When Americans think of the terms “genocide, forced sterilization, or even master-race” most understandably think of Nazi Germany, and the bone chilling images we’ve all seen of the millions of bodies being bulldozed into mass graves upon the arrival of the allies in 1945. Americans think of Hitler lashing out against the Jews, and successfully turning a nation, (with exceptions of course,) against a religion and ethnic group. After Nazi Germany, the next most common thing Americans most likely think of are the purges in the early 50’s in the Soviet Union. Many may think about the tribal warfare that tragically still goes on in Africa today. Unfortunately, the vast majority of this country overlooks one major detail. Despite America’s exceptionalism, there has been a band of people who have done everything but defend freedom. For the past hundred years or so, progressives have focused on a very real and threatening practice called eugenics. Through bigotry, racism, and a general dislike for the concepts of religion and God, progressives have sought to control people right here in America through this practice. Although the practice has taken on numerous names such as genetic engineering, ecoscience, or just plain science, it is still alive and well today, just as dangerous as ever, and must be stopped.
Eugenics is the attempt by man to influence the evolution of man. This can be attempted by numerous different ways. Genetic enhancement is the most common method in modern times. Other methods that have been used throughout history are the forced sterilization of people, (often times people who are “mentally unfit,”) selective breeding, and abortion. Although abortion itself is not a form of eugenics, when used to target selective ethnic groups or races in order to eliminate them as a society, it most certainly is. In the worst case scenarios, there are government sponsored programs overseeing all these things mentioned.
The most common method used here in the United States in the early part of the twentieth century was forced sterilization. In his book War Against the Weak; America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, Edwin Black informs us of the nation’s largest center for forced sterilization, (or sterilization mill as they were often called,) and how it was located in Lynchburg, Virginia. Native Americans, Blacks, recent immigrants, Jews, and young poverty-stricken white boys and girls were brought in, sterilized and sent on their way. What makes this even more immoral is the fact that many of these people, especially the younger ones, were misled or not told at all about what the procedure they were going through was actually doing to them. Many were simply told that it was “for their health” (Black, pg 6)
There were those involved in the practice of eugenics who undoubtedly were misguided and surely had good intentions. Kate Bolton, a retired county welfare director stated when interviewed by Black, “If you’ve seen as much suffering and depravity as I have, you can only hope and pray no one else goes through something like that. We had to stop it at the root”(5). Although these words attempt to justify the actions taken, and show that some peoples’ hearts were in the right place, there is much evidence showing that many people who were perfectly capable of providing for themselves and future children were also rounded up and sterilized. In another interview from Black’s book, one man explains that he simply can not understand why the government deemed him incapable of taking care of children. He noted that he had held the same job for over a decade, had never missed a day, never been late, and was one the workplace’s most dependable workers. The only explanation is that he lived in a day and age where in Virginia, much of the “polite society” looked down upon people that lived in the hills as “hillbillies” or “white trash.” Clearly a bigoted view not unlike the Nazis contempt for the Jews.
Another thing progressive eugenicists were able to take advantage of in the twentieth century in order to advance their agenda was the economy. From about 1890 to the post World War I era, progressives were very involved in economics, and the reform of industry. In many ways they did things that helped many people and could be considered social advancements. For instance, they regulated child labor and eventually banned it, they set a minimum wage to making sure women and children weren’t working all day for a few pennies, and they regulated safety and working conditions in order to protect peoples’ lives and health. Yet just as it did in the foothills of Virginia, eugenics reared it’s ugly head by the hand of the progressives.
African Americans, Native Americans, Catholics and Jews were time and again banned from working in factories and getting jobs. As more and more white, Protestant workers began fearing for their jobs, the more the suppression of equality came to business and the more economists began looking to the ideas of eugenics in order to make a more thriving economy for non-minorities.
Thomas Leanard documents in his journal Journal of Economic Prospectives, how Irving Fisher, the President of the Eugenics Research Association and an economist, stated his fears when he addressed the association, saying that immigrants were “defectives, delinquents, and dependants” (209). Fisher and many of his economists colleagues believed that white, protestant workers were more apt to working in agrarian society, and that the only way for them to compete with Jews, Asians, Native Americans, African Americans, Slavs, or Catholic immigrants would be the eugenics route. To regulate the selective breeding of these workers, to force sterilization upon them, and to attempt, (although never successfully) to make laws about who could have children was the eugenicists solution to an economic problem.
