What is being said

Wintery Knight

MUST-READ: The link between Darwinism, nihilism and public school shootings

[[ Check out this amazing UK Times article. ]]

[[ First, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold: ]]

"Harris wore a 'Natural Selection' T-shirt on the day of the killings. They made remarks on video about helping out the process of natural selection by eliminating the weak. They also professed that they had evolved to a higher level than their classmates. I was amazed at the frequent references to evolution, and that the press completely ignored that aspect of the tapes."

[...]As the attorney for the families of six of the students killed at Columbine, the Denver lawyer Barry Arrington has come across more in a similar vein. "I read through every single page of Eric Harris's journals; I listened to all of the audio tapes and watched the videotapes? It became evident to me that Harris consciously saw his actions as logically arising from what he had learnt about evolution. Darwinism served as his personal intellectual rationale for what he did. There cannot be the slightest doubt that Harris was a worshipper of Darwin and saw himself as acting on Darwinian principles."

[[ And Pekka-Eric Auvinen: ]]

Before he embarked on his shooting spree, Auvinen posted a lengthy apologia on the internet. Styling himself a "social Darwinist", he said that natural selection appeared not to be working any more - had maybe even gone into reverse. He had noticed that "stupid, weak-minded people reproduce faster than intelligent, strong-minded ones". The gene pool was sure to deteriorate if society continued to guarantee the survival of the second-rate. He had pondered what to do about this problem. He understood that life was just a meaningless coincidence, the outcome of a long series of random mutations, so there might not be much point in doing anything at all. But eventually he had decided he would do his bit by becoming a natural selector, aping the pitiless indifference of nature.

Auvinen left a special plea for his motivation to be taken seriously and for the world not merely to write him off as a psychopath, or to blame cult movies, computer games, television or heavy metal music, before concluding: "No mercy for the scum of the Earth! Humanity is overrated. It's time to put natural selection and survival of the fittest back on track."

[[ The article continues: ]]

One conclusion implicit in evolutionary theory is that human existence has no ultimate purpose or special significance. Any psychologically well-adjusted person would regard this as regrettable, if true. But some people get a thrill from peering into the void and acknowledging that life is utterly meaningless.

Darwin also taught that morality has no essential authority, but is something that itself evolved -- a set of sentiments or intuitions that developed from adaptive responses to environmental pressures tens of thousands of years ago. This does not merely explain the origin of morals, it totally explains them away. Whether an individual opts to obey a particular ethical precept, or to regard it as a redundant evolutionary carry-over, thus becomes a matter of personal choice. Cheerleaders celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday in colleges across America last February sang "Randomness is good enough for me, If there's no design it means I'm free" - lines from a song by the band Scientific Gospel. Clearly they see evolution as something that emancipates them from the strict sexual morality insisted upon by their parents. But wackos such as Harris and Auvinen can just as readily interpret it as a licence to kill.

[[ Darwin himself thought that his theory warranted racism and genocide: ]]

Darwin looked forward to a time when Europeans and Americans would exterminate those he termed "savages". Many of the anthropomorphous apes would also be wiped out, he predicted, and the break between man and beast would then occur "between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon; instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla". He took a sanguine view of genocide, believing it to be imminent and inevitable. "Looking to the world at no very distant date," he wrote to a friend in 1881, "what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world."

Convinced that the various races of mankind had travelled different distances down the evolutionary highway, and that two races could be fairly described as more or less evolved even when both had a track record of cultural achievement, Darwin insisted that natural selection explained why the Europeans had been able to see off serial invasions by the Ottoman Turks. Some of today's Turks understandably resent being designated as genetically second-rate, which perhaps explains why the editor of Turkey's most popular science magazine was instructed by his proprietor to cancel a special edition celebrating Darwin's anniversary.

[...]Nowhere was the toxic doctrine of racial superiority more enthusiastically taken up than in the Third Reich. The Nazis believed that the Aryan race was already the most highly evolved, but could evolve further if defective genes could be eliminated. To purify the German gene pool, they decided to exterminate all the physically and mentally handicapped.

Darwin summed up his moral philosophy by saying that a man could "only follow those ideas and impulses that seem best to him". Darwinian ideas, eugenics and its ugly sister, eugenic euthanasia, were accepted by the mainstream of the German scientific and medical professions. Indeed, so convinced were the staff of the clinic at Kaufbeuren-Irsee in Bavaria that they were acting rationally that, even after Germany's surrender in 1945, they carried on killing handicapped people under the American occupation, until a US officer led a squad of GIs to the hospital and ordered them to desist.

...

The Last Days

Eugenics quotations from Holdren's book

... On page 837, the book states that compulsory abortion is perfectly legal under the Constitution of the United States:

"Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society."

On page 786, it says that single mothers should have their babies taken away by the government and that they could be forced to have abortions if the government decides that is what is best:

"One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption--especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society."

On pages 787 and 788, the book advocates the mass sterilization of humans by putting drugs in the food and water supply:

"Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock."

On pages 786 and 787, the authors discuss the involuntary sterilization of women after their second or third child:

Involuntary fertility control

"A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.

The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births."

On page 838, the authors state their belief that there is nothing wrong or illegal about the government dictating family size:

"In today's world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?"

On pages 942 and 943, the authors call for the creation of a "planetary regime" that would control the global economy and enforce population control measures:

Toward a Planetary Regime

"Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime--sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market."

"The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits."

On page 917, the authors advocate the surrender of national sovereignty to an armed international police force:

"If this could be accomplished, security might be provided by an armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force. Many people have recognized this as a goal, but the way to reach it remains obscure in a world where factionalism seems, if anything, to be increasing. The first step necessarily involves partial surrender of sovereignty to an international organization."

It would be easy to dismiss Holdren as an eccentric nutjob, but the truth is that his views are an accurate representation of what is commonly believed among the global elite. They are obsessed with the notion that this planet is massively overpopulated, and that if strict population control measures are not implemented quickly it will have catastrophic consequences for the planet. ...

[...]

The Darwin Papers

DARWIN AT NUREMBERG

"I don't claim that Darwin and his theory of evolution brought on the holocaust; but I cannot deny that the theory of evolution, and the atheism it engendered, led to the moral climate that made a holocaust possible" Jewish scholar Edward Simon ...

Now we must look into one of the darker, more ominous sides to Darwin's theory. We are going to investigate how our world-view affects our lives and see whether Darwin's world-view contributed to the genocidal Nazi holocaust of the 20th century. Indeed, there are certain very serious issues that need to be answered here. Do our ideas of our origin and destiny have significance for our everyday lives, and the lives of others around us? Does it affect the criterion we use by which we place value on human life and conduct? How do we define man? Is he merely the product of natural selection and of the society he lives in and hence merely a subject of the secular state, or is he a moral and spiritual being as well as a rational and physical being who answers to a higher set of laws and standards?

There are some momentous historic reasons why we should seek answers to the questions just posed. Do ideas of our origin and destiny take the form of actions that have moral and/or spiritual consequences to them, and if so, what has been the result of applying Darwinian theories in the world politic: how has the theory of evolution affected human life and culture; by what set of principles should people and nations be governed, and thus ultimately we must ask ourselves what is the purpose of human government and social institutions, whose set of laws and morals should we obey, and what should be the standard of accountability for the common citizen and for those in public office? ...

[... continue to read complete article ...]

... "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." (Descent of Man, Chapter Six: On the Affinities and Geneology of Man, On the Birthplace and Antiquity of Man) ...

1871 Descent of Man - Darwin

Darwin concepts of Eugenics - 1871 Descent of Man

The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; ... (134/139)

Great lawgivers, the founders of beneficent religions, great philosophers and discoverers in science, aid the progress of mankind in a far higher degree by their works than by leaving a numerous progeny. In the case of corporeal structures, it is the selection of the slightly better-endowed and the elimination of the slightly less well-endowed individuals, and not the preservation of strongly-marked and rare anomalies, that leads to the advancement of a species. So it will be with the intellectual faculties, since the somewhat abler men in each grade of society succeed rather better than the less able, and consequently increase in number, if not otherwise prevented. When in any nation the standard of intellect and the number of intellectual men have increased, we may expect from the law of deviation from an average, that prodigies of genius will, as shown by Mr Galton, appear somewhat more frequently than before. (136-7/141-2)

A most important obstacle in civilized countries to an increase in the number of men of a superior class has been strongly insisted on by Mr Greg and Mr Galton, namely, the fact that the very poor and reckless, who are often degreded by vice, almost invariably marry early, whilst the careful and frugal, who are generally otherwise virtuous, marry late in life, so that they may be able to support themselves, and their children in comfort. Those who marry early produce within a given period not only a greater number of generations, but, as shown by Dr Duncan, they produce many more children. The children, moreover, that are born by mothers during the prime of life are heavier and larger, and therefore probably more vigorous, than those born at other periods. Thus the reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members. Or as Mr Greg puts the case: 'The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him. Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts---and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sizth of Saxons that remained. In the eternal "struggle for existence", it would be the inferior and less favoured race that had prevailed---and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults.' (138/143)

If the various checks specified in the two last paragraphs, and perhaps others as yet unknown, do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men, the nation will retrograde, as has too often occurred in teh history of the world. We must remember that progress is no invariable rule. It is very difficult to say why one civilized nation rises, becomes more powerful, and spreads more widely, than another; or why the same nation progresses more quickly at one time than at another. We can only say that it depends on an increase in the actual number of the population, on the number of the men endowed with high intellectual and moral faculties, as well as on their standard of excellence. Corporeal structure appears to have little influence, except so far as vigour of body leads to vigour of mind. (140/145-6)

Obscure as is the problem of the advance of civilization, we can at least see that a nation which produced during a lengthened period the greatest number of highly intellectual, energetic, brave, patriotic, and benevolent men, would generally prevail over less favoured nations. (142/147)

With highly civilized nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on Natural Selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes. Nevertheless the more intelligent members within the same community will succeed better in the long run than the inferior, and leave a more numerous progeny, and this is a form of Natural Selection. The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs, and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. It should, however, be borne in mind, that the enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally developed through Natural Selection as one of the most important elements on the social instincts. (143/148)

Newsbusters

Whiff of Eugenics: Ginsburg Tells NYT Roe Was About 'Populations That We Don't Want .... Too Many Of'

In a July 7 New York Times Magazine article ("The Place of Women on the Court"; HT to an e-mailer) apparently scheduled to appear in its July 12 print edition (based on its URL), Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the Times's Emily Bazelon that "at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of."

Who is this "we" Ginsburg refers to?

Alleged reporter Bazelon did not follow up on this astounding admission.

Here, in full context of the Q&A discussion about women's reproductive rights, is Justice Ginsburg's statement:

[...]

Blue Collar Philosopy

H.G. Wells And The Eugenic Roots Of Liberalism

For this particular post I will focus on H.G. Wells, the man some may consider the Godfather of American Liberalism. The dirty little secret about Liberalism is that it is essentially a racially cleansed version of another Totalitarian ideology, namely Nazism. This means that instead of dehumanizing one segment of the population as the Nazis did, Liberalism dehumanizing every human being regardless of his or her ethnic identity. This is most evident with the Liberal love of abortion on demand and even spilling over into infanticide. But here are some of the thoughts of H.G. Wells himself:

"What provides the possibility for such freedom is eugenics. Wells has no use for the iron laws of Marxism, but he replaces them with the iron laws of Malthus and Darwin. "From the view of human comfort and happiness, the increase of population that occurs at each advance in human security is the greatest evil of life," he writes. "The extravagant swarm of new births" that created the masses was "the essential disaster of the 19th century." Man's propensity to reproduce will always outstrip his productive capacity, even in an age of machinery. Worse, the "base and servile types," who are little more than the "leaping, glittering confusion of shoaling mackerel on a sunlit afternoon," are the most fecund.

In Anticipations, Wells had already argued horrifyingly that the "nation that most resolutely picks over, educates, sterilizes, or poisons its People of the Abyss" would be ascendant. For the base and servile types, death would mean merely "the end of the bitterness of failure." It was "their portion to die out and disappear." The New Republicans would have "little pity and less benevolence" for the untermenschen, "born of unrestrained lusts . . . and multiplying through sheer incontinence and stupidity....In Germany, of course, the eugenics and central planning that Wells touted soon led in directions that the futurist didn't anticipate. Wells attempted to explain away Hitler as "the screaming little defective in Germany"--an explanation for which George Orwell had only contempt. But Orwell nonetheless recognized Wells's extraordinary impact. "I doubt whether anyone who was writing books between 1900 and 1920, at any rate in the English language, influenced the young so much," Orwell wrote. "The minds of all of us . . . would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed."

Orwell was right. It was Wells who made it respectable, even before World War I, for liberals in England and America to demean their own native democratic culture in the name of an imagined antidemocratic World State. And it was Wells, with his stature as the prophet of the future, who taught upper-middle-class liberals that they were entitled to govern in the name of social evolution."

[...]