Saturday, September 8, 2012

Latest Updated Index of the Darwin-Eugenics-Haeckel Series

I have been asked to put the temporary index of my Darwin-Eugenics-Haeckel series at the top of the page again.   I will, since I have decided to include the post about what eugenics meant to its victims in North America with them.  I will probably add more posts on that legacy of Darwinism along with other posts on related to Darwin's eugenics and will repost it then.  I may put a link to it in the sidebar

Notice of Intent
A Note about Documentary Evidence and Primary Sources.
A Note About The Word "Darwinism"
How Much Do You Have To Quote Before You're Not "Quote Mining”  With a note about Darwin "quote mining".
Charles Darwin and Eugenics: The Standard of Evidence Required to Make the Case 

What Would It Take for Charles Darwin To Beat the Eugenics Charge
1. Galton  (case closed )
2. Leonard Darwin Schallmeyer with a note about George Darwin (note: This post should be considered an outline due to the lack of Schallmeyer available in English translation. )  Revised on Sept. 2. 2012.
3. How Much Did Darwin Really Believe In Natural Selection:  W. R. Greg, sometimes called the co-inventor of eugenics.  Darwin's anti-Irish bigotry overcomes Natural Selection.
4   Another Note About George Darwins 1870s Eugenics Activity   Francis Darwin calls it "eugenics"
5.  Darwin's Response to Gaskel Was Not a Rejection of Negative Eugenics
6.  Darwin and The Survival of the Fittest  Darwin and Spencer and Wallace
7.  Darwinism Against Economic Democracy: William Cobbett on Malthus

Leilani Muir:  Making Eugenics As Real As A Young Girl's Life And Body

Darwin and Haeckel 1  Darwin endorses Haeckel 
Darwin and Haeckel 2  Darwin Publicly Confirms His Endorsement of Haeckel as Science (will be lengthened)
Darwin and Haeckel 3  Darwin Doesn't Protest Attribution of Monism To Him
Darwin and Haeckel 4  Haeckel and Darwin   Infanticide.
Darwin and Haeckel 5  Could Haeckel's Depravity Have Been Prevented If Darwin Had Objected ? with a long footnote on the future course of Darwinism in Germany and Leonard Darwin as the only one with standing to speak for his father in 1939.

EVOLUTION, evolution Ideology and the Continuation of Life
1.  Part one  The Enormous Scope of Evolution, Its Complexity,  Science has only scratched the surface
2   Interlude Scherzando and Early Selections   Biological Determinism, its Depravity and Hypocrisy
3   The People   Biological Determinism Negates Democracy with a long footnote about the “aid which must be given” paragraph
Dissing an Idol and Feeling Better For It
It's a Dirty Political Brawl Adapt or Die

The Popular Misunderstanding of the Huxley - Wilberforce Debate

A Closing Comment   Darwin Provided Himself Cover, His Position in Science Culture as Opposed to Today's Science

Update:   I will probably keep working on these posts which were written very quickly, especially the second of the Darwin and Haeckel posts.   I had intended to write a 2a because there is just so much material showing that Darwin and Haeckel were saying many of the same disturbing things as they were in contact and I will expand that theme in the future.   I am intending to put these in a more permanent order on a new blog, probably finishing some of the posts that are still in draft.

Since the purpose of these was to show what Charles Darwin could be fairly charged with as he was alive and writing I haven't gone nearly as far into what people who Darwin never heard of said about his inspiration of them.  There is much more that could be said about that.   It is a major intellectual scandal that so many people who present themselves as scholars blatantly lie about this.  I think some of that is clearly ideological,  Darwin is the mascot of scientism,  materialism and atheism.  A lot of it is done in ignorance of the record.  Some of it is done out of cowardice, knowing that writing about Darwin's relationship to eugenics in the English speaking world and Germany will make you a pariah and attract attacks and distortions of what you said.   I hope to show how the eugenics and Social Darwinism that were present at the start and which have been one of the major catastrophes in the history of science have survived and are promoted by prominent and some infamous scientists.  I will do so in their own words, trying to hold to the same use of primary source material, where that is available.  But that is for the future.

