Political Philosophy
4,196,949,605 of 7 billion people on earth.
I am the 78,636,613,080th person to have lived since history began.
The historic milestone cannot but bring to mind the global hysteria of the "population bomb," a liberal fallacy which led to the international community's willful complicity in global programs of sterilization, abortion and human-rights abuses. The UN Population Fund is a remnant of this shameful history and exists now as little more than an international lobby for the abortion industry which identifies the Catholic Church as a greater enemy to "reproductive rights" than China.
Of course, the lie of overpopulation was always a mere means to the end of liberal globalization: the liberal control of international organizations capable of stealing sovereignty from the nations (and thus people) of the world. Liberal globalization would achieve by stealth and trickery what the greatest imperialists and conquerors in history had failed to achieve by force. Their weapon was fear and their delivery mechanism was "undisputed science" which captured the world's population in a stupor of ignorance.
Of course, rational minds prevailed. The Catholic Church was foremost in the resistance to these immoral policies and authoritarian tactics. Conservatives likewise opposed the radicalism of population control. They were vindicated as being on the side of science and rationalism.
Of course, the media largely failed to notice any of this. Partially, they didn't wish to expose their own complicity. But more importantly, they were already chanting the next cadence of liberal globalization. Global cooling was next, followed by global warming and now climate change. The entire environmental movement, with its need to regulate all life on the planet at the international level, serves this goal. Internationalism - be it law, politics, diplomacy or economics - has long been dominated by the left. They have recognized since the "population bomb" days that the last battlefield is global in breadth and that internationalism is the strategic high ground.
Their climate and environmental alarms will likely herald nothing more frieghtening than the overpopulation scare - and the damage inflicted on the world will be relative to the successes of such policies. Right-minded people have and will continue to oppose their secret war of oppression, but today is, more than anything, a reminder of the radical left's grand strategy.
Need we forget that since the United States became a chief warrior on a women's right to choose courtesy of femimists and liberals, 173 million baby girls have
been aborted throughout the world. Many of these abortions are due to the one-child policies of countries like China and India where boys are more valuable than girls.
173 million - that is a little more than half the population of the United States.
Stupid femimists - by supporting abortion you have done nothing but destroy your own gender and put the lives of many women at risk in places like Thailand, Cambodia, and China were girls as young as 12 are sold into sex slavery.
Liberalism is a .....
By the time I finished your 3rd paragraph, I could've sworn I heard the distinctive sound of a Glenn Beck Conspiracy Chalkboard being wheeled out...
But seriously, you know who liked the idea of sterilization (judiciously applied, why of course!!) ??
That crazy liberal Winston Churchill - you know, the one who's always being derided and criticized here so relentlessly...
Churchill: "The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate."
I'm guessing these aren't Quotes of Conservative Icons (TM) that Sarah Palin will be trotting out any time soon.
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The entire article (written by - well, well, WELL!! - SIR Martin Gilbert, CBE) is worth a read, but here are the highlights that include Churchill quotes. Not only do we get his endorsement of forced sterilization, but also protection of his precious race, and forced labor (of the "feeble-minded" - perhaps this is an idea that cowgirl would like to resurrect? Something to take care of all those liberals in The Stupid State!), too. I especially like this one:
"Churchill preferred compulsory sterilisation to confinement, describing sterilisation as a "simple surgical operation so the inferior could be permitted freely in the world without causing much inconvenience to others.""
And the rest....
"A.J. Balfour's Conservative government set up a Royal Commission "On the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded." When the commission reported in 1908 to the Liberal Government-which had come into office at the end of 1905, and of which Churchill was a Cabinet Minister-it recommended compulsory detention of the mentally "inadequate," as well as sterilisation of the "unfit," so that it would be impossible to have children and thus perpetuate what were then seen as inherited characteristics...."
"In September 1910, Churchill wrote to his Home Office officials asking them to investigate putting into practice the "Indiana Law"-dominated by sterilisation, and the prevention of the marriage of the "Feeble-Minded." Churchill wrote: "I am drawn to this subject in spite of many Parliamentary misgivings....Of course it is bound to come some day." Despite the misgivings, "It must be examined." He wanted to know "what is the best surgical operation?" and what new legal powers would be needed to carry out sterilisation." [Hey what a hero for "small government conservatives"!]
Churchill was answered by his Chief Medical Adviser of Prisons, Dr. Horatio Donkin, who described the Indiana arguments for eugenics as "The outcome of an arrogation of scientific knowledge by those who had no claim to it....It is a monument of ignorance and hopeless mental confusion."[6]
In October 1910 a deputation to the Government called for the implementation of the Royal Commission's recommendations without delay. Churchill, in his reply, recalled the fact that there were at least 120,000 "feeble-minded" persons "at large in our midst" who deserved "all that could be done for them by a Christian and scientific civilization now that they are in the world," but who should, if possible, be "segregated under proper conditions so that their curse died with them and was not transmitted to future generations."
Churchill had not given up his belief in sterilisation as well as segregation. On studying the case of Alfred Oxtoby, who had been convicted in June 1910 of bestiality and of indecently assaulting a twelve-year-old girl-and who had been described by the local police in the East Riding of Yorkshire as mentally inadequate and "over-sexed"-Churchill wrote to his advisers: "This seems to be a case where a complete cure might be at once effected by sterilisation." Churchill went on to ask: "Can this ever be done by consent?" In reply, Donkin wrote that sterilisation would not in fact remove Oxtoby's sexual drive, and that he was too insane to give informed consent. Oxtoby was sent to Broadmoor criminal lunacy asylum. Churchill asked that his case be kept under review at the Home Office in the hope that sterilisation would become possible in the near future.[7]
With Dr. Sharp's pamphlet and the Oxtoby case much in mind, Churchill decided to take the initiative with regard to the implementation of the Royal Commission's recommendations. He wrote to the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, in December 1910, about the "multiplication of the unfit" that constituted "a very terrible danger to the race." Until the public accepted the need for sterilisation, Churchill argued, the "feeble-minded" would have to be kept in custodial care, segregated both from the world and the opposite sex.
In his letter, Churchill told Asquith: "The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. I am convinced that the multiplication of the Feeble-Minded, which is proceeding now at an artificial rate, unchecked by any of the old restraints of nature, and actually fostered by civilised conditions, is a terrible danger to the race." Concerned by the high cost of forced segregation, Churchill preferred compulsory sterilisation to confinement, describing sterilisation as a "simple surgical operation so the inferior could be permitted freely in the world without causing much inconvenience to others."
...
"In February 1911, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons about the need to introduce compulsory labour camps for "mental defectives." As for "tramps and wastrels," he said, "there ought to be proper Labour Colonies where they could be sent for considerable periods and made to realize their duty to the State."
...
"The Congress on Eugenics led to renewed public pressure for Britain to adopt eugenics laws. In October 1912, Churchill discussed the proposed laws with Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who wrote in his diary: "Winston is also a strong eugenist. He told us he had himself drafted the Bill which is to give power of shutting up people of weak intellect and so prevent their breeding. He thought it might be arranged to sterilise them. It was possible by the use of Roentgen rays, both for men and women, though for women some operation might also be necessary. He thought that if shut up with no prospect of release without it many would ask to be sterilised as a condition of having their liberty restored. He went on to say that the mentally deficient were as much more prolific than those normally constituted as eight to five. Without something of the sort the race must decay. It was rapidly decaying, but could be stopped by such means."
https://www.winstonchurchill.org/support/the-churchill-centre/publications/finest-hour-online/594-churchill-and-eugenics
You also have Buck v. Bell and Justice Holmes.
Holmes and Churchill are still giants. In the early 1900's it was the dominant view.
I am not 100% certain that we have moved past the material factors that weight in favor of forced sterilization.
China I think has advanced in part because limits on familly size have prevented dilution of scarce resources.
In terms of general moral consensus I agree with you, Cowgirl and Justin...sterilization=bad.
On the other hand, Malthus, Churchill and Holmes present some politically incorect facts, that the arch of history may yet still be forced to bend towards, i.e. scarcity.
Buck v. Bell, and just about every liberal Progressive from the late 19th and early 20th centuries including Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, and company.
Yea, Craig, you're losing it. All that effort to prove only that it was a common view back in the day, and often spearheaded by the most "progressive" people (George Bernard Shaw also comes to mind). Isn't it time you starting looking for work again? Surely Mom and Dad have grown weary of hearing the clickety-click of your keyboard strokes wafting up from the basement.