Jonah Goldberg, on “Liberals and Eugenics”:
When reading the literature on the subjects of eugenics and race, one commonly finds academics blaming eugenics on “conservative” tendencies within the scientific, economic, or larger progressive communities. Why? Because according to liberals, racism is objectively conservative. Anti-Semitism is conservative. Hostility to the poor (that is, social Darwinism) is conservative. Therefore, whenever a liberal is racist or fond of eugenics, he is magically transformed into a conservative. In short, liberalism is never morally wrong, and so when liberals are morally flawed, it’s because they’re really conservatives!
Case in point: Jill Lepore, writing in the New Yorker:
It has become a commonplace, on the right, to label eugenics “progressive” (in order, presumably, to make the word “progressive” as ugly a smear as “liberal”). Eugenics dates to the Progressive Era, when it was faddish. Early on, and particularly before the First World War, it was embraced by reformers on the left, from Jane Addams to Woodrow Wilson, but the movement that lasted was, at heart, profoundly conservative, atavism disguised as reform. After a while, but nowhere near soon enough, the disguise got pretty flimsy. In “The Eugenics Cult,” an essay that Clarence Darrow wrote in 1926, a year after defending Scopes, he judged that he would rather live in a nation of ill-matched misfits and half-wits than submit to the logic of a bunch of cocksure “uplifters.” “Amongst the schemes for remolding society,” Darrow wrote, “this is the most senseless and impudent that has ever been put forward by irresponsible fanatics to plague a long-suffering race.”
How an eventual repudiation of eugenics by progressives means that the discipline of eugenics is itself therefore conservative in nature, is never addressed. Presumably, we’re simply to accept that what progressivism is ultimately against, that being (by its own definition) the opposite of progress, must of necessity be “conservative” and supported by conservatives and conservative ideology. Which, while it is certainly convenient to define your political enemies by your own ideology and policy mistakes and lapses in judgment, doesn’t mean having done so is proof of the argument’s plausibility, particularly in the absence of evidence supporting the assertion, and in direct contradiction to the preponderance of evidence that shows such an argument to be absurd on its face.
As Goldberg is quick to point out:
The simple truth is that the “cocksure uplifters” Darrow was talking about were all, to a man and a woman, Progressives. Remember, the Progressives hated “social Darwinism,” which was a policy of laissez faire. The uplifters were members of the Addams camp.
Meanwhile, Lepore mentions that the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in the Buck v. Bell case, led by liberal hero Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a passionate eugenicist who considered “building a race” to be at the core of reform. Did Holmes and his fellow justices, including Louis Brandeis, sign on to the cause out of “faddishness”? What about the fact that the lone dissenter was Pierce Butler, a conservative Catholic Democrat appointed by a Republican (whose appointment was opposed by The Nation, The New Republic, and the KKK)?
If the progressive “turn” from eugenics is a suggestion that eugenics was, at its heart, conservative, what do we make of the fact that conservatives, by and large, never had to distance themselves from eugenics?
The answer, implied by the likes of Lepore, must then be that such conservatives were really forward-thinking progressives.
Which, if you follow the calculus, distills to this: right and righteousness = progressivism; wrong and reactionary = conservatism. The rest is just high-sounding special pleading.
(h/t dicentra)
Jeff:
That’s ALWAYS been the underlying assumption. After all these years, it only hits home now?
All which is Good, and Beautiful, and True is liberal/progressive. And all which is Bad, and Ugly, and False (based on liberal/progressive definitions and reporting) is conservative. And if standards of Good/Beautiful/True change, that does not alter that its adherents will be the liberals/progressives.
It is, after all, the narrative that matters, nu?
This is how we get nishi accusing Jeff and other conservatives of being “on the side of” all kinds of disgusting things merely because what we really are on the side of, nishi is against, as are all those other disgusting things.
I asked her if perhaps her excessive gaming hadn’t turned her brain to binary mush, because she’d apparently divided the world up into A and not-A, and failed to recognize that there are categories aplenty in not-A that are separate and exclusive of each other.
But Leftists were never concerned with the nuances (and obvious distinctions) of the world of not-A: hence the continual insistence that conservatives must be racist because we, the Left are neither conservative nor racist.
Furthermore, the whole project of eugenics was to improve the race by controlling its evolution. Their misreading of Darwin impressed Adolf Hitler plenty, and he took their “cocksure uplifting” to its logical conclusion after mixing in a desire to eradicate capitalism too.
Hence: the Jews had to go.
That’s a lot to lay on Jesus freak science deniers.
Is feminism conservative? Because Margaret Sanger wrote this about selling abortion to “undesirables”
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
heads i win tails you lose
I’m the rubber, you’re the glue
It’s easier to smear than to argue.
I’m gonna go check my Great Book Of Quotes.
BRB.
“Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies,who like to eat theirs.”
-P. J. O’Rourke
They have Maxwell’s demon working overtime to keep up.
Did I miss something?
Humans have done selective breeding on animals for quite a while. There is no reason to believe that you could not select for various characteristics in humans.
You pretty much have to treat humans as cattle to do it *and* you have to treat them that way for generations to get that for which you are selecting. Tailor made for the all-encompassing state!
Plus I am not convinced progressives have separated themselves entirely from all elements of the eugenic movement.
It has become a commonplace, on the right, to label eugenics “progressive” (in order, presumably, to make the word “progressive” as ugly a smear as “liberal”).
How delusional can you get? Anyone even nominally attuned to politics knows that only recently have the two been somewhat interchangeable. “Progressive” was long the self-description of choice for the Nation crowd – the permanent protest class – and the embrace of Liberal was a means for lefties to distance themselves from the unelectable left. The word liberal got a bad name primarily because so few of them actually are in the light of day.
On that note, SarahW, there’s room for a critical examination of the similarities between the eugenicist movement and the multi-culti drive for “authenticity.”
who is this years nominee for the margret sanger award from planned parenthood?
Liberal?
Fascists!
(Heh, someone should write a book about that.)
Cocksure uplifters–those same progressives are with us now!
And I like old Clarence Darrow, the Hitchens of his day.
There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword, the other is by debt. John Adams
H/T to the Anchoress for that one. John Adams was not a progressive.
Conservatives believe in letting people do whatever they want as long as they don’t hurt anyone.
Liberals believe in hurting anyone who does not do what they want them to do.
Liberals believe in hurting anyone who does not do what they want them to do.
You could make that parallel with “Liberals believe in hurting anyone who does whatever they want.”
he’s really a conservative:
http://tinyurl.com/yagm7t6
“You could make that parallel with “Liberals believe in hurting anyone who does whatever they want.””
I don’t think that is quite as accuarate, Dicentra. Only specific groups are truly allowed under the Liberal rubric to “do whatever they want”.
They recieve this right once the liberals have checked out “what they want”, and made sure that it violates the generally recognized code of judeo-christian civil conduct.
Which means…
Rims jobs at noon in front of children on a float on Castro street during the Gay Pride parade? Liberal Approved!
Desire to purchase insurance from a private company that meets all of the industry standards of good corporate citizenship? Obama Banned!
I just did a bad thing.
I succumbed to Facebook.
eugenics is not conservative at heart… at heart what eugenics does is pathologize stuff what needn’t be pathologized, and that’s what our little president man and his dirty socialists friends do all the time… America is sick but they can make it better.
They have a very eugenical attitude I think.
Its not the gaming, a lot of us game and manage to not be that stupid.
Which is exactly what they are doing. Instead of trying to create a race of supermen, they decided a race of super idiots would be easier to manipulate, so they went about creating a welfare state that breeds retards who have to vote for them because they depend on them for their survival.
Go look at the “OMG!!! Rape is not teh funnie!!!!1111” thread if you need proof.
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!
…or, in the present case, words that rhyme therewith.
Outside the they’s, I gotta go with B Moe fairly strongly here as to the increasingly magnificent Rapey rape rapings thread. It’s a peculiar thing, the vaunting ignorance going on over there. So proud, these human beings, proud beyond imaginings.
What would the world want were they to know their shame instead?
d was, at heart, profoundly conservative, atavism disguised as reform. After a while, but nowhere near soon enough, the disguise got pretty flimsy. In “The Eugenics Cult,” an essay that Clarence Darrow wrote in 1926, a year after defending Scopes, he judged that he would rather live in a nation of ill-matched misfits and half-wits than submit to the logic of a bunch of cocksure “uplifters.” “Amongst the schemes for remolding society,” Darrow wrote, “this is the most senseless and impudent that has ever been put forward by irresponsible fanatics to plague a long-suffering race.”
how on earth does this quote prove that eugenics was at heart conservative?
how on earth does this quote prove that eugenics was at heart conservative?
(a) It doesn’t.
(b) It doesn’t matter; because a vague gesture toward proof is all that’s required in progg circles. Actual facts are a tool of teh Patriarchy to suppress women and pigmenty people.
Oh yeah… Happy Passover!
i guess i missed the “make an assertion then follow it with a quote that has nothing to with that assertion and then call it proof” lesson in college
The Nebulous They, sdferr. Sometimes I get lazy.
It’s perfectly cool B Moe, I do it too, so just jab me. Anyone watching the girls pound the hardwood?
There is a scarcity of JD today. Or a paucity.
i guess i missed the … lesson in college
You obviously didn’t study in the Humanities or Social Sciences. :D
I don’t get any of those kind of channels.
get with the narrative please
I just had an existential moment where a phantasmal projection of Michael Scott leapt from my chest to try to hammer at my keyboard. We reached an agreement where I would quietly titter.
