Thoughts on Sailer

A new VFR reader from Australia, who the other day was re-thinking his views of Mark Steyn and Daniel Pipes as a result of my critiques of them, responds to my criticisms of Steve Sailer that were published a few months ago (see, for example, “Biocentric Yuppiedom versus the West,” as well as this and this and this). Please note that I praise as well as criticize Sailer.

I have to hand it to you, you’re right about Steve Sailer, too.

There’s no denying I love reading him, and I don’t particularly mind his meandering style. It’s just that, for someone who seems to be so aware of what is happening, it would be nice to believe he felt he had more of a stake in what is coming; Rome could be burning and Sailer would be pointing out all the cool sociobiological aspects of it.

Part of that could be a lack of a larger framework in which to place his insights. He claims he’s a Catholic but his whole faith seems to rest on no more than his acceptance of the Anthropic Principle. Maybe one day he’ll be accept a refutation of it and that will be that. Not really a quality you’d expect of one on the vanguard of civilizational self-defense.

There is a moral dimension to him, but it seems somewhat peripheral. He’ll note that young women ignoring the advice of their grandmothers leads them to unfulfilling life outcomes, but there’s nary a hint of condemnation; he seems to be more excited by the fact that he noticed it and pointed it out. (Curiously, though, I’ve never seen him delve into steroids, even though it’s ripe for an inquisitive sports freak like him. He’ll touch on it if has to, and then just stop dead in his tracks. Could be a moral raw nerve.)

Mr. Anachronism writes:

Well, of course, the basic problem with Sailer is that he is an idiot savant, brilliant with numbers, but the moment he departs from his data sets he is rarely capable of anything better than fatuities. His credulous remarks on the absurd Plame Affair and on jewo … pardon me, neoconservatives, have been frankly moronic. The change from bright to dim is so stark that I have even idly wondered whether his friends at American Conservative might have funnelled some petrodollars his way to get him to burnish his opinions in a manner pleasing to the Saudi eye; but I think mere mental imbalance (I don’t mean psychologically) explains it.

I think this is too harsh on Sailer. It is true that where he is at his brilliant best is in bringing out the meaning of numbers. It is also true that the personal animus that is manifest in his criticisms of neoconservatives and the war is objectionable; I have personally written to him about this on more than one occasion. It is also interesting that, though Sailer seems to be detached on a civilizational level, as has been noted, the one area where he gets passionate is his dislike of the neocons. However, I do not see any direct evidence of animus toward Jews as Jews in Sailer’s writings. Some people will say I am terribly naive not to see this, but my position remains that the charge of anti-Semitism is so serious and damaging that if the charge is to be made, there must be actual evidence of it, not just constructive evidence.

Mr. Anachronism replies:

Just to clarify, I don’t for a moment think Sailer is a let’s-finish-the-job-Hitler-started type. That said, and noting that I am revolted by the attitude of the ilk of this Foxman charlatan who see “anti-semitism” in perfectly normal expressions of Christian culture, I do think it becomes clear in Sailer’s writings that he believes that American foreign policy has been hijacked by “Likudniks,” that Donald Rumsfeld, for example, has been the sock puppet of minor Jewish functionaries in the Department of Defense, and I must characterise this as deeply fatuous. I don’t know whether this could be classified as evidence of “anti-semitism” or not, and frankly I don’t even care, what I care about is that it is stupid, and it pains me to see him go off the rails like that. Similarly his apparent obsessive need endlessly to sneer about Ahmed Chalabi and Michael Ledeen, or even the struggles of the U.S. military to get a grip on the complexities of Mesopotamia, is deeply uninformative and unhelpful, not to say unpleasant. I do wish he would restrict himself to commenting on his data sets. And then of course we would not be criticising him at all if he did not have many important things to say about those. It were a waste of good pixels to spend any time criticising, say, Glenn Reynolds, who is merely a collection of cool, precisely-calibrated, just-slightly-ahead-of-the-curve attitudes.

Respectfully yours,

Mr. A.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 14, 2006 09:52 AM | Send