Morally Paralyzed (Thomas Sowell)

Townhall.com ^ | July 24, 2007 | Thomas Sowell

[Misterioso]

What I’m telling you is that you haven’t answered my question. Name some names, or admit that your original claim was a shot in the dark without any target.

[MarkL]

As an aside, the Bush administration is looking to work with Iran as a "partner" to provide security and stability in Iraq: I am wondering just what planet I'm living on... This is like the farmer working with the fox to ensure security and stability in the hen house! Unbelievable!

Mark

[Misterioso]

Your original question: Did you know that the US practiced eugenics in the late 1890s? I know there was a eugenics movement years ago. Your attempt to smear America as a country of racists offended me and I called you on it.

[Tolik]

Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !

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[Rummyfan]

We know that Iran is moving swiftly toward nuclear weapons while the United Nations is moving slowly -- or not at all -- toward doing anything to stop them.

It is a sign of our irresponsible Utopianism that anyone would even expect the UN to do anything that would make any real difference.

Thank you Dr Sowell. I don't think the President will leave this for the next administration to deal with.

[Blind Eye Jones]

“In short, totalinarism was the end of an era of Social Darwinism (Hitler, Mussolini, et al.)”

Now we have Social Islamism. Still the same kind of belief but wrapped in a different cloth. I didn’t know that about the US.

[jazusamo]

Oh how I hope you are correct, if it should be a dem administration we will be in big trouble.

[P.O.E.]

Look at TV.

There’s a concerted EFFORT to remove shame, conscience, courtesy, etc. These are the internal guideposts that lead to behavior. By stomping on individual contemplation and doing what’s right, this leaves the door open to group-think.

[Utah Girl]

Excellent article by Thomas Sowell, as always. The saying keeps coming to my mind “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” ~~ George Santayana

We’re seeing today exactly what happened in the thirties. The liberals and the dems remind me of kids who stick their fingers in their ears and say “la la la la la” when confronted with reality. And I think the one thing above all else I despise about Bill Clinton is the fact that he thought he could talk his way out of anything. And the fact that they held all night bull sessions at the White House to talk about everything. Those on the Left just talk stuff to death and think they have done something constructive about problems.

[jazusamo]

Good point...The isolationist-pacifist movement of the thirties was a strong influence and there are many similarities to it now.

[ulm1]

bump

[litehaus]

Are we France? No, but Israel may be.

NOT if Bebe gets back into power they won't be.....Pray!

[LjubivojeRadosavljevic]

I'm surprised that I find myself having to do this...but here an example. BTW sorry if I offended you.

Eugenics and the United States, 1890s–1945

One of the earliest modern advocates of eugenic ideas (before they were labeled as such) was Alexander Graham Bell. In 1881 Bell investigated the rate of deafness on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. From this he concluded that deafness was hereditary in nature and recommended a marriage prohibition against the deaf ("Memoir upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human Race") even though he was married to a deaf woman. Like many other early eugenicists, he proposed controlling immigration for the purpose of eugenics and warned that boarding schools for the deaf could possibly be considered as breeding places of a deaf human race. In 1907, Indiana became the first of more than thirty states to adopt legislation aimed at compulsory sterilization of certain individuals.[14] Although the law was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court in 1921,[15] the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia Law allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions in 1927.[16]

"We do not stand alone": Nazi poster from 1936 with flags of other countries with compulsory sterilization legislation.Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler was infamous for eugenics programs which attempted to maintain a "pure" German race through a series of programs that ran under the banner of "racial hygiene". Among other activities, the Nazis performed extensive experimentation on live human beings to test their genetic theories, ranging from simple measurement of physical characteristics to the horrific experiments carried out by Josef Mengele for Otmar von Verschuer on twins in the concentration camps. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazi regime forcibly sterilized hundreds of thousands of people whom they viewed as mentally and physically "unfit", an estimated 400,000 between 1934 and 1937. The scale of the Nazi program prompted American eugenics advocates to seek an expansion of their program, with one complaining that "the Germans are beating us at our own game".[Quoted in Selgelid, Michael J. 2000. Neugenics? Monash Bioethics Review 19 (4):9-33 ]

[Misterioso]

OK. Truce. I should have let it go. You wrote “the US practiced eugenics” which I took to mean that the federal government was doing such a thing. Sorry for starting this fuss. You are obviously quite knowledgible and I imagined someone not so much.

[SoldierDad]

And that kind of thinking will only result in more attacks, and I believe they’ll be at least as big as 9/11/01, or worse.

[wbill]

Good Article, but it fails to mention that the French, while numerically superior, were technologically inferior, and incompetently led.

Still and all, the premise is correct. A united front against Hitler in the mid-30s would have snuffed out his particular ambitions. I still think that war was inevitable, though, with the Allies and Germany squaring off against Russia and/or Japan. But, that's just one opinion.

[M1Tanker]

Bump for reference.

Remember that Churchill was openly mocked up until everything he predicted came to pass.