Monday, November 15, 2004

Perspective and historical patterns....

....on Margaret Sanger and the pattern of her ideas and movement. She was the founder of Planned Parenthood. What is the plan? Well, at least she would tell you the plan instead of just saying she had one. The plan is for there to be less parents who are genetically "unfit." That was her plan for parenthood.

Also, history may give a little perspective to conservatives who are nostalgic about the past. Many of the same issue and patterns were on the table then in politics, as now. This also highlights how powerful women can be in politics, for good or bad. Women did a lot of good before they even had the vote. Voting is not everything, you know.

Here is some of what socialist socialites did that was Evil. It seems to never be a story of redemption with this type of socialite. Instead it is to be death or some other form of maternalistic totalitarian control of Life based on the socialite's "choice."

".....the women eagerly studied the work and writings of national birth-control pioneers, especially Margaret Sanger, whom the women “worshipped like a god,” and philanthropist-physician Clarence J. Gamble, whom they periodically contacted for support. Both Sanger and Gamble participated actively in the national eugenics movement. Sanger wrote frequently about limiting reproduction by the unfit; Gamble promoted and distributed model sterilization laws."
("In The Finest, Most Womanly Way:" Women
in The Southern Eugenics Movement
By Edward J. Larson
The American Journal of Legal History,
Vol. 39, No. 2. (Apr., 1995), pp. 139)

"Utilizing their prominent social positions and the support of the local medical community, Nixon and her fellow committee women met with lawmakers and arranged talks on birth-control and sterilization to civic groups throughout the state. The talks sometimes featured such national birth-control pioneers as Edna Rankin McKinnon, the sister of America’s first female member of congress.

'For the past few months, the lay public have been actively engaged in presenting our plea on sterilization of the mentally deficient,' the MAG’s legislation committee reported in 1934.

'It appears, in the present light, that they may prepare the minds of the legislators better than we have done. Many talks on the subject have been given before organizations all over the state, and the voters seem ready to demand that a suitable bill be passed.'

This report referred to the work of the Augusta Junior League. That work, building on years of advocacy by mental-health experts and physicians, set the stage for the 1935 legislative session, when Georgia lawmakers first seriously considered a sterilization bill."
(Ib. :141)

I would note here, at least Leftists did not do things through mere judicial diktat back then. It seems that they did not go around sniveling about how "religious" people were imposing their values on the "scientific" people. Instead, they had a vision that they thought was true and they advocated it in the light of day. In actual legislation....but now socialists have turned largely to intellectual cowardice and want the Courts to make the discriminations to make their type of laws. Why can they not actually convince people that the laws they want are correct?

They used to actually pass a law. E.g.
"[The] bill [was] to cover only “patients” at any state custodial institution who “would be likely, if released without sterilization, to procreate a child, or children, who would have a tendency to serious physical, mental, or nervous disease or deficiency.” Patients would be sterilized upon the recommendation of their institution’s super intendent, subject to the approval of a three-member State Board of Eugenics. [......]

The amended bill was overshadowed during the session by other progressive reforms.....
Nevertheless, the General Assembly did not overlook the bill. Backed by the chairman of the state medical board and the physician’s lobby, the measure generated little debate as it passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming vote of 117 to 29.

One of the few negative floor comments came from an Atlanta law maker who protested against “trying legislation on something that ought to be left to God to take care of.” In explaining the bill’s easy passage after years of inaction, the progressive Augusta Chronicle noted, “The very intelligent campaign for a sterilization law in Georgia which was conducted by a number of prominent young Augusta women did much toward educating the members of the Legislature and the people of Georgia generally as to the great necessity for such a law in this state.”

The Chronicle went on to urge prompt Senate action “in voting for a sterilization law, which would place Georgia among those progressive states in the Union which are doing their part to stamp out insanity, imbecility, and crime.” [.....]

[The governor] surprisingly vetoed the sterilization bill. His only public explanation for this action came in a light-hearted remark to Adjutant General Lindley W. Camp while signing the veto. “They made no provision in here to except the governor and the adjutant general,” Talmadge observed. “Lindley, you and I might go crazy some day and we don’t want them working on us.” In a phrase, the governor had personalized the concerns that populists had always felt towards eugenics; and certainly, his poor and working-class white supporters would not object to his veto.
[.....]
Talmadge later bragged “that he threw every New Deal bill in the trash can without even reading. If so, the sterilization measure went in with the rest."

Predictable reaction greeted this veto. The Augusta Chronicle editorialized:

'We are sorry that Governor Talmadge has struck a blow at progress, at social security for the future and in favor of a continuation of such terrible conditions that will mean more and more insane, more and more feeble-minded, with crimi nals augmented and hospitals filled to capacity.’

Another leading progressive newspaper agreed.

“The scientific reasons for sterilization are so well established and so sound that the governor is flying in the face of accepted practice in vetoing the bill,” the Columbus Enquirer wrote. The absence of such a law may cause the parents and relatives of feeble-minded persons from other states to fly to Georgia, because most other states now have sterilization laws or are wisely preparing to pass them.'"(Ib. :141-144)

The journalists, socialist women and socialist doctors seems to be a repeating pattern and they still say these same type of things to this day. The conservative answer to them back then was decidely limpid. Then after Nazism was drawn out and a full eugenic ideology seen, suddenly all the socialists hid. They will not say what they are choosing, just that they are "pro-choice." They will not pass bills, they will hide in the Courts.

Zell Miller noted that the Democratic party is a "national party no more." But that is one cadaver in the body politic that is certain to rise up as soon as the new hiding place of the judiciary seems threatened. So wait for the President to appoint a person who believes that text has transcendent meaning to the Courts and then you will see some moral degenerates come out of the closet again. And they will be saying the same sort of things that they have always said when they do.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's a great quote from some of a book by Francis Schaeffer. This particular section is "Law in Post-Christian Culture"

He has been dealing with some of the laws established on the Old Testament, particularly the cities of refuge that were set up for a person who has unintentionally murdered someone.

"We can now understand why it may be emphasized that in Reformation countries, the Old Testament civil law has been the basis for our civil law. We are not a theocracy, it is true; nevertheless, when Reformation Christianity provided the consensus, men naturally looked back to the civil law that God gave Israel, not to carry it out in every detail, but to see it as a pattern and a base.

But we have changed of course. We are no longer a Christian culture, and because of that we are seeing a change in our concept of law. The differences between the past and present fall into two areas.

The first difference involves the foundation of the law. The cities of refuge were Levical cities--that is, they had something to do with God. The person taking refuge had to stay in the city until the death of the high priest; in that way he would be reminded that civil laws were related to God. They did not just exist in a sociological vacuum. Unlike modern man, the people of the Old Testament and of Christian communities after the Reformation did not view civil law as basically sociological. To them, it was not founded primarily on a social contract. Civil law was related to society, but not only to society. It was ultimately related to the existence and charater of God. This is important. Law that comes from God can provide something fixed. Today's sociological law is relativistic.

The moral law is rooted in the fact of the existence and character of God. It has validity because God is there. The civil law is also based upon the reality of God's existence; so it, too, has an absolute base. Reformation law was like this-one can think of Samuel Rutherford's "Lex Rex"- and so was in total contrast to the post-Christian, sociological law developing in the Western world.

Paul Robert, who lived at the end of the nineteenth century, was a wonderful Christian and a great Swiss painter of his era. He painted huge murals, one of which is on the stairwell of the old supreme court building in Lausanne, Switzerland. Paul Roberts placed it there so the justices would never forget the basis of the law....the title, Justice Instructing the Judges. ...the mural has a strong thrust. Several litigants stand in the foreground of the painting: wife against husband, builder against architect. The question is, on what basis are the judges able to judge? Justice points with her sword so that the judges can follow it and see what should be the basis-a book on which Roberts has carefully lettered, The Law of God. That is tremendous! There was a foundation for civil law fixed in the existence and character of God and his revelation of that character to us."

from "Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History by Francis Schaeffer

I just thought this is a powerful picture of what our justice should be based and how far we have fallen from this.

~M

mynym said...

"...but to see it as a pattern and a base."

Some of my favorite words....basis, sight that is insight, a pattern.

Thanks. I'll file that away electronically. Hmmm, I hope you scanned that and did not type it by hand.

You better not have transcribed all that by hand.

mynym said...

Also, I agree with the Founding Fathers that civil law can be reached by a sort of common revelation from the Maker.

Then Christians, Jews, etc., can all talk about religion and philosophy given free speech and free expression. That is all you are supposed to do in this regard in Christianity anyway.

Some people are so desperate to convince people when actually, let the dead in the head bury their dead.

Some people are always trying to harvest the field too, without planting the seeds. It's all well and good to be evangelizing all the time. But look, people have divorced "religion" from "real life" anyway, so what good are you doing trying to evangelize "religion" that does not really matter to people. That is their "private life." Their "personal beliefs."

First, do what the Founding Fathers did and take the issue seriously, in fact most of them were quite obsessed with religion and philosophy. None of this "private life" and "personal belief" stuff for them. The reason for separation of Church and the body politic is like the separation of mind and body.

If Leftists existed in their day they would have told Jefferson not to write the Declaration because he and those who signed were trying to impose beliefs about truth on others.

And he would have laughed at them. Then kicked their butts intellectually. For of course they were trying to impose their beliefs. But there were not that many mental retards about back then and it seems that no one made that mentally retarded argument. Socialists were in France, instead...and on the whole, still are.

Although America has its little French socialist movement now, in the Democratic party.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I did type it all by hand-my poor arthritic fingers! How do you scan it in if you do not have a scanner, I would like to know?

About France--yeah, and look where it has gotten them!

I agree about trying to reap without the sowing. But Even the "dead in the head" can be brought to "life in the head"--not by us but by the Holy Spirit. I will keep on eveangelizing or "planting seeds" as long as I have breath! One never knows what can happen. Look at C.S. Lewis. He says that he was "dragged kicking and screaming into the kingdom of heaven".

~M