Nature Versus Nurture (Versus Immigration)
Trump is probably right about a genetic link to crime—and what it means for immigration policy
By A Former Border Patrolman
Recently Trump went viral by saying that immigrants to America have “bad genes”. “You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” [Trump's 'words matter': Republican strategist reacts to former president's 'bad genes' comment , CNN, October 15, 2024] Immediately, the left was out with their smelling salts and fainting couches unable to believe what their innocent ears were hearing.
I find that strange because, when it comes time to finding a genetic link to crime, journalists have no problem with it so long as the perpetrator is white. The Atlantic Monthly had an excellent article on this possibility titled, “When Crime Is a Family Affair”, by Fox Butterfield [October 22, 2018]. It followed the white Bogle family in Oregon. Two of the brothers are among “…60 members in their extended family who have been incarcerated or placed on probation or parole.”
Brothers Bobby Bogle (left) and Tracey Bogle (right) are two of 60 members in their extended family who have been incarcerated or placed on probation or parole. (Oregon Department of Corrections)
The article mentions that a study in South London (from the pre-mass immigration date of 1961 to 2001) found that two-thirds of convicted kids came from 105 of the families.
Once again, the hereditary criminals of South London are white criminals like the Kray Twins, below.
Going along with that, there’s believed to be a gene that causes psychopaths. In this article from the Daily Mail, professor of psychiatry James Fallon found that his brain scan matched those of psychopathic murderers.
He was also distantly related to Lizzy Borden who likely hacked her father and stepmother to death (she was acquitted apparently because back in those days it was so unfathomable that a woman would do such a thing). People with this psychopath gene have no brain activity in the area that controls empathy. They simply feel no empathy for others. Nevertheless, Fallon did not grow up to be a criminal despite having the genes for it. He attributes that to the nurture side of things.
Back when I was in college studying criminal justice in the late 90s, we had a round-table discussion with our professor about crime falling. At the time, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 had been on the books for a few years and crime was truly starting to go down.
In addition, some states had passed “Truth in Sentencing” laws that sought to make judges have less discretion in sentencing criminals to longer jail and prison sentences. There was also the theory that criminals were aging out of crime. There were fewer young men on the streets than previously, so, less of “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” (This would later be expanded on in the book Freakonomics to argue that abortions after Roe V. Wade got rid of a lot of unwanted male babies who are the most likely to commit violent crimes as adults—a theory that, as Steve Sailer pointed out in 2006, fails to take into account the “the early ’90s crack wars fought by the first generation of youths to survive legalized abortion” ).
There were other factors too. Due to crime, more private security guards were getting hired, and technology was changing too; more close circuit TVs (CCTV, security cameras) were being used. Also, the economy was improving. There is a link to economic downturns and crime going up.
There was one thing our professor mentioned briefly, then moved on. He said there was also discussions of a genetic link to crime. He summarized the findings by saying that the research had shown that if you have an individual with low intelligence and low impulse control (both of which are hereditary traits), then the chances of that individual being a criminal go up exponentially. It doesn’t mean that the individual will be a criminal, but they are much more likely to become one. Then, he ended it by saying, “We will not be discussing that in this class. The black community protested against the research because they were afraid of what we would find.” I think he meant the black academic community, but there were also street protests outside (and inside) academic conference[Protesters attempt to halt crime, genetics conference—Opposition fears research will fuel racist practices, by Douglas Birch, Baltimore Sun, September 24, 1995]. We were too busy arguing about the other causes that could lead to less crime.
I was later to run into this quote from Noam Chomsky, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum….” [The Common Good, 1998, p. 43].
We didn’t discuss the genetic link to crime, and I barely even remembered the professor talking about it since there were so many other things to discuss.
Later on, I remember running into a friend of my parents, one of the few conservatives I knew. I told him what I was studying, and he blatantly told me that he thought criminals were born, not made. He was so blunt about it that I thought it was funny. I asked him if he didn’t think that an improved economy with more jobs was driving the crime rate down. “Nah, it’s the criminals themselves. People are born that way.”
OK, I ignored it…but, he did have me wondering. Later on, bits and pieces started to come out about how crime runs in families. Much, much later on, I was talking to a New York State Trooper. The same discussion came up on nature versus nurture. Are people criminals due to the way they were raised, or, could they actually have been born bad? The NY State Trooper said that they had a term, something like the triumvirate, when over the course of your career you have arrested the grandfather, the father and the son. This particular Trooper said that he had arrested fathers and then later on their sons, but he hadn’t accomplished the triumvirate.
The other thing I was learning about in studying criminal justice was how terrible America was for a crime rate. Going back to the university, the way they liked to phrase it was that “America has the highest crime rate of any industrialized nation in the world.”
We were all supposed to feel bad about that. I do recall that one professor even had the temerity to say that even when you take firearms out of it, Americans still kill each other more than Europeans, we just use knives, baseball bats, cars, poison or whatever else to do it.
It didn’t occur to me till later on, that if you take the qualifying statement “industrialized” out of the above phrase, then America really doesn’t have a high homicide rate at all. (We used homicide rates because they are believed to be the most accurate measure of crime. Different jurisdictions have ways of making burglaries go down on paper, and women may not report rapes if they feel the cops are incompetent, but a dead body lying in the street is harder to cover up).
That got me thinking when I was down on the southern border working for the Border Patrol and hearing terrible stories about the Cartels over in Mexico. Well, it turns out that the United States doesn’t have a high crime rate when you compare us to the rest of the world, and do include the majority of countries. Most countries are Third World, underdeveloped, or as Trump was alleged to have said to some congressmen at the White House,, “s***holes”.
If you look at Wikipedia’s “List of countries by intentional homicide rate”, then the United States looks pretty good. Africa and the Americas are the regions where crime is highest.
In victims per 100,000 inhabitants, places like Mexico had a homicide rate of 26.107. Whereas, the United States has a homicide rate of 6.383. Mexico’s homicide rate is almost four times ours! Mexico isn’t even one of the higher ones in the Americas. The U.S. Virgin Islands has a homicide rate of 49.631! Costa Rica (by far the best country in Central America) also beats the U.S. with a homicide rate of 17.382. El Salvador’s homicide rate is down, owing to Bukele’s crackdown, to the level of Canada, according to them, but whereas under Bukele, they’ve had 2.4 murders per 100,000, in 2020 and 2021, it was more like 16 per 100,000.
Guatemala is at 19.990. Nicaragua is at a mere 11.006, still higher than us.
I have to also add that a lot of those Third World countries probably minimize their homicide rates to look better. Also, we are importing a lot of people into the U.S. from those failed nations.
Why should we believe that South Americans don’t have a higher genetic tendency to commit murders? Genetic heritage is known to affect rates of violence.
Below I’ve some clips of National Geographic’s documentary Born to Rage: Inside the Warrior Gene with punk rocker Henry Rollins. The whole thing is available on DailyMotion, with smaller clips on YouTube.
However, I will spoil it for you should you watch it. The Hispanic twins he interviews both have this so called “Warrior Gene” (it would be more accurate to call it the psychopath gene).
When it comes to the group of six bikers Henry Rollins interviews, two of the Hispanic bikers and one of the white bikers have the gene.
Anecdotally, that’s a lot more Hispanics who have this gene than Westerners. (And, where are we importing the majority of our new immigrants from? South America and Africa? The two places with higher crime rates than anywhere else in the world.) Dutch Dr. Han Brunner identified a gene he called the MAOA—leading to what’s known as “Brunner Sydnrome”. People who have it are “more likely to fly off the handle if provoked.”
Here’s his interview with (reformed) Hispanic Gang members Hector and Gilbert Vordugo:
Of course, the fact that in this video more individuals tested are Hispanic doesn’t prove anything—but rates of MAOA genes by ethnic group aren’t apparently available…because research into it is demonized. The likelihood that it is higher is suggested by the level of violence in South America, Central America…and East LA, where the Verdugos live.
Just because you have the genes that can cause one to be a psychopath doesn’t mean you will become one. Henry Rollins interviews an American Navy SEAL who has the gene, but has not become a criminal.
Like the psychiatrist Fallon, the SEAL attributes this to being raised by loving parents.
Now, going back to the subject of immigration. We are dealing with a transient population moving in and setting up shop.
We are importing people from countries with high crime rates and the liberals are hoping that the Magic Dirt of the United States will keep them from becoming criminals here.
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