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.
Just for note - I have no prob with religion, but with its zealots who insist on hell and damnation.
This issue needs to be treated with compassion - i.e. truth
As a reformed pro-choice woman (upon reading a similar story about Sanger and the Rockefellers), I tell anyone who will listen
I have to tell you that this paragraph alone is the main reason why women have abortions in my opinion. Let me share with you something I have never forgotten.
Years ago a "girl" came to the hospital where I work to have her baby. This had actually been her 7th pregnancy, but it was only her 3rd child. This woman first got pregnant when she was 16-years-old and had the child. She had another child at 17. She then had four abortions over the next 7 years. When she came to the hospital to have her third child and as I was going over her history, I realized that they only reason she was even having this child was because she could not have another abortion (PP told her four was the limit - how nice of them)!!!!! I could barely contain myself to take care of her and I wanted to vomit everytime I walked into her room. To this day I pray for her and the children she decided not to abort - what kind of person could pick and choose which child to keep and which child to murder?
Forget the spew that comes out in the media - I am letting people know from experience that most women have an abortion for the simple reason of "inconvenience" and that's it. Sickening, just sickening!
But may I ask, who is FJ Sheed?
Suggest is entirely different from coersion - Sanger had Black preachers go into the ghettos, supporting "Choice", becuase she knew that as a white person, she would be immediately viewed with suspicion.
Other people's poverty and ignorance are burdens on the wealthy and educated, only to the extent that the wealthy and educated choose to take on those burdens
Oh, you don't pay taxes, then?
You are against abortion, but would think about it if your child were "born" gay?
I'll keep you in my prayers tonight.
You've never watched 'Jerry Springer' have you? These people never choose not to reproduce.
Liberty + Growing Populations = Prosperity
...Cool...Thanks...
Capitalist institutions can 'promote' anything they want as long as they don't use the power of the state to coerce or force individuals to do their bidding [which is is tantamount to serfdom]. This is 'capitalism'.
If a capitalist institution decides to 'get into bed' with the state then it will cease to be a capitalist organization. It will become for all intents and purposes an 'arm' of state. This is 'socialism'.
The terms 'capitalism' and 'socialism' are distinct and mutually exclusive.
Of course not. But it you may educate people about their options and give them the means to amke the choice.
The programs are designed to enable the choice, so that Africans and Asians have wanted babies, presumably those that they can support.
This is done by coercion or trickery in some countries. Incentives is not coercion. But in any case, you are now backing off from the objective to methods. The methods can be discussed, and some may be objectionable to you. Certainly, if specific cases constitute abuse and deviaton from the statee policies, they have to be addressed. But these aredifferent issues altogether: you have raised the question of ethics. None of the reasons you listed give me permission, as an educated white man, to stop a poor African or Asian from having babies. This is done by coercion or trickery in some countries.
It is wrong to seek to control others in that way.
Yes, if that is how you frame the issue, but you appear to be misinformed. There is nothing wrong with trying to influence the actions of a person that depends on you currently in order to move him towards independence. The same is true with respect to the countries.
Also, influence is not the same thing as control; look it up.
I happen to agree with Mr. Holmes.
It is one thing to validate the notion that a good society cares for its feebleminded and its weak.
It's quite another to allow them to breed out of control, to allow them to vote and to elect them to public office in a frenzy of mindless compassion.
And lest you think I am talking tongue-in-cheek, ponder the members of legislatures, from the federal level down to the local level.
You think California's sad state is the result of an accident?
I don't.
It's a straw man.
The implicit underlying assumption, I am convinced, is false.
Sadly, that's exactly what appears to be happening with Continental Europe's Muslim population...
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.