I came to the conclusion that the liberals were in a way right about the impact of environment on the individual and groups. Environment has shaped us, but the environment that gave us the genetic code that so deeply influences us came not in the evolutionary millisecond of the individual's short life span, but over thousands of years. That is why well-meaning efforts to improve some races of man through his environment invariably fail. And efforts to oppress other races, such as the nationalities in the former Soviet bloc, also fail in the end.

There have been many uncivilized areas of the globe that rapidly flourished to economic, social and scientific achievement after having just the slightest contact with civilization. Conversely, other areas on the borders of civilization for thousands of years never could adopt and sustain its most rudimentary characteristics. A perfect example is the traditional Sudan, an area that stretches across northern Africa just south of the Sahara. Rich in grasslands, minerals, forests, swamps and even natural seaports in the east that brought trade and the learning of the civilized world, Sudan's only historical bright spots were as colonial outposts of the Egyptians, Arab Muslims and then later the modern Europeans. Contrast the Sudan of today to the descendants of Rome's colonial forays in Britain and France. Not only did those nations adopt the attributes of Roman civilization; they eventually far exceeded them.

In the Sudan, after at least six thousand years of contact, it is little better off than it was in the times of the Pharaohs, in fact it is arguably a lot worse. In the last thirty years since colonial independence, the quality of life has rapidly disintegrated as the institutions and organization set up by the west have been abandoned. The character of genes is much stronger than the institutions of mankind, for institutions come and go, while the genes are forged over millennia.

It is the genes themselves that construct the very character of the societies in which they thrive. Every nation rises or sinks according to its genes. Over time, genes override every advantage or impediment. Human genes can make nations with the poorest of resources rich, or the richest poor. They can inspire great universities or make ruins where greatness stood. They can erect tyranny over once free men or resurrect freedom from the worst of oppression. Social structures created by race can be imposed on another, but in time the genes, if preserved, will assert themselves. The power of the gene is the source of space travel or of squalor, of civilization or the jungle.