What's Happiness to Do with Catholicism?

Yesterday, the 20th of March, was the International Day of Happiness, proclaimed in July 2012 by the United Nations General Assembly, "recognizing the relevance of happiness and well-being as universal goals and aspirations in people's lives and the importance of their recognition in public policy objectives."

Being happy is in fact what everybody wants, but people hugely differ in their definition of happiness and views of how to achieve it.

Contrary to public perceptions due to prejudices and intentional distortions, Catholicism also wants people to be happy. A person couldn't be declared saint, for instance, if he hadn't been happy in his life.

Professor of philosophy Christopher Kaczor, in the book The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction about Catholicism (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) , writes:

[E]very saint experiences and exhibits joy - no saint is canonized without it.

The Catholic idea of and route to happiness are surprisingly similar to what current scientific psychology thinks, on the basis of empirical studies.

Here are some results of psychological research.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, is the author of the book The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) , in which she examines hundreds of empirical studies and concludes that about 50% of individual differences in happiness are caused by genes, 10% by life circumstances and 40% by our intentional choices of goals and activities.

That 40% is in our hands, and is going to have an important effect on our happiness.

Drawing on the work of psychologists and philosophers, the book Healing the Culture (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) by Robert J Spitzer distinguishes four kinds of intentional goals and activities corresponding to four different levels of happiness. Here they are:

1. Physical, bodily pleasure through food, drink, drugs, sex and so on.
2. Attainment of money, power, success, popularity, fame and other material goods.
3. Loving and serving other people, and therefore avoiding hurting others.
4. Loving and serving God.

The amount, length and depth of happiness increases at each of these levels.

This is what the Catholic Church says. And this is also what evidence-based psychological research says.

This subject requires more than an article, but let's make some reflections.

The paradox of hedonism

The first level is the easiest and the quickest to attain, but it's also the quickest to end. Not only it's short-lived, it's also short term. Only an addict or someone with serious problems would base his life on the search for this kind of pleasure, often followed by much greater pain (physical and psychological), ill health and other serious consequences.

There is nothing wrong with bodily pleasure, but in moderation and not as final goal. Catholicism says the same.

The first level is related to what is called the "paradox of hedonism", something already known to ancient Greek philosophers. It's very simple: you don't find happiness by directly pursuing it. Happiness is only the indirect consequence of something else, the result perhaps of something we produced or created and we are satisfied with. We find happiness when we aim at something else.

We all have experienced this type of failure. If you desperately try to have fun at a party, you're more likely to end up with the opposite effect. A deliberate effort to enjoy oneself, to find happiness or pleasure with alcohol or drugs can be one extreme case of this paradox. Another extreme case, at the other end of the scale, can be psychotherapy: continuously looking for possible internal obstacles to one's happiness.

Happiness and money: dispelling a myth

At the second level we find the goals that probably most people, in today's materialistic society, associate with happiness, so it needs more analysis.

It may seem obvious, and yet not many people take notice of this thing, that philosophers have always said, from Epicurus onwards: finding happiness in wealth is an illusion.

American affluence research shows that. In the early '80s, Americans had 5 times as many air-conditioners per head, 4 times as many clothes dryers and 7 times as many dishwashers as in 1958; 93% of American homes owned colour TVs, as opposed to 1% in 1960. Yet, despite this dramatic increase, people didn't feel happier. The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center found that the proportion of Americans describing themselves as "very happy" had remained the same (one third).

For most people, once they've satisfied their basic needs, the pursuit of material wealth does not achieve happiness. That explains why the huge gulf in affluence between, say, the Germans and the Indians, or the Japanese and the Kenyans doesn't translate into a different degree of how happy the people of these countries judge themselves.

R. A. Easterlin, of the University of Pennsylvania, has performed a comparative international survey of the link between affluence and happiness. His conclusion is that there is little relation between the two: "Economic growth does not rise a society to some ultimate state of plenty. Rather, the growth process itself engenders ever-growing wants that lead it ever onward".

Lottery winners and paraplegics

Suppose you win the National Lottery. Now suppose you have been paralysed in a major car crash. You probably think that, if the first were true, six months after the event you'd be much happier than if the second were true.

Well, empirical evidence shows that it is not so. Studies of the way people react to major happenings show that big money lottery winners, statistically, are no happier than those paralysed in a car accident, six months after each event.

