Given the many glancing mentions of Margaret Sanger (whom Goldberg asserts “is today considered a liberal saint, a founder of modern feminism, and one of the leading lights of the progressive pantheon”) in the comments to my previous posts in this series, and given the budding debate her mention has generated on just where legalized abortion is located on the political spectrum (progressive? libertarian? both?), it seems now would be a good time to fan the flames a bit — while at the same time beginning to draw together some of the themes Goldberg has been hitting on, namely, how an “enlightened” and “scientific” support of eugenics lies at the heart of many progressive programs, and how that impetus fits in with what Goldberg calls the “fascist moment”:
Under the banner of “reproductive freedom,” Sanger […] sought to ban reproduction of the unfit and regulate reproduction for everybody else. She scoffed at the soft approach of the “positive” eugenicists, deriding it as mere “cradle competition” between the fit and the unfit. “More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue of birth control,” she frankly wrote in her 1922 book The Pivot of Civilization. (The book featured and introduction by [H.G.] Wells [with whom Sanger had and affair, and who is the Fabian responsible for coining the term “Liberal fascism,” not as a perjorative, but as a prescription], in which he proclaimed, “We want fewer and better children…and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us.” Two civilizations were at war: that of progress and that which sough a world “swamped by an indiscriminate torrent of progeny.”)
A fair-minded person cannot read Sanger’s books, articles, and pamphlets today without finding similarities not only to Nazi eugenics but to the dark dystopias of the feminist imagination found in such allegories as Margaret Atwood’s Handmid’s Tale As editor of the Birth Control Review, Sanger regularly published the sort of hard racism we normally associate with Goebbels or Himmler. Indeed, after she resigned as editor, the Birth Control Review ran articles by people who worked for Goebbels and Himmler. For example, when the Nazi eugenics program wa first getting wide attention, the Birth Control Review was quick to cast the Nazis in a positive light, giving over its pages for an article titled “Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need,” by Ernst Rudin, Hitler’s director of sterilization and founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene. In 1926 Sanger proudly gave a speech to a KKK rally in Silver Lake, New Jersey [note: in an earlier segment, Goldberg notes how the KKK, after Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, was far more cosmopolitan in scope than we often think of them — and that their allegiances were often with progressive causes, including Prohibition; in short, Goldberg makes the argument that the “racism” of the KKK post-BOAN was in keeping with the enlightened, progressive sort championed by many scientific elites – ed].
One of Sanger’s closest friends and influential colleagues was the white supremacist Lothrop Stoddard, author of The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy. In the book he offered his solution for the threat posed by the darker races: “Just as we isolate bacterial invasions, and starve out the bacteria, by limiting the areas and amount of their food supply, so we can compel an inferior race to remain in its native habitat.” When the book came out, Sanger was sufficiently impressed to invite him to join the board of directors of the American Birth Control League.
Sanger’s genius was to advance [“raceologist” E.A.] Ross’s campaign for social control by hitching the racist-eugenic campaign to sexual pleasure and female liberation. In her “Code to Stop Overproduction of Children,” published in 1934, she decreed that “no woman shall have a legal right to bear a child without a permit…no permit shall be valid for more than one child.” But Sanger couched this fascistic agenda in the argument that “liberated” women wouldn’t mind such measures because they don’t really want large families in the first place. In a trope that would be echoed by later feminists such as Betty Friedan, she argued that motherhood itself was a socially imposed constraint on the liberty of women. It was a form of what Marxists called false consciousness to want a large family.
Sanger believed — prophetically enough — that if women conceived of sex as first and foremost a pleasurable experience rather than a procreative act, they would embrace birth control as a necessary tool for their own personal gratification. She brilliantly used the language of liberation to convince women they weren’t going along with a collectivist scheme but were in fact “speaking truth to power,” as it were. This was the identical trick the Nazis pulled off. They took a radical Nietzschean doctrine of individual will and made it into a trendy dogma of middle-class conformity. This trick remains the core of much faddish “individualism” among rebellious conformists on the American cultural left today. Nonetheless, Sanger’s analysis was surely correct, and led directly to the widespread feminist association of sex with political rebellion. Sanger in effect “bought off” women (and grateful men) by offering tolerance for promiscuity in return for compliance with her eugenic schemes.
In 1939 Sanger created the […] “Negro Project,” which aimed to get blacks to adopt birth control. Through the Birth Control Federation, she hired black ministers (including the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr.), doctors, and other leaders [note: progressive icon W.E.B. DuBois, it will be recalled, championed the “Talented Tenth,” a eugenic idea aimed at getting the “good” negroes to breed more, and the worst to breed less; and he championed Sanger’s Negro Project – ed] to help pare down the supposedly surplus black population. The project’s racist intent is beyond doubt. “The mass of significant Negroes,” read the project’s report, “still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes … is [in] that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.” Sanger’s intent is shocking today, but she recognized its extreme radicalism even then. “We do not want word to go out,” she wrote to a colleague, “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.”
It is possible that Sanger didn’t really want to “exterminate” the Negro population so much as merely limit its growth. Still, many in the black community saw it that way and remained rightly suspicious of the progressives’ motives. It wasn’t difficult to see that middle-class whites who consistently spoke of “race suicide” at the hands of dark, subhuman savages [hi, “Ron Burgandy”!] might not have the best interests of blacks in mind. This skepticism persisted within the black community for decades. Someone who saw the relationship between, for example, abortion and race from a less trusting perspective telegrammed congress in 1977 to tell them that abortion amounted to “genocide against the black race.” And he added, in block letters, “AS A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE I MUST OPPOSE THE USE OF FEDERAL FUNDS FOR A POLICY OF KILLING INFANTS.” This was Jesse Jackson, who changed his position when he decided to seek the Democratic nomination.
Just a few years ago, the racial eugenic “bonus” of abortion rights was something one could only admit among those fully committed to the cause, and even then in politically correct whispers. No more. Increasingly, this argument is acceptable on the left, as are arguments in favor of eugenics generally.
In 2005 the acclaimed University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt broke the taboo with his critical and commercial hit Freakonomics (co written with Stephen Dubner). The most sensational chapter in the book updated a paper Levitt has written in 1999 which argued that abortion cuts crime. “Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime. Freakonomics excised all references to race and never connected the facts that because the aborted fetuses were disproportionately black and blacks disproportionately contribute to the crime rate, reducing the size of the black population reduces crime. Yet the press coverage acknowledged this reality and didn’t seem to mind.
In 2005 William Bennett, a committed pro-lifer, invoked the Levitt argument in order to denounce eugenic thinking. “I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.” What seemed to offend liberals most was that Bennett had accidentally borrowed some conventional liberal logic to make a conservative point, and, as with the social Darwinists of yore, that makes liberals quite cross. According to the New York Times‘s Bob Herbert, Bennett believed “exterminating blacks would be a most effective crime-fighting tool.” Various liberal spokesman, including Terry McAuliffe, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, said Bennett wanted to exterminate “black babies.” Juan Williams proclaimed that Bennett’s remarks speak “to a deeply racist mindset.” [To be fair, the White House, and Bill Kristol, among others on the conservative side, were quick to criticize Bennett, as well — and it was those criticisms that were particularly troubling, to my point of view. I addressed that angle of the controversy here and here – ed].
In one sense, this is a pretty amazing turnaround. After all, when liberals advocate them, we are usually told that abortions do not kill “babies.” Rather, they remove mere agglomerations of cells and tissue or “uterine contents.” If hypothetical abortions committed for allegedly conservative ends are infanticide, how can actual abortions performed for liberals end not be?
I have long argued that much of what progressives believe, beyond mere topical and contemporary policy initiatives, is unknown even to them, given that the structural imperatives of progressivism have become second nature, and are so insinuated into social, political, and civic culture that the are simply (illiberal) givens.
What I am not arguing is that today’s progressives necessarily and intentionally adhere to the (often explicit) beliefs of their intellectual and political predecessors. Rather, I believe many progressives — at least, those outside academia, or those who aren’t open socialist fellow travelers — have simply not examined the core tenets and kernel assumptions of the ideology to which they adhere, and so are blinded by a self-righteousness that often leads them to embrace desired outcomes without thinking through the implications of how they are directing us toward those outcomes, particularly as those implications speak to constitutional principles and the classical liberalism upon which a truly free society must necessarily be built.
And I’m here to help combat the ignorance, being a giver and all.
So. Have at it!
****
June 12 update: Just came across this review of LF from Claremont, and I noticed this startling resemblance to my Nazi-esque, moronic conclusions. Seems there are many little ‘conservative’ Hitlers running around, misrepresenting history and drawing false parallels in the service of, uh, well…evil:
When she was asked in one of last fall’s presidential debates whether she still considered herself a liberal, Hillary Clinton sidestepped the question. She called herself, instead, a “proud, modern, American progressive,” and boasted that her “progressive vision” for the country had roots going all the way back to “the Progressive Era, at the beginning of the twentieth century.”
Modern, big-government liberalism has come home. The Progressives were the first generation of Americans to criticize the United States Constitution, especially for its limits on government’s scope and ambition. They rejected the American Founders’ classical or natural rights liberalism, offering instead a vision of the modern state as a kind of god with almost limitless power to achieve “social justice.” When modern liberals like Senator Clinton call themselves progressives, therefore, they are telling the truth, even if their audiences don’t fully understand the implications.
[My emphasis]
I’m sure steve would have the reviewer use fewer words, but what can we say? Sometimes even we conservatives like to go buck wild with the verbiage.
It’s not just that they have not examined the core tenets and kernel assumptions of the ideology to which they adhere, it is that they absolutely refuse to do so . . . and, if we do so, the rage they express toward us is palpable. They then attempt to distort history and/or outright lie about history so that they don’t have to face where their beliefs stem from and what philosofical underpinnings it requires.
Thus, when it is pointed out that their belief system seems to always generally lead to tyranny wherever it has been put into practice, they don’t even respond, or simply imply that this time it will work, b/c, you know, this generation of leftists are so enlightened that they would never become tyrants.
The Russians are doing an admirable job of exterminating themselves at the moment.
These posts are above my paygrade, but they are also the single biggest reason I keep on coming back. Per usual, great stuff, Jeff.
If the idea behind adhering to an ideology were to define their lives, it would be reasonable to expect them to examine those core tenets.
Unfortunately, most of the jargon-spouters are more interested in being popular with their fellow know-nothings, and getting the choice poon at the raves, than in having any kind of meaningful impact on the world.
Hell, being popular and getting choice poon is their idea of having a meaningful impact on the world.
Only a tiny fraction of them vote, but even that is too many.
The two paragraphs just below the excerpt sum up the problem perfectly, Jeff.
Two things: One, the recent (mostly unreported) news item wherein a number of Planned Parenthood offices offered no resistance, and expressed no outrage, to a caller who wanted to make sure that his donation would be used to abort black babies, and two, the catastrophic effect of liberal policies and programs on minority communities over the last 45 years. Taken together, it appears that the eugenicists never really went away.
So, JHoward, how then do we solve the problem of ‘Liberal Education’ (which is) now in such much disrepute?
..so much…
or ..such much…to my discredit.
I denounce myself. This could get to be a habit.
Goldberg doesn’t understand eugenics at all…..the Holocaust was not eugenics, but ethnic cleansing.
Jew is not a race.
Also, reproductive freedom is a basic right that can only attach to women.
True libertarianism allows citizens control of their own bodies.
All this bs about eugenics is just a way for religious conservatives to impose their antique moral values.
Tell that to the Jews, nish
Is the question how Goldberg understands eugenics, or how Sanger et al understand eugenics?
The core tenets of Democrats are the four S’s: slavery, secession, segregation and socialism.
Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/11 @ 11:59 am #
Hush, child, the adults are talking.
We simply realize that government schools are promulgating what’s tantamount to religion (the philosophy of secular humanism handed out by a virtual monopoly) and for that reason alone, should be ruled unconstitutional, Sdferr.
Because we trust ourselves to revert to the private sector that built the place to also educate it’s own kids. It costs the State twice as much to dick up what it costs the private side to do a good job at, thereby creating a new dependent class, but that’s peripheral to your question.
Now that, ironically, I’ve committed as much as public heresy against conventional cant, let the stake-burnings commence.
WITCH! SATANIST! HATER OF THE UNDER-ADVANTAGED!
Abortion= reproductive freedom. It means nothing, to pro-choicers, outside of the “reproductive freedom” box.
It is tiresome. And, I have miles to go before I rest.
Nishi helpfully shows the methodology for those who wish to appear as if they have examined the ideology, when confronted with uncomfortable truths simply redefine terms.
Oh, and nuggie was so wrong on the first Provocateurism threads there aren’t really words for it…
All this bs about eugenics is just a way for religious conservatives to impose their antique moral values.
Oh, and of course point an accusatory finger at those with whom you disagree.
They keep to the traditions, without knowing how the tradition came about or why. Rather Col. Blimpish of them, don’t you think?
Does the word “untermensch” mean anything to you matoko? The unfit those with mental and physical disabilities – were also killed. And when you classify an entire people, such as the jews, as untermensch, subhuman, you are are using eugenics.
The Nazis just ramped the scale of the project up.
But it is a biologically distinct group with common bloodlines. Who said eugenics had to take race specifically into account?
Religious conservatives like Goldberg and Jeff? lulz
One thing seems clear to me. That is that Sanger’s understanding of ‘fit and unfit’ has nothing to do with the understanding of differential survival/reproductive rates as currently held in evolutionary biology.
But it is a biologically distinct group with common bloodlines
dude, converts.
Who said eugenics had to take race specifically into account?
erm….the definition?????
it is ethnic cleansing.
words have meaning.
– Its not at all surprising. You have, aside from a group of left over hippies and hippie wanna-bes from the turbulent “counter-culture” of the 60’s and 70’s, mostly young, rebellious minds, who are simply engaged in Theism (I’m allowed whatever asocial habits I want to pursue as long as I follow the current Narrativeâ„¢) and chasing “teh excitement”, catching the tail of the contemporary pop-culture comet, politically and philosophically. They are simply non-serious, so what more could be expected.
– No real interest in core tenets. Check.
– Seldom actually follow through and actualize their ideas and claimed beliefs by voting. Check.
– Become both confused, and threatened, when confronted with those tenets. Check.
– React by arrogant dismissive outrage rather than debate honestly. Check.
– Argue by fabulists contention, most of which either beg the issue of discussion, or contradict directly one or more of the core tenets of what they claim to believe. Check.
– I honestly think that if King started a cult of horror, couched properly in the grift-wordage of an E-ticket ride at Disney, in a short while he would amass a sizable following. As long as it was seen as “cool”, and acceptably “anti-daddy”, the young would flock to it like bees to honey.
The question is, can you use that “control over your body” to murder “babies” — progeny, as clearly progressives from McAuliffe to Sanger to DuBois conceived of the product they were hoping to preemptively destroy.
This has always been an interesting question for me, being adopted myself and so at higher risk of having been aborted: when is a person a person?
I have always described myself as “reluctantly pro choice” — but I’ve been for all sorts of conditions, from parental notification to a backward sliding scale that only allows abortion where viability has not yet been reached.
Science, ironically, may get us to the point where they will effectively do away with non-viable fetuses — at which point it will be science who turns “choice” into murder by turning clumps of cells into “persons”, if by persons we mean those who are able to live outside the womb.
At which point nishi’s head will pop like a salmon egg on a gourmet pizza.
why not define everything you disagree with as “eugenics” pablo?
abortion is eugenics, gene engineering is eugenics, buying gametes is eugenics.
Ethnic cleansing justified by eugenics, matoko.
Sanger was going to use abortion; the Nazis decided to use gas chambers.
The methods were different but the desires were the same.
The undoing of ‘Liberal (and here I suppose I should insert the obligatory ‘Arts’) Education was not a matter of Government. It began in the late 19th century under the wise guidance of learned thinkers on paedogogy at Harvard, a distinctly private institution of HIGHER learning. It has been going downhill ever since.
lulz… we are legion!!!1!11!!1!!1
Nishi represents the typical leftist mentality; “Because I really believe in the
true tenants of liberalism, I am a better, more moral person than any conservative.”
However, when you logically explain the inconsistencies and outright contradiction inherent within their liberal philosophy, the respond with ad hominem attack and name-calling?
This is because they can’t intellectually process the cognitive dissonance between their emotive philosphy and the intellectual
logic that refutes it. As a result, they must emotionally defend their self-congradulatory belief system and the basis for their unwarrented self-esteem, rather than address the logic and facts that renders their worldview as childish and irrational.
Nishi on “words have meanings?!?!?!”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
or in the more common perlance:
LOL!
Nishi, your concept of the Holocaust is very simplistic and wrong if you contrain your thinking of it as only applying to Jews. The Nazis included the mentally handicapped and other “inferior races” in their extermination program, explicitly in their propoganda films, to strengthen their bloodlines. Euthanasia was a tactic to implement their strategy of eugenics.
the J-womb is 10 years out.
the unborn are simply not citizens.
that is the libertarian position.
their rights do not supercede the mothers until postbirth.
they can’t. its her body.
otherwise the state or society owns the mothers body.
eugenics:
the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). (dictionary.com, based on Random House unabridged dictionary)
eugenics:
The study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding. (American Heritage Dictionary)
So long as we’re talking about words having meaning and all…
Please substitute “constrain” in place of “contrain” in the previous post. My apologies.
http://www.regent.edu/acad/schedu/uselesseaters/
USELESS EATERS:
Disability as Genocidal Marker in Nazi Germany
The methods used for mass extermination in the Nazi death camps originated and were perfected in earlier use against people with physical, emotional, and intellectual disabilities. Developed from the article by Dr. Mark Mostert, this website describes the historical context of attitudes toward people with disabilities in Germany and how this context produced mass murder of people with disabilities prior to and during the early years of World War II.
Because I’m comfortable with using the word as it is currently defined.
We’re not talking about faith, we’re talking about genetics. Converts are irrelevant.
What definition is that?
Which is by no means mutually exclusive to eugenics.
“#Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/11 @ 12:09 pm #
words have meaning.”
Learn them.
Love them.
Spell them.
So is it okay to kill non-citizens, nishi? Do I have that “choice,” too?
I ask this because you are cagily using the term “citizen” in all your “libertarian” arguments for abortion on demand. That way, you can differentiate a “person” (viability) from a citizen (post-born).
Me, I’m here to pin you down and watch you wriggle like Prufrock on a bug board.
“Goldberg doesn’t understand eugenics at all…..the Holocaust was not eugenics, but ethnic cleansing.
Jew is not a race.
– No nishi. The Holocaust was the externalized self-hate (AH was a Jew) of a madman, grafted onto the raw jealousy of the cultural success of a particular religious group.
– The Jews were handy, and excelled in the sciences and financial world, and the Nazis needed all of that to build their dreams of empire on.
– The murderers of the Reich held no such lofty beliefs as has been used as some sort of excuse to explain their actions. It was all about wealth and power, just as it is in your seditious scheming fellow travelers today.
So simple eh nishi? Of course, you have to leave something out of your equation in order to remove the stink. The truth is that the mother to be has a right to deny the life of another if she believes it infringes upon her liberty, according to our current national legal position.
You know this is coming…
I just had a flashback to when I facepalmed on the toilet reading this in the book.
Accepting, however lightly, the Nazis’ occasional claims to any shred of Nietzscheanism (which claims were 49.5% youth-advertising strategy, like Clinton’s sax-playing on Arsenio’s show, 49.5% rhetorical karate, to chop the best critic of German proto-fascism from the list of names that could be safely invoked against the post-proto version by then-present critics, and 1% tightly aimed fundraising flattery), and taking, however lightly, any p/Progressives’ claims to any shred of radicalism (ditto, approximately) as not purely propagandistic, are massive errors of credulity.
There are too many of those in the book — and they’re all of the same kind, lightenings of linguistic suspicion in the presence of conservative scare-words, e.g., “radical” and “Nietzsche” — for it to work like it should.
(And Nietzsche has no “doctrine.” And the things that can be mistaken for such aren’t “individual”; his ideas are too weird to fit the schema implied, indigestible to “radical” and (any kind of) liberal alike, because they’re alike. And [etc., etc.].)
I think this is an unecessary tangle. Of course birth control and induced abortion were seen by social reformers, excited by the brave new science of the time, to direct and improve the species through eugenic practice. Liberal ( and I don’t mean that in the political identification sense) attitudes toward induced abortion in my own state were not completely divorced from ideas having to do with letting the lessers in society, and those who would burden society reduce themselves voluntarily.
However, the lynchpin of law about induced abortion is what underguirds the similarly, eugenic-movement inspired challengesto the Comstock law, that ultimately resulted in recognition of the liberty of persons to direct themselves their sexual activity and biological reproduction.
I’m not sure where you are going here, JeffG. Are you trying a backdoor argument in opposition to induced abortions, by saying – folks with ulterior motives supported or support it? Because to me, the law rises or falls with other principles.
THREAD SHIFT ALERT. You have been warned. She’s already mentioned the Jwomb. Gay marriage isn’t far behind, I’m sure.
Or nature owns it. Which it does, unless cancer is a violation of one’s rights.
Ok.. real quick.. only have a few minutes left on coffee break.
So is this wordy piece pro or anti eugenics? Cause from where I sit eugenics looks like a pretty good, desirable and even necessary thing. Eugenics stripped of sentimentality is simply the common sense of racial survival.. Increase the reproduction of the strong and smart and limit the reproduction of the slow, stupid and unproductive.
A simple truth in our time, no matter how un-PC to say so, is that people of white European and Jewish ancestry are responsible for most of humanity’s technical and social advancements.. Period. But with the 3rd world influx to America and a low birth rate among whites they’ll all but disappears in 50 years.. Europe is being flooded by middle eastern and African immigrants and aren’t reproducing fast enough to keep from drowning either.. Native Japanese are slowly dying out..
