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Apple-Pie Eugenics: War Against the Weak
BreakPoint ^ | 2 Oct 03 | Chuck Colson

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.


TOPICS: Activism/Chapters; Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Germany; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: abortion; auschwitz; charlescolson; colson; eugenics; hitler; margaretsanger; masterrace; mengele; nazis; nuremburg; plannedbarrenhood; plannedparenthood; roevwade; sanger; thirdreich
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To: Mr. Silverback
Amen. I wish that instead of playing the religious card regarding pro-life, the truth would be revealed.

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

61 posted on 10/02/2003 8:57:53 PM PDT by PurVirgo (Here's a tip: Never weed eat the dogpen with your mouth open.)
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To: sc2_ct
yes - Sanger, I believe. I think the company "Birthright" has its roots in Eugenics too.
62 posted on 10/02/2003 8:59:20 PM PDT by PurVirgo (Here's a tip: Never weed eat the dogpen with your mouth open.)
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To: cpforlife.org
****Fact: Only 1% of abortions are performed as a result of rape or incest. Most abortions are done as a form of birth control because the baby is "inconvenient", "too expensive", or a "burden".***

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!

63 posted on 10/02/2003 9:29:19 PM PDT by Gerish
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To: GovernmentShrinker
I know two very smart, athletic genetic biologists who married and had a less than perfect child. They are hesitant to have another. I would have thought their kids would have been perfect.

The other problem with eugenics is that some people have great genes, but something went wrong somewhere else like the thalidomide "flipper" babies. And what looks like a genetic problem may be environmental.
64 posted on 10/02/2003 9:31:20 PM PDT by staytrue
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To: RichardMoore
What a fascinating post - I have become obsessed with the Eugenics movement - it wasn't something we learned about in school, and it has also turned me pro-life (thanks FR)

But may I ask, who is FJ Sheed?

65 posted on 10/02/2003 9:38:11 PM PDT by PurVirgo (Here's a tip: Never weed eat the dogpen with your mouth open.)
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To: GovernmentShrinker
When they suggest that poor people should try the same thing...

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?

66 posted on 10/02/2003 9:43:02 PM PDT by PurVirgo (Here's a tip: Never weed eat the dogpen with your mouth open.)
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To: BabaOreally
are you serious or are you just trolling?

You are against abortion, but would think about it if your child were "born" gay?

I'll keep you in my prayers tonight.

67 posted on 10/02/2003 9:46:57 PM PDT by PurVirgo (Here's a tip: Never weed eat the dogpen with your mouth open.)
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To: GovernmentShrinker
Choosing not to reproduce, if one has lousy genes, is another option that really shouldn't frighten anyone. And that is very definitely "eugenics".

You've never watched 'Jerry Springer' have you? These people never choose not to reproduce.

68 posted on 10/02/2003 9:54:59 PM PDT by Lester Moore
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To: Mr. Silverback
'Population control does nothing to promote a free society or free markets [...] Free people produce more and better goods and more wealth, and wealthy nations treat the environment well.' -Mr. Silverback

Liberty + Growing Populations = Prosperity

...Cool...Thanks...

69 posted on 10/02/2003 10:47:24 PM PDT by MayDay72 (Socialism Kills. Free Markets Feed.)
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To: RichardMoore
'Eugenics in the USA is the direct result of Industrial Capitalism [...] They began promoting easy divorce, contraception and abortion [...] We have Socialism and Capitalism coexisting in great harmony [...]' -RichardMoore

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.

70 posted on 10/02/2003 11:10:24 PM PDT by MayDay72 (Socialism Kills. Free Markets Feed.)
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To: Mr. Silverback
BUMP
71 posted on 10/02/2003 11:23:58 PM PDT by ppaul
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To: TopQuark
Corporate philanthropies fund research, and at the time that was research. The athor makes it sound as if corporations themselves were interested in killing the weak.

Not the corporations themselves, but the people who owned and ran the corps, oh, yeah. The Rockefellers were the biggest and most public expample. They made no secret of it either. And it wasn't research. One of them went to Rome to try to convince the pope in the 1910's to encourage birth control. They gave the money and land for the UN which is where most of the population control propaganda is coming from now.

No, the whole eugenics movement was an atempt by the monied class to limit the working class and it's documented if you look for it.
72 posted on 10/03/2003 4:51:06 AM PDT by Desdemona (Kempis' Imitation of Christ online! http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/imitation/imitation.html)
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To: Zack Nguyen
None of the reasons you listed give me permission, as an educated white man, to stop a poor African or Asian from having babies.

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.

73 posted on 10/03/2003 5:51:20 AM PDT by TopQuark
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To: Mr. Silverback
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."

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?

74 posted on 10/03/2003 6:36:27 AM PDT by Publius6961 (californians are as dumb as a sack of rocks.)
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To: BabaOreally
I wrestle with this one...

I don't.
It's a straw man.

The implicit underlying assumption, I am convinced, is false.

75 posted on 10/03/2003 6:49:03 AM PDT by Publius6961 (californians are as dumb as a sack of rocks.)
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To: Mr. Silverback
We can't afford to just sing louder while the train goes by.

for lurkers and posters who don't know what this refers to --
(at least this is how I've heard it)...suppossedly an elderly German
recalled that during WWII, transport trains would stop for a while in his town.
The church he attended was near to the station, the trains, of course, were headed to
the death camps.
Some Sundays, the lamentations from the train were loud enough to disturb the
atmosphere of the sanctuary of the church...
so the congregation simply sang louder to drown out the crys of the condemned
and to remove the shame of their inaction from their minds and discussion.

At least this is what I heard on the "Haven" Christian music/commentary show.
76 posted on 10/03/2003 6:55:58 AM PDT by VOA
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To: presidio9
If you can't out-rig the elections of today you can out breed them for tomorrow.

The other day my 6yo said "Momma when I get a wife we are going to have ten, maybe even twenty, children!!" I can only hope...
77 posted on 10/03/2003 7:37:19 AM PDT by kancel
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To: staytrue
True, but on average, good genes in the parents produce good genes in the children -- even if sometimes some of the genes aren't expressed in that child, they may still be passed to and expressed in the next generation.

As far as environmental factors are concerned, if parents are a mess due to environmental factors, they're not very well equipped to raise children, regardless of the parents' or children's genetic endowments. I.E., if you're retarded and have impulse control problems due to in utero environmental factors (and not due to genes), there's still a strong argument to be made for discouraging you from having children.
78 posted on 10/03/2003 7:38:34 AM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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To: kancel
If you can't out-rig the elections of today you can out breed them for tomorrow.

Sadly, that's exactly what appears to be happening with Continental Europe's Muslim population...

79 posted on 10/03/2003 7:42:44 AM PDT by presidio9 (Countdown to 27 World Championships...)
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To: PurVirgo
Suggesting (i.e. leaving decisions ultimately up to free individuals) is the kind of eugenics I support. Though in serious criminal cases, like child rapists and other severe child abusers and vicious murderers, who've been duly convicted by a jury, I also support "coerced" sterilization.

And the wealthy and educated as a group, have decided to provide a certain level of support to the poor and uneducated in our own country and abroad. We have also decided not to provide a higher level of support -- in fact, we've been lowering it lately, as we've seen the horrid results of giving teenage crackhead moms homes and food and "rehabilitation", so that they can easily continue and multiply their lifestyle.
80 posted on 10/03/2003 7:44:07 AM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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