"... expanded its brief (originally one of control of subhumans) into control of all conception. Her insights were taken up in the 1960s when 'hygiene' classes became 'sex education,' educators holding that because perhaps the children were not taught at home, the higher orders needed to take charge. And now we have kindergartners trained in a bizarre catechism of sexual identity politics. How could a school be a complete community? The church or synagogue was not, neither was the shop or business. Each was understood to be a part of a community, a community that would thrive as each of its components contributed its own unique efforts. A school could be a complete community only if all other aspects of the community were destroyed. The Hitler Youth could be a complete community. It was a gang. The gang exists to supplant both the family and the marketplace, as we now see with education, having taken upon itself schooling not only in sexual practices but in political (and so economic) direction...."
Writes David Mamet in "Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch."
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If conservatives want to reduce abortions, they merely need to become the strongest advocates for abortion. If white conservatives said today what Margaret Sanger said back in the day, the left/woke culture would flip and note that abortion disproportionately affects black and brown people. But they won't, and the abortion debate has descended into demagoguery and inciting fear to maintain power.
Howard will accuse Mamet of being "obsessed" with pedophilia in 3,2,1...
Disheartening to hear but a bill has been introduced in the California legislature permitting, without criminal penalty, the killing of babies for x number of days after birth.
But x is an arbitrary number. Meaning the length of x could be expanded. And the left tells us they're against capital punishment.
And if California makes this bill law, we can expect the usual group of deep-blue lefty states will follow.
I liked Mamet's book very much.
I wanted to review it on AMZN but I had kicked been kicked out because I am a CAGW sceptic. Free speech is mostly dead in America with the Althouse blog being a notable exception.
"having taken upon itself schooling not only in sexual practices but in political (and so economic) direction"
I sympathize with Mamet, and I'm pleased he's speaking up roughly, sometimes very roughly, for the right side, but the obvious response is that "schooling" has always been "political," and is bound to be, so complaining about "political direction" in very general terms is insufficient. The fight has to be about the direction of the direction, not just the fact of it.
It's not a complete society until there is twitter.
Antifa (anti-family). Life deemed unworthy of life for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes. Planned Parent/hood is a wicked solution to a purportedly hard problem.
Hillary received the Sanger Award in 2009.
She must have been so proud.
Of course, Democrats love to enslave and kill blacks, so it makes sense...
"The lockdown was the manipulation by those in power of the response to a natural phenomenon. In this it resembles the Left's insistence on global warming: fear gives power to the governments, who are, as always, the tools of the plutocrats." David Mamet
Member of the OPPD Board was on a podcast and said that after his wife read media reports on the latest UN report on climate change, she was very scared. That's crazy. CAGW is a scam.
so complaining about "political direction" in very general terms is insufficient. The fight has to be about the direction of the direction, not just the fact of it.
Yes, exactly, it will be someone's religion: moral, ethical, or legal, and God, god, or mortal god philosophers. Principles matter.
Mamet is deliberating yoking euthansisia (sic) with steralization for blacks and attributing it to Sanger. Here's Wikipedia:
Sanger did not tolerate bigotry among her staff, nor would she tolerate any refusal to work within interracial projects.[82] Sanger's work with minorities earned praise from Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr.; when he was not able to attend his Margaret Sanger award ceremony, in May 1966, Mrs. King read her husband's acceptance speech that praised Sanger, but first said her own words: "Because of [Sanger's] dedication, her deep convictions, and for her suffering for what she believed in, I would like to say that I am proud to be a woman tonight."
In personal correspondence she expressed her sadness about the aggressive and lethal Nazi eugenics program, and donated to the American Council Against Nazi Propaganda.
Jonah Goldberg hates Sanger too, and calls her an "American Fascist". You gotta wonder why this woman has become such a hate figure for libertarian/classical liberal types.
And the left tells us they're against capital punishment.
A naturally conceived... born "burden". A Twilight faith ("emanations from penumbras"). Mortal gods and goddesses. The ostensibly "secular" Pro-Choice "ethical" religion. A liberal ideology. A progressive outlook. One step forward, two steps backward.
I always find this "abortion advocates are the real racists" just plain stupid. Blacks vote 80-90 percent year after year for the most socially liberal Democrats. Black congressmen are the biggest advocates of so-called "abortion rights".
Its not just dumb, its dishonest, since if 90% of abortions were white, the pro-life advocates would still be pro-life.
I thought this was all made up.
@Sebastian '"schooling" has always been "political," and is bound to be, so complaining about "political direction" in very general terms is insufficient. The fight has to be about the direction of the direction, not just the fact of it.'
Dennis Prager pointed this out a decade or more ago. The problem is not that we are stigmatizing Nazis. We always did that. The problem is that the ones who control discourse decided all of a sudden that everyone was a Nazi but them, and they would treat them so.
Now we have teachers in our school who are a product of that mindset. We can't afford to have them poisoning our kids, and we don't know how to stop them.
Sanger is sometimes quoted out of context, but it is interesting to read about what some of the great minds thought 100 years ago (when Sanger was in her 40s), before the Nazis made the concept of mass sterilization and eugenics passe. This was pre birth control, where there was great fear at places like Columbia and Harvard that the horrible ignorant masses would breed away civilization.
Is David Mamet engaging in misinformation 😧
Was she a pedo? Howard wants to know.
One should know better than use Wikipedia for anything controversial that may reflect poorly on a Hero of the Socialist Revolution. Maybe in my spare time I'll go dig up all of the evidence against Sanger that Wikipedia entry omits.
"Black congressmen are the biggest advocates of so-called "abortion rights"
Only because they are bought and paid for by AWFLS. They don't represent their black constituents, they represent the racist money that keeps them in office.
That extract seems like gibberish. Not a temptation to buy the book.
Jonah Goldberg hates Sanger too, and calls her an "American Fascist". You gotta wonder why this woman has become such a hate figure for libertarian/classical liberal types.
She was a racist and a eugenicist. It was popular among the "intellectual" left -- you only have to read Oliver Wendell Holmes to get the elitist tone right -- until Hitler went to town. And then it was an embarrassing past that you can either acknowledge or hide.
Here's the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood talking about how racist Sanger was. So yeah, tear down her statue. And teach the history of birth control and abortion in America. Run photographs of aborted black babies, and be sure to quote the liberals who say that was a right thing to do.
The third paragraph of Roe v. Wade reads:
In addition, population growth, pollution, poverty, and racial overtones tend to complicate and not to simplify the problem.
You tell me why he's thinking about race and pollution.
That's how Ruth Bader Ginsburg read the opinion. She said so in her interview in the New York Times.
Here's the "journalist" who's trying to clean up the quote so it no longer sounds like eugenics.
gang bangers/ criminals who end up back in the clink over and over - who go in and out of the prison system.. These are people - men mostly -who should be OFFERED a vasectomy as state expense. So they stop impregnated women who abort and stop impregnating unwanted pregnancies altogether.
Pregnancies where the women ends up with another fatherless child.
Don't care about skin color. Skin color plays no role.
No coercion. 100% transparency. Make it an offer.
"She was a racist and a eugenicist."
Meaningless smear words. I just posted extracts that show she was NOT bigoted against blacks. And in any case, I could probably label every person born before 1940 as a "Racist" using today's standards.
As for "Eugenicist", I have no idea what that means exactly. Since Sanger didn't propose to kill off inferior people or forcibly sterilize them, what does it matter? Funny, how people use Hitler to shut off any reasoned discussion. Hitler liked oatmeal too. Why are we still eating it? Its Nazi food!
Sanger mostly pushed birth control. Which we all agree with today. Abotion has been legal for 50 years. I don't like it, but even the Catholic church doesn't seem to care much anymore. If they did, they'd punish all the Catholic Pols who not only support legalized abortion, they PUSH IT.
I'm tired of so called "Conservatives" doing this shtick where every support for a conservative position has to be coupled with an attack on the Right.
Have just finished reading One Damn Thing After Another by William Barr, which was surprisingly good. He has a chapter entitled Securing Religious Liberty which has a brief discussion of public schools and their place in the US. He points out that in the 19th Century, the country was mostly a Protestant country, and the public schools had a fair amount of religious aspects, which broadly reflected the culture and mores of the US. Catholics and the Amish and otheres had their own schools systems, which reflected the mores of those particular communities.So the schools then were part of, and in sync with, the communities that they served. That no longer seems to be case. Barr's solution is to provide for vouchers and to allow parents to send their children to religiously affiliated schools. He notes that England has 7000 state-funded religiously affiliated schools.
"Disheartening to hear but a bill has been introduced in the California legislature permitting, without criminal penalty, the killing of babies for x number of days after birth."
Not so. Please check your facts before accepting--and promulgating--such misinformation.
"Sanger did not tolerate bigotry among her staff, nor would she tolerate any refusal to work within interracial projects."
I'm sure some of her best friend were black. That doesn't explain away her belief in eugenics. While she was smart enough not to talk about it in terms of racial hygiene, the idea was to limit the breeding of "inferiors" (not just blacks, but any nonwhite or latin ethnics) to improve society. The Nazis just brought the idea to its logical and horrifying conclusion.
mostly a Protestant country, and the public schools had a fair amount of religious aspects, which broadly reflected the culture and mores of the US. Catholics and the Amish and otheres had their own schools systems,
15 years ago I noticed the proliferation of Christian Schools. Not Catholic, Christian. Why I wondered? Slowly as I stepped backward in time, it was clear. Public Schools USED TO BE Protestant. As Barr accurately explains, the schools mirrored the culture of the community. Leftist got embedded, and sanitized public schools of their soul. It took a while, but Protestants gave up on public schools and went the Catholic path.
The highly educated people running public education can't see the history as it unfolds around them. Public Schools are not long for this nation. Educators are killing them.
Sanger mostly pushed birth control.
Yes, that's right. But her motives were to keep other people from reproducing. Roe v. Wade was a government plan to limit population growth.
The feminist horseshit came later, when people started calling Blackmun a baby-killer. That's when the abortion doctor prescribing abortion to the poor morphed into an emancipated woman choosing abortion for herself. The only thing that changed for Blackmun was the rhetoric. The motive was the same, it was just feminist bullshit to trick them into doing it.
See also hide the bodies.
Abortion has been legal for 50 years. I don't like it...
Nobody likes it, that's why so much repression is going on.
even the Catholic church doesn't seem to care much anymore. If they did, they'd punish all the Catholic Pols who not only support legalized abortion, they PUSH IT.
You don't understand Christianity. The Pope is quite clear: Abortion is murder.
Of course there are people in his church who are lost sheep, and hypocrites. That's true in any church. And he won't deny communion to any sinner. That's the way it should be. We're all sinners.
You can accuse the Pope of cheap grace, but you can't say he's pro-choice or that he's a "liberal" on the issue. He's clear as a speaker can be: abortion is the killing of a baby.
"As for "Eugenicist", I have no idea what that means exactly."
Eugenics is "the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable." A eugenicist is someone who believes in that. The arrangement can be done passively, by providing unfavored groups with access to birth control and in general discouraging the group from breeding. It can also be done more actively with mandatory sterilization and death camps.
Either way, the assumption is that there are people you don't want more of and there are people you do. If you look at Sanger's writings (as Jonah Goldberg did) you will see she was one of those. I hope that helps.
Re BothSidesNow statement that England has 7000 state-funded religiously affiliated schools. I have two grandchildren who were born and live in London. Their mother, my daughter, was pretty much anti-religion from the age of 9 or so. Imagine my surprise when I was walking with her one day when she said, "Dad we're going to church on Sunday." It seemed that the best elementary school in their neighborhood in Southwest London was affiliated with/run by the Church of England. Admission was competitive and being active in the parish church was a leg up on getting her two kids into the school. And so we all went to church.
It was not my good old time Methodist/Southern Baptist (I'm bi-religious on my parent and grandparent sides). I can stand only so much gentle guitar strumming. It's the modern "relevant" Church of England. But you got to do what you got to do. And since I only go to London once or twice a year to visit the grandkids, I can stand it.
This issue is not political. It's spiritual.
I see many want to take an academic approach. Perhaps out of habit, perhaps lack of strength to confront the true source of the conflict they know deep down exists...and it nags at them.
"Please check your facts before accepting--and promulgating--such misinformation."
From the article it's more of a matter of interpretation. The law can (and may when passed) be interpreted to cover infanticide within the first 7 days. In any case, I don't see issue the bill is supposed to address. Is there really a rash of prosecutions for miscarriages in California?
“He [Barr] notes that England has 7000 state-funded religiously affiliated schools.”
I wonder just how many madrassas are included in that 7,000…
"Barr's solution is to provide for vouchers and to allow parents to send their children to religiously affiliated schools."
I think that support of taxation for education involves more than just educating the kids. Public schools provide a sense of community, in big ways like with sports and also in smaller ways like just having a daily gathering at the bus stop. Also, I think when people pay school taxes there's a thought that they're keeping up the buildings and the grounds - things of lasting value that provide some public use. Anyway, I think that in detaching the kids from a school we also tend to detach the taxpayers from the school district. Thus, people might find that going to a voucher system might end with vouchers of very little value.
Either way, the assumption is that there are people you don't want more of and there are people you do. If you look at Sanger's writings (as Jonah Goldberg did) you will see she was one of those. I hope that help
Yeah that's right. So Hitler was a Eugenicist and so is Aunt Maude who thinks smart people should have more kids.
Like I said, I don't know EXACTLY what someone means when they accuse someone of being a Eugenicist. Are they Hitler or Aunt maude? Its too broad to CLEARLY mean anything. Its a label like antisemitism, it can cover so much ground it can mean almost anything. Kill 6 million jews? "antisemite", don't like Israel enough? "Antisemite".
People who use these sort of labels need to either admit its a smear, or define SPECIFICALLY what they're accusing someone of. As for Mr. Jonah Goldberg - he's not exactly Mr. Scholarship so if he calls Sanger a racist/eugenicist - its not even worth pinning it down. I doubt he even understands what he's trying to say.
The left moves left and the present hard left has moved away from promoting the current goals of organized eugenics as expressed in its national society The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology. This group, which founded Planned Parenthood through its long-time member Margaret Sanger nd her eugenicist allies, now opposes population control because it clearly sees that the birthrate in European cultures has fallen below replacement levels. It is now promoting selection through "polygenic risk scores." These are combined scores based on the presence or absence of gene variants. These variants in combinations are alleged to be related to desirable or undesirable character traits. An example of this thinking was published in the society Journal, Biodemography and Social Biology, on April 21, 2021 "Achieved educational attainment, inherited genetic endowment for education, and obesity," Sample conclusion: " among individuals who hold a college degree, those with a high education polygenic score (a greater genetic propensity to succeed in education) are less likely to be obese than those with a relatively low education polygenic score." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19485565.2020.1869919
So "success in education" is a genetic endowment. This is the old IQ argument swathed and bulked up like a sumo fighter in protective new concepts. These concepts, not coincidentally, mesh well with Chinese social credit concepts and Chinese social strengths.
OTOH the eugenic society isn't behind the new ideas on gender because it's trying hard to raise the birthrate among those of European descent by promoting family values while the left is still doing population control (among the blacks) and is still anti-family, only more so. Eugenicists worked with the left for a long time but now the group is unfurling a banner of the right - just like Putin and just as sincerely.
"Yeah that's right. So Hitler was a Eugenicist and so is Aunt Maude who thinks smart people should have more kids."
Actually she thought WASP's like her should have more kids and Blacks, Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, and pretty much everyone else should have less. If you are really interested in what she believed (and aren't just feigning ignorance to win an argument) you can Google her written works yourself. I recommend "My Plan for Peace" from 1932.
That extract seems like gibberish.
That's high literary praise coming from Readering.
Not so. Please check your facts before accepting--and promulgating--such misinformation.
Cook has his own definition of "misinformation." Kind of like MS Pisshockey.
It's not an assumption that "there are people you want more of and people you don't," it's a widespread sentiment.
If a population group thinks so little of itself that it either 1) refuses to breed or 2) aborts a big percentage of its potential posterity, or 3) some combination of the two, so be it. Why should I object, if I value my own posterity more?
You people are living proof of the failure to get eugenics going in the US.
Rcocean- I don’t know where you get that silly idea we all agree with birth control. Do you actually know any good Catholics? As the father of five, I’m married to one- who doesn’t agree with birth control. Neither does my Catholic convert daughter-in-law, nor my son she’s married to. Or AFAIK, all of my wife’s relatives. Or some of the other people I know with five or more children.
TBH, I’m not aware of the Mennonite or Amish position on using birth control. My Mennonite neighbors are up to an even dozen. It’s a subject we’ve never discussed with them. But from observable evidence, they apparently don’t even practice the rhythm method.
'Since Sanger didn't propose to kill off inferior people or forcibly sterilize them, what does it matter?'
Kind of think she was OK with forced sterilization...
'“When we realize that each feeble-minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble minded”'
--Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (NY: Brentano’s, 1922), pp. 101-102
You can find this information pretty easily...
Actually she thought WASP's like her should have more kids and Blacks, Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, and pretty much everyone else should have less.
There's absolutely nothing in anything I've read from Sanger which indicates this. (I love how you toss the Orish in there- because of course the Orish are always being oppressed by Proddystants).
Sanger thought it would be best to give incentives for “feeble-minded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal,…illiterates, paupers, unemployables, [and] criminals" to have less children.
If you read her autobiography, you'll see her strongest allies in her fight for birth control were the jewish community. So, its rather odd that Mammet and Goldberg hate her so much.
Honestly I don't even have words to describe these people.
Same old create utopia... no matter what it takes.
I don't know why there is controversy about Sanger and eugenics. Eugenics was quite respectable back in the day. The Nordic countries practiced it, the Fabians thought it valid, Alva Myrdal (Gunnar Myrdahl's wife and Nobelist) was a well known Swedish proponent, and Marx invented the term lumpenproletariat. Those folks also tended to be Malthusians, population bomb anyone? The idea isn't particularly right wing, nor is it dead by any means - note Aunt Maude above - but it is no longer taught, and no longer considered the scientific way to deal with poverty. But its progeny live on, unaware of their ancestry :)
"I don't know why there is controversy about Sanger and eugenics. Eugenics was quite respectable back in the day."
It was respectable until the Nazis showed where the logic of it leads. The difference between Sanger and her people and Hitler and his is that he had the power to go all the way.
"
If you read her autobiography, you'll see her strongest allies in her fight for birth control were the jewish community."
You do know what an autobiography is right?
Sanger, like Howard, was a miserable human being.
Unlike Howard, she seemed pretty bright.
I was one of 6. I love big families. But statistics don't lie. Catholic laity believes in birth control.
Planned parent/hood is a wicked solution to a purportedly hard problem (e.g. "burden"). A progressive path and grade from the State's Choice to keep women appointed, available, and taxable, to his Choice, to her Choice for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes. The Pro-Choice "ethical" religion, not limited to reproductive rites, denies women and men's dignity and agency, and reduces human life to a negotiable commodity. One step forward, two steps backward.
The Pro-Choice "ethical" religion is a State-established behavioral protocol, unconstitutional, if not for court rulings based on emanations from penumbras (i.e. Twilight fringe [faith]) the deny (e.g. diversity [dogma]) "the People" and "our Posterity" (i.e. babies, fetal technical terms of art for social distance).
Planned parent/hood or selective-child, selective-parent (e.g. Michigan, New York), is essentially one-child delegated, by virtue of religious: moral, ethical, legal sanction in Progressive Churches, Synagogues, Corporations, etc. for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
Transgender conversion therapy through surgical, medical, or psychiatric corruption, experimental and cargo cult mandates, are extensions from Mengele et al experiments for scientific progress and inclusion.
Abortion is murder. You can dress it up in any pretty little package you want, but the bottom line, is that a mother decided to kill her baby. PERIOD.
Abortion is murder. When a baby dies in the womb, however, it is not murder to remove it so the mother can not risk her health.
That said, Sanger was absolutely no different from most of the ruling classes of America at that time. And in the cities and heartland, there were horrific problems with husbands abandoning wives for drink, wives with ten, twelve, and more babies.
This was anything but uncommon. I say this not to justify Sanger, but to contextualize her. And also the abolitionist movement, which many libdoltarians cling to as the mother's mike of their idea of freedom.
Sorry. Life is complicated and hard.
Disagreeing with Howard is OK, but you folks fired the first shots. His response seems appropriate.
"I was one of 6. I love big families. But statistics don't lie. Catholic laity believes in birth control."
No question. I know otherwise devout Catholics who do not follow the church's teachings on that issue.
School vouchers will end with leftist infiltration of all schools, not just public schools. Vouchers are not a solution.
It does surprise me that in an era of revisiting a historical figure and striking him or her from the record because of unprogressive thoughts, Sanger survives. Then again, many progressives, including H. G. Wells, believed in eugenics 100 years ago, and one of the assumptions of that belief was society would be improved by removing "inferiors." For now, they seem to be getting off without punishment.
I wonder when Darwin will be thought to be a bad man because he believed in the influence of genetic strains on how species developed. Not exactly a "social construct" thinker.
"I wonder when Darwin will be thought to be a bad man . . . "
New to Althouse?
When a baby dies in the womb
If she dies of natural causes, then it was Her Choice. If she dies through chemical castration or at the edge of a scalpel, then it was her Choice. The latter is tolerable in a civilized society as an act of self-defense through reconciliation. There is no mystery in sex and conception. A man and woman are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. We should be wary of normalizing elective abortion for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes (i.e. wicked solution). That said, the first step could be to define parallel viability at the beginning and end of life. The goal is to recognize women and men's dignity and agency, lose our ethical religion, and mitigate the progress of human commoditization.
"Disagreeing with Howard is OK, but you folks fired the first shots. His response seems appropriate."
His response is typical Howard. It's an infantile insult aimed at people he imagines he is superior to. It's all he ever does and is capable of. That's why many of us just tune him out.
"This was anything but uncommon. I say this not to justify Sanger, but to contextualize her."
Contextualizing in this case doesn't quite help her case. Sanger was celebrated by the left for being the pioneer and the brave rebel fighting the patriarchy of her day. Now it turns out she was just pushing their racism in the guise of sexual freedom. That's one of the reasons members of Planned Parenthood itself are looking at cancelling her.
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