Why?  Several reasons.  First and foremost because the record supports the idea, that record is there and, as I said, its existence is the only justification anyone needs for exposing it.  Second, it is important politically and in terms of human life and society.  Eugenics led to more than one attempt to destroy groups of people and to deprive people of their most fundamental rights.  Third, there is great interest and controversy about these facts.


Friday, September 7, 2012

The Humble Farmer On Public Broadcasting

While listening to how NPR covered the Democratic convention and remembering how it covered the Republican convention, I remembered my favorite radio man once said this:

And the only thing that you'll see on public radio or public television now that would indicate that they are leaning to the left...  that's just a facade for what's really going behind, on behind, for the fascists running it from behind.  The guys who're pulling the strings.  They're still fooling the liberals.  Some liberals think,  “Oh, we must support public radio.  It's the only place we can...”  They don't realize it's gone. It's gone.  They don't need, public radio doesn't need money, that little thirty-five dollars from you anymore.  Corporate guys can write checks, five thousand, ten thousand a hundred thousand ...

Robert Skoglund,  The Humble Farmer. 

Do go to the link at his name and hear his wonderful podcasts and read his "Whines and Snivels". And please contribute. The humble man who gave Maine Public Radio the best show in its history for free over three decades could use the support.  And watch the YouTube at the first link that will give you the history of how they got rid of him and why they did it.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance In Full, Not Excerpted and Distorted

James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance is frequently clipped down to one section to assert he was some kind of deist and enemy of "theism".  That section in the seventh paragraph beginning "Because" is hardly ever, if ever,  given in full.  I've underlined that section which is probably the only part of it well over 98% of people who have read any of it, have read.

Because experience witnesseth that eccelsiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy. Propose a restoration of this primitive State in which its Teachers depended on the voluntary rewards of their flocks, many of them predict its downfall. On which Side ought their testimony to have greatest weight, when for or when against their interest?

As anyone who reads the entire paragraph can see, Madison's list of vices in religion are attributed, by him to "ecclesiastical establishments", in an argument that he makes against established, tax supported religion.  He argues for "maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion" and "a restoration of this primitive State in which its Teachers depended on the voluntary rewards of their flocks".   I interpret that as a call for the return of primitive Christianity during the period before it was corrupted by being adopted as the official religion of the later Roman Empire.  Since he mentions Quakers favorably and that was one of the stated intentions of Quakers, to restore primitive Christianity, that is certainly what Madison was advocating.   Throughout the document Madison advocates Christianity in terms that are far more than merely political, even, in the 12th "because" paragraph, saying that disestablishment is necessary for its propagation.

And that is just one of the  favorite examples of  "quote mining"  among those who are always saying  the phrase"quote mining".  I will post more of the examples of misrepresentation of The Founders* in the future.


To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia

A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments

We the subscribers , citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly, entitled "A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion," and conceiving that the same if finally armed with the sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound as faithful members of a free State to remonstrate against it, and to declare the reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate against the said Bill,

1. Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence." The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considerd as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.

2. Because Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former. Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited: it is limited with regard to the co-ordinate departments, more necessarily is it limited with regard to the constituents. The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.

3. Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entagled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?

4. Because the Bill violates the equality which ought to be the basis of every law, and which is more indispensible, in proportion as the validity or expediency of any law is more liable to be impeached. If "all men are by nature equally free and independent," all men are to be considered as entering into Society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less, one than another, of their natural rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an "equal title to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates of Conscience." Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered. As the Bill violates equality by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the same principle, by granting to others peculiar exemptions. Are the quakers and Menonists the only sects who think a compulsive support of their Religions unnecessary and unwarrantable? can their piety alone be entrusted with the care of public worship? Ought their Religions to be endowed above all others with extraordinary privileges by which proselytes may be enticed from all others? We think too favorably of the justice and good sense of these demoninations to believe that they either covet pre-eminences over their fellow citizens or that they will be seduced by them from the common opposition to the measure.

5. Because the Bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world: the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.

6. Because the establishment proposed by the Bill is not requisite for the support of the Christian Religion. To say that it is, is a contradiction to the Christian Religion itself, for every page of it disavows a dependence on the powers of this world: it is a contradiction to fact; for it is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them, and not only during the period of miraculous aid, but long after it had been left to its own evidence and the ordinary care of Providence. Nay, it is a contradiction in terms; for a Religion not invented by human policy, must have pre-existed and been supported, before it was established by human policy. It is moreover to weaken in those who profess this Religion a pious confidence in its innate excellence and the patronage of its Author; and to foster in those who still reject it, a suspicion that its friends are too conscious of its fallacies to trust it to its own merits.

7. Because experience witnesseth that eccelsiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy. Propose a restoration of this primitive State in which its Teachers depended on the voluntary rewards of their flocks, many of them predict its downfall. On which Side ought their testimony to have greatest weight, when for or when against their interest?

8. Because the establishment in question is not necessary for the support of Civil Government. If it be urged as necessary for the support of Civil Government only as it is a means of supporting Religion, and it be not necessary for the latter purpose, it cannot be necessary for the former. If Religion be not within the cognizance of Civil Government how can its legal establishment be necessary to Civil Government? What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not. Such a Government will be best supported by protecting every Citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another.

9. Because the proposed establishment is a departure from the generous policy, which, offering an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion, promised a lustre to our country, and an accession to the number of its citizens. What a melancholy mark is the Bill of sudden degeneracy? Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a signal of persecution. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance. The maganimous sufferer under this cruel scourge in foreign Regions, must view the Bill as a Beacon on our Coast, warning him to seek some other haven, where liberty and philanthrophy in their due extent, may offer a more certain respose from his Troubles.

10.  Because it will have a like tendency to banish our Citizens. The allurements presented by other situations are every day thinning their number. To superadd a fresh motive to emigration by revoking the liberty which they now enjoy, would be the same species of folly which has dishonoured and depopulated flourishing kingdoms

11.  Because it will destroy that moderation and harmony which the forbearance of our laws to intermeddle with Religion has produced among its several sects. Torrents of blood have been split in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious disscord, by proscribing all difference in Religious opinion. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy, wherever it has been tried, has been found to assauge the disease. The American Theatre has exhibited proofs that equal and compleat liberty, if it does not wholly eradicate it, sufficiently destroys its malignant influence on the health and prosperity of the State. If with the salutary effects of this system under our own eyes, we begin to contract the bounds of Religious freedom, we know no name that will too severely reproach our folly. At least let warning be taken at the first fruits of the threatened innovation. The very appearance of the Bill has transformed "that Christian forbearance, love and chairty," which of late mutually prevailed, into animosities and jeolousies, which may not soon be appeased. What mischiefs may not be dreaded, should this enemy to the public quiet be armed with the force of a law?

12.  Because the policy of the Bill is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity. The first wish of those who enjoy this precious gift ought to be that it may be imparted to the whole race of mankind. Compare the number of those who have as yet received it with the number still remaining under the dominion of false Religions; and how small is the former! Does the policy of the Bill tend to lessen the disproportion? No; it at once discourages those who are strangers to the light of revelation from coming into the Region of it; and countenances by example the nations who continue in darkness, in shutting out those who might convey it to them. Instead of Levelling as far as possible, every obstacle to the victorious progress of Truth, the Bill with an ignoble and unchristian timidity would circumscribe it with a wall of defence against the encroachments of error.

13.  Because attempts to enforce by legal sanctions, acts obnoxious to go great a proportion of Citizens, tend to enervate the laws in general, and to slacken the bands of Society. If it be difficult to execute any law which is not generally deemed necessary or salutary, what must be the case, where it is deemed invalid and dangerous? And what may be the effect of so striking an example of impotency in the Government, on its general authority?