So without eugenics.. a conscious effort to preserve the race that built our world’s great societies.. what will we become in 100 years? I guess it really doesn’t matter as I’ll most likely be dead.. but a slightly more backward and violent version of The Idiocracy comes to mind.
Or nature owns it. Which it does, unless cancer is a violation of one’s rights.
Not anymore it doesn’t, for man has decided that the primary purpose of the sex act is not reproduction but pleasure.
psycho —
I agree that “Nietzsche” is often used as a scareword among conservatives. But much of that, as you point out, has to do with his original misappropriation. Nietzsche has become a convenient shorthand for how he was used. Which infuriates philosophers and the like, but is on some level, at least, understandable.
As to progressive radicalism apart from its propaganda purposes, I’d like to hear you flesh that argument out a bit, because — though I think I know what you’re saying — I’m not entirely certain, and so don’t want to respond without being so.
If I wanted to be cruel, I might ask what it is about birth that makes one a “citizen.” I guess I hadn’t realized that birth was a social construction of nationality, but I digress. It can’t be that the baby is now no longer dependent on the “mother” is it? Clearly the baby is dependent on somebody or it will die since it cannot care for itself for quite some time. So does the baby belong to the mother? Or to the state? No, can’t be that, since the mother’s body belonging to the state is anathema, so presumably the baby’s would be as well. Given the obvious and well documented benefits of mother’s milk in feeding the baby, doesn’t that place some sort of claim on the “mother” by the baby? Or does Nishi ever consider the developmental part of the whole human thing relatively (no pun intended) inconsequential once the perfected genome has been achieved?
Ouroboros
Aren’t you essentially arguing that nature tells the whole tale and that nurture (or environment) plays no role in the eventual worth to society of a person? It seems to me that many immigrants to this country may have something else to say about that.
And my apologies for not being able to type fast enough to keep up with the ever shifting theme of this thread.
– The entire “Get Bush” campaign that the Left has used for the past 7+years exactly mimics the demonization of the Jews by the Nazis. the Jews were “chosen” alright, chosen for demonization. It would not have mattered really if they were Eskimos. AH, and the Fascists behind him, would have found a way. Its the same “arrogance of theistic infallibility” that animates the Left today. Exactly the same.
otherwise the state or society owns the mothers body.
So, any laws against ingesting any substance into my body means that the state owns my body?
Any law requiring me to use certain safety devices that I don’t want to use (seatbelt, helmet, etc) in order to protect my body means the state owns my body?
Any law stating that I cannot legally sell the use of my body (prostitution) means the state owns my body?
I may buy into the absolute freedom of choice for women as to the unborn when society does not require the father to support the child based on the mother’s choice to have the child. After all, requiring me to use my body for labor, to earn an income, to give to someone else, means that the state owns my body and therefore I am a slave.
Ouroboros, your comment appears to assume something north of 99% for nature and south of 1% for nuture in the grand equation. Last I checked, this issue has never really been resolved has it?
Not at all. As I say, I’m actually torn on the question, and I recognize that on the political spectrum, abortion as it is viewed today is not easily placed (hence, “progressive? libertarian? both?).
The idea is to generate a discussion. Just as I think a raving racist can come up with a good idea, regardless of his or her racism, I think a policy conceived by those with ulterior motives can morph into something useful, or even constitutionally protected.
Which, again, is why I define myself as reluctantly pro-choice (I don’t know where Goldberg is on abortion, to be honest; citing him here has never been a tacit endorsement of his arguments, some of which I agree with, others I don’t — though I am in agreement with his general thesis). But I will cease to be pro choice once science brings viability in line with conception. At that point, so far as I’m concerned, the question as to whether it is a right to kill another person, even one growing in your own body, becomes more difficult to answer.
and im not left ot right.
if killing homosexuals is eugenics, then homosexuality cant be a lifestyle choice can it?
ditto gypsies.
neither gypsy or Jew is biologically determined.
there either Hitler was not practicing eugenics, or Goldberg is clueless about what eugenics means.
/puts out tongue
I may buy into the absolute freedom of choice for women as to the unborn when society does not require the father to support the child based on the mother’s choice to have the child. After all, requiring me to use my body for labor, to earn an income, to give to someone else, means that the state owns my body and therefore I am a slave.
Word. It’s all or nothing. If it’s a woman’s choice, let’s cut the men loose.
So, once you’ve got a child support order entered against you, you do not own your body. Right, nishi?
the unborn are simply not citizens.
that is the libertarian position.
their rights do not supercede the mothers until postbirth.
they can’t. its her body.
otherwise the state or society owns the mothers body.
I agree with this, but you are arriving at your result by a different logic than the early progressives who are the subject of this post. They did not champion abortion rights in order to limit the authority of the state over the bodies of its citizens. They were pushing abortion in order to give the state more control over the population.
Once again Nishi:
eugenics:
the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). (dictionary.com, based on Random House unabridged dictionary)
The Nazi’s believed that the jews, gypsy’s and homosexuals had “inheritabole undesirable traits” and thus they were, in fact, practicing Eugenics.
It seems pretty clear that it is you who has no understanding of the word, or the english langauge for that matter.
but, that has never stopped you before.
Um…. I hate to break this to you, but homosexuality does not cause reproduction.
It really is a mindless idiot.
nishi —
Many of the “defectives” and “imbeciles” of those days would not today be described as such given advancement in modern medicine. This doesn’t mean that, retroactively, those in favor of weeding such people out weren’t engaging in eugenics.
You can play semantic games all you want. Hitler’s erroneous ideas about the ontology of those he was wiping out only show him to be confused about how such groups might infest the breeding stock. It does nothing to trouble the argument that Hitler and the Nazis considered themselves engaged in Eugenics — as the bit from Ernst Rudin included in the excerpt makes clear.
After all, requiring me to use my body for labor, to earn an income, to give to someone else, means that the “state owns my body and therefore I am a slave.”
shudha used a condom.
consider the sex act a biological contract.
the XY donated sperm.
my point stands.
citizens MUST own their own bodies. it is the most basic right.
Now, one could certainly argue that the nazis were wrong, and that the Gypsies, Homosexuals and Jews have absolutely no inheritable traits and therefore the Nazi’s eugenics program would not have worked as such.
But, that does not change the fact that the nazis were trying to practice eugenics in an efforct to create and sustain a “master race”
“Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/11 @ 12:35 pm #
neither gypsy or Jew is biologically determined.”
Both gypsys and Jews are born to either gypsy or Jewish parents.
That goes both ways and is not a rebuttal of the statement. Of course, you want it both ways, or whatever way happens to work for you at a given moment.
So citizens must not be forced into labor to benefit another party, right?
Now that I’ve gotten the ball rolling, it’s time to hit the sun and work my grip strength. Which raises my stock as a breeder, I’m pretty sure.
Or as a blacksmith. One of the two.
well….religious conservative use the word “eugenics” in scare quotes….badbadbad.
but Hitler wasn’t practicing eugenics at all.
eugenics, like science is another bigbadbugaboo for the neoluddites.
Nishi,
Can’t you even try to come up with an argument? A biological contract? That is your argument? I made a contract to give the state my body by having sex? Therefore, my very act of having sex in and of itself is a waiver of any rights I have to my own body?
Why does it not work that way for the female? Why does she not give her body up to the state upon having sex?
Or, can you make a rational, logical arugment whatsoever or do you just operate on deluded self-rightousness and emotion? Based on your inability to grasp concepts and understand language, I would guess the latter.
Child support is law, not biology.
Blacksmiths work in the dark, mostly.
“Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/11 @ 12:40 pm #
the XY donated sperm.”
100,000,000 sperm and your’s won?
shudha used a condom.
consider the sex act a biological contract.
But only for men.
67, not neccessarily.
converts and lifestyle choices.
ZOOM!!!!!
Nishi,
Again, you have no understanding of history or fact. You state but Hitler wasn’t practicing eugenics at all.
eugenics, like science is another bigbadbugaboo for the neoluddites.
However, the factual truth is that the Nazis were very much practicing eugenics, and no matter how many times you state they were not, you are lying and wrong.
Now, one could certainly argue that the nazis were wrong, and that the Gypsies, Homosexuals and Jews have absolutely no inheritable traits and therefore the Nazi’s eugenics program would not have worked as such.
But, that does not change the fact that the nazis were trying to practice eugenics in an efforct to create and sustain a “master raceâ€Â
but Hitler wasn’t practicing eugenics at all.
Please learn some history before posting again, child.
Jeff, in a free society, the mothers right to her own body supercedes any other entities right.
you may not like it, you might think it is immoral.
but it is the right of reproductive freedom.
any constraints you put on that are make the woman into a slave breeder.
“if killing homosexuals is eugenics, then homosexuality cant be a lifestyle choice can it?
– People might decide that they are practising eugenetics by killing gays, when in reality “gayness” might just be a random coalition of certain physical/chemical processes in the brain, just as other “preferences” are based on your though processes. As such, gatness may have no genetic component.
– You have to know causation accurately before you can ask those types of questions, otherwise that which might appear clever to you is simply a dumb question. So put your tongue back in your mouth. you’re making everyone ill.
– FOX is reporting that Jim Johnson is stepping down from the Obama campaign.
And there is the crux of the biscuit. What say you, lolscientist?
It’s kind of funny how often nishi is unable to see her own inconsistencies.
Increase the reproduction of the strong and smart and limit the reproduction of the slow, stupid and unproductive.
I guess I’m still mired in the sentimental belief that trying (and not always succeeding) to value the slow and stupid as much as I do the smart and strong is one element of being a better human. Probably why a pound mutt means as much to me as a $2500 pure pedigreed Dogue de Bordeaux.
the nazis were trying to practice WHAT THEY THOUGHT WAS eugenics
so why tie eugenics to Hitler?
can you not accept that eugenics can be “good”?
Why does it not work that way for the female?
because men don’t have wombs
“#Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/11 @ 12:44 pm #
67, not neccessarily.
converts and lifestyle choices.”
How many “voluntary gypsys” have you ever heard of?
And do Jews proselytize?
Idiot.
Double idiot.
Yes, he was.
Now we’re to the point where I believe you’re being willfully contrarian. Too bad.
But they do have bodies. Why does the state have a right to force labor out of them?
The nishtoon has a limited repertoire of “points” which it reiterates endlessly by assertion in order to keep a discussion from progressing beyond a certain point. One can conclude that point is the limit of its understanding of the issue.
I think that limit is permanent and cannot be extended. Thus the only benefit to responding to nishtoon is for the lurkers — and I rather doubt many capable of even merely lurking at PW are dumb enough to be swayed by the nishtoon.
You know who else has wombs? Unborn baby girls.
Nishi,
Do you really believe you are making rational, coherent arguments? If so, please see a doctor.
You are saying that right to body trumps all, but that men don’t have that right b/c they have sex. How, in your tiny mind, do you get to that point? B/c women have wombs? Therefore, their rights trump all other rights of men to their own bodies?
You are bordering on the insane buddy. I’ve never thought you were remotely intelligent, but always thought you might be sane. Now I am questioning that.
“#Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/11 @ 12:48 pm #
the nazis were trying to practice WHAT THEY THOUGHT WAS eugenics
so why tie eugenics to Hitler?”
No, the Nazis practiced eugenics, period.
“can you not accept that eugenics can be “goodâ€Â?”
Only if it were you it were being practiced on.
Point the first: The state has no right over anybodies body.
Point the second: The woman, once she has sex, can freely chose whether or not to have the child and the state has no right to interfere b/c it is her body.
Point the third: If the women choses to have the baby, the man can be forced by the state to use his body for labor b/c any right over his own body became forefeit on the male having sex.
Point the forth: This contradiction over the state being able to control your body is o.k. b/c females have wombs.
Point the 5th: killing people based on what you believe to be bad inheritable traits to try and establish a “master race” is NOT eugenics.
Point the 6th: Eugenics is only killing people based on their race (don’t look in dictionaries, their definition of eugenics is wrong).
Point the 7th: I like the color purple and get to wear a helmit all day.
“You know who else has wombs? Unborn baby girls.”
– And I also tend to believe that they have every right an adult has, including civil, Constitutional, and a sort of unborn bill of rights that should be absolutely enforced if we are to consider ourselves in the least bit civilized.
– Yes that complicates certain issues deeply, but I don’t think that makes those rights any the less inalienable.
factual truth is that the Nazis were very much practicing eugenics,
except that they werent
they thot they were, but that doesnt make it eugenics does it?
I haven’t got the answer to the Nature vs Nurture question… and I’m not racist.. There certainly are any number of good, hardworking, decent, even brilliant non-white people.. and I don’t think eugenics based on race or ethnic group is the answer.. However, it strikes me as a serious mistake to encourage the most able individuals in our world to limit their procreation to 1 or 2 babies while enabling even encouraging the least able individuals to breed like rabbits.. through welfare programs, socialized childcare, food stamps, laws forbidding forced birth control. seems to me that encouraging the least able to limit their childbearing would serve our society much better.
Brilliant individuals have risen out of every society and nation.. and from every racial and ethnic group.. but truth be told the third world is a messed up place and I’m not sure how we benefit by opening our doors to a flood of immigrants from societies that don’t share our values or history.. Sure, me may eventually gain some excellent minds but at what cost?
Untermensch, matoko. And to the Nazis you would be one, subhuman, fit only to be a slave to the master race, not permitted to wed or breed with the master race, and fated eventually for extermination, to remove your competition for resources so that the master race could add more people and thrive.
Eugenics justified all of their odious racial theories; and your clinging to it in the face of all facts and arguments does not support your self-description as a scientist.
To quote Jeff once again and to offer an excuse to leave off Nishi bothering:
“…Rather, I believe many progressives … have simply not examined the core tenets and kernel assumptions of the ideology to which they adhere… particularly as those implications speak to constitutional principles and the classical liberalism upon which a truly free society must necessarily be built.”
Which summarizes the problem very well. And it happens, not only as in this instance with regard to progressives and eugenics, but to us all, no matter the underlying ideology nor the immediate public policy question at hand to be solved. How to educate a people in a necessarily perishable Liberal tradition?
Comment #325 on Provocateurism, 4, nuggie. You’re transparent as glass.
No one is ordering women to get pregnant; and I’m not advocating women or men not use birth control.
I have a hard time thinking of women who are complicit in becoming pregnant as slaves to their own prior choice.
Which I don’t advance as an argument against abortion per se. Just against the way you frame it.
I will give Nishi this – he is saying that he likes Eugenics and thinks Eugenics is good and should be done. (which is why he wants to disassociate eugenics from the Nazis). I don’t think you will find many other leftists being so honest about their evil intentions.
Nishi, I am interested to hear your opinion on the rights to the “property†that is the fetal remains from an abortion. Do these remain the property of the woman who coceived the fetus, or does the clinic or persons who perfomed the abortion own the fetal remains?
As more and more uses for fetal remains are developed, the value of those remains will become increasingly higher. This is an issue that sooner or later will need to be determined by the courts. Though it might sound ghoulish for a woman to concive and abort as many feti as possible for monetary gain, the possibility is there. And just as a woman can be forced into prostitution, she could be forced into making feti for the montary gains of someone else. A law stating that a woman no longer owns her fetus after it leaves her body would prevent some of this sort of thing, but wouldn’t she, in effect, be denied the rights over her own body? A little OT, I know, but I know you don’t mind that.
And I also tend to believe that they have every right an adult has, including civil, Constitutional, and a sort of unborn bill of rights that should be absolutely enforced if we are to consider ourselves in the least bit civilized.
that is just riddickulous
take an embryology class BBH and stare at saggital sections 18 hours a week.
a fertilized zygote has rights?
a nerula?
a blastula?
where do you draw the line?
this is another IQ-baiting argument, the line is drawn between the thinkers and the believers..or the educated and the uneducated.
Which part is culture and which part is genetics, Ouroboros?
Is Nishi saying that the problem is that eugenics just hasn’t been properly tried yet?
MTH, assortive mating already dooms most 40percenters to their own gene pool.
except for the beautiful ones. ;)
– Please don’t anyone light a match if you’re a smoker. The pile of nishi strawmen in here has turned the PW lounge into a veritable tinderbox.
You are saying that right to body trumps all, but that men don’t have that right b/c they have sex.
I don’t think that she is saying that.
I may buy into the absolute freedom of choice for women as to the unborn when society does not require the father to support the child based on the mother’s choice to have the child. After all, requiring me to use my body for labor, to earn an income, to give to someone else, means that the state owns my body and therefore I am a slave.
This is good libertarian logic.
#54
factual truth is that the Nazis were very much practicing eugenics,
except that they werent
they thot they were, but that doesnt make it eugenics does it?
How dense are you? The point is that the facsist’s philosophy, including eugenics, was the base point for progressivism in this country. Progressives liked the idea of eugenics in the same way that nazis did. The nazis actually went out and tried it in a very terrible way. Much of the left’s philosophy today stems from such things as the eugenics movement, which started with the fascists.
So, basically, your political ideology stems from facsism. That is the point. Whether or not what the nazis did can properly be defined as “eugenics” does not change that fact. That is the point.
I disagree with you on whether or not it actually was eugenics put into practice, but that really is a side issue. The main issue is the point, which you cannot refute, that Planned Parenthood stemmed from the same philosophy and ideas as fascism. That progressivism, which turned into modern american liberalism, aslo stems from fascism.
Not currently. That’s outlawed. BECAUSE OF SQUISHING TEH WIMMEN’S RIGHTS!!!
You cling to evil matoko.
By the way, with all these “slave to the state” concepts being thrown around, how do you feel about taxes?
where do you draw the line?
Simply being able to identify this question and then taking it no further does not make you a thinker. You believe that because you don’t know where life begins that you can act as if it no longer is relevant to the discussion. That’s belief, no matter what you tell yourself.
“this is another IQ-baiting argument, the line is drawn
– Or maybe others could legitimately consider you a soulless geek, lacking any belief in the spirit, which makes you also an idiot if you can say that and not be crushed by the loss of someone you love.
Aldo,
That is exactly what it said. It said that b/c the male engaged in sex, it had entered into a “biological contract” whereby the state has the right to force it to engage in labor to pay child support. Is that not the state controlling the male body?
Of course, it appears that in it’s world, the female does not enter into the same “biological contract” when the female has sex. Only the male. The female maintains her freedom over her body even after she has sex.
#103, theres a Chrichton book about that very thing…rights of research chimeras, and whether people own their own germ plasm.
in the book teenagegirls force multiple ovulations with hormone injections to sell eggs.
ppl’s DNA becomes the property of the corporation they sell it to.
/shrug
this is eventually going to happen and i don’t see that it is preventable by “moral bulwarks”.
it will simply become ecomonics.
Yes, she is. The statement was “After all, requiring me to use my body for labor, to earn an income, to give to someone else, means that the “state owns my body and therefore I am a slave.— and her response was “shudha used a condom.
consider the sex act a biological contract.
the XY donated sperm.”
That’s exactly what she’s saying.
the female does not enter into the same “biological contractâ€Â
aucontraire, if the woman carried to term and abandoned the child and the man took it on, he could sue for support.
that is the biological contract.
the womb contract is different there is no analog for men
see my 119 pablo
How does one run a program of eugenics without having the state exercise great power over the choices of citizens and over the bodies of citizens?
Prohibit the unfit from breeding? That means forced sterilization (see Buck v Bell) or forced abortions (see China).
Prevent the unfit from using resources that could be better used by the fit? That means extermination (see Nazi Germany).
All involve the state exercising great control over the bodies and choices of their citizens, and the state must do it as a forced program; a partial program would do no good. Thus authoritarianism is needed.
Of course, no one here has actually asked a genetics scientist if eugenics actually makes any sense knowing what we now know of human genetics.
I’m pro-life. While I believe that it is not wrong for our society to err on the side of liberty, even if I do disagree with the method for how we came to that conclusion, I must never forget the other side of the equation is or will be a human life.
– Have you nishi. Have you ever loved someone?
– Its a very simple question.
#111 where is that outlawed?
I’ve stated for a long time that Nishi is a high school student who uses Google to find “big words” with which to appear erudite.
However the mask slips quite frequently.
Liberals believe the gov’t should control everything (i.e., regulate the economy, regulate what people can say, who they can hire, control health care, redistribute wealth, order men to pay child support for children they did not want) except the one sacrosanct thing the gov’t cannot control is a woman’s right to chose.
The sheer disconnect these people have in their beliefs and thought processes is staggering. If someone like nishi actually argued for true freedom, from taxes, gov’t regulation, freedom of the market, etc., I could actually respect her arguments as being a coherent set of principals.
But, that is sadly not even remotely the case.
“#103, theres a Chrichton book…”
That’s fiction. We’re dealing with facts and history here, and you can’t handle it. So much for super-smart science girl.
Which is a distinction without a difference, at that point, nishi. I can’t sing worth a shit, but that doesn’t keep me from pretending I can…
The womb contract? AAahhhahahahahah!
the female does not enter into the same “biological contractâ€Â
aucontraire, if the woman carried to term and abandoned the child and the man took it on, he could sue for support.
that is the biological contract.
the womb contract is different there is no analog for men
so, once the man has sex he has no rights unless the woman gives the rights to him? I.e., the woman can chose whether or not to have the child (the man and gov’t have no say). The woman choses whether or not to keep the child (if she choses to keep – the gov’t can force the man into labor to pay support, thus controlling his body). The woman can chose to abandon the baby (at which time the man can obtain custody and sue for support).
