By Shannon
“Stupidity isn’t a crime.”
“There’s no law against being stupid.”
“You can’t put him in jail just for being stupid.”
These are half-jokes that criminal attorneys use to remind each other of a truth. Many of us wish we could outlaw stupidity.
I recently made a joke in a public forum on the internet that I am ashamed of having made. The forum was about domestic abuse. People were debating whether or not it was the victim’s fault. One man infuriated me when he explained that “she got what she deserved” for going near the abuser when he was mad. I responded that the author of that statement was “a perfect example of the argument in favor of genetic engineering.” I’m ashamed of my joke tonight. I’m even more ashamed that it was only a half-joke.
Pic from www.hgalert.org
Genetic engineering is the current politically-correct phrase for an idea that has been around since at least the early 1900s. Eugenics. Tonight I heard a few quotes by supporters of eugenics that turned my stomach. As I condemned the speakers, I realized I needed to take a long hard look at my view of “stupid” people and my half-jokes.
“We civilized men…do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of society propagate their kind.”
~Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871
“If you’re not pulling your weight in the social boat, if you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.”
~George Bernard Shaw, playwright, March 1910
Pic from www.jonesreport.com
“The multiplication of the feeble-minded is a very terrible danger to the race.”
~Winston Churchill, British Statesman,1910
Pic from www.noblelie.com
“Any group of farmers, who permitted their best stock not to breed, and let all the increase come from the worst stock, would be treated as fit inmates for an asylum. Yet we fail to understand that such conduct is rational compared to the conduct of a nation which permits unlimited breeding from the worst stocks.”
~Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. President, 1/3/1913
“The most urgent problem… how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”
~Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood, “Birth Control Review” Oct 1921
Pic from www.theoccidentalobserver.net
“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for a crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind….”
~U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Buck v. Bell, 1924
“We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the negro population.”
~Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood in a letter to Clarence Gamble, 12/10/1939
Pic from www.boingboing.net
The theory of eugenics, which is the selective breeding of humans, began following Charles Darwin’s publication of The Origin of the Species and was supported by many prominent world citizens including Adolf Hitler. At a meeting of the Eugenics Education Society in March 1910, beloved playwright George Bernard Shaw was the first to suggest gas chambers as a means of exterminating society’s undesirables. Thanks to Nazi death camps that appeared less than 30 years later, the term “eugenics” became politically incorrect after WWII.
Result of eugenics in Auschwitz.
Pic from www.phillips.blogs.com
Today we call the idea “genetic engineering.”
Whether one wants to use eugenics or genetic engineering to “protect the race” as evidenced by the words of those quoted above (as well as Adolf Hitler’s actions) or whether you are merely a criminal attorney who half-jokes that the world would be better with fewer stupid people, the idea is morally abhorrent. Who is George Bernard Shaw and who are we to decide if a life is justified?
It takes all kinds to make the fabric of life rich and multi-textured. By a eugenicist’s logic, an autistic child or one that is mentally handicapped or physically deformed is one that should be sterilized and even "compassionately" killed. However, anyone who’s been around an autistic or otherwise handicapped child can clearly see that they generally offer more kindness and goodness than most of the highest functioning among us.
I must echo Ann’s conclusion from Friday… in determining others to be “less than” or undesirable or unfit for life, we ourselves become “less than” human.
Pic from www.noiri.blogspot.com
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