Ultimately, the easiest way to defeat non protestant whites, and to defend against them from taking jobs in an ever urbanizing and industrializing environment, was to limit the non white protestant population. This was no easy goal to attain. Business owners liked employing Jews, slavs and other ethnic minorities because they would work for relatively low wages. You couldn’t just remove them from the cities; that would cause an uproar. Limiting their birth was the most logical conclusion.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood who is often times heralded as a hero in modern society wrote a “Baby Code,” (found in the online database Life Education and Research Network.) In her Baby Code, Sanger included eight articles. To paraphrase these articles, Sanger proposed that marriage licenses do not give couples the right to reproduce, that men and women do not have the inherent right to have children, that permits given by the government must be required to have a child, (each permit only authorizing one child,) and finally, that those who are feebleminded, prone to being criminals, and those with disease don’t have the right to have children. Although Sanger’s “Baby Code” includes no terminology regarding race or ethnicity, it was written about urban environments where the problem was minorities having children. Furthermore, only a few years later she participated in a outrageously racist project called the Negro Project.
While involved in the Negro Project, during a moment of complete candor, Sanger wrote a letter referencing the project’s push for African American abortions through an organization soon to operate under the banner “Planned Parenthood” to a Dr. Clarence Gamble. She wrote, “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” This quote clearly shows, how tragically, America not only has racism as part of it’s past, but an ugly attempt at eugenics driven genocide to oppress that race.
Yet today many American people are convinced that eugenics is only an ugly stain on our history which is fortunately only part of our past and that has no place in our present or future. However, the progressive movement to decide and control who and what types of people are born and allowed to be a part of society has only disguised itself and taken on a new tactic; genetic engineering. Once one looks into just what exactly “genetic engineering” really is, it is not hard to tell that there is little if any difference between it and the eugenicists strategies. What was once called “selective breeding” by the progressives is now called Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, prenatal testing, or genetic testing, (a procedure done on the adults.) New fancy names are used to hide what they really are; slightly more advanced methods used to defend against the “feebleminded” or “unfit” becoming a part of our society, by deciding which fetuses should be allowed to continue life.
In fact, the goal of germline genetic engineering, (a branch of genetic engineering) is absolutely no different than the goal of eugenics when put into words. Just as eugenics has the ultimate goal of man controlling the evolution of man, germline genetic engineering gives man the ability to control his evolution or to “control his destiny.” This is done by controlling the genes in the sperm and the ova cells. Although the intentions may sound good, one must wonder, what are these scientists really trying to achieve? One of the two discoverers of DNA, Dr. James Watson has publicly approved of germline genetic engineering, but this same man has publicy expressed his contempt for “ugly” women, and unintelligent people. He’s gone on to say things paralleling Margaret Sanger’s quotes when speaking to the Times of London. In 2007 Dr. Watson bluntly stated that “there are many people of color who are very talented,” but went on to say that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa.” Fortunately the rest of the legit scientific community quickly denounced his words in the October 2007 issue of Scientific America. The sad truth of the matter is that Dr. Watson is not the exception in the community of progressive scientists, eugenicists and genetic engineers; he is the rule. The community has been attempting to mask their general distaste for people different than them, (whether it be of color, ethnicity, culture, intelligence, or simply their personal looks,) as science for the better part of the last century.
In fact, we need look no farther than the current “science czar,” (officially called the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy,) of the current presidential administration to find another pseudo-scientist attempting to use science to hide his ill feelings toward “undesirables.” In the 1977 book which John Holdren, the “science czar” co-authored, Ecoscience: Population, Rescources, Environment, he proposes many disturbing wishes for this country. He proposes forced abortions with no regard to the mother’s wishes. He proposes sterilizing the population at large by putting drugs into drinking water and food. Finally he proposes forcing “people who contribute to social deterioration,” (783) or undesirables, to have abortions or to be sterilized. How does Mr. Holdren propose that we enforce these proposals? In his own words he calls for an “International Planetary Regime,” which would be an “armed international organization” (782). Clearly, this same strategy of having and armed organization was shared by the ultimate eugenicists, Adolph Hitler. Obviously, although the progressive eugenicists have changed there language, they haven’t changed their goals.
If we take a moment to study the philosophy of progressives, we will find that really and truly, they do little to hide their contempt for mankind. As most are atheists, and in turn existentialists, (and in more recent years have taken on the title “humanists”) they have no regard for human life, and see no problem with manipulating it whether by forced abortion, or in a lab somewhere. In his book God And Reason; A Historical Approach to Philosophical Theology, ED L Miller exposes the true meaning of Jean-Paul Satre’s words, a leading existentialist, who wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century summed up his existentialist beliefs in a few words. “Subjectivity must be the starting point”(151). Satre also gravitates to the idea that life is nothing but a series of absurdities, which is only another way of stating that to the existentialists, humanists, and of course the progressives, life is simply meaningless. Many thinkers who have ideals based on some sort of moral compass, (ie; members of numerous different religions or agnostics) believe in a “big box” (152). This box has reference points based upon which provide a rational view of the world.
Progressives have been for a little more than the last century, operating with no regard or belief in this box and with no tolerance for those who do. With no sense of morality, progressives here in the United States have roamed the foothills of Virginia looking for “feebleminded” to sterilize. They have attempted to force abortions in urban industrial centers with the sole goal of eliminating the African American population. Their ideology has spread oversees to the Third Reich where Hitler, (who had been closely following the Eugenics movement here in the United States) avidly ran with the idea, and proceeded to kill eleven million “undesirables.” Margaret Sanger’s of the “Baby Code” has spread to communist China which strict laws about how many children a couple may have. The progressive-eugenics movement has changed it’s name in recent years and taken on the titles of genetic engineering or ecoscience. Yet whether one-hundred years ago in sterilization mills, half a century ago in concentration camps, or today in labs or the office of the “science czar,” progressives have sought and continue to control population, families, and individuals’ freedom here in the United States and all over the world. American exceptionalism is a very real thing. We have given millions the opportunity to live free lives. We have spread democracy to other nations, toppled tyrannies and made advancements in science and medicine unprecedented by any other country. We as a nation have unbelievable influence upon the rest of the world. Therefore we must prevent the progressives from taking over our country and spreading their ideas to the rest of the world before their pseudoscience kills more people, and violates the rights of people of all colors, ethnicities, socio-economic statuses, beliefs, and cultures.
Works Cited
Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak; America’s Campaign to Create A Master Race.
New York City: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003. Print.
Leanard, Thomas C. “Retrospectives; Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era.” Journal of Economic Perspectives. 19.4 (2005): 207-24. Print.
Miller, ED L. God and Reason. New York City: MacMillan, 1972. Print.
Nugent, Helen. “Black people ‘less intelligent’ scientists claims.” Times Online. The Times of London, 17 October. 2007. Web. 25, November. 2009.
Abrams, Joseph. “Obama’s Science Czar Considered Forced Abortions, Sterilization as Population Growth Solution.” Foxnews.com. Fox News, 21 July, 2009. Web.
28 November. 2009.
“Racist and Eugenicists Statements by Margaret Sanger, the Founder of Planned Parenthood.” The Black Informant. The American Life League. Web. 28 November. 2009.
Sanger, Margaret. “The American Baby Code.” Life Education and Research Network. Heritage House, 1976. Web. 26, November. 2009. http://www.abortionfacts.com/learn/sanger_and_planned_parenthood.asp
“Genetic Technology and Eugenics.” Med India, Networking for Health. Health Watch, 4 April. 2007. Web. 28 November. 2009.
Stein, Lisa. “World Renowned Geneticists Draws Fire for Claims that Africans are Intellectually Inferior.” Scientific American. American Scientific Publishers, 17 October. 2007. Web. 28 November, 2009.
Ehlrlrich, Paul R. Anne H. Ehlrlich. John P. Holdren. Ecoscience, Population, Resources, Environment. San Francisco: W.H. Freemen and Company, 1977.
http://www.questia.com/. Web. 27 November. 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment