1. An interesting ability of the human mind is 'voluntary amnesia'. When one deeply and fervently held belief is found to be wrong, adherents simply forget what they once believed, and, often, even deny that they ever held the view.
Take Charles Darwin's theory of evolution: it had ramifications far beyond the field of biology. The idea of 'survival of the fittest' was quickly wrapped around a doctrine of competition among humans, and decisions about the superiority of one race to another.
2. Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, writing in "Hereditary Genius," concluded that particular families produced an inordinate number of high achievers. Similar reasoning was applied to races. It was Galton who coined the term "eugenics," which promotes an argument for, or against the survival of different races.
Galton wrote "there exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race."
Haller, "Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought," p. 11.
3. Shocking? No longr the view of refined progressives at this late date? Perhaps not races....but groups....or individuals? Guess again.
"Signs of ObamaCare's failings mount daily, including soaring insurance costs, looming provider shortages and inadequate insurance exchanges. Yet the law's most disturbing feature may be the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, sometimes called a "death panel," threatens both the Medicare program and the Constitution's separation of powers..... For a vivid illustration of the extent to which life-and-death medical decisions have already been usurped by government bureaucrats, consider the recent refusal by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to waive the rules barring access by 10-year old Sarah Murnaghan to the adult lung-transplant list. A judge ultimately intervened and Sarah received a lifesaving transplant June 12. But the grip of the bureaucracy will clamp much harder once the Independent Payment Advisory Board gets going in the next two years." David Rivkin and Elizabeth Foley: An ObamaCare Board Answerable to No One - WSJ.com
4. The idea that government bureaucrats have the right to sentience people....convicted of no crimes....to death, is inherent in one particular political view. Intellectuals, social scientists, and scientists of various types are firmly convinced of their conclusions....until they're not. Through the first half of the 20th century, observable, testable differences among and between groups were attributed to heredity. Then, beyond the middle of the century, the same differences were attributed to environment, especially an environment of racism.
5. "Theirs was the vision of the anointed as surrogate decision-makers in both periods, along with such corollaries as an expanded role for government and an expanded role for judges to re-interpret the Constitution, so as to loosen its restrictions on the powers of government."
Sowell, "Intellectuals and Race," p. 26.
a. Sowell goes on to say that these progressives took a negative view of European immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Today, there are also intellectuals who cast aspersions on whole groups who aren't like them. The following quote is amusing based on the history of Liberals:
"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
6. Richard T. Ely, founder of The American Economic Association, rejected the free market. "Progressives hoped to find a middle course between the two, what the fascists called the “Third Way” or what Richard Ely, mentor to both Wilson and TR, called the “golden mean” between laissez-faire individualism and Marxist socialism. Their chief desire was to impose a unifying, totalitarian moral order that regulated the individual inside his home and out. The progressives shared with the fascists and Nazis a burning desire to transcend class differences within the national community and create a new order.”
Goldberg, “Liberal Fascism,” p.119
a. Ely redefined freedom, so that the regulation by the power of the state of these industrial and other social relations existing among men is a condition of freedom." And, while state action might "lessen the amount of theoretical liberty" it would "increase control over nature in the individual, and promote the growth of practical liberty."
Sidney Fine, "Richard T. Ely, Forerunner of Progrssivism, 1880-1901," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, March, 1951, p. 604,609.
b. A glance at the projects advanced by Ely cements the connection with current Progressives: conservation, labor unions, a proponent of inheritance and income taxes, minimum wage laws (Professor John R. Commons: to protect the standard of living of superior races).
7. Harvard economist Frank Taussig endorsed eugenics for those "saturated with alcohol and tainted with hereditary disease" and the "irretrievable criminals and tramps. If it was not feasible to "chloroform them once and for all, at least they can be segregated, shut up in refuges and asylums, prevented from propagating their kind." Thomas C. Leonard, "Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005, p. 215.
a. Some things never change. Nobel Prizewinning Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal supported programs which sterilized 60,000 people from 1941 through 1975. Ibid, p. 214.
b. " Sweden is the poster state for those who believe in the power of the government to solve all problems. Frequently referred to as a "benevolent" socialist or social democratic state, to distinguish it from the run-of-the-mill socialist butcher shop, such as Cuba, China, North Korea, the USSR, and most of Africa, Latin and Central America, and Asia, Sweden is the Promised Land of the Left. Where the USSR was a departure from the genius of Karl Marx, Sweden shows the potential. It is also in capitalist nations — where the right to liberty and the right to property are protected — where men and women have been comparatively free from the eugenic nightmares of other nations. Although prisoners and "mental deficients" were sterilized in the United States, such programs never reached the levels they reached in Sweden, let alone in Germany under the National Socialists." Sweden and the Myth of Benevolent Socialism ?
No matter what benefits Liberals promise.....look carefully at their record when it comes to taking the lives of those with whom they don/t agree......
It is a philosophy more suited to bees than human beings.
Take Charles Darwin's theory of evolution: it had ramifications far beyond the field of biology. The idea of 'survival of the fittest' was quickly wrapped around a doctrine of competition among humans, and decisions about the superiority of one race to another.
2. Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, writing in "Hereditary Genius," concluded that particular families produced an inordinate number of high achievers. Similar reasoning was applied to races. It was Galton who coined the term "eugenics," which promotes an argument for, or against the survival of different races.
Galton wrote "there exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race."
Haller, "Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought," p. 11.
3. Shocking? No longr the view of refined progressives at this late date? Perhaps not races....but groups....or individuals? Guess again.
"Signs of ObamaCare's failings mount daily, including soaring insurance costs, looming provider shortages and inadequate insurance exchanges. Yet the law's most disturbing feature may be the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, sometimes called a "death panel," threatens both the Medicare program and the Constitution's separation of powers..... For a vivid illustration of the extent to which life-and-death medical decisions have already been usurped by government bureaucrats, consider the recent refusal by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to waive the rules barring access by 10-year old Sarah Murnaghan to the adult lung-transplant list. A judge ultimately intervened and Sarah received a lifesaving transplant June 12. But the grip of the bureaucracy will clamp much harder once the Independent Payment Advisory Board gets going in the next two years." David Rivkin and Elizabeth Foley: An ObamaCare Board Answerable to No One - WSJ.com
4. The idea that government bureaucrats have the right to sentience people....convicted of no crimes....to death, is inherent in one particular political view. Intellectuals, social scientists, and scientists of various types are firmly convinced of their conclusions....until they're not. Through the first half of the 20th century, observable, testable differences among and between groups were attributed to heredity. Then, beyond the middle of the century, the same differences were attributed to environment, especially an environment of racism.
5. "Theirs was the vision of the anointed as surrogate decision-makers in both periods, along with such corollaries as an expanded role for government and an expanded role for judges to re-interpret the Constitution, so as to loosen its restrictions on the powers of government."
Sowell, "Intellectuals and Race," p. 26.
a. Sowell goes on to say that these progressives took a negative view of European immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Today, there are also intellectuals who cast aspersions on whole groups who aren't like them. The following quote is amusing based on the history of Liberals:
"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
6. Richard T. Ely, founder of The American Economic Association, rejected the free market. "Progressives hoped to find a middle course between the two, what the fascists called the “Third Way” or what Richard Ely, mentor to both Wilson and TR, called the “golden mean” between laissez-faire individualism and Marxist socialism. Their chief desire was to impose a unifying, totalitarian moral order that regulated the individual inside his home and out. The progressives shared with the fascists and Nazis a burning desire to transcend class differences within the national community and create a new order.”
Goldberg, “Liberal Fascism,” p.119
a. Ely redefined freedom, so that the regulation by the power of the state of these industrial and other social relations existing among men is a condition of freedom." And, while state action might "lessen the amount of theoretical liberty" it would "increase control over nature in the individual, and promote the growth of practical liberty."
Sidney Fine, "Richard T. Ely, Forerunner of Progrssivism, 1880-1901," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, March, 1951, p. 604,609.
b. A glance at the projects advanced by Ely cements the connection with current Progressives: conservation, labor unions, a proponent of inheritance and income taxes, minimum wage laws (Professor John R. Commons: to protect the standard of living of superior races).
7. Harvard economist Frank Taussig endorsed eugenics for those "saturated with alcohol and tainted with hereditary disease" and the "irretrievable criminals and tramps. If it was not feasible to "chloroform them once and for all, at least they can be segregated, shut up in refuges and asylums, prevented from propagating their kind." Thomas C. Leonard, "Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2005, p. 215.
a. Some things never change. Nobel Prizewinning Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal supported programs which sterilized 60,000 people from 1941 through 1975. Ibid, p. 214.
b. " Sweden is the poster state for those who believe in the power of the government to solve all problems. Frequently referred to as a "benevolent" socialist or social democratic state, to distinguish it from the run-of-the-mill socialist butcher shop, such as Cuba, China, North Korea, the USSR, and most of Africa, Latin and Central America, and Asia, Sweden is the Promised Land of the Left. Where the USSR was a departure from the genius of Karl Marx, Sweden shows the potential. It is also in capitalist nations — where the right to liberty and the right to property are protected — where men and women have been comparatively free from the eugenic nightmares of other nations. Although prisoners and "mental deficients" were sterilized in the United States, such programs never reached the levels they reached in Sweden, let alone in Germany under the National Socialists." Sweden and the Myth of Benevolent Socialism ?
No matter what benefits Liberals promise.....look carefully at their record when it comes to taking the lives of those with whom they don/t agree......
It is a philosophy more suited to bees than human beings.
Last edited:
