Posted on 10/02/2003 10:48:45 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
See if you can guess the source of this quote. "It is better for all the world . . . [if] society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles is enough."
If you think that this quote came from a Nazi document, you're wrong. It's from Oliver Wendell Holmes's 1927 majority opinion in BUCK V. BELL that upheld a Virginia law mandating the sterilization of the "feebleminded."
Twenty years later, Holmes's words were thrown back in our face by Nazi defendants in the Nuremberg trials. You see, while the Nazis' worst crimes may have ended at Auschwitz, they "began on Long Island."
That's the conclusion of a new book, WAR AGAINST THE WEAK: EUGENICS AND AMERICA'S CAMPAIGN TO CREATE A MASTER RACE written by Edwin Black, who contends that American "corporate philanthropies helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele."
Eugenics, which literally means "good birth," originally referred to the use of selective breeding to "improve" the human race. Of course, what was meant by "improve" reflected the racism and bigotry of the eugenicists. Blacks, Jews, Eastern and Southern Europeans, the retarded, and even people with brown hair were the targets of the "improvers."
Thus, between 1900 and the mid-sixties, "hundreds of thousands of Americans . . . were not permitted to continue their families by reproducing." Black compares it to "ethnic cleansing," and he's right.
The tools of American eugenics included forcible sterilization, commitment to mental institutions, prohibitions against marriage, and even dissolution of already existing marriages. One Michigan legislator went so far as to introduce a bill calling for the electrocution of severely retarded infants.
Eventually, American eugenics, with help from the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, Margaret Sanger, and others, found its way to Germany. While "Nazi eugenics quickly outpaced American eugenics in both velocity and ferocity," Black writes, the connection between the two was never lost. As one American eugenicist told the Richmond TIMES-DISPATCH, "the Germans are beating us at our own game."
The Holocaust and other crimes of the Third Reich made eugenics a bad word, and the American connection was quickly swept under the rug. But the attempt to play God "never really stopped."
Today it takes the form of "human genomic science and corporate globalization." Instead of racist declarations, we have "polished PR campaigns" that hold out the promises of biotech: miracle cures and ever-increasing life expectancies.
While the word eugenics is never used, that's what it is. We are intent on eliminating "imperfection" from the gene pool. Even today, children whose "deformities" are discovered in utero are rarely permitted to be born. And as genetic technology improves, the list of those whom Black calls the "never-born" will continue to expand.
If the "abolition of man" is to be stopped, this story must be told. Christians need to pull the truth about eugenics out from underneath the rug and hold it up as a reminder of where playing God leads us. Six decades of denial is enough.
He said that the Captains of Industry had decided that Industrial Capitalism was a failure because it couldn't afford to pay one man enough to support a family as large as he could have.
So they set about to encouage and promote abortion, contraception and divorce.
That is the Eugenic Society that we have today.
Hey, I know that feeling!
If you think sterilizing a bunch of mentally handicapped people will get us out of the mess we're in, you're losing your mind. And if you think that elected public servants like say, Maxine Waters and Robert Byrd are feebleminded, then you missed the moral context. These people are not stupid, they are evil servants of an ideology that killed at least 160 million people last century. That's not retarded, that's diabolical.
I just had to repeat your statements. Absolutely true, and masterfully expressed!!!!
At one time, I was for forced sterilization. But I cannot in good conscience support that cause anymore, from a humanitarian standpoint. As much of a "burden" as the poor are, they have the same rights as you and I do.
After all, free will was God's greatest gift. It's what we do with it that is our choice. I personally do not want my exercize of free will to include limiting someone else's natural rights.
But as for sterilization of rapists and murderers -
I think the victims of rape should decide for themselves whether or not to abort. And murderers - if we upheld life with no chance of parole (not 15-20 yrs bullcrap), then obviously they could not procreate.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that autonomy should be the guiding principle. Your mistake=Your responsibility, not my burden to bear.
I read that chapter, and one thing I find interesting is that it's "instructions" call for a lot of stoning.
I could be wrong, but doesn't one of the Commandments explicitly ask us not to kill each other??
And another thing - "genes" are not an accident - If the Creator did not mean for it to be, then how could the gene exist in the first place?? Hypothetically, of course, given your set of argument parameters.
The difference is that usually before 6 months the fetus cannot maintain homeostasis outside the mother's womb. It would die at 4 months if it were taken outside its mother's womb. You could leave a newborn on someone's steps and they'd be able to take care of it just as well as the biological parents. Big difference.
Why thank you! Every once in a while I put the words in the right order. ;-)
Free will separates us from lower life forms. Mental Prowess as opposed to physical, choice over instinct. To deny free will is to deny God, if you want my (humble) opinion.
Hey, I appreciate a kind word now and then too, so back atcha!!!
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