Posted on 11/16/2014 6:29:11 AM PST by rktman
In the early years of the 20th Century, the “science” of eugenics spread across America, from pulpits to statehouses, with religious zeal.
The underlying premise of the eugenics movement was that the undesirable traits of parents would invariably be passed on to their children. While the scientific basis for this assumption had little data to support its conclusions, the new “science” was quickly embraced by the American progressive movement and many of the wealthy.
Early funding for eugenics projects came from such wealthy Americans as John Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and oil magnate and founder of the 3-in-1 Oil Company, James Noah H. Slee, the second husband of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. The term eugenics was coined by Sir Francis Galton, a British anthropologist, progressive and scientist. The Galton family were prosperous Quakers who made their fortune in manufacturing guns.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
The author points out that conservative white Protestants never even considered an alliance with conservative Black Protestants while eugenicists like Fosdick were building bridges to the Black community and gaining a reputation as pro-Black. This quandary haunts us to this day.
Today's irony is that this article is being posted at the same time when other articles on the Ferguson situation are eliciting very Sanger-like emotional responses from conservatives.
What a strange world we live in.
Thanks!
And I notice the Bell Curvers are coming out of the woodwork. But is it not a strange situation when both threads like this one and the Ferguson threads (and some of the attitudes exhibited thereon) co-exist on this forum?
BTW, I'm the number one critic of Black political behavior on this forum (sometimes to the extent that I wonder why I haven't received a warning of some kind) . . . yet my criticism remains of political behavior. I am too much a Biblical fundamentalist to believe that the G-d of Heaven is the "white man's 'gxd.'"
They're not conservatives, they're anti-conservatives. Conservatives still "hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men..."
Anti-conservative philosophy is godless and humanistic, premised on the shifting sand of arbitrary human will.
Yes, the anti-white black political rhetoric is abhorrent, but no more so than white supremacist rhetoric. However, in neither case is forced sterilization a solution.
Truth is stranger than fiction ALL the time. Possibly an experiment gone wrong in a big way.
Does the expression "The Bird is cruel!" mean anything to anyone but me?
Please. Free Republic is as pro-God, pro-family, pro-liberty organization. We do not advocate or support forced sterilization. That’s a monstrously evil proposition.
I don’t remember advocating allowing government to force sterilizations, unless we are discussing the totally incompetent - and even then pills are less expensive and intrusive than operations.
Could we just ask for no welfare payments to those whom we are discussing?
PS Neither I, nor I suspect Carry-Okie & Chicken Soup, want to see government allowed into the decision making loop.
IMHO, if the Founders thought AgencyPersons could make such decisions better than parents, and the parents choice of theological advisors, they would have left some hint of such views in their writings.
IIRC, they didn’t.
Post 61 raises an interesting issue. As long as people are content to make their own way through life, and do not ask for, much less insist on forced charity money, as is being done by those Ferguson Demonstrators, - just that long can anyone reproduce freely as they see fit.
As soon as they demand charity, the givers of that charity have a say in how it is disbursed, and to what end.
To date, no one has found a valid end run around the hard reality that “Who pays the Piper, calls the tune.”
TANSTAAFL.
PS I have a hard time imagining either Moses or Jesus seeing the case Carry_Okie used, that of parents who both carried genes sure to produce a terminally ill child and who deliberately had such a child knowing they could/would pass the costs onto others.
PPS Where does individual responsibility enter this discussion? If G*d gave us Free Will, did not responsibility come as an inseparable part of that Divine gift?
there are people that need to be sterilized because people who have no ability to judge or care for other humans are having babies.
This is absolutely calling for forced sterilization.
In post 39 you wrote:
a catastrophic genetic disease can usually be spotted long before birth...parents who deliberately birth children with genetic diseases usually ask, make that demand, that others pay for their child’s medical bills.
The only way to "deliberately birth" a child with a genetic condition is to have a prenatal test done and not opt to kill the baby.
And finally, in post #8 Carry_Okie wrote:
To me, there is a big difference between abortion and forced sterilization. In the latter case, as decided by a judge or jury, it is deprivation of a liberty, true, but it is not killing anybody. There really are people out there who should not have kids...To me, forced sterilization with appropriate due process of law is the least damaging.
Again, a specific call for forced sterilization.
This is precisely why Leftists went from being supporters of eugenics to opponents of eugenics and promoters of dysgenic policies. Had their eugenic scheme been implemented, there wouldn't be a permanent victim class around to demand liberal largesse.
Conservatives who fear eugenics are living in the distant past. They should be more worried about how our current policies are actively dysgenic: i.e. importing the Third World underclass by the millions due to liberal immigration policy, and rewarding the underclasses for having more children through increased per-child welfare checks.
Really? You think Moses and Jesus would support forced sterilization and forced abortion?
1 posted on 9/5/2004, 1:53:01 PM by wagglebee
I am charged with being a “eugenicist.” Accordingly, I will now go to a dictionary definition of eugenics:
The penalty I am proposing does involve a procedure that was used by eugenicists, but to equate what I have proposed with eugenics is to demonize the procedure rather than its purpose in use, much the way leftists demonize guns. NAZIs used guns too, but I don’t see you demonizing gun users as NAZIs, quite the contrary. As we all know, guns don't cause crime, but as you apparently do not know, neither do medical procedures. Instead, whether a particular medical procedure is “barbarous” as you suggest or not, depends upon how it is used and to what purpose.
Now, to a second class of what I regard as criminals against children and society, I offered a specific example of two adults with cystic fibrosis, both having gone through genetic counseling having been informed that it is a heritable genetic disorder that WILL be passed to their common progeny, then deciding to procreate their biological child anyway. You will note that I am responding only to the extremely rare combination of two people both carrying that gene willfully and knowingly producing a child with that disease. Note: I never advocated any harm to the child if it is conceived; that human being has rights. I simply do not want the parents’ crime against a child to be REPEATED. No one with that disease should ever wish it upon their children, but unfortunately, it has happened that parents with genetic diseases CHOSE to have children willfully for the specific purpose of sharing that suffering with their children (and yes, I do know this for a fact but I cannot release personal information because of HIPPA).
You should see newborns with genetic disorders to understand what I mean by suffering. It can be horrible. This is suffering that is wholly within our means to prevent by heeding genetic screening. To produce such a child and then expect everybody else to foot the bill makes their propagation, to my mind, a terrible sin against the Lord’s first commandment to people, which is to be fruitful. There is no penalty for them marrying. They can go get in-vitro services to assure that the wife can even get pregnant without the disease. Hell, I would even advocate that their insurance should cover it for free. Obviously they could also adopt, and I would advocate a preference for them in choosing to exercise that discretion. Accordingly, what I am proposing here does not preclude them from breeding at all, as individuals. Hence, what I am suggesting is not genocide or eugenics by any means. It merely limits the damage until a cure can be found. If they violate that law and produce a pregnancy, I am not advocating abortion. I am saying that if what they did was an informed decision, then it was a crime to be adjudicated. If they are found guilty, they should be punished appropriately. I am not proposing depriving their child of parents. I am merely proposing taking action to assure that what they did is not to be repeated.
I think you all know very well what eugenics truly is. I think you also know very well therefore that what I proposed is not eugenics. Yet for the rhetorical purpose of demonizing me, you chose to fling the charge anyway. That is simply dishonest misrepresentation of what I said and willful misconstruction of what eugenics is all about. You knew the charge was misapplied and proceeded with your defamation. So to dishonesty we must add slander.
Wagglebee, you “accused” that my suggestion of a penalty for a crime that prevents a repeat offense that has not been committed is some sort of injustice. Pray tell, what is the use of a pair of handcuffs if not to prevent further criminal acts? Why do we put bars on jail cells if not to prevent additional criminal acts? When a police officer takes custody of a suspect, we call that process “arrest.” The word means to STOP somebody from committing either more crimes or a crime in process. Taking action to prevent crime has always been part of criminal law enforcement. When the officer uses handcuffs the policy is based upon the principle of probable cause, where the officer has reason to believe there is reasonable probability of an impending criminal act and the need to prevent it. Yet the handcuffs deprive a person of liberty without having been found guilty of a crime! Nothing I am suggesting here rests upon anything as flimsy or subjective as probable cause for arrest but instead expects a full criminal trial before taking said action, thus respecting the gravity of the decision.
