One of the first history books my father gave me to read in grade school was H. G. Wells' classic The Outline of History.¹ Its theme is the rise and fall of nations. A great people arise having intelligence, strength and ambition. They create a powerful society and conquer their less fit neighbors. And then begins a process of absorbing the conquered in their nation-state. The traits that originally led them to victory and dominance are lost as they gradually absorb the defeated population. Invariably the process begins again, and another people come on the scene and conquer, only to once more be absorbed by those they had vanquished. Such a pattern was obvious to me in studying the Americas, but now, as I read more history, it became obvious to me that the race factor is present in the rise and fall of every civilization. In fact, in every fallen civilization there had been a racial change from the original founding population. The only real justification for the survival of a nation is a racial one - the survival of that specific population as a distinct genetic entity, as a source for the next generation. Otherwise, such a nation would not be worth defending in a world of many nations.

Historians such as Toynbee, Durant and Spengler have chronicled the emergence and decline of nations. Interestingly, every great civilization that has graced the Earth fell into decay and destruction. Ours is simply the last of many civilizations that have risen only to subsequently decline. The ultimate question of the historians is why civilizations have this cycle. There are many theories on why civilizations decline. Some argue economic downturns, some say political corruption, some argue military weakness and defeat, some simply say moral decay from the breakdown of religious tradition, some argue class warfare, some say wealth always breeds degeneration. There are as many theories as there are historians, but one factor is present in the rise and fall of every civilization known to man: the race factor. The racial group that built the original civilization lost its dominance, often even its genetic integrity.

Before I learned about race, I too had my theories, based on what I had read. Mine were based purely on the symptoms of the decline rather than on the underlying factors causing the symptoms. A book written over a hundred years ago by a French scholar, Count Arthur de Gobineau, proposed a hypothesis on the decline of civilization that had me thinking about the issue for weeks, and it ultimately led me to my world-view on the race issue. De Gobineau's Inequality of the Races² was written before Darwin's Origin of Species³ and long before many of the modern principles of biology and psychology, but it put forth the startling propositions that populations were undergoing change in their biological character, and that civilization was ultimately the product of biology: the racial characteristics of its founders.

De Gobineau claimed that civilizations declined because the inherent makeup of its creators had changed. The racial quality of the people had declined. He saw it as an intra-racial and inter-racial weakening of the culture-creating race. It was inter-racial in that the cosmopolitan nature of the empire caused racial-mixing with alien peoples and declining birthrates among the founding race accompanied by overpopulation of the mixed multitudes. De Gobineau also recognized a decline intra-racially in that, he saw among the ruling race, the most intelligent and productive citizens had the fewest children, while the lower elements were extremely prolific.

De Gobineau wrote during the mid-19th century, before modern biology, which meant that his book was bound to contain errors. Yet the many principles that he got right were astounding. De Gobineau was well traveled for his time, and he had the power to dispassionately observe and interpolate what he encountered.