Historian Richard Weikart’s provocative new book, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress, comes out today, illuminating the mercilessly coherent worldview driving Nazi policy in 20th century Germany. Weikart persuasively mounts his case that Hitler was not a madman; rather, he sought to improve the human race via “evolutionary progress,” an ethic that influenced almost every major feature of Nazi policy: eugenics (i.e., measures to improved human heredity, including compulsory sterilization), euthanasia, racism, population expansion, offensive warfare, and racial extermination. By embracing this particular brand of ethics, Hitler managed to perpetrate much greater evil than he would have had he been merely opportunistic or amoral. It’s an intriguing argument, which Weikart defended on yesterday’s ID the Future podcast. Take Read More ›

The editor-in-chief of Bloggingheads TV, Robert Wright, has re-instated my interview with linguist John McWhorter on that website. Wright was away last week when the brouhaha occurred. It’s good to see that a steady editorial hand is back in charge.

To: Ben SteinFrom: Walter DurantyNew York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist (deceased, but never fired).936,287,434 Seventh CircleMoloch Township, Gehenna. Dearest Ben,My condolences on your involuntary departure from the New York Times. Down Here, we all find it very amusing.Yea, we all know that you got canned by the Grey Lady- by e-mail, no less. The pretense: your ‘crime’ was to hawk the services of an on-line credit report company that the Times management thought unethical.Of course, causing people who trusted you to lose money would have been your quickest ticket to promotion at the ‘Newspaper with a of Record.’ Pinch Sulzberger reduced the value of the stock of the world’s ‘Newspaper of Record’ by 6 billion dollars (1999 50 bucks /share; Read More ›