If there’s any truth to it being genetic then we’re also a nation of draft dodgers and guys who light out the moment they find out the girl next door is pregnant.
So Medved might have a point.
It’s worth noting that, in the article linked by the OP, Medved appears to undertake some pretty self-serving cherry-picking in order to make his point (big surprise, i know).
I’ve just read all the online reviews i could find (most contained in academic subscription databases, so no links available) of the two books upon which he bases his argument, and while the books do indeed appear to make connections between the genetic predispositions of America’s immigrant stock and the nation’s persistent characteristics, the authors (especially Whybrow) appear to be far less sanguine about the consequences than Medved is, noting that the “mania” characteristic of the American condition can just as easily lead to negative as positive character traits.
Also, the authors of both books seem to fall into one of the traps that characterizes many American exceptionalists—the tendency to look at a particular trait or tendency evident in the United States and to assume that this particular trait or tendency is only evident in the United States.
Here’s a segment from one review of Whybrow’s book:
It’s worth noting that a few of the reviews of Whybrow’s book are quite impressed with it, finding considerable merit in his efforts to link neurobiology and societal trends, even while they’re not convinced that the characteristics he finds constitute an exclusively American phenomenon.
I was only able to find a single scholarly review of Gartner’s book, and if it’s any indication, this book is even more problematic in the way it compiles its evidence:
I did find an article about Gartner’s book in Baltimore’s local free weekly, the City Paper. You can read it here.
And what about the people who were “transported” to America as a form of punishment and banishment?
On a seperate point, isn’t it fairly clear that the people who willingly transported themselves must have been of sufficient means to buy the ticket?
Some, I believe, paid for it by entering into indentured servitude.
Yes, my husband’s been doing geneological research, and he has an ancestor who came here as an indentured servant.
It’s crazy to try to attibute a national conscioiusness to such a thing. Too many varied circumstances under which people came here. Not to mention that it certainly couldn’t be said that ALL the people in a given culture with these traits might have made their way here, so certainly those traits have to be found in other cultures (and clearly they are).
But I disagree that this theory is an indication of racism. Even IF you assume the premise is true that American Blacks were selected in a different manner and therefore exhibit different kinds of traits, that isn’t the same thing as saying that NO people of African origin exhibit those traits.
Astounding.
You know, I know that I don’t know enough about scientific fact and theory when it comes to genetics and quantum physics and all of the 17 dimensions in between to expound upon it and make parallels without sounding like a scientific novice using big words. I’ll never understand why Ben Stein and Michael Medved and others who are a lot richer and more successful and in ways better educated than I am don’t grasp the same point.
I think of it as offering a straw man rather than concocting one. He knows that he will be criticized for this stuff, for sure as you’re born, someone will accuse him of racism. And he gets to be shockedshocked at the very idea. After all, he is simply reporting on scientific research that bolsters the common-sensical notion that groups of people have identifying characteristics that are inheritable. Why, nothing racist about that!
Except that it is, sorta kinda. It offers comfort to that bankrupt mode of thought that it doesn’t deserve. Like Medved himself, it uses a form of reason to undermine reason. The Medfly is very, very good at that, a weasel thinker of the first water, he can present the most reasonable face for an utterly unreasonable argument, usually by insisting on controlling the semantical parsing, to define the terms in the most sympathetic possible light.
Its a set up, an invitation to a straw man. He gets to say “Look, see how the awful liberals are accusing innocent little me, as I stand before you in my spotless Communion dress, of being a racist! Simon LeGree was a racist, I am not Simon LeGree, therefore I am not a racist! Hence, it follows you should always be skeptical of any accusation of racism, unless specificly directed to Simon LeGree…”
If immigration sorts for preferences towards small government and so on, what about Canada ? Why didn’t they turn out the same way ?
Too cold to be industrious, probably.
A lot of them are…how to put this delicately?..well, French.
I thought Michael Medved was a crappy movie critic. Isn’t he wandering a little too far from his comfort zone here?
I was just coming in to say that I liked him a lot better when he was just a cut-rate movie critic. He started branching into the political/moral punditry industry in the mid-90s…mostly out of outrage over Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, IIRC.
True, but he arrived by the utterly novel approach of excoriating corrupt Hollywood for its depraved and immoral yadda yadda… His reivew of Polansky’s film version of Macbeth…
This man must be stopped.
With the North’s 200 year tradition of slavery prior to the Civil War, many of the African-Americans in the Northern states were and are the offspring of those who crossed the ocean against their will.
I’m skeptical about this particular theory anyway.
Oh. That explains why descendants of adventurous vikings are so self-reliant and have so little government, as illustrated by Scandinavian countries… Oh, wait… Never mind.
Given how much “white” blood many African-Americans have, wouldn’t that have given to those descended from slaves the “entrepreneur gene”? This looks to me as yet another Olimpic-pool-sized hole in that guy’s theories.
I do think that there is a cultural difference; Americans are generally descended from and were raised by people who, when faced with a tough situation at home and the possibility of betterment far away, chose to uproot. They are more likely to uproot than those who stayed: these are descended of people who either never had it that bad, considered it was better to change the bad situation locally, or were too afraid to go hunting for rainbows. But I see it as a cultural difference, not a genetic one. Many of the people who went to other ex-colonies went intending to go back home; Americans, not so much (although a lot of the current immigrants go with this notion in mind).
Perhaps this is the genesis of the “if X gets elected, I’m moving to Canada…” attitude among Americans.
Sure, but I think the ‘argument’ goes, “because the African-Americans didn’t come here of their own free will, they don’t count in this ‘american-gene’; I’m not being racist, I’m just stating historical fact…the data doesn’t apply to them.”
My point is, okay fine; centuries ago African-Americans didn’t migrate here out of a desire to <insert generic reason>; however once they got here there were mass migrations to the North out of a desire <insert similar generic reason> which created the European migrations to America; the only difference being the African-Americans were already here.
Listen, I’m pretty skeptical about this whole thing - but it should be noted that at a time when Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler were in power, the most radical leader we got was FDR. Other wackos on the scene, like Father Coughlin and Huey Long, never got far with their demagoguery.
Fundamentally, I think that’s because America was at the time, and remains to a great extent, tremendously conservative in a social sense.
Australia (and Canada) should strengthen this “theory” given that they also received an influx of whites. The fact that the First Fleet exists(ditto the Jerry Springer show) should blow Medved’s whacko theory out of the water . Oz is a hardworking, industriously minded peopled place, but I’m not sure where genetics comes into it. So, I agree with you, but feel the need to point out that most (white) Australians did not immigrate to Oz to begin with–they were transported.
Canada should be twice as wealthy and mighty, given that those whites (some of them) effectively immigrated twice: once to the colonies and then again to Canada due to Royalist sympathies AND they didn’t have slavery! (did they? not real up on the history of Canuckland).
I think his theory is racist, whether by default or malice aforethought I cannot say.