Island Packet | Eugenics was a progressive cause | The Island Packet Island Packet The progressive mob that disrupted Charles Murray's appearance last week at Middlebury College was protesting a 1994 book read by few if any of the ... |
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Eugenics was a progressive cause | The Island Packet - Island Packet
If big cats dont kill livestock, farmers wont shoot them.
Panthera, a charity that manages corridors for jaguars that stretchfrom Argentina to Mexico, guesses that just 5,000 of the cats are left in los llanos, Colombias scorching savannah. It has come up with a less violent way of protecting both the jaguars and the cattle.
The idea is to teach cattle self-defence, or rather to breed the instinct into them.
Pantheras idea is to replace panicky Zebu with cattle that stand their ground, or to interbreed the two.Esteban Payn, who directs Pantheras operations in northern South America, chose San Martineros, a little-known subspecies of Criollo cattle descended from Spanish fighting bulls. Few jaguars dare to challenge a massed group of 500kg (1,100-pound) San Martineros, their horns levelled. Docile with humans, they are fierce defenders of territory and their young.
Eugenics seems to work. Cattle that are just a quarter San Martinero may be just as brave, says Mr Payn. No jaguars have attacked cattle on Las Pampas, [a] 4,000-hectare ranch, since the programme began, he says. Zebu-only ranches in the area suffer a dozen attacks a year.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:Breeding cows that can defend themselves against jaguars
The rest is here:
The following is from an interview transcript
Last year, we had a series of mergers in the agribusiness GMO-corporations worldwide. This has created an alarming concentration of corporate power in the hands of basically three corporate groups.
The first one is Bayer AG of Germany, which made a friendly takeover of Monsanto. The reason for this was that Monsanto became identified in the public mind as pure evil and everything bad about GMOs, which was accurate. This became a burden on the whole GMO project. So, Bayer stepped in, which has a friendly image of an aspirin, harmless, nice company, but in fact is the company that invented heroin in the 1880s and made gas for the ovens of Auschwitz during WWII. Its one of the dirtiest agribusiness companies in the world with a series of homicides and pesticides that killed off bee colonies and many other things that are essential to life and to nature.
Flickr.com/Miran Rijavec (public domain)
ChemChina China State Chemical giant for some reason took over Swiss Syngenta, which makes weed-killers.
Then, Dow Chemicals and DuPont merged their GMO businesses together.
So, we have three gigantic corporate groups worldwide controlling the genetically-modified part of the human food chain. As dangerous as the GMO crops are and the more they sell, it is becoming more and more obvious that they are the chemicals that by contract must be applied to those GMO seeds by the corporations. They demand that if you buy roundup ready soybeans or corn, you must use Monsanto (now Bayer) roundup.
Therefore, this is giving more corporate power to the GMO industry than ever before and thats an alarming trend. They are putting pressure on the bureaucracy in Brussels. One example: there was a massive public campaign against the renewal of the license of the European Commission for Glyphosate. Glyphosate is the most widely used weed-killer in the world. Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Monsantos roundup. The other ingredients are Monsantos corporate secret, but the combination of them is one of the most deadly weed-killers.
The World Health Organizations body responsible for assessing genetic dangers made a ruling the last year that Glyphosate was a probable cancer-causing agent.
The license came up for automatic renewal last year a 15-year license. The EU commission for health was prepared to automatically renew it for 15 years. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which is responsible allegedly for the health and safety of European citizens, recommended approval based on a German study by the German Food Safety Agency that was simply lifted 100% from studies given by the private corporation Monsanto! So, the whole chain was corrupt from the beginning and all the information was rigged. In reality tests have shown that in minuscule concentrations, lower than in recommended levels in Europe and in the US, Glyphosate causes kidney disease, liver disease, and other illnesses that are potentially fatal.
Now, Glyphosate has shown up in urine tests, in urban drinking water, in gardens, in ground water and so forth. And that gets into the system of childbearing women, for example, with embryo. Its all in this!
The EU commission, despite a million petitions this is a record setting and despite recommendations from leading scientists around the world to not renew the license, made a compromise under huge industry pressure and renewed it for 18 months. Why did they renew it for that time? Because at the end of 18 months, they were told by Bayer and Monsanto that the takeover of those two giant corporations will be completed and Bayer is going to replace Glyphosate with another, likely more deadly toxin, but not so well-known as Glyphosate. So, they simply bought time. And that is just one example.
This agenda of GMO is not about the health and safety; its not about increasing crop yields thats a lie that has been proven in repeated tests in North America and all around the world. Crop yields for farmers, using GMO plants, may increase slightly for the first 1-2 harvest years, but ultimately decline after 3-4 years. And not only that! Weve been promised by Monsanto and other GMO giants that the use of chemicals will be less, because of these wonderful traits that GMO plants resist. In fact, the weeds become resistant and you have super weeds, which are 5-6 feet in a height and choke out everything. Its a catastrophe. So, farmers end up using added weed killers to kill the super weeds. This whole mad playing around with the genetic makeup of nature is a disaster from the beginning.
The real agenda of GMO, which I have documented in great detail in my book Seeds of Destruction, comes from the Rockefeller Foundation. It comes out of the 1920s-1930s Eugenics movement. The Rockefeller Foundation during the 1930s, right up to the outbreak of World War II when it became politically embracing too, financed the Nazi Eugenics experiments of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and in Munich. Why did they do this? Their goal was the elimination of what they called undesirable eaters. That is called population reduction.
After the war, the head of the American Eugenic Society, who was a good friend of John D. Rockefeller, at the annual conference of the American Eugenic Society said: From today, the new name of eugenics is genetics. Moreover, if you keep that in mind genetic engineering, the Human Genome Project and so forth they all are scientific frauds. Russian scientists have proven that the entire Genome Project utterly disregarded 98% of the scientifically valuable data in favor of 2% that was completely nonsense and a waste of billions of dollars.
Therefore, they have been obsessed with the idea of how to reduce human population in a way that would not be so obvious as simply going out and carrying out mass-sterilization.
Actually, they have done that in Central America together with the World Health Organization by giving certain vaccines that they cooked-up to have abortive effects. Therefore, the women of child-bearing age in Central America were given these vaccines against tetanus. The organization of the Catholic Church became suspicious because the shots were given only to women, not to men. And they found that there was buried in the vaccine an abortive effect that made it impossible for women to conceive and bear children. This is all covert population reduction.
These are the Western patriarchs who believe they are the gods, sitting on the throne with great dignity, controlling mankind. I think they are a bunch of fools, but they have this agenda of genetic manipulation. Its against nature, its chemically unstable. And I have to congratulate the Russian Federation that they had the courage and the moral concern for their own population to ban GMO cultivation across Russia. That was a step forward for mankind. I would hope that Russia will use its influence to get China to do the similar thing, because their agriculture is in dire need of some healthy Russian input. But this step by Russia to make a GMO-free agriculture is a great step for mankind.
Read this article:
Almost a century ago in Charlottesville, Virginia, Carrie Bucks mother had been institutionalized for what was then called feeblemindedness.
Despite good grades Carrie was pulled from school by her foster parents at the end of sixth grade for domestic work. Soon Carrie became pregnant, and her foster family, knowing shed probably been assaulted by a visiting relative, also had her institutionalized for being feebleminded.
Carries circumstances made her the unfortunate legal target of the American eugenics movement.
As author Adam Cohen notes in his book, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, in the 1920s the United States was caught up in the belief that newly discovered scientific laws of heredity could perfect humanity. It was a compelling idea, and Eugenicists laid claim to a body of apparent scientific knowledge and practice that called for native-born Americans deemed mentally or physically deficient to be forcibly sterilized.
In a test case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers in Virginia presented expert evidence that would never stand up to scrutiny today, that Carrie, her mother, and Carries 8-month-old daughter were feebleminded. In 1927 Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a eugenics supporter, famously wrote that three generations of imbeciles are enough to justify the courts 8-1 ruling that allowed the State of Virginia to sterilize Carrie and countless others with qualities deemed undesirable.
Nazi Germany followed the lead of the American eugenics movement and forcibly sterilized 375,000 of their own citizens. In the Nuremburg trials, Nazi defendants attempted to use Holmes majority decision as a defense.
And heres the Immigration link, because eugenicists turned to immigration laws for non-citizens.
At the turn of the last century, record levels of immigrants poured into the country, bringing with them different religious, ethnic and political backgrounds. Fear of their numbers contributed to social unrest and set the stage for The Immigration Act of 1924.
Championed by eugenicists, the Act set quotas for immigration that favored northern European and Christian immigrants over southern and Slavic Europeans and Jews. This law barred Otto Frank from bringing his family here to escape the Holocaust. Its the tragic backdrop to his daughter Anns famous diary - in which she documents her life before perishing in Auschwitz.
I find it hard to accept that once again were debating immigration and religion in a similar atmosphere.
View post:
Spencer Rendahl: Immigration And Eugenics - Vermont Public Radio
In the 1920s, a legal victory against the rising eugenic tide was won by a Catholic doctor over prominent birth control advocate Marie Stopes. While Stopes is lauded today at a feminist hero, the story of the eugenics libel trial has been largely overlooked.
Marie Stopes in her laboratory in 1904. (Image via Wikipedia)
In 1923 in Britain, a Catholic doctor won an important victory in the battle against one of the most harmful ideologies of the 20th century: eugenics. The battle was fought in the law courts when British birth control advocate Marie Stopes sued Dr. Halliday Sutherland for libel.
Had Sutherland lost the case, opposition to eugenics in Britain would have suffered a blow, and would possibly have been silenced altogether. Sutherlands success was in large part because he was supported by the most consistently vociferous critic of eugenics in Britain at that time: the Catholic Church. But having won the legal battle, Sutherland subsequently lost the history war when the narrative of the losing side became the received history.
It is time to correct the record and, whats more, demonstrate why it matters today. Recent developments in biotechnology mean that eugenics is back. The issues in Stopes v. Sutherland are still relevant today and, when the centenaries of past events are commemorated in the next few years, it is essential that the correct narrative is used to influence the contemporary debate.
The centenary in 2023 of the Stopes v. Sutherland trial will be an opportunity to challenge the falsehoods of the last 100 years. Catholics can reflect on the Churchs record of standing up for ordinary people against the master plan of the elites. Remembering these events will help to educate and inspire those who will take up the cause in the contemporary debate.
Fake histories are warehouses to store fake news.
Theres lots of fake news around these days, isnt there? This article is about one of the sources of fake newsfake history.
Heres an example from the BBCs online biography of Marie Stopes:
In 1921, Stopes opened a family planning clinic in Holloway, north London, the first in the country. It offered a free service to married women and also gathered data about contraception. In 1925, the clinic moved to central London and others opened across the country. By 1930, other family planning organisations had been set up and they joined forces with Stopes to form the National Birth Control Council (later the Family Planning Association).
The Catholic church was Stopes fiercest critic. In 1923, Stopes sued Catholic doctor Halliday Sutherland for libel. She lost, won at appeal and then lost again in the House of Lords, but the case generated huge publicity for Stopes views.
Stopes continued to campaign for women to have better access to birth control
A second example of fake history is a 2015 press release from Marie Stopes International celebrating the 90th anniversary of the establishment of Stopes second London clinic:
90 years ago a woman called Marie Stopes made an extraordinary decision. She would open a service in the heart of London that offered women access to free contraception. In 1925, three years before women would win the right to vote, Marie Stopes bucked convention by showing women they had a choice regarding whether and when to have children.
On what grounds do I say that these items are fake? In my opinion, they are fake because of what they leave out.
There is no mention of Stopes eugenic agenda or of her intention to achieve, in her own words, a reduction of the birth rate at the wrong part and increase of the birth rate at the right end of the social scale.
No mention of her view that, as she put it in 1924:
From the point of view of the economics of the nation, it is racial madness to rifle the pockets of the thrifty and intelligent who are struggling to do their best for their own families of one and two and squander the money on low grade mental deficients, the spawn of drunkards, the puny families of women so feckless and deadened that they apathetically breed like rabbits.
No mention was made that she advocated the compulsorily sterilization of the unfit, nor of her lobbying the British Prime Minister and the Parliament to pass the appropriate legislation.
No mention of the vituperative language she used to describe those whom she desired to see sterilized: hopelessly bad cases, bad through inherent disease, or drunkenness or character wastrels, the diseasedthe miserable [and] the criminaldegenerate, feeble minded and unbalancedparasites.
No mention is made of the bedrock tenets of the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, set up by Stopes to run her clinics: to furnish security from conception to those who are racially diseased, already overburdened with children, or in any specific way unfitted for parenthood.
No reasons were given as to why the doctor opposed her. Dr. Sutherland opposed Stopes because he opposed eugenics. His opposition began many years before, when he was nominally a Presbyterian and in practice an atheist.
No mention was made of the fact that Dr. Sutherland specialized in tuberculosis, an infective disease of poverty. This fact is key, because it brought him into direct conflict with eugenicists (more commonly known at the time as eugenists). Eugenists believed that susceptibility to tuberculosis was primarily an inherited condition, so their cure was to breed out the tuberculous types. While Sutherland and others were trying to prevent and cure tuberculosis, influential eugenists believed their efforts were a waste of time. Furthermore, these eugenists thought tuberculosis was a friend of the race because it was a natural check on the unfit, killing them before they could reproduce.
Of course, both the BBC biography and the press release are brief summaries and, as such, cannot include all of the details that I have outlined. But thats not the point. The point is that neither item properly summarizes the issues. The excision of Stopes eugenic agenda makes her a secular saint. How could anyone oppose her in good conscience?
And thats the question that brought me to where I am now. As a grandson of Dr. Sutherland, I often wondered why he opposed her, because I used to believe the fake version of this story myself. No onefamily or otherwisetold me differently. Following many hours of research, including the examination of Dr. Sutherlands personal papers, I now know a different version of events.
Halliday Gibson Sutherland was born in 1882, and was educated at Glasgow High School and Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh. He studied medicine at Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and he graduated in 1908. At that time, he came under the influence of Robert Philip, who pioneered modern anti-tuberculosis treatments.
Tuberculosis was responsible for one-ninth of the total death-rate in Britain at the time. Tuberculosis killed over 70,000 victims, and disabled at least 150,000 more each year. Given that the disease often killed the bread-winner of a family, it was the direct cause of one-eleventh of the pauperism in England and Wales, a charge on the State of one million sterling per annum, Sutherland wrote in 1911.
In 1910, Sutherland was appointed the Medical Officer for the St. Marylebone Dispensary for the Prevention of Tuberculosis. In 1911, he edited and contributed to a book on tuberculosis by international experts.
Sutherlands religious journey is pertinent to this story. He was baptized a Presbyterian. In August 1904, at the age of 22, he was in theory an agnostic and in practice an atheist, he would later write. Ten years later, there came the hazards of war, and for me the time had come when it was expedient to make my peace with God. At that point he was admitted to the Church of Scotland. He became a Catholic in 1919.
Also relevant to this story is the falling birth rate, and two groups which had strong views about population.
Britains birth rate increased from 1800 onwards. In 1876, it peaked at 36.3 per thousand, and began to fall. By the end of 1901 it had fallen 21 percent, and by nearly 34 percent by 1914.
Not everyone was worried about the fall in birth-rate; one group in particular, the Malthusians, welcomed the fall.
It was T.R. Malthus (1766-1834) who had observed: The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man.
He drew up his natural law, that when the population increased beyond subsistence, the resulting competition for resources would lead to conflict, famine, and disease. Sexual abstinence was the way to keep the population at manageable levels. In the period of the Stopes v. Sutherland libel trial, the term Neo-Malthusian was used to differentiate Malthusians who advocated the use of contraceptives instead of abstinence.
Another group keenly interested in population were the eugenists. The word eugenics was coined by Sir Francis Galton, cousin of the naturalist Charles Darwin. But while the word was new, the idea was not; G.K. Chesterton described it as one of the most ancient follies of the earth.
In the decades before the Stopes v. Sutherland libel trial, eugenists were concerned about the differential birth rate, so-called because the poor were producing more children than the rich. Given that British eugenists used social class as a proxy for a persons racial fitness, it was clear that the worst stocks would be the progenitors of Britains future population. For this reason, British eugenists fretted about degeneration and race suicide.
While there was rivalry between the Malthusian League and the Eugenics Education Society, and they differed strongly over the use of contraceptives, both groups agreed that in relation to population, quality mattered. The areas of overlap meant that some people were members of both the League and the Society. One such person was Marie Stopes.
The reader of this article might assume that doctors cure diseases; this, however, was not always a pressing concern for some influential minds in medicine and science at the beginning of the 20th century, particularly in relation to tuberculosis.
Sir James Barr, president of the British Medical Association (BMA), provides an excellent example of the attitude of many of those in the medical establishment of the time. At the BMAs annual conference in Liverpool in 1912, Barr was explicit that moral and physical degenerates should not be allowed to take any part in adding to the race. He then he turned his attention to tuberculosis:
If we could only abolish the tubercle bacillus in these islands we would get rid of tuberculous disease, but we should at the same time raise up a race peculiarly susceptible to this infectiona race of hothouse plants which would not flourish in any other environment. Nature, on the other hand, weeds out those who have not got the innate power of recovery from disease, and by means of the tubercle bacillus and other pathogenic organisms she frequently does this before the reproductive age, so that a check is put on the multiplication of idiots and the feeble-minded. Natures methods are thus of advantage to the race rather than to the individual.
Sutherlands opposition to this mindset and to eugenics can be traced to the article The Soil and the Seed in Tuberculosis, published in the British Medical Journal on November 23, 1912. In it, he recognised that doctors had traditionally believed in an inherited disposition to tuberculosis, and admitted that he had been one of them. Now he had changed his mind.
Sutherland again spoke out against eugenics on September 4, 1917, when he addressed the National Council of the YMCA. He rebutted the notion that consumption was hereditary, and he attacked the eugenists:
But why should you set out to prevent this infection and to cure the disease? There are some self-styled eugenistswho declaim that the prevention of disease is not in itself a good thing. They say the efficiency of the State is based upon what they call the survival of the fittest. [World War I] has smashed their rhetorical phrase. Who talks now about survival of the fittest, or thinks himself fit because he survives? I dont know what they mean. I do know that in preventing disease you are not preserving the weak, but conserving the strong.
His disagreement with eugenists, previously on medical and scientific grounds, was now on ethical and moral grounds as well.
In March 1918, Marie Stopes book Married Love was published, became a bestseller, and made her a celebrity. According to biographer June Rose:
Marie had written Married Love for women like herself, educated middle-class wives who had been left ignorant of the physical side of marriage. Her tone in her book and in the letters of advice sent to readers implied that they shared a community of interests and of income. She had no particular interest in the lower classes and in Wise Parenthood had written censoriously of the less thrifty and conscientious who bred rapidly and produced children weakened and handicapped by physical as well as mental warping and weakness. The lower classes were, she wrote in a letter to the Leicester Daily Post, often thriftless, illiterate and careless.
It was in her other books that the eugenic agenda was more clearly expressed. In Radiant Motherhood, she urged the compulsory sterilization of wastrels, the diseasedthe miserablethe criminal.
Stopes and her husband opened the Mothers Clinic in Marlborough Road, Holloway on March 17, 1921. She established the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress to run the clinic. She engaged eminent people as vice-presidents of her society, including Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, John Maynard Keynes, and Sir James Barr.
Birth Control
On July 7, 1921, Sutherland attended a talk at the Medico-Legal Society by Dr. Louise McIlroy, professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and first female professor at the Royal Free Hospital. In the discussion that followed her presentation, McIlroy addressed the negative physical effects of contraceptives. Sutherland, by this time a Catholic, wrote an article in which he observed that the medical profession now concurred with Catholic doctrine. The editor of The Month, in which the article appeared, suggested that he develop it into a book.
Sutherland wrote Birth Control: A Statement of Christian Doctrine Against the Neo-Malthusians. Despite the title, the book was very political and it described Malthusianism as an attack on the poor. It was a polemic for the fair treatment of the poor, and for an equitable structure in society to share the abundance of wealth. His conclusion foreshadows the demographic problems that developed nations face today:
The Catholic Church has never taught that an avalanche of children should be brought into the world regardless of the consequences. God is not mocked; as men sow, so shall they reap, and against a law of nature both the transient amelioration wrought by philanthropists and the subtle expediences of scientific politicians are alike futile. If our civilisation is to survive we must abandon those ideals that lead to decline.
In Birth Control, under the heading Exposing the Poor to Experiment, Sutherland wrote:
But, owing to their poverty, lack of learning, and helplessness, the poor are natural victims of those who seek to make experiments on their fellows. In the midst of a London slum a woman, who is a doctor of German philosophy (Munich), has opened a Birth Control Clinic, where working women are instructed in a method of contraception described by Professor McIlroy as the most harmful method of which I have had experience. When we remember that millions are being spent by the Ministry of Health and by Local Authoritieson pure milk for necessitous expectant and nursing mothers before and after childbirth, for the provision of skilled midwives, and on Infant Welfare Centresall for the single purpose of bringing healthy children into our midst, it is truly amazing this monstrous campaign of birth control should be tolerated by the Home Secretary.
Shortly after the book was published on March 27, 1922, Humphrey Roe, Stopes husband, wrote to Sutherland inviting him to publicly debate his wife. Sutherland did not respond to the letter, and a month later, he received a writ for libel.
Part II of this story will be published at CWR next week.
Read the original post:
The true story behind the Marie Stopes eugenics trial of 1923 - Catholic World Report
Im tempted to say, in response to Robert VerBruggens lament, that yes, thats Twitter for you, and this is one of many reasons why Im not on it. But Ithink there is more to say about the problem of eugenics than merely its immoral but not ineffective.
First of all, as Im sure VerBruggen would agree, not all efforts to improve the gene pool are immoral, and though we may disagree about exactly where the line is, we both surely agree that its laudableto get tested for Tay-Sachs before you marry, and we both surely agree that forced sterilization of undesirables is an abomination. For myself, Ive written about this before, and I stand by what I wrote then.
Second, we shouldprobably limit the word eugenics to collectiveprograms to improve the gene pool, and not apply the word to individual choices about who to have children with, because only collective programs can actually change the population as a whole. As such, its important to recognize that to breed for particular traits, you have to prevent elements within the population thatdont have those traits from breeding. For example, if you assume that intelligence is highly heritable, and wanted to increase the intelligence of the population, it wouldnt do to get smart people to marry other smart people. Youd have to get smart people tooutbreed less-smart people. I cant think of away to do this that is both ethical and plausible and most of the ways I can think of are neither.
Finally, while we know from extensive experience in selectively breeding animals and plants that such programs work, by work we meanthat weve maximizedparticular traits, abilities and behaviors. And in the course of doing so, you always get tradeoffs. The swift greyhound has chronic hip problems. The highly-trainable poodle is also prone to stress. The large-breasted chicken cant fly. And so forth.
There is no reason to doubt that the same would be true of humans, and that any serious attempt to breed people for particular traits even if undertaken on an entirely voluntary basis and involving no abortion or sterilizationor whatnot would have unexpected side effects. Perhaps breeding for ambitionwill result in lower empathy. Perhaps breeding for intelligence will result in greater incidence of anxiety anddepression. Perhaps breeding for greater athletic prowess will result in higher rates of marital infidelity and divorce. Who knows?
We dont and we cant ethically conduct the kinds of controlled experiments that would allow us to determine with high confidence that we had avoided unexpected side effects. That cautionholdsaswell for genetictherapies that are surely on the horizon. Fitness is only meaningfulrelative to a set of environmental conditions. Narrow the set of traits by which you definefitness and you have implicitly narrowed the set of environments within which an organism will prove fit. Which is not, generally, a good way for a species to maximize its survival prospects.
Im not arguing that people should blithely ignore genetic history or the science of inheritance more generally in matters like mate selection. (If I did, nobody would listen to me anyway.) But I am arguing both for humility and for a broad understanding of what constitutes fitness. Someone especially smart who says, I need to marry someone just as smart as I am so that ourchildren are likely to be similarly smart and hence similarly successful is not only running the risk of disappointment due to mean-reversion (which remainsa factor even when you stack the deck in your favor), but running the risk of having ignored other vital dimensions of the human personalityby reducing fitness to a narrow, measurable trait.
(Also, if you want a good marriage, you should probably marry someone who you love and desire, who is good for you and who you are good for, andwith whom you share certain core values and a robustability to communicate,rather than thinking of your spouse primarily as breeding stock. Not to mention not treating your children as pint-sizedsuccess machines. And staying off Twitter when your wife is in the next room with the OB/GYN. Just saying.)
Read the rest here:
Robert VerBruggen Is Not a Nazi, But Eugenics Isn't Rocket Science - The American Conservative
By Matthew McCaffrey*
Eugenics has haunted the social sciences for the better part of two centuries. Historically, as a social movement, its most ardent advocates were the progressives, while in economics its most famous champion was John Maynard Keynes. Recently, the history of the eugenics movement has been studied in detail in Thomas Leonards masterpiece, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era (you can read a review here, and Leonards own survey of the topic here). Yet although the rhetoric of public policy has changed since the heyday of eugenics a century ago, economic policies with eugenic implications persist almost unnoticed in the 21st century.
Its no surprise that Mises, an expert on the economics of socialism and interventionism, perceived the evils of this movement, especially its close connection with authoritarianism. In the early 1920s, for example, when Mises was beginning to outline his critique of socialist economic planning, he observed that total state control of the economy also requires control over reproduction:
Without coercive regulation of the growth of population, a socialist community is inconceivable. A socialist community must be in a position to prevent the size of the population from mounting above or falling below certain definite limits And since in it those motives, which in a society based on private ownership of the means of production harmonize the number of births with the limitations of the means of subsistence, would not exist, it will be obliged to regulate the matter itself. (1951, p. 198)
This regulation manifests as political rule of the private lives of citizens, against their own wishes:
He who would make man the material of a purposeful system of breeding and feeding would arrogate to himself despotic powers and would use his felIow citizens as means for the attainment of his own ends, which differ from those they themselves are aiming at. (1949, p. 244)
Historically, such total reproductive control was a feature of several socialist regimes, including China and Romania. Yet it was not the communists but the fascists who brought the logic of eugenics to its ultimate conclusion:
The Nazi plan was more comprehensive and therefore more pernicious than that of the Marxians. It aimed at abolishing laisser-faire not only in the production of material goods, but no less in the production of men. The Fhrer was not only the general manager of all industries; he was also the general manager of the breeding-farm intent upon rearing superior men and eliminating inferior stock. A grandiose scheme of eugenics was to be put into effect according to scientific principles.
