Posted on 12/17/2016 6:03:11 PM PST by ProgressingAmerica
Here's something I do not understand:
The very same people who blast Margaret Sanger, and inevitably bring up the fact that she supported eugenics, will then turn around and defend Theodore Roosevelt with the deepest sincerity knowing full well that Theodore Roosevelt also supported eugenics. Somehow TR is a good progressive, but MS is a bad progressive. How is this possible?!?!?!???? In my book, there are no good progressives and I think every last one of them ought to be thrown out onto the ash heap of history.
What follows are two quotes, and I defy anybody - anybody to off of the top of their head(no googling! no peeking!) tell me which quote is from Margaret Sanger, and which one is from Theodore Roosevelt. Neither quote is a work of fiction. To the untrained eye, you cannot tell the difference.
Who said it? Margaret Sanger or Theodore Roosevelt? It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding. Any group of farmers who permitted their best stock not to breed, and let all the increase come from the worst stock, would be treated as fit inmates for an asylum.
Who said it? Margaret Sanger or Theodore Roosevelt? If plants, and livestock as well, require space and air, sunlight and love, children need them even more. The only real wealth of our country lies in the men and women of the next generation. A farmer would rather produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts. How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan?
I think the 1st quote is Teddy.
Not familiar with the second, must be Sanger.
OK, I’ll bite: Theodore Roosevelt’s philosophy was motivated by a genuine love of this country, while Margaret Sanger was just an advocate of “free love” who didn’t like children, especially children of the poor.
Nearly everybody in 1910 believed in eugenics.
There is a reason for that. The idea that intelligence, for example, is inherited is pretty solid.
But the social engineers took it way beyond the scientific reality , by using to impose social engineering that did not have a basis in science, rather like “climate change” today.
Racism was solidly mainstream in 1910 as well.
TR was progressive. He was also brilliant. He would cringe at where his progressivism has led.
http://sangerpapers.org/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=225299.xml
One quote is from Theodore Roosevelt's letter to Charles Davenport, the noted Eugenist. The other quote is from a Sanger article titled The Meaning of Radio Birth Control published in April, 1924.
Indeed.
Great post. Thank you. I am about as far from “progressive” in any sense of the word as you can get, but I do admire TR. I think he was a genius, a patriot, and very likeable.
With the progressives our nation has voted for LBJ and the great society. The book the bell curve has shone that the paying of benefits to the least useful of society for the purpose making babies has increased the numbers of the most useless of society. Now, did I issue an opinion or did I state a fact.?!
not me. tr and ms were both poison to America, and i’ve never said anything different here. tr one of the worst presidents in American history.
Sterilize islam and the evil from africa and we can at least breath.
These are the statements that I find to be truely puzzling.
Everything that progressivism has become today can be seen right in his Bull Moose party platform from 1912, his "New Nationalism" speech, as well has his high regard for Herbert Croly's two books "The Promise of American Life" and "Progressive Democracy", and finally his disdain for the U.S. Constitution.(noting some of his activities, such as he was the first President to issue over 1000 executive orders)
Nothing has changed from Bull Moose, it is still all big government for the sake of big government.
??
Roosevelt did not promote birth control, which is the root of abortion.
The idea that thinking one race is superior to another, which you have not proven roosevelt did, anyway, is as bad as practicing sexual relations with the idea of preventing birth, which is inherently evil, which leads to death, is moral relativism which is a different discussion than what you are presenting.
“The word eugenics, which means well born, was coined in 1883 by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Positive eugenics was a movement that attempted to “improve” the human population by encouraging “fit” people to reproduce.
Also in February 1917, the first issue of Sanger’s journal, The Birth Control Review, was published. She was The Review’s editor until 1929, and used her editorials to promote birth control and eugenics. For Sanger, these issues were inseparable.”
Teddy Roosevelt on abortion:
He assailed the promoters of abortion as pushing a “frightful and fundamental immorality” and of caving in to ” to coldness, to selfishness…and to an utter and pitiful failure in sense of perspective” [2]
“Artificially keeping families small inevitably involves prenatal infanticide and abortion- with all its pandering to self-indulgence, its shrinking of duties, and its enervation of character.” [3]
Margaret Sanger.:
“We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members”
Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, a Hillary Clinton mentor, wrthis thi about her abortion clients “…human weeds,’ ‘reckless breeders,’ ‘spawning… human beings who never should have been born.” Margaret Sanger, ”Pivot of Civilization,” referring to immigrants, African Americans and poor people.
The saddest part of the progressive/moral relativist mind is in refusing to recognize natural law and God’s (the Creator) created order and its accompanying moral absolutes, the progressive relativist can never know which side of morality they are on. The Right or the Wrong. Therefore they can hold no position but that espoused by Rand so clearly in Atlas shrugged: there is no right or wrong, there is no good or bad, who am I (or you) to judge, there are no boundaries, there is nothing off limits.
Yet, why do I as a Liberal/Leftist/progressive/multiculturalist/diversity believer/ SJW/ Democrat/ etc. even care who is president? There is nothing in my globalist/Hawkins ridden mind but accidents anyway so how can one who knows there are no thoughts, only happenings, be displeased with any random act in the universe? After all, is not Trumps election (and Hillary’s loss) by one’s own miserable definition of universality and Darwinism simply another move in the universal progression of random improvements in the cosmos and (if one is truly a believer) to be celebrated beyond measure?
Truly a full and open embracing of the Trump Presidency is the only faithful reaction that can be had by a faithful Leftist, Liberal, Globalist, Communist, Darwinist, Atheist, etc. Any other response can only be interpreted as the reaction of those who are not truly faithful to the various cause they espouse making everyone on the #nevertrump side of the ball the most gross definition of Hypocrite on the planet! GO AWAY you hypocrites!
I have my doubts that you can show quotes from exactly the same people castigating Sanger and praising Teddy R. Teddy was a mixed bag as far as I can tell.
In a book released last year, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (Knopf 2014), Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore explores the connection between Wonder Woman and Margaret Sanger. Through impeccable historical analysis and detection, she shows us that the most well-known comic icon of 1940s feminism was actually largely inspired by another feminist icon of the first half of the twentieth century: Margaret Sanger.
In doing research for this book, Lepore uncovered a never-before-seen collection of documents, including William Moulton Marston’s private documents. She discovered that in creating Wonder Woman, Marston was profoundly influenced by early twentieth century suffragists, feminists, and birth control advocates, including Margaret Sanger, who was secretly a member of his family.
Dr. William Moulton Marston,
creator of Wonder WomanMarston entered Harvard College as a freshman in 1911, the same year that Emmeline Pankhurst was barred from speaking on campus and gave a fiery speech in Harvard Square instead. He married Elizabeth Holloway, a feminist alumna Mount Holyoke, in 1915. He received a law degree and a PhD in Psychology from Harvard, and she from Boston University and Radcliffe, and they launched their academic careers in psychology. In 1925, while teaching at Tufts, Marston fell in love with one of his students, Olive Byrne: Ethel Byrne’s daughter and Margaret Sanger’s niece.
In 1926, Olive Byrne moved in with Marston and Hollaway; they lived as a threesome, with, in Holloway’s words, “love-making for all.” Byrne is the mother of two of Marston’s four children, and Holloway the mother of the other two. The children effectively had three parents. This domestic set-up was no doubt unconventional, and it cost him his academic career.
Marston, center, surrounded by his unconventional family.
In 1928, it became clear to Marston that his academic career was doomed, so he began a career in the burgeoning industry of cinema. However, he was not as successful as he would have hoped, and he spent most of the 1930s unemployed, supported by Holloway who worked for Met Life insurance, while Byrne raised the children. The unconventional family maintained close ties with Byrne’s aunt, Margaret Sanger, who was rather unfazed by the “family intrigue.”
In 1937, the year the American Medical Association finally endorsed contraception, Marston held a press conference in which he predicted that women would one day rule the world. He also offered a list, “in the order of the importance of their contributions to humanity,” of six surpassingly happy and influential people: Margaret Sanger was No. 2, just after Henry Ford and just before F.D.R. The story was picked up by the Associated Press, wired across the continent, and printed in newspapers from Topeka to Tallahassee. “Women Will Rule 1,000 Years Hence!” the Chicago Tribune announced. The Los Angeles Times reported, “FEMININE RULE DECLARED FACT.”
In 1940, Marston was hired by M.C. Gaines, who published Superman, as a consultant. He convinced him that the Justice Society of America needed a female superhero. Thus, Wonder Woman debuted in 1941. A press release explained, “ ‘Wonder Woman’ was conceived by Dr. Marston to set up a standard among children and young people of strong, free, courageous womanhood; to combat the idea that women are inferior to men, and to inspire girls to self-confidence and achievement in athletics, occupations and professions monopolized by men” because “the only hope for civilization is the greater freedom, development and equality of women in all fields of human activity.” Marston put it this way: “Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.” And as shown by his list of influential people, Margaret Sanger was just that type of woman.
For a reason unbeknownst to the author, Margaret Sanger wanted to keep well-hidden her ties to the comic-book superhero created by Marston. Maybe it was because she found the association embarrassing, or because she wanted to keep Olive Byrne’s family situation a secret. Whatever the reason, Margaret Sanger never mentioned Wonder Woman.
Marston died suddenly in 1947, but Holloway and Byrne stayed together for the rest of their lives, taking care of Sanger in her old age in Tucson. In 1965, when the Supreme Court effectively legalized contraception, in Griswold v. Connecticut, Byrne wrote to Justice William O. Douglas, who had written the opinion for the 7-2 majority, “I am sure Mrs. Sanger, who is very ill, would rejoice in this pronouncement which crowns her 50 years of dedication to the liberation of women.” Sanger died the next year.
Lots of people got caught up in the eugenics craze.
There are some very famous names associated with its advocacy.
It was considered ‘scientific’ and modern.
It was sort of the climate change issue of its day.
It was cool and the cool people were into it.
Helen Keller
Theodore Roosevelt
Winston Churchill
Linus Pauling
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
John Maynard Keynes
H.G. Wells
William Du Bois
Woodrow Wilson
Clarence Darrow
Bertrand Russell
Herbert Hoover
Alexander Graham Bell
many more
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