Nishi, that is beyond asinine in logic. In your world women are free and men are simply things that the state controls. Do you ever laugh at your own stupidity?
that is none of your bidness BBH.
let me ask YOU a question.
have you ever watched someone die by centimeters?
to go from being a surgeon and a rhodes scholar to a being a hostile zombie in depends?
fuck off
Because, Lord help us, if Nishi is ACTUALLY a college-educated biologist, I’d have loved to sit in on the required Ethics courses he/she/it attended………
This tired old nonsense comes up over and over; it’s an identifying trait of conservative ignorance and dishonesty.
Sanger advocated positive eugenics (encouraging reproduction by favored groups) but was no racial eliminativist. Her concern was almost entirely for class, not race (your own quotes make a distinction between higher- and lower-class “Negroes”, which should have been a clue as to what she was actually talking about). And her views changed over time, which you misrepresent; your quotes all come from almost 30, to as much as 45 years before her death.
Further, you are just stupidly wrong about the historical facts you pretend to rely on. Even to imagine that the phrase “Talented Tenth” was a slogan of eugenics is so bizarrely stupid as to be unworthy of comment. And you commit the standard, and widely debunked, falsehood of misquoting the line about the “Negro Project” in precisely the opposite of its obvious meaning. It occurs in a letter to a black supporter about the need for black staff in contraceptive clinics in minority areas, because they would have better rapport with the patients; she goes on to say that support for contraception should be encouraged among black community leaders, including ministers, precisely for the purpose of reassuring patients that the project was not hostile to their interests. Your quote, as always, includes only one half of one sentence of this letter and implies a meaning completely the reverse of what it clearly says when read in its entirety.
Perhaps you think Sanger was not only an advocate of racial genocide but openly announced this to black leaders, and somehow still managed to bamboozle Adam Clayton Powell, W.E.B. Dubois, the Urban League, and the NAACP into mistakenly supporting that plan. Perhaps you think you know more about what she wanted and planned than the people she was talking to directly and who knew her personally. Perhaps you can see hidden meanings in plain clear words that somehow eluded all the black people she was talking to at the time. And if you do, you are an idiot and a fool. More to the point, if you spread this nonsense without making even the simplest effort to check its accuracy, and if you continue to propagate this absurd claim of guilt by association, by slandering a woman now more than 40 years dead, you are dishonest and a liar. Seriously: you take the buffoon Jonah Goldberg as your source, when simply reading the material would demonstrate you were wrong? Apparently you are worth exactly as much regard as he is.
Finally, none of this means anything, except in some historical sense. Margaret Sanger did great good work, whatever her motives. But whatever she did and whatever her motives may have been are irrelevant to the questions that confront us now. Contraception, abortion, and other aspects of personal autonomy are as vital now as ever, no matter who supports them or what their beliefs may be. Not content with slandering dead leaders, nor with attempting to smear current activists by association with those slanders, you attempt to impeach the moral values of freedom and autonomy by association with names you have slandered and a history you have distorted. Apparently you adopt your principles on the basis of whether you like the people who held them before you. Others choose to think about the principles themselves, not the people, and make our commitments accordingly. I’m glad Sanger stood for autonomy, whatever else she stood for; I choose to do the same, but not for that reason. As for you . . . one only hopes for improvement.
the woman can chose whether or not to have the child
yes. it her body and her right.
anything else is forced slave-breeding
Nishi,
Since you are against the state owning my body, are you against income taxes? That is the state taking the fruits of my labors, which is control over my body. The first three months or so of the year I am working for the federal gov’t, and not voluntarily. Thus, the state owns my labor, which comes from my body, for those months.
Are you against income tax?
Or, is the only freedom you care about abortion?
A challenger appears!
According to nishi’s logic, the fact that men are stronger than women gives them the right to elevate their liberty over that of the weaker sex. Women have wombs and are thus masters of the reproductive domain, and men who have muscles can use them to assert domain over everything else.
I think I remember this story and I don’t remember it having a happy ending.
– Thank you nishi for sharing you story.
– Now I understand. You will heal in Gods good time.
if Nishi is ACTUALLY a college-educated biologist
I seriously doubt that is true. Putting aside philosophical disagreements with her, her logic and writing skill are too poor to demonstrate higher education.
mikey, scifi is how we testdrive the paradigms of the futere.
you religious conservatives are mired in the past.
accept that new paradigms are coming down the pike that will reshape the world.
and your crude primitve antique “ethos” is completely incapable of bulwarking anything.
Kevin,
Autonomy?
Sanger dedicated a momement, that by it’s very defination, consists of interfering with others peoples lives on a massive scale. How in the world is that “Autonomy”?
Kevin Smith,
Hate to break it to you, but Sanger’s racism is incredibly well documented. Your attempts at claiming otherwise are the only thing dishonest here.
Come on, a testicle has to be worth something.
mikey, scifi is how we testdrive the paradigms of the futere.
you religious conservatives are mired in the past.
accept that new paradigms are coming down the pike that will reshape the world.
and your crude primitve antique “ethos†is completely incapable of bulwarking anything.
Ahh, the brave new world. The liberals will create utopia on earth using science. That claim hasn’t been made before (ussr? cuba? China? North Korea? Nazi Germany?).
This time thought, it will work. The people that tried to creat the brave new world in the past weren’t as pure as today’s leftists. That’s why it didn’t work last time.
this abortion discussion is profoundly stupid.
there is no way to force a woman to carry an unwanted child to term.
neither can she be forced to stop drinking or smoking or eating crap.
its her body.
W.E.B DuBois was also a good Marxist. He knew that one needed to break a few eggs to get to the Utopia.
DuBois was a large fan of Imperial Japan, seeing their victory of Russia in the Ruso-Japanese War of 1905 as an example of “colored pride”. In 1936, he co-wrote a paper justifying Japan’s invasion and subsequent occupation of Manchuria and that the Chinese people should view the Japanese as their saviours from “Europeanization”
It is fiction, matoko. You don’t ‘test drive’ anything. The story reaches the conclusion the author wants because the author can send the story there. Nothing else determines anything that happens in the story but the author’s desire to put it there or have it happen or not happen.
You don’t ‘test drive’ any concept in scifi because the God-like figure of the author controls all outcomes.
“over Russia”
Sanger, in her own words:
Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents.
More Sanger
It [charity] encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.
The most serious charge that can be brought against modern “benevolence†is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.
It now remains for the U.S. government to set a sensible example to the world by offering a bonus or yearly pension to all obviously unfit parents who allow themselves to be sterilized by harmless and scientific means. In this way the moron and the diseased would have no posterity to inherit their unhappy condition. The number of the feeble-minded would decrease and a heavy burden would be lifted from the shoulders of the fit.
there is no way to force a woman to carry an unwanted child to term.
neither can she be forced to stop drinking or smoking or eating crap.
its her body.
Fine. All I want is the same freedom. Will you agree that men should not be forced to pay support for children they did not want?
dur, its future projection..these are things that could happen.
im so sorry your limited intellect and imagination prevents you speculating and exploring the future.
“….and your crude primitve antique “ethos†is completely incapable of bulwarking anything.
– ….and you feel it didn’t save you in your time of deepest sorrow when you needed it the most.
Start with this: Once I had a discussion with one of my alanon family group attendees thusly –
Lady: “What am I going to do….nothing seems to free me from this deep heartache”
Me: “Have you started the 12 steps….admited a higher power and put yourself in his hands?
Lady: “I tried that…. I prayed and prayed….he didn’t answer me”
Me: “He answered you”
Lady: “No….no he did not….no matter how much I prayed my other hasn’t changed”
Me: “He answered you. The answer was “no”. Your other may not change but you certainly can. That was his answer.”
– Finding that comfort you seek only works when you ask the right questions. You need to ask different questions about your loss. Then you will understand.
Of course, you are wrong about the smoking, eating, etc. Now, people still do what is illegal, but you can make smoking crack, meth, and other things illegal. You could even making smoking tobacco illegal. You could make drinking alcohol illegal (remember prohibition).
Thus, your argument rests on some very unsound presumptions.
I really enjoy it when someone who can’t type or string a coherent sentence together claims the “superior intellect”.
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
dur, its future projection..these are things that could happen.
im so sorry your limited intellect and imagination prevents you speculating and exploring the future.
I read tons of sci-fi. Of course, I’m not childish enough to believe that it is the road-map of the future. Flying cars were promised in Sci-fi 60 years ago, and we don’t have them, after all.
Will you agree that men should not be forced to pay support for children they did not want?
nope.
unless the women raped them.
even if she lied about using birth control, it is still his responsibility.
let me ask YOU a question.
have you ever watched someone die by centimeters?
to go from being a surgeon and a rhodes scholar to a being a hostile zombie in depends?
That would make a person irrationally hate God, ‘Xtians’ and worship genetic science for a while….
no, it is the superset of WHAT COULD HAPPEN in the future.
dur, its future projection..these are things that could happen.
im so sorry your limited intellect and imagination prevents you speculating and exploring the future.
It is speculation, and it means nothing. You can imagine anything you want, but it doesn’t ‘test drive’ anything. That is why it is called fiction.
And the humor of someone who denies facts and writes as you do calling another a limited intellect is surely lost on you.
…because you say it is?
Sorry, what if I’ve advanced to a higher ethos by then?
Nishi,
You really don’t see the contradiction in your position do you? You believe the woman has freedom of choice but you are unwilling to give the man the same. After all, the woman chose to have sex. If she gets pregnant and the man wants the child, then the man should be able to require it. Why not? If he is going to be responsible for payment why should he be in charge of the decision?
Nishi seems to live for abortion. Every time a woman has one, she must smile.
It’s a scary reality.
I’m going to re-read some of my future history books, like Isaac Asimov’s foundation series. Now that I know they show exactly what the future will be like, I want to prepare.
I love how Nishi claims contraception is entirely the man’s responsibility.
Apparently, women cannot be held accountable for their own actions. God forbid we expect the same level of responsibility from a woman as we do from a man.
Because she has the outcome she desires, great banana. Anything that does not conform to that outcome is wrong. The denial of reality by the self-proclaimed Matoko Super-Genius Science Girl is a wonder to behold – like two freight trains colliding.
gb, u simply cannot require forced-carry-to-term.
men don’t have wombs so there cant be parity.
think with big head instead of the little one.
What about post-apocalyptic fiction?
Contemporary liberalism is a false consciousness. Its failures in reality legion, its adherents evidence blindness, hubris, and inhumanity.
“even if she lied about using birth control, it is still his responsibility.
– How sexist nishi. Once there is a child it is both adults responsibility, all other considerations aside, even treachery.
– BECAUSE…The baby is a human being, not one of you abstract scientific theories, or a petri dish with some cell material floating in it. You really don’t get that so you. I feel a touch of sympathy for your emptiness. I will pray for you.
Actually, if I get to pick, I want my future to be Ringworld.
Or, in the alternative, the world of Mad Max.
“#
Comment by Mikey NTH on 6/11 @ 1:28 pm #
It is fiction, matoko. You don’t ‘test drive’ anything. The story reaches the conclusion the author wants because the author can send the story there. Nothing else determines anything that happens in the story but the author’s desire to put it there or have it happen or not happen.
You don’t ‘test drive’ any concept in scifi because the God-like figure of the author controls all outcomes.”
And the reason he/she is writing is to make money.
Nothing else enters into it.
What about Babylon 5?
I always thought it was the most “realistic” future society.
That, or Firefly.
Nishi
I said nothing about forcing the women to carry to term. let it be her choice. But, the man should have a choice as well. His choice not to pay for a child he does not want. What is so hard about that? Why does the state get to control a man’s body.
try thinking with your brain instead of your vagina.
Actually, I want to live in “I Am Legend”.
Non-citizens also have rights under the law. For one, you may not murder a non-citizen without repercussions. Go ahead, try it and see.
“#
Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/11 @ 1:36 pm #
Will you agree that men should not be forced to pay support for children they did not want?
nope.
unless the women raped them.
even if she lied about using birth control, it is still his responsibility.”
Ah, I got it.
She’s a Femi-fascist.
N O’Brian,
As I said earlier, for liberals like Nishi, the ONLY true right is for women to have abortions. Everything else they are fine with the state controlling.
So, femi-fascist is actually pretty acurate.
– I kind of liked Homer Simpsons theory of a donut shaped universe. Such a place would just naturally have a large selection of world varieties.
– Ummmm …. donuts….
“Actually, if I get to pick, I want my future to be Ringworld.”
Would YOU like a name like ‘Chitakumishad’?
She’s an authoritarian N. O’Brain. To achieve her eugenics dream she must have power – lots of power – to make people do what they would not otherwise do. a nasty piece of work she is. Thankfully, she is unlikely to breed and pass along her hate to the future.
Well, that’s enough of the afternoon gone.
Have fun with the Nishi the rest of the thread.
These always seem to gravitate towards he/she/it anyho.
Interestingly enough, the only right that the left truly believes in, deep in their cell structure (I would say soul, but don’t want to offend), is the “constitutional right to abortion” – which is nowhere to be found in the constitution.
The other rights explicitly stated in the constitution, they don’t really care much about.
I find that very, very odd.
Maybe we can just stop answering Nishi entirely. Here position can be summed up thus: Science Is Our Saviour, para los siglos de los siglos amén.
It is a core part of the Progressive agenda, and given that she is too naive to know that Life’s #1 Rule is “People Suck,” including and especially intellectuals, because they value neither humility nor gratitude, there is no reason to let her string a perfectly good thread beyond 150 comments on her childishness alone.
it’s an identifying trait of conservative ignorance and dishonesty.
Wow. You’ve won me over, right there. I had no idea that I was ignorant and dishonest.
I just want to note that nishi’s point about “citizens” is complete BS. It was shown by me to be complete BS. She ultimately had to admit she did not know what the hell she was talking about.
And she’s back with the same crap argument today. She does not learn, and thus should be glad that eugenics is so infrequent in today’s society.
I just like watching her run her arguments around in circles. It’s like my dog when he is chasing his tail.
I can just imagine her sitting at her computer trying desperately trying to come up with a cogent, rational argument – and then finally giving up and typing gibberish.
Nishi,
You’ve said on more than one occasion something to the effect that “scifi[sic] is how we testdrive[sic] the paradigms of the futere[sic]“. I would argue that this assertion is somewhere between wholly incorrect and a willfully obtuse post hoc interpretation of events.
I know it makes you feel all anti-Christian and smart and warm and fuzzy inside, but really, where do you get such a silly idea from?
BRD
Oops, sorta covered upthread, although not addressed by nishi in any substantive way.
So, the way I interpret nishi’s various responses upthread, abortion is the biological analogue of bankruptcy: you can get yourself into a difficult spot through mistake or bad decision, and the court can get you out relatively scot-free.
Only, abortion advocates insist on there being no court and no public record.
It’s fiction, right? You’ve been warned about trying to argue based on fiction.
Finally, none of this means anything, except in some historical sense.
That is really heavy, Kevin. You think of that all by yourself?
Nishidiot, it’s called science fiction for a reason. It’s fiction. It helps communicate the ideas the author has, but that’s all. It can be interesting fodder for discussion, but it has no predictive value at all.
And I’d really like you to list who here are “religious conservatives”. I don’t think your list conforms with reality.
I’m so sorry your limited intellect is incapable of distinguishing between fact and fiction.
And to clarify for the literally challenged, eugenics isn’t exclusive to race, religion, ethnicity or anything else, although all of those can come into play. Eugenics is simply a systematic breeding system designed to enhance humanity to some arbitrary standards. Animal husbandry for human animals, if you will. The fact Sanger was willing to tolerate the “smarter” Negroes in return for eliminating the average or below is hardly an endorsement of her character, it seems to me.
Convenient for you, innit? You can lie to a guy, birth his kid, then take a chunk of his earnings for the next 18 years. He has no say, no rights.
And you think you’re a libertarian?!
Was Margaret any relation to Tammy Wynette? She was a Sanger, too. A durned good one!
Shorter Kevin – Her intentions were good, so feel free to ignore all of that nasty eugenics/racist stuff.
mikey, scifi is how we testdrive the paradigms of the futere.
you religious conservatives are mired in the past.
Whoa…. Does that mean that if the Bible is science-fiction, as Nishi believes, it could be a good way to test drive the paradigms of the future, like say bio-engineering?
In which case the theocons are mired in the….. future?
Maybe I have to reread Kevin’s comment, but I thought that he was getting at the notion that while she may have been into some batshit crazy stuff while younger, she recognized the errors of her ways and moved on from there. If I’m wrong about that, please cue me in so I can get up to speed.
Thanks!
I’m still waiting for my flying car, BTW. And where’s that manned trip to Jupiter that was supposed to have taken place 7 years ago?
“And you think you’re a libertarian?!”
– Maybe we need to coin a new word for the special case of the Feminazi that believes in “rights for me but not you, if you’re a damn man” – Femitarian –
“And I’d really like you to list who here are “religious conservativesâ€Â. I don’t think your list conforms with reality.”
I’d edit that to read “she has no fucking Clueâ„¢ what she’s talking about”
AS to predictive value, Robert A. Heinlein actually described the water bed. When someone actually tried to patent it, they were turned down.
I’m really, really learning to loathe WordPress.
Nishi, I’ve been watching your posts, and looking at your sentence structure.
It seems likely to me that you’re Austistic/Asperger’s. You can google the Baron-Cohen test to find out.
If that’s the case, then you are yourself currently the target of a Eugenics campaign.
– What took so long?
– Hey. Mitts off my Aspergers kid. He’s going to rewrite Star Wars or something, and keep me in my dodage in the manner I could get used to easily.
Nishi is a female supremacist and a bigot. And an idiot pretending to be a genius. Her arguements are 2 dimensional, emotionally based and incoherent. I, too, suspect a highschool student. If not, she wasted alot of money on her “education”. It is certainly a moral retard.
I would rather argue with a telephone pole; the TPP wouldn’t make dumb statements.
Why the hate for WordPress? It seems to work adequately.
Kevin Keith boldly asserts: “…Sanger advocated positive eugenics…” but was she not the leading proponent of birth control? Birth control hardly seems positive, as in positing another child, but negative, as in, don’t have that kid you were about to conceive.
BRD: Kevin says, “…whatever she did and whatever her motives may have been…” so you got it, she gets a pass. Jeff did start off his post taking note of Goldberg saying that she is considered a liberal saint, and we all know that saints sin and are forgiven. Most of all, Kevin want us to come away with the certain knowledge that she was not a ‘racist’, just that she was kinda down on lower class people (like me).
“…just that she was kinda down on lower class people (like me).
– Sdferr, I’m going to take the high road here and assume you didn’t mean you’re down on lower class people, something like the indeterminate statement “You can’t put too much water in a nuclear reactor”.
Nishi, you are digging a hole. The deeper you dig the more your vision and perspective become ever more restricted and without context or value. Once you lose sight of the horizon you are in grave danger. (Cue Col. Jessup asking, “Is there any other kind?”, or perhaps Hamlet saying, “I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in’t.”) You have used your conceptual prolixity like a shovel for bullshit for so long that you seem to have come to believe that it is the appropriate tool for every problem: rhetorical, philospophical, or mineral. alas and alack, the light at the end of the tunnel you see may be nothing more than the glow of the earth’s magma. But I digress. Enough mix and match metaphors and similes for one day.
You can lie to a guy, birth his kid, then take a chunk of his earnings for the next 18 years.
like i said, think with the big head, crawford.
the theocons dip a toe in. via that duplicitous douchebag ponnuru.
“…the devil’s water it aint so sweet…you dont have to drink right now.
but you can dip your feet.”
— The Killers
BBH, if he were not referring to himself as being lower class, but instead saying that he was also kinda down on lower class people, he would have had to say, “Like I am”. So you’re safe in assuming that he isn’t a major tool.
Sdferr,
So, sort of like Robert Byrd?
Cuz it’ll run over?
We need to invent a new word that means;
The study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative ——) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive ——).
The Nazis stunk up the word “Eugenics” by trying to disguise their murder of’ politically undesirable’ people as
some sort of scientific program to improve the gene pool. Nowadays the subject cant even be discussed coolly without all arguments coming back around to “look what the Nazis did” The Nazis were not eugenicists.. they were evil fuckers. I think we can agree on that.. Let’s now move along.
There are clearly individuals that should not be allowed to procreate or at very least be discouraged from doing so. Drawing the line doesn’t have to be difficult. There are people that are carrying severe genetic defects that most likely lead to severe mental or physical defects. Must we encourage them to pass those defective genes to the next generation in the name of personal freedom? The lumpen proletariat (of whatever race or ethnic group) procreate the most but contribute proportionally less to society.. Nature? Nurture? Who knows… ? All I know is that illiterate parents that promote neither a solid work ethic or a solid education produce stupid, unproductive and often criminal offspring.
If I could waive a magic wand and make genetic abnormalities disappear I would.. If I could raise low IQs into the normal or high range, I would.. If I could teach the yabbos to be responsible good citizens I would.. but I cant.. so the alternative is to find a scientific way to cut down these negative characteristics in our population.. (insert new not-eugenics word here) would be that scientific way. And , yes, it would require a certain amount of totalitarianist power and regulation to accomplish.. Human nature is not all that noble and in correcting it one has to be firm for the greater good.
“…and the more you drink, the more you’ll want
you see.
and then its too late.”
Ouroboros, I’m one of those “genetic abnormalities”. So, for that matter, are a large percentage of the people who work at the local software shop. Make us “normal”, and we lose the ability to make all your nifty toys.
i have been tentatively diagnosed with auspergers.
in as much as they can diagnose it.
ausbergers is really just highfunction autism.
– Pinocchio –
ourobouros, there is a word.
transhumanism
eddison fan? im into victorian psuedo-erotica. Fiorinda is one of my WoW tune names.
toon names, hehe.