When people commit crimes against innocent children, I am certain that you agree they should be punished. Typically, we put people in prison, and I doubt you object to that. But why would we need to put people in prison if not to prevent more crimes? After all, if prison were only about punishment we could go back to flogging. If it was only about counseling, restitution, reeducation, or repentance, we could merely give gang-banging murderers counseling! By this “no prevention” standard of your reasoning, any action taken to prevent a repeat offense is unjust, a violation of individual rights and liberties. Hence, we shouldn’t put bars on jails or even locks on doors!
Consider quarantine for ebola. Do you oppose quarantine for people returning from Sierra Leone? That’s not even a crime. Hence, your assertion that taking action to preclude a repeat offense is a violation of Constitutional rights is an absurd construction. So please don't tell me that the Constitutionally legitimate powers government do not include the power to prevent a crime, particularly in a State (as opposed to the Federal government). It is a baseless and false assertion contradicted by countless everyday facts and experience.
Worse, you yourself have demanded exactly the same sterilization punishment for a crime against a child. I am told by all of you that the idea of sterilizing a woman for committing a crime against her unborn baby is “barbarous.” Well, why is it that I don’t see you saying the same thing about castrating pedophiles? To the contrary, in researching this reply, I have witnessed MANY instances in which YOU wagglebee have suggested that pedophiles be castrated.
What is worse about pedophilia compared to the lifetime of suffering often induced by a mother who takes drugs during pregnancy? Can you imagine what it is to perforate an intestine in your first days of life? Have you witnessed these children in the NICU? I have, and I get an earful of it almost nightly. Have you tutored underperforming children in schools (I have). I don't think I can tell you what it is like to watch the tears streaming down the face of a nurse of thirty years as she talks about giving treatments to a baby, and the child raises its arms and closes his eyes turning the head away barely able to move at all, just trying to get her to stop making it hurt. Yet she can't stop, she must work as fast as possible or the kid dies. And yet the humanity in any person witnessing this kind of pain… you just want to stop. It is a horror to witness what these children go through, and the NICU is only the beginning. Imagine going through amid the cruelties of middle school knowing that both body and mind were irreparably damaged by your own mother. The child committed no crime before the forced sterilization of the mother.
Mr. Edd, I never suggested the child should be harmed in any way. The measure I am proposing is only to prevent a subsequent pregnancy. You willfully misconstrued what I wrote into the belief that I was proposing the child be aborted with information to the contrary staring you in the face. In that hair trigger state of mind you decided that I should be killed for suggesting something I never said when you yourself have approved of sterilization for a crime. Might I suggest you never sit on a jury.
And to top them all, we have Bykrbayb’s equally dishonest slander:
Please show me where I regarded these kids as diseases. Once conceived, they have a right not to be killed or mistreated and I never suggested otherwise. Genocidal? Let’s take a look at that definition, shall we?
Bykrbayb, how dare you insinuate that I don't care about these kids’ suffering. How dare you insinuate that I consider these children something to be eliminated. I never said any such thing. I take this position upon behalf of those children. I simply don't want their suffering repeated and inflicted upon OTHER innocents AND I want whatever resources are available to be focused upon those who have been so harmed. How do you propose to put a stop to this catastrophic injustice, and not just to the child, but the next, and the next and the next? Are you going to go to these gangbanger houses to report them taking drugs during pregnancy? Do you go to people’s houses to help with respiratory therapy? Do you understand what it takes to be patient in teaching a mother in the nursery, sixteen years old and on her fifth pregnancy with two kids, knowing that she doesn’t give a crap about her new baby compared to collecting a government check for getting high and having sex? Well my poor wife has had to do many of those things. Your vicious posting has given hypocrisy a whole new meaning. And I’d bet you think you’re a Christian too. Unbelievable.
