Wait — eugenics, did you say? Isn’t that a discredited pseudoscience from centuries past, like phrenology?
Well, yes, but eugenics never went away. Despite reaching its bloody culmination in the Nazi era, eugenics is still seductive as a concept to many people, and eugenics-based proposals still crop up in popular culture distressingly often, frequently by people who don’t even realize the historical implications of what they’re suggesting.
Over the last several days I’ve noticed an alarming upswing in eugenics-related incidents and current events, even though none of them were identified as such. And so, to rectify this oversight by the Meme Lords, I present — This Week in Eugenics!
(Note: For the purposes of this article, I’m using the most inclusive definition of the term “eugenics,” covering not just social programs designed to “improve genetic stock,” but also many notions closely related to and derived from eugenics, such as involuntary euthanasia, ethnic cleansing, suppressing birthrates among unwanted groups, mass rape, forced abortions, and killing your opponents en masse as a way of eradicating them from the gene pool.)
British liberal: Murdering substandard babies is highly recommended
Left-leaning British pundit Virginia Ironside stunned BBC viewers last Sunday when she said on air that she would enthusiastically suffocate any child who was “suffering.” The video really must be seen to be believed:
“If I were a mother of a suffering child — I mean a deeply suffering child — I would be the first to want to put a pillow over its face… If it was a child I really loved, who was in agony, I think any good mother would.”
(Make sure to pay close attention to the facial expressions of her shocked fellow guest, the young Reverend Joanna Jepson, who is literally rendered speechless by Ironside’s moral framework.)
Not included in this video clip are additional statements by Ironside earlier in the show which clarify what she means by “suffering”:
But she said there were millions of disabled and unwanted children around the world who were left suffering in institutions.
“To go ahead and have a baby, knowing that you can’t give it some kind of stable upbringing, seems to me to be cruel,” she said.
…
“If a baby’s going to be born severely disabled or totally unwanted, surely an abortion is the act of a loving mother.”
I don’t think I need to remind everyone that the Holocaust got its start as a program of “merciful” euthanasia for the disabled:
Forced sterilization in Germany was the forerunner of the systematic killing of the mentally ill and the handicapped. In October 1939, Hitler himself initiated a decree which empowered physicians to grant a “mercy death” to “patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health.”
Virginia Ironside is not alone in her thinking — her “progressive” views are commonplace in Europe and among certain sectors of the American populace. Are these people even aware of their not-so-subconscious dalliance with eugenics?
After 30 years of forced abortions, China breaks promise to end “one-child policy”
When China instituted its “one-child policy” exactly 30 years ago this month, they vowed that it was temporary and would end after 30 years. Now that the 30 years are up — surprise! — it looks like they won’t be ending it after all:
When China introduced its drastic population controls, officials promised that it would lift them after 30 years – an anniversary which falls this weekend. Aware of the resentment the policy would cause, the government said it was a temporary measure in response to China’s high unemployment and food scarcity.
“In 30 years, when our current extreme population growth eases, we can then adopt a different population policy,” read the announcement from the Communist Party Central Committee.
But today, the one-child policy remains firmly in place and government officials cannot shake the idea that it has played an important role in China’s economic miracle.
With only one child to care for, parents have been able to save more money, enabling banks to make the loans that have funded China’s huge investments in infrastructure.
Meanwhile, officials claim the policy has conserved food and energy and allowed each child better education and healthcare.
“We will continue the one-child policy until at least 2015,” said the National Family Planning Commission earlier this year.
Actually, that whole 2015 business is just a lie too. The government has no plans to ever end the policy:
China: One-child policy will stand
China will not drop its one-child policy, officials say, 30 years after Beijing decreed the population-control measure.
“I, on behalf of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, extend profound gratitude to all, the people in particular, for their support of the national course,” said Li Bin, who leads the commission.
“So we will stick to the family-planning policy in the coming decades,” she said over the weekend, according to the state-run China Daily.
Who could have ever suspected that totalitarian “emergency measures” would last indefinitely?
Unprecedented!
[UPDATE: China forces woman into abortion at EIGHT months for breaching one-child policy.]
John Holdren remains unashamed about hero-worship of eugenicist
Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren is back in the news again. Over the last week, bloggers and pundits have continued trying to decipher Holdren’s latest euphemism for global warming, “global climate disruption”:
Global warming could be a thing of the past, thanks to the Barack Obama administration.
No, the White House has not single-handedly managed to stop the apparent rising temperature — but it does think the terminology oversimplifies the problem.
According to U.S. science adviser John Holdren, the public should start using the phrase ‘global climate disruption’ because it makes the situation sound more dangerous.
What’s that got to do with eugenics? Nothing directly. The connection comes from my shock that Holdren still walks around proudly declaiming his views, even after my essay from last year exposing Holdren’s close ideological connection to a notorious eugenicist:
John Holdren and Harrison Brown
Lifelong intellectual infatuation with eugenics-minded futurist casts shadow over Science Czar Holdren’s worldview
John Holdren, the Science Czar of the United States, has long expressed an intense admiration — one that bordered on hero-worship — of a man named Harrison Brown, a respected scientist from an earlier generation who spent his later years writing about overpopulation and ecological destruction. In fact, as Holdren has pointed out several times (including very recently), it was Harrison Brown’s most famous book, The Challenge of Man’s Future, which transformed the young Holdren’s personal philosophy and which inspired him to later embark on a career in science and population policy which in many ways mirrored that of his idol Brown.
Holdren’s regard for Brown was so high that in 1986 he edited and co-wrote an homage to Brown entitled Earth and the Human Future: Essays in Honor of Harrison Brown, in which Holdren showers Brown with accolades and unrestrained applause.
At first glance, there’s nothing remarkable or amiss with this picture: one respected scientist giving credit to and paying tribute to another. Happens all the time. Except in this case, something is amiss. Grievously amiss. Because Harrison Brown, whatever good qualities Holdren might have seen in him, was also an unapologetic eugenicist who made horrifying recommendations for “sterilizing the feeble-minded” and other “unfit” substandard humans whom he thought should be “pruned from society.”
You might think that these opinions would disqualify Brown as someone deserving praise in the modern world; but not to John Holdren, it seems — perhaps because Brown’s views (as Holdren himself has stated many times) were the basis of Holdren’s own worldview.
Skim the whole essay for the stomach-churning details. A sampling, with quotes from both Brown and Holdren:
“The feeble-minded, the morons, the dull and backward, and the lower-than-average persons in our society are outbreeding the superior ones at the present time. … Is there anything that can be done to prevent the long-range degeneration of human stock? Unfortunately, at the present time there is little, other than to prevent breeding in persons who present glaring deficiencies clearly dangerous to society and which are known to be of a hereditary nature. Thus we could sterilize or in other ways discourage the mating of the feeble-minded. We could go further and systematically attempt to prune from society, by prohibiting them from breeding, persons suffering from serious inheritable forms of physical defects, such as congenital deafness, dumbness, blindness, or absence of limbs. … A broad eugenics program would have to be formulated which would aid in the establishment of policies that would encourage able and healthy persons to have several offspring and discourage the unfit from breeding at excessive rates.”
— Harrison Brown, in The Challenge of Man’s Future
“Harrison Brown’s most remarkable book, The Challenge of Man’s Future, was published more than three decades ago. By the time I read it as a high school student a few years later, the book had been widely acclaimed…. The Challenge of Man’s Future pulled these interests together for me in a way that transformed my thinking about the world and about the sort of career I wanted to pursue. I have always suspected that I am not the only member of my generation whose aspirations and subsequent career were changed by this book of Harrison Brown’s…. As a demonstration of the power of (and necessity for) an interdisciplinary approach to global problems, the book was a tour de force…. Thirty years after Harrison Brown elaborated these positions, it remains difficult to improve on them as a coherent depiction of the perils and challenges we face. Brown’s accomplishment in writing The Challenge of Man’s Future, of course, was not simply the construction of this sweeping schema for understanding the human predicament; more remarkable was (and is) the combination of logic, thoroughness, clarity, and force with which he marshalled data and argumentation on every element of the problem and on their interconnections. It is a book, in short, that should have reshaped permanently the perceptions of all serious analysts….”
— John Holdren, in Earth and the Human Future: Essays in Honor of Harrison Brown
This man remains the Science Czar of the United States, appointed by Obama. My previous exposés of Holdren (the whole “forced abortions and mass sterilization” thing) were so widely linked that they entered the mainstream consciousness; but to my mind this lesser-known eugenics-related scandal — the connection between Holdren and Harrison Brown — is even more shocking. And yet he blithely jets around the world as a representative of the United States, as if none of this had ever been revealed.
Michael Savage and Nicholas D. Kristof agree: Let’s do what we can to stop poor people from having babies
Politics makes strange bedfellows. And eugenics makes the strangest bedfellows of all. Two different pundits at opposite ends of the political and personality spectrum — hyper-conservative firebrand Michael Savage, and wishy-washy liberal Nicholas D. Kristof — both published essentially the same opinion this week: That we as a society should do whatever we can to stop poor people from over-breeding.
As you might expect, Savage phrased his recommendations in the bluntest possible terms, whereas Kristof danced around the issue and tried to doll it up:
[Savage] also wants to see Norplant, the embedded contraceptive, required for all women on welfare.
“That’s a revolutionary statement,” he admitted. “But should we permit women on welfare to keep knocking out babies to increase their benefits? Only an insane society would permit that.”
Contraception research just hasn’t received the resources it deserves, so we have state-of-the-art digital cameras and decades-old family planning methods.
The situation is particularly dire in poor countries, where some 215 million women don’t want to get pregnant yet can’t get their hands on modern contraceptives, according to United Nations figures. One result is continued impoverishment and instability for these countries: it’s impossible to fight poverty effectively when birthrates are sky high.
Yet impressive new contraceptive technologies are in trials and should address this problem.
…
Another new contraceptive that could have far-reaching impact is the Sino-implant (II), a tiny pair of rods inserted just under the skin (typically in the arm) to release hormones. Other implants are widely used, but one great advantage of the Sino-implant is that it can last four or five years and costs $3 a year or less.
…
Family planning has long been a missing — and underfunded — link in the effort to overcome global poverty. Half a century after the pill, it’s time to make it a priority and treat it as a basic human right for men and women alike around the world.
Kristof isn’t foolish enough to get into Savage-level recommendations for linking contraception and financial aid, but the notion hovers in the background, unspoken. LifeSiteNews.com is, however, unafraid to drag Kristof over the coals for his population-control views.
Neither Savage nor Kristof were likely thinking of their proposals as having anything to do with eugenics — but beware of the law of unintended consequences (or perhaps intended in Savage’s case); once you start dictating to whole classes of people what you think their birthrates should be, it’s a slippery slope to more sinister uses of population control.
I don’t see anything in Nicholas D. Kristof’s article which suggests Eugenics. All he’s talking about is more effective birth control. At no point does he suggest that this is something which will be done *to* people. Rather, he suggests that they may want to do themselves. His assumption is that people (particularly women) in poor countries will want to control their fertility.
For example, at one point he mentions a particular birth control device which women can apply themselves. This he sees as an important advantage. That’s hardly the outlook of a Eugenicist.
I have long admired your work, Zombie, but I don’t think his article belongs in this list.
Well, you might as well protest the one about condom use among minorities, as well, since they are self-administering.
Kristoff is going for the nudge, Savage for the push.
The general idea is that contraception is promoted unequally and for nefarious purposes. With good advertising, you can target very specific audiences with your message and get selected groups of people to do what they otherwise might not do otherwise. The favored groups, of course, get a different targeted message. The ideal robbery is the perfect con – where the victim gives you his/her money quite voluntarily. The ideal eugenics program is where the victim removes him/herself from the gene pool voluntarily.
Precisely.
I say in my essay, Jonathan, that Kristol is only skirting the issue, and dolling it up. But as Paul says, there are many gradations between coercion and indoctrination and voluntary choice. If the government aggressively targets ad campaigns and public service messages and social programs all directed at decreasing the birthrate of certain ethnic or economic groups, that may not count as genocide but it could be considered a subtle form of “smiley-face eugenics.”
You may agree (as several commenters do below) with the notion of encouraging birth control for poor people, but that doesn’t mean that it falls outside the eugenics spectrum. In fact, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, this is exactly what eugenics was defined as: encouraging birth control among undesirables, and encouraging higher birth rates among desireables. Eugenics only acquired its sinister reputation after the 1930s and 1940s when the Nazis took it to extremes. But if Kristol had written that same column in 1900, it definitely would have been classified as a eugenics essay.
The point many have made in the decades since WWII is that reasonable-seeming smiley-face eugenics proved to be the first step toward morally justified genocide.
Eugenics is the gateway drug for totalitarianism.
But isn’t this exactly what the Left has been doing to itself for the past 50 years? Look at what Democrats support: same-sex marriage, euthanasia, abortion, widespread contraceptive use, assisted suicide, ESCR. Kind of pathetic that ACORN is now desperately trying to put in fake voters that would have been there for real, if libs hadn’t killed their own children in utero and kept most of the others from being created in the first place. It’s like there’s an agreement across the board that there are too many liberals: I’d like them to change their minds, most of them want to obliterate their lines. Okayyyy, do it your way.
Not sure Zombie of the whole Savage context, but the Savage blurb you provided only seems to suggest that those who want others to be forced, on threat of imprisonment, to toil to provide their sustancence should have conditions placed on them while they are attaching their fangs into our epidermous. I think Savage has the wrong idea. We just shouldn’t have such a system in the first place. But, if we do have such a system, what is so wrong with placing conditions on the idol ruling class? That isn’t eugenics. If the sloths don’t like the deal then they can do like the rest of us and make themselves useful.
This is in reference to the Michael Savage statement about putting welfare mothers on birth control. Why not instead put into effect a cap on how much a mother can claim in benefits? Talking to some older prior service members I’ve met, I found out that a service member’s housing allowance (BAH) in the past was based on how many children he/she had. That resulted in cases of service members “banging out the children” so that they could get more BAH. At some point, the military changed the benefit so that if you had dependents, you got paid one rate, whether it was one child or five of them. Would that have been considered eugenics? After all, it was removing the monetary compensation for having more children than a soldier could otherwise afford.
I don’t know if a similar compensation cap has ever been put into place on welfare payments, although I’m pretty sure that it probably would never happen in this day and age.
“Eugenics is the gateway drug for totalitarianism.”
Exactly. Eugenics is a triumph of the state over individual rights. It takes too many of the decisions out of the hands of those they directly effect and outsources them to politburo/apparatchiks sitting in their cubicles giving the thumbs down like a Roman Emperor. Such ideas are widely accepted on the left, because they feel that central planning is best to force some form of conformity or behaviour pattern. This is merely an extreme form of the ideology that sees high taxes and higher subsidies as a way of producing a type of utopia. (Like Europe, for example.)
As for Michael Savage? This was a stupid, stupid idea for a conservative to espouse. I, too, hate welfare, though I have to admit that I am a libertarian and not a conservative. Welfare often removes the burden of responsibility from human beings for their actions, which is never a good thing. I have a better idea, that I think I’ve mentioned before. (I know I have somewhere at PM recently.) No social services for high school dropouts. None. If you quit school or get kicked out, that is your problem. You are free to remain uneducated, and we are free to demand you not feed yourself on the state teat. We can’t pay for you if you are unwilling to acquire the skills necessary for work. You think families will allow these drop outs to live for years on their penny instead of the taxpayers’ “generosity”? Doubtful In fact, a few serious restrictions on welfare, as well as decreased payouts, would mean it is no longer profitable to have kids you can’t pay for. In this case, you would see a lot more single mothers on birth control or actively seeking child support from deadbeat fathers more rigourously instead of using the “safety net” as their own private “pick and DON’T pay.”
Nice work, Zombie.
Yet Savage could well be on the right track if only he qualified his statement as applying to SINGLE mothers on welfare: No more babies out of wedlock – what is wrong with that? Of course, if there is no welfare, no rules of responsible behavior need be enforced.
Mr. Levy you need to look harder perhaps with the use of modern day spectacles may be in order for you to see it. Alas, You are going to need to use your brain and read between the lines. Mr. Levy, good luck and godspeed on your venture. I will not be holding my breathe though, no offence, my dear friend Mr. Levy.
Just wondered if anyone else was aware of Dr Phillip Longman and his research on long term population decline worldwide and the economic disaster likely to ensue?
It doesn’t seem to be featured in mainstream media as it is a bit counter intuitive.
This is why everyone in this country should be alarmed by socialized medicine under Obamacare in this country. How long do you think it will be before the Federal Government determines that some people are not worth saving anymore? How long do you think it will be before the Federal Government says you’re too old to keep on living or that young baby with that horrible disease should be left to die? After all, it’s for the good of the country, right? So if you’re on a ventilator for more than a week or in a coma for more than a month, time to pull the plug on these people, right? And, if you’re in your eighties or nineties, you can forget getting anything more than a pill. Operations really are not worth it on people that age, correct? And if you’re a young child with some life-threatening disease, well, you’re going to die anyway, so how about speeding up the process?
This is what Eugenics leads to in government. People did not learn from the Nazi “experiment,” so it’s up to this generation to remind everyone that there is no good or happy ending whenever you rely on Eugenics.
Stop these leftist SOBs in November. It will be the first step in reapealing Obamacare, the first law ever passed in this country that will actually be responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. Please stop them. There are literally millions of young and old sick people out there depending on you.
With socialist medicine, a line is likely to form for the ventilator in due course, which will painlessly take care of the dilemma whether to save a patient or not. Except that some will be more equal than others, so triage will have some peculiar criteria.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
“Who could have ever suspected that totalitarian “emergency measures” would last indefinitely?”
Well, right now China is halving with each generation, and it’s clear that in the near future the number of kids per couple has to rise to 2, or the Han will go extinct eventually.
As for the overpopulation of the planet, the sad fact is that population control will happen in some form, if not by contraception, then by famine and civil wars.
As for your first case, I’d like to know how many severely disabled children you have adopted yourself? There are lots of them out there, abandoned into care homes by families who just could not cope — and there are a number of graveyards of those that killed themselves and the child they no longer could cope with. If morally superior people like you adopted instead of berating others, then life surely would be perfect. How about it Zombie?
Seriously, I’m usually a fan of yours, but this time, you appear to have borrowed the wrong brains to think this post out…
I don’t need to adopt anyone — I just go around killing them if I think their lives don’t meet my standards.
In all seriousness: Life isn’t perfect. Never has been, never will be. Who are we to declare that if someone’s life isn’t “good enough,” then we have the right (or in fact the duty) to kill that person? Where do we draw the line? Who gets to determine at what point that someone else’s life just isn’t worth living?
A coyote caught in a steel trap will gnaw off its own leg in order to escape. Can you imagine how painful that must be? And yet the coyote is willing to not only endure such pain, be even to inflict such pain on itself in order to stay alive at all costs. Thats because all living creatures have a built-in will to try to survive, even if surviving involves pain and suffering.
Now, if an adult is in terrible terrible pain of some kind, and wants to make the conscious decision to kill him- or herself, then I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is when someone else other than the sufferer steps in and presumes to make the decision for the sufferer, and kills that person without the victim’s consent. In my worldview, that’s murder. And killing a child because you think its life is not worth living is the height of hubris.
You describe these “care homes” full of disabled people as somehow being worse than death. I don’t agree. I in fact have a friend with a disabled child living in a group home with nurses, etc., and that child — along with many other even more severely disabled children — actually seem to have pretty decent lives with experiences and emotions like anyone else. I don’t have the financial resources to personally adopt them and take care of them all, but I do have the resources to pay my share of taxes for the government to fund their care. Which is exactly what I do — I pay taxes, and the government has SSI and other aid programs for the disabled. I have no problem with that — I’m not a complete libertarian. I think we should decrease bloated government spending, but not eliminate it entirely, especially humanitarian aid for the least fortunate Americans.
Disabled people exist. My solution is for society to care for them as best as we can. What’s your solution? Kill them all? Or perhaps go the eugenics route and try to ensure that no imperfect people ever get born?
It’s amusing to me that someone who apparently thinks she has the right to end anothers life based on her own preconceptions would have the gall to accuse anyone else of “moral superiority”. Talk about projection.
Mr. Zombie you are right on many levels. HappyHippyChick needs to re-evaluate her beliefs.
Ms. Jeanette, who would have thought that Humanae Vitae turned out to be so true and prophetic. Man is made in the image and likeness of GOD and every Christian believer, a true believer must hold that belief.
“I don’t need to adopt anyone — I just go around killing them if I think their lives don’t meet my standards.”
This isn’t about you and your standards(or mine!), but about the people who are affected by such a disaster.
Have you any idea how destructive a special needs child can be to it’s existing family? Lots of people escape by killing themselves and the kids they cannot manage or see a future for — it’s not only the child, but the entire family you have to consider here. It may not be life or death either, but being a sibling of such a kid can mean result in a very dysfunctional childhood and all that grief this causes in adult life.
And note that you yourself say you’re too poor to adopt one, well, money is not the issue here, all you have to do it be prepared to totally donate your life to their cause, that it what it means to have a kid that needs 24/7 care and that is the main cost — in essence it’s a full time job for 3 people + holiday cover. No-one should have to carry this kind of burden without adequate help.
So, in the end, the parents are the people who have to make the decision, not you or me. And plenty of people are making this decision quietly and often erroneously — we may well save more lives than are lost to Euthanasia by legalising the process.
(As an addition to your Euthanasia list, have a count of how many disabled people are cared/accounted for in various countries around the world.)
“Who are we to declare that if someone’s life isn’t “good enough,” then we have the right (or in fact the duty) to kill that person? Where do we draw the line? Who gets to determine at what point that someone else’s life just isn’t worth living?”
Indeed.
However, no-one is actually saved in this case, but we have merely randomised who will lose out because our resources are finite and do not cover all our needs. If we pay to keep a disabled person in 24/7 care for 70 years of their natural life, that money is not available to save other people’s lives. So, tell me, who gets to make the decision of how many people we tell they cannot have life-saving med instead? In the UK, a quango call NICE does this. True, it’s not *active* euthanasia as such, but the result is the same as if it were — you do the math how much one case costs and how many must lose out so one other one wins.
FYI: in the UK, we calculate the worthiness of your survival in QUALYs that is, quality adjusted years and deem one of those to be worth £30k. Now, we’ve not put a QUALY on disabled people yet, but folks who have cancer, Alzheimers, eye diseases that blind them of course get graded that way and euthanised/crippled if they life expectancy doesn’t offer ‘value’ in the NHS’s eyes. £30k just about buys a 24/7 care place, so, everyone of those kids lives comes at the cost of 70+ dead, blind or demented adults. So Euthanasia is already our bitter daily reality anyway, and we’re inflicting it on conscious people instead of unconscious disabled folks.
And it’s not only the NHS where this happens, but in every health care system that has a finite budget, there will be those choices to make it doesn’t matter whether it’s private, insured, charity, or state provided.
So, in essence, we don’t get to avoid Euthanasia, at best we may get to make a rational, humane choice on how to apply it with the least carnage. Heads: we lose, tails: no-one wins
RightWingHippyChick “So, tell me, who gets to make the decision of how many people we tell they cannot have life-saving med instead?”
Well, obviously, in a free society the answer is no one. You take care of you and yours the best you can. I’ll take care of me and mine the best I can. If folks want to voluntarily help others out they, of course, can do so.
Whoa…”you don’t know how destructive a special needs child can be to IT’s …family”?
You say that as though: 1)the child came into this world with the express intent of being destructive or is at best a punishing and burdensome accident (which infers that such a “thing” is best avoided at all costs); 2)the use of the term “it’s” — as though the child is a non-person (which would mean using “he” or “she”).
This depersonalization/demonization parallel is exactly one of the things Zombie is writing about…congratulations; you just made Zombie’s arguement.
RWHC, do you see the problem with giving government responsibility to pay for the healthcare of the peasantry? This is exactly why healthcare reform in the US is so damaging, because the decision to pay or not is taken away from the family members and invested in some Hippy Chick in a HEW basement somewhere. She is the one who determines how many people die, and which ones we try to save based on limited resources.
The debate in the UK seems to be rarely over whether to stop government-run healthcare, but who gets the bigger piece of pie for their favorite disease state.
I don’t want no damn bureaucrat deciding if my children’s life is not worth saving. If I can pay, I’ll go broke before I let that happen.
Look at it this way: How much is YOUR life worth to ME (or mine to you, same thing)? That’s the question that gets asked every minute with government-paid healthcare.
There’s also the true story of the hiker who was trapped by a boulder that rolled onto his leg during a hike. He ended up cutting off his own leg in order to escape. In his case, he had a choice whether to live or die. Newborn children cannot make that choice for themselves.
” . . . all living creatures have a built-in will to try to survive”
All except that suicidal coyote in my backyard who backed his car up to his den, ran a hose from the exhaust through the front door and laid down for a good long nap.
On the other hand (or maybe foot);
“An animal will gnaw its leg off to escape a trap. A human would lie there in wait, pretend to be dead, and when the trapper came, kill him, to protect the rest of his kin.
“Are you an animal, boy, or are you a human?”
-Reverend Mother Helen Gaius Mohiam to Paul Atreides, in “Dune” by Frank Herbert.
cheers
eon
aahoooooooooooooooooooooooo . . . ah ah ahoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Okay, I really agree with Savage. If you are receiving welfare payments, you should not be spitting out babies every year to increase your benefits. It should be a requirement that if you are on government assistance, you are given birth control (and yes, I like the Norplant idea). He didn’t say hysterectomies or forced sterilization. Norplant birth control is good for 5 years, but can be removed earlier. Welfare should be a temporary solution until someone gets on their feet and that is difficult if you add to your household.
It would be nice to be able to say “You can have babies, but we won’t pay for them.” Not much chance of that happening, though. Personal responsibility? What’s that?
And it would go against the current liberal line: namely, that the government is responsible for providing “positive liberty.” A rich woman is “free” to have as many babies as she wants, so it’s the government’s duty to make sure a poor woman is “free” to do the same. What will be interesting, if the conflict ever arises, to see how they reconcile this government function with population control/eugenics.
CHEMICAL birth control is very high risk- strokes
a lady I know has had to re-learn to speak, will have permanent brain damage from using it, she is only in her 30′s
how much did her recovery care cost?
gov’t has no right to put those women at risk
IUD can casue life threatening infections and perforations of the uterus
nice for men to prescribe
but
No you have nothing to say about a women’s choice to life threatening medications
please read someof the package warnings on those scripts/products
Why punish only women for welfare babies? where are the dads?- do you advise temp vasectomies?? chemical castration?
Funny that you mention that because honestly if it’s good for the Goose as they say.
Seriously are there male versions of birth control like that? Temporary Vasecotmy’s or chemical chastration as you say if there’s a male equivalent to the pill or an implantable system I’d love to hear it. (Seriously there should be research in this area anyway)
I’m planning on having a Vasectomy after my second child is born, but as you say that’s my choice.
I went to high school with girls who were churning out babies as fast as they could to increase their welfare check. There was one girl in particular who had a baby at 12, another at 13, one at 14, and another by age 15. She gave birth to 4 children before she could drive! Every time, she referred to the unborn baby as “the check”. Now, I’m not excusing the fathers, but I seriously think that if her welfare check didn’t increase every time she had a baby, she wouldn’t have been so happy to have those 4 children. I also don’t think that offering her voluntary birth control (i.e. condoms) would have prevented her from having those children as each baby was an increase in her “check”…her words not mine.
So what is the answer? It surely isn’t the current one which is consigning those babies to be raised by career welfare moms and/or grandmoms, in this case, and allow these children to continue to grow up in poverty and repeat the cycle. Welfare has taken the stigma off of children born out of wedlock. When a baby was the responsibility of the family or the community, then birth control, voluntary birth control, is the answer.
Tell me how many welfare moms would voluntarily take birth control or use birth control if it was contingent upon them getting their checks? Jeez, I never said hold them down and force them. By the way, I was a user of birth control (the chemical kind) for over 10 years. I chose to use it rather than bring a child into the world that I couldn’t afford. Ask yourself how many of those women would really make that choice?
By the way, there are risks associated with pregnancy, too.
There’s nothing “pseudo” about eugenics. People are a kind of animal, they pass characteristics to their offspring. What discredits eugenics are the atrocities that were committed in its name.
All negative eugenics is nothing but atrocities. I see nothing wrong with positive eugenics (encouraging people with “desireable” traits to have more kids), however.
Agree with both of you, with the caveat that “desirable” is in the eye of the beholder (just look at what men considered attractive in a woman 50, 100 years ago, compared to today), and what would be “desirable” in a child should be left entirely up to the parents of that child and not society.
When you realize that these people look down upon their fellow human beings as nothing more than animals, then their animalistic views become quite understandable.
How unfortunate that they disregard the human spirit so completely. In doing so, they ignore the very qualities that make us human.
By these guys logic, if taken to it’s logical conclusion, no poor person or “defective” person should get healthcare either. Prevent the poor and defective from breeding and let them or help them die seems to be what they want. And who gets to determine who is defective? Why that would be them. I’m probably defective by their standards since I’m not a progressive and I don’t have a whole lot of money like most of the elites of the progressive movement. What do they do with all their money. They sure don’t seem interested in redistributing their own wealth… In this case “Pogo” was wrong. We have met the enemy and he ain’t us.
idk Chris, I’m as pro-life as all get-out, but mandatory sterilization of all tenured professors, ethnic-and-victim-studies and journalism majors, union members and newscasters? Pretty tempting. (Hey, you don’t think they’re going to score higher on IQ tests than plumbers and electricians, do you? Seriously)
…and the Sanchez sisters would be first in line, right?
I so rarely disagree with you, Zombie, but this time I have to in the Savage/Kristol bit. I’ve been on welfare, I’ve had jobs working with a welfare population, and I have known hundreds of people, mostly women of course, on welfare. I’ve seen enough abuse of the system that I completely agree with Savage: if you want to get the cash handout, get long-term contraception for the period of time you’re on the dole, provided there are no health problems associated with it. I have also had a Norplant, and it is no big deal – completely reversible, as my two daughters prove, and a heck of a lot safer and healthier than many female options including pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion. Perhaps a modified version: increased cash benefits to women who voluntarily use long-term contraception? Carrot rather than stick. Or, best option of all, eliminate federal welfare entirely and allow states and community organizations (municipalities, churches, whatever) to sort things out for themselves.
If, in the situation outlined by Kristol, it became contingent upon a poor country receiving aid to sterilize (temporarily or otherwise) a percentage of its female population, I’d have a problem with that – it would undoubtedly lead to involuntary sterilization of women.
Am I reading right? You prefer to save the WELFARE system (which is collectivist/socialist in any case) AND have Government-led planned parenthood
instead to bring the welfare down? Instead of really reinstate freedom and capitalism in this country?
Obama told us to judge him by the people he appoints to advise him.
Then he appointed the unhinged lunatic Holdren, the protege of, and co-author with, Paul Ehrlich.
I’d say the jury’s reached a verdict, Barack.
I think the answer to what Savage is trying to fix is clear: Not forced birth control, but reduction or elimination of welfare.
Of course, Welfare recipients should be required to use contraceptives. If they can’t afford to feed themselves, how can they care for more and more children, and how fair is that to the children or to the society required to pick up the tab? Comparing this to eugenic selection or forced abortion is ridiculous.
We should be paying people–as many people as possible, regardless of race, ethnicity, intelligence, income, etc.–to get voluntarily sterilized. In the long run, it would save a fortune, and greatly diminish many of our national problems. We spay and neuter pets to reduce the number of homeless, unwanted, and abused animals, and almost everyone agrees this is a good thing. And yet, when someone suggests we do this to ourselves, many people become hysterical.
The National Organization for Woman claims that women should have complete reproductive choice, including the right to produce, and then kill, kids, or to have as many babies as they want, regardless of circumstances. Is the policy you want to identify with, even if only in part?
No. Forced anything (along the lines of contraception, abortion, etc.) isn’t right because that leaves some other person in control other peoples’ lives. Whenever possible, we need to avoid placing the control of peoples’ lives under other peoples’ jurisdiction.
The best answer is simply to remove the impact that other peoples’ childbearing has on everyone else in society. In other words, remove child bonuses for welfare, food stamps, whatever. Remove financial incentive to have more children. Isn’t that obvious? Contraceptives and abortion should be secondary to human will.
P.S. I believe that contraceptives have a purpose in society, but not as compulsory factors.
Selective breeding is done by creating a selection pressure for or against individual traits. Eugenics is accomplished by using a selection pressure. The U.S. has had a eugenics progam since the mid 60′s when LBJ and his congress created selection pressures for single parenthood, government dependence and lower intelligence. This selection pressure has worked to produce a country where almost half the people do not earn enough money to pay federal income taxes, but require increasingly expensive government services.
Zombie – I commend you on an excellent job of underlining just how fundamental to the leftist world view are such outrageous concepts as eugenics. Of course, eugenics is fundamental to them because they are elitists. And because they are elitists, they are arrogant, rude, obnoxious and hypocritical! They’re just sooo much better than the rest of us (just ask ‘em, they’ll tell you!)
Did you notice how much the tenets of Islam have in common with this? The whole idea that you may convert or die sounds just like ethinic cleansing! The Koran also outlines laws about subjected people and whom they may marry, when or if they may reproduce and how the offspring may be raised. Genocide is ok, mass rape is ok, mass murder is ok, & etc. There’s quite a lot of correlation when you look.
The Koran also outlines laws about subjected people and whom they may marry, when or if they may reproduce and how the offspring may be raised.
Your point is well taken as to the philosophical parallels between Islam and America’s Left.
Part of the reason Obama waxes eloquent on the subject of Islam whenever he gets the chance, his admiration for its totalitarian ideas.
The dhimmi who is allowed to live and pay the jizya (tax) must always keep his head down and never offend one of his Muslim masters by looking at him full in the face.
Just like Obama and his crowd of élitists envision for thee and me.
99% of modern leftism stems from Marx, and Marxism is basically Islam without the excuse “because God said so” attached. Both basically say the same thing; “Become one of us, or shut up and submit to our rule, else there will be physical consequences.”
The civil war in Congo is actually various conflicts. There is a civil war against rebels who want to overthrow the government, and there is also fighting between Tutsi and Hutu paramilitaries which has spilled over from neighbouring Rwanda and Burundi. So I’m guessing the mass rapes have to do with the Hutu-Tutsi conflict (which goes back much further than Rwanda; in Burundi in the 1970′s 200,000 Hutus were killed by Tutsi forces; not something we ever hear about but it certainly gives some context to the later conflict) and the desire held by each the militant members of each ethnic group to eliminate the other from existence.
Hitler himself initiated a decree which empowered physicians to grant a “mercy death” to “patients considered incurable
but not by smothering them with pillows!
Who would have believed that the start of the 21st Century would see the appearance of another set of potential Hitlers.
Additionally, a story came out of the Netherlands the other day about how scientists have found that “neurotic people” cost up to $22K more than normal people:
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2010/10/useless-eaters-study-says-neurotic.html
I blame Khan, and Kirk for letting him live after their first encounter.
I’ve always had a vision of the epilogue to “Space Seed” being something like this;
Kirk goes to his cabin, to do his log report, and finally gets a chance to do a computer search on “Khan” and “Botany Bay”.
And finds that since the United Earth Space Probe Agency (forerunner of Starfleet) knew perfectly well where Khan & Co. had vanished to (A DY-100 launch would be hard to miss, after all), all Starfleet vessels had standing orders re Khan’s ship; “Shoot on sight, to kill”. Or at least “Maximum hazard apprehension; alive if possible, dead if necessary.”
Said instructions not including dropping them on a planet, unsupervised.
Kirk; “Oops.”
cheers
eon
Hehe that sounds like a great cutting room floor scene. Along with the one where Checkov bumps into Kahn on the way out of the bathroom.
(Anyone who gets this has a high chance of being a Trekkie)
Michael Savage isn’t the only conservative who’s called for a reduction of certain babies. San Diego’s Rick Roberts was carrying on about two years ago about how people with mild physical birth defects should do the polite, moral thing and refrain from propagating. Wish I had the clip. Do any San Diegans remember that?
If the secularists and evolutionists are right and man is nothing more than the highest form of an animal, then why not eugenics?
Please note that I am not a secularist or an evolutionist. I believe in the sanctity of human life – even so called “unwanted” life – because man was created in the image of God and endowed with a higher purpose and calling than all other creation.
I would also point out that welfare programs and even the tax codes contains elements of eugenic policy in that they enable and encourage a specific sexual outcome.
One practical problem with coercing welfare recipients into using birth control, (and then also with widespread use in Africa etc) is the effect that 50-odd years of widespread use has had on fish. 2 different studies (CO and DC-area) have found widespread occurences of girlyman fish. IIRC, in Colorado they found that “male” was the third-most common gender of trout in the study, after “female” and “other”. I doubt that it’s all due to cattle feedlots; I think more studies are warranted.
Section 17 of Humanae Vitae is really fascinating to me; in the first paragraph, PVI predicted modern Western society, and in the second, he predicted modern China. But hey, he’s just another Dead White Guy, right?
John Holdren’s notion of a good eugenics approach would work in favor of the survival of individuals like himself and Dr. Zeke (“We’ll give you a score, a quality adjusted life years’ score, QALY, as a function of our assessment of your remaining value”) Emanuel.
George Bernard Shaw spoke of a person’s contribution and worthiness as a measure of whether or not he should be allowed to keep breathing. (no, we didn’t learn that about him when we were assigned his plays in college).
As “just” a playwright, Shaw might have fallen short of his own parameters.
Holdren apparently considers himself one of the smart and worthy ones whose very existence is a boon to planet Earth.
I’d say his personal assessment is way off the mark and that he’s a global climate disruption in his own right.
And more than a little creepy.
Nothing surprises me with these so-called humans. Nothing. They see a window of opportunity within the USA and Europe. We MUST close that window shut this November. Otherwise another world conflagration will come shortly. We have our Chamberlain in place don’t we. All the arrows point to some kind of war. Either INTERNAL or external. The Ayer’s of the world will attempt to get their way if possible. Do not doubt that. You do at your peril. Prepare my friends. Prepare
Since male children are more highly prized in China, there has been an inordinate abortion rate among women pregnant with female babies.
The one-child policy has also skewed proportions, and young Chinese males find a dearth of females to marry and have been looking to neighboring countries.
Human rights campaigners have tried to drive home the point that mass-rapes are usually not just about sex or about hatred of women, but are rather a component of an ethnic cleansing program; the purpose of the rapes is to impregnate as many victims as possible with babies from outside their ethnic group or culture, and thereby dilute or “wash out” entire societies.
When the (Muslim) Janjaweed (“men on horseback with rifles”) were raging around in Sudan (with the encouragement of al-Bashir’s government) they were raping black Sudanese women indiscriminately with the expressed goal of making more “light skinned” babies.
(King Shamir Shabazz is simply scum. Scum that has the duplicitous support of the United States department of justice.)
And with an entire generation of young men who will have zero chance of marriage and very little of any other sort of meaningful relationship (due to a lack of eligible young women), three guesses how China will deal with this demographic bulge?
If you guessed “put them in uniform and build an even bigger army”, ding-ding! You are a winner.
Considering that China has a historical track record of using large armies offensively, rather like Islam, it’s unfortunately a safe bet that such an army won’t just be sitting in garrison blancoing their LBEs. If I were Russia, or India, or Japan, I’d be making some long term plans, right now.
Come to think of it, we should be doing so, as well.
cheers
eon
This is what happens when all morality and the strong family unit is destroyed by the left. When you value nothing then nothing has value except flat screen televisions perhaps.
Yep! It’s all about ME.
Just as is true in totalitarian societies (against which Friedrich Hayek warned and where Obama and friends are trying to take America), the question always comes down to who gets to decide ?
In the case of eugenics, who gets to decide who lives and who dies ? What are their motives, their own pathologies, their weird and wild “thinking” that leads their so-called minds in one direction or another ?
(Nicholas D. Kristof strikes me as a drooling, bleeding heart moron, so maybe eugenics not such a bad idea in his case.)
(just kidding, just kidding!)
Savage is no hyper-conservative; it is still unclear to me what philosophy he embraces because he is so inconsistent. However, he sure likes the use of fascist methods to cure all the ills he sees out there.
Eugenics came first, Hitler came second. Hitler is not the architect of eugenics. Margaret Sanger and her cronies, in this country, laid the groundwork for what happened in Nazi Germany. Those who do not heed history are doomed to repeat it.
History is marching on with eugenics. Eugenics have been cloaked with compassion and kindness in our day. Let’s review the latest from the British pundit, Virginia Ironside (appropriate name) “If I were the mother of a deeply suffering child – I would be the 1st to want to put a pillow over it’s face”. “Any good mother would smother a disabled child with a pillow because of the frustration bringing up such a baby would pose.” Are we talking about the suffering of the child, or the inconvenience to the parent?
No one in this day and age need suffer, due to modern pain management. If they do, they need to change their doctor, not eradicate the patient; especially a helpless child.
This is absolutely correct. Hitler was very interested and learned a great deal from the eugenics movement in California in the 20s and 30s and the state laws actually passed by the state of California.
The bottom line is that no one can be trusted to administer a eugenics program no matter how “well intended”. No one.
You’re both right. Here is a Nazi poster from 36 entitled “We do not stand alone.” The point was to say that Nazi Germany’s programme was in line with an international trend. And yes, that is an American flag at the top left hand corner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wir_stehen_nicht_allein.jpg
Anyone who hasn’t done so should get a copy of “Liberal Fascism” immediately.
Thanks for shining a light on this topic Zombie. Last month I read Edwin Black’s seminal work “Eugenics- The War Against The Weak” and more than anything I was struck by the parallels in contemporary science and political thought being debated now that are a direct descendant of the Eugenics movement of 100 years ago. Today’s environmental movement fits the mindset perfectly. It is about population control (controlling the population of undesirables) and conservation of resources (denying resources to undesirables). The AGW issue is eugenics all over again. [Now after viewing that 10:10 campaign ad I am more convinced of this than ever.]
There is a spectral elephant in the room haunting this discussion. Enemy doctrines and cultures, inimical and deadly to our culture and civilization, are vastly out-breeding us. The one exception somewhat limiting it’s demographic explosion is China – and I for one thank the stars that they are limiting their population growth.
In his/her broad and overheated condemnation of population control, Zombie seems to favor a world where (for example) Muslims may easily exert hegemony through sheer demographic conquest, as they’re accomplishing in Europe. We have a similar (albeit slightly less immediately malignant) swarming of our American border by a tsunami of excess Mexicans.
We are the only culture/race of people who “celebrate diversity” and thereby cement our demographic and cultural death by embracing the multicultural lie, limiting our reproduction, while welcoming millions of un-assimilatable aliens. The Chinese don’t do it. The Latins don’t do it. The Muslims don’t do it. In the case of the latter two, they are exporting their exploding populations in increasing numbers, while our demographics plummet.
Do you want to see a world where Muslims, for example, numbering perhaps three or four billion mor in a few decades, and whose chief exports appear to be oil, terror, and excess Muslims, establish their hegemony because they outbred the Europeans? I don’t. Nor do I want to see the consequences of three or four billion more Chinese swarming the planet, or the consequences of three or four billion more Indians.
Does that make me a Nazi, Zombie? Conflating population control and demographic limits with eugenics is a deeply flawed and oversimplified distortion of reality, and hardly forms a reasoable context for this critical discussion.
You may not like the fact that certain ethnic groups and cultures are outbreeding others, and there’s no problem with having an opinion on the matter. The problem would come on what you plan to do about it, if anything.
Aside from expressing disapproval of Muslim/Mexican/Indian birth rates, what are your suggestions? Pass laws against certain minorities having babies? Or…what?
No, you’re not a Nazi, but depending on which actions you recommend in response to the perceived problem, you could drift into Nazi-like territory.
Option 1: You have an opinion, and that’s as far as it goes. In this case, you’re an American with an opinion.
Option 2: You have an opinion, and you push for laws controlling who or who does not have permission to have babies. In this case, you’re in eugenics territory.
Option 3: You have an opinion and you feel so strongly about it that you recommend killing large numbers of Muslim/Mexicans/Indians, to decrease their numbers. In that case, yes, you would be the equivalent of a Nazi.
And then there’s Option 4: Stop immigration to a trickle. That seems like a reasonable course we can all agree on.
As for the doomsday scenarios of billions of Muslims or Chinese or Hispanics or Indians overrunning the globe…the world’s population growth is actually tapering off: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/world-population-chart.jpg . The overpopulation scares of the 1970s, promulgated by John Holdren and his cohorts, turned out to be just a bunch of hooey. By 2080 the world population is set to reach a stable level, and not increase substantially beyond that.
But even if certain groups continue to grow, as long as we keep US immigration low, then what do I care that some foreign country is filled with teeming masses of poor people? Their choice. Let ‘em teem.
Zombie,
You are doing what the left does best; limiting the discussion by declaring your opponents’ positions off limits.
Don’t like the fact that we pay people to have children now and not work? Tie the Nazi millstone around anyone’s neck who dares to say we should perhaps limit benefits to those who choose to have children while they receive the public dime. They are paid by the child (up to a limit of 11 IIRC). But instead of looking at the Eugenic (yes Eugenic because we are encouraging them to have children) policies via TANF (welfare) and calling it what it is you call them just one step above ‘Nazi’.
In fact, you lay it out with an oh so helpful numerated list of where you fall on the Nazi-Not Nazi scale based on how people agree with you. Good of you to do so. I might have been confused otherwise.
You can try and doll your writing up all you like and draw all the ‘logical conclusions’ for us to read about on numbered lists; it is still an attempt to limit speech. And not the most original attempt either.
For Goodness Sake, tarring your opponents with the ‘Nazi’ brush is just old, old tired and jaded like a clapped out whore. You even flog the dead horse more in the comments section as if your argument couldn’t stand on its own.
I don’t agree with norplant for welfare recipients nor do I find the Chinese policies very enlightened. Perhaps we should leave it to the adults on welfare. Let them choose to use birth control or accept limits on how much money they receive.
Don’t limit speech. Don’t try to tar people you disagree with with the Nazi brush even if that is only by putting them one step (literally) removed from Nazi’s on your ‘list’. Heck, don’t write lists like that. You might as well say US tax policy is Eugenic because it favors families or disgenic because it favors single parent households.
Do better next time. You have a forum use it wisely.
Filthy Screw, It was not I who brought up the discussion of Nazis in this comment; it was Morton Doodslag, the original commenter, who directly asked me, “Does that make me a Nazi, Zombie?” I was just being polite and answering the direct question asked of me. And my answer was: No, you are not a Nazi for having an opinion. But, of course, if you were to kill millions of people, then yeah, I guess that would make you Nazi-like.
So: In what way am I “tarring [my] opponents with the ‘Nazi’ brush”? I didn’t even raise the topic. And I said he wasn’t a Nazi.
And how in the world am I “limiting speech”? Both you and Morton Doodslag have been free, are currently free, and will continue to be free to come here and say whatever you please. Your speech is completely unlimited. And just because someone else disagrees with a sentiment you express, that in no way impinges on your freedom. And even if I did unfairly villainize Morton Doodslag (which I didn’t, since it was he who asked me whether or not he was a Nazi), that still in no way is a limiting of speech. Free speech means free arguments, and free arguments almost invariably descend into name-calling and logical fallacies, far far beyond anything in this thread. Yet even in the most extreme cases of name-calling, that still does not count as limiting speech. I could just as easily argue that your falsely accusing me of being a speech-fascist is your attempt at limiting my speech, by discredting me. But of course I won’t argue that, because it’s not true. Just as your accusation against me is not true.
The Internet is a rough-and-tumble free speech zone. What we see on this thread is still the playground sandbox compared to most other forums, in terms of viciousness. If you cant handle a poster disagreeing with a commenter even in the mildest terms, you’re in for a rude awakening in the real world.
You started the article with comparisons to Nazis. You confirmed that was your point in this comment.
“Option 1: You have an opinion, and that’s as far as it goes. In this case, you’re an American with an opinion.
Option 2: You have an opinion, and you push for laws controlling who or who does not have permission to have babies. In this case, you’re in eugenics territory.
Option 3: You have an opinion and you feel so strongly about it that you recommend killing large numbers of Muslim/Mexicans/Indians, to decrease their numbers. In that case, yes, you would be the equivalent of a Nazi.
And then there’s Option 4: Stop immigration to a trickle. That seems like a reasonable course we can all agree on.”
The comment I was commenting on above posted by somebody using the nom de plume Zombie. Might not be the author.
The below is from the article. Not suggesting anyone was a Nazi? Well I must have misread it. Let’s look at it again.
“Well, yes, but eugenics never went away. Despite reaching its bloody culmination in the Nazi era, eugenics is still seductive as a concept to many people, and eugenics-based proposals still crop up in popular culture distressingly often, frequently by people who don’t even realize the historical implications of what they’re suggesting.”
Yup, still a Nazi in there and still linking current people not advocating killing anyone (unless you’re not including Michael Savage and Nicholas D. Kristof with the people on that slippery Nazi slope).
Look you said it, you own it.
Still you did not address the central point of my disagreement. You are trying to limit the speech of others and now clearly being disingenuous about it. So if you did not make a list with options carefully graded from thoughtful to Nazi (I included #4 out of courtesy, clearly it was your first choice but you chose to set up strawmen instead but you even set it apart from the rest). Anyone here understands Godwin’s Law or whatever they are calling it now. Accusing people of acting, thinking, looking, like Nazis is a tactic designed to draw condemnation on the accused and make any association with them and more importantly their ideas as radioactive as Hanford.
If you did not want people to draw comparisons to Auschwitz you would not have said ‘Nazi’ or referred to the ‘bloody culmination’ of their thinking.
Yes Dood said ‘Nazi’ in the comment first because he was quoting your article.
If you are not trying to paint people as Nazis maybe instead of saying ‘he did it first’ you should just not use the word inappropriately.
Wait — so, you’re claiming that the eugenics movement didn’t reach its bloody culmination with the Nazis?
Explain.
It’s not a violation of Godwin’s Law when the people you’re comparing to Nazis are . . . Nazis.
It’s an undisputed historical fact that Nazis were into eugenics, that Nazis went too far with eugenics, that Nazis used eugenics as an excuse to exterminate millions of people, that eugenics was widely popular up until WWII when the Nazi excesses suddenly turned most people against eugenics, and that, yes, eugenics reached its bloody culmination in the Nazi era.
I stated this self-evident fact in the essay. Didn’t accuse anyone of being a Nazi except for Nazis themselves. Didn’t violate Godwin’s Law. Then, unbidden, someone asked me if I though he was a Nazi. I said he wasn’t.
That’s it.
The fact that you’re obsessing over an issue that is not only trivial in the extreme — whether or not I violated Godwin’s Law in a comment responding to someone else’s comment — but one which is demonstrably false, means there’s something else afoot here, though I’m not sure what. Looks like you’re trying to find a way to criticize my essay, but can find no basis on which to do so, so you instead latch onto an innocuous comment.
Well, if it keeps you entertained, keep obsessing. People have all sorts of peculiar hobbies. Whatever floats your boat.
Eh, read much?
Seems like one suggestion has already been made. Just put up billboards in selective neighborhoods encouraging condom use, and Voila’! Instant results.
Thanks for the clarifications.
Morton, people like you make me nervous; stay away from me and my eight beige kids, okay? We live a right-to-carry state, I’m warning you.
So I express grave concern that our low-reproduction rate culture and nation is being overrun by inimical Mexicans storming our border — as I describe — a veritable tsunami of illegal aliens — aliens who will fundamentally change my nation and culture in ways which are damaging and unasked for — and you threaten me with a gun??? And how the F do you know what complexion I have ??? People like you worry me.
Dood’, Did not threaten you with a gun, weenie; I warned you to stay away from me and mine and informed you that if you’re foolish enough to disregard, we’ll defend ourselves. I don’t care what color you are, you sound racist to me (we all know racists come in all colors) and further, you sound like someone who would use my kids’ color to justify action against them. I don’t know you and you might be a neato guy, but your first impression on me was quite a strong one, eh? Words mean something.
Yes you did threaten him. Your threat was as subtle as allowing someone to see your ‘concealed’ piece in an argument over a parking space.
Also, you are a coward. You threaten a guy and expect him to shrug off your threat. Worse, you threaten physical violence to a guy when he has no way of responding. A man who threatens a woman whatever the provocation is a bully.
If ‘Dood’ were to respond to you in kind he would be seen as a bully, an idiot for joining you in the game of ‘internet tough guy’ or both. If you threaten someone who either in good manners or good sense cannot even protest much less respond to your threats you are a coward.
Would you have said something similar to him if you lived next door? Think carefully. How could he go to the local store, out to his car or even to church knowing that he might run into you and your children who you have not so subtly reminded him you are willing to defend with a gun. Your words meant nothing else. In addition you told him you view him as a threat. One of those things they drill into you when you are learning to use a firearm for self defense.
You’ve already told him you are capable and willing to shoot him. You couldn’t get away with that if he were your neighbor and you’d be a worse person if you did go around doing that kind of thing. Just because we are mostly anonymous here (the irony of responding in a comments thread of a guy who uses a nom de plume does not escape me) but that does not mean we should forget our good manners.
“Words mean something”
They sure do, which is why I’ll be skipping any posts by you in the future. The last thing America needs is more wackos like you for the left to point at and say “Look at the crazy wingnut who whips out a gun and threatens people, completely unprovoked by anything other that their own paranoid lunacy”.
Go ahead and keep supporting the moonbats in your own insane way though, it’s still a free country(for the time being).
BTW, shouldn’t you be over a Kos, victim-mongering? A woman who sees her own children as a skin color doesn’t seem like a natural fit for PJM.
As a white woman with non-white children, I’ve heard enough when my children aren’t around, that I’ve learned to trust my spidey sense; if someone like Death/Mort comes around, I get really nervous and start counting kids. I’m well aware that even in this day and age, some people have bad ideas, and I’ll protect my kids from someone like him if it comes to that.
Morton:
Mexican and Central American birthrates have been going down substantially for some time. You’re confusing the influx of primarily adult illegals with high reproductive rates that mostly don’t exist anymore. That there is an “inundation” of sorts I don’t argue with, but I quantify it differently. It isn’t so much the numbers, as it is the enormous leverage that minorities can exert thanks to “multiculturalist” and grievance industry policies. This is how Muslims manage to leverage less than 5% of the European continental population into having undue influence over social policy (along with disproportionate contribution to crime rates and welfare expenses).
FWIW: The forecast of whites in America becoming a “minority” (actually the proper term would be plurality) by 2050 is exaggerated. However, cultural influences that don’t subsume themselves to an American ethos are likely to become more exacerbated unless we start insisting on assimilation again.
Hey Don Rodrigo — you make very good points — especially about the fact that PC and multiculti not only allow for minorities to exert unfair influence far beyond their numbers. But implicit in you idea is the notion that due to multi-culti and the grievance industries which have emerged around it, newly arriving minorities have very little incentive to integrate into the fabric of American society — they are, in fact, incentivized to remain in a state of perpetual alienation to reap disproportionate rewards. This isn’t simply limited to those who arrive on the bottom tier as immigrants, and is an indication of how pervasive the rot has become. Victor Davis Hanson has written eloquently on the topic of academics who happily adopt whatever grievance costume which currently in vogue and best situated to reap the largest windfall.
I saw this in a movie once! It was taken from a book I believe or a short story and later became a short lived TV series.
It was called “Logan’s Run” while the script never called for the termination at any age for those babies seen not fit it did have a shelf life for people who made it passed the baby/toddler/tween and teens culls which came about on their turning thirty, then they were gathered to be ritually and spectaculary killed.
Perhaps the eugenicophiles have this scenario in mind for those of us not in the elite of government,military and medical personnel.
I believe though the idea is to contain and control the population through social engenering by teaching everyone from birth to be sane functional homosexuals, babies will be artificially ensemenated into Mandatory National service women who reach the child bearing best age, the semen will come from males in the same drafted catagory.
No father’s and Mother’s, grandparents or aunts and uncles, nope the baby becomes the ward of the state to be assigned a niche and a purpose then kept medicated and docile the majority no doubt non desirable men/women will be neutered with only the best of the breed being able to breed children but not inclined to because everyone is Gay!
I read that idea in Haldeman’s Forever war.
Personnally I like the way we do it now without eugenicist help.
“Logan’s Run” was/is one of my favorite all time sci-fi movies. So chilling.
Wow. This is so evil.
There are actually brain operations you can do to cut off ‘pain signals’ to the brain if someone is suffering so badly that regular medication intervention does not work.
The idea of just “snuffing someone out” because they are suffering is beyond cruel.
EVERYONE has the instinct to want to SURVIVE even in PAIN and suffering. Look at Farrah Fawcett for instant! She was suffering horribly towards the end of her fight with anal cancer but she STILL WANTED TO LIVE.
Sad that ANYONE could fee this way about an innocent child who is suffering.
“…for instance” no “instant”. lol
While I vehemently against eugenics-you can never know who will birth the next Einstein-I am all for poor people having access to free birth control IF they so choose to use it. I assure you plenty of women in those poor countries would be grateful for a 5 year implant. It rips their hearts out to birth babies they can not feed. In fact, I regularly contribute money to http://www.projectprevention.org
And yes, if one of my children was suffering horribly with no chance of recovery, I would ease them from this world and if it damned me to hell, that’s the price I would pay. Can’t say I’d do it with a pillow, though. Both these situations are a far, far cry from the forced abortions and eugenics in the other examples above.
What if a modern medical ‘cure’ came out for your child one year after you had snuffed him/her out of her misery? There are ways to deal with pain and suffering without death.
I draw the line for a child who is born without a brain, that’s obviously insane to keep a child alive on life-support.
My sis-in-law had gave birth to her first child who was born with a rare genetic disorder and she cherished every moment she had with him up until his death (he lived to be 1 1/2 years old). We all prayed and held out hope that a cure could have been found to help him… He could barely breathe towards the end and my SIL held him in her arms and let him go rather than calling 911 to resuscitate him.
I just couldn’t live with myself purposely taking my own child’s life for ANY reason. I just couldn’t do it.
Delia, I couldn’t either. No normal, sane mom could–although I could see a mother agonizing for the rest of her life over an action committed in a moment of despair.
The abortion industry makes big bucks from those moments–giving a mom full information and chance to reflect before becoming their customer is very bad for that all important bottom line.
“Earl Grey Decaf” are you a “Tea Partier” per chance?
I could see a mother agonizing for the rest of her life over an action committed in a moment of despair.
I so agree with that. Some of us in the family wondered if perhaps Laura [name changed to protect the innocent] had purposely smothered little Jay when she saw him sputtering and coughing for life. We will never know, but, we all know she loved him with all her heart and did everything humanly possible to save his life and make it better.
Gosh, it makes me so sad to go back to that memory. She had me paint a picture of her and her [then] hubby releasing little Jay up into the heavens out of the woods. I cried the whole time I painted it.
Being human is not easy (nor was it meant to be). The genuine struggle to just SURVIVE is how we got here in such great numbers.
Not exactly a tea partier because I haven’t been able to attend any. An erstwhile Repub who is thoroughly disgusted with a party that keeps calling for donations (and getting an earful) after telling me and “my kind” to shut up and vote.
At the same time, determined not to be angry (hence the decaf)–’cuz that does nobody any good. And I do believe the abortion industry has many living victims who never really get over the pain and sorrow and guilt of realizing they had a child and killed him/her.
Also–and above all–a Christian who has experienced God’s grace and mercy and would like to let those victims know God loves them too.
“What if a modern medical ‘cure’ came out for your child one year after you had snuffed him/her out of her misery?”
And what if that cure came from embryonic stem cells? Would you let your child die?
Yes, I would let my child die if the only thing that saved him was aborted tissue stem cells since many studies have already proven that stem cells from aborted babies cause cancer and other DNA destroying things.
Stem cells from umbilical cords and adult stem cells are far less risky.
Do your research rather than bitch your mindless, deleterious squawking points.
What studies?
One could what-if to the heavens. We have a pretty good grasp on when someone is beyond saving at this point in time. Dying of cancer is agonizing. Speeding that up is merely humane. I just had a cousin die of brain cancer. NO one would put their child through that pointless agony. I did say if they were uncurable, not chronic. There’s a difference. Arthritis is painful, but one can live a good life with it. Ditto other chronic illnesses. They just aren’t the same as being terminal.
I have to disagree ..your point about a child without a brain comment is way off.
it seems they have a role to play in congress
1) Birth rates are going down. They have been going down for 200 years in the U.S. (I can prove this from Census data.) They are going down almost everywhere in the world except sub-Saharan Africa. No pro-parenthood cheerleading program has ever changed this. We can’t go back – so we have to go through. That may mean a period of population decline, until the underlying factors change again – perhaps with radical life extension.
2) “Last man standing.” Birth rates have declined everywhere, but furthest in the developed and civilized world. Birth rates are higher in more backward Moslem countries, and in Africa. In the U.S., birth rates remain highest among the “underclass” – the poor, the uneducated, the welfare-dependent, the drugged-out, the boozed-up, the criminal, and yes, the stupid and insane. If present demographic trends continue, in 50 years, functional America, “native” Europe, and east Asia will have declined, but Moslem Europe will be predominant (and as dysfunctional as the Middle East), the U.S. will be swamped with various types of born probable losers, and mass immigration from Africa will be exporting Africa’s problems to the world.
3) Requiring people who are dependent on the charity of others to refrain from reproducing is not “dictating to whole classes of people what you think their birthrates should be”. No one is forced to accept contraception except as a condition of receiving such charity. Those who want to have children are free to do so on their own dimes.
4) In an age of wealth and generous charity, stupidity and folly becomes a successful evolutionary strategy. Sexual continence and effective contraception require intelligence, knowledge, forethought, prudence, and self-control. People who lack these qualities conceive more children than those who have them, and their survival (at a minimum level) is secured by a mixture of welfare, charity, and intermittent low-end employment. (Some of these people get better. And then they have fewer children.) Evolution is selecting for incompetence. This will continue until the underclass reaches the limit of the larger society to keep them alive, or contraception is made dirt easy and immediately rewarding.
Where does islam’s generations old habit of inbreeding and now recently gender-based abortion (like the Chinese) fit into this Eugenics business?
Theoretically, in the worse-case scenario of (Heaven Forbid) islam ruling the world, while “conquering” women as others have mentioned regarding the Congo and the Sudan might starve off the effects of inbreeding in the short term, along with those who are forced to convert to islam.
In such a scenario, the long term prospects of humanity look bleak enough that the combination of islam & eugenics would end up being very self-defeating on so many levels.
Islam’s longstanding custom of intentional inbreeding is a good example of what they call “malgenics” — the opposite of eugenics, in which bad traits are selected for and passed on.
“Malgenics”? Is that like “malware” only with “DNA”?
ROTFL!
I googled that and you made that up, Zombie-Chan! AWESOME!
“Malgenics”?
It’s a feature.
Holdren doesn’t so much want eugenics as human extinction. Eugenics to prevent those who don’t support his ideas from raising more troublesome children is just the first step.
Next step is declaring those who don’t agree with his ideas as “unfit to live” and having them euthanised.
All those left after that will willingly kill themselves as ordered.
I am a Conservative- but- if Michael Savage is promoting NORPLANT for Welfare moms – he is a Eugenicist ! Watch Maafa21 and learn just how that type of thinking has been used as a racist way of targeting people for population control. Http://www.maafa21.com
Birth rates are especially declining among Europeans, particularly Italians and French.
A certain negativity in the air is un-inspiring people about the future. I would contend that is an offshoot of living under soul killing socialist régimes and near cradle-to-grave governance.
Mark Steyn has written at length about the Islamicization of Europe. Muslims themselves have put forth the notion that sheer procreation is a very important part of spreading the Ummah. Having babies is an absolute requirement for the good jihadist female. More babies = more future jihadists and suicide bombers to destroy the miserable house of the unbelievers.
I’ve not seen the proper level of alarm among the French that there are currently no fewer than 750 zones urbaines sensibles (ZUS) in and around French cities where French law enforcement is, effectively, absent.
Bernard Lewis has predicted that Europe will be fully Islamic by the end of this century.
A new dark ages.
Treating genetic disorders as a function of inbreeding is practically a medical industry in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is punishable by death and a girl might be stoned to death for being raped by an uncle…while recently, in a posh London hotel, a relative of the Saudi prince slaughtered his long time male lover, described as a “servant”.
Saddam Hussein produced Uday and Qusay through marriage to a first cousin.
I’m going to propose a theory that might explain the brains of a John Holdren, a Cass Sunstein, a Jim Wallis, an Anita Dunn, a Van Jones, a Valerie Jarrett, an Eric Holder…in short, most all The One’s™ peeps in DC…(throw in Ms. Ironside and the creep Shabazz…)
Their parents were too closely related.
(don’t take me seriously, or too seriously, anyway)
For the record, the kind of authoritarianism evident in that (pulled) British video is very close to how these folks’ minds actually work.
They make the rules, we follow.
Or else.
Build the eugenics wall on the southern border, and stop illegal alien anchor babies. They are a problem, and not part of the solution.
Dr. Savage for POTUS!
Eugenics and socialism have been partners since the 19th century. Given the Monty Python incompetence displayed by socialist governments we already know what the socialist engineered Ubermensch would be – all left wing and asshole.
If eugenics is synonymous with Naziism, Hitler or Mengele, I’m against.
If eugenics means ‘this is what I call anyone worried about the human population overwhelming the earth’, then the term needs updating.
War is a form of ‘eugenics’ in its result, or some sort of survival of the fittest. I am against war in principle, but realize in practice that it is inevitable. To be a consistent anti-eugenicist, one must be a pacifist: after all, war could be avoided if everyone believed in the sanctity of life and respect other nations and cultures, and could share resources, etc.
The attempts to stop Islam, or ‘Islamism’ are based on a form of ideological eugenics – dampening the fire through moderation or lawfare or some such thing. The failure to convince Muslims to stop believing in the ‘trinity’ that propels Islam – Quran, Sura, Hadith (I hope I got that right) will result in a situation, sooner or later, where national armies of non-believers commit willful ‘eugenics’ on portions of Muslim populations.
Words are dangerous things, they become labels, they mean different things to different people, and more.
As we have pointed out all along these people on the left and the Muslim world are killers. They have been all along, they may seem to us, strange bedfellows, but the fact that they are killers makes them one. One sect believes in no Creator and the other believes in a god of war who rewards those who kill, and that means killing anyone just for the sake of killing. So no matter what the excuse; infidel, moron, lame, Jew, carbon breather, energy hog, capitalist, conservative, Christian, does it really matter to them in the end? No. They still want to kill you and take your stuff at the end of the day. These people run our country today.
Zombie
Wait — so, you’re claiming that the eugenics movement didn’t reach its bloody culmination with the Nazis?
Explain.
Nope, I don’t have to because I didn’t claim that. You are as dishonest in the comments thread as you are in your article. Way to set up another strawman just to knock him down. Good job.
I never made that claim.
It’s not a violation of Godwin’s Law when the people you’re comparing to Nazis are . . . Nazis.
So which of the people in your article are because below you sure as God compared their ideas to…..Nazis.
Wait — eugenics, did you say? Isn’t that a discredited pseudoscience from centuries past, like phrenology?
Well, yes, but eugenics never went away. Despite reaching its bloody culmination in the Nazi era, eugenics is still seductive as a concept to many people, and eugenics-based proposals still crop up in popular culture distressingly often, frequently by people who don’t even realize the historical implications of what they’re suggesting.
Over the last several days I’ve noticed an alarming upswing in eugenics-related incidents and current events, even though none of them were identified as such. And so, to rectify this oversight by the Meme Lords, I present — This Week in Eugenics!
Which of the people you gave examples of in your article were Nazis?
It’s an undisputed historical fact that Nazis were into eugenics, that Nazis went too far with eugenics, that Nazis used eugenics as an excuse to exterminate millions of people, that eugenics was widely popular up until WWII when the Nazi excesses suddenly turned most people against eugenics, and that, yes, eugenics reached its bloody culmination in the Nazi era.
I stated this self-evident fact in the essay. Didn’t accuse anyone of being a Nazi except for Nazis themselves. Didn’t violate Godwin’s Law. Then, unbidden, someone asked me if I though he was a Nazi. I said he wasn’t.
You did compare people to Nazi’s you left a neat chart numbered one to Nazi (all strawman arguments but that’s what I am seeing is your strong suit).
That’s it.
The fact that you’re obsessing over an issue that is not only trivial in the extreme — whether or not I violated Godwin’s Law in a comment responding to someone else’s comment — but one which is demonstrably false, means there’s something else afoot here, though I’m not sure what. Looks like you’re trying to find a way to criticize my essay, but can find no basis on which to do so, so you instead latch onto an innocuous comment.
Well, if it keeps you entertained, keep obsessing. People have all sorts of peculiar hobbies. Whatever floats your boat.
No I just enjoy calling people out when they’ve got egg on their face. The fact that you use strawmen several times in your article and in your comments speaks volumes. I don’t care about ‘Godwin’s Law’ I was using it as an example. One that most readers on the web understand. You did not call anyone Nazis you just said that their ideas were the same as Nazis’. Next you’ll be telling me you’re sure they don’t forget their moms on Mothers Day and are nice to their dogs. That doesn’t change the fact you associated them with Nazis through their ideas. Then you did it again with a numbered chart. If that was not your intention I apologize.
I was comparing you to people who try to stifle dissent by painting people you disagree with as Nazis. Saying that people’s ideas are akin to the Nazi Party’s Final Solution is comparing them to Nazis. You did that why deny it?
BTW sorry I had to respond in a new window. The reply button was not available on your posting.
You make some good points, and it’s clear that Zombie doesn’t enjoy criticism. Nobody does, but I have grown increasingly disillusioned with this site as it’s clear Zombie, Radosh, Michael Totten and a few others resort to personal attacks when their supposedly comprehensive analyses of the topic attract criticism either on the basis of the logic used or simply because a commentator has his/her own experience or perception to add. It does relate to the topic of eugenics, because the point at which arrogant writers refuse to accept valid criticism as the point at which people start to play G-d, and that is certainly related to the topic at hand.
Larry, it’s pretty obvious to everyone here that “Filthy Screw” is a troll, and didn’t make ANY points, much less good points. Zombie’s responses to Filthy Screw and Morton Doodslag and RightwingHippyChick were all slamdunks. Filthy Screw’s argument is circular, coming on here for the sole futile purpose of trying to discredit Zombie based on no evidence, relying on the baseless claim that Zombie deserves to be discredited because Zombie tried to discredit someone! How much sense does THAT “good point” make? His argument is ridiculous and trivial, which is the hallmark of a professional troll.
Zombie is polite and won’t say it, but I’m not polite so I’ll say what we all know: Filthy Screw is a troll. Whether he is an actual racist jerk or a DNC operative posing as a racist jerk doesn’t matter. Trolls are trolls. I also suspect that Morton Doodslag and Filthy Screw are the same troll posting under different names.
The internet’s been around for a long time. So have I. I’ve seen his ilk come and go a thousand times. As transparent as cellophane. Don’t worry, he’ll move on to the next site on his list of bloggers to attack soon enough. Not much traction here.
The paranoid style is most unbecoming. Crazy even. Google “Morton Doodslag” and Pajamas Media and you’ve find nearly 1400 posts by me. Jeanette is clearly crazy — I’m not sure what your motivation actually is.
Did you actually read the article or are you just angry because you can’t understand what’s at stake?
I agree with Zombie on the substance of his article. I do not agree with him on the style in which he presented his argument. I pointed out to Zombie that he used the old leftist tactic of trying to limit debate by tarring those he disagrees with as ‘Nazis’. No he did not call anyone ‘Nazi’. However, he started his article with a direct comparison to the Nazis and wrote a ‘connect the dots’ article that clearly linked people in the article to eugenics and the Nazis. He even thoughtfully provided a numbered list of where you might fall on the scale of 1 to ‘Nazi’. You cannot compare somebody to Nazis anymore strongly than that.
Where in the world do you get the idea I am a racist or a Democrat? However, I get the idea you are young. You say the ‘internet has been around a long time and so have I’. No, the internet has not been around a long time. That is why people often say things they never would in a face to face meeting. Like calling them racists or assuming they are a troll.
Zombie avoided answering me every time I directly quoted him. Not parsing what he said but long full quotes. He compared people to Nazis smearing them and their ideas in order to limit what is acceptable speech. He included actual instances of eugenics however he also included things that clearly don’t fall under that category or if they do it’s only because eugenics covers a broad swath of subject matter.
Everything from marriage and procreation to tax law, public education, social welfare programs, medicine, aging, and even nutrition can be stretched to cover eugenics.
He did not get a ‘slam dunk’ because he could not argue with his own words. He wrote those things. I am only continuing answering these posts because I might open an honest dialogue. Someone might understand about etiquette and courtesy on the internet.
The internet is something like the old snail mail. It is also something like the town square. All too often people act like anonymous children throwing stones in the night because they are anonymous. People have an obligation to be courteous, honest, and ethical in a civilized society. What I am trying to do is encourage courtesy.
Using dishonest and underhanded tactics in a debate is none of those things. The fact that Zombie is not owning up to this tactic when it is pointed out indicates that he either was trying to do that all along or that he was not intending to do that and embarrassed or perhaps simply embarrassed and not honest enough to admit it.
We cannot see each others faces, hear the tone of our fellows voices, or read their body language. Without those elements of communication we are left only with the written words. That puts a greater obligation on us to be courteous in our words. We have nothing else on the internet. Most of us have never and will never meet face to face so we cannot even assume we understand the tone of others writings.
Please re-read what you wrote. You accused me of being a sock puppet, a racist, a Democrat, and a troll. I am none of those things. You don’t even know why you don’t like me or more accurately my writing since you obviously don’t know me. All of your conclusions were wrong. All of them. Think about that for a moment. If you are so completely wrong perhaps you understand less of the debate and the people involved than you think you do.
One of the quietly kept secrets in the Jewish Orthodox community is of inbreeding and the awful results of this. First as a Jew before I married my wife, I took a blood test to see if I was a carrier of Tay Sachs disease. Had I been, my now present wife would have taken the same test. The reasoning behind this is that both parents have to be a carrier for this disease to manifest itself. If just one of us had been a carrier, the marriage could go on and we could have children. To my knowledge, neither of us is a carrier. This doesn’t eliminate other diseases which are hereditary: autism, neurofibromatosis, hemophilia, diabetes, and a host of others which I either can’t remember or can’t spell. The Jewish community has an abnormal high number of such diseases. These diseases originated in the ghettos of Europe where Jews were force to live their entire lives at the pain of death. Cousins had to marry cousins. After a few generations, everyone in the ghetto was related. The results were inbreeding and associated diseases. Here in the USA the Jewish Orthodox community still practices marriages within their own community. In fact they won’t even consider another Jew outside their community as marriage material. The result is that the gene pool has stayed the same. Its as if they were still living in the Middle Ages in their ghettos. Its been a disaster for some Orthodox families. Let me take this a step further. While my wife was pregnant, each time, she had an amnio test to see if the baby was all right. Had there been something wrong with the babies, an abortion was being considered. We wanted our children to be well, to be perfect. Orthodox couples will not have an amnio test. The result is a high incidence of Downs in addition to the for mentioned problems. What I see is this group of Jews breeding themselves out of existence. Their mistakes become a burden to society in general. As a Jew, I am critical of what I see. Also as a Jew, I would defend them to the death.
“If a baby’s going to be born severely disabled or totally unwanted, surely an abortion is the act of a loving mother.”
Um… if you’re a loving mother, why would your baby be totally unwanted?
Does this murderous psychopath even listen to the dangerous nonsense that tumbles from her face?
great essay Zombie. and your reply comments even better.
don’t worry this is a recurring issue.
people kill each other. (I am not condoning it)
as societal animals we are often led by bad people with bad intentions, sometimes led by good people with bad actions and even the odd time by good people with good actions and intentions.
cheers
I have to agree with Savage and Kristof. If you can’t feed ‘em, don’t breed ‘em.
What’s particularly ironic about the whole eugenics movement is that, in reality, the scientists and politicians have no clue as to what is truly “superior” or not. It’s based on an outdated 19th century notion of “progress” with a clear, rising line from fish through ape to human. I refer you to any book by Stephen Jay Gould, particularly “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History” and “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory”. Evolution is, in reality, a crapshoot; what we in engineering call a “drunken-man walk” through a solution space in search of that combination of factors that will enable your genes to survive another generation. Perfectly good dinosaurs and other families died out because of a random meteor strike. Other species, including humans, horses, and cheetahs, survived near extinction by a matter of a few thousand individuals. The same gene that is responsible for sickle-cell anemia confers a measure of protection against malaria. For all that Margaret Sanger knows, the baby she just aborted could have had a mutation in a gene that provided protection against AIDS or something worse yet to come.
Then there’s the whole aspect of respect for the elderly. I read once where a sociologist was doing research on a South-Seas island and came across a very old woman – over 80 (which was incredibly old for that culture). She had no teeth and was very feeble, her granddaughter had to pre-chew her food for her so that she could eat. It also turned out that she was the last survivor of the previous “100 year” hurricane; she knew not only the survival foods that could be eaten when the primary crops were wiped out, but what could keep you alive when those were gone as well. “Lucifer’s Hammer” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle has a good illustration of this. A comet impact wreaks havoc on global civilization and a group of refuges take shelter in a nuclear reactor. One of the group is very sick, a diabetic, and a drain on resources. However, it also turns out that he’s a physician and has a collection of books stashed that detail how to make medicines and other important items – essentially how to jump-start a civilization. We take care of the feeble and elderly in large part because they are the repositories of knowledge and experience.
Ultimately, of course, the Nazi extermination of the Jews backfired on them. Notice how many of the U.S. nuclear scientists were Jewish? One of the reasons that the Nazi’s nuclear program didn’t succeed is because their best nuclear scientists either escaped or were killed.
OK, we agree. Let’s promote more babies from people with positive traits making positive contributions.
And let’s start with physical prowess – exceptional balance, hand-eye coordination, strength, superior rhythm, endurance, quick recovery from injury. We need more of them.
Now let’s look at intellectual prowess – highly developed analytical skills, mathematical understanding, insights into the physical sciences, computer design and systems analysis, and a disciplined approach to higher learning and subsequent teaching. We need more of them.
Now let’s talk creativity – the ability to make keen observations and curious connections in the creation of humor, insight into the human condition, being able to transfer real life experiences into sharing mechanisms like books, movies, television, etc., the ability to imagine entirely new worlds that have both relevance and escape, the simple ability to entertain. Need more of them.
Now to artisans – bringing art and health to landscapes, crafting in stone and tile, building domiciles and other structures so critical to securing shelter and safety.
Now let’s talk design – the ability see a problem or deficit, to learn all about the people who that deficit affects, to create and test and refine solutions to the vexing problems, big and small, of function and form in our lives, and finally yo offer those effective solutions that include an aesthetic and attitude that is rewarding and entertaining.
And, of course, courage – the willingness to serve a cause greater than self, the courage to enter the unknown, the guts to face certain hostility, and the grace to do it without recognition or gratitude but out of a love of country.
OK, what do we have. In this order . . . blacks, Asians, liberals, Hispanics, gays, and the defense and protection services, which are populated by all of the above.
Wait, wait, there’s some key group missing . . . a hah! – the willingness to pile trash next to overstuffed garbage barrels after a picnic – a clean up crew. That brings in the Tea Partiers. (Hey, everybody can play a role in the greatness of America.)
Of course, I am none of these things. I have no skills or courage or work ethic. So allow me to say to you what so many talk radio people say in lieu of actual commitment, offered as a strategy in the hope that those listening will be placated with such empty deference and not confront my undeniable cowardice . . . “Thank you for your service.”
Wow Really, you write well. Why waste it on strawman arguments (most of your post above) and ad hominem attacks (the Tea Partiers comment)?
I can understand if you’re a mindless troll squinting at your computer screen and getting your best moments of the day by tweaking what is mostly a conservative audience.
But you write well enough that you could probably make cogent arguments – or even just observations – and possibly add to the conversation rather than just make posts that seem to wittily disparage those with whom you seem to disagree.
In the same vein, Dood and Jeannette, go easy on each other, ok? I don’t think either of you is as dangerous (again, based on your writing) as each thinks the other is.
It’s funny that you speak of “trash” and “Tea Partiers” in the same sentance. Maybe you should look at what the capitol looked like after the Tea Partiers left it, and compare it to how it looked after your leftists.
I also find it interesting that, all of a sudden, in your case, it’s not racist to say that blacks are superior physically (the only possible causative factor being genetics).
Hey, who do you think makes up the defense services of America, I.E the military? It sure ain’t liberals and there are very few visible minorities….
Unaddressed here are the nonsense and baseless claims that Hispanics are somehow more creative and Gays are somehow more artistic. But hey stereotyping and bigotry have always been cool when they come from the Marxist side of the aisle.
Now let me argue the flip side of eugenics. Have you ever noticed how certain traits run in families. As an example, some families are musical. Either one or both of the parents seemed to have a talent for music and guess what. The children seem to inherit the same abilities. I’ve seen this in art, in math, in medicine, in writing and I’m sure the list goes on and on. You can also see this trait passed on in athletics, it runs in families. The question then, is it possible to improve the human gene pool by using eugenics? It seems you can breed man just like you can breed horses, or dogs, or chickens or what ever you want. Not only that, we can splice in other genes to “improve” man. We could create a four armed/handed man for workers. We could create a water breathing man to farm the seas. We could create a man with wings and the ability to fly. We could improve man with breeding and genetic augmentation. Just think, we could breed lawyers out of existence. That would be a benefit to all man kind. I think I’ll start small and breed my cockers into a new type of race horse or dog. Just think of the benefit, I could ride him around and have him eat mixed breeds. Good night folks.
Great cartoon on “The Women of Life” versus “The Women of Death” at http://drawfortruth.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/choose-life/
Have you noticed the recent trend. Conservative women becoming leaders, being elected, changing the political landscape, and changing this country. I think that the day of the woman has truly arrived.
Cass Sunstien has associates that advocate that Earth’s population must be reduced to less than half of a billion people. Killing off nineteen i=of every twenty people is mot going to get my vote. We cannot sustain the modern technology base with that populatin.
Our local TV news just covered something on Eugenics and a 1950′s state funded program in North Carolina. Crazy how this tough pops up again.
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Ah, duly noted (and changed above)… I thought I’d recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t put my finger on it… Thanks!