14.  Because a measure of such singular magnitude and delicacy ought not to be imposed, without the clearest evidence that it is called for by a majority of citizens, and no satisfactory method is yet proposed by which the voice of the majority in this case may be determined, or its influence secured. The people of the respective counties are indeed requested to signify their opinion respecting the adoption of the Bill to the next Session of Assembly." But the representatives or of the Counties will be that of the people. Our hope is that neither of the former will, after due consideration, espouse the dangerous principle of the Bill. Should the event disappoint us, it will still leave us in full confidence, that a fair appeal to the latter will reverse the sentence against our liberties.

15.  Because finally, "the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his Religion according to the dictates of conscience" is held by the same tenure with all our other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consult the "Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Vriginia, as the basis and foundation of Government," it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis. Either the, we must say, that the Will of the Legislature is the only measure of their authority; and that in the plenitude of this authority, they may sweep away all our fundamental rights; or, that they are bound to leave this particular right untouched and sacred: Either we must say, that they may controul the freedom of the press, may abolish the Trial by Jury, may swallow up the Executive and Judiciary Powers of the State; nay that they may despoil us of our very right of suffrage, and erect themselves into an independent and hereditary Assembly or, we must say, that they have no authority to enact into the law the Bill under consideration.

We the Subscribers say, that the General Assembly of this Commonwealth have no such authority: And that no effort may be omitted on our part against so dangerous an usurpation, we oppose to it, this remonstrance; earnestly praying, as we are in duty bound, that the Supreme Lawgiver of the Universe, by illuminating those to whom it is addressed, may on the one hand, turn their Councils from every act which would affront his holy prerogative, or violate the trust committed to them: and on the other, guide them into every measure which may be worthy of his [blessing, may re]dound to their own praise, and may establish more firmly the liberties, the prosperity and the happiness of the Commonwealth.

-------
I would call your attention to the twelfth "Because" paragraph that reads:

Because the policy of the Bill is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity. The first wish of those who enjoy this precious gift ought to be that it may be imparted to the whole race of mankind. Compare the number of those who have as yet received it with the number still remaining under the dominion of false Religions; and how small is the former! Does the policy of the Bill tend to lessen the disproportion? No; it at once discourages those who are strangers to the light of revelation from coming into the Region of it; and countenances by example the nations who continue in darkness, in shutting out those who might convey it to them. Instead of Levelling as far as possible, every obstacle to the victorious progress of Truth, the Bill with an ignoble and unchristian timidity would circumscribe it with a wall of defence against the encroachments of error.

Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments wasn't a document of religious skepticism, it was a declaration of religious freedom through an assertion that the civil government had to have a policy of strict non-interference and non-preference for one sect or another.  It asserted that when religion accepts state funds, it is susceptible to political corruption and vice.   Madison's document was certainly not an anti-Christian document as it's so often presented to be in the post-war period.  It warned about the history of religious establishment in Europe over the previous three centuries.   It warned, repeatedly, that disestablishment of religion by the civil state was essential for the integrity of religion and the peace of a pluralistic socieity.

* NOTE:  I don't understand why anyone in 2012 cares what Madison or Jefferson, etc. thought about religion OR THE CONSTITUTION except in so far as what they said makes sense in today's world.   I wouldn't look to "the founders" lives as good models of moral conduct.   Collectively, the "founders" owned slaves, stole land and other things, favored dispossession of the native population so they could steal their land - "ethnically cleansing" land outside of the existing 13 colonies and within them, to do that.  "Ethnic cleansing" is a modern euphemism for "murdering" when they wouldn't go without a fight.    All of them deprived women of their rights.   The best of them are covered with warts.  And more than two centuries after them, we don't need to be slaves to their beliefs and intentions.   I'm against making heroes of them by cleaning them up into plaster saints when none of them were.   Their Constitution, that we're still saddled with against all reason,  proves that the cult of "the founders" is a dishonest and misguided act of romantic hagiography.  Its modern aspect arose in opposition to the civil rights movement and the struggle for black Americans and members of other minority groups to be covered by the Bill of Rights and other amendments that are the only things that make the original Constitution tolerable.

