THE SURVIVAL OF THE WEST
RACE, DYSGENICS, AND
THE SURVIVAL OF THE WEST
An Interview with Richard Lynn1
_______________________
The Occidental Quarterly: What factors contributed to the trajectory of
your career and your interest in researching empirical aspects of personality,
IQ, racial differences, and eugenics?
Richard Lynn: My father was a geneticist and eugenicist and he
was the first influence on my thinking. Then when I was a student
reading psychology at Cambridge I read Francis Galton’s Hereditary
Genius (1869), which argued that intelligence is the key to civilization,
that there are race differences in intelligence, and that intelligence de-
clines in advanced civilizations because the more intelligent cease to
have children. I also read the work of Cyril Burt and Ray Cattell that
confirmed the tendency of the more intelligent to have fewer children.
It struck me that this was enormously important for the future of our
civilization.
TOQ: Who has had the most important impact in shaping your outlook
and perspective as a psychologist? (Historical figure, colleague, mentor, or
scholar.)
RL: Francis Galton pretty well said it all. The only significant thing
he missed was the high intelligence of the Chinese and Japanese.
TOQ: What was it like to work with Hans Eysenck?
RL: Eysenck was an inspiration. He was a hereditarian at the time
when almost everyone was an environmentalist. His judgment was
almost invariably sound and he was always helpful.
TOQ: Who else has influenced you?
RL: The two most significant influences have been Art Jensen and
1 Originally published in The Occidental Letter, vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 2007): 1, 4–6. The
interviewer was Kevin Lamb. The Occidental Quarterly
10
Phil Rushton. Art Jensen came first with his path-breaking 1969 paper
that opened up the issue of black-white differences in intelligence and
his numerous subsequent books and articles. Phil Rushton’s r-K the-
ory of race differences is a hugely creative work of genius and ex-
plains numerous other race differences such as those in brain size,
rates of maturation, testosterone, and crime. Several years ago I said in
an interview that Phil Rushton deserves a Nobel Prize for his r-K the-
ory of race differences.
TOQ: What do you regard as your most important work?
RL: First, the discovery of the high intelligence of the East Asians at
105, five IQ points higher than Europeans.
Second, that the IQ of blacks in Africa is about 70. Previously, peo-
ple had believed that the black IQ is about 85, but this is the IQ of
blacks in the United States and Britain, who enjoy all the advantages
of living in a white society, such as a high standard of living, good nu-
trition, and health.
Third, my compilation of studies of the IQs of the ten major races
worldwide, and the formulation of the theory that these have evolved
as adaptations to the cold environments of Europe and East Asia,
which required higher intelligence and greater brain size than were
needed in Africa.
TOQ: President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” Act seems to make cer-
tain egalitarian assumptions in regard to closing the “education gap.” What
do you see as the likely consequences of ignoring and disregarding the body of
literature on racial and sexual differences in IQ? Will educational “reform”
initiatives ever incorporate IQ research findings into public policy measures
on education?
RL: I shouldn’t think so. It is impossible to envision the president
saying that nothing can be done to advance the blacks, Native Ameri-
can Indians, and Hispanics because of their low IQs and personality
characteristics.
TOQ: If you were selected to head up a Department of Eugenics (as a cab-
inet-level department in the British or American governments), with un-
limited authority and unlimited budgetary discretion, what reform initiatives
would you implement? What priorities would you establish as policy initia-
tives? Vol. 7, no. 3, Fall 2007
11
RL: I would implement the “parental licensing” scheme first advo-
cated by Galton. Under this scheme, couples would have to apply for
and obtain a license to have children, analogous to obtaining a license
for driving an automobile. Only those who passed the tests would be
granted the license. To obtain a parenting license, couples would have
to demonstrate that they have sound genetic qualities and parental
skills. This scheme was also advocated by the late David Lykken. I
discuss this and other eugenic proposals in my book Eugenics. But I
point out that it would be impossible to implement this proposal in
liberal democracies.
TOQ: In terms of eugenic social policies, what do you view as critical,
threshold reforms that Western societies should, as a minimum, adopt in or-
der to avoid future dysgenic trends? Can dysgenic trends be reversed by pub-
lic policies?
RL: I doubt whether much can be done in Western societies at pre-
sent. For the future, the most promising development will be the use
of embryo selection to produce genetically desirable children. The
procedure will entail the growth of a number of embryos by IVF, as-
certaining their genetic characteristics, and implanting the most desir-
able. This is prohibited in most western nations, except for the selec-
tion of embryos carrying certain genetic disorders, but we can see a
time when these prohibitions will be lifted or overcome.
TOQ: In your chapter in Race and the American Prospect, you ad-
dressed the subject of racial differences in psychopathological personalities.
What do you view as the underlying explanation for a greater degree of vio-
lent tendencies among blacks?
RL: I think the problem should be posed as the reduction of psycho-
pathological personality among the European and East Asian peoples.
This likely evolved for the same reason as their higher intelligence,
namely as an adaptation to the cold environments of Europe and East
Asia. This would have demanded a greater degree of forward plan-
ning, e.g., in collecting and storing food for future consumption, and of
emotional intelligence to keep social relations harmonious.
The issue of race differences in personality is one of the big prob-
lems that still has to be tackled. I attempted to make a start on this in
2002 with a paper in which I assembled evidence suggesting that psy-
chopathic personality is highest among blacks and Native Americans, The Occidental Quarterly
12
next highest in Hispanics, lower in whites, and lowest in Orientals.
But there is still a lot more that needs to be done on this.
TOQ: Political correctness has become a menacing force in terms of sti-
fling free speech and enforcing constricting barriers on what is acceptable and
unacceptable for discussion, as Charles Murray would say, in “polite com-
pany.” Where do you see this “PC” trend headed?
RL: I guess PC is a contemporary fad that will pass in time. Most
ages have had their PC fads that last for a century or so and then fade
away. In the seventeenth century it was PC in Protestant countries to
wear black and smash statues of the Virgin Mary in Roman Catholic
Churches. In the nineteenth century it was PC to avoid any mention of
sex. In the second half of the twentieth century it became PC to con-
demn any mention of racial or social class differences in intelligence.
This will very likely last for a few more decades, but eventually this
fad will surely pass.
TOQ: Despite all the criticism leveled against Herrnstein and Murray for
their conclusions in The Bell Curve, have their findings been largely vindi-
cated? By the same token, The g Factor was largely ignored by many of the
critics (in the press and academe outside the psychometric community) who
were so largely critical of The Bell Curve. (One could point to Michael
Levin’s book Why Race Matters as a comprehensive examination of the sub-
ject of racial differences, and yet it was equally ignored.) To what do you at-
tribute to this peculiarity?
RL: Everything in the The Bell Curve was correct, and it received
quite a lot of flak. Other non-PC books on intelligence and race have
been ignored by the media. I have had quite a lot of experience with
this. For instance, the National Review asked me to review The g Factor.
I agreed and sent in the review, but they declined to publish it. In the
case of my own books, I have sent review copies to numerous quality
magazines but none of them has carried reviews. I sent copies of my
IQ and the Wealth of Nations and IQ and Global Inequality (both written
with Tatu Vanhanen), which set out the theory that national differ-
ences in IQ are a major factor in economic development, to the Econo-
mist, but they did not review or mention them. I guess this is because
the prevailing PC zeitgeist frightens journalists and editors from
touching books of this kind.
Vol. 7, no. 3, Fall 2007
13
TOQ: Your two books coauthored with Tatu Vanhanen stress the impor-
tance of intelligence by showing that advanced, wealthier nations have higher
average national IQs (and free-market economies). What other major na-
tional, social, cultural, and racial areas of IQ research are there left to ex-
plore?
RL: I think the most important is the decline of the world’s IQ aris-
ing from below-replacement fertility in the entire economically devel-
oped (high-IQ) world, and the high fertility in the underdeveloped
(low-IQ) world. The details and implications of the decline of the
world’s IQ need to be worked out.
TOQ: In your interview with Right Now! editor Derek Turner, you seem
pessimistic about the future of the United States and Western civilization
and believed that the problems of the former would eventually split up the
United States and that white states should secede from the Union; and that in
terms of the latter, racial conflict would dominate Western societies. Do you
see any encouraging signs on the horizon to indicate a reversal of these pre-
dictions?
RL: I remain pessimistic about the future and see no prospect of the
split up of the United States.
TOQ: Are Western democracies inherently anti-meritocratic? What are
the prospects for returning to strictly meritocratic standards for employment
selection, career advancement, and promotion?
RL: I see Western democracies as pretty meritocratic. Of course
they are required to promote less able people to positions they would
not obtain on merit, but broadly speaking I would say the cream rises
to the top.
TOQ: What do you see as the most important issues/problems facing
Western societies?
RL: The single most important issue is the increasing immigration
of low-IQ third-world peoples into the United States, Canada, and
Europe. The effect of this, combined with their higher fertility, is that
they are replacing Europeans. By the end of the twenty-first century
Europeans will become minorities in the United States, Canada, and
Western Europe. Yet this huge demographic catastrophe has been
barely noticed by the media, and anyone who mentions it is con-The Occidental Quarterly
14
demned as a “far right racist.”
This phenomenon raises what is perhaps the most baffling problem
of the present age, which is why the European peoples are so compla-
cent about being dispossessed in their own countries by the influx of
non-European peoples. Normally, people resist invasion by alien peo-
ples and it seems natural for them to do so. In England we have the
Norman conquest of 1066 seared in our national consciousness as the
last time we were invaded, and we are equally conscious of our suc-
cessful resistance to the threat of invasion by the French under Napo-
leon and the Germans in World War II. Yet in the last half century we
have been invaded by non-Europeans, and most of us are quite com-
placent about this. It is the same with the European peoples in Conti-
nental Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zea-
land. There seems to be something profoundly unnatural about this
complacency and it defies explanation.
TOQ: Do you see any hope for the future?
RL: I believe the best hope for the future of civilization lies with the
Chinese and Japanese. They have not been infected with the virus of
Political Correctness, and they are not admitting large numbers of
immigrants. They have low fertility but this is not too much of a prob-
lem for the present and can probably be corrected in the future by
paying people to have children. These are highly intelligent peoples
and will probably carry the torch of civilization when it is extin-
guished in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Richard Lynn, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the Uni-
versity of Ulster. He is the author of sixteen books, including Dysgen-
ics (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996), Eugenics: A Reassessment
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001), IQ and the Wealth of Nations
(with Tatu Vanhanen) (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002), Race Dif-
ferences in Intelligence (Augusta, Ga.: Washington Summit Pub-
lishers, 2006), IQ and Global Inequality (with Tatu Vanhanen)
(Augusta, Ga.: Washington Summit Publishers, 2006), and, coming
in 2008 from Washington Summit Publishers, The Global Bell
Curve, plus scores of published research papers, including six articles
in Nature.
What are you hoping your long posts about eugenics will accomplish here?
So there is no concern about the end of western civilization here? I guess you didn't even read it.
TOQ: Do you see any hope for the future?
RL: I believe the best hope for the future of civilization lies with the
Chinese and Japanese. They have not been infected with the virus of
Political Correctness, and they are not admitting large numbers of
immigrants. They have low fertility but this is not too much of a prob-
lem for the present and can probably be corrected in the future by
paying people to have children. These are highly intelligent peoples
and will probably carry the torch of civilization when it is extin-
guished in the United States, Canada, and Europe. "
do you only read stuff that confirms what you think you already know?
No I read alot of dissenting views and have yet to find any case for them. Are not not concerned melamine?
My IQ is about 130. But I am improving.
Alex IQ is 220. And he is improving.
220 IQ that is good, only one other guy has gotten over 200
so you're a racist Christian, ATA1? You are disgusting, and a disgrace to your religion. I hope your angry, vengeful God tortures you for advocating stupid beliefs.
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Eugenics, which is name after me, does not work.
Melamine, JC & Gene Dwi, you are MUDS. When the spell of PC is finally removed you will be left out in the cold and probably shot. The world has not use for want for mulattos. Shame to your parents, it is not your fault you are what you are, but you are what you are and will be dealt accordingly to what you are.
yeah, I think you, a racist, prejudicial Christian who claims to represent God all while promoting hate will also be dealt with. I can't fucking wait. I hope Jesus sodomizes you.
