Kevin MacDonald writes:

 > Re Dan Kriegman: Kriegman is a practicing psychoanalyst who, so far as
I know, has never published in a mainstream evolutionary journal on
anything. Like David Lieberman, he has a less than zero academic
reputation. Kriegman put together a symposium on my work which I agreed to
participate in only after he said it would happen anyway whether or not I
participated. Then he sent me a 50-page, single-spaced paper with his
criticisms a day or two before I left for the conference. As a result, I
didn't bother dealing with it--how could I in 15 minutes, although to the
best of my recollection he simply stated my conclusions and called them
racist. In my presentation I simply presented the basic theory and data on
Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy, but the discussion afterward had
nothing to do with the theory or data but whether I was a racist or not. A
complete lynching. I can hardly wait if and when he publishes something on
this. Kevin MacDonald. <

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It's true that I was overwhelmed with my immersion in Kevin MacDonald's work
as I prepared for the symposium at HBES.  I had hoped to read all three
volumes of his work.  Instead, I was able to complete a thorough reading and
critique of only volume one and some skimming of the other two.  This did
lead to a fifty page single spaced paper.  But I certainly did not present
50 pages in my 15 minutes:  I hit on some highlights of the problems with
Kevin MacDonald's work and cited numerous examples from Volume I.  It would
seem to me that I could respond to a critique of one of my papers/books as I
happen to know them pretty well.  Other people's works are more of a problem,
which is why I had to work so hard and felt so overwhelmed; when presenting
something that was likely to draw a sizable crowd, I wanted to be sure I knew
my stuff.  And I arranged the program so that Kevin had the last word.

As far as his only having 15 minutes, Kevin, you've had 1 1/2 years and you
haven't made a peep!  You've ignored my criticisms and I watch some of them
reappear on h-antisemitism.

The basic criticisms were:  Where is your control group?  What is your
evidence that Jews as a group behave differently from other groups in
similar ecological/intergroup conflict circumstances?  Taking your examples
of Jewish activity, I offered counterexamples of gentile activity that were
extremely similar in similar circumstances and I asked how you can ascribe
characteristics to some nature of the group members when you haven't shown,
in any manner that would be considered scientific, that the differences in
behavior are due to something biological as opposed to situational.  To do
the latter, you need to do science, i.e., control for variables such as
different social contexts.  E.g., do Jews really band together and show
more ingroup altruism than other groups who are surrounded by a larger
group that they feel threatens them?  For a week or two after 9/11, I saw
no road rage in America.  It has returned (may even be worse).  But at the
moment of solidarity and communal identification under a clear sense of
threat (that has diminished as people found out that life does go on) and a
need to respond in a unified fashion, ingroup tensions diminished and
Americans showed ENORMOUS ingroup altruism.  Do you think that a threat to
a group makes their genes mutate and become more Jewish?

When one doesn't need a comparison group, you have the repeated phenomenon
of scientific finding by declaration; it's so because I said it's so.  For
example, "There is no question that Judaism has been characterized by high
levels of within-group altruism" (p. 153).  Since all groups evidence
significant within-group altruism, this statement has no meaning unless it
is taken to mean "unusually high" or "high in comparison to what is usually
found in groups."  But MacDonald makes no attempt to measure actual Jewish
within-group altruism, not to mention measuring within-group altruism in
another group and making an actual comparison, not to mention measuring
within-group altruism in another group in similar ecological circumstances
and making a comparison.  Then, this scientific-fact-by-declaration is used
to argue that this unusual level of within-group altruism is mediated, in
part, by genetic differences between Jews and gentiles.

When you are doing a literature/culture search for signs of your hypothesis,
that you find supporting evidence should come as no surprise.  What is
fascinating about Michael Bradley is that his ideas are more clearly divorced
from reality but are supported with the same exact type of
scholarship/science.  That is, you look for supporting themes and when you
find them you build your conclusions around them in a poetic, literary
manner.  There are no controls (like a control group), no standards for
determining if a good argument based on so and so's words reflects reality
accurately.  It's basically, "This seems to make sense to me.  It all fits
together.  Doesn't it?  Therefore, it's truth."  That isn't science.  Go back
to Francis Bacon and his warning:

"Man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things:  on the
contrary, all the perceptions, both of the senses and the mind, bear
reference to man and not to the universe; and the human mind resembles those
uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects ... and
distort and disfigure them."  (Novum Organum, i, 41).

The scientific method was an attempt to reign in such "religious"
scholarship---i.e., argument based on the assertions of the most articulate
or forceful minds---and force us to pay attention to facts in a controlled
context in which the meaning of those facts could be teased out from other
extraneous variables.  The paranoid personality can weave elaborate systems
of belief around real features of the world.  With no measurements of
supposed Jewish traits and no attempt to control for variables other than
biology that could account for them, how do we/you know your method is not
doing the same thing; even if your "paranoia" is more mild than Bradley's?
Indeed, I documented examples of selective scholarship in which you picked
out the parts that fit your theory and ignored the contradictory evidence.
This included several quotations from the Torah in which you, for example,
focused on the admonition to not marry outside the faith when in fact the
admonition was to not allow your ideology/religious beliefs to be "poisoned"
by those of your non-Jewish wives.  In fact, there were clear instructions on
how to take gentile women to be among your wives.  Since I was easily able to
document your selective scholarship with those sources I knew, why should I
suppose that I would not find the same thing if I studied the sources you
used that I didn't know?  Why have you not responded to the numerous examples
I gave demonstrating this type of selective scholarship and the problems
posed by basing "science" on such a methodology?

Some examples from my paper (all page numbers unless otherwise stated are
from A People that Shall Dwell Alone, by K. MacDonald):

     All of a sudden, when it comes to analyzing gentile behavior, MacDonald
switches away from a genetic to an ecological analysis of human culture in
which one must primarily understand the context in which a cultural
phenomenon occurs.  He presents no evidence to support the notion that the
Jewish strategy represents a fundamental feature of their biological being,
while the gentile response is purely ecologically controlled (i.e., is a
defensive reaction and, "in a fundamental shift," operates, to some degree,
against their truer nature, which is to be more individualistic and tolerant
of otherness and more open to assimilation and exogamy).  For MacDonald, Jews
act, gentiles react.  Because of this, MacDonald is able to ignore the data
of gentile collectivism and ethnocentrism and conclude

"Whereas prototypical Western societies have shown strong tendencies
toward assimilation and individualism, Judaism is at it s essence exclusivist
and collectivist. ... The foregoing provides evidence that the Near Eastern
peoples, and especially the Jews, tend in general toward racial exclusivity
and collectivism compared to most Western societies."  (p. 245)

     Alleged, innate, Jewish separatist tendencies are not needed to explain
Jewish group behavior in the face of clearly formed antisemitism.  Such
outgroup enmity is known to be a powerful force in maintaining strong group
identity.  But MacDonald knows this and repeatedly mentions the fact that
anti-Semitism has been and continues to be a major factor solidifying the
Jewish group and Jewish identity.  So, it is all the more striking when he
seems to find it highly meaningful that

"Jews have retained an intense commitment to their ingroup over a very
long period of historical time and despite very high levels of hostility
directed at them by surrounding peoples."  (p. 229, also see p. 230)
Despite high levels of hostility?  What may need explaining is how they
survived as a group, but powerful outgroup hostility, as MacDonald repeatedly
acknowledges elsewhere (e.g., pp. 160, 218, 259 n.6), is more than sufficient
to create and maintain "intense commitment."  So, how can you claim that this
is a genetic, biological, innate tendency of Jews more than other people?
Where is the evidence?

In arguing that Jews would not intermarry and kept others in a lower status,
MacDonald tells us

"further indication of the low status of the offspring of foreigners
[which] comes from the very negative attitudes toward Solomon's many
foreign wives.  Solomon is cursed with the fragmentation of his kingdom
after his death as the result of this practice (1 King's 11:11...)"  (page
41)

But that is a highly biased interpretation of a selectively chosen passage
from the Bible, which actually reads:

"The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from
the Lord, the God of Israel who had appeared to him twice.  Although he had
forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord's
command.  So the Lord said to Solomon, since this is your attitude and you
have not kept My covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will
most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your
subordinates." (1 King's 11:9-11)

It is true that Solomon was worshiping the gods of his foreign wives.
However, the Lord does not punish him for having foreign wives, he had
hundreds.  One can have foreign wives if:  1) they were taken from distant
lands, 2) their kin are not allowed to live among you (with their "detestable
practices" that could take one away from Yahweh, and 3) you do not adopt
their religious beliefs.  The danger of foreign wives is that they will turn
the Jew away from his God toward worshiping other gods.  Solomon actually
built temples to these other gods.  Now that's the kind of thing that gets
the Old Guy ticked.

     This type of misreading of the Bible occurs repeatedly.  For another
example, MacDonald states

"... Moses orders the execution of Israelite men who consort with Moabite
women" (Num. 25:1-13).

Again, that is not what occurred. It is true that the Bible says that "the
people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab" (Num. 25:1), but
that is not what got God angry.  What follows that MacDonald left out shows
us the concerns of God (or of the priestly redactors of the Bible):

"And they [the Moabite women] called the people unto the sacrifices of
their gods: and the people did eat, and bowed down to their gods.  And
Israel joined himself unto Baal of Peor: and the anger of the LORD was
kindled against Israel.  And the LORD said unto Moses, Take all the heads
of the people, and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that the
fierce anger of the LORD may be turned away from Israel.  And Moses said
unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto
Baal of Peor."  (Num. 25:2-5)

In each case when God is angered by something to do with foreign concubines
or wives, the issue is almost always ideological impurity or disloyalty to
God.  Again, this is highly consistent with Kriegman and Kriegman's theory
which emphasizes ideological purity for the effective use of religion in
intergroup conflict.  And it makes far more sense from an evolutionary
perspective in which the primary purpose of going to war is to enhance
one's reproductive success.

"... although humans appear to be biologically predisposed toward
ingroup-outgroup conflict, there is no reason whatever to suppose that
group membership or group permeability itself is genetically determined;
that is, there is no reason to suppose that there is a genetic imperative
that societies MUST be organized around impermeable groups, and indeed,
prototypical Western societies have not been organized in this manner. ...
The outstanding feature of Judaism has been that it has steadfastly raised
barriers between Jews as an ingroup and the surrounding society as an
outgroup.  But ... the erection of cultural barriers between Jews and
gentiles is a critical aspect of Judaism as a culture."  (MacDonald, The
Culture of Critique, 1998, p. 44)

MacDonald repeatedly makes this claim:  The outstanding feature of Judaism
has been that it has steadfastly raised barriers between Jews as an ingroup
and the surrounding society as an outgroup.  In contrast,

"To be sure, some Jews do prefer to remain among their own within a
particular society, but here again, Jews are hardly unique. The prevalence
of ethnic neighborhoods (or people of particular racial and ethnic groups
socializing on campus) is evidence of this. But there is ample evidence to
prove that Jews have often been segregated from the general population not
of their choice, but as the result of official government policy. The Pale
of Settlement in czarist Russia, the creation of Jewish ghettoes in
medieval Europe, forced expulsions in almost every European country, and
the requirement of Jews to wear the Star of David in 13th century England
stand as examples of imposed segregation."  (D. Schwartz, one of
MacDonald's fellow faculty at CSULB in an email discussion forum)

Indeed, as we will see, MacDonald does not present any probative evidence
that Jews erect such barriers to any greater degree than other groups.  His
response to the evidence of forced segregation by gentiles is that, at times,
Jews imposed their own segregation.  Again, this latter fact is no different
from other groups who, at times, struggle to remain separate and is
essentially unresponsive to the challenge to his theory presented by a
history of forced segregation.  Another claim is that "Even when the ghetto
was imposed by the gentile authorities, 'many rabbis would have liked the
walls of the ghetto higher' (Johnson 1987, 238)," is also not very impressive
as segregation is usually in the interests of those whose high status derives
from clear group membership, valuing the ingroup, fearing the outgroup, etc.

Relative to Jews, people who live in more Northern, cold climates (e.g.,
Northern Europeans) would evidence less of a tendency toward collectivist
cultures (p. 237) and presumably less ethnocentrism because "ethnocentrism
would thus be of no importance in combating the physical environment" (p.
237).

"Such a perspective would not imply that Northern Europeans lack
collectivist mechanisms for group competition, but only that these
mechanisms are relatively less elaborated and/or require a higher level of
group conflict to trigger their expression." (p. 260 n. 15)

Northern Europeans having less collectivism than Jews tend toward the more
individualist end of the individualism-collectivism spectrum.  So in
comparison to Jews, Northern Europeans like other

"People in individualist cultures, on the other hand, show little emotional
attachment to ingroups. ... Individualists have more positive attitudes
toward strangers and outgroup members and are more likely to behave in a
pro-social, altruistic manner to strangers.  People in individualist
cultures are less aware of ingroup/outgroup boundaries and thus do not have
highly negative attitudes toward outgroup members. ... They ... show little
emotional commitment or loyalty to ingroups ... Opposition to outgroups
occurs ... but the opposition is more "rational" ... " (p. 229) MacDonald
acknowledges the fact that Northern Europeans can be very collectivist,
e.g., Nazism.  However, he claims that this was a mirror image reaction to
Judaism and an adoption of the Jewish strategy for intergroup competition.
Maybe he ought to tell that to all the other peoples of the world who have
been violently subjugated by stranger loving, outgroup positive, rational
Europeans.  Where were the Jews they were reacting to there?  This type of
argument begins to feel like we are entering Wonderland with the "Red Queen
talking backward."

While avoiding stating it baldly, MacDonald clearly implies -- and
antisemites have taken him to be saying -- that Jews specialized for a
parasitic role vis a vis gentiles.  How does he do this without saying it?
On page 17, he discusses specialization for specific roles in inter-species
competition.  He notes that generalists are less likely to do anything
really well, so specialization is in order.  In this discussion of
inter-species competition and specialization he specifically mentions three
roles:  predator, parasite, and primary producer.  He then immediately (p.
18) goes on to say that he will show how Jews used cultural practices for,
as well as eugenics to breed themselves into

"a specialized role within human societies. . . . Moreover, another result
of this specialization is that Jews in the Diaspora have almost never been
engaged in what ecologists term primary production . . . Rather . . .
Jews have become specialized for occupational niches at the upper levels of
the human energy pyramid.  And in ecological terms, this implies that Jews
as a group, like other high status groups ... serve as consumers of energy
produced by lower-status gentile members of society laboring in the area of
primary production."

Thus, we have role specialization between species into predator, parasite,
and primary producer.  Jews are then clearly seen as an alien other (a
closed, "pseudo-speciated" group [p. 111]) that is not a primary producer--
”i.e., that is a consumer who doesn't produce--leaving only predator and
parasite in his list of role specializations.  This obvious implication
cannot have escaped MacDonald's notice for he is well aware that pioneers of
IQ measurement

"Galton and Pearson believed that Jews had developed into a parasitic race
which used its superior intelligence to prey on gentiles."  (p. 188) It is
therefore not a great leap to assume--as antisemites, in fact, do--”that
he is suggesting that Jews have a parasitic (or predatory) role in
stratified societies.  Though MacDonald modifies this bias by noting that
Jews are "like other high status groups," it seems disingenuous to act
surprised that the implication that Jews are specialized for parasitism is
picked up as his conclusion by white racists.  He clearly seems to be
stating that gentiles in comparison to Jews are primary producers some of
whom temporarily (i.e., not as an innately, specialized group like Jews)
are parasitic/predatory on the production of other, lower status gentiles.

One could argue that I am reading meaning into his words, that this
juxtaposition of ideas lends itself accidentally to these implications.
However, the same line of thinking is presented in the same manner earlier:

"... human societies are seen as ecosystems in which different human groups
are analogous to species occupying a common ecosystem and engaging in
competition and/or reciprocity with each other.  Thus, in the natural
world, an ecosystem may comprise producer species as well as several levels
of predator species and parasitic (and hyperparasitic) species. ... The
analogy with humans would be that stratified human societies offer the
possibility of complex intrasocietal ecological strategies."  (p. 3)

I think it is reasonable to conclude that he is offering to present an
analysis of human intergroup competition as analogous to an ecosystem with
producer, predator, and parasitic species.  And it is clear in MacDonald's
writing that if one were to place Jew and gentile into these roles,
gentiles would play the role of the producer species and--though he does
not state the following, the implication follows from the foregoing--this
leaves the Jews as parasites or predators.  This is the essential condition
when the groups display their true nature.  While MacDonald does
acknowledge the ugly reality of antisemitism, based on this analysis about
the inherent, innate nature of the two groups, antisemitism is seen to be
an overreaction to being, essentially, successfully parasitized.

Indeed, Jews are not only not primary producers, they are also relatively
incapable of making productive contributions.  Northern peoples required
specialized intelligence for mechanical invention in order to cope with the
Ice Age.  Jews, on the other hand, lack this ability—which is a strange
claim for yet another reason:  he reports that Jews are equal (about
average) to gentiles on sub-tests that he claims are correlated with this
ability.  Jews, according to MacDonald specialized in verbal intelligence
for abilities that are important for social influence "and would be
expected in a people who evolved in large groups" (p. 222).  The
contradictions abound.  First, as just noted, his own data show Jews to be
equal to gentiles on the type of intelligence he claims is related to
innovation (and superior if we use as the criteria Nobel prizes in science
or actual innovation in Israel where Jews have the incentive for patient
innovation for they can own the products of their innovations).  Second,
after making numerous claims about how Jews "evolved" during the Diaspora
in relatively small, closed groups—especially as compared to the larger,
gentile "host" society—now he is claiming that Jews have relatively more
of those faculties developed for life within large groups.  Not to mention
the marked success of Northern Europeans in coalitional aggression, success
that requires quite a bit of facility for coordinated action within very
large groups and, as Kriegman and Kriegman (1997) suggest, may be the
quintessential adaptive function that led to the human ability to live in
large groups.

However, given these arguments, MacDonald goes on to explain why "Jews
started businesses that used simple technology" (p. 191, n. 13).  On the
one hand, we can explain this fact (assuming that it is true) by using a
supposed Jewish deficit in inventiveness, as MacDonald does.  Or we can
explain it the same way we explain the lack of focus on agricultural
enterprise:  You have to have the essential prerequisites for farming or
complex manufacturing, i.e., social stability and the capacity to own and
control significant resources over considerable periods of time, in order
to invest in either farming or large scale complex innovation and
manufacturing.  And MacDonald clearly knows that Jews could not count on
such prerequisites "since they have often been subject to capricious
seizures of property, expulsions, and confiscatory taxation" (p. 140).
Farms and complex manufacturing only payoff over large time periods after
large initial investments that, at first, result in a net loss.  Jews, who
could not count on long term stable ownership to make slow, incremental
innovative investments, invested in quick, high risk (p. 140) economic
ventures where shorter periods of stability and ownership could pay off
(before their investments and profits were confiscated).  Again, note that
in Israel, where the prerequisite conditions do exist, Jews have achieved
remarkable success in both agriculture and very complex innovative
manufacturing.

MacDonald, continuing his unsupported speculations, suggests that Jews are
emotionally predisposed for high risk ventures (p. 140 along with his
arguments for natural selection for risk taking on p. 212).  In contrast to
the supposition of such an innate propensity for risk taking and an
innovation deficit, what MacDonald considers (and presumably, the average
gentile historically considered) high risk was actually lower risk for Jews
for whom a gentile "low risk" venture--e.g., long term patient
establishment of a farm owned by those who cleared and worked the
land--would have been a foolishly high risk venture.  I can even imagine
the dialogue among two Jews (mostly translated from the Yiddish):
"Schmuck!  Why are you busting your ass clearing that land?  You think once
you get it producing, the goyim'll let you keep it?  Have you gone
completely meshuga?"

Given the (unsupported) argument for impoverished innovative capacities in
Jews, it is not hard to see where this will lead, as MacDonald well knows.

"This is a difficult area because a theme of anti-Semitic writing in
Germany was that Jews were not innovators, but only appropriated the
inventions of others."  (pp. 190-191)

Indeed, it is a difficult area.  Knowing this, it might be wise not to enter.
Certainly it would be foolish to enter it unprepared (i.e., with very
limited, inconclusive data).  But enter it MacDonald does and a number of
antisemitic racists are glad he did.

"Jewish clannishness and separateness have been sufficient conditions for
at least moderate levels anti-Semitism ... I show that since the
Enlightenment Jewish groups have been quite aware of this and have acted to
lessen external signs of separateness (e.g., the Reform movement) while
exhibiting great concern with the corrosive effects of these assimilative
tendencies on group continuity."  ("Reply to Robert Pois" from MacDonald's
website)

This makes the Reform movement a "strategy" for lessening "signs of
separateness" in order to lessen anti-Semitism.  More obvious and likely
possibilities are thus discounted.  . . . Rather than the Reform movement
being something that could make more sense than traditional Judaism (and
was thus a genuine sign of assimilation to a larger post-enlightenment
culture), to some Jews--such as my first generation Reform Jewish American
parents who didn't even believe in God, not to mention His being angry if
they ate ham-- for MacDonald this becomes a "strategy" (i.e., was a sign
of group identification and collectivism posing deceptively as
assimilation) for lessening anti-Semitism.  The logic here becomes
contorted:  Jews bring on an anti-Semitic reaction when they claim to be
the chosen people.  But if they don't believe in a God who has chosen them,
then they are deceptively trying to lessen antisemitism so they can
out-compete the gentiles in the resource competition (thus, ultimately
bringing on antisemitism).  It does seem like Jews are damned if they do
and ... well, just damned if they do, because no matter how they act, you
know they do, damn it!

Or consider MacDonald's claim that Reform Judaism's openness was a
necessary deception in order to avoid charges of misanthropy (pp. 97, 99):
There was no real openness.  A bit later, he states that Zionism (p. 99) and
neo-Orthodoxy (p. 100) were responses to the

"perceived failure of the Reform movement due to the fact that many Jews
became completely assimilated, including especially a substantial incidence
of conversion and intermarriage."  (p. 99)

This type of logic makes me do a double take:  Reform openness was a
deception.  Yet it was so open it required countermeasures to stop rapid
assimilation!  If data are milked for any possible supportive conclusion then
there is no hope that any data could falsify the hypotheses.

And what about the biased phrasing?

"There is no question that Hitler's perception that Jews and 'Aryans'
were locked in an intense competition was central to his world view ... These
perceptions of economic competition and Jewish domination, although clearly
having a basis in reality, may well have been exaggerated ..." (p. 134n. 25)

It is rather strange that when MacDonald speaks of Jewish domination or
exploitation, that "clearly" has some basis in reality but Hitler "may"
have been exaggerating (also see p. 133n. 12 for similar wording).

MacDonald (Chapter 3) shows that, in the old Testament, the God of the Jews
promises them reproductive and material success.  Again, without a
comparison group, this says nothing about Judaism: all religions promised
things people desire.  Even the religions that ostensibly focus on an
afterlife present the believer with a God who answers prayers in this life.
I have worked with a large number of Christian patients who actively pray
to God and I can't recall a single instance in which they reported focusing
their prayers on the request for eternity in heaven rather than assistance
with material reality.  Judaism is a "this worldly" (p. 36) religion.
Does this say anything about Judaism per se?

MacDonald says yes, in part, because he claims to find that the obtaining
of resources is central to Jewish religious belief and practice.  His data?
The fact that he can find a focus on business practices in the Talmud (p.
37).  There may indeed be a significant focus on business practices in the
Talmud.  The Talmud is an attempt to translate a religious document (the
Bible) into instructions for actions and practical everyday life, i.e.,
rules for how to behave in reciprocal altruistic interactions.  This same
is true of the Muslim sharia: the translation of the Koran into a code of
behavior.  Again, if the claim is that Judaism represents a group
evolutionary strategy characterized by a higher level of focus on resource
accrual, where is the comparison group?  Mining the Talmud--which
functions, in part, as the Jewish community's equivalent to the many
volumes of laws we have to guide us in intragroup conflicts--for
indications of a Jewish focus on resource accrual is as appropriate as
looking at the Massachusetts General Laws and concluding that Bay Staters
have an unusual focus on material wealth.  Only in a state where there is a
significant separation of church and state could you find religious systems
without extensive focus on intragroup conflict and resolution.  So
MacDonald's mining of the Talmud raises the all-important question once
again:  Where is the comparison group?

And, of course, this is dangerous theorizing as it lends pseudo-scientific
credence to racist notions about greedy, materialistic Jews.  It is hard to
believe that MacDonald is unaware of this when he makes statements like
"Extreme concern with worldly success has also remained a characteristic of
Judaism in the contemporary world." (p. 188).  I don't doubt that, like all
people, Jews are very concerned with material success.  But the use of the
word "extreme" unmistakably indicates a comparison with other groups.
Where is the comparison?  Where is the evidence?

---------------------------------------------

Kevin, as you know, this just scratches the surface of my critique.  Take all
the time you want and respond to these or other criticisms.  But Kevin, you
should know that I'm not a "practicing psychoanalyst," whatever that may be
(it sure sounds bad from the way you use it to discredit me) and if you think
my evolutionary credentials are flimsy read the foreword to my book (written
by Robert Trivers).

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