But I point this out because the deceptive quotation of the document and the assertions of what it "proves" about "the father of the Constitution's",  Madison's,  "deism", claiming the Constitution  for anti-"theism",  annoys me.  That characterization of Madison and the Constitution is an ideological superstition.   I may post other documents from other "founders" frequently claimed, often against their own words, for "deism" and atheism.  While the Christian fundamentalists have the case quite wrong, so does today's religion bashing movement.

PZ's Great Desecration A Fake?

PZ Myers, whose major intellectual contribution, "The Courtier's Reply", I wrote about the other day, is more famous for a publicity stunt he mounted called "The Great Descecration".    In his act he stuck a nail through a consecrated communion host, a page ripped out of The Quran, and more pages from The God Delusion, covered all with coffee grounds and banana peels, took a picture of it and put it on his blog with a puerile description of what he did and why he did it.  And, remember, Myers did so on his "Science" blog*.

I'm not going to go into the Webster Cook incident or Bill Donohue's own PR campaign riffing off of that,  PZ's  motivation for doing what he did.  This post isn't about his act of desecration, which I pretty much ignored when he first did it to squeals of glee in the halls of blog atheistdom and outrage from other people.   I thought it was an act of juvenile attention getting, all round and  suspected it would turn out to not end the world as we know it.  But in the blog brawl over its authenticity I  was involved in several years back, I found out that atheists are not only supposed to be  immune from knowing what they're talking about,  their improbable sounding claims are NOT to be treated with skepticism.  The uber-"Skeptics" are not to be treated skeptically.  Something I found not to be in keeping with the requirements of science.

When one of his fans gave extremely improbable details of his most famous act, as told,  I asked what if PZ Myers faked it?   Accusations of fakery are the bread and butter of pop-atheism and its conjoined twin, organized "skepticism".   I figured it was entirely fair to hold them to their own standards.

It began on Chris Mooney's blog, The Intersection.   In a long discussion about PZ Myers, and his "Desecration"  I first critisized his using pages of a Quran at comment 15.   In the context of the times and previous events it was extremely irresponsible, especially when Myers said he was responding to threats of violence as the reason for his claim to have desecrated a consecrated host.

I haven’t heard any reaction to the Quran desecration, though I’d imagine any might be gratifying to someone who publicly did that during a period when the reaction to that kind of act, getting large numbers of people injured and even killed. Anyone who assumes Myers knew what had happened in the aftermath of the cartoons published in the Danish newspaper, could hardly be faulted for assuming PZ would be prepared for some kind of reaction to his publicity stunt. I haven’t checked his archive to see if he’d commented on the demonstrations and riots that had left people dead in the aftermath of the cartoons. Did he comment on that?

Looking at PZ's archive, I found that he had addressed and expressed understanding at how the desecration of the image of Muhammad had sparked the violence that had gotten people killed and maimed.  At comment 18 I quoted PZ.:

There are some things a cartoonist would be rightly excoriated for publishing: imagine that one had drawn an African-American figure as thick-lipped, low-browed, smirking clown with a watermelon in one hand and a fried chicken drumstick in the other. Feeding bigotry and flaunting racist stereotypes would be something that would drive me to protest any newspaper that endorsed it—of course, my protests would involve writing letters and canceling subscriptions, not rioting and burning down buildings. There is a genuine social concern here, I think. Muslims represent a poor and oppressed underclass, and those cartoons represent a ruling establishment intentionally taunting them and basically flipping them off. They have cause to be furious!

So, Myers, himself had noted the potential of desecration of religious objects to incite violence among Muslims before he used pages of the Quran in his publicity stunt.   I will note that I'm not sure the English translation of the Quran that Myers used actually qualifies as desecration of the