Steve Sailer



Steven Ernest Sailer (born December 20, 1958) is an American journalist and movie critic for The American Conservative, ex-correspondent for UPI, and VDARE.com columnist. He writes about race relations, gender issues, politics, immigration, IQ, genetics, movies, and sports. He is perhaps best known online as a blogger.

Sailer grew up in Los Angeles and attended UCLA and Rice University. From 1994 to 1998, he worked as a columnist for the conservative magazine National Review.

Sailer, along with Charles Murray and John McGinnis, was described as an "evolutionary conservative" in a 1999 National Review cover story by John O'Sullivan, referring to his writing dealing with the science of human nature. Sailer argues that there is a lack of open and fact-based debate regarding intelligence, genetics, race, and gender. He also promotes a political theory called "citizenism," which posits that national identity should take priority over race.

In 1999 Sailer created the Human Biodiversity Institute, an "educational and scientific not-for-profit", which runs a non-public discussion group for "a mix of experts from across the scientific, intellectual, and political spectrums." The HBI webpage argues that understanding the social effects of varying allele distribution will be important if technology in genetics and reproductive therapy progresses to be able to act on allele distribution. The institute describes existing biodiversity as a valuable "storehouse of data available to base predictions upon," and argues that this area of scientific inquiry is presently discouraged. Sailer plans to expand the institute's activities to include a scientific journal, a webzine, and conferences.

General standpoints
He has described his starting point in analyzing political policies as being concerned with the greatest good for U.S. citizens, as opposed to being concerned with the greatest good for one's "identity group." He refers to this as a "citizenist" stance.

Sailer writes about racial issues in terms of the 'breeding population' definition used by biologists and evolutionary scientists, arguing: "A race is simply an extremely extended family that inbreeds to some degree [whereas] a species [...] inbreeds virtually exclusively."

Evolution
Sailer, who calls himself a neo-Darwinist instead of a paleoconservative, calls creationism an “easily falsified theory” that “makes religion in general look stupid,” saying that “Darwinian science is corroborating and extending much of the conservative worldview.”  His argument are paraphrased by John O'Sullivan who says that: "First, that lessons of the new science of evolutionary psychology are largely conservative ones about an adamantine human nature, the natural basis of sex roles, and so on; second, that the knowledge gained from the Human Genome Project and the rise of genetic engineering will throw up some fascinating and contentious political issues in the increasingly near future." On the relationship between evolution and religion, Sailer writes: "At minimum, we now know that our natural world cannot account for its own existence. To do that, we need to assume the existence of some sort of supernatural word. And even if some enormous breakthrough let us validate the existence of this superuniverse, we'd probably end up having to assume that it was brought about by some sort of hyperuniverse beyond that, and on and on." He also endorsed Jerry Pournelle’s reflection on the subject: "I do object to calling Intelligent Design 'science.' As I have said, it is explicitly a statement that 'science' is not sufficient for understanding the world. I think that lesson in humility would be no bad thing for inclusion in our schools. We will continue to have people who are certain that the application of science is all that is needed to produce good citizens and understand the universe, but I certainly see no harm in letting everyone know that is not the universal view of the world. Science is important, and the key to power and much understanding; it may be everything; but perhaps it is not everything."

Race
Sailer, a race realist, argues that race is not a social construct. He also specifically asserts that IQ is not only “strongly hereditary,” but at the same time points to the 15 point gap between white and African-American average IQs. He defines race thus:

"[Race] is essentially a lineage. A racial group is merely an extremely extended family that inbreeds to some extent. Thus, race is a fundamental aspect of the human condition because we are all born into families. Burying our heads in the sand and refusing to think clearly about this bedrock fact of life only makes the inevitable problems caused by race harder to overcome."

Citizenism
Steve Sailer subscribes to a political theory called "citizenism," which says that national identity should take priority over race. He says that "Americans should be biased in favor of the welfare of our current fellow citizens over that of the six billion foreigners." He argues that white people are too idealistic and self-sacrificing for "explicit white ethnocentrism" to succeed."

Immigration
Sailer opposes "unskilled" immigration, especially from Mexico. He argues that a Mexican oligarchy knowingly exports illegal immigrants into the U.S. in order to extend its sphere of influence into the country. He refers to those in power in Latin America as "Latin America's corrupt white elites", mainly because caste in Latin America roughly follows skin color , with the lightest-skinned being at the top of the social and economic structure.

Hurricane Katrina and racial demographics data
Following Hurricane Katrina, Sailer argues in a series of VDARE articles that subsequent anarchy was preventable and easily foreseen based on "the demographics and culture of New Orleans." "Officials should have expected that the population that failed to evacuate would be numerous, improvident, poor in judgment, laced with criminals, and highly dangerous to each other." Sailer argues that the racial demographics data would have been germane, as the lower average IQ of the African American population found in intelligence research correlates with "poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups [resulting in the need for] stricter moral guidance from society." Realistic predictions of population effects, Sailer argues, were not made because of a cultural taboo against noting negative behavior on the part of poor African Americans.

Sailer responded to criticism by arguing that many of those making the accusations acknowledged a correlation between low IQ and poor judgment by supporting the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 Atkins v. Virginia decision "that, in effect, banned the death penalty for killers with IQs under 70." John Derbyshire defended Sailer in the National Review Online by citing large variance in crime rates by race and birth rates for unmarried women by race. According to Peter Brimelow, Sailer's original article has been emailed out by readers (through the link to "email [this article] to a friend") at among the highest volumes seen by VDARE's articles.

