all is fair, when done in the service of The Party.

Kevin wrote "This is highbrow Rush Limbaugh-ism . . . ."

I might agree that "This is ersatz-highbrow Rush Limbaugh-ism." There's nothing truly highbrow about it.

"This is highbrow Rush Limbaugh-ism

And quite ironic coming from the neocon, exterminate-the-Muslims crowd.

There's nothing truly highbrow about it.

outlandish smears based on a ridiculous caricature of your opponent's actual views is the very essence of Limbaughism, in fact.

He's not using the word out of a dedication to scientific precision.

Exactly right. Thanks, Kevin.

A Republican using dishonesty to serve partisan purposes???

"...ironic coming from the neocon, exterminate-the-Muslims crowd."

It's all projection, all the time with them.

Funny how they never mentioned this before, since it's sooo vital to the nation. And now: Al, picking up the meme like it's always mattered to him, in 3... 2... 1...

By the same token, conservatives favor criminalizing homosexuality, and erecting barriers to minority voting.

One can disagree about the treatment of minorities without it being a smear.

Conservatives are Nazis.

What we have in the world of science today is Lysenkoism vs Darwinism. Lysenko, Stalin's theorist about inheritence, devised a Socialist-realism theory of genetics, which supported Communism - acquired traits could be inherited. That is the intellectual heritage of today's conservaboobs like Douthat. They devise a theory based on a political nut point and use that theory over science.

It's nutty.

"a feature, not a bug"
-Exactly.

... not serious argument.

Agreed. But why can't the Replicans be serious? I see a larger context: The Republicans are the party of the old, physical economy; the Democrats are the party of the new, knowledge economy.

To get a serious arguments, the two wings of the Dems would have to debate. The Republicans can't, because they are out of date.

Back to the sandbox with it.

For Friday Catblogging, may I suggest a photo of Ross Douchehat's picture lining your cats' litter box.

Kevin, the connection between abortion and eugenics is pretty simple. Since you're unwilling to look it up yourself, I'll explain it to you. As conservapedia explains, eugenics means "selective breeding". Abortion leads to selective breeding in quite a few ways.
1. First, babies who are "diseased" (like babies with Downs syndromes) would be aborted. So you would be selectively breeding out babies you judge to be imperfect.
2. Second, designer babies would be created, and those who do not meet up with the designs would also be aborted. So babies who do not conform to your ideal design would be aborted.
There are numerous other ways abortions cause eugenics also, but you can look them up yourself.

As conservapedia explains,

Surely you can't be serious.

Okay, 14 minutes... but Al, do ever read any of the posts preceding yours? Or following them?

What an amazingly predictable tool you are. Just to spell it out for you, that's not a good thing. More specifically, everyone here thinks you're an idiot and a pathetic lackey. All of these words can easily be looked up in any dictionary.

Lets put it another way: bet your mama wishes she'd heard about "eugenics also" at a more useful juncture.

I smell Karl Rove.

Or maybe some OxyContin-addled Heritage Foundation intern?

Al;
A ban on abortion and birth control leads to eugenics too.

Wealthy, privileged, educated folks will still seek (and obtain) birth control, and limit their reproduction to a low replacement average. While low-income, uneducated, underprivileged families will continue to have 6 to 9 kids per generation.

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

eu·gen·ics (y��-jěn'ĭks) Pronunciation Key
n. (used with a sing. verb)
The study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding.

Now Al, I'm sure the complexity of the issue probably escapes you, but assuming for the sake of argument that you can grasp the difference between individual choices and mandated policies, I would point out that eugenics, by definition, involves some controlling authority to ensure uniformity of decision making, while individual abortion decisions are based solely on the woman's medical and ethical choices.

While low-income, uneducated, underprivileged families will continue to have 6 to 9 kids per generation.

Just wait to see what this country will look like in 500 years.

90% of parents choose an abortion after learning their fetus has down syndrome. Somehow Douthat thinks this is "liberal eugenics"? Please

Can we get serious here?

With Bush Cultists? No.

This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Simple questions (h/t Atrios).

Oh, Al, and another thing, perhaps you could take a minute to brush up on the relationship between "causation" and "correlation". Your statement, "Abortion leads to selective breeding," suggests you haven't a clue as to the difference.

You might begin by typing the following phrase - "cum hoc ergo propter hoc" - in Google which, despite its obvious liberal bias, will return a number of interesting sites which, with the help of a dictionary you should be able to decipher.

We can't ignore this stuff. This use of language is how these nutbags got to where they are. I'll bet they've focus grouped/tested the word and now they're rolling it out, like a new product. That's their MO and we can't ignore it just because it offends our sensibilities.

This one's simple:

When commentator uses a group's own moniker, it is a discussion: "progressive," "liberal," "Nazi," "Conservative," "homosexual," "latino."

When a commentator makes up his own moniker, and when it's an ugly one, it's a smear.

I think Limbaugh is better at this, though. He usually a) picks smears in common usage or b) takes a group's own moniker and beats the hell out of it until it becomes a smear.

Ross is bush league.

Probably part of the reason we have legal abortion is all the upper-class white racist dudes think it will keep ghetto-mammas producing less.