Now we get to the cost of this kind of treatment. A stay in the NICU often costs well over $1 million before the baby even leaves the hospital. Many have lifelong problems, requiring special education, visiting nursing, physical therapy, and usually welfare. I know one kid with such problems who was picked up in a bus every morning, the only kid on that bus, and driven 90 minutes to school and 90 back every day. She is so disabled, she may actually be able to say a word some day. Do you think just maybe that this is a costly situation? This is money that is taken by force from the parents of every other child in the community. It curtails their educational opportunities, it restricts their careers, it severely damages their lifetime productivity and the competitiveness of this nation. Yet you would do NOTHING to prevent a repeat offense or the sexual use of such a mentally retarded mother, preferring that the public be FORCED to finance the continuation and expansion of this hideously expensive cruelty. That money is taken from families trying to save money for college. That money is not yours. You want it for the simple purpose of feeling better about yourself, yet without the willingness to handle the consequences yourself. That is covetousness, and one that empowers the almighty welfare state.
So perhaps I should dub you Waggs Cloward and BykrBayb Piven.
I don’t want these innocents to die once conceived. I do regard what the “parents” did as a crime if and only if they had been informed that this problem was a guaranteed outcome. I simply want to preclude a repeat offense. There are not a few here who believe, as I do, that pedophiles should be executed. I repeat: the consequences to these innocents are often WORSE than from anything done by a pedophile short of murder. So if the consequences of this crime are often worse than pedophilia, how is it so barbarous by comparison to simply preclude a repeat offense with no other consequences? Do you suggest execution instead? Well execution surely prevents a repeat offense and there is support for an even more extreme form of that idea, but you might think it “barbarous:”
Do you think the Mosaic Law has changed?
So, would the Mosaic prescription be my preference? In principle, yes, but there is absolutely no way it would ever happen politically right now, so I see this as an emergency measure considering the fiscal bleeding, and it’s not small. With most drugged out parents, they usually had no desire to get pregnant in the first place. They are simply so irresponsible, or forcibly raped, or so drugged out, that they failed to take contraceptive measures or saw an opportunity for drug money from the State supporting the kid. I would not be surprised to see many of them volunteer for a sterilization procedure in lieu of jail.
So, if you refuse to invoke the Mosaic Law, are you off the hook? Not a bit.
Oh, but you are “saved by grace!” Well, that doesn’t mean that grace will be the metric of how you are judged.
So now we come to the point of my having cited all that Scripture: How are works to be judged?
The crimes these people have committed upon these innocents are every bit as serious as pedophilia, for which not a few of you demand castration. Were you to recognize these crimes against innocents as such (and it is mystifying that you do not), you would probably demand serious jail time. But death? This is where latter day political reality enters into our dilemma. Who pays for the appeals? In the mean time, jail time is very expensive and does not completely preclude either another pregnancy with drug abuse (it’s happened and drug use in jail is legendary). Upon release, recidivism rates are very high. It is extremely unlikely that a jail sentence will do anything to prevent a repeat offense and why should we be filling jails with these kinds of people anyway?
What I’m proposing, while about 10% baked, comes at far lower cost, and at far less invasiveness and less of a constraint to liberty than the length of jail sentence appropriate to the crime, never mind death. It is in fact a punishment that fits the act of the crime if all it was as far as the perp was concerned was getting blasted while pregnant. It is in that respect far more just than simple imprisonment. You cry “Barbaric.” You cry “Eugenics!” You cry “Genocide!!! “ These people are self-selecting. This is no attempt to improve the human breed. This is not an effort to eliminate “undesirables.” This is simply an appropriate punishment for a crime committed against a child to preclude a repeat offense. So to attack it, you misrepresented what I proposed by associating it by the medical procedure alone. In effect, you lied.
Then there’s the flaming Mr. Edd’s not-so-subtle threat of banishment by flagging Jim Robinson. Well, Edd, Jim knows me better thing than to think I’m some kind of eugenicist or genocidal lunatic. He also knows that that I knew very well what was likely to happen if I opened the discussion I did. He knows that I'm a big boy and can deal with it. Apparently you do not have the self-control to conduct such a debate in good faith much less the comity expected of FreeRepublic, choosing instead to erect a falsehood so that you can excoriate it. I apologize for believing that you or the others might be capable of a productive exchange.
I want to prevent suffering. I don't want crimes committed. I want to restrain the irresponsible at minimal cost in money and liberty and not to empower the welfare state. I certainly cannot have them killed according to Torah. Hence, if the mother carrying the baby committed a crime, or if a father combined with a mother with the absolute certainty of inflicting severe bodily harm with lifelong consequences to an innocent child, such a person is in need of punishment and restraint. I think it perfectly reasonable to demand that such people be sterilized, but in the interest of protecting their rights I expect due process of law: charges, a trial, the assumption of innocence, and a finding of guilt by judge or jury. Such is absolutely adequate protection against arbitrary or eugenic intent and I don't give a crap what you think otherwise. You have demonstrated such terrible hypocrisy, dishonesty, and vile behavior, unbefitting anyone calling themselves a Christian. Where was the love? Where was the attempt to find comity? Where was the respect for this forum? No. You all went off like idiot robots to demonize, just like any leftist power freak would do except for one thing: Leftist power freaks seek money and control; you have no other purpose than self-aggrandizement. At whose real expense?
This is what it is to wear righteousness as filthy rags. The innocents who pay for it their entire lives and the people from whom you abet coerced payment by default are, with those children, your victims, as are all the other kids who are deprived because of the expense.
Historically, before there ever were government social welfare agencies, charities used to deal with such problems. What happened? Some of them failed, the newspapers screamed, and their toadies in government stepped into the gap because the Christ’s Church was the principal thing that stands in their way. That’s why charity is so important to liberty. America ran that experiment and it flopped, but then, so did the “remedy” (as planned I’m sorry to say). But as time went on, things kept getting worse. Why?
Up until recently, we were at G_d’s mercy as to whether these kids lived or died, we were meek before the Lord in that respect. Unfortunately in some respects but a blessing in others, something important has happened more recently that impacts this kind of issue greatly: technology has vastly increased our capabilities to deal with tragic birth maladies while pooling of financial resources has increased our ability to fund any one case. That means we have the capability of spending virtually unlimited money on any one case while we impoverish our funding for education, retirement, and charity because of the coercive legalities involved (and don’t think for a minute these ‘standard of care’ issues don’t affect the cost of settlements under tort law that get rolled into everybody's insurance premiums).
Unfortunately (from a moral perspective), we now have the technical capability that forces us to make decisions about life and death that in some respects should be beyond us morally, and we don’t have good ways of dealing with the trade-offs. Unlike you, I don’t pretend to have the wisdom to master all the countervailing issues as if they were all “moral absolutes” because in cases like this moral absolutes have a way of conflicting, thus requiring give and take. We can’t spend all we “should” on every case, while our brother, the “least of these,” suffers for even basic needs somewhere beyond our recognition. That’s what I mean by stopping the bleeding. For every crack baby that sucks up a million bucks in the NICU, we could have clothed, fed, and educated thousands elsewhere, children G_d cares about every bit as much. At least I have the honesty to grapple with trying to figure out how best to meet those conflicting demands.
So in conclusion, I have been visited with hate, monstrous hypocrisy, covetousness, pride, arrogance, greed, dishonesty, and slander, by a group I see as empowering a catastrophic welfare state and harming innocent children who are already here while they abet the reproduction of yet more catastrophically damaged babies, and I’d bet the farm I won’t see anything approaching any appropriate degree of penitence, the first step to being a Christian. Well I repent:
Ow! Good one!
I know I’ll draw your ire for responding, but oh well. This subject is too important to be silent.
I think people have a visceral, innate knowledge that forced sterilization, with or without the benefit of “due process,” is wrong. It’s repugnant. It just is.
Seems to me that as soon as one even begins to weigh societal resources, needs, and benefits against the reproductive capability of the individual person, they have stepped onto the Utilitarian slippery slope that ultimately leads to such things as cattle cars, gas chambers, and crematoria.
Why?
Because not only does one then begin to play God, to substitute flawed, short-sighted human understanding and will for God’s will, they find themselves running smack up against one of God’s most important positive commands to all men: “Be fruitful and multiply,” a command that has never been revised or rescinded.
You advocated the sterilization of persons with genetic conditions (NOT A CRIME).
Obviously, you fail to see the difference.
As for the rest of your post, it is meaningless.
The penalty I am proposing does involve a procedure that was used by eugenicists, but to equate what I have proposed with eugenics is to demonize the procedure rather than its purpose in use, much the way leftists demonize guns.
Forced sterilization was ABSOLUTELY used by eugenicists in the United States and elsewhere.
Where do these people come from?
*facepalm*
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.