Six months is the keyword, here. There is an element of habituation, a mechanism by which our minds get used to almost anything.

Basically, the maintenance of an emotional state (whether good or bad doesn't matter) and the repetition of a stimulus result in a neutral state, in which the stimulus has no more or little effect.

Here is the abstract of "Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative?", a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

Adaptation level theory suggests that both contrast and habituation will operate to prevent the winning of a fortune from elevating happiness as much as might be expected. Contrast with the peak experience of winning should lessen the impact of ordinary pleasures, while habituation should eventually reduce the value of new pleasures made possible by winning. Study 1 compared a sample of 22 major lottery winners with 22 controls and also with a group of 29 paralyzed accident victims who had been interviewed previously. As predicted, lottery winners were not happier than controls and took significantly less pleasure from a series of mundane events. Study 2 indicated that these effects were not due to preexisting differences between people who buy or do not buy lottery tickets or between interviews that made or did not make the lottery salient. Paraplegics also demonstrated a contrast effect, not by enhancing minor pleasures but by idealizing their past, which did not help their present happiness. [Emphasis added]

Happiness is relative, and depends just on the contrast with a previous state. A way in which this habituation occurs is through a series of rationalizations, a sort of "lying" to ourselves which is not necessarily lying, but giving a different interpretation to things.

Maybe, we can think, lottery winners are not so happy because they didn't earn that money and therefore they didn't appreciate it. Maybe they felt guilty about it.

Well, wrong again. Studies of Fortune 500 executives found they had only average levels of happiness, and 37% of these ultra-wealthy business leaders are less happy than the average person.

Christopher Kaczor says in an interview:

As St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out more than seven centuries ago, we want many things that no amount of money can buy. We cannot find true happiness in more fame, power or “winning” of any kind...

Scientists have studied this question extensively. It turns out that more money can make you much happier — if you live in abject poverty. If you do not have clothes to keep you warm, if you have no food for your children, and no roof over your head, money for these basic provisions greatly improves reported happiness.

Once you have enough money for food, clothing and shelter (what St. Thomas Aquinas called "natural wealth"), increases in money are unrelated to stable increases in happiness. In other words, once a person has the necessities, more money — money spent in shopping as well as money in the bank — does not lead to more happiness.

Social psychologist David Myers, the author of The Pursuit of Happiness (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) in which he reviews thousands of scientific studies, observes that the happiness attained by a purchase or achieving a particular level of wealth soon wears off and people adapt to whatever level of wealth they have achieved. Soon after having achieved a certain level of wealth or having purchased the desired product, the happiness recently enjoyed will fade and disappear.

This perhaps explains why, if you compare a person making $30,000 a year, another making $100,000 and a third making $500,000, there is very little difference in their self-reported happiness or levels of depression.

Not only that. However much money they make, they will all say that, if they had about 10% more, they would feel happier. When they do get that 10% more, however, which does happen over a few years of salary increases, they want another 10% and so on, ad infinitum.

Looking at other level-2 goals like power, success, popularity and fame, it's impossible not to notice how many so-called celebrities, people who have achieved all that - as well as money -, lead very miserable lives and often end up alcoholic, drug-addict, depraved, promiscuous, paedophile, HIV-positive and depressed even to the point of committing suicide.

Yet again, as in the case of physical pleasure, there is nothing wrong in any of those things per se: it's elevating them to supreme goals - or, as Catholicism puts it, loving them more than other people and than God - that turns a positive into a negative.

Think of the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride.

They all correspond to some lack of self-discipline, by which we give more importance to something else than to others and God. If we had faith and followed His commendments, we wouldn't need any self-help book.

It turns out that psychologists, even those who don't believe in God, recognise - simply on the basis of empirical evidence - that the people who are happiest, mentally healthiest and most fullfilled are those who attain both the third and the fourth levels: serving and loving other people and God.

Robin Skynner, just as an example, in the book he co-wrote with John Cleese, Life And How To Survive It (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) , says, like so many other psychologists, that the healthiest individuals are those who manage to feel part of something greater and higher than themselves. And, considering the secular nature of this book, he gives a surprising emphasis to Jesus' words.

It's because God and the Church want us to be happy that they guide us towards certain goals and behaviours.

Israel's Democratic Pluralism In a Photo

The above image shows Israeli Member of Parliament Michael Ben Ari while he publicly ripped up a copy of the New Testament in the country's Parliament, the Knesset. He then threw it into a rubbish bin after denouncing it as an "abhorrent" book.

A second legislator called for Bibles to be burnt.

Although Mr Ben Ari was criticised by the Knesset's speaker, he faced no official sanction.

If Israel were the pluralist, democratic, Western country that it claims to be, this MP would be forced to apologise or resign. But he's not.

This should tell you something about Israel where, incidentally, Christian Palestinians are treated just as badly as Muslim Palestinians.

So, the excuse of being tough in order to combat terrorism doesn't hold water. There are no Christian terrorists.

The First Crusade Came Very Late

The image above gives the numbers of years intervened between various Islamic attacks on Europe and the moment when Christendom finally responded with The First Crusade, called by Pope Urban II in 1095.

It is a graphic illustration of the lie uttered - recently by Obama as well - whenever Crusades are called aggressive - rather than defensive - wars and whenever a moral equality is postulated between Christianity and Islam.

Thanks Jews - Video

The Dresden Holocaust - Video

I have always found the conventional historiography of the Second World War a lot similar to Hollywood plots: absolute good versus evil, heroes against villains. The good guys have no faults, the bad guys have nothing but faults.

It's winners who write history. Maybe in this case they got the help of movie screenwriters, with their storytelling abilities and imagination. And it's a bonus that Hollywood studios are largely, as nobody disputes, owned and managed by members of the Jewish communitity.

The introduction to the above video on YouTube says:

More people died in the fire bombing of Dresden on February 13th to 14th, 1945 than in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Holocaust (noun) - "Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire."

Orbán: Christian Culture Is Europe's Only Natural Foundation

It looks like some of our newest and possibly best hopes come from the European East, rather than West.

Putin is not a saint, but he is one of the few world leaders today who doesn't toe the line and is capable of standing up to the masters of political correctness and destroyers of Christendom. What Western European mainstream politician would dare say what he says about homosexuality, as a glaring example?

Another such man who does not accept the diktats of the New World Order is Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary and the president of the country's national conservative ruling party Fidesz.

This blog covered him in the article "Hungary: How to Overthrow a Government Voted by the People" , in which the Hungarian writer explained how last autumn's street protests against the Orban administration - reported by the Western media - were financed by George Soros, who also funds various opposition organisations and leaders, like Gyurcsány Ferenc and Bajnai Gordon. The well-known Jewish socialist Soros, the article said, has financial interests to protect in his native country, and they are threatened by the government headed by Orbán, which enjoys a great popular support.

In the April 2014 election, the government was re-elected to office. Orbán's centre-right party Fidesz received most of the votes, 45%.

A centre-left opposition alliance got 25% of the votes, and the far-right Jobbik party 21%.

The Hungarian left has never fully recovered from its heavy defeat in the 2010 ballot, in which Mr Orban swept to power with a two-thirds majority.

Viktor Orbán has given his State of the Nation Address in Budapest on 27 February 2015. These are some of the most illuminating and impressive excerpts:

Everyone can see that we are a people’s party community, based on Christian-democratic foundations – the ideal, guiding star of which is a civic Hungary. I do not think that this would change in the next hundred years...

We could, of course, always observe by way of introduction, that we are human, too. We are no saints, though we should aim for nothing less; this is something that members of the Reformed Church should also consider. We have our own interests, our affections, and of course, our biases. The work we do is far from perfect, even if that is what we should strive for. But notwithstanding our frailties and imperfections, there is one regard in which we cannot go wrong: neither individual ambitions, nor individual or group values may take precedence over the interests and service of the nation...

I should mention here a piece of political advice that should be important for all Christian-democratic politicians. “Do not concern yourselves with whether God is on our side, but concern yourselves with whether you are on God’s side.”...

Terrorist organizations recruit fighters to join their ranks from among immigrants living in the continent’s western part, while the southern borders of the EU – including our own state’s borders – are besieged by waves of modern-day migration, in the face of which increasingly frustrated states and governments are at a loss. And this is happening in an economic environment in which millions of Western European citizens feel that they have to work ever more for less money, just to keep their jobs. Europe is facing questions which can no longer be answered within the framework of liberal multiculturalism. Can we shelter people, many of whom are unwilling to accept European culture, or who come here with the intent of destroying European culture?...

Europe today continues to huddle behind the moats of political correctness, and has built a wall of taboos and dogmas around itself. In contrast, we took the view that the old pre-crisis world will not return...

Those who do not make choices find that instead circumstances will make the choices for them. Those who do not actively decide will find that their lives will be decided for them. We therefore let go of neo-liberal economic policy, and perhaps we did so as late as we possibly could have; we let go of the policy of austerity, just before we were about to share the fate of Greece; we let go of the delusion of the multicultural society before it turned Hungary into a refugee camp, and we let go of liberal social policy which does not acknowledge the common good and denies Christian culture as the natural foundation – and perhaps the only natural foundation – for the organization of European societies. We decided to face the barrage of unfair attacks and accusations, and also let go of the dogma of political correctness.

And as far as I see it, Hungarian people are by nature politically incorrect – in other words, they have not yet lost their common sense. They are not interested in talk, but want facts and results; they are not interested in theories, but want jobs and affordable utility bills; and they do not swallow the nonsense that unemployment is a natural concomitant of modern economies. They want to free themselves from the modern-day debt slavery that they were driven into by foreign currency loans. They do not want to see their country thronging with people from different cultures, with different customs, who are unable to integrate; people who would pose a threat to public order, their jobs and livelihoods...

We learnt from György Bencze something which we now experience personally on a daily basis. He told us that liberals are extremely tolerant – they are only intolerant of fascists. But it is surely not their fault that everyone else – everyone except for them – is a fascist. Yes, we must understand that liberal politics only ever recognizes two kinds of opinion: its own and the wrong one...

The modern world sees economic facts as the ones that truly count. It may be right, but I would attach higher priority to facts related to life. Above all, the facts which determine our biological survival and continuance.

Dear Friends,

Life in Hungary presents us with facts that surprise even the most pessimistic of people. More children were born last year than at any time in the last five years. The so-called total fertility rate – that is, the number of children born into a family – was 1.41 in 2014; this is its highest value since 1997, though still not high enough. The number of marriages has increased continuously since 2010; it rose by 9% in 2014 alone. Let me remind you that between 2002 and 2010 the number of marriages in Hungary fell by 23%.

Dear Friends,

The number of divorces decreased by 15% between 2010 and 2013. The number of abortions is in continuous decline, and has fallen by 20% since 2010. While the truth is that the number is still high, it has not been this low since 1954...

I could also say that the hundreds of thousands of hardworking Hungarians must be admitted to the ranks of civic society; we must make room for them and their children in the world of successful Hungarians.

And, Ladies and Gentlemen, we must not do this with the methods the socialists used: taking out huge loans, distributing them in the form of benefits or one-off pay rises as they did in 2003, and thereby crippling the national economy. We should only attempt to assist those who have fallen behind together with increased economic growth, and in parallel with improvement in our competitiveness...[Emphasis added]

Guillaume Durocher makes this interesting comment on The Occidental Observer, in relation to the Hungarians' lack of appetite for political correcctness:

The same could be said of most other Central-Eastern Europeans as well. Having lived under the hard political Marxism of Communist Party dictatorship, they have been for now inoculated against the soft cultural Marxism of Franz Boas, the Frankfurt School, Stephen J. Gould, and all the other pseudoscientific and anti-European theories peddled by the Left. Unfortunately, the Anglo-American world and Western members of the European Union (led by France and Germany) are seeking to impose these ethnomasochist principles and falsehoods upon Central-Eastern Europeans through cultural encroachment and European law.

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Wikipedia Commons

Essential Introduction to Kevin MacDonald

I want to introduce to you Kevin MacDonald, Professor of Psychology at California State University.

He received a B. A. in Philosophy, a Masters degree in Evolutionary Biology and a Ph. D. in Biobehavioral Sciences.

Since assuming his position at California State University, his research has focused on developing evolutionary perspectives on culture, developmental psychology and personality theory, the origins and maintenance of monogamous marriage in Western Europe, and ethnic relations (group evolutionary strategies). He is the author of more than 100 scholarly papers and reviews.

His most important book is considered The Culture of Critique (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) , whose subtitle is "An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements".

In this book, and indeed in the trilogy of which it is part (The Culture of Critique series), he applies evolutionary theory to Judaism, arriving at the conclusion that Judaism is a group evolutionary strategy, namely it helps the interests of the ingroup against the interests of rivals - the outgroups.

Anti-Semitism, on the other hand, is the outgroups' response to Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy that favours only Jewish interests at the expense of all others.

All three books are the fruit of extremely diligent and painstaking scholarly work.

Here's how MacDonald sums up The Culture of Critique (CofC) in the Preface to the First Paperback Edition of the book:

CofC describes how Jewish intellectuals initiated and advanced a number of important intellectual and political movements during the 20th century. I argue that these movements are attempts to alter Western societies in a manner that would neutralize or end anti-Semitism and enhance the prospects for Jewish group continuity either in an overt or in a semi-cryptic manner. Several of these Jewish movements (e.g., the shift in immigration policy favoring non-European peoples) have attempted to weaken the power of their perceived competitors — the European peoples who early in the 20th century had assumed a dominant position not only in their traditional homelands in Europe, but also in the United States, Canada, and Australia. At a theoretical level, these movements are viewed as the outcome of conflicts of interest between Jews and non-Jews in the construction of culture and in various public policy issues. Ultimately, these movements are viewed as the expression of a group evolutionary strategy by Jews in their competition for social, political and cultural dominance with non-Jews.

The "culture of critique" of the title can be described as the constant pattern of theoretical and intellectual attacks to which predominantly Jewish movements and elites have subjected the mainstream White, Gentile and Christian societies in which they've been living, attacks which have considerably weakened these societies' resistance to external and internal threats. Mass immigration, multiculturalism and Islamisation are contemporary examples of these threats, and they have been overwhelmingly not just supported but also promoted by Jewish communities in the West.

The Jewish movements analysed are

Freud, the New York Intellectuals, the Boasians, and the Frankfurt School, in which 'scientific' theories were fashioned and deployed to advance ethnic group interests. This ideological purpose becomes clear when the unscientific nature of these movements is understood. Much of the discussion in CofC documented the intellectual dishonesty, the lack of empirical rigor, the obvious political and ethnic motivation, the expulsion of dissenters, the collusion among co-ethnics to dominate intellectual discourse, and the general lack of scientific spirit that pervaded them. In my view, the scientific weakness of these movements is evidence of their group-strategic function.

Boasians are the followers of Franz Boas, who established a highly influential school of thought in anthropology categorically denying the existence of human races and claiming that genetic differences between peoples are trivial and irrelevant.

It is thanks to this movement, that came to dominate the field of anthropology, that even believing in the existence of races and, more importantly, in differences among them is these days considered as racist.

I will return to MacDonald and his work in future articles but now I wish to introduce an autobiographical element.

During all the time I was in the counterjihad movement, I always felt that something wasn't quite right.

True, Islam is a serious problem, an inherently homicidal and supremacist doctrine disguised as a religion that threatens the whole world. I thought this then and I think this now.

But the question was: Islam is a foreign doctrine to the West, it's never been part of it and therefore it is - or at least it was - an external enemy to us.

The Western world is much stronger militarily, economically, politically, culturally than the Islamic world. How could the Occident be menaced by Islam, then?

If Muslim populations had been kept out of Western lands, they would have still represented a mortal threat to the unfortunate Christians living in Muslim-majority countries, but not to us. At one point someone opened the gates to Mohammedans, so that the invasion has not been by military conquest, as it happened sometimes in the past and was repelled by Christian armies, but by inordinate numbers of economic immigrants and true or false "refugees".

This is well-known recent history. But why not many people, even in the counterjihad, ask themselves and seek plausible answers to the question: who opened the gates and why?

The answers commonly given are not satisfactory: the Left, the politicians, and so on.

I was also giving myself these answers. Cultural Marxism was my best bet.

Now, I didn't then pause to reflect that Cultural Marxism is a typically Jewish movement.

Cultural Marxism's origins are traced back to Jewish intellectual György Lukács and Italian politician Antonio Gramsci, who married a Jewish woman, Julia Schucht; it was then developed by the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxists whose main inspirations and thinkers were overwhelmingly Jewish. Strange coincidences, when you think that Jews are a tiny fraction of the Western population.

Indeed, communism in its modern form is a Jewish creation. Its greatest, most influential authors are Marx for the theory, Lenin for the practice: both of Jewish background.

Bolshevism was disproportionately Jewish, and so has been radical Leftism in Western countries.

Not to mention another force that has been powerfully destructive of Western morality: psychoanalysis, another Jewish creation.

Add to that the strong anti-Christian feelings that Jews have always harboured, and you realise that there's far more than circumstantial evidence to establish a connection between the cultural destruction that has been practised for at least the last seven decades in the countries once collectively known as Christendom (a term Jews might have resented) and Jewish influence.

Let's hear some witnesses, then, only a few of the many from MacDonald's The Culture of Critique. These relate to both the questions of unrestricted immigration and secularisation in the USA:

The well-known author and prominent Zionist Maurice Samuel (1924, p. 215) writing partly as a negative reaction to the [restrictionist, EF] immigration law of 1924, wrote that 'If, then, the struggle between us [i.e., Jews and gentiles] is ever to be lifted beyond the physical, your democracies will have to alter their demands for racial, spiritual and cultural homogeneity with the State. But it would be foolish to regard this as a possibility, for the tendency of this civilization is in the opposite direction. There is a steady approach toward the identification of government with race, instead of with the political State.'

Samuel deplored the 1924 legislation and in the following quote he develops the view that the American state has no ethnic implications.

We have just witnessed, in America, the repetition, in the peculiar form adapted to this country, of the evil farce to which the experience of many centuries has not yet accustomed us. If America had any meaning at all, it lay in the peculiar attempt to rise above the trend of our present civilization - the identification of race with State.... America was therefore the New World in this vital respect - that the State was purely an ideal, and nationality was identical only with acceptance of the ideal. But it seems now that the entire point of view was a mistaken one, that America was incapable of rising above her origins, and the semblance of an ideal-nationalism was only a stage in the proper development of the universal gentile spirit.... To-day, with race triumphant over ideal, anti-Semitism uncovers its fangs, and to the heartless refusal of the most elementary human right, the right of asylum, is added cowardly insult. We are not only excluded, but we are told, in the unmistakable language of the immigration laws, that we are an 'inferior' people...

A congruent opinion is expressed by prominent Jewish social scientist and political activist Earl Raab, who remarks very positively on the success of American immigration policy in altering the ethnic composition of the United States since 1965. Raab notes that the Jewish community has taken a leadership role in changing the Northwestern European bias of American immigration policy (1993a, p. 17), and he has also maintained that one factor inhibiting anti-Semitism in the contemporary United States is that '(a)n increasing ethnic heterogeneity, as a result of immigration, has made it even more difficult for a political party or mass movement of bigotry to develop' (1995, p. 91). Or more colorfully:

The Census Bureau has just reported that about half of the American population will soon be non-white or non-European. And they will all be American citizens. We have tipped beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to prevail in this country.
We [i.e., Jews] have been nourishing the American climate of opposition to bigotry for about half a century. That climate has not yet been perfected, but the heterogeneous nature of our population tends to make it irreversible - and makes our constitutional constraints against bigotry more practical than ever. (Raab 1993b, p. 23).

Positive attitudes toward cultural diversity have also appeared in other statements on immigration by Jewish authors and leaders. Charles Silberman (1985, 350) notes that "American Jews are committed to cultural tolerance because of their belief - one firmly rooted in history - that Jews are safe only in a society acceptant of a wide range of attitudes and behaviors, as well as a diversity of religious and ethnic groups. It is this belief, for example, not approval of homosexuality, that leads an overwhelming majority of American Jews to endorse 'gay rights' and to take a liberal stance on most other so-called 'social' issues."

Similarly, in listing the positive benefits of immigration, Diana Aviv, director of the Washington Action Office of the Council of Jewish Federations states that immigration 'is about diversity, cultural enrichment and economic opportunity for the immigrants' (quoted in Forward, March 8, 1996, p. 5). And in summarizing Jewish involvement in the 1996 legislative battles a newspaper account stated that 'Jewish groups failed to kill a number of provisions that reflect the kind of political expediency that they regard as a direct attack on American pluralism' (Detroit Jewish News; May 10, 1996).

It is noteworthy also that there has been a conflict between predominantly Jewish neo-Conservatives and predominantly gentile paleo-conservatives over the issue of Third World immigration into the United States. Many of these neo-conservative intellectuals had previously been radical leftists,4 and the split between the neo-conservatives and their previous allies resulted in an intense internecine feud (Gottfried 1993; Rothman & Lichter 1982, p. 105). Neo-conservatives Norman Podhoretz and Richard John Neuhaus reacted very negatively to an article by a paleo-conservative concerned that such immigration would eventually lead to the United States being dominated by such immigrants (see Judis 1990, p. 33). Other examples are neo-Conservatives Julian Simon (1990) and Ben Wattenberg (1991), both of whom advocate very high levels of immigration from all parts of the world, so that the United States will become what Wattenberg describes as the world's first 'Universal Nation.' Based on recent data, Fetzer (1996) reports that Jews remain far more favorable to immigration to the United States than any other ethnic group or religion.

It should be noted as a general point that the effectiveness of Jewish organizations in influencing American immigration policy has been facilitated by certain characteristics of American Jewry. As Neuringer (1971, p. 87) notes, Jewish influence on immigration policy was facilitated by Jewish wealth, education, and social status. Reflecting its general disproportionate representation in markers of economic success and political influence, Jewish organizations have been able to have a vastly disproportionate effect on United States immigration policy because Jews as a group are highly organized, highly intelligent, and politically astute, and they were able to command a high level of financial, political, and intellectual resources in pursuing their political aims...

In this regard, the Jewish success in influencing immigration policy is entirely analogous to their success in influencing the secularization of American culture. As in the case of immigration policy, the secularization of American culture is a Jewish interest because Jews have a perceived interest that America not be a homogeneous Christian culture. 'Jewish civil rights organizations have had an historic role in the postwar development of American church-state law and policy' (Ivers 1995, p. 2). Unlike the effort to influence immigration, the opposition to a homogeneous Christian culture was mainly carried out in the courts. The Jewish effort in this case was well funded and was the focus of well-organized, highly dedicated Jewish civil service organizations, including the AJCommittee, the AJCongress, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It involved keen legal expertise both in the actual litigation but also in influencing legal opinion via articles in law journals and other forums of intellectual debate, including the popular media. It also involved a highly charismatic and effective leadership, particularly Leo Pfeffer of the AJCongress:

No other lawyer exercised such complete intellectual dominance over a chosen area of law for so extensive a period - as an author, scholar, public citizen, and above all, legal advocate who harnessed his multiple and formidable talents into a single force capable of satisfying all that an institution needs for a successful constitutional reform movement.... That Pfeffer, through an enviable combination of skill, determination, and persistence, was able in such a short period of time to make church-state reform the foremost cause with which rival organizations associated the AJCongress illustrates well the impact that individual lawyers endowed with exceptional skills can have on the character and life of the organizations for which they work.... As if to confirm the extent to which Pfeffer is associated with post-Everson [i.e., post-1946] constitutional development, even the major critics of the Court's church-state jurisprudence during this period and the modern doctrine of separationism rarely fail to make reference to Pfeffer as the central force responsible for what they lament as the lost meaning of the establishment clause. (Ivers 1995, pp. 222-224)

Similarly, Hollinger (1996, p. 4) notes 'the transformation of the ethnoreligious demography of American academic life by Jews' in the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, as well as the Jewish influence on trends toward the secularization of American society and in advancing an ideal of cosmopolitanism (p. 11). The pace of this influence was very likely influenced by immigration battles of the 1920s. Hollinger notes that the 'the old Protestant establishment's influence persisted until the 1960s in large measure because of the Immigration Act of 1924: had the massive immigration of Catholics and Jews continued at pre-1924 levels, the course of American history would have been different in many ways, including, one may reasonably speculate, a more rapid diminution of Protestant cultural hegemony. Immigration restriction gave that hegemony a new lease of life' (p. 22). It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the immigration battles from 1881 to 1965 have been of momentous historical importance in shaping the contours of American culture in the late twentieth century.

The ultimate success of Jewish attitudes on immigration was also influenced by intellectual movements that collectively resulted in a decline of evolutionary and biological thinking in the academic world. [All emphases mine]

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