– My nuclear reactor runneth over? What scripture is that from?
Human nature is not all that noble and in correcting it one has to be firm for the greater good.
Who’s greater good? And who determines that? Those questions are what is wrong with the scientific approach to “improving” the species and ignores free will and individual rights over the collective. I don’t much care for that. It is a Nazi-like attitude.
Nishi,
You’ve said on more than one occasion something to the effect that “scifi[sic] is how we testdrive[sic] the paradigms of the futere[sic]“. I would argue that this assertion is somewhere between wholly incorrect and a willfully obtuse post hoc interpretation of events.
I know it makes you feel all anti-Christian and smart and warm and fuzzy inside, but really, where do you get such a silly idea from?
BRD
Ouroboros:
Either what you just wrote is great satire, in which case my hat’s off to you, or you are not kidding.
If you are not kidding, then you are wrong. Not wrong in that there are people who carry obvious genetic defects. The issue comes down to one thing that you mentioned (somewhat) in passing:
Drawing this line is not just difficult, but impossible, because the question arises, “Who gets to draw that line?” I have already concluded that no human being is qualified to do this. The line, or lines, could be arbitrarily placed anywhere.
The fact that enacting your program “would require a certain amount of totalitarianist power and regulation to accomplish” should be a tip-off for you right there. Finally,
This admission about the state of human nature kills your whole argument about deciding who gets to procreate. No one is qualified. However, if you think you are, then, well, I really don’t know what to say.
I thNishi opposes, based on personal autonomy considerations, giving the state the authority to force a woman to carry her pregnancy to term. I happen to agree with her on this point, but it is a red herring in the context of this post. The early progressives who are the subject of the post were not negative liberty proponents who were opposed to state interference with a woman’s decision. They were actively pushing for abortion and sterilization by the state in order to give the state more control over the population.
The distinction here goes to the heart of the issue: Progressives have historically been on the side of giving the state more power over individuals, even though they have learned to co-opt libertarian language on some issues in order to make this project more palatable to people who might otherwise resist.
It is this theme (which I personally find most interesting) that is summed up in these lines:
This trick remains the core of much faddish “individualism†among rebellious conformists on the American cultural left today. Nonetheless, Sanger’s analysis was surely correct, and led directly to the widespread feminist association of sex with political rebellion. Sanger in effect “bought off†women (and grateful men) by offering tolerance for promiscuity in return for compliance with her eugenic schemes.
Of course we see this same “trick” at work all the time in the blogosphere, where Leftists adopt a “rebellious” pose even as they uncritically regurgitate the platitudes that are ubiquitous in academia, the MSM, the arts, and the politically ascendant Democratic party.
This
Hey, I’m part Aspie myself (making me half-Asped), and my nephew has a full-blown case of it. I also know another full-blown Aspie, who is extremely articulate and knows where to find the shift key.
Nishi’s primary problems are youth, naiveté, arrogance (youthful), blind faith in SCIENCE!, and hoping to immanentize the eschaton by making sure that only the “fit” can breed.
“transhumanism”
– Sounds like a new high speed rail line. ZygoteTrac?
In other words, you do not believe in equality; all decisions should be yours, and you should be capable of defrauding a man out of his liberty. Simply because of the arrangement of your anatomy.
You’re not a libertarian. Libertarians believe in taking responsibility for their own actions; the libertarian position would give the man the choice of his involvement in supporting the child, particularly since he has no choice in whether or not the child is born.
Ouro:
As soon as it becomes acceptable to declare some people “fit” and others “unfit,” you open the door to more horrors than you can imagine.
Because there will always be a percentage of the human population that yearns to control the rest of us  not for our own good but for their own self-aggrandizement  and they will be extremely arbitrary in their definition of “fit.”
We’ll have our own version of the Inquisition, which, unexpected as it was, was ultimately a way of “setting things right” by getting rid of the undesirables.
Besides, the criteria for “fit” will never include goodness, gentleness, kindness, wisdom, spiritual acuity, generosity, patience, or any other of the Christian virtues.
And “unfit” will never include the power-hungry, the narcissistic, the predatory, the cold-hearted, the envious, the vulgar, or anything like unto it. Because those are the very people who will take control of the fit/unfit categories. Woe be unto the civilization who allows that kind of evil to take root.
Human nature is not all that noble and in correcting it one has to be firm for the greater good.
And that, right there, is the underlying assumption of the fascist impulse. Did you know that Ouro? Really?
Jackson Five; Nikki Six, Chapter 11.
BRD
where do you get such a silly idea from?
Dr. J. Richard Gott, Neal Stephenson, Dr. Jerry Pournelle, William Gibson, among others.
Christian virtues.
/spit
tell that to Margarete Porete and the Albigensians.
look at how simple this is.
religion == tribalism a.k.a. the selfish genes, plus value-added supernatural.
marxims, communism, naziism == tribalism without the supernatural. atheist religions if you like.
;)
you are all exactly the same.
BBH- 209
Heh. That I am low class should have been by now, self-evident.
I denounce. Habit. Getting.
Thanks cranky-d for filling in. BRD – what ‘sort of like’ the sainted senior senator of west virginia, longer than whom no other has served? So long, he moulders in fact.
So that makes it right? Argument from authority, nishi.
It’s still fiction. It’s still entirely the product of the author. Society is the product of all the people within it — emergent system, remember? The author makes all the choices in fiction, determines all the outcomes. The “predictions” in SF are as valid as a psychic’s, and have even less bearing on reality as it exists now.
We don’t live in the Co-Dominion, or Stephenson’s future history, or even Heinlein’s. We live in the real world. There are other people and random chance to deal with.
SF can help you think about the future, but you have to think. And it remains, in the end, fiction.
Jesus, people. I just looked in because the thread got so huge so far, I should have known better.
How many months have y’all been trying to beat some sense into this fool? How’s that workin’ out for ya?
Slashdot has been taken over by trolls, is it PW’s turn?
Simple is not reality, nishi. Just because you can express your bigotry in a few words doesn’t make it any more than bigotry.
Don’t forget L. Ron Hubbard when it comes to scifi authors testing the paradigm of the future!
since he has no choice in whether or not the child is born.
he had a choice crawford.
to fuck or not to fuck.
Or how about Frank Herbert and the Kwisatz Haderach?
Merovign,
Have you forgotten B. F. Skinner? At this point, though, we might be into Pavlovian response.
Anyway – I like to think of it as a group attemp to communicat with the inner gerbil of Richard Gere.
ok charles.
Dune rawks.
You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggles permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.
–
Nishi, you really might want to read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which some regard as the first scifi novel. It also touches on some of your themes today.
I would rather argue with a telephone pole; the TPP wouldn’t make dumb statements.
Balloon fence.
Chinese container ship invasion of Los Angeles.
Teh stoopid is our greatest renewable resource, and if it could be harnessed it would provide for our energy needs. One “_____________ Studies” Department could probably provide all the energy necessary for the rest of the campus, including the cyclotron.
Nishi, I’m not certain you’re being as clear and lucid as you think you are.
If it wasn’t clear from my response to Ouroboros, I’m Aspie as well. Learning that has made my opposition to Eugenics much more …. personal.
I’m Aspie as well
i doubt it.
mindblindness renders us aspies completely insensitive to others.
we basically want to burn them down for being so fracking stupid
She had the same choice. Assuming consensual sex, they made that choice mutually.
Afterwards there’s another decision point — abort or carry to term? You say the father has no say in that decision, particularly if the mother wants to abort and the father doesn’t, right? So the choice is entirely the mother’s, right?
So why should the father be held accountable for a choice he had no part in?
Shouldn’t the mother take the responsibility for her decision at that second decision point? Or is she less than a full adult, who should be protected from the consequences of her decisions?
Ouroboros – you said “All I know is that illiterate parents that promote neither a solid work ethic or a solid education produce stupid, unproductive and often criminal offspring.”
The determining factor in that scenario is culture, not genetics.
In most cases, the woman has the choice to have sex or not, too. This may be a new low for nishi.
Ok, then I guess I’ll have to self-identify as half NOT-Aspie.
Yeah, Aspies have a hard time dealing with others’ “stupidity,” but we also tend to be idiot-savants: good at one or two things, sucky at everything else.
Just because neurotypicals don’t obsess over the same details we do is no sign of their “stupidity”; rather, it’s a sign of our own narrow interests and our inability to relate to them (and vice-versa). It IS hard to deal with, but what doesn’t kill you yadda yadda yadda.
Nishi @ 232,
As far as I recall, I don’t think many science fiction authors have are so conceited to imagine that they are ‘test driving’ any sort of future paradigm. As it happens, I was recently speaking to a close friend about such topics, and essentially science fiction seems to break into two major categories, that of Jules Verne and that of HG Wells. Verne’s fiction is generally pretty descriptive, but doesn’t head towards a specific political or moral subtext, which Wells does.
By and large, I think science fiction is quite often a fantastic allegorical tool to explore the world as it is today, but as far as any future predictive value, science fiction has an absolutely horrid record on predictions, except in those cases where incidental elements have become self-fulfilling prophecies.
In general, one might go so far as to say that they posit interesting what ifs, but I don’t think any author would be so arrogant to suggest that they create simulations of such great veracity that they can run viable simulations of the future. Even alternate histories recognize their limitations in this respect, and they have a much better and more concrete of information with which to begin.
BRD
Except when it deep-sixes two separate attempts on my part to comment, on this thread — the kind of behavior that causes some on occasion to suspect they’re being blocked or their comments shitcanned, but it’s just WordPress being glitchy.
Aldo at #226.
Buck v Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), was the United States Supreme Court ruling that upheld a statute instituting compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded “for the protection and health of the state.” It was largely seen as an endorsement of negative eugenicsâ€â€the attempt to improve the human race by eliminating “defectives” from the gene pool. (cite via Wikipedia). I have read it before in ConLaw, and is taught as a warning case. Not all US Supreme Court decisions are good.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), is another case wherein citizens were not treated equally.
That is the case you want.
Orson Scott Card predicted the Internet in the Ender series. He also maintains that sci-fi and fantasy are “realized metaphor.” IOW, NOT test cases.
Sci-fi is also the genre most likely to date itself, because its authors regularly ride on what they believe to be the cutting edge of technology, which ends up not being the edge after only a few years.
Like in those crappy old movies, everyone talked about the mysterious “electromagnetism” at first, then it’s all about RADAR, then Radiation, etc.
Then maybe I have it too.
<tosses lit Molotov cocktail> Hey, Nishi! Catch!
#241 – Do not forget Mary Shelley.
So using Sci-fi to foresee and testdrive paradigms = good.
Using the Bible to foresee and testdrive paradigms = bad?
And charles austin said it before me.
My nephew is an Aspie also, and he’s a pretty good little kid – a few years behind at school, but does he love trains and my old matchbox cars. And fans – all kinds of fans – ceiling, pedestal, oscillating, etc.
As profoundly wrong as the thread-jacker typically is, it’s not difficult to see the laughability of a poor choice of words concerning fiction. The difference missed, naturally, is that between excellent speculative fiction and mere garden-variety sci-fi. The latter has no more predictive or trial value than the average sci-fi author, for that purpose the two being essentially one and the same.
But the former, wielded by a true visionary, is highly useful not as a test drive for literal “future paradigms”, but as a thought-provoker for the mental experiment in choice, responsibility, and outcomes; the stuff of life for the functional psyche.
Which involves principle. Oops.
Further, to an opportunist, anything that might strike the ego just so could constitute “test-driving the future” (and might muck over genuine enlightened artistry in literature, such as occasionally occurs.) And by this paradox of views, everybody that disagrees is a backwards fundie.
No ability to discern the difference means no ability to elaborate on it. Bingo: as wrong on fiction as on what any given author meant to say…and no less so on the ramifications of reality itself.
It all kinda adds up.
Kevin seems to think that I wrote Liberal Fascism, what with all the addresses to “you” with respect to text that is Jonah’s. Which is interesting.
As for DuBois, here’s what Goldberg writes:
I wrote in an earlier comment that even racists can come up with good ideas that may withstand constitutional scrutiny; too, I’ve noted time and again that this entire series is meant to provoke discussion, and that my beliefs may not necessarily mirror Goldberg’s.
This doesn’t stop ol’ Kevin from reducing my “worth” to zilch (without irony, this idea of my comparative worth for, in his opinion, thinking and believing incorrectly; I’ll allow him several moments to identify the disconnect), naturally. In that haughty tone of the truly enlightened who, as pointed out above, seem not to recognize the active role of abortion in negative eugenics — or that black progressives, too, could believe in eugenics, and would have just as much invested in seeing the “right kinds” of blacks reproducing as would people like Sanger.
Goldberg notes that Sanger was not necessarily a black eliminationist. I have no where called her one, either. But to pretend that her eugenic ideas weren’t grounded in racialism is to airbrush history — typical of the left, that, blotting out the inconvenient truths and replacing them with a frame more sympathetic to today’s progressives. Thus, Sanger becomes a eugenicist who was merely worried over class inequity. Which I’m not sure makes her eugenics anymore palatable — but hey, one step at a time when we need to rehabilitate one of our heroes, yes?
Writes Kevin:
Many accusations, but no proof offered. 1) How exactly do I slander dead leaders? 2) Where do I attempt to smear current activists by association? 3) where to attempt to impech the moral values of freedom and autonomy (!) by association? 4) How do I adopt principles on the basis of whether I like the people who held them before me? 5) Is Kevin actually suggesting that, of all people, I ignore the principles in favor of the cult of personality? 6) Did Kevin bother to read any of the comments I left in this thread that proceeded his own? Because if so, one wonders how he could take my reluctant pro-choice stance as an attack on “autonomy”.
Kevin, in short, may wish for my improvement. But as with many other progressives, he should first look to improve himself, and not be content to think that, simply because he can raise high dudgeon, he must necessarily be on the correct side of every issue — such that he’s able to reduce my worth to zero and advocate for my “improvement.”
Because there’s something so…fascistic about that.
I am quite late to this discussion, but I did want to make the point that eugenics, for the most part, is an amoral philosophy. Human beings, however, are terrible at implementing it because there is no consensus on what makes someone genetically superior. Is it brute strength? A kind personality? What if someone has 3 ears and half a lung, but is a virtuoso at the trumpet?
And so it goes without saying there has not been one successful eugenics program to date. Our soft eugenics program of abortion as a choice (and make no mistake, that was the intention) has solved none of the social problems the original advocates claimed it would, so “choice” it would seem, does not make for an effective eugenics program.
But forced eugenics policies have even worse effects. Look at China. They don’t have enough girls.
So it seems that Mother Nature has the best eugenics program, and she has no ulterior motive. I think there is something to be said for letting nature take its course, and maybe teaching men to fish as long as they want to learn.
Many years ago (long before I’d heard of Autism), I realized how incredibly stupid I am. I can feel the limitations of my feeble intellect. There are pathways the wetware just won’t follow. It’s frustrating. At the same time, it has opened new doors for me, because it is far more comfortable for me to learn from others.
Beat you to it, Zelda.
mindblindness renders us aspies completely insensitive to others.
we basically want to burn them down for being so fracking stupid
Matoko, you just gave a solid reason why you should never, ever be put in charge of anything. You are far too selfish, too self-absorbed to see other humans as anything more than tools or problems – tools which you use up and throw away, problems just to be eliminated.
Although I am not a psychiatrist, I think you are on the verge of becoming a sociopath. For your own health and future, let alone anyone else’s, I urge you to get some psychiatric counseling now, lest you actually act out on your frustrations.
For the record I watched my grandparents deteriorate to the point that on his last day my grandfather thought I was dad. I didn’t disabuse him of that notion; but it was hard to watch that strong-willed, taciturn old farmboy, then flying officer, then dentist mentally disintegrate.
My mom’s brother is going down that road now.
This is life, it is part of nature – the world’s nature and ours.
#261 JHoward,you said “But the former, wielded by a true visionary, is highly useful not as a test drive for literal “future paradigmsâ€Â, but as a thought-provoker for the mental experiment in choice, responsibility, and outcomes; the stuff of life for the functional psyche.”
I think that is what all good fiction does, whether it is Dickens in his present day or Tolkien in his middle-earth. Science Fiction just provides a stage that is congenial to some.
Meanwhile, allow me to note this: PW, 10 million + served.
Thanks, all.
You’re a decimalist aren’t you. Congratulations!
Been watching that ticker myself, Jeff. Cool!
ALL YOUR BASE TEN BELONG TO US!!!
Or as the old knight said in ‘The Last Crusade’ “He chose…poorly.”
Beat you to it, Zelda.
And you put it better as usual. *sigh*
a few years behind at school, but does he love trains and my old matchbox cars. And fans – all kinds of fans – ceiling, pedestal, oscillating, etc.
That sounds closer to the Autism end of the spectrum. I’ve never had the fan thing (neither has my nephew), and I was always first or second in class (the kid who was first when I wasn’t is now in prison for soliciting sex over the Internet with a cop, who was posing as a 14-year-old boy, thus demonstrating that intelligence has nothing to do with decency).
But the AS spectrum doesn’t speak to morality or political leaning. Fortunately.
dicentra – he is very much in this world. He talks to us and the speech is topical. He listens and does what he is asked (as much as a kid will). It is like he is mentally a couple of years younger, and my brother and sister in law were told Asperger’s, so I go with that.
Memorial Day weekend he was up north at mom and dad’s, and the pontoon wasn’t in the water. He was disappointed about that, then asked if we could use someone else’s boat. He’s in this world, and that is a big thing.
Oh – and he likes running around outside, playing with a ball, or running his scooter on the driveway, or going to the park and playing on the swings. He’ll be nine in December, but when I talk to him it is like talking to a six-seven year old.
And he likes school and likes the bus (all boy – he likes big mechanical things that move)
Uh, anyone else wondering if nishi’s Asperger’s is just her glomming onto something trendy?
No offense to those legitimately diagnosed, but, well, nishi has been remarkable for her dishonesty.
“Many years ago (long before I’d heard of Autism), I realized how incredibly stupid I am. I can feel the limitations of my feeble intellect. There are pathways the wetware just won’t follow. It’s frustrating. At the same time, it has opened new doors for me, because it is far more comfortable for me to learn from others.”
-Wise- is the word you’re for.
There are no flawless, philospher kings – though there are people who through bluff and bluster can fake it adequately. Insofar as leaders are concerned, give me one person who knows their own limitations over 100 who think they know everything.
Given the whole “sci-fi is a test drive” thing Nishi needs to see “Serenity”. It’s a pretty good depiction of what happens when well-meaning progressives try to scientifically improve the human race.
Unfortunately, as a quick look at our national leadership illustrates, I may be in the minority in that respect.
Rob Crawford, see my comment at #266.
I am not a psychologist, but my guess was sociopathy for matoko, not Asperger’s. She has certain unrealized (thank God) Stalinesque tendencies. A foe is not human and is to be removed. A friend is a useful tool until no longer useful. Then the friend becomes a foe. She is actually a very scary person, much scarier than I could ever be.
The teeny-bopper text messaging style disguises the scariness a lot. Sort of like ‘The Bad Seed’, if you know what I mean.
Rhoda is portrayed as a sociopath, although the term was not widely used at the time. Like her grandmother, she has no conscience and will kill if necessary to get whatever she wants, whether that be a penmanship medal she felt she should have won, the silence of a janitor who knows more than she wants him to or the desire to possess an opal pendant. By the time Christine puts the truth together, Rhoda has already killed three people (the old lady who was going to leave her a snowglobe, Claude Daigle, and Leroy the janitor) and one puppy. An adept manipulator, she can easily charm adults while eliciting fear and repulsion from other children, who can sense something wrong with her. (via Wikipedia)
Jeff – congrats on the count-marker.
matoko is as scary and unbalanced IMUO* as the person whose name cannot be typed. As evidence I point to her comments.
There, I said my piece.
*In My Uneducated Opinion
I just picture the end of her two minute interview with Dr. Mengele.
“Hauptforschungsassistent. Gesetzt ihr in Bezirk neun. Schnell, bitte”
…he is very much in this world.
Oh, I didn’t mean to say that he’s not an Aspie, just that his Aspieness is closer to the Autism end than my nephew’s. My friend, the articulate Aspie, also was fascinated by fans.
However, I have no way to know if nishi is on the AS spectrum, but she does make sociopathic-esque statements. Also, I’d be hesitant to say sociopath, but whatever. Just keep her away from me and mine in the meatworld.
#283
Main research assistant. _ set it in district nine. Fast, ask –Bablefish
Well, “socially inept” is a symptom of it. Though there’s a big difference between “inept” and “complete asshat” IMHO.
Stick her in Ward/zone nine – quickly, please.
something trendy
go right ahead, bury your heads in that righteous moral sand.
lulz.
choose…a transhuman future….or a posthuman one.
well, Ian, i am a brownshirt, actually, when Josh had the site.
We lobbied for Serenity and popularized it before it was filmed.
And the Alliance used an evironmental trigger, not a genetic one, to genocide the planet and create the Reavers.
I have been criticized here for quoting Serenity before.
guess u missed it.
…they hate us…because we meddle.
–River Tam
brownCOAT
dur
was that a freudian slip?
dicentra – I wasn’t ragging, just elaborating. Trying to describe my nephew with what I know based on what I have been told and what I have observed. And he is a pretty nice little guy, and I am fond of him. Heck, he likes riding in Sammy with the top down and the Beach Boys playing – what could be wrong about that?
If I rag on someone you will certainly know it.
Something even trendier
And to think all of the eugenicists would want to off him. I guess they want a fight. But between my nephew and the eugenicists, I can figure out which cold excuses for a human need to be offed.
Humans are not cattle; there is supposed to be a Thirteenth Amendment preventing that. My dander is getting up again. All humans have the same rights – the greatest sin of the progressives was turning them into commodities again after the bloodbath of 1861-1865. Spare me your new ideas, spare me your Aryans, your supermen, your New Soviet Men.
I prefer fundamental decency, I prefer the cardinal virtues – prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, over the cardinal sins – of which Pride the eugenicists seem to be full of, though the others follow in train.
“If I rag on someone you will certainly know it.”
Right back atcha. I’m off my meds today (forgetfulness), and only the fact that I’m also logy stopped me from going nuclear on our resident eugenicist.
The eugenicists seem to be good at avoiding the Golden Rule – “treat others as you would like to be treated.”
Without a willful act there is no reason to do otherwise, and a big reason to comport with that rule.
dicentra – fist bump.
It’s all the rage, dontcha know.
“…stopped me from going nuclear on our resident eugenicist.”
Nuclear can be very, very satisfying, but after experience I prefer precision guided munitions. the rapier as opposed to the battle axe.
Though as I said, the battle axe can be very satisfying…
McGehee@90
Here’s one (long time) lurker who isn’t swayed.
I guess the host likes keeping it around, but I can see a fair number of first-timers reading this and thinking “WTF”?
What I don’t get is why it’s encouraged. Please stop. Ignore it and I’m pretty sure it’ll find a sandbox that it thinks is more fun.
dicentra,
Not bad for babelfish. In that context, “bitte” is better rendered as “please”, but “schnell, bitte” is a colloquial euphemistic order meaning “right now, and don’t ask questions.”
It would be worth your while to work out where District Nine was, from Dr. M’s point of view.
Regards,
Ric
Oh, there is clearly a line between the fit and unfit. Truth be told, none of us, myself included, are fit.
I would suggest to certain prolix stream-of-consciousness females commenting in this thread that before you can transcend humanity you must first live up to it. Firstly because you must know what you are transcending, and secondly because you might *not* want to once you discover the reality.
I would rather be an immortal spirit than a man-machine hybrid any day.
Now, where did I put my prayer book…
#113 charles austin “By the way, with all these “slave to the state†concepts being thrown around, how do you feel about taxes?”
I like having the Coast Guard (and I am a member of the USCGAUX – I don’t get paid I volunteer for non-law enforcement, non-military missions), I like having the channels marked, I like being able to hit channel 16 on a marine band radio and find the Coast Guard when I am in trouble. There are general public goods that need to be paid for, I am not against taxes as such; I am against taxation to just transfer wealth from one person to another without some tangible public benefit.
Ot and by the way, IIRC, regulating common carriers is a very old thing. Ferries were regulated back to the time of King Charles II. Got to make sure they run when needed, got to make sure they don’t kill their passengers, etc. The marketplace has always been regulated – how much regulation is appropriate? Ah, that is a good question.
Anybody feeling like dealing with Kevin’s response?
Re: Nishi —
In a sense she is correct — eugenics itself is not necessarily racist, as Goldberg himself observes, nor is it necessarily immoral as a mechanism. But the problem is, you can’t have a “program” of eugenics that is not run by people, and people are fallible, arrogant, filled with hubris and self righteousness, and, when push comes to shove, they are motivated by politics, opportunism, and self-interest. Turning a project of eugenics over to the state only worsens the problem.
People with competing interests are not who you want deciding who gets to breed and who doesn’t, or who is fit for society and who isn’t. As an example, I reference the many recent “scientific” attempts to label conservatives as mental defectives.
It’s silly now, because it has no controlling power. But in another time…
And we hit #300!
Yay, Us! Yahoo!
Jeff
did you edit/extend your original response to Kevin? It seems different now than when I first read it.
Also, about transhuman/posthuman future being ‘inevitable’…
So is Armageddon.
She’s like the science fiction version of a Millenarian Christian.
“we basically want to burn them down for being so fracking stupid
– Which, due to the total lack of selfcontrol and introspective, plus a complete lack of humanity, puts you one stop above an android in one respect only…..you eat and defecate.
– Hopelessly self-involved and unfeeling is mo way to go through life. As a 1 notch above android, let us call you Ann+1, you would be recycled in the first wave.
– Seems to me, if you have any survival instinct instead what so ever, instead of arguing for eugenics you should be fighting like hell to curtail it.
– BTW. Do you at least stay faithful to the Android “first directive”, or ar you down on everything not self contrived?
I added that last bit, Sdferr, because I hadn’t read through his complete litany of my supposed transgressions until after I initially responded.
It seems odd to me, given the way I conclude the post, that he would make such accusations. I mean, I write, “What I am not arguing is that today’s progressives necessarily and intentionally adhere to the (often explicit) beliefs of their intellectual and political predecessors. ”
Which seems to me a rather resounding preemptive rebuke to the core of Kevin’s original indictments. But then, if I spent too much time wondering how people could miss what to me seemed the plain meaning of a text, I wouldn’t have time for baseball, or tanning, or touching my near-perfect abs…
I didn’t deal with Kevin because I couldn’t quite deal with the level of BS there. The cold record of history would require a full post of why it is a bad thing to pursue eugenics, to treat humans as no more than cattle, no more than a mere commodity. To actually go into details of why it is a bad idea would take more patience than I can muster.
I can sum it up, I hope. Eugenics has a mission to make sure unfit humans do not propagate, only fit humans will, to the proper amount. Who gets to decide who is unfit and who is fit? What criteria are used? What is the proper amount?
I am not a cattle to be milked for the good of others; nor am I trash to be disposed of. Eugenics in its history flies in the face of the Golden Rule, it flies in the face of the Declaration of Independence, it flis in the face of any undestanding of human rights. And I do not see anything now that convinces me that early 21st century eugenicists are any different from their early 20th century counterparts.
It makes humans into cattle, it makes them into commodities, eventually slaves.
That is my answer to Kevin. I am not your possession, your toy, your little green plastic army man. I have a will that is my own and I will curse and resist your kind to my last breath.
F*** Y** Kevin and all other ‘betters’ – I am an American, and my master? To quote an old cowboy “That sumbitch ain’t been born yet.”
By the way, what my original comment (#299) implies is that the actual logical endpoint of selective breeding / abortion is to kill off everyone. How you get there has got to be pretty interesting,
The reason for this is that every person living today has something about them that could be regarded by another human being as ‘unfit’, even if it only be that they are part of a competing group. I would argue, though, that genetic perfection will eventually be disdained (or mitigated in importance) because a person with perfect genes (of whatever sort) could still be crazy, and thus ‘unfit’. Also, there is what happens in the womb (which is not necessarily ‘genetic’) that effects the child.
Because of this I find that from a eugenic standpoint you could argue for selective breeding rights of any group or abortion of any child. It would all depend on the level of isolation and the willingness of the body public to accept the particular level of inhumanity.
“In a sense she is correct  eugenics itself is not necessarily racist…
– Only in the first instance, and only if you assume absolutely maximally controlled use with perfect prediction and result of outcome, both of which are improbable as a practical matter.
– However, even given those caveats, as soon as you cojoin it into human enterprise, any realistic human enterprise, it becomes, in some regard, destructive. Its unavoidable without a massive change in human nature, which isn’t going to happen any time soon, if ever.
– Aside from that, the whole panalope of misuse by the powers that always congregate whenever large amounts of money are to be made, has only been just touched on, when in fact, the corruption in eugenics is so rich in possibilities, it becomes the over riding factor against, at least sans any very restrictive control. In fact, its unclear if that is even doable or possible.
That’s the “singularity” — as faith-based as the “Left Behind” series. It’s based on a graph with an undefined unit as the y-axis and a whole lot of wishful thinking.
I think that one could also say that for the Death Penalty, but because of its traditional centrality to crime prevention, this implication is widely understood. Take for instance the French Revolution. Thus extreme controls are put on it in places like the United States, since the danger of the reasoning of ‘people who are bad for society should be killed’ is clear.
Places that have illegalized it either underestimated its deterrent effect or the level of cultural stability necessary to maintain its proscription. In any case, my position is that the government has the right to execute, though ideally it should never have to follow through with it. I don’t believe in ideal worlds.
Heh, the only singularity on the graph I know of is the Origin. 0,0.
“In any case, my position is that the government has the right to execute, though ideally it should never have to follow through with it. ”
I think that’s wrong. Looking at elements in this society we have now, I rather have the progs fighting in courts to prevent Mumia’s execution rather have them, without the death penalty, fighting for Mumia’s release. That was the whole problem of Gitmo. Most of those who were caught should have been killed after their capture.
“Heh, the only singularity on the graph I know of is the Origin. 0,0.”
– Not true River. there are many functions that have any number of points on the curve that no real numbers will satisfy, singularities in effect. In fact. the Dirac function, otherwise commonly known as the “two valued function”, only has two places where it can be solved for, meaning in effect all other points on the entire field of the graph are effectively singularities. That, in no way, reduces its usefulness. Without it we would be far less informed in the field of communications, and we well might not be having this discussion, at lest not by transmitted pixels.
“Comment by RiverC on 6/11 @ 7:18 pm #
Heh, the only singularity on the graph I know of is the Origin. 0,0”
I denounce your spacism! What about 0,0,0?
dre:
Yes, the zero gave birth to the one, the one to the two, the two to the three and the three to all things.
Er, I just wanted to avoid the Trinitarian implication of the origin of the three-dimensional graph.
“I denounce your spacism! What about 0,0,0?”
– And I Uber-Denounceâ„¢ yours.
– think “super strings” – 17 dimensions – Nx10E17 -1 origins (singularities) –WAFFLES!
BBH: t’were a bit of jest.
But wait, aren’t those imaginary numbers you’re dealing with?
dre: I think we’re agreeing: I think the government should have the right to execute. Without this, the ultimate power and the ultimate mercy belonging to an authority are gone.
– Actually if you get into -i you’re really building the tower….think Fractals, with an infinate number of singularities. I didn’t want to go there, it gets too messy.
– But I have to remove your denouncement of shun. We’ve decided super strings was not a workable model. We’re now on the second generation of “quanta”, and things are shaping up. Of course every time a physicist says that, the ghost of Schroedinger’s cat pees on our shoes.
Well?
I gave my response.
And in my vanity I await a reply from anyone. Feed me!
BBH: Or he doesn’t. Or does he? One can never know for certain.
It appears that Kevin is a true believer of the first order, a self-proclaimed bioethicist and an ardent proponent of Planned Parenthood.
Here is his take on Obama’s first (Philadelphia) speech dealing with Rev. Wright. It doesn’t hold up too well in light of O’s later dealings with the Rev. Wright, but then how could it unless he were to be a little more critical than “…it was a bit short of perfection…”. Warning, it goes on a little long. After detailing the comments on the speech at NRO, he eventually gets around to a mention of a post Dan Collins put up on the subject, passes on the other right wing bloggers and blah blah blah. He evidently feels a duty to read all the crap he just can’t stand and still comes away just hating it. Funny, that.
http://tinyurl.com/3tw6yd
We’ve decided super strings was not a workable model.
As a rank amateur layman, all I can say is it is about time.
Oh, and Mikey NTH, the tax question really was for others, but no problem. Government has legitimate, enumerated powers for which taxes are moral and ethical. Everything after that is a power grab and generally allows populism, corruption, and creeping nanny-statism to get its foot in the door, after which it is incredibly hard to get rid of.
“BBH: Or he doesn’t. Or does he? One can never know for certain.
– Of course. If you go off 180 degrees, I didn’t write that, and you were never here to see it.
– Go behind your monitor and look. See?
– But come back here, and there it is again. Damn cat.
let me ask YOU a question.
have you ever watched someone die by centimeters?
to go from being a surgeon and a rhodes scholar to a being a hostile zombie in depends?
fuck off
Give it a rest, Nishi. We all have stories and “life” experiences. Matter of fact, we prolly all have MORE stories than you, since we -most of us – are older. It is your ego that makes you believe that “your” stories are unique.
– Carin -BONC, to be fair, I intentionally pushed her buttons. I wanted to see if there was a tiny amount of humanity under that Fascist amoral indifferent exterior.
– Verdict. Just as much as anyone, its simply buried in the anger of bitter disappointment that everyone has to deal with at one time or another.
– Nothing unique there though, as you said.
his abortion discussion is profoundly stupid.
there is no way to force a woman to carry an unwanted child to term.
neither can she be forced to stop drinking or smoking or eating crap.
its her body.
True. That’s why that isn’t the discussion I wish to have. I wish to inform [women specifically] that she doesn’t want to have to choose, because it is something that will break her heart. And, should she find herself in such a predicament, than perhaps she should think BEYOND herself. And that 9 months is a blink of an eye to suffer not drinking, or smoking. I’ve done it 5 times, and I’d do it again for anyone who asked. How SELFISH. 9 months of mild sacrifice. Really, that is so disgusting to view it as servitude. Not to go all xian, but it’s a BLESSING.
She’s pulled it before, BBH. As if her experience with her father gives her some sort of street cred on all things uber serious. She discounts everyone here. It’s ego.
to go from being a surgeon and a rhodes scholar to a being a hostile zombie in depends?
fuck off
None of it is really permanent anyway. Some of us leave the world more suddenly than others.
– Yes RiverC. One thing you now know for certain about nishi. She still has not come face to face with her own mortality.
“Man can be chained, but he cannot be domesticated.”
-Robert A. Heinlein
#324 charles austin. Thanks. You asked a question and I gave my answer. Would be rude to ignore it, and didn’t want to be rude.
But then again, I am a lawyer and an American. Everyone is entitled to my opinion.
Also, it’s basically a ‘chip on the shoulder’ tactic: mention something that gives you grief in an offensive way, and then get offended when people don’t offer polite condolences.
You have to recognize that personhood is not simply the combination of body parts, but something which transcends them while including them. Your father lives, though his body is dead. This is an essential Christian truth: When David’s son (Solomon’s younger full brother) was dying, David grieved. But when he was dead, David arose and took food. When his attendants were surprised, he remarked that he expected to see his son again, “For my redeemer liveth”, I think is the words.
Thus I can say with assurance you will meet your Father again. What the circumstances will be like I cannot know, but I know that it will happen.
“…Everyone is entitled to my opinion.
– True. However in this age of reader decoded signing rights, we are also entitled to decide your opinions.
– I preemptively denounce myself and all my nefarious relatives for that one.
#307: “Eugenics has a mission to make sure unfit humans do not propagate, only fit humans will, to the proper amount.”
I can’t agree with this statement. I would say rather that eugenics has a mission to eliminate negative hereditary traits and conditions by controlling childbearing practices (positive and negative).. As has been mentioned we cant agree on what “fit” actually is but I think we can all agree on some level of disability that clearly is NOT fit.. and if the cause of that severe disability is a hereditary gene shouldn’t we take measures to prevent it from being passed on? I don’t see that as being any more immoral than working to wipe out any other disease or dangerous medical condition. Only the method of attack is different.
You and others brought up the question of nature vs nurture above.. there are really two aspects to this eugenics question that should be considered separately. One is elimination of hereditary medical conditions. The other is limiting the population growth of the least productive segments of our society. To my mind the former isn’t a question of morals, it’s simple common sense. The latter is a grey area that brings in individual rights and freedoms vs the greater good for the society… a meatier topic to chew on.
As Carin said – I saw my grandfather on the last day of his life, I saw him deteriorate. I saw physical nature. It wasn’t pleasant; it wasn’t pleasant to pretend to be my father for my granfather’s comfort. It isn’t pleasant knowing my uncle is going through the same thing; it isn’t pleasant waiting for my parents to begin to slip. It isn’t pleasant knowing that I will be the one to make the decisions.
No; it is not pleasant at all. But I am an adult, and I will do what I must do. For I live in this world and must deal with it as it is.
Something matoko can’t seem to accept.
Tay-sachs, anyone?
“Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/11 @ 5:56 pm #
brownCOAT
dur
was that a freudian slip?”
No.
Ouroboros: Ultimately, my hope would be that any and all eugenic thinking would be one day strictly constrained to eliminating genetic disorders alone. But I wonder what kind of horror it will take to stamp that into people’s minds?
From Goldberg:
“Just as we isolate bacterial invasions, and starve out the bacteria, by limiting the areas and amount of their food supply, so we can compel an inferior race to remain in its native habitat.â€Â
That’s interesting to compare another human to an unwanted bacteria. You can see why a traditionalist approach would irritate the progs in their desire to CURE ALL MANKIND’S ILLS AND USHER IN utopia!
Ouroboros – that is what eugenics is about, breeding the proper human. The unfit will not breed with the fit, only the fit will breed with the fit. And the unfit will not be permitted to breed at all. Please see Buck v Bell, I provided the cite earlier in this thread. It is actual history, a US Supreme Court decision.
Eugenics treats humans as cattle. I am not cattle; I am not a specimen for anyone to experiment with, than you very much. For experiments on humans, please see ‘Dr. Jsef Mengele’ for where that gets us. Or the transcripts from Nuremburg, it is all the same.
Hey Carin, I lost your e-mail address and dont see a “contact us” link on your website. Drop me an e-mail when you get a sec at tjholme@comcast.net . I want to ask something off thread.. -Jake (yes, THAT Jake.. from Scribble Terrier)
Mikey – see, I’m sure most of all of us have stories. I would never presume to assume that anyone here HAS NO IDEA WHAT SUCH AND SUCH is like. Arrogance.
Didn’t Pablo (hope I’m not getting this wrong) lose a child?? I mean, just damn. I have a story. Everyone has a story. I’m not going to lecture about “the hardship” I’ve been through and how i makes me so much wiser than you two-digits. Because I know better. And, because I’m (usually) not an ass.
Boy Howdy! What a thread, my thoughts on reviewing it quickly,
this abortion discussion is profoundly stupid.
there is no way to force a woman to carry an unwanted child to term.
neither can she be forced to stop drinking or smoking or eating crap.
its her body.
Women, and men, are forced to stop drinking, smoking, eating, snorting and injecting crap into their bodies everyday. Pregnancy has nothing to do with it.
im into victorian psuedo-erotica.
What the almost fuck is that?
So using Sci-fi to foresee and testdrive paradigms = good.
Using the Bible to foresee and testdrive paradigms = bad?
If you don’t believe the Bible is literal, then it is science fiction.
“Man can be chained, but he cannot be domesticated.â€Â
-Robert A. Heinlein
I seldom disagree with the Master, but domestication is a mutual agreement, you cannot domesticate an animal without becoming domesticated yourself.
#Comment by Ouroboros on 6/11 @ 8:29 pm
“One is elimination of hereditary medical conditions. The other is limiting the population growth of the least productive segments of our society. ”
Bob in Zimbabwe disagrees. His technique is a little coarser. But what the hell ya gotta break a few eggs.
RiverC – the desire to do good is a great road to power, and justifying what must be done to getting the power. But it doesn’t end there, eventually it leads to evil. I cite the cold record of history.
Indeed, Mikey. What has been shown to be true thus far is that people can’t help but play God when it comes to this sort of thing.
Partly, though, it seems that there is a difference between eugenics vis a vis eliminating genetic disorders and that regarding ‘eliminating the unfit’. The first is decidedly humane, the second inhuman. I think the line lies at coercing people not to procreate (either through birth control or abortion.)
OK, this has been adequately covered, but I want to pile on.
the woman can chose whether or not to have the child
yes. it her body and her right.
anything else is forced slave-breeding
Nishi, as the smug owner of a hole with a womb attached, are you not responsible for what you let in it? Unless raped, it isn’t forced breeding of any kind.
I mean, as an an adult individual, you make the choice whether to allow an erect penis around your womb or not. Why then is it only the mans responsibility for the resulting consequence?
If a woman lets the man have sex, is she not as culpable as the man?
The womans choices after that are hers. If she prefers abortion, just please do it in the first trimester. If she choses the baby, then the mans preference should be up to him. If he doesn’t want the baby, that should be respected just as the womans preference, whereupon she can raise the (chosen) child without any involvement from the man. Or she can abort.
Why is an egg free from consequence, but not the sperm?
– Ouroboros, rather than adress your points, all of which are valid, taken as far as they go, the big picture issue is larger than all of that.
– Eugenics is a young, fantastically rich, exciting field, precisely because its so new.
– But that means we are really just beginning, with a multitude of alleys to go down. At least two problems immediately occur. OTOH you’re not trying to devise a new plastic where a mistake results in a spoiled beaker of goo, or even a destructive explosion. You’re talking about tinkering with the fundamental building blocks of life, in a field of a vast number of possibilities. God knows what sorts of mistakes are waiting to be visited on the planet. Mistakes that could be race-wide fatal. Mistakes that would make AIDs, something man did not even have a hand in we believe, unimportantly trivial. Theres that. you fix a hereditary defect, and generate a new one far worse. In spite of nishis glib toss off, claiming some other part of the field would be something or other, thats just rationalizing. The example is unimportant, as she knows. With enough knowledge, you could make an example that was very apropos. so its intellectual skullduggery for her to try to slip out that way.
– In fact ite her very denial of something she knows is absolutely tru that makes me not want to trust her, or anyone with that sort of unsupervised power.
– the second aspect is “scaling”. Every scientific endeavor man has ever started always branches off and builds and becomes enormous compared to the original thinking. nishi will labor to assure everyone that the research will be limited to this or that. It will not. It will go wherever it takes us. When she says that she knows full well its a lie. I know its a lie. Every scientist alive would tell you, upon hearing such a statement, its a lie. Growth of knowledge and branching off ibto new fields of study is exactly what science is after, and what it does. To deny that tells me everything I need to know about the person speaking’s judgment.
– Verdict. Full and complete accountability, supervision, and oversight, with an extremely tight rein on schedules and funding.
–
im into victorian psuedo-erotica.
What the almost fuck is that?
Ha! I missed that. Thanks B Moe for catching it. And I, too, await an explanation.
Wait. No I don’t. I really don’t want to know. Really.
It is really simple: Natural evolution is rugged individualism. Eugenics is populism.
Perhaps the better question is “can man be trusted to use eugenics responsibly, fairly and humanely to advance the the overall human condition?” Given examples like Nazi eugenics and the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments I can totally understand why many would rather we not even step onto this slippery slope. I personally don’t think we (our government and leaders)are ready to wield such power openly and legally over large numbers of people as of yet.. It’s only eugenics in theory that I agree with.. It’s purest and most uncorrupted form that has yet to be demonstrated in the real world in any large scale program.
“nishi will labor to assure everyone that the research will be limited to this or that. It will not. It will go wherever it takes us.”
Yea I think the black guy in Terminator II? said the same thing.
“Eugenics is populism.”
More like Chicago politics. Gotta know someone even if you ain’t born or are dead.
#344 Carin.
I can see a photograph, of a baby in white – me – in my mother’s arms. It is in the backyard and my parents and grandparents and uncle and aunt and older brother are all in the photograph. I had just been baptised.
Stop.
Last weekend I was at a wedding, a son of a cousin. The grandparents are gone, my mom is now the matriarch of that family. My eldest cousin is sixty, and she was eighteen when I was born. I remember telling ghost stories to little kids who are now married or who had just gotten married. I remeber hearing ghost stories from their parents (the same ones I told their kids! Heh, ahem).
It is just life; it isn’t easy, but it is what we all must deal with – weddings, births, funerals.
Did you know that two hundred years ago there were two people who got married? And because they did I am here? Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t it great that the eugenicists weren’t active then, because I may never have been born? And life, I like it.
Yes. She died in her mother’s and my arms at the ripe old age of five. Then last year, I watched my father die at 75, after watching him deteriorate to the point where I was picking him up off the floor at 3 AM because he just couldn’t make the trip to the bathroom by himself anymore. And then it got worse until the point that death was a relief to all involved.
But then, I expected to bury my father. My sympathies are with anyone who has to deal with such a thing, but I grant no license because of it other than that required to behave like a human being in directly dealing with the situation. You don’t get to be a sociopath because you’re seeing the ugly but inevitable end of life occur. Lose a baby and I’ll accept your being a little nuts for a while.
Mikey, I hope you don’t think my 344 snark was directed at you. Because it wasn’t. Everyone here has stories, but only select few (or one) think that their stories are so unique that no one else has ever experienced anything remotely simlare. Everyone’s stories are special and their own. And, worthy of sharing. But, if I need to list the heartaches my family has faced … as if it gives me some sort of authority on the issue (which I don’t think it does) – well, I can do it.
But, I’m not arrogant (or heartless) enough to think that most of the people who comment here haven’t had their own travails.
As a small brain among a field of big brains I’m impressed that even a hot potato subject like eugenics can be discussed coolly and thoughtfully on PW without the thread devolving into threats and name calling like some other sites..(The whole Nishi subject aside..) despite there being clear and vast differences of opinion.. That’s something that sets this place apart and why I come back.
(OK, enough generalized ass kissing.. back to the discussion..)
And in two weeks I go to my niece’s christianing. A new leaf on the tree of humanity. And then next month an old friend gets married. Truly, life is good; best spent in the sunlight than in the cold confines of a lab concocting the best breed.
(Actually, I prefer doing that the old-fashioned way. A-Hem. *grin*).
But if you deliver a baby with drugs in its system, you might very well be prosecuted for it. Except in nishi’s world.
Oh no, Carin – I didn’t think it was directed at me. I just used it to elaborate on something else. No offnese taken – and certainly none intended.
Pablo, that just breaks my heart.
It didn’t do us any good either, Carin. ;)
I definitely don’t recommend it. But I can tell you this. I gained all sorts of perspective out of the experience. I’d rather I hadn’t, but there you go.
Pablo – please, accept my sympathies – I didn’t know. Words fail me, and words are my only tool here.
“best spent in the sunlight than in the cold confines of a lab concocting the best breed.”
I thought the Mark Steyn trial showed you don’t need a laboratory to produce the “best” breeds. His quote of an Iman in Europe and reprinted in a magzine of “muslims breeding like mosquitoes” got him in trouble. The progs put him there too. Meanwhile the progs tell us not to reproduce. The problem is some folks don’t care what the progs believe. They believe something different. Vacuums and all that.
That was one of the things I learned, Mikey. Sometimes words are utterly useless. Thanks for your kind intentions.
Asperger’s here too. 6 year old son has it as well. *Nods to aspies in the group*
This must be why I feel some empathy for your plight Matoko-chan. That’s why I tried to warn you about you being too much like Miyamoto Musashi–too sharp–too much karate. You need to learn Judo. The wise pass through three phases before reaching wisdom: 1) fight and lose, 2) fight and win, and 3) win without fighting. Guess which phase you haven’t reached.
I personally don’t think we (our government and leaders) are ready to wield such power openly and legally over large numbers of people as of yet…
Ouro, your faith in humanity’s ability to progress morally over time is touching, but it’s a deadly assumption. We like to point to our progress in one area of morality, but we tend not to notice that our advance was accompanied by a loss as well.
It’s like a parakeet’s vocabulary: it can learn a certain number of words or phrases, then after awhile, it will lose as many words as it learns. Limited RAM in that pea-sized brain, yo.
That which makes us “unfit” to decide who lives and who dies will always be with us. And like I’ve said before, eugenics will not make a better society, just a more homogeneous one. Sounds like dystopia to me.
Pablo, thanks for your presence here. I’ll hug my little aspie boy a little tighter when I check on him before bed tonight.
To just elaborate again – I have a little picture of my mom’s older brother with his sister. She was about two in the picture and died soon after – she drowned in a water-filled stump-hole. This was in the 1920’s. I have often wondered what she would have been like, what she would have done, had she lived. What would my Aunt Dorothy have been like? I wonder…
And I like to think that makes me more human than any eugenicist.
I gained all sorts of perspective out of the experience. I’d rather I hadn’t, but there you go.
Unfortunately, the valuable lessons that pain teaches us cannot be learned any other way. Why else would we be set down on this miserable rock, seemingly for no reason?
I appreciate that my parents had me inoculated against disease, but at the time I got the injections, I was appreciative NOT at all.
malaclypse – one thing I try to remember is humility – if only because I do not like the taste of crow.
Pablo – thanks. And God be with you and yours; and before you, and beside you, and behind you.
Are the geneticists like the physicists before Heisenberg? Do the geneticists find at lower levels rationality disperses?
Probably right D.. With my luck eugenics would simply bring about a homogenous Logan’s Run world full of hot young, beautiful, promiscuous people and my palm light would be glowing red for all of my short life. My first day would be last day and I wouldnt even have time to use my hot babe transporter to find a first night friend or anything..
Utterly unprovable. I want no part in ethics by fiat, whether yours or Nishi’s. I subscribe to the Hayekian notion of evolutionary ethics. I don’t anyone’s synthetic judgements a priori to become the vision for our ethical system any more than I want the same to become the vision for our economic system. Ethics and markets are both stochastic and I like them that way.
That strikes me as rather condescending. But then I’m not Ouroboros, so perhaps I should just shut my piehole. Why do people feel comfortable making enormous metaphysical assertions, dripping with certitude? You got an infinitely long ruler somewhere?
malaclypse, I’ll be here all week! Try the veal, and don’t forget to tip your waitstaff. But seriously, as long as all this is at the front of my mind, let me make a recommendation. David M. Bailey is a glioblastoma survivor, which is a pretty rare thing, and which my daughter was not fortunate enough to be. He wrote One More Day pretty early on when he was under the impression that he didn’t have long to live. Drop the $0.99 and download the MP3. It’s a tune to live by, as none of us know when our number will be up. But 12 years later, David is still getting the last laugh.
And thank you for the compliment.
As I said in #307 – eugenics flies in the face of the Declaration of Indepenedence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; and that amongst these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”
Eugenics is inherently un-American.
if you deliver a baby with drugs in its system, you might very well be prosecuted for it.
Abort it and get off scott free. Go figure.
…like I’ve said before, eugenics will not make a better society, just a more homogeneous one.
I am sure there will be carefully calculated diversity in the brave new world, dicentra.
malaclypse at #376.
The ‘long ruler’ is human history.
You’re welcome.
You got an infinitely long ruler somewhere?
Yes, it’s called human history, and the simple observation that civilizations rise and fall, and amass knowledge and lose it, and think themselves awfully advanced and clever while on the other hand committing horrors. This very thread, on the breathless hubris of the “advanced” Progressive cause, demonstrates a case in point.
That we’ve put a man on the moon and been able to splice DNA doesn’t make us morally superior to our ancestors. And the fact that we don’t seem to be able to learn from history is as depressing as it gets. We’re about to elect another Jimmy Carter during the lifetime of people who remember the first one. If that’s not proof of humanity’s inability to “progress,” I don’t know what is.
That strikes me as rather condescending.
Maybe it is, but Aspies aren’t known for their tact, are they? :D
Natural evolution is rugged individualism. Eugenics is populism.
For millions of years natural evolution has been harsher than eugenicists have ever been..(with the possible exception of Dr. J Mengele) Under natural selection the weakest died.. The less than fit never got a chance to procreate and the able made the babies. Civilization derailed this natural process when we decided that it was only ‘fair’ and ‘humane’ (two concepts that nature doesn’t know from..) that all citizens have the right live and procreate.. and those that cant on their own are entitled to be supported and protected by the rest of society and it’s laws….
That strikes me as rather condescending. But then I’m not Ouroboros, so perhaps I should just shut my piehole. Why do people feel comfortable making enormous metaphysical assertions, dripping with certitude? You got an infinitely long ruler somewhere?
In my pants.
Ok, you were asking for it.
– A tale of no consequence, except maybe a small reason to glorify in the possibilities of life.
– I’d raised three, all with families of their own, happy, giving me pride for all those years devoted to family. A second wife, late in my years, my youngest son, left to my own devices, homeless, living out of a 15 year old can-van, our sole possession, working odd labor jobs so I could feed him by day, rocking my 5 year old autistic son to sleep, shivering hard, wrapped in a blanket and crying himself into silence, begging me to tell him what he had done so bad his mommy had left him.
– Stop.
– My craft was still good in my hands, and saved us. Within 3 months I was back among colleges, hard at work, and made a home, and til just this week, raised him on my own.
– Today hes a fine young man, auspergers yes, but honor student, straight A’s, learns so easily he makes me jealous. He graduates this week and goes on to college in the fall.
– The point.
– When we think of life’s travails, when we are overwhelmed with the unfairness and hardness of it all, a moment like last weekend occurs, and we wonder again why we don’t always, can’t always, see our blessings. He looked at me as we were relaxing enjoying a ball game together and said; “I know I don’t say this often enough dad, but I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you sacrificed to raise me….I love you dad….”, …and he hugged me tightly.
– And I like to think that makes my 70 years lived more human than any eugenicist.
That strikes me as rather condescending.
Struck me that way too.. but not so mean-spirited that it required a specific response..
For the record, however, I don’t necessarily believe we’ll ever progress morally to the point that we can safely use eugenics.. I just hope we eventually do.. like I hope our society one day is able to form itself into a sustainable utopia.. Not likely but its a nice pipe-dream.
Oh, and as someone that can remember the Jimmah Carter years.. you just bummed me out.
“Under natural selection the weakest died.. The less than fit never got a chance to procreate and the able made the babies.”
Until WESTERN CULTURE pulled all the assbackwards tribes forward and when that happened the progs wanted to go back to your initial condition.
For millions of years natural evolution has been harsher than eugenicists have ever been..(with the possible exception of Dr. J Mengele) Under natural selection the weakest died..
Not necessarily, the strongest often die hunting or fighting for the tribe/family, but that wasn’t my point exactly.
The less than fit never got a chance to procreate and the able made the babies. Civilization derailed this natural process when we decided that it was only ‘fair’ and ‘humane’ (two concepts that nature doesn’t know from..)
Some might say that civilization is the natural state of man, since we have thrived and procreated quite successfully since its inception.
that all citizens have the right live and procreate.. and those that cant on their own are entitled to be supported and protected by the rest of society and it’s laws….
Now you are starting to address my point, up until now procreation has been primarily a decision made by an individual man and an individual women, their choices and success drove the development of man. As civilization and society have gotten more involved, however, the “support and protect” you talk about has suddenly given society, or the populace, the idea that they should be involved in the initial decision making processes also. This is what differentiates eugenics from natural evolution, the impetus for procreation is no longer what individuals desire, or feel is best for them, but instead is driven by what society, or the populace, wants and needs.
I’m pretty much a product of perfectly selected genetics: all Scandinavian and Scottish going hundreds of years back. Daddy was a soldier and mathematician and mommy was a prom queen, model and writer.
Grampa was an engineer and artist and Gramma was a musician and poet Great-great grampa was a buffalo hunter and Great-Great Gramma was a nurse and teacher.
And I’m still a Conservative!*
*but I am fucking gorgeous and I’ve got rhythm.
“*but I am fucking gorgeous and I’ve got rhythm.”
There’s an ADA program for folks who can’t jump. Fyi
Simply because those civilizationally impaired noble tribespeople are far better off and happier with their poor nutrition, high infant mortality, short life spans, lack of sanitation and assorted and varied rampant (but totally cureable) diseases and life threatening medical conditions..
They’re free, man..like the birds and the animals and the trees and the wind.. They dont live under the heel of The Man.
Ah, yes. Humanity is a rich tapestry. Eugenics strives for the crisp white sheet.
*but I am fucking gorgeous and I’ve got rhythm.
Ooooo, come to Mama sexy! I LOVE a man in uniform…
If 390 is addressed to me, you are still missing the point. I got no truck with civilization, it is obviously a wonderful thing, and I believe the natural state of man. But society should serve the individual, not the other way around. Man is not a hive animal.
“Man is not a hive animal.
– Unless of course, you’re a SecProgg.
Uh, anyone else wondering if nishi’s Asperger’s is just her glomming onto something trendy?
No offense to those legitimately diagnosed, but, well, nishi has been remarkable for her dishonesty.
I’m no arbiter of fashion, but I doubt Asperger’s is trendy. Even if it is, Nishi does not strike me as the type who gloms onto trends in an effort to conform or fit in with the group. Nor do I perceive her as dishonest.
I am not a psychologist, but my guess was sociopathy for matoko, not Asperger’s.
She’s been taking a lot of fire at PW lately. I think that context explains some of the sociopathy. I’m a sociopath too if you judge my personality based on my volleys in a flame war.
Everyone here has stories, but only select few (or one) think that their stories are so unique that no one else has ever experienced anything remotely simlare.
Most of the commenters here seem to be middle-aged or older. Nishi may still be in her teens. I would expect her to be less emotionally mature than the older and wiser commenters here, and if she has Asperger’s her social skills (or emotional IQ) may not be as high as her mental IQ.
My suggestion is that those who find her style annoying simply ignore her comments. In these 300-comment threads there are usually several conversations going simultaneously. Maybe it is because I have more areas of agreement with her than some of you, but I enjoy reading her comments in spite of her abrasive style and immaturity. She acts like a snotty kid sometimes (probably because she is one), but that hardly seems to warrant all the anger, vitriol and piling-on.
“They dont live under the heel of The Man.”
We want to thank O!, Mr. Wright and our special guest Calypso Louis for the encore.
RiverC wins the thread.
I think that common law is morally superior to its predecessors. I think that Monsanto’s rootworm resistant soya is morally superior to the sacrifice of virgins to appease fertility gods. I think that freely entered monogamy is morally superior to tribally prescribed consanguinity. I think that 78 year life expectancies are morally superior to 30 year ones. I think tripartite representative democracy is morally superior to feudalism.
I don’t think the profound connection we’d like to think exists between our sense of what is right and the external accord of ethics is predicated on some transcendental and unchanging source. I think the conncetion is real enough and may be in part transcendental, I just don’t think it’s static. We evolve. The limitations of our external reality influence that sense of right. Those limitations change over time.
I’m not saying we’re perfectable; I don’t feel any more comfortable suggesting that than I do accepting the idea that we’re not. But it doesn’t strike me as proven that our collective moral sophistication has not grown and evolved over our history on the planet–and it is still a short history!
just wait till she calls you a theocon. or racist. or homophobe. but you may be right, it may just be teh stoopid.
B Moe: I was an RN in a psychiatric hospital years ago in California.. We warehoused quite a number of patients that couldn’t function in society.. Violent Schizophrenics and severe Bipolars for the most part.. Some depressives and a number of severely mentally retarded.. Something I noticed in dealing with them day in and day out is that they were totally and unreservedly promiscuous and did each other with wild abandoned any chance they got. In them I began to see society in a nutshell.. A whole lot of people mindlessly breeding , making babies without intending to.. Your example regarding the decision making process assumes participants that are able and willing to make a reasonable and informed decision.. There’s just a big piece of our society that I don’t think is up to the challenge.
Ooooo, come to Mama sexy! I LOVE a man in uniform…
No, I can’t, as a product of genetic selection, I’m saving myself for someone with bigger, um, genes….
Aldo, nishi is not a teen. She just acts like one. And she’s taking fire because she seeks to draw it, which you can tell by her self description of “griefer”. I’ve internet “known” her for better than 5 years. This is who she is. This is what she does. Ask her sometime how many forums she’s been banned from.
Ooooo, come to Mama sexy! I LOVE a man in uniform…
No, I can’t, as a product of genetic selection, I’m saving myself for someone with bigger, um, genes….
On second thought–OK! As long as we use effective contraception, or you abort the resulting “40 percenter”. You’re not as perfect as I am, but I’m feeling humpy.
– Well I for one, returned her suggestion that I do something physically impossible (if flattering), with understanding.
– So I hereby un-condemn myself for the next 24 hours.
A whole lot of people mindlessly breeding , making babies without intending to.. Your example regarding the decision making process assumes participants that are able and willing to make a reasonable and informed decision.. There’s just a big piece of our society that I don’t think is up to the challenge.
Because society has stepped over the line in enabling the unable. Most people, by and large, pick their mates rationally and have families they love and care for and are a positive influence on things. The welfare state, which rewards irresponsible breeding, is of course a negative force and needs to be reformed. But the bottom line on utopia is it is a paradox, there can be no such place except on the individual level. I am willing to bet my idea of utopia would be radically different from the average poster here.
since we’re getting silly now… did anyone else read this:
and think, hey! they’re not just for carrying laundry anymore! am I right, Maybee? ;D
“Comment by Ouroboros on 6/11 @ 10:33 pm #Something I noticed in dealing with them day in and day out is that they were totally and unreservedly promiscuous and did each other with wild abandoned any chance they got. In them I began to see society in a nutshell..”
Were they near Los Angeles, or Sex and the City, or the SanFranNan Bathhouse?
I sentence all you eugenicist-sniffers to watch “The Elephant Man”.
John Merrick: Genetic wreckage; admirable and courageous. He would have been aborted under your schemes and plans.
Helen Keller? Medical waste….
“#Comment by maggie katzen on 6/11 @ 10:40 pm #
since we’re getting silly now… did anyone else read this:”
What sperm futures?
just wait till she calls you a theocon. or racist. or homophobe. but you may be right, it may just be teh stoopid
If I recall correctly she called me a theocon-panderer. I thought it was a typical internet flame, not a sign of dishonesty, and I got a chuckle out of it.
Did someone say pie? I was just skimming, but I’m pretty sure I heard pie.
Incidentally, I come from criminal stock. Which is what makes me so darned edgy, I guess.
Aldo, she has a habit of completely mis-interpreting things people say and passing judgment. if it’s not dishonesty it’s stupidity. srsly.
#394: I second Aldo’s comment. I’ve also wondered why so much energy is expended flaming Nishi.. Her (‘her’, right?) views and opinions often aren’t the most popular but she writes well and often makes interesting comments.. and she’s not nearly as offensive at her worst as some have been on here over the years.. Given the amount of crap she gets here I’d say she’s a pretty good sport.. I’ve always just figured there’s some backstory or history I don’t know about.. I was away for quite awhile..
– I invite everyone to join me in roundly denouncing Jeff for this glorious hyper-thread.
Weren’t the FLDS that Nishi condemns simply a genetic experiment?
Weren’t those “breeder-slaves” just performing their role in an old-fashioned self-selected eugenic scheme?
#400 Ahhh, Ok. I thought she was just a precocious kid, and I was uncomfortable with the idea of adults beating up on her.
babyrapist!
Dre: hahahaha! They made the SF Bathhouse crowd look chaste.
OK! As long as we use effective contraception
Whatever big boy, We are your figment of the imagination…
Welcome back Jeff. What was the topic again?
I thought she was just a precocious kid, and I was uncomfortable with the idea of adults beating up on her.
Isn’t that what precocious kids are for?
Nishi.. Her (’her’, right?) views and opinions often aren’t the most popular but she writes well and often makes interesting comments.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Isn’t that what precocious kids are for?
you’re thinking of cats.
– I think it was eugenics in the pastry industry – engineering pies for intelligence.
hey Big Bang Hunter,
Check this out.
“What was the topic again?”
3.14159
– Thanks Aldo – I am familiar with the E8 geometry, but this is a new twist. Interesting. More so because its testable. We shall see.
– Maybe we’ll be able to run our cars off banana skins after all.
QED.. I think.. Anyway, night all!
#Comment by Ouroboros on 6/11 @ 11:18 pm ”
That’s not the Ouroboros I knew.
I denounce 3.14159 and everything else.
I thought she was just a precocious kid, and I was uncomfortable with the idea of adults beating up on her.
She claims to have a graduate degree in mathematics and employment that requires ultra-top secret government clearances. And most of the abuse comes from people who have grown weary of having their intelligence and heredity insulted anytime you disagree with here.
“That’s not the Ouroboros I knew.”
-…Obviously an unpaid volunteer….
…Obviously an unpaid volunteer….
The true underdog in a Darwinian “rugged individual” sense…
Um…reversed cause and effect. Nishi brought out the abuse, first, even if she doesn’t recognize it as such. She’d probably get a great deal less flack if she’d say something both intelligent and on-topic, in between energetic whackings of strawmen.
Not to be excessively nit-picky, but TS is as high as it goes. After that, it’s just increasing restrictions on need to know.
Funny comment spam:
# Stampede Throw Now On Sale on Sexing the Sharia
ha! maggie!
<<<>>>
Group hug!
yay!
it’s just the thought of my womb growing up and getting a law degree…
*sniff*
I couldn’t be prouder.
She claims to have a graduate degree in mathematics and employment that requires ultra-top secret government clearances.
Does she have the little prism “Seraphim” level access chip embedded in her left retina?
No?
I didnt think so..
Those with the need to know know what I’m talking about.
In my case, it’s because she lied about some of the things I’ve said, and it’s happened to other commenters. To be homest, I don’t know if she truly lied, but she’s incapable of understanding anyone else’s arguments, and described my positions, attributed to me, as something completely unrecognizable. She’s arguing with strawman versions of everyone, especially Goldberg, and repeats the same arguments ad infinitum. We’ve even addressed her arguments, and she can’t understand how someone could honestly and intelligently disagree with her position. Also, there is no logical consistency to her arguments. I enjoy debating her as an illustration of what not to do. She’s not offensive, certainly compared to the trolls that show up occasionally, and as such I don’t believe she should be banned. However, setting threads to bait her is a good way to keep her in a fixed place, and passages from Liberal Fascism for her to misinterpret will always attract her.
Aldo — you actually said nishi “writes well”?
Good God, man, the idiot’s barely capable of stringing two words together. It’s either out of ignorance — which she refuses to rectify — or contempt for her audience — which is inexcusable.
She lies constantly, mis-stating people’s positions — or she’s too stupid to understand what people are saying.
Couple either side of those two traits with her habit of attributing disagreeing with her to being mentally deficient, and you’ve got a first-class asshole.
Here’s a thought: the Soviet Union was a huge eugenics experiment.
They slaughtered , what, 30, 40, 50 million people on a mission to create the “New Soviet Man.”
Discuss.
#
Comment by MayBee on 6/12 @ 12:34 am #
Group hug!
You’re not wearing a bra.
I love how Nishi only thinks with her vagina. The only thing in the world she seems to care about is having abortions.
She obviously believes women are inferior, as she believes society should never hold a woman accountable for her actions, such as having sex. That is why she believes that birth control is 100% the man’s responsibility (even if the woman lies) and that society has every right to control a man’s body to support a woman who choses to have a child.
So, the vagina and the womb are the only holy things in this world, which must be worshipped above all else. And, no responsibility or accountability is to be expected from thos beings that keep the vagina and womb alive, b/c to do so would be against he religion of the vagina and womb.
Once we understand Nishi’s religion, the ‘logic’ of her position starts to make sense. The only thing sacred is the vagina/womb. Everything else, the state has every right to control.
How is that not clear?
Mikey NTH:
I can sum it up, I hope. Eugenics has a mission to make sure unfit humans do not propagate, only fit humans will, to the proper amount. Who gets to decide who is unfit and who is fit? What criteria are used? What is the proper amount?
there would certainly be no Steven Hawking in the eugenic left’s world. Nor FDR for that matter. If homosexuality is truly genetic, as the left claims, would they allow homosexuals to be born? For those who watch Little People, Big World, I doubt very much these modern fascists such as Nishi and Kevin would have allowed Matt or Amy Roloff to be born.
For people who make a religion out of “diversity”, they don’t seem to truly understand what diversity is.
Rob Crawford,
She lies constantly, mis-stating people’s positions  or she’s too stupid to understand what people are saying.
What I love, is that she only responds to what she thinks she has a response to – she just ignores arguments that she can’t refute as if they don’t exist. Of course, considering that the ‘arguments’ she does make are usually so ridiculous and misrepresent the facts leads me to believe that she is actually correct not to attempt more.
Nanny O’Brain, I thought we were discussing Fascists, not Communists.
Jeff’s lying and dimwitted excuses for conservatism and Goldberg’s thesis that Right Wing fascism is somehow equated with “Progressivism” surely is on the level of your equating Hitler with Stalin. Let me see they did have that short term nonaggression pact. Oh, that makes Fascism the same as Communism, you’re suggesting? So why were American Right wingers endorsing Hitler and Mussolini and hoping Hitler would kill as many communists as possible and willing to ignore the killing of jews as a sideline? That’s just the case. Franco was Hitler’s boy in Spain and even ol’ Joe Kennedy was rooting for Franco and all to kill the commies. And of course, Bush et al were investing in Nazi Germany.
Progressives were more likely to support the ‘Republicans’ of Spain, while Jeffy/Goldberg woulda been rooting for Franco.
eugenics doesn’t even make the list on any definition of “Progressivism”. More like: woman’s sufferage (the otherwise racist, and intolerant Pres. Wilson bucked the conservative beliefs that women shouldn’t vote). Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair actually were rivals and disagreed but both were “progressives”. Hemingway? surely. Jeff, if in that era would have been gone with the White Southern KKK types in equal status of being a ‘reactionary’. And add hypochondria to the list of isms.
Look up Progressivism…. dupes.
music that this goldberg/goldstein phenom reminds me off::
Two Little Hitlers (from the album *Armed Forces*)
A E
Why are we racing to be so old?
A E
I’m up late pacing the floor I won’t be told
A E D
You have your reservations I’m bought and sold
D
I’ll face the music I’ll face the facts
E
Even when we walk in polka dots and chequer slacks
A E
Bowing and squawking Running after titbits
A E7
Bobbing and squinting Just like a nitwit
(CHORUS)
D
Two little Hitlers will fight it out until
E A
One little Hitler does the other one’s will
D E D E
I will return I will not burn
Down in the basement
A E
I need my head examined I need my eyes excited
A E7
I’d like to join the party But I was not invited
A E7
You make a member of me I’ll be delighted
D
I wouldn’t cry for lost souls, you might drown
E
Dirty words for dirty minds Written in a toilet town
A E7
Dial me a Valentine She’s a smooth operator
A E7
It’s all so calculated She’s got a calculator
A E7
She’s my soft touch typewriter And I’m the great dictator
(Chorus)
A
A simple game of self-respect
E A
You flick a switch and the world goes off
E A
Nobody jumps as you expect
E F#m E
I would have thought you would have had enough by now
A E7
You call selective dating For some effective mating
A E7
I thought I’d let you down, dear But you were just deflating
A E7
I knew right from the start We’d end up hating
D
Pictures of the merchandise Plastered on the wall
E
We can look so long as we don’t have to talk at all
A E7
You say you’ll never know him He’s an unnatural man
A A
He doesn’t want your pleasure He wants as no one can
A E7
He wants to know the names of All those he’s better than
(Chorus)
D E
I will return
D E
I will not burn . . . . .
h, that makes Fascism the same as Communism, you’re suggesting? S
I would suggest that you read the fucking book … but doubt it would help.
dave is the fruit of the socialist/progressive education efforts. Everything he claims to believes is a lie, but that doesn’t matter because he has committed himself to the cause and it is within the cause that his truth is found.
Power to the people dave.
Ok, who left the back door open.
Gate unhitched, even.
Jonah-lanche!
yadda yadda. oh sure: obviously, I don’t need to waste money on Goldberg’s political posturing, how about a conservative History 102 class, eugenics? I am seeing Goldberg and Goldstein are being judiciously selective in their definitions. eh? bub!
fiction isn’t Jeff’s niche I guess. A little more character development helps.
malaclypse: The story of mankind, more or less, is firstly a story of falling away from communion with God, and therefore losing a direct understanding of right and wrong. Secondly it is of him (as a whole) gradually rediscovering the things he once knew because without them life is either miserable or impossible.
The reason for the ‘loss’ is that in the beginning man knew these things not as we do, i.e. rules written in a book, abstract laws, but rather in the sense of simple understanding. You didn’t kill another man. Why? Why would you? Somewhere along the line, we forgot paradise and ended up here. And gradually we forgot more and more until some horrid low point – probably a long, long time ago, after which we had to begin to put things back together.
In most early (2000 BC +) cultures there is some rudimentary awareness of the single creator-deity, but usually in a distant fashion. Because of this distance most of us lost our concern or caring for such a thing; and sought after other things.
With such a connection is that direct understanding of what is right/wrong – Lao Tsu’s description of this as ‘The Way’ makes clear what this is like: It is not some kind of fancy legal system or a logical morass, but rather something that is done without thinking, with complete humility. The trouble is, of course, that if it is lost, since it is perceived directly, it can only be regained by going back to the source and only approximated by reconstructing the principles with logic and reason.
Therefore in a certain sense ‘ethics’ is evolutionary, but in another sense absolutely not.
this is the same datadave who said, according to a dear friend Mr. Aliegri, that a ‘corporation’ is necessarily a servant of the public. Of course, nevermind that corporations only serve the public indirectly by creating wealth (if they do) which may (or may not) improve life for everyone.
So datadave’s reasoning, like nishi’s, is a bit suspect.
Datadave,
What aspect of german fascism do you believe made it a creature of the right? I’m talking specific policies here – not general assertions that b/c hitler was bad, he must have been a conservative. It seems to me that the clearly asserted policies of the Nazi party mirror the modern american left much more closely than the modern american right. And, again, they did call themselves socialists, which seems telling.
Next question, even assuming that german fascism was right of center (as we define that in america today), wouldn’t you agree that left-of-center governments have been more tyrannical and caused more human suffering in the last 100 years (Cuba, USSR, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia)?
Thus, even were Goldberg’s main thesis wrong (i.e., that german and italian fascism were the precursers in thought to american progressivism), doesn’t history seem to show us that leftism generally leads to tyranny and totalitarianism?
I suppose with that litany of evil stemming from leftist thought, the left desparately needs to claim that german fascism was from the right in order to claim that both sides have led to evil abuses. Otherwise, the world might just realize that all of the results of leftists coming to power have ended very, very badly.
The fundamental difference between Fascism and Communism is national (Italians, unite!) vs. international (workers of the world, unite!). Beyond that, most of the tools and tactics are pretty much the same, with some variation — communists seize the means of productions, whilst fascists sit the capitalists down and tell them what to do, when to do it and what will happen if it doesn’t get done.
Now, as for Asperger’s syndrome, for most practical purposes, it boils down to an excuse to be an ass, used as a shield so as to allow people to be rude.
Nishi, your positions are weak on the facts. Your philosophy infantilizes females and even your ill-aimed thrust about a “womb contract” is a poor analogy, insofar as what you posit is so unbalanced as to invalidate the notion of there being a contract. Your attempts to flee into the realm of science fiction to justify political positions in the real world are laughable — the proper genre for science fiction is “speculative fiction,” in that it discusses what might be and is ill suited to “test driving” social constructs.
The Nazis practiced eugenics, insofar as they sought to eliminate those possessing undesirable traits. Their methodology was crude, their grasp of the mechanics of genetics little better than a medieval horse-breeder, but they operated to the best of their ability and as efficiently as they could. To try and claim that their racial practices and efforts to breed a super-human Aryan strain *wasn’t* eugenics is disingenuous at best.
Data, I don’t know what your link intended to prove? I was suggesting that the commonalities between Fascism and Communism cannot be boiled down to one thing (non-aggression pact). You, my friend, are beating a straw man. You cannot argue against LF since you haven’t read the book. Your counter arguments are specious – and that’s giving them credit, because they are barely superficially plausible.
Datadave,
Also, please cite me some actual examples of this So why were American Right wingers endorsing Hitler and Mussolini and hoping Hitler would kill as many communists as possible and willing to ignore the killing of jews as a sideline?
the truth is that all of the american love for Hitler and Mussolini came from the left. Please provide cites of someone who was a conservative back in 1930-1940 america who voiced support for Hitler or Mussolini.
Does it ever bother you that all you do is lie. I always ask this question, but never get an answer. If you must lie to support your arguments, how can you honestly believe your arguments are correct?
…fascists sit the capitalists down and tell them what to do, when to do it and what will happen if it doesn’t get done.
Like where they are allowed to do business, how much profit they are allowed to make, and how much they are sllowed to pay their employees and CEOs.
It appears to me dave’s understanding of fascism is it is a synonym for “bad”.
“Does she have the little prism “Seraphim†level access chip embedded in her left retina?”
no, its a barcode.
like this
Ourobouros–>E.R.Eddison
Mistress of Misstresses is psuedo-erotica, not explicit like the Story of O
when i first started comin here, i was still in grad school. we usta have late night haiku contests and Jeff meticulously beat the crap out of the pompous illiterati, feministas, and the left’s boutique intellectuals.
but just like in genetics, this site has undergone a regression to the mean.
and the mean seems to be teh theocons.
Actually, if you get into the details, rather than the shallow surface “knowledge” that passes for an education nowadays, there are little difference between Fascism and Soviet Communism. Mussolini, prior to his storied rise as the dictator of Italy, was a noted socialist, the editor of several socialist papers and didn’t fall from grace until the start of WW I.
The main difference is a national focus vs. an international focus. When Mussolini advocated Italy above the tenets of international socialism at the start of the First World War, he was declared a heretic. In a sense, Fascism is lazy socialism — the slogans, being nationalist, rather than internationalist, are easier to sell to the masses — you’ve eliminated class friction, since you’re appealing to more than just the workers and students, it plucks at the national pride, etc.
The policies are rather similar, although Fascism veneers itself — they don’t seize the means of production in the name of the people, they instead sit down all the stake-holders and decide, collectively, what to do… not unlike what some American liberals would like to impose on corporations in the present.
The antipathy between socialists and fascists rises from their initial political support / targets to organize are the same. Two entities that feed from the same supply inevitably fall into conflict.
If you do not agree with the nishit, you must be a theocon.
Dogmadave merits only one stock response: “Here’s your sign.”
JD – not true. You may just be a two-digit.
…the slogans, being nationalist, rather than internationalist, are easier to sell to the masses  you’ve eliminated class friction, since you’re appealing to more than just the workers and students, it plucks at the national pride, etc.
Like, we should be using that money we are wasting in Iraq to take care of the healthcare needs of our own people.
they don’t seize the means of production in the name of the people
Like Maxine Waters wants to. See, dave, not all proggs are fascists. Some are just plain old socialists.
It’s a never-ending journey, like approaching the speed of light: no matter how much power you apply to acceleration, you only close the distance without ever crossing it.
And so long as there remains a gap, it will always look as wide as it ever was and the effort expended to try to cross it will always be all you’ve got and a little bit more.
Consider the definition of “poverty” in a global sense versus an American sense. The “poor” in America have food, clothing and shelter, and often multiples of things our parents lived like kings without.
…they’re heeeeere..
Part 1
Part 2
A rusty unhitched gate, banging in the wind.
Consider the definition of “poverty†in a global sense versus an American sense. The “poor†in America have food, clothing and shelter, and often multiples of things our parents lived like kings without.
My husband just related a story to me last night about stopping at a gas station, and having a group of teens pull up in a non-beater car to buy a beavy of road snacks. Junk food. Paid for with food stamps.
My room mates in college used to work in a small grocery store that basically was a shill for food stamp recipients to buy lotto tickets. The store had a lotto machine, and a small shelf of grocery items. They’d buy a can of soap, use a high denomination food stamp … and with the change buy twenty-bucks worth of lotto and scratch tickets.
If you have a point, nishi, why don’t you flesh it out in a seperate post, either here or in the pub. I scanned those links and they look interesting, but I think this thread is a little dead to be bringing up something completely new.
Huh, I’ve been around PW for awhile, and I haven’t really changed that much as concerns religion influencing my political views. This:
but just like in genetics, this site has undergone a regression to the mean.
and the mean seems to be teh theocons.
is blowing hot air.
RiverC:
You have to understand, Nishi believes that anyone who disagrees with her is a theocon. Once she applies the label, she believes she does not have to refute any arguments.
You see, “theocons” are evil, and therefore cannot possible have a good argument about anything. Thus, their arguments can be ignored.
For instance, I’m not all that religious, and abortion is not a truly hot-button issue for me. Yet, I was interested in debating the issue with Nish, but all she could come up with was that the womb is sacred and I should stop thinking with my “little head.” I’m sure she did not believe she had to respond to any of my arguments b/c in her mind, I’m a “theocon”, even though I gave her no reason to believe so – except for challenging her superficial arguments.
RE: nishi’s linked articles
Also, the 1950’s were a golden age only in a certain limited sense: they were a period of time where families were largely intact and traditional values still were as well. It was not going to last, as it had been falling apart for many years already, simply waiting to break. Also, ‘traditional values’ are transient representations of ‘traditional’ or ‘eternal’ virtues. If they go no deeper than ‘values’ (as they did in the 1950’s) they will not survive a cultural shift.
In this case it was a combination of things.
We should also recall that the direction of science is influenced by the academy, which had been going south for decades. Only those who were in lockstep with its ideals would be inclined towards its results, at least initially.
Of course, I think most Fundamentalist posturing regarding science – and even spirituality – is mostly bunk – but that does not exhaust nor contain the conservative position on science.
Jim Manzi in NR hardcopy (Oct 8, 2007):
This is where the game of pass-the-parcel winds up in a dead end  as, eventually, it must. A scientific theory is a falsifiable rule that relates cause to effect. If you push Dawkins and company far enough, you find yourself more or less where Aristotle was more than 2,000 years ago in stating his view that any chain of cause-and-effect must ultimately begin with an Uncaused Cause. No matter how far science advances, an explanation of ultimate origins must always  by the very definition of the scientific method  remain a non-scientific question.
*****
Fortunately, it is possible to thread the intellectual needle: to defer to scientific explanations for non-ultimate physical processes, while still remaining within the central Judeo-Christian tradition.
One of the advantages of institutionalized religion is that it conserves insight. Ironically, dealing with evolution places us back in the company of Augustine and Aquinas, who were both forced to figure out how to reconcile powerful proto-scientific ideas with Christianity. They described God as acting through laws or processes. In about the year 400, Augustine described a view of Creation in which “seeds of potentiality†were established by God, which then unfolded through time in an incomprehensibly complicated set of processes. In the 13th century, Aquinas  working with the thought of Aristotle and Augustine  identified God with ultimate causes, while accepting naturalistic interpretations of secondary causes. Neither Augustine nor Aquinas was a proto-Darwinist: Augustine, for example, thought species were immutable. What is striking about both of them, however, is their insistence on understanding and incorporating the best available non-theological thinking into our religious views.
Relying on this deep intellectual heritage, most major denominations in the Western world have accepted evolution as fully consistent with theistic religious faith. Thoughtful conservatives would be wise to agree
Honestly, nishi – with this issue you are arguing more with the voices in your head than anyone here.
Well, I’m clearly a theocon, as θεο as they get – and I’ve noticed that I usually don’t get called a theocon.
I keep digging for the seed so I can water it. Maybe I’m below her radar?
It seems to me that part of what Nishi is doing is engaging us in a way that makes us react negatively, so that she has something to grief about.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
BMoe sez:
“If you have a point, nishi…
Ha! Hahaha!
[wipes eyes]
BMoe, thank you! That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a while, and certainly brought a smile to my face.
BRD
Heck, I’d gladly challenge the ‘zono to a theological debate.
Of course, it wouldn’t be fair: I have a copy of the Philokalia on hand at home, plus Greek bibles (Septuagint and N.T.) as well as access to a bunch of reference material on the Fathers. It would be unfair because I wouldn’t be making the debate personal: I would rely on what they said instead of what I can figure out on my own.
To put it to you this way, I found I couldn’t beat them, so I joined ’em.
I think the idea that conservatives have a problem with science is bunkum.
I love science. I love technological advances. My problem is with scientists politicizing science and becoming political players themselves, and using “science” as a weapon.
For instance, I’m told that there is a “concensus” on AGW and therefore we must destroy our economy and enact the left’s wet dream of regulation on all activity, high taxes, and wealth redistribution.
However, there was a “consensus” among scientists for thousands of years that the sun went around the earth. Or that the earth was flat. Indeed, there was a consensus among these same scientists 30 years ago that we were entering a new ice age. I don’t care about consensus of scientist’s opinions. Give me some scientific fact and then maybe we can talk about what is the appropriate policy. We don’t have scientific fact on AGW. We have theories, consensus of opinion based on theories, and that is all. That is not science, that is people’s political preferences being disguised as science to try and enact their perferred economic policies. It’s a shell game.
Put another way. Assume you have a bunch of left leaning scientists who already are ardent environmentalists. Show them some theories about AGW and get their consensus. Their pre-existing bias lead them to support the theory of AGW w/o any skepticism, despite the lack of a true scientific grounding.
So, being against the abuse of “science” for political means is not the same thing as being against science.
Which you still can’t seem to point out. Do you have anyone in mind, or no? If so, please let us know who you think you’re arguing with, so we have at least some assurance that it’s not the voices in your head.
Thanks in advance!
#459
“The fundamental difference between Fascism and Communism is national (Italians, unite!) vs. international (workers of the world, unite!). Beyond that, most of the tools and tactics are pretty much the same, with some variation  communists seize the means of productions, whilst fascists sit the capitalists down and tell them what to do, when to do it and what will happen if it doesn’t get done.”
Socialism is State control of all property.
In Communism the control is de jure.
In Fascism the control is de facto.