It is vain for the champions of eugenics to protest that they did not mean what the Nazis executed. Eugenics aims at placing some men, backed by the police power, in complete control of human reproduction. It suggests that the methods applied to domestic animals be applied to men. This is precisely what the Nazis tried to do. The only objection which a consistent eugenist can raise is that his own plan differs from that of the Nazi scholars and that he wants to rear another type of men than the Nazis. As every supporter of economic planning aims at the execution of his own plan only, so every advocate of eugenic planning aims at the execution of his own plan and wants himself to act as the breeder of human stock. (1951, p. 581)
Race is a common theme in historical discussions of eugenics. Then as now, supporters of eugenics claim to rest their case on scientific results. As Mises puts it, The mass slaughters perpetrated in the Nazi horror camps are too horrible to be adequately described by words. But they were the logical and consistent application of doctrines and policies parading as applied science (1951, pp. 581-582). He repeatedly pointed out the failure of such pseudoscience to distinguish mental and moral characteristics based on race or social status (1944, pp. 170, 172;1951, p. 324;1957, p. 336).
Rather than science, eugenics is instead based on the unscientific values of eugenicists themselves, which inevitably imply the need to impose their plans on others:
Such judgments are reasonable if one looks at mankind with the eyes of a breeder intent upon raising a race of men equipped with certain qualities. But society is not a stud-farm operated for the production of a definite type of men. There is no natural standard to establish what is desirable and what is undesirable in the biological evolution of man. Any standard chosen is arbitrary, purely subjective The terms racial improvement and racial degeneration are meaningless when not based on definite plans for the future of mankind. (1949, p. 165)
In others words, central planning implies eugenics, and eugenics in turn is a kind of central planning. And like all central planning, it cannot ultimately succeed, but it can lead society to ruin by removing free choice and the free, innovative minds that go with it: It is impossible to rear geniuses by eugenics, to train them by schooling, or to organize their activities. But, of course, one can organize society in such a way that no room is left for pioneers and their path-breaking (1949, p. 140).
Of course, eugenics supporters also claim their plans will improve society by eliminating criminal or other undesirable elements, which they often associate with race and ethnicity. This too is an arbitrary and vain effort to improve the quality of humanity:
The eugenists pretend that they want to eliminate criminal individuals. But the qualification of a man as a criminal depends upon the prevailing laws of the country and varies with the change in social and political ideologies Whom do the eugenists want to eliminate, Brutus or Caesar? Both violated the laws of their country. If eighteenth-century eugenists had prevented alcohol addicts from generating children, their planning would have eliminated Beethoven. (1951, p. 581)
Today, policies are rarely labelled as eugenics-based. Nevertheless, eugenic effects are among the many terrible consequences of interventionist policies. The minimum wage is a useful example. Historically, it was a favorite policy of progressives, who freely admitted that its purpose was to prevent immigrants and other unemployables from competing in the job market, the better to manage their reproduction (Leonard, 2005, pp. 212-215). Even though today many of its advocates are unaware of this history, these laws still selectively victimize groups based on factors like race and ethnicity.
Importantly, eugenics is only one consequence of illiberal ideology. Throughout his career, Mises explained that other weapons of illiberalism, including racism, nationalism, protectionism, and war are all related, and mutually reinforce each other. Eugenics is simply one implication of these ideas, especially inasmuch as it fuels and results from economic intervention.
Given the implications for liberty and economy, its astonishing that anyone associated with the ideas of liberty could embrace eugenics, or treat eugenicists as legitimate scholars worthy of attention and debate. Its doublyunfortunate that there is a need to point out that eugenicists, racists, nationalists, and protectionists are no friends of Mises or his ideas, the liberal tradition, or the Austrian school.
About the author: *Matt McCaffrey is assistant professor of enterprise at the University of Manchester.
Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute
The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace. The liberal intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) guides us. Accordingly, the Mises Institute seeks a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order. The Mises Institute encourages critical historical research, and stands against political correctness.
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A panel of researchers from the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Medicine released a report last week indicating preliminary support for embryonic gene editing in cases of severe disease or disability.
This support for genome editing represents not only the potential alteration of human germlines, the genetic material we may pass on to our children, but also the crossing of an ethical line. Genetic selection, after all, has its own questionable historical lineage.
I believe germline editing is a eugenic process. From the Greek term for well-born, eugenics refers to the selection of heritable biological traits with the aim of producing ideal progeny.
Amid post-Darwinian theories of biological degeneracy in the 19th century, eugenics emerged as a scientifically backed effort to eliminate disability, mental illness and non-white races from the human gene pool through forced sterilization and other intrusive measures.
In the 20th-century United States, eugenic efforts consolidated into federally funded sterilization programs in 32 states, some of which endured well into the 1970s. Indiana, in fact, was the first in the world to enact compulsory eugenic sterilization legislation in 1907.
A notorious 1927 Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell upheld the constitutionality of sterilization laws in the case of Carrie Buck, a woman deemed feebleminded and unfit in Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes majority opinion.
It is essential to recognize that eugenic practices received overwhelming scientific, medical and governmental backing in the name of public health. Though the practice is now acknowledged as unethical, it was legally dismantled only about half a century ago.
Embryonic gene editing procedures are not on the same ethical level as forced sterilization, but the processes nonetheless share eugenic goals.
An underlying principle of eugenics is that society gets to decide which conditions should be eliminated from the human gene pool.
This determination involves a subjective value judgment in selecting which specific diseases or disabilities should not be permitted to exist.
The panels report does acknowledge the troubling relationship between eugenics and human germline editing. While the awareness of this history is crucial in considering the ethical principles at stake, it does not resolve the problem.
The report offers no concrete guidelines for assessing which conditions qualify as severe disease or disability, nor does it clarify whether this determination would be based on quantitative measures, like fatality rates, or other more subjective measures.
Research for treatments is a better investment of resources, and it enables progress toward less ethically questionable options.
The National Institutes of Health currently allocate no funding to gene editing in embryos and for good reason.
Fortunately, it will likely require several years before embryonic gene editing would be a viable option. In the meantime, its time to reassess the ethical heritage of the practice: eugenics.
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Those statues and portraits that embellish our high seats of learning enjoy them while you can. As Sir Francis Galton, one of the greatest polymaths in British history, is recast by some University College London activists as the inventor of racism, we must ask: is any famous figure safe from the campus commissars of moral rectitude?
Today, Galton is best known as the father of eugenics, to the neglect of his far broader range of contributions to knowledge of humankind. He is ridiculed for his doctrine that nothing is beyond understanding through the scientific method of objective, quantitative measurement. Yet this approach elevated the erstwhile philosophical musings of psychology and sociology to credible empirical disciplines.
The eponymous statistical tests of his disciple Karl Pearson remain essential tools of empirical research. Strongly influenced by the evolutionary theory of his cousin Charles Darwin, Galton was passionate about the possibilities of improving the human race by manipulating the laws of natural selection.
We must always consider the social context of scientists and their theories: in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, imperial Britain was embarrassed by the apparent decline in physique and social attributes among the working class. Army recruiting sergeants saw before them a pale shadow of the sturdy agricultural labourers of Wellingtons time: certainly the arduous industry of Coke Town produced men of muscle, but others were gaunt weaklings or hapless dullards. Impoverished conditions were seen not as cause but effect.
The consensus of the fin-de-sicle intelligentsia was that something needed to be done. With higher birth rates in the lowest strata, the elite feared its decay, and subversion of biological laws by survival of the weakest. Eugenics, a term coined by Galton, was the scientific pursuit of improving the human stock. Among membership of the Eugenics Society were John Maynard Keynes, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Cyril Burt, Julian Huxley and most of British psychiatry.
Christians accused eugenicists of playing God, but there were also Anglican supporters.
Galton is vilified by UCL activists for his views of racial inferiorities. However, authoritative biographer Nicholas Wright Gillham is in no doubt that he would have been appalled by distortions of hereditary theory long after his death. Meanwhile, many other celebrated scientific, political and cultural names are untarnished by their support for the cause. Marie Stopes, a perennial role model on the BBC Radio series Womans Hour, urged sterilisation of the poor, yet this escapes the notice of leftward leaning liberals.
The chattering class, on its high moral ground, should be reminded that eugenics has never gone away: the brutally enforced one-child policy in China, and in the West abortion for a lengthening list of undesirable conditions such as Downs syndrome and cleft palate. Do the students who castigate Galton oppose genetic design, or assisted suicide?
People of the past were not perfect, and they cannot keep up with the whims of contemporary ideology. The lecture theatre named after Galton at UCL, his laboratory and bust, honour his seminal achievements. It would be intellectual and cultural vandalism to remove his name, but sadly this is part of a broader trend in universities.
Many scholars will be well aware of the censorial and airbrushing tendencies of radical students, and administrators often appear spineless in defending their greatest alumni. We expect students to be idealists and to challenge the status quo, but if their zeal for an unblemished gallery is appeased, universities will be left with only the bland and the boring.
Revisionism is manipulation of history to suit present sensitivities. If honourable men and women are to be punished for any utterance or belief at odds with modern norms, we will live perpetually in year zero.
Niall McCrae is a lecturer at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at Kings College London. Roger Watson is professor of nursing at the University of Hull.
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Trump campaignIn an essay that makes Meryl Streep look like an astute political commentator, The New Republic's social media editor, Sarah Jones, claims "Trump Has Turned the GOP Into the Party of Eugenics." Well, not literally, Jones concedes in the sixth paragraph. Or at all, it turns out, once you've waded through all 2,300 words of increasingly desperate argumentation.
At first it seems Jones wants to prove that Trump believes in eugenics, which she defines as "the idea that the human race could improve itself through selective breedingthrough propagating good traits and quarantining the bad ones." Jones notes that Trump once told Oprah Winfrey, "You have to be born lucky, in the sense that you have to have the right genes." And according to one biographer, the Trumps "believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring."
In case you are not yet convinced that Trump is eager to push a program of government-sponsored genetic improvement, Jones adds that anonymous sources interviewed by The New York Times said Steve Bannon, the president's chief strategist, "occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners." Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general, "praised the Immigration Act of 1924 in a 2015 interview with Bannon," and Trump adviser Michael Anton has written (under a pseudonym) that Charles Lindbergh's America First Committee was "unfairly maligned."
That's pretty much it, which is why Jones ends up switching her focus from Trump to the Republican Party and from eugenics to "the party's agenda," which "in many ways channels the spirit of eugenics, even if it does not accept the theory in a literal sense." Hence the article's subhead, which contradicts the headline by suggesting that eugenics was not introduced to the GOP by Trump but has "always been embedded in the Republican platform."
How so? Republicans oppose Obamacare, like capitalism, talk about welfare reform, and support school choice, which according to Jones makes them eugenicists in spirit.
Jones omits a major target of anti-Republican rants: the GOP's pro-life stance, which is inconvenient for her argument because it entails rejecting tools favored by coercive eugenicists: abortion, euthanasia, and sterilization. She also conspicuously ignores the intimate relationship between eugenics and progressivism. It was progressive icon Oliver Wendell Holmes, after all, who declared that "three generations of imbeciles are enough" in Buck v. Bell, the 1927 Supreme Court decision upholding Virginia's forced sterilization of "mental defectives" (a decision that was joined by progressive luminary Louis Brandeis). Jones quotes a book about that case in her second paragraph but shows no interest in the ideological roots of the policy Holmes endorsed. She is so intent on exposing metaphorical eugenicists that she overlooks the political philosophy of actual eugenicists.
Jones's article is an excellent example for progressives who want to alienate allies while discrediting criticism of Trump. She manages to exaggerate the odiousness of the president's views even while conflating them with those of mainstream Republicans, turning what should be a discussion of Trumpism's peculiar dangers into a familiar attack on cruel privatizers and budget cutters. If this is what the anti-Trump movement is all about, you can count me out.
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TNR Editor: Trump 'Turned the GOP Into the Party of Eugenics,' Which It Always Was - Reason (blog)
ROME Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge on Monday said that theres a link between abortion and child abuse, and a Church which has been strong in defense of the unborn has to be no less strong in defending the young and vulnerable whenever and wherever.
The same, he added, is true for the state.
Coleridge delivered his comments on a video that was shared on his dioceses website, Brisbane. Hes currently one of several bishops of the Catholic Church who are participating in the final hearings by theAustralian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.
Last week during a pro-life rally, Coleridge was asked by a journalist to weigh in on Queenslands ongoing debate about decriminalizing abortion. Under the current code, both the woman seeking an abortion and the doctor providing the procedure can be criminally prosecuted, unless its performed to prevent serious danger to the womans physical or mental health.
During the interview, as he says in his post, the archbishop was asked about new technologies that can detect disabilities and also gender-based abortion.
I couldnt disagree with what he was saying, because eugenics is part of the complexity surrounding abortion, Coleridge said. The journalist mentioned the eugenics of Nazi Germany, and again I couldnt deny the historical fact.
Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, a pro-abortion rights Catholic, responded through Facebook, saying that shes a Catholic but also a woman, and she simply disagree[s] with the Churchs views on a womans right to choose.
Its also sad that we have reached a new low in this debate when women who have abortions are compared to Nazis, Trad wrote.
That, according to Coleridge, wasnt the point of what he had said, but instead the fact that the proposed legislation in Queensland can open the door to the kind of eugenics weve seen before and are seeing in other parts of the world now.
It has to do with law and policy, not the individual women who decide to have an abortion, he said.
Coleridge, or the Catholic Church for that matter, is far from being the first to raise the risks of genetics-based abortion.
For instance, in late January, Lord Kevin Shinkwin, a member of the United Kingdoms Parliament, gave a speech that has gone viral in many circles, in which he said: I can see from the trends in abortion on grounds of disability that the writing is on the wall for people like me.
Shinkwin, who is disabled, moved on to say that people with congenital disabilities are facing extinction.
If we were animals, perhaps we might qualify for protection as an endangered species, he said. But we are only human beings with disabilities, so we do not.
Coleridge also addressed Trads comment regarding the Churchs views on a womans right to choose, saying that this is slippery language, making him or the institution seem anti-woman, which is a common stereotype.
However, he argued, the Churchs position is genuinely pro-woman. Women are damaged by abortion, which is a short-term solution leading often to long-term trouble.
Then theres also the fact that many women choose to have an abortion because they either feel or are made to feel like they have no choice, and no other choices are presented to them.
To speak of a womans right to choose prompts other questions about rights: What of the rights of unborn children, or do they have no rights, no real human status? What of the rights of the spouse or partner of the woman considering an abortion? What of the rights of society to a guarantee of the right to life as the foundation on which all other rights are built? What of the rights of conscience?
In his interview, the archbishop also spoke about the contradiction of a government that strongly opposes domestic violence but favors a greater access to abortion, which according to Church teaching, as well as much scientific research in embryonics, means terminating a human life.
According to The Daily Telegraph, on Monday Trad went after Coleridge again, saying that she would have thought there was probably more importance in focusing on the outcomes of the findings of the Royal Commission into Child Abuse and the role the Catholic Church has played in that rather than the legislation before the Queensland Parliament, which prompted his response.
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Aussie archbishop warns that abortion can lead to eugenics - Crux: Covering all things Catholic
Abortion technically is illegal and carries criminal charges in parts of the Land Down Under even though the law is not enforced. However, Queensland is considering decriminalizing abortion in upcoming State Parliamentary proceedings in March, and Brisbanes archbishop has received tremendous criticism for comparing the move to the Nazi eugenics programs, RT News reported.
The classic term for it is eugenics, Archbishop Mark Coleridge told the Courier Mail. It is the kind of thing that went on in Nazi Germany.
The archbishop elaborated on his fears that women would abort their unborn babies based on gender, citing the atrocities of Chinas One Child Policy, or based on womens fears of the natural weight gain associated with pregnancy. This could be a reference to a story Pope Francis recently told about a woman who aborted her baby to preserve her figure.
We know this is happening in China. There are even women having abortions because they are worried about their figure. At that point you have a culture in trouble, Archbishop Coleridge stated. I think a government that is very strongly opposed to domestic violence but strongly in favor of greater access to abortion has a kind of a contradiction at its heart. Its a contradiction and probably is hypocrisy.
The Queensland Crimes Code of 1899 currently bans abortion. There are exceptions to prevent serious danger to the womans physical or mental health, RT News states. The proposed legislation, to be voted on March 1, would not only decriminalize abortion but also create buffer zones surrounding abortion centers and permit abortions post-24 weeks should two doctors agree upon endangerment of the mothers physical or mental health.
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Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, a Catholic who said she simply disagrees with church doctrine on the sanctity of life, told the RT Times: With all due respect to Archbishop Coleridge, I dont need counseling about my position on abortion. I have been pro-choice all my adult life.
Its also sad that we have reached a new low in this debate when women who have abortions are compared to Nazis, Trad elaborated. I would have thought the Archbishop had more important things to focus on, like the [Royal Commissions] inquiry into institutional [child sex] abuse and the findings that are coming out of that inquiry than what is before the Queensland Parliament, Trad told the Brisbane Times.
The Archbishop has since apologized for the comments comparing abortion to the Nazi eugenics programs, the Courier Mail reported. However, he also stated: For her [Trad] it may be more a political judgment than a moral judgment. But I have a problem when political judgment and moral judgment part company.
According to the International Business Times, the archbishops apology also included the following sentiments: Women are damaged by abortion, which is a short term solution often leading to long term trouble. To speak of a womans right to choose prompts other questions about rights. What are the rights of unborn children? Or do they have no rights no real human status?
In a letter sent to Queensland State Parliament, the archbishop criticized the legislation, saying it does not protect womens health and it would lead to the destruction of innocent, vulnerable babies in the womb.
For most medical procedures, one needs to indicate that there is a medical reason for undertaking the procedure, the archbishop wrote. The Bill being considered makes no such provision. Indeed it treats abortion as a trivial procedure.
He continued:
As well as in the Criminal Code, in Queensland the law on abortion is governed by legal precedent: the decision in R v. Bayliss and Cullen in 1986. While that decision allowed for abortion in certain restricted circumstances. Justice McGuire stated: The law in this State has not abdicated its responsibility as guardian of the silent innocence of the unborn. It should rightly use its authority to see that a mentality of abortion on whim or caprice, does not insidiously filter into our society. There is no legal justification for abortion on demand.
It is sometimes suggested that times have moved on and community expectations are different. But this would not seem to be the case. It is true that the majority of the population believe that women should have access to abortion, but it is also true that there is preference for women to have real and immediate access to alternatives to abortion. Furthermore it would appear that even among those who support abortion in principle, many do not support it other than for medical reasons.
A recent Galaxy Poll in Queensland found that 72 per cent of Queenslanders were opposed to abortion after three months.
Original post:
Catholic Bishop: Killing Babies in Abortion is "Eugenics" Like "What ... - LifeNews.com
Rebecca Ayers | Published 11 hours ago
A newly released documentary centers around the efforts of Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., to pass legislation to compensate victims ofNorth Carolina's forced sterilization program, which lasted until 1974.
"The State of Eugenics," directed by Dawn Sinclair Shapiro, tells the stories of individuals sterilized as part of the program which sterilized over 7,600 women, men and children.
In 2013, when Tillis was speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, theNorth Carolina budget set aside $10 million of the state budget for the compensation of sterilized victims.
Elaine Riddick, who is featured in the film, wasunknowingly sterilized after her son's birth in North Carolina at age 14 and isnow executive director of the Rebecca Project for Justice, a national advocate for women's health and safety. She had her first child as the result of a sexual assault and was deemed "feeble-minded" and "promiscuous" by the N.C. Eugenics Board.
It took me a long time to realize that I didn't do anything wrong that I am not feeble-minded, she said. This is something that a white supremacist government did to me.
Riddick said she was 19years old when she discovered she was sterilized,and she was frustrated with the time it took for the state to recognize their offense.
I wanted the world to know that they took something away from me," she said."I started opening up my mouth about what was going on in North Carolina, and it took over 40 years for North Carolina and Virginia to bring justice for what they had done to victims."
Johanna Schoen, a historyprofessorat Rutgersfeatured in the documentary for her expertise on the subject, said compensation is controversial and rarely occurs.
I think states are worried about the public relations aspect if they compensate one group, then other groups will try to be compensated," Schoen said.
In 1927 the U.S. Supreme Courts Buck v. Bell decision affirmed the constitutionality of eugenics programs. Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.wrote at the time, three generations of imbeciles isenough. The decision has yet to be overturned.
The demographics of individuals targeted to receive sterilizationprocedures changed over time, but they were often in thelowest socioeconomic classes, said Anna Krome-Lukens, a lecturer in the publicpolicy and history departmentsat UNC.
Our programs were born in the era of Jim Crow and absolutely reflected ideas about white superiority and racial purity and so on, she said. A sort of interesting byproduct of that is for the first roughly 20 years of the programs, it was actually white women who were sterilized more than black women, and then in the 1950s that shifted.
While the documentary featured a powerful story, Schoen said it ignored that while Tillis fought for the compensation of sterilization victims, he also advocated for reduced access to abortion in the state.
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Documentary tells stories of NC eugenics program - The Daily Tar Heel
BRISBANE, Australia (ChurchMilitant.com) - Archbishop Mark Coleridge is asserting the decriminalization of abortion in Australia will lead to a culture of eugenics.
The archbishop spoke duringMarch for Life Brisbaneon February 11. The event hoped to create opposition for the upcoming decriminalization of abortion vote in the state of Queensland.
Under the current code, both the woman seeking an abortion and the abortionist providing the procedure can be put in jail. The proposed law, called Abortion Law Reform (Woman's Right to Choose) Amendment Act 2016, would remove certain sections of the Criminal Code which would, in fact, allow the procedure with no legal repercussion.
He commented that if abortion is struck from the Criminal Code, the value of life will degenerate and women will use abortion for the sake of convenience. He conveyed that abortion would then be used to kill disabled babies, calling it "eugenics." He said, "It is the kind of thing that went on in Nazi Germany."
He noted the use of abortion in China for population control and pointed out a new trend among Chinese women "having abortions because they are worried about their figure." He added, "At that point you have a culture in trouble."
The archbishop went on to say, "I think a government that is very strongly opposed to domestic violence but strongly in favor of greater access to abortion has a kind of a contradiction at its heart." He added, "It's a contradiction and probably is hypocrisy."
Two Queensland politicians, Labor Premier Annastacia Palazczuk and Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, are vocal advocates of the legislation and claim to be Catholic.
Coleridge said of them, "Whether they are both Catholic in name, I am not in a position to judge. But it would seem to me that to be a protagonist to this type of legislation is very hard to reconcile with anything that resembles true Catholic faith."
Trad and Palazczuk met with the archbishop on February 12 with the archibishop offering he to "counsel" them. They refused, and Trad commented on Facebook:
She commented the following day at a press conference, "I don't need counselling about my position on abortion. I have been pro-choice all my adult life." She continued, "I am a Catholic, but I'm also a woman, and I simply disagree with the Church's views on a woman's right to choose." She added, "It's also sad that we have reached a new low in this debate when women who have abortions are compared to Nazis."
The bill will be voted on by parliament sometime in March.
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Australian Bishop Draws Comparison Between Abortion and Nazi ... - Church Militant
Brisbanes Archbishop Mark Coleridge has compared Queenslands proposed decriminalization of abortion to Nazi Germanys eugenics program. The priest is facing backlash over his comments from politicians pushing for reform.
The Catholic bishop drew comparisons to both China and Nazi Germany in his statements which described his fears that the proposed legislation would decriminalize late-term abortions.
The classic term for it is eugenics, he told the Courier Mail, referring to his fear that women would terminate fetuses with a disability. It is the kind of thing that went on in Nazi Germany.
READ MORE:Trump White House endorses anti-abortion march
Coleridge was concerned women could choose to end their pregnancies if they dont get the gender they desire, citing China where the government previously imposed a one child limit on parents, with many placing more value on a male fetus. The policy was phased out in 2015.
He also stated concerns that women worried about their figure would choose to get abortions, claiming that women use abortions to avoid gaining weight.
We know this is happening in China, he said. There are even women having abortions because they are worried about their figure. At that point you have a culture in trouble.
In Queensland, abortion is a crime and can only be carried out to prevent serious danger to the womans physical or mental health.
READ MORE:New Arkansas law allows rapists to sue victims seeking abortion
Proposals put forward by Cairns MP Rob Pyne aim to remove abortion from the states criminal code, and to set limits for when abortions can be carried out, as well as creating protected areas around abortion facilities.
One of the bills says a woman can have an abortion after 24 weeks only if two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would be too physically or mentally dangerous to the patient.
Coleridge also criticized fellow Catholics Labor premier Annastacia Palazczuk and deputy premier Jackie Trad, who have supported the proposal.
I think a government that is very strongly opposed to domestic violence but strongly in favor of greater access to abortion has a kind of a contradiction at its heart, he claimed. Its a contradiction and probably is hypocrisy.
Trad responded to the Archbishops criticism. With all due respect to Archbishop Coleridge, I dont need counselling about my position on abortion. I have been pro-choice all my adult life, she wrote.
She explained that although she is a Catholic, she simply disagrees with the Churchs views on a womans right to choose.
Its also sad that we have reached a new low in this debate when women who have abortions are compared to Nazis, she added.
Here is the original post:
Catholic Archbishop compares abortion to Nazi eugenics program - RT
A chara, Juliana Adelmans article on the dark history of the eugenics movement is very welcome (Social agendas dressed up as science, February 9th). Great credit to the author is due for her reference to the strong links between eugenics proponents and the the birth control movement and its leaders in the US and Britain. These leaders included Margaret Sanger, a pioneer of Planned Parenthood in the US, and Marie Stopes in the UK. The legacy of both of these leaders includes two of the largest abortion providers in the US and UK.
Perhaps the most chilling reminder of the eugenic philosophy today is the systematic elimination through abortion of Down syndrome babies in such countries as Denmark and Sweden, with government programmes promising to reduce the incidence of Down syndrome to zero in the next 10 years. The dark shadow of eugenics closer to home is the fact that, according to UK NHS records, over 90 per cent of babies in the womb identified with Down syndrome are aborted. Yours, etc,
RAYMOND McINTYRE,
Mullingar,
Co Westmeath.
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In 11 pages, the cautionary tale about arrogant scientists tampering with divine design covers Eden, Hitler, mutants, immortality, and the most radical ideology in history.
More than a decade before Stephen K. Bannon became one of President Donald Trumps closest White House aides, he tried to make an epic documentary-style film about the eugenics movement, Adolf Hitler, blood purity, abortion, contraception, Darwinism, mutants, and cloning. According to his longtime Hollywood writing partner, Bannon even met with controversial Oscar winner Mel Gibson in his effort to get the picture made.
The 11-page outline for Bannons unmade movie, a copy of which was reviewed by The Daily Beast, was written in the spring of 2005 and bears the ominous title The Singularity: Resistance Is Futile. (The projects alternate working title: The Harvest of the Damned.)
The document, which credits Bannon as a writer, producer, and director, divides the movie into 22 segments spread across four sections. A heady, incomplete mix of science, history, religion, and politics, it sketches out a story in which mankinds unquenchable thirst for knowledge and scientific advancement has led to horrific, fascist atrocities and forced sterilization, drawing a direct line between those atrocities and modern bio-technology.
The draft is unfinished, so it is unclear precisely what Bannon's full message and story arc were intended to be. But the theme that genetic and reproductive sciences has led to Nazi horrors and war crimes is a theme seen in a lot of conservative agitprop.
Essentially, Bannons is a Christian right-friendly story of arrogant scientists trying to perfect the human race at the expense of the natural order and Gods vision of humanity.
The acceleration of technological progress is the central feature of the 20th /21st century, the chapter titled The Religion of Technology begins. We are on the edge of change brought about by Mans ability to create Man, the toolmaker, is on the verge of creating greater-than-human intelligence.
The Tree of Knowledgethe garden of the new Eden, fruit of the forbidden tree: clones, mutants, and designer humans, the segment continued.
Subsequent segments riff on the Enlightenment, Christianity, English literature, physics, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and incomprehensible social change, to name a few of the big subjects that piqued Bannons cinematic interest.
[The] most radical ideology in historyMan as the driver of evolution, the creator of the new Adam, Bannons draft reads.
Later, Segment 8 covers in four minutes subjugation of race and class throughout time, including Native Americans, Jews and gypsies, Sunis and Shiites (sic), and also the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia.
The next four minutes cover Darwin, Nietzsche, Wagner, the survival of the fittest, the Ubermensch, and the Aryan Elite.
And things keep getting darker. Segment 12 opens Section III, The Commercial Eugenics Civilization, with two minutes covering Nazi theories and practices of racial purity, and the perfectibility of life through a human-controlled elite race that will bring about a better world.
From there, its a deep dive into Anglo-Saxons and the Aryans, which includes a bullet point on the American Eugenics Movement: Sanger, Rockefellers, Harrimans, abortion, contraception.
That in turn segues into sections on German nationalism and Hitlers fan letter to eugenicist Madison Grant, and how Nazi doctors, gas chambers, and death camps were influenced by American eugenics, including sterilization law in California.
Bannons draft soon leaves behind the Nazi bloodbath and Holocaust to examine Yuppie Science and Bio-technology as big business: Irving Weismann, Hans Kiersted, Ray Kurzweil, Karen Bernstein, Biomark, Amgen, and the darlings of Wall Street.
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The new age super-powers are identified as China, Singapore, Korea, and Japan, and Walt Disney and Ted Williams are categorized as part of the frozen elite.
In its penultimate segment, the film examines post-humanity, the Fountain of Youth, and The New Immortalswho are living happily ever-after, apparently thanks in part to spare body parts for sale. Thats followed by a CODA described only as THE SINGULARITY, and a final four-minute segment, described only as NOVUS ORDO SECULORUMa slight variant of the Latin motto that translates to New Order of the Ages and appears just below the pyramid with an eye on the back of our one-dollar bills.
Bannon did not respond to requests for an interview on this story.
Julia JonesBannons longtime Hollywood writing partner and former close friend who had a falling out with Bannon over his prominent role in Trumps campaign, which disgusted heris credited as Bannons co-writer on The Singularity. When reached by The Daily Beast this week, Jones confirmed that this was an unfinished project the two had worked on together back in the Bush years but said she did not remember contents of the outline.
This was the first thing Steve wanted to do after [our Ronald Reagan movie] In the Face of Evilbut nothing ever came of it, she recalled. I was very involved in researching it.
Jones said she did extensive research for this would-be movie, which included drawing inspirations from books like Edwin Blacks War Against the Weak.
Jones also said Bannon talked about how he was securing financing for the film from at least one Hollywood big name. Jones recalled at least two occasions over the four months that they worked on the film when Bannon said we were getting the money from Mel Gibson, the famous Lethal Weapon star and director of Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ.
At one point, Steve came [into the office] and said he met with MelWere gonna do a cloning documentary with Mel Gibson, he told me, Jones said.
Another source close to Bannon during his days as a conservative filmmaker in Hollywood who asked not to be named due to fear of retribution also told The Daily Beast about hearing Bannon boast about meeting with Gibson for The Singularity.
Yup, he certainly enjoyed name-dropping Gibson, the former Bannon associate said.
There was a time when Bannon was tight with people in close-knit circles of conservative Hollywood, and that included some people who had worked with Gibson. Jim Caviezel, for instance, was a huge fan of Bannons pro-Reagan propaganda doc, and Caviezel would even host exclusive parties with Bannon to promote the film at a mansion in Santa Barbara. (Caviezel played Jesus Christ in Gibsons The Passion of the Christ, the 2004 blockbuster drama dogged by charges of blatant anti-Semitism.)
Bannon and Gibson also overlapped politically, as they were both part of the more outspoken Christian Hollywood right.
Steve was such a good Catholiche didnt approve of abortion, Jones said. Im pro-choice but anti-abortionwe had the anti-abortion part in common.
When reached for comment about Bannons reported claims that he had met with Gibson for the project, Gibsons publicist Alan Nierob quickly and tersely denied it, replying, Fake news is my comment.
Before Bannon headed Breitbart and then became one of the most powerful people in the world via the Trump administration, he operated in the Democratic bastion of liberal Hollywood as a right-wing filmmaker influenced by the filmmaking of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. Some of his projects became films, others did not.
Last week, The Washington Post published excerpts from his draft for a movie that warned about how Muslim extremists could try to turn the U.S. into the Islamic States of America. The document also blamed the American Jewish Community as being one of the enablers of this supposed threat.
As The Daily Beast reported last year, Bannons other unproduced film projects included a script about the Rwandan genocide, a Shakespearean hip-hop musical about the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and an adaptation of Titus Andronicus that was set on the moon with creatures from outer space.
Today, he sits at the height of executive power.
The film producer Stephen K. Bannon isnt just on a crusade. Hes on a roll, The New York Times wrote of Bannon in June 2005, in a piece on conservatives working in the movie industry.
The paper might as well have been writing about him now.
Read the original:
Steve Bannon Wanted Mel Gibson for His Movie About Nazis, Abortion, 'Mutants' - Daily Beast
"Superior ability breeds superior ambition."
The Eugenics Wars (or the Great Wars) were a series of conflicts fought on Earth between 1992 and 1996. The result of a scientific attempt to improve the Human race through selective breeding and genetic engineering, the wars devastated parts of Earth, by some estimates officially causing some thirty million deaths, and nearly plunging the planet into a new Dark Age. (TOS: "Space Seed"; ENT: "Borderland")
The script of "Borderland" stated forthrightly, "The Eugenics Wars are a dark subject."
Records from this period are fragmented, but what is known is that the wars' roots lie in a group of Human scientists' ambitious attempt to improve the race through selective breeding and genetic engineering. They created a race of "supermen," popularly known as the Augments, who were mentally and physically superior to ordinary men and women. They were five times stronger than the average person, their lung efficiency was fifty percent better than normal, and their intelligence was double that of normal Humans. They also had enhanced senses, including an ability to hear beyond that of Human capabilities. (TOS: "Space Seed"; ENT: "Borderland", "Cold Station 12")
The Augments were created by the scientists in the 1950s cold war era in the hopes that they would lead Humanity into an era of peace in a world that had only known war. (Star Trek Into Darkness) One aspect these scientists overlooked was the personality of the Augments. Along with their superior abilities, the Augments were aggressive and arrogant, flaws which the scientists were unable to correct at the time due to the infancy of the science. One of the Augments' creators realized this, writing that "superior ability breeds superior ambition." That same scientist was ultimately killed by one of his own creations. (TOS: "Space Seed"; ENT: "Cold Station 12", "The Augments")
Khan Noonien Singh in the 1990s
The Augments rose to power and held dominance over a large portion of Humanity, beginning in the early 1990s. Among the most notorious of these superhuman conquerors was Khan Noonien Singh, who in 1992 became the "absolute ruler" of more than a quarter of the planet, from Asia through the Middle East. (TOS: "Space Seed")
The following year, a group of fellow "supermen" followed in Khan's footsteps, and simultaneously seized power in over forty nations. Some people were treated as little more than slaves by the Augments. Khan considered himself a prince "with power over millions," and unlike some other nations ruled by Augments, under his rule there were no massacres and no wars of aggression until he was attacked; he was thus among the most admired of the so-called "tyrants" into the 23rd century, being called the "best of the tyrants" by James T. Kirk. (TOS: "Space Seed"; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; ENT: "Borderland")
Reports as to exactly how the wars began vary; some claim that Humanity rose up against Khan and his fellow "supermen," while others believe the Augments began to fight among themselves. Regardless of how they began, or who started them, the Eugenics Wars had a devastating impact on Earth, as entire populations were bombed out of existence. (ENT: "Cold Station 12"; TOS: "Space Seed")
Among the areas affected by the wars was North Africa. One conflict that occurred there involved a battalion of soldiers that included the great-grandfather of future Starfleet Captain Jonathan Archer. In this encounter, Archer's great-grandfather was able to convince the commander of his enemy's forces to hold their fire long enough to evacuate a school that was directly between them. Some or all parts of that account may be non-factual as Archer was evidently in an altered state of mind around the time he disclosed it. (ENT: "Hatchery")
The Augments were eventually defeated by Humans who were not genetically enhanced. Khan was the last of the tyrants to be overthrown, in 1996. Khan and over eighty of the "supermen" were condemned to die as war criminals. They however went unaccounted for, a fact the governments of the time did not disclose to the public in order to prevent panic. Rumors were later on confirmed in the 23rd century that Khan and 84 of his followers had managed to flee the planet unattended aboard an early sleeper ship, the SS Botany Bay. (TOS: "Space Seed"; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; Star Trek Into Darkness)
The official number of casualties from the wars was placed at thirty million, although some historians believe it to be closer to 35 million, with another figure established as being 37 million. Although the wars may have ended, Humanity's fear of genetically-engineered beings remained well into the 24th century. (ENT: "Cold Station 12"; TOS: "Bread and Circuses"; DS9: "Doctor Bashir, I Presume")
Following the wars, controversial debates ensued between Earth's governments regarding the fate of thousands of Augment embryos. Uncertain of how to handle the issue, the governments opted to have the embryos placed into cryogenic suspension. This fact was also kept from public knowledge. The issue of genetic manipulation and Human genome enhancement continued to plague Earth well into the 21st century, proving to be one of the causes of World War III in 2026. In the 23rd century, the Eugenics Wars themselves were sometimes viewed as synonymous with the Third World War. (ENT: "Borderland", "Cold Station 12", "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II" historical archive; TOS: "Space Seed")
As both conflicts were fought over the issue of genetic manipulation, this suggests the Eugenics Wars were regarded as the initial cause and prelude for the Third World War, much like how the Second World War is often seen as a result of the First.