Virginia Tech Massacre
On the day after the Virginia Tech massacre, Sailer wrote about "a bit of wholly unwarranted speculation about the influence of recent South Korean pop culture," such as the movie Oldboy, on Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman of the massacre, but later he wrote that other Asian movies seem to be more similar to the gunman's pictures. This speculation was made after Paul Harrill, who teaches film and video at Virginia Tech, had initially brought up the similarities between aspects of the film Oldboy and Cho's behavior.

Controversy
The neo-conservative commentator John Podhoretz has characterised Sailer's comments on New Orleans as racist. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights advocacy group, argues the science of human nature that Sailer and the HBI deal with have negative effects for minority population segments, and imply such study isn't scientifically legitimate. VDARE has been controversial for its immigration reduction stance. Sailer argues the accusation of racism is not a factual or logical refutation of his arguments, but is instead an emotive response to the transgression of taboo

"'As when television news broadcasts hours of blacks behaving badly, enormous pressure builds up amongst the commentariat to denounce furiously the first person who is so crass as to mention what everybody can see with their lying eyes. Almost all these condemnations of me have been of the now-traditional point-and-sputter ilk. The critic can't think of any facts or logic to disprove my argument. So he merely gesticulates about what an awful person I must be to say such a horrible thing ...to gesticulate in fury at the sheer unmentionability of what I've said.'"

Sailer notes that the SPLC has been accused by a Pulitzer Prize-finalist investigative report and by a Harper's Magazine exposé of exaggerating the threat of racism for fundraising purposes, and failing to appropriately spend the funds it did raise.

Sailer's article on Hurricane Katrina was followed by accusations of racism, with the highest profile critic being John Podhoretz, who posted a response on the National Review Online blog.

The left wing media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) published a report that criticized New York Times columnist David Brooks for citing Sailer's demographic analysis of the 2004 election while failing to acknowledge Sailer as "a leading promoter of racist pseudoscience". Similarly, Media Matters for America took NBC to task for citing Sailer as a conservative movie critic while omitting any mention of his racial and political beliefs.

Prominent articles

 * "Cousin Marriage Conundrum: "The ancient practice discourages democratic nation-building,"
 * "The Genetic Revolution," "America's role in the twenty-first century may depend on acknowledging and understanding human genetic diversity."
 * "Is Love Colorblind?", "While interracial marriage is increasingly accepted by whites, a surprising number of Asian men and black women are bitterly opposed. Why?" and its follow-up article "2000 Census Shows Interracial Marriage Gender Gaps Remain Large"
 * "Does Abortion Prevent Crime?", Slate, Aug. 1999. Dialogue between Sailer and University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt on Levitt's legalized abortion and crime effect.
 * "How Jackie Robinson Desegregated America", "Perhaps the least-learned lesson of the saga of Jackie Robinson is that competition can transform self-interest into an engine for racial fairness."
 * Americans First, by Steve Sailer, Posits his theory, called "citizenism," that national identity should take priority over race.

Articles on the red state-blue state divide
After the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Sailer published a series of articles with his analysis of the red state-blue state divide in American politics.


 * ""Affordable Family Formation"—The Neglected Key To GOP's Future,"
 * "The Dirt Gap: The Fundamental Cause of Red vs. Blue States,"
 * "The GOP’s Third Electoral Secret: Marriage, Fertility…And Cheap Housing,"
 * "Democrats Recoil From GOP’s Electoral Secret: Marriage Plus Children,"
 * "Baby Gap: How Birthrates Color the Electoral Map,"

Other articles

 * "Fragmented Future",
 * "What's Wrong With the Democrats?",
 * "Hollywood's Skin Deep Leftism",
 * "We're Different. Get Over It.",
 * "Whites, not Latinos, won it for GOP",
 * "Revolutionary Nepotism," "Nepotism and dynasticism are on the rebound in politics, both abroad and at home. "  Review of Adam Bellow's In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History.
 * "How will Annika Sorenstam perform?" Sailer analyzed the recent performances of Annika Sörenstam on the LPGA Tour leading up to her 2003 appearance in Bank of America Colonial, a tournament on the men's PGA Tour. Sailer predicted that she would most likely miss the cut by four strokes, which she did.
 * "Q&A: Steven Pinker of 'Blank Slate'",
 * A Miracle Happens Here: Darwin's Enemies on the Right,
 * The Coming War Over Genes: Darwin's Enemies on the Left,
 * The Left Doesn’t Like Darwin Either,

Quotes

 * "The typical white intellectual considers himself superior to ordinary white people for two contradictory reasons: a] he constantly proclaims belief in human equality, but they don't; b] he has a high IQ, but they don't."


 * "Darwin seems to lose out with the public primarily when his supporters force him into a mano-a-mano Thunderdome death match against the Almighty. Most people seem willing to accept Darwinism as long as they don't have to believe in nothing but Darwinism. Thus, the strident tub-thumping for absolute atheism by evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins, whom the new issue of Discover Magazine rightly criticizes as "Darwin's Rottweiler," is self-defeating."


 * "What you won't hear, except from me, is that 'Let the good times roll' is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society. ... In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan — because, when you get down to it, [the] Japanese aren't blacks."


 * "Lenin, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered even more tens of millions in the name of equality than Hitler murdered in the name of inequality."


 * "Perhaps the most quoted social philosopher of our time famously asked:
 * "Can we all get along?"
 * Well, when it comes to Muslims and Westerners, the answer is:
 * No, we can't.
 * So, deal with it. When we get in each other's faces, we get on each other's nerves. It's time to get out of each other's faces. Westerners and Muslims don't agree on the basics of social order and don't want to live under the same rules. That shouldn't be a problem because that's what separate countries are for. We should stop occupying their countries and stop letting them move to ours.