Although these thugs are certainly capable of anything (except doing their jobs, of course), does anyone here actually think that the anti-eugenics flag is going to rouse anyone into battle in 2008.

Except for Al, of course, who doesn't actually think. Hey, putz, we're making fun of you. Yoo-hoo, chickenshit, over here. Here's your chance to defend yourself, but you just dribble Kark Rove's semen and leave, dontcha boy?

Probably part of the reason we have legal abortion is all the upper-class white racist dudes think it will keep ghetto-mammas producing less.
Posted by: Swan on July 31, 2007 at 5:07 PM | PERMALINK

. . . less DNA-test-backed court-ordered child-support wage-garnishments of upper-class white racist dudes who visit ghetto-mammas for certain discrete services. . .

The Republican Party smear artistes might find linking eugenics with abortion and birth control backfiring on them with much of their core constituency.

Racist whites in the South, rural midwest and places like Colorado Springs long have advocated eugencis as a means of controlling the "colored" population -- though they might not use the term "eugenics". "Sterilization" comes to mind. These racist whites are the Dixiecrat Republicans on which the GOP depends now for what victories it gets at the polls. (That and diddling the electronic voting systems). So when the Roveans tell them abortion and birth control are eugencics, it will pose for them a dilemma: Is the GOP now favoring abortion and birth control or what? See the problem posed for these folks? Mixed signals, indeed. Complexity, whew! Easily a three-beer problem.

Oh, and by the by, these racist Dixiecrat whites, huddled in their whites-only churches, are what the media choose for reasons of it own to call "evangelicals." But that's another post . . .

Eugenics is a system by which choices about reproduction are forced on people by the state. I will state that again: the common element of eugenics is decision making by the state. An indiviudal in control of their own reproductive fate is not committing and is not a victim of eugenics. There is a decent argument that those who would outlaw abortion are the true eugenicists. Forcing some people to have children is as much a part of eugenics as forcing others not to.

. . . actually, the word "eugenics", to begin with, was nothing more than trying to put a nice, scientific-sounding word on racism, to try to legitimize it.

So this really isn't any different than the conservative argument that Liberal policies are racist because helping black people with Affirmative Action leads to dependence on the state and lack of self-reliance and initiative.

The racist whites are confused?

Notice I have difficulty even spelling "eugenics."

but you just dribble Kark Rove's semen and leave, dontcha boy?

Keep your gonzo porn images to yourself.

Hey, Al,

Brave New World is fiction.

I believe the US will have a two tier eugenics regime after R v W is overturned. White women will be required to have as many babies as possible and women of Color will be sterilized. This is why the anti-choicer leaderss want to overturn R v W. They just use the 'it's a baby!' rhetoric to mobilize the dumbfounded.

Forcing some people to have children is as much a part of eugenics as forcing others not to.

Excellent analysis.

We need more selective breeding. We need parents DECIDING to KEEP the child. Far Far FAR too often I see a mother carrying one dragging two by the hand with a fourth behind. None of these children were selected, just dropped. And what's happening is that the unselective, mass breeding leads to lower intelligence, lower school performance and lower overall QOL for all concerned. If she had aborted 3 of the 4, the sole remaining child would get more attention, do better, be happier and be a successful adult.

I'm for selective, thoughtful breeding, and far more abortions than we have today.

You're quite right Kevin. Don't let Douthat get away with this BS. It's as bad as when the left tosses around the word 'fascist' to describe anyone to the right of Che Guevara.

I hate it when people feign detached intellectualism when pulling rhetorical dirty tricks.

The Right to Life is the cornerstone of all Civil Rights. You cannot vindicate women's rights if unborn girls do not have the right to live. You cannot vindicate Civil Rights if unborn African American children do not have the right to live. The liberty of an abortionist ends where the unborn child's life begins. And, judging by the various cover ups of rapes that Planned Parenthood has knowningly committed, it seems to be that they care more about the abortionist's rights than the rights of either the unborn child or his or her mother. And the fact that Planned Parenthood has used scare tactics to encourage young women to have abortions further illustrates that their to claim to be "pro-choice and not pro-abortion" has no credibility.

The Democratic Party would be far greater if it did not obey this special interest group. Why is it that when there are so many pro-life Democrats, the Party's leading nominees for President, Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, are all on Planned Parenthood's side of the issue?

The Democratic Party would be far greater if it did not obey this special interest group. Why is it that when there are so many pro-life Democrats, the Party's leading nominees for President, Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, are all on Planned Parenthood's side of the issue?

Because Planned Parenthood is the Right to Life side. We are not religious fascists, forcing others to have children regardless of circumstance. We on the Dem side are for a woman making an informed, sensible choice, rather than nazis like James Dobson doing it for her.

Who died and made YOU a fascist in charge of women's bodies?

We on the Dem side are for the Right to Life.

1) We believe that women have the right to Life, not the Right to be a mindless breeder. That's your position: women exist only to reproduce. That's not the right to life, that's the right to be a rabbit.

2) We believe that other children, not just the blastocyst, have a right to life. If there's an older child, that child has a right to life.

3) We believe that religious fascists should look to their own house before sticking their big oar into ours. The states with the most restrictions on abortion have the highest divorce rates, the lowest high school graduation rates, and basically are cesspools of social pathology.

4) We believe that incest is not a sacred ritual. We believe that rape is not a sacrement. We believe that abortion is the best and most positive thing to do in many cases.

Abortion is the most important right for women. A woman is not a mindless breeding vessal.

Why doesn't he just say that anyone who disagrees with him is objectively pro-eugencis?

brian,

I'd be interested in seeing a picture of Planned Parenthood's penis, which it obviously has, given that it has "knowingly commited" rapes. I wonder which has a bigger penis, Planned Parenthood or the NRA?

But in all seriousness, this is a pretty pathetic attempt to paint the anti-choice movement in grand terms of the civil rights struggle, when it's painfully obvious that you and your friends care very little about anyone's civil rights, and a whole lot about regulating female sexuality.

Rapists prefer their victims become pregnant so the victim becomes tethered to an unwanted child and becomes dependent upon some authority's material relief. Often the relief authority is not motivated by compassion or altrusim, but is the rapist. A system that allows victims to abort the abomination left behind by the rapist spoils the authority used for amusement and self-righteous aggrandizement. It is these type of controlling and intrusive people who say a zygote is a baby.

1) We believe that women have the right to Life, not the Right to be a mindless breeder. That's your position: women exist only to reproduce. That's not the right to life, that's the right to be a rabbit. - POed Lib

If you believe women have the right to life, then why do you support policies denying the right to life to unborn girls?

Defending the right to life does not infringe on women's rights; defending the right to life vindicates women's rights. That's one reason why fifty percent of women are pro-life. Women deserve all the rights that men have, and it is a mockery of our values that women still suffer despicable discrimination, especially in terms of pay, which is usually one third lower than men of the same talent and position.

4) We believe that incest is not a sacred ritual. We believe that rape is not a sacrement. We believe that abortion is the best and most positive thing to do in many cases. - POed Lib

Then why do you support Planned Parenthood, an organization that has intentionally and maliciously covered up both rapes and incestuous rapes?

Women's rights must be fully vindicated. That is why the right to life must be vindicated.

Rapists prefer their victims become pregnant so the victim becomes tethered to an unwanted child and becomes dependent upon some authority's material relief. Often the relief authority is not motivated by compassion or altrusim, but is the rapist.

You know, if you replace "Rapist" with "War Monger" and "pregnant" with "invaded", and "child" with "occupation" - it sounds a whole lot like Iraq:

War mongers prefer their victims become invaded so the victim becomes tethered to an unwanted occupation and becomes dependent upon some authority's material relief. Often the relief authority is not motivated by compassion or altrusim, but is the war monger.

Conservative ideology, in a nutshell?

I read it as an admission that the right favors eugenics, because they don't accuse anyone of anything unless they're guilty of it themselves.

So the question to ask is: "Ross Douthat, why are you a eugenics supporter, and how does that not make you as bad as the fascists of the past?"

The Right to Life means that actually alive people have rights. To abortion fascists like you, blastocysts have rights, but women do not. If you are pregnant, an abortion fascist like you would force her to have a child. That's not a right to life. That's a fascist life promotion over all.

Liberals like myself believe that women can make sensible decisions, having the child sometimes, aborting it other times. We are not fascists like you, forcing any pregnant person to have the child in all cases. Rather, the woman must balance her needs, the child's needs, the needs of others.

Unlike you, I believe that women can be trusted to make a sensible decision. But I'm not a morality nazi like you.

I just love Brian's deceitful and lie-filled diatribes. He is clearly a student of Rove and Orwell, using names which mean the opposite of something to name things.

For instance, he perverts and distorts my comment about fetuses. He makes "women's rights" into the rights of unborn female fetuses. A woman is an adult, a fetus is not. A fetus is not an independent individual. A fetus is under the control, until birth, of the mother, and she can do anything she wants.

Brian, you are a lying piece of crap. Before I dismiss your moronic crap, answer me one question:

Should a woman who has an abortion be tried for murder?

When the right-wingers recycle the term Eugenics, it is time to recognize that they really are Fascists, Nazis, McCarthyites and John Birchers.

Actually, progressives have a serious connection with the eugenicists of the past. Margarete Sanger is the most obvious example. She is lionized in every child's civics textbook for her pioneering stance on birth control and her position on the vanguard of the Women's movement. These same books grapple with the reconciliation of this with the fact that she was one of the leading advocates of eugenics by omitting the latter.

These omissions are why Kevin Drum and other successes of the American Education System (every PC drone they can churn out is a success) can't understand why on earth anyone would mention these connections. Those who do mention them, along with the extent to which fascist theory informed FDR's New Deal ventures, etc. etc. are seen as taking irrelevant potshots at what they see as a neat history of liberal reform; when what Ross is actually doing is examining how the Liberalism of today derives from Liberalism of the past.

Or perhaps Kevin would like to argue that one day after WWII, FDR and MLK decided to throw out everything that had to that point be called "progressive" and evangelize the revealed truth as told in the new gospel of PC Liberalism.

I see that BC, a disciple of Joseph Goebbels to be sure, is reciting the new RightWingNazi lie: that liberalism is related to fascism.

Conservatism is fascism. They are the same, and all you lying crap will not deny this truth. Especially under Bush, the two are the same.

You are truly a stupid fuck, besides. FDR, you total fucking moron, did not survive WWII, you blithering historical ignoramus. He died, you fuckwad twit, in April 1945. What a total Nazi boob you are, butthead.

BC makes a cute chew-toy.

Margaret Sanger was a pioneer of birth control and she may have had some racist tendencies that allowed for eugenics, but she was not a leading light of the progressive movement of the early Twentieth Century. That is a lie told by the culture of rape to demonstrate that those advocating now for reproductive rights are deceitful. Intrusive, intolerant and authoritarian people tell lies because they have no arguments worthy of proper discusssion. They can only appeal to emotions like dead babies and forced sterilizations to energize the people too ignorant or too lazy or too dominated to find out for themselves what is historically correct and what the real issues are.

The nonsense and selective quoting of history employed by the new Morality Nazis like Brian and BC is almost endless. Here's one important one: They claim that Margaret Sanger and other birth control proponents favored eugenics. This is true.

Please cite for us the opponents of eugenics who also wisely opposed birth control. In fact, many people supported eugenics prior to the Hitlerian misuse of the ideas. Hundreds of famous people supported eugenics, including AG Bell, WEB Dubois, 30 state legislatures (with majorities in favor), and thousands more.

It was a belief which began with good intentions, but was wrong. It is not unique to birth control, and that association is just more nazi reasoning.

Eugenics is a wierd, unused term in my circles.
Institutions are full of persons unwanted by couples who couldn't deal with it.
Why is that a liberal issue?

When you say that every human individual has the right to life, you're not necessarily saying that liberals favor eugenics.

And the argument for the defense of the Right to Life is not based only on emotions. It is based on our higher principles that every individual has self-evident rights, including the right to life.

It was this principle that was vindicated when slavery was abolished. It was this principle that was vindicated when the Civil Rights movement fought so that no individual would see their right to life trampled by the lynch mobs. And for this principle to be truly vindicated, the lives of unborn children, silent victims with no voice to speak for themselves, must be defended.

And Planned Parenthood's participation not only in abortion itself but in covering up rapes shows that it is not only the unborn children that Planned Parenthood wishes to be silent.

It is based on our higher principles that every individual has self-evident rights, including the right to life.

So on this theory obviously a blastocyst has no such right, being a collection of cells and not an individual, nor does an embryo, which is not an individual that can survive on its own but a part of another organism.

And I'm curious: just what are these self-evident rights you speak of?

For instance, do Iraqis have the self-evident right not to have their sovereign nation invaded and occupied by a foreign power? Do they have a right not to live in a warzone of American making? Do they have a right not to have their door busted down in the middle of the night without a warrant, by soldiers who don't even speak their language? Do they have a right not to be tortured for no reason except a thin hope they might know something about something? Do they have a right to peace and stability?

And if so, what should the penalty be for violating these human rights?

Why in the conservative world do only white men, unbaked pies, presidents, and corporations naturally have rights? And why is it that people with brown skin, women, and children only have rights after progressives fight for them for decades, only to have conservatives give lip service to these rights but resist granting them in practice?

And those slave-owners and lynch mobs you mentioned: they were composed of individuals, many of whom were the forebears of the "Right to Life" movement. Some of their descendants even ran schools that prohibited interracial dating for over seventy years until there was an outcry from progressive-minded individuals.

Funny that.

Hey, are you people really gonna let "eugenics" be a part of this debate? GWB is busy euthanizing the country, and we are still letting Karl Rove frame our discussions.

We will prevail in 2008, but it remains disturbing.

Every now and then, everyone's favorite faux-reasonable concern troll, brian, lets the mask slip: Planned Parenthood's participation not only in abortion itself but in covering up rapes

Support that assertion. Thanks in advance.

"WWII, FDR and MLK decided to throw out everything that had to that point be called "progressive" and evangelize the revealed truth as told in the new gospel of PC Liberalism."

POed Lib seems to exhibit a contradictory demand of historical accuracy from obvious hypothetical counterfactuals.

I don't know why Lib is so adamant about protesting the obvious historical truth that historically, progressives had made allies out of Communists and Fascists, depending on what camp these progressives were from. Communist support for Hitler after the Nazi-Soviet Pact is another of a hundred examples. I already mentioned FDR's fondness for Mussolini, whom he affectionately called "the Italian gentleman".

I do not say that the modern PC Left is eugenicist or fascist, but the fact remains that the new comes from the old, and pre-WWII Progressives were a motley bunch that included Fascists, Eugenicists, Communists, Social Democrats, Racists, Rural Populists, and a host of other figures, and to understand the New Left, with its PC Orthodoxy that drives POed Lib into conniptions even when it is not violated, it is necessary to understand its lineage.

There were eugenic programs in North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, California....and some 27 other states
Some writers have claimed that immigration restrictions in the US during the 20's were also motivated by the eugenics movement.

....it is necessary to understand its lineage. BC at 9:32 PM

"included Fascists, Eugenicists, Communists, Social Democrats, Racists, Rural Populists,"

Truly, you are a moron. Fascists and communists are always, and have always been enemies. Communists are the allies of liberals, but fascists with their conservative buddies have always opposed them. if you are speaking of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, that was a Hitler plan to keep the commies quiet, but to Hitler and to all fascists and other conservatives, communists have always been the enemy.

Your historical understanding is very low.

Anyone who knows history, BC and other current fascists exempted, knows that Hitler conflated bolshevism and jewish plots. To Hitler, the Jews were entirely bound with Bolshevism. He hated both communism and jews equally, and did not see a difference.

Today's fascist wack-jobs are running from their heritage. Hitler hated communists and the left, today's Repukeliscum party hates communists and the left. Hitler hated judges, today's repukeliscum party hates the rule of law and judges. Hitler hated everything that today's Repukeliscum party hates, he revered everything that today's repukeliscum party reveres.

Today's republican party is the true and honest heir of National Socialism. George W. Bush, grandson of Hitler supporter Prescott, is a fascist and the true heir of his grandfather's political love.

Lineage is not destiny. That is a eugenics concept.

Lineage is part of history and having some familiarity with the history of the subject is necessary to possess some understanding of the subject.

American political discourse has remained true to Jefferson in one way: We all still hold our truths to be self-evident and accuse those who disagree with us (that is, those who hold other truths to be self-evident) as immoral or wrong-headed. In so doing we refuse to deal with how each of us has come to think the way we do, which would open the possibility that perhaps our deeply cherished beliefs do not spring from our special insights into great moral truths, but are, in large part, as historically conditioned and contingent as the cherished beliefs of our enemies.

Investigating the roots of modern Liberalism entails the corollary of examining why Liberals today think as they do. Progressives would rather bypass such an inquiry and hold on to their illusion that their beliefs are the fruit of their special moral and intellectual insight.

The fact that the Modern Left's direct ancestors featured a large eugenicist contingent would undoubtedly trouble someone who claims moral and intellectual insight based on his association with the Modern Left. It's pedigree is discredited, and without pedigree they turn to long-winded tomes by John Rawls, or empiricism, or anything which will substantiate their beliefs. When all of these inevitably fail, and they are confronted with the fact that most of their cherished beliefs are totally groundless, they shout at you. This is why Lib is always POed.

I will add that this goes for most followers of ideologies and religions. They would prefer to remain benighted and contented. I just point out the Left is a special case because of its surreal self-perception as skeptical and doggedly pursuant of truth at any cost.

The Modern Left is descended from believers in eugenics. Of course, everyone believed in eugenics, so the Modern Right is descended from them too.

The Modern Right is descended from practitioners of eugenics.

That's the big difference. The right wingers are impatient with jews, communists and gays, so they just shoot them.

Alright POed Lib:

Did the Communist Party give Hitler a pass after the Nazi-Soviet Pact and actually endorse him until Hitler invaded Russia?

When Hitler invaded Russia, did not the Communist Party in fact pull a complete 180 and denounce Hitler?

Was there not a significant part of the pre-WWII Progressive Movement which was sympathetic to the Communists?

Did FDR not privately embrace much of Mussolini's agenda, while at the same time often betraying a less than hostile (deferential in fact) relationship with old "Uncle Joe"?

I am truly deeply impressed with how infantile, shallow, presentistic, and tendentious your Manichean view of the world is, and how desperately you need the "Progressive" crutch to lean on for your moral compass. How about getting off that crutch and looking with your own two eyes once in awhile?

For clarification, a good portion of the reform movement in the early 20th century, which was populated by many 'progressives,' openly embraced eugenics. Indeed, as Stefan Kuhl and Edwin Black have elucidated, the Nazis drew rather specific support and inspiration from these circles -- and this administration was often reciprocated, well into the 1930s.

However, this widespread support for eugenics amongst 'progressives' ultimately died when the full details of the Nazi Final Solution became apparent. Thus, any attempt to brand contemporary liberals with the eugenics brush is complete hackery, particularly when there's been a rather concerted effort in more recent decades to revive eugenicist thought by people on the right in order to support an evisceration of the liberal welfare state (D'Souza, Murray, Herrnstein, et al.).

"administration" should be "admiration" above. D'oh.

One of the circulating wingnut memes is that since Margaret Sanger was a pioneer of birth control, the founder of Planned Parenthood and a proponent of eugenics, then birth control and abortion are equivalent to eugenics.
Well, William Shockley was also a proponent of eugenics. Since he also invented the transistor, I guess that means transistors also equal eugenics.

It's so cute how BC keeps getting his ass spanked, but claims he can't feel it.

What a good bottom he is.

However, this widespread support for eugenics amongst 'progressives' ultimately died when the full details of the Nazi Final Solution became apparent.

William Shockley was also a proponent of eugenics. Since he also invented the transistor, I guess that means transistors also equal eugenics.

I'm not the one who equates contemporary Liberalism or Birth Control with eugenics, and it is obvious that most Liberal rationales favoring legalized abortion have nothing to do with eugenics. My point is more general: that modern Liberals do not like to investigate the origins of a belief system which they treat as truth revealed whole to them.

I would imagine that contemporary Liberal "anti-racist" fanaticism (the kind that equates all opponents of race-preferences to Nazis) to be derived in part from the revulsion their forbears towards the horror of what they had embraced, though that would require more investigation. My point is that Liberal dogmas come from somewhere, and the studying of past "Liberalisms" can shed some light as to how they came about.

Also, those who think that eugenics-by abortion thinking is dead on the Left should see whence Stephen Levitt's "Abortion cut crime" theory got all its support. The NYT and almost the whole of the Liberal Establishment embraced his theory immediately and continued to do so well after it had been thoroughly discredited. Furthermore, the Left promoted Levitt's thesis as an argument for abortion rights when Levitt himself did no such thing, and stated that he had reservations about legal abortion. The obvious eugenicist implications of Levitt's argument (i.e. the open secret that the aborted future criminals would include a highly disproportionate number of underclass African Americans and the NYT was enthusiastically promoting their preemptive execution precisely as such) did not seem to register even slightly on the Establishment Left, probably because of another open-secret-that there is significant support of abortion amongst the Left for this reason, and that's fine with them provided no one be so crude as to mention it in public. The anti-eugenics argument in this case (as in so many others) came from a certain strand of the Right.

That episode in itself carried more than a suggestion that old habits die hard, and should also show the obvious connection between eugenics and abortion as such-regardless of whether or not Liberals rely on eugenicist rationales- that does not exist in the case of transistor radios

Eugenics? It's a fair cop. I'm for it, in its general sense of encouraging more babies (of all skintones) who are healthier, smarter, prettier, happier.

Conservatives have problems with healthy babies?

Conservatives have problems with women's sexuality, that's all.

"This is highbrow Rush Limbaugh-ism, not serious argument. Back to the sandbox with it."

By sandbox, I assume you mean kitty litter box.

those slave-owners and lynch mobs you mentioned: they were composed of individuals, many of whom were the forebears of the "Right to Life" movement

The only people who have ever practiced eugenics in the US were the Southern forebears of the anti-abortion movement. Sterilzaions in the US South was practiced by the same evangelicals and Baptists that now want to claim proponents of reproductive rights are eugenicists. Those same religious folks also infected African-American men with syphilis in order to study the disease, without ever telling the poor subjects.

The 'communist party' spoken of regarding flip flopping on its support or opposition to Hitler was Stalinist and had no theoretical or political basis in Marxism or Social Democracy. Calling Stalinists communists is a lie. Both Hitler and Stalin practiced totalitarianism, which closely resembled the politics practiced by the American evangelical right and W. Bush. The opposition to science in favor of theological and policital doctrine and to reproductive rights is an example of the type of totalitarian society they would like to create.

Slave owners also practiced eugenics, but the more positive kind. Breeding larger plantation workers from the stock of slaves was practiced by the ancestors of the anti-reproductive rights movement of today. It should be no surprise that the progeny of the slave owners have a nurtured bias to freedom.

Also, those who think that eugenics-by abortion thinking is dead on the Left should see whence Stephen Levitt's "Abortion cut crime" theory got all its support. The NYT and almost the whole of the Liberal Establishment embraced his theory immediately and continued to do so well after it had been thoroughly discredited.

This is a lie and I dare you to come up with evidence to support your statement.

BC really stands for BS. He is a historically ignorant commentator, who seems to have a clear idea of events with no idea of their actual and real meaning. His interpretation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as implying a great relationship between Hitler and Stalin is truly the stupidest and least informed interpretation that I have ever read. His understanding of the relationship between eugenics and abortion is similarily idiotic and uninformed.

Today's conservaboobs are getting stupider and stupider. BC is Example 1 of the stupidity and idiocy of the Modern Conservative "mind". After all, if you need to get approval from James Dobson, you are likely to look and sound like an idiot, or like BC.

"My point is more general: that modern Liberals do not like to investigate the origins of a belief system which they treat as truth revealed whole to them."

Since I know of no one, either left, right, or center, who has a "belief system which they treat as truth revealed whole to them," I'm afraid that you simply do not have a point.

"Since I know of no one, either left, right, or center, who has a "belief system which they treat as truth revealed whole to them," I'm afraid that you simply do not have a point."

Are you familiar with the religious wacko mindset, in which there is a belief system of that kind? The right wing, including useless idiots like BC, all partake of that well of koolaid.

BC at 11:28 PM
I am truly deeply impressed with how infantile, shallow, presentistic, and tendentious your Manichean view of the world is....
What alternate universe do you inhabit? Progressives are always criticized for seeing too many sides to issues, not taking the Republican sound bite solutions, and not agreeing with the Bush view of Good versus Evil in his call for endless war. Do you even know the meaning of the terms you use?

BC at 4:13 AM:
.... modern Liberals do not like to investigate the origins of a belief system which they treat as truth revealed whole to them.
In general, since those on the left are inclined to the study of history, that is a particularly silly statement. It is important to view the flaws of yesteryear in order to avoid such absolutist theories in the present. Pragmaticism demands that unworkable theories and ideas be weeded out. Republicans remain bound to theory despite fact. That is why they frequently do the same things over and over as if they will obtain a different result.

....contemporary Liberal "anti-racist" fanaticism .... My point is that Liberal dogmas.....
There is certainly no evidence to justify racism, but what is this dogmatism? Where does it reside. What book contains the dogma of liberalism, because in the real world, if there are two leftists together, there are at least three opinions.

....obvious connection between eugenics and abortion as such-regardless of whether or not Liberals rely on eugenicist rationales
No, there is no connection between eugenics and abortion. There is however, a connection between Republican's Social Darwinism and eugenics: If one is sick as well as poor, unemployed, underemployed, or burdened with a pre-existing condition that prevents one from obtaining health insurance, then that person is to be weeded out of the reproducing game. Losers like those are supposed to die early.

BC:

She is lionized in every child's civics textbook for her pioneering stance on birth control and her position on the vanguard of the Women's movement.

Civics is still being taught in this country? Who knew?

Would you care to point me to one of those civics textbooks that lionizes Sanger? Or did you just pull that "textbook" out of your ass?

The NYT and almost the whole of the Liberal Establishment embraced his theory [abortion causes lower crime rates] immediately and continued to do so well after it had been thoroughly discredited.

Again, cite please? The only person I remember pushing this was Bill Bennett.

Mike and I simply come from two different Universes when it comes to our respective impressions of Liberals. Mike sees Liberals the way they see themselves-as tolerant, open-minded, questioning, curious, informed, and intelligent people.

I see the average Liberal the exact opposite-as a self-satisfied and credulous dogmatist impervious to introspection, reflection, and empirical evidence which contradicts his tenets.

There are serious critical-minded liberals out there, and there are also a whole lot of highly ignorant and dogmatic Conservatives, particularly Bush/Fox News Conservatives who border on Fascism, but the average Liberal (POed Lib is the quintessential example) fits the fideist model described above, as does the average Conservative, in all probability.

Liberals will not critically examine their PC Dogmas on race, or Religion, or Feminism because they derive their unfounded moral authority from these dogmas and their institutional authority from their association with the Church of Liberalism, a church from which they never deviate. Show me a sizable Liberal contingent skeptical of Modern Feminism, Multiculturalism, Mass Immigration, Affirmative Action, Race-Constructionism, and who defends Traditional Religion, and I might reconsider my opinion.

Well, since I've offered one opinion - you are a cretinous fathead with a poor grasp of the facts and a tenacious connection to reality - your beliefs about me and my opinions of things in general are as full of shit as are the other statements you've made.

Why is it, Sir, that conservatives like yourself are today such boobs, fools and logic-deprived dupes?

Dear Mr. Ziffel

Check out Jim Holt's review of Freakonomics in the NYT in May of '05.

How about being included in Time Magazine's "100 People Who Shape Our World" in '06?

How 'bout the fact that Bennett was arguing against Levitt's theory and noted that "It would be a...ridiculous...and reprehensible thing to do" (and I am by no means a fan of Bennett). How about how the selective memory employed in achieving the only real Liberal project: to fel good about thyself and thy superiority.

And my AP history textbook contained more than a passing mention of Sanger. I would contend that a majority of folks on this thread who know who she is first heard of her in High School.

Modern feminism: women have the same rights as men. That is not dogmatic, it's logical and egalitarian. Plus, women seem to think they should have these same rights anyway. Only a sexual Chauvinist could disagree with equal rights for the opposite sex.

Multiculturalism: all cultures have some redeeming quality that the people living in them observe and use as a rationale for their reason for being. This quality is shared by BC and every other human being on earth. BC's intolerance of other cultures is matched by the intolerance of others from other cultures. Cultures seem to like to compare themselves favorably to other cultures. A good anthropology theory, perhaps.

Mass Immigration: unless BC is an African American, s/he is a descendant of a person that participated in mass immigration. Probably from Europe. It is objectively hypocritical for a descendant of mass immigration to criticize the immigration of others.

Affirmative Action: an attempt to correct the past discrimination of slaves and their descendants, who suffered horribly from very religious hypocrites. Compassion and contrition are usually associated with the teachings of some mythological Hebrew dude, so it should surprise us when those who claim that dude is their god turn their backs on the compassion and contrition used to mitigate the sins of their nation.

Race-constructionism: I have never heard of it. It must be a Dobson/Duke social theory ascribed to 'liberals' that the dumbfounded hang their intellect upon. I am a human being, and so is every other human being. I try to treat everyone as worthy of my attention and affection regardless of what ethnic group they think they derive from.

Traditional religion: I do not believe in a deity, but I will defend others rights to believe whatever they want, but, perhaps, not to the death. Alas, I am not Voltaire, so I have shame.

Dogmatists have no shame, do they BC.

"to fel good about thyself and thy superiority."

Ah, here we have it: the appeal to stupidity. Conservaboobs like BC, spelling-challenged of course, are unable to articulate why liberals are so bad. So, they merely state that liberals are bad because they, the liberals, feel superior.

When you're around, BC, superiority is the natural state of the liberal. That's because you're such a fucking boob, bud.

Why is it that conservatives seem to feel (note FEEL) that they are superior when they point out that liberals believe that they are superior? Isn't this sort of self-contradictory? Or at best really moronic? This is the most amazing part of conservaboobahood - they are inept, incompetent, and do badly in school, and have the only thing left to the third-rater - pulling down the naturally superior intellect.

Well, for your information, I have worked hard to become a naturally superior intellect, and like many liberals, went to school and learned stuff. You should try it.

I've already given my opinion of PO'ed Lib.

I never said Hitler loved Stalin; I said that the Communist Party toed the line and followed Hitler during the brief period of cooperation, and that the re were sections of the Progressive Movement that sympathized with eugenics and fascism, citing Roosevelt's love for Mussolini as an example. All of this is widely documented. I never said half the things that the unleashed raving Id of Liberalism (POed) accuses me of saying.

Some of the nonsense that is being blurted on this thread is fascinating. If my approach weren't clinical, I might be aggravated by it.

Breeding larger plantation workers from the stock of slaves was practiced by the ancestors of the anti-reproductive rights movement of today. It should be no surprise that the progeny of the slave owners have a nurtured bias to freedom.

This comment, illiterate and nonsensical, is the perfect display of Mike's open, curious and tolerant liberal mind at work. All of Brojos enemies are lumped into one class of insane sexist-racists impeding the progress of Liberal Tolerance and Goodness. I'd love to see what sort of deep nuance or understanding Mike can find in that wretch.

No. The main eugenics movement was composed of racist progressives of the Woodrow Wilson cloth. Alexander Graham Bell, the Carnegie Institute, etc. The forerunners of today's Christian Right often had little to do either with eugenics or slavery. They would have been regarded by both constituenties as "Poor White Trash" and might have been the victims of forced sterilization themselves.

Eugenics was the province of intellectuals as a class. Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois were prominent in the eugenics movement. Close to 30 states (more, I believe, than the entire Confederacy) adopted eugenic policies. No Catholic countries adopted eugenics programs and almost all religious leaders opposed it.

Brojo's illiterate ranting has hopefully cleared his psyche to the point where he could gather some facts to add some nuance and reality to his cartoon history of the United States. As of now "Masturbation now; masturbation tomorrow; masturbation forever", seems to be the beginning and end of his political philosophy.

Well, what you SAID, you moron, is that Communism and Fascism are the same, or some such moronic twaddle, or that liberalism is fascism or god knows what. I offered up the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as the only possible relationship between communism and fascism, and like a dog to the bell (name the experiment), you salivated on command. Your understanding of the history of 1919-1939 is very shoddy indeed. Ever read ANYTHING about Hitler, other than the twaddle served up by Michael Savage and Rush?

And to make things very very very clear (necessary considering my audience), Molotov-Ribbentrop demonstrated that Stalin was far poorer a poker player than Hitler, and was very unclear about Hitler's overall objectives. Sort of like you - you see the facts, and come to a conclusion 180 o from reality.

You should additionally read "The True Believer" Eric Hoffer (1962 or so).

Fascists like you have a problem with the open mind.

Well, for your information, I have worked hard to become a naturally superior intellect, and like many liberals, went to school and learned stuff. You should try it.

This is for you Mike. It seems like your colleagues are proving my point over and over again.

Over-schooled and under-educated Liberals take great pride in their B.A. diplomas. We've all got B.A.s POed. I'm frankly unimpressed. Mindlessly mouthing trendy academic ideas and using your associations with trendy academics as a crutch is not the sign of a great intellect. Quite the opposite.

David Hume could not get an academic post for being a contrarian. This is not to say that I am a David Hume, but going with the general consensus of elite opinion is a sure-fire way of being wrong about everything. Try being a bit more of a gadfly. It's more fun than self-satisfied and self-righteous posturing.

Multiculturalism: all cultures have some redeeming quality that the people living in them observe and use as a rationale for their reason for being. This quality is shared by BC and every other human being on earth. BC's intolerance of other cultures is matched by the intolerance of others from other cultures.

Everything Brojo wrote illustrates my point. He cannot imagine anything but his dogmas being the case, or that his thinking contains gaping holes. To him, Liberal Platitudes are rationality itself. He even goes so low as to mention a typo!

He does not know what I think of other cultures, but he accuses me of intolerance because I do not accept official PC multiculturalism. He does not know what my disagreements are, but it does not matter, because the slightest deviation is tantamount to a "hate crime". Such is the mind of a dogmatic Liberal fideist.

POed Lib.

Well, what you SAID, you moron, is that Communism and Fascism are the same

I said that different strands of progressivism sympathized with Communists and Fascists. FDR sympathized, to an extent, with both.

If you think this is the same as saying that Communism and Fascism are the same, than you might wish to demand a refund for your overpriced and obviously ineffective education in which you take so much ill-founded pride.

Compassion and contrition are usually associated with the teachings of some mythological Hebrew dude, so it should surprise us when those who claim that dude is their god turn their backs on the compassion and contrition used to mitigate the sins of their nation.