Doctor Keniclius
Soong and the Augment embryos
Genetic engineering of Humans was ultimately banned on Earth, as the concept was considered anti-Humanistic by Earth leaders. As a result of this, Doctor Stavos Keniclius was exiled from his community, which eventually led him to depart Earth permanently. The ban was placed primarily as an attempt to prevent another event like the Eugenics Wars, and to ensure that Humanity did not endure the wrath of another Khan Noonien Singh-type tyrant. (TAS: "The Infinite Vulcan"; DS9: "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", "Statistical Probabilities")
The ban on genetic engineering was challenged by the geneticist Arik Soong in the 2130s, when he stole some of the Augment embryos left over from the wars which were being stored at Cold Station 12. Soong believed that genetic engineering was the key to improving Humankind and preventing illness, and that it should be given another chance. By raising the Augments himself, Soong believed he could prevent them from behaving like their brethren from the Eugenics Wars. His plan failed as the aggressive nature of the Augments dominated, and they threatened to incite war and cause mass murder. Starfleet's mission to hunt down and capture the renegade "supermen" ultimately led to the destruction of the Augments, as well as most of the embryos. (ENT: "Borderland", "Cold Station 12", "The Augments")
Not all of the embryos were destroyed, though. Some found their way into the hands of Klingons who, believing Humans were improving themselves in order to conquer the Klingon Empire, attempted to use the DNA from the embryos to enhance themselves. The end result was a mutation of a highly-contagious virus that caused massive changes in physical appearance, biological structure, and even basic personality traits of large portions of the Klingon race. (ENT: "Affliction", "Divergence")
Both "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan give the dating of the Eugenics Wars as the 1990s. At one point during that decade in reality, Ronald D. Moore and Ren Echevarria had a discussion in which they observed it as odd that the Eugenics Wars seemed to basically be the only evidence of genetic engineering in Star Trek. "It's virtually never discussed, aside from the fact that there was this thing called the Eugenics Wars at some point, and Khan came out of it," stated Moore. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 431) Consequently, while writing DS9 Season 5 installment "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", Moore focused on the idea that the Eugenics Wars had motivated the Federation into deciding not to meddle with genetic engineering. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, Nos. 6/7, p. 49)
In contrast to the Eugenics Wars having previously been established as taking place in the 1990s, "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", set in 2373, references the Eugenics Wars as having occurred two centuries prior to the episode, placing the Wars in the late 22nd century. As Ronald D. Moore later admitted, this statement was a production error, a line he had taken from The Wrath of Khan, but he had accidentally forgotten to account for the episode being set a century later than the film. (AOL chat, 1997) Confessed Moore, "It was simply a mistake. The date of the Eugenics Wars is something that we have been studiously trying not to pin ourselves down about, because obviously they aren't happening around as we speak [....] What looked like the distant future in 1967 is not so distant any more. I don't blame them for not having the foresight to see that in 30 years this would become important in the series." A production staffer from Star Trek: Voyager suggested the date had deliberately been changed on DS9 to account for the Eugenics Wars having not been mentioned in the "Future's End" two-parter. Moore flatly rejected that theory and responded, "We never talked to Voyager about it." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, Nos. 6/7, p. 50)
The original dating of the Eugenics Wars was reaffirmed by Phlox stating in "Borderland" that Arik Soong's Augments were pretty sophisticated for 20th century genetics. Phlox later mentions to the Klingons that genetic engineering on Earth was "banned decades ago," suggesting that the ban was not necessarily adopted by Humans immediately after the Eugenics Wars.
Manny Coto was a fan of this series of conflicts. "I was always fascinated by this idea of this Eugenics Wars," he commented. "I love the backstory of that story. I just found that just compelling, the idea that it was instigated by these genetically superior individuals." ("Inside the Roddenberry Vault, Part I", Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault special features)
In "Space Seed", Spock describes the Eugenics Wars as "the era of your last so-called world war," suggesting this conflict could be World War III. In TOS: "Bread and Circuses", Spock states that thirty-seven million people died in World War III consistent with Phlox's assertion that over thirty million died in the Eugenics Wars (again connecting World War III and the Eugenics Wars) but not Riker's claim that six hundred million died in the nuclear conflict in the 2050s. As Spock was speaking in the context of despotism, and what constitutes despotic "responsibility" is open to interpretation, his statement may not give the total death count.
In TNG: "Up The Long Ladder", Data states that Humans were still recovering from the effects of World War III in the early 22nd century. This statement makes more sense within the context of a mid 21st century war than that of a late 20th century war, suggesting that World War III and the Eugenics Wars are not the same conflict, as confirmed in Star Trek: First Contact.
The Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars books portray a different view on the Eugenics Wars as being a more covert hidden battle between the genetically engineered "supermen" rather than an overt one in an attempt to marry the original dates of the Eugenics Wars with the events of the present day. It also raises the quite logical hypothesis that Gary Seven was involved in the overthrow of Khan and the other tyrants since he conceivably was present on Earth at the time of Khan's birth and would have known or seen the advent of the eugenics movement. Numerous 20th century Trek characters appear in the story, including Rain Robinson (who at the end of the second book becomes Roberta Lincoln's assistant), Ralph Offenhouse (an early financial backer of the genetic engineering program), Clare Raymond (her death is not an embolism but collateral damage from a nerve gas attack, Khan's assassination of Vasily Hunyadi, the fellow Augment secretly behind the Balkan conflicts of the early 1990s), Gillian Taylor, Flint (as "Wilson Evergreen"), and Jeff Carlson, who designed the Botany Bay with Shannon O'Donnell and Walter Nichols involved in the project primarily with technology reverse-engineered from Quark's Treasure.
In the Star Trek: Khan comic book series associated with the Alternate reality, the creative team went with a portrayal of the wars as being an open conflict that outright affected the whole planet.
In "The Rules of War", a short story from the anthology Strange New Worlds 9, the enemy commander whom Archer's great-grandfather Nathan Archer negotiated with in North Africa is Stavos Keniclius.
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CNSNews.com | Dark Side of Progressivism Exposed: From Eugenics to 'Race Science' CNSNews.com A new book details the progressive movement's reliance on eugenics and race science as well as its effort to exclude the disabled, blacks, immigrants, the poor, and women from full participation in American society. The words progress and ... |
Link:
Dark Side of Progressivism Exposed: From Eugenics to 'Race Science' - CNSNews.com
Before he was the executive chair of Breitbart and long before he was ever a chief strategist to the president of the United States of America, Stephen Bannon wanted to make a movie. One of those movies, which never came to fruition, was a Hamilton-style rap musical about the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Another, The Daily Beast has learned, was "an epic documentary-style film about the eugenics movement, Adolf Hitler, 'blood purity,' abortion, contraception, Darwinism, mutants, and cloning."
The 11-page outline for The Singularity: Resistance Is Futile (as the project was naturally called) credits Bannon as writer, producer, and director, although Bannon reportedly met with filmmaker Mel Gibson about getting the picture off the ground. "Essentially, Bannon's is a Christian right-friendly story of arrogant scientists trying to perfect the human race at the expense of the natural order and God's vision of humanity," The Daily Beast writes of the 2005 project.
The Singularity is divided into 22 segments, including "The Religion of Technology," which begins by talking about "the garden of the new Eden, fruit of the forbidden tree: clones, mutants, and designer humans." Other sections touch on the "subjugation of race and class throughout time," the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, "the survival of the fittest," the "Aryan Elite," and "the Commercial Eugenics Civilization," which discusses "the perfectibility of life through a human-controlled elite race that will bring about a better world."
But wait, there's more! Bannon goes on to discuss "Yuppie Science"; "bio-technology as big business"; the "new age superpowers" of China, Singapore, Walt Disney, and Ted Williams; and "post-humanity." Read more about the project at The Daily Beast. Jeva Lange
Read the rest here: