In the 1970s Gilder established himself as a critic of feminism and government welfare policies, arguing that they eroded the "sexual constitution" that civilized and socialized men in the roles of fathers and providers. In the 1990s he became an enthusiastic evangelist of technology and the Internet through several books and his newsletter the Gilder Technology Report. He's also known as the chairman of George Gilder Fund Management, LLC.
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Gilder was born in New York City and raised in New York and Massachusetts. His father Richard Gilder was killed flying in the Army Air Force in World War II when Gilder was three. He spent most of his childhood with his mother and his stepfather Gilder Palmer on a dairy farm in Tyringham, Massachusetts.
David Rockefeller, a college roommate of his father, was deeply involved with his upbringing.[1]
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Gilder attended Hamilton School in New York City, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Harvard University, graduating in 1962.
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Speechwriting
In the 1960s Gilder served as a speechwriter for several prominent officials and candidates, including
Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and Richard Nixon.
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Supply-side economics
Supply-side economics was formulated in the mid-1970s by Jude Wanniski and Robert L. Bartley at the Wall Street Journal as a counterweight to the reigning "demand-side" Keynesian economics. At the center of the concept was the
Laffer Curve, the notion that high tax rates can reduce government revenue.
[Read: "stimulus" and bailouts a-la-Obama.] The opponents of supply-side economics often refer to it as "trickle-down economics."
Inspired by Wanniski and by the works of free-market economists like Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek and novelist Ayn Rand,[5] Gilder wrote a book extending the ideas of his Visible Man (1978) into the realm of economics, to balance his theory of poverty with a theory of wealth.[6] The book, published as the best-selling Wealth and Poverty in 1981, communicated the ideas of supply-side economics to a wide audience in the United States and the world.[7]
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On women and feminism
Gilder states that men are superior to women in the workplace and in creative ventures outside the home, due to inborn, biologically determined differences between men and women.
...men are inferior sexually...but they are superior in the workplace and in the great creative ventures outside the family circle. This has been true throughout human history and always will be true. The denial of it is perverse and destructive because men do have an absolutely central role in society that is commensurate with, yet different from, the familial role of women.[10]
Gilder also describes women as "a very physiological consciousness," and asserts that women—due to inborn, biologically determined differences from men—must give up "choice" or else the family will be destroyed. Referring to women, Gilder asserted in 1994:
Her sexuality determines her long term goals. As a very physiological consciousness, she knows she can bear and nurture children. She has a central role in the very perpetuation of the species...The Women's Movement tragically reduces female sexuality to the terms of male sexuality. When this happens, she reduces herself to the male level of recreational sex. Paradoxically, when that happens the woman loses all her power over men and the reverence and respect toward the procreative potential of woman is lost. And that really destroys the family. But if the power of "choice" is given up, the woman actually ascends to a higher level of sexuality and her body attains an almost mystical power over men.[10]
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He argued that welfare and feminism broke the "sexual constitution" that had weaned men off their predatory instinct for sex, war, and the hunt and had subordinated them to women as fathers and providers. The book achieved a succès de scandale and Time made Gilder "Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year".[11]
[So if women are "properly" subservient and give up "choice", men will stop raping, warring, and exploiting? As if. Am I reading this right?! Clearly the family unit is all sorts of messed up these days, but this sounds like a ponerized explanation for it.]
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On "corruption" and "suicide" of Native American and African cultures
Gilder has
asserted that the culture of Native Americans was "corrupt and unsuccessful", and consequently Native American culture "failed".
He describes both African and Native American cultures as "destructive cultures", "tragic failures" and "virtual social suicide", and upholding Native American or African cultures is a "terrible perversion."
Indian culture didn’t fail because it was virtuous. It failed because it was a corrupt and unsuccessful culture. These tribal cultures they [multiculturalists] are trying to import from Africa are tragic failures, too. To uphold these destructive cultures that have been virtual social suicide for the people who live in them is a terrible perversion.[10]
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On Christianity, Satanism, and secular education
Gilder has stated:
Religion is primary. Unless a culture is aspiring toward the good, the true, and the beautiful, and wants the good and the true, really worships God, it readily worships Satan. If we turn away from God, our culture becomes dominated by "Real Crime Stories" and rap music and other spew... When the culture becomes corrupt, then the businesses that serve the culture also become corrupt... Secular culture is in general corrupt, and degraded, and depraved. Because I don’t believe in secular culture, I think parochial schools are the only real schools.[10]
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Gilder's 2009 book The Israel Test is partly described as follows:
Gilder reveals Israel as a leader of human civilization, technological progress, and scientific advance. Tiny Israel stands behind only the United States in its contributions to the hi-tech economy. Israel has become the world's paramount example of the blessings of freedom.—Amazon book description.
