes, which translates to fifty times the colonists’ tax rate.[5]

Although the Declaration of Independence claimed that “[King George] has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us,”[6] it was actually Americans who escalated violence from Lexington that led to complete warfare. British troops marched to Concord in an effort to prevent armed conflict by seizing weapons thought to be there. However, the Lexington militiamen refused to be disarmed since they insisted they had a right to self-defense. When these two forces met, British Major John Pitcairn ordered the militiamen to disperse, which they refused. Pitcairn never gave the order to his men to fire, but the shooting did commence, although we don’t know which side fired first. This outbreak of hostilities resulted in eight dead colonists and nine others wounded, while on the British side the only casualty was a soldier with a bullet through his thigh.

When the British finally made their way to Concord, they destroyed all the war material they saw. They also set fire to the town’s liberty pole, a fire which then spread to the courthouse nearby, which is when things got out of control. As Roche writes,

the town’s militiamen who had been watching from above the North Bridge mistakenly believed the British were burning the entire town. This prompted them to attack, and the New England militiamen harried the British troops all the way back to Boston. When the British had finished running their gauntlet, 73 were dead, 174 had been wounded, and another 26 were missing. On the American side, only 49 had died, 39 were wounded, and 4 were missing. The colonists followed up this assault by laying siege to the city of Boston with an Army of Observation. The patriots further escalated the conflict when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Army of Observation as the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, and made George Washington its commander. By this action, the Congress transformed a regional rebellion into a continent-wide civil war. Four days later, the New England troops enticed the British to attack them by fortifying Breed’s Hill. The final aggressive act the colonists made prior to the Declaration of Independence was the invasion of Canada. The Americans hoped to wage a war of liberation and make Canada the Fourteenth Colony. At a minimum, it seems reasonable to classify the patriots’ actions as something more than mere “self-defense.”[7]

Roche concluded:

By any measure, the War of Independence was not a war of last resort. The British were still willing to make compromises through the summer of 1776. Parliament proposed the Conciliatory Resolution in February 1775, which offered to allow the colonies to tax themselves as long as they contributed “their proportion to the common defence.” The Continental Congress rejected this offer. When Admiral Lord Richard Howe and General William Howe arrived in New York City at the head of thirty-two thousand troops in July of 1776, they came not only as military commanders but also as peace commissioners. They were authorized to settle the issue of taxation under the terms of the Conciliatory Resolution, as well as grant pardons and remove trade restrictions. Unfortunately for Lord Howe, the Americans declared independence eight days before he arrived.[8]

Because of the colonists’ drive for war, tens of thousands perished in an unjust war:

Throughout the course of the war, an estimated 6,800 Americans were killed in action, 6,100 wounded, and upwards of 20,000 were taken prisoner. Historians believe that at least an additional 17,000 deaths were the result of disease, including about 8,000–12,000 who died while prisoners of war.

Unreliable imperial data places the total casualties for British regulars fighting in the Revolutionary War around 24,000 men. This total number includes battlefield deaths and injuries, deaths from disease, men taken prisoner, and those who remained missing.

Approximately 1,200 Hessian soldiers were killed, 6,354 died of disease, and another 5,500 deserted and settled in America afterward.[9]