/titter.
get with the narrative please
arrgh! i’m always behind…like how just when i learn that dissent is super cool it’s uncool again..i’ll never be one of the hip kids
Eugenics? That’s only for right wingers.
Racism? Only whites think of themselves as superior to other races, the occasional Rev. Wright, or SCOTUS member too sometimes, aside (for the sake of this argument).
There’s something about the progressive agenda that reminds me of HG Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come. Probably because it IS the progressive agenda.
Poison pills for all dissenters! It’s the only humane solution.
And I believe you can buy Cocksure Uplifters at Ashley’s Sex Toys.
Ashley’s the best.
Would you call these people progressive?
Given that H.G. Wells coined the term “Liberal Fascism…”
Stop trying to counter The Narrative! You have been warned, Citizen!
For Obama and the State!
Would you call these people progressive?
Let us know when they get tenure at a university! That’s the thing about the left, it’s garbage from top to bottom. You can mindlessly and desperately push your narratives, but as regards the particulars of the story you linked, there aren’t many cops who don’t know who has their backs. And it sure as hell ain’t the left.
O hells no lefty, those right there look far more like conspiratorially insidious anti-government extremists………. or maybe grumpy monkeys.
Insty’s pro bono snark on the other hand, kinda funny.
One more time. Just because.
Would you call these people progressive?
Answered my question by deleting my comment.
Must not mention right wing cop killing white Christian militias. They speak a little too well for Real [conservative] America.
Thanx for clearing that up for us.
Progessive or conservative? Margaret Sanger on Eugenics.
#53
Your comment is still there, douchenozzle.
The Insty link. As we all know you just can’t be a “right wing cop killing white Christian militia” without you very own web site and Youtube channel. I mean how do you do those top secret, hush hush, operations and conspire covertly without them.
So now Obama has his “Michigan Milita” moment. His Clinton “bucket list” continues.
“I question the timing!”
Hey lefty, you reckon any of these jerkwaters will end up saying they’re sorry for their miserable selves and the harms they’ve done, and mean it? I’d bet on 5 out of 8, with 3 sincere, 2 bullshitters and 3 almighty holdouts.
Hell and Paradise are both in Michigan. My State collects political weirdness in bulk but doesn’t get California’s PR. Try The Port Huron Statement or The White Panther Party.
Not just the 60s either. The Republican Party was started in my State, radicals all. At that time the whole area where I live was a hotbed of abolitionists and the underground railroad had a main line right through here.
Those Militia guys are going to have to show more than loud talk to even be a footnote ’round here. So far they sound like the jerks you meet in every bar.
OT: New Whittle vid is up. I so want that bumpersticker that he shows at the very end…
The ironic cherry on this pathological sundae is that in the Scopes trial the textbook that Darrow’s client used taught eugenics, and eugenics was the primary reason William Jennings Bryant opposed the teaching of evolution as he thought it was a natural outgrowth of the science.
So, the specific case she cites has the conservative opposing eugenics, and the liberal defending it. Yet somehow that proves eugenics is a conservative ideal. Obviously, I’m just not sophisticated enough for the New Yorker.
Why’d I put a “t” at the end of “Bryan”? The world may never know….
Why did Schuler cross the T?
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/how-should-conservatives-deal-with-the-lefts-disrespect-and-lack-of-empathy/
Lookie who gets mention right out of the gate.
Early on, and particularly before the First World War, it was embraced by reformers on the left, from Jane Addams to Woodrow Wilson, but the movement that lasted was, at heart, profoundly conservative, atavism disguised as reform.
Late to this, but how did she type that with a straight face?
Racism is only atavism NOW. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was the hip thing that all the cool kids were into.
While realizing that boheme is an unserious little dork, using his calculus, then Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright and gang bangers all speak to well to progressive America. Well, since I’m not a complete moron, such as boheme, I’ll have to say, no, they don’t. Of course, there is a world of difference in the influence, at least of Bill “the domestic terrorist” Ayers and Reverend “kill Whitey” Wright, the two seperate groups have on the leadership of the democrats and republicans. I think, even a shallow thinker such as boheme, can see that.
“Conservative” = “Bad dog! smacks nose with newspaper” in Lib Speak.
Wait, Rev. Wright is a religious extremist, therefore he’s a right wing nut job, no?
No, Pablo. You have it backwards, I think. Rev. Wright is a good left winger, therefore his sermons are unobjectionable.
Since Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels were devout believers in eugenics (especially as a means of eliminating “inferior” races”), I guess they were actually “conservatives” at heart…
[…] Goldstein: If the progressive “turn” from eugenics is a suggestion that eugenics was, at its heart, conservative, what do we make of the fact that conservatives, by and large, never had to distance themselves from eugenics? […]