#478:
hee – all ur science are belong to us! lulz
δοοδ. roÇor Τεh ΓrεεÇor. Αll Ã…r μεÄαphysics are belong Äο ÅÂ.
I should have used the word “ownership” instead of “control” in #484.
Closer to 60mm, with Stalin accounting for about two-thirds. (Estimated lives lost under the combined history of communism total some 110,000,000 out of the roughly quarter billion democides in the 20th century.)
Ah, the collective. For the good of all.
So many words to say:
“If you disagree with me, you haven’t really thought that hard about it”
I think it works either way, geoffb.
She’s been taking a lot of fire at PW lately…
..
Most of the commenters here seem to be middle-aged or older. Nishi may still be in her teens. I would expect her to be less emotionally mature than the older and wiser commenters here, and if she has Asperger’s her social skills (or emotional IQ) may not be as high as her mental IQ.
My suggestion is that those who find her style annoying simply ignore her comments.
You know, Aldo. You could ask about the history rather than scold. What you’ve done is accuse people who’ve had trouble with her of being at fault, or not being understanding. For the second time now.
Well…this thread is also about the republican war on science. LF contains a labored attempt to smear the left and science as propagators and promotors of “eugenics”.
Like I told Manzi, it seems the right is fighting is fighting a doomed rearguard action against the combined forces of technological advances, academe, and cultural evolution.
Like Aldo said, judeo-xian ethics is a pretty frail bulwark against scientific progress.
I think Manzi’s account of how the right has alienated many scientists is accurate.
My question is, how will conservatives deal with the age of designer evolution?
Tecnology like this: nanomedicine, superbiology, biological anti-senescense, cybernetics, cloning, lifehacking, neurochemical augmentation, free market eugenics, designer babies, etc, etc.
You can’t seem to handle plain old darwinian evolution.
;)
republican war on science
No such thing exists, except in nishit’s mind.
My prediction, is that we will see homosapiens sapiens separate into two distinct classes, homosapiens transhumanicus (those that can afford the biotech augmentation), and homosapiens originalis (those that cant afford it or wont do it because of moral/religious reasons).
A lot of scifi speculates on that kind of a future, right down from the Time Machine and the morlocks and the Eloi.
I think I’ve had enough of datadave, who’s getting progressively (ahem) more personal in his attacks. And comparing a couple of Jews to Hitler is a bit too Arab for me.
Besides, the retarded fuck offers nothing of value here, anyway. So, ta ta to da-ta ta.
I think Manzi confuses “science” with how to use scientific discoveries / ideas.
He counts this “(resistance to forced sterilization of anyone judged to be a “probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring†in the early 20th century).”
As resistence to “science”. How is forced sterilization science? The resistance was to an act – not to science. Same with resistence to gov’t mandated vaccinations. It was not resistance to “science”, but resistance to a gov’t action.
This is where the confusion comes from – people not even understanding what science is. Science can explain things. Science can create new technologies, which are then made into tools that people can use.
What policies gov’t enacts or does not enact is not “science”. That is policy.
Someone like Nishi believes that b/c science discovers an ability to do something – say determine whether or not an unborn child has down syndrom, that answers the questions and gov’t should mandate all such unbord children be aborted as part of creating some kind of master race. That however, is not science. Science can’t tell us whether aborting such unborn children is good or bad, moral or immoral, etc. That is for people to decide.
#490, Dread Cthulhu
Thanks,
When threads get past 300 I often wonder if anyone reads them. It can take quite awhile to read and consider all the comments.
PW is one of the few places that is worth it for me.
What is more devastating, or ought to be to Christians of any kind RE: communism, is that most of those slaughtered by Stalin were Christians.
It’s something not widely known for some reason. Some of these folks had their index and middle finger cut off, likely so they would not be able to do the sign of the cross. Some refer to these uncounted millions as ‘The Russian New-Martyrs’. Russia burned its heritage on the pagan altar of ‘The Soviet New Man’.
In other words, science can tell us whether we are capable of doing something, not whether or not we should do it. And, just because we are capable of doing things does not mean we should do them. If that were the case, why don’t liberals believe that might makes right. After all, the mighty can do things, thus, why shouldn’t they?
Nishi is not entirely incorrect: If there are ‘transhumans’ they will undoubtedly be elitist monsters, and probably find it acceptable to slaughter those who oppose their agenda, esp. religious folks.
Oh the Liberals believe ‘might makes right’, but only the more cynical/wise ones get the game: It’s ‘might does not make right’ until the might is yours. After that…
say determine whether or not an unborn child has down syndrom, that answers the questions and gov’t should mandate all such unbord children be aborted as part of creating some kind of master race.
no i don’t.
it it is the mothers body, and her decision.
also, given the tools of nanomedicine and supergenics, the mother and father should be able to decide if the want to fix the genetic abnormality, or go ahead and have the Downs baby.
it should be their choice.
“Comment by datadave on 6/12 @ 6:35 am #
Nanny O’Brain, I thought we were discussing Fascists, not Communists. ”
No difference.
It is nature, not society, that is our greatest oppressor.
–Camille Paglia
Unless we have a totalitarian world order, someone will design an improved human somewhere.
–Stephen Hawking
Comment by datadave on 6/12 @ 6:35 am #
The rest of your comment is, well, incoherent is as kind a word that I can come up with.
And, yeah, you missed the point of my little psot.
it it is the mothers body, and her decision.
So, if the father doesn’t want a child with down syndrome and the mother does, can the father opt out of any responsibility?
Or, is it only woman who have choices in your world?
nishi —
There is no war on science happening here. There may be a mistrust of scientism — and AGW-worship as dictated policy despite a decided lack of concrete evidence has the effect of creating skeptics — but there are plenty of people here who are very much dedicated to science and the scientific method, me chief among them.
There is also no Republican war on academics being fought here. There is, however, a classical liberal rejection of the current academy, which is decidedly homogeneous in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and which has shrugged off its mission of promoting intellectualism and the free exchange of ideas for becoming a self-perpetuating echo chamber and protector of the (political and politicized) status quo. If you get a chance, watch ECMaloney’s Indoctrinate U. Or ask me to regale you with stories from my own time in the academy.
In the culture wars, I have fought adamantly against social conservativism, because many of their solutions to “problems” smack of nannystatism just as sure as do smoking bans, Twinkie taxes, et al. Again, I always put individual freedom first — which is why I remain reluctantly pro-choice, despite my desire to see restrictions placed on abortion that keep in line with advances in science.
Do I think aborting an 8-month, fully-formed fetus is barbaric? Of course. That Obama doesn’t is reprehensible, so far as I’m concerned. Partial birth abortion, once the fetus is viable and can be put up for adoption or turned over to a willing father, is inexcusable. Surely it is no more “invasive” at that point to have the child than it is to have it removed and it’s brains sucked out.
You can continue to caricature the positions of the commenters here, many of whom — though religious — are about as far away from screaming fundies as you are. Similarly, you can continue advancing your cause of enforced dogmatism, and promoting an academic ethos that mystifies alternative ideas rather than taking the time to teach them properly, which would have the net effect of doing precisely what you’d like to see happen: separating science from philosophy.
But you’d rather impose your will than “humor” the godbotherers, I guess. Because you know what’s best and all. That’s arrogance and hubris. And it is precisely what puts some people off science to begin with.
Your assumption is that people can’t learn. Human history says otherwise. I know where I’m placing my bets.
As for datadave, I’d just as soon suffer a gibbon with a pawful of his own crap. Because with gibbons my expectations aren’t particularly high — though they’re on par with my expectations of datadave. But in defense of the gibbon, evolution has only taken him so far.
“Russia burned its heritage on the pagan altar of ‘The Soviet New Man’.”
That belongs in a Lucite cube. I should feel some sympathy for the Russian people as their demise proceeds. Perhaps someday I will.
Geoffb and Dread Cthulhu provide an excellent synopsis regarding the accuracy of Goldberg’s overarching theme. Fascism and socialism/communism/progressivism are all just branches growing from one trunk. They aren’t separate species and saying they are won’t make them so.
Nishi,
I’ll give you a little story that may cause you to actually think through your position.
I knew a guy who was sued for child support when the child was 14. He did not know he had this child. He was in the military and had not seen nor heard from the mother in 14 years. He was a good guy, and would have paid child support had he known the child existed. He also would have wanted to be involved in the child’s life. He would have wanted visitation and the opportunity to bond with the child. That was all denied him.
The mother chose to have the child. The mother chose to not inform the father for 14 years. the mother then chose to sue, and to get 14 years back child support. so now, the father had no opportunity to bond with teh child, develop a relationship with the child to the exten he could have, etc. He lost the opportunity to watch the child grow up. He also now had a $50,000 judgment hanging over his head plus current support obligations.
All becuase the mother made choices. In what world is this fair or just? Why, in your world, are women immune from responsibility or accountability based on their actions and decisions? the only thing I can figure is that you believe women are inferior to men and thus can’t be expected to be accountable or responsible for their own decisions the way you expect men to be held accountable. Otherwise, your position has no logical consistency whatsoever.
The reason I used so many words to say what I said is to ensure idiots like you were unable to reduce my post to feckless attempts at soundbiting.
I don’t care that you disagree with me. What I care about is that you understand the kernel assumptions and the memetic mechanisms of a given ideology. Your conclusions may differ from mine, just as mine may differ from Jonah’s. But at least in our case, we’re beginning from an agreed upon starting point.
So, if the father doesn’t want a child with down syndrome and the mother does, can the father opt out of any responsibility?
hmm…i dont know.
what if the mother was religious and wanted to bear the child “as god made him/her” and the father wanted the inter-utero cure for downs?
i just dont know….those things should be the topic of discussions, instead of the antique history of “eugenics”.
Should Hitler harm us for the next 200 years by saying that we cannot do genetics?
–James Watson
Our trolls are miniature versions of the problem of evil: Having earned nothing of the sort, evil always demands at least equal terms when its survival depends on its host. It crops up universally, but its purpose is to ruin. Conversations are derailed into defeating complete bullshit, but in the end the liars go unreformed and simply reappear while higher purposes go ignored. Integrity then plays defense because rhetorically evil disguises itself as legitimacy while its clear motive is to not compete fairly. It knows it cannot.
It’s entirely akin to the decay of freedom and the structures originally designed to create it. Evil works the slippery slope.
Likewise politics: The entire leftist experience depends on a core untruth; on a core evil. Accepting that dishonesty allows for any manner of negative pursuits, such as legislating envy and theft, victimizing the just and productive, and making the sorts of completely irresponsible arguments — typically led by myth and strawmen — such as the nuggies and datalessdave’s have built their reputations upon.
Although I often don’t heed it myself, the best advice is to ignore this pathology. These are not honest engagements from equal minds and purposes, these are lies designed to tear down the conversation of a civil, fair democracy and a philosophy of equality and freedom. Therefore these “arguments” — whether nuggie’s habitual dishonesty or datalessdave’s shameless strawmen, bogus assumptions, and other hallucinations — can only throw dirt in the works. By design.
By this means the political debate in this country is also ultimately not between co-equals on the horizontal L-R scale. The political debate reflects a moral and even spiritual underpinning (or its lack) that aligns thought, purpose, and motive on a vertical continuum. By the evidence of #488, the collectivization of humanity — the worship of self and the structures of humanistic selfishness as opposed to objective, accountable adherence to principle — shows the popular left’s intellectual integrity inferior to that of its opposition.
Having mostly only cartooned rightists to oppose, the left is more comfortable with the lie, the manipulation, envy and theft, and the baser instincts. Posing as benevolence, it must actually run at cross purposes to honesty and accountability to survive, as history shows, and when set back on its heels for lack of tangible merits, as happens chronically, it can only lash back with more of the same emptiness.
“Scratch a liberal, find a totalitarian.” The left’s survival depends on the ruse of equivalency — the chronic accusations of all the usual lies — intentional or otherwise.
“#Comment by nishizonoshinji on 6/12 @ 9:06 am #
Well…this thread is also about the republican war on science.”
Only to those voices in your head, nishinazi.
Jeff, do you disagree with Manzi’s posts (that i linked) then?
Proof that nishinazi has no fucking clue what she’s nattering about:
“Conservatives are the chief defenders of a capitalist, free-market system, and the capitalist, free-market system is perhaps the most profoundly unconservative social force in human history.”
-Jonah Goldberg
He also said:
“The point is we shouldn’t have to argue with crazy people.”
-Jonah Goldberg
Smart man, The Nep.
nishizonoshinji: “My prediction, is that we will see homosapiens sapiens separate into two distinct classes, homosapiens transhumanicus (those that can afford the biotech augmentation), and homosapiens originalis (those that cant afford it or wont do it because of moral/religious reasons).
A lot of scifi speculates on that kind of a future, right down from the Time Machine and the morlocks and the Eloi.”
A couple of points… firstly, any sort of effective genetic engineering is a long ways off. Secondly, I would remind you that H. G. Wells’ novel was a cautionary tale, no some dry run on a future society.
Now, as for the “Republican war on science,” I would point out that there is no “war on science,” merely individuals saying that the important question is not whether or not a particular experiment could be done, but whether or not it *should* be done. There are those, who for religious, moral and philosophical reasons, have reservations about the direction that some of these experiments are taking.
nishizonoshinji: “it it is the mothers body, and her decision.”
Then the outcome should be her responsibility — such a lop-sided division of power cannot be consider a contract of any sort, where even fraud on the part of the female — lying about birth control, even lying about paternity after the fact — is no defense. A trifle hypocritical, insofar as women which to claim equality, but cobble together social structures that infantilize them. If it is her decision, it should be her responsibility as well, logically speaking.
It could be the beginning of wisdom, if it weren’t the nishtoon.
Nishi,
i just dont know….those things should be the topic of discussions, instead of the antique history of “eugenicsâ€Â.
The problem is that you seem unable to grasp the point of the original post, and the book from whence it came. It is not to say that eugenics is per se evil, it is to point out that german and italian fascism were the starting point of american progressivism, that many ideas and political philosophies that you accept without questioning stem from a fascist past. That does not neccessarily invalidate all those ideas, but it would be nice if the left would be honest and admit the truth.
That’s what the talk about eugenics was about – how fascism and american progressivism were both in love with the idea, until Hitler made eugenics a dirty word through his evil acts. Which, is why you tried so hard to claim that what Nazi germany did was not eugenics, so you could disassociate yourself from german fascism, without understanding that much of your ingrained and unquestioned political thought actually came from german and italian fascism.
i gtg, ill check back later.
[…] o o s e D r o p s . . . noteworthy headlines & perspectives Progressives “have simply not examined the core tenets and kernel assumptions of the ideology to which they adhere.” A 267-acre lake  down the drain. Making the carrying of guns as common as the […]
Nishi,
As far as it goes, I don’t think that anyone here is arguing that the idea of finding out if a fetus is Down’s and treating the fetus in utero is a bad thing. I think the consternation arises from the idea of having something like mandated abortions for Downs fetuses or compulsory in utero medical procedures regardless of the will of either of the parents.
Past that, the more general uneasiness is the notion that only women have reproductive rights, while both men and women have legal reproductive responsibilities. I would imagine tghat the delamination of rights and responsibilities should be a matter of concern for all people, regardless of ideo/theology.
BRD
Strawman, nishi. Who said we can’t “do genetics”? Who? Seriously. Give me names. You have well over 500 comments here to choose from, plus all the bioluddites you routinely rail against.
Show me that person or persons, and I will condemn them along with you.
But of course, these people are not at all representative of the current group with whom you are debating. So long as we’re talking about Liberal Fascism, and sci fi as cultural canary in a coal mine, why not deal with Wells himself: The Time Machine; Island of Dr Moreau, etc.
Our civic culture is built around checks and balances. You seem to want Science (capitalized to reflect your idea of those fields existing under the scientific umbrella as somehow transcendent and unimpeachable, like a godhead) to be left completely to its own devices — as if science was not something that is practiced by humans, who have been proven fallable, and whose hubris, be it social engineering schemes, economic schemes, or political schemes, has proven disastrous at times throughout history, particularly when change comes rapidly.
You have often railed against the second wave feminists, who use “social science” commingled with politicized “hard science” to affect curricula development, to the point where boys are now less likely to grow up and attend college, the competitive impulse has been forcibly castrated, and the ways boys learn, given a difference in both traditional socialization (which, importantly, was built upon certain physiological truisms about the sex) and verifiable physiological differences between the sexes, has been rendered largely ineffective — all in the name of some progressively asserted “egalitarianism.”
This is science acting as social engineer — with “experts” and “professionals” inside the academy leading the charge. Problem is, the academy has become corrupted, “science” has become politicized and opportunistic (grant money for diversity? Sure, we can come up with some program!) — and you wonder how anyone here can question the BRIGHT LIGHT OF SCIENCE THAT SHALL BRING US THAT PROGRESSIVE UTOPIA YOU SO EVIDENTLY CRAVE.
Your problem, nishi, is that you don’t recognize that this has all been tried before. Which is the reason for introducing eugenics. It is not to smear current progressives with a taint of racism: as I said elsewhere, I think “racialism” would have been the more appropriate term for Jonah to use, simply because it is in keeping with the zeitgeist he is describing, and it carries less of a moral judgment. (Though, don’t get me wrong: there were plenty of racists happy to engage in scientific racialism); instead, it is to highlight a certain kind of thinking that animates the progressive ideology — one that is totalitarian and fascist, terms that progressives were at one point quite comfortable with, given that it signaled an end to messy classical liberalism, and a rise of the elite leader, the technocrat, and the social scientist to fix the “problems” created by the chaos of democracy.
That many progressives now run from those labels, given the subsequent disrepute they’ve come under as a result of their excesses during earlier periods in history — opting instead to call themselves “liberals.” in a semantic coup that has further problematized any understanding of the political ideology that underlies it (particularly on the progressive end of the “liberal” spectrum, which, as I’ve pointed out, is almost by definition based around illiberal principles and, by political extension, illiberal programs) — is just so much obfuscation. Meanwhile, the project continues apace — albeit, thanks to our Constitution (ever under seige) and American exceptionalism, it manifests itself in the guise of a velvet revolution. Hence, the happy face on the cover of Jonah’s book.
I’m last!
Follow-up post here.
Bring your pitchforks!
First and Last. I am the alpha and the omega of bananas
I just knew that someone was going to produce the ostensible ‘infinitely long ruler’ and it would appear in the form of scripture. I wouldn’t attempt to disabuse you of your beliefs. I respect and honor them. That said, metaphysical certitude is fine in the pulpit, but we’re talking about what would appear to be actually adducible evidence as to the nature of our ethical and moral aptitude over time. Dicentra and others claimed it doesnt’ get better. Y’all cited history in toto. I think it gets better. I cited specific evidence from history. Now you’re coming back with creation mythos. Where is the tangible evidence?
If you wanna talk theology, fine. I’ve read Aquinas and Augustine and I adore Lao Tsu. I just thought we were talking about ethics. You know, the kind we have here on earth.
On second thought, forget it. I fear this discussion is too far afield of the purpose of the thread and I don’t want to argue about finite things with someone taking an infinite perspective. There’s an incommensurability problem there that strikes me as potentially more painful than productive. Plus, the “in my pants” comment was great fun. I should have left it at pronouncing you the winner of the thread.
Nishi: “Tecnology like this: nanomedicine, superbiology, biological anti-senescense, cybernetics, cloning, lifehacking, neurochemical augmentation, free market eugenics, designer babies, etc, etc.
You can’t seem to handle plain old darwinian evolution.”
As opposed to liberals, who claim to subscribe to darwin, yet wheeze and whinge about “extinctions” of species? Please.
As for your assertion — your suggestion is so lacking in support as to risk arrest for vagrancy.
There will always be those who resist advances, at least in the short term. That said, I’m afraid you’re failing to impress — your argument paints a single broad stroke. To put in it in the argot of the left, you’re lacking nuance.
Right now, with the possible exception of cybernetics, most of what you’re nattering about is not even into serious prototype, let alone even being considered for mainstream deployment. When and if these technologies come out of the comic books and into experimental use, they’re still going to be medical treatments with doctors — it is not going to be as simple as getting a tatoo or a body-piercing. Most folks won’t be able to afford these treatments, immediately out of the chute, since the insurance companies will not cover them in the short term, leaving them to the wealthy and super-wealthy and will initially attract those with a need for them, rather than a want for them.
You’re reveling in pipe-dreams, Nishi… try again later once you’ve calmed down and found some logic.
It’s nearly quitting time, and nishi still can’t tell us what she’s on about this time.
Not that anyone cares, anymore. Still, I try and shoot for closure.
So how does the progressive ideal that embraces eugenics also become the welfare state that pays to keep masses of non-productive people alive? If they really believed in eugenics wouldn’t they be more Scroogy about “reducing the surplus population”?
Seems to me they are really down deep mostly interested in control.
Eugenics is just the laser to paint the target.
malaclypse: It both gets better and worse. That’s how it has been since the beginning. If that’s as far as you’ll go, then that’s fine. But its never a uniform process. It will continue that way until the end, I reckon. This is no ‘pulpit’ nonsense, just common sense. History bears witness to this, especially as the 20th century got ‘better’ in terms of how many people live materially and the freedom they had available, but got worse in terms of the number of people slaughtered like animals.
Better, Worse, why not both?
Better, and simultaneously worse in “new and improved” ways.
Jeff – This whole series is brilliant, as usual, of course. It deserves more entries and certainly a ‘Greatest Hits’ entry. I’ve been stuck in Asia and just got through all of it in one sitting. Whoot!
[…] on society that should never have been born in the first place (call it “the nurturer’s addendum for those greedy hick breeders who refused to take the high road and just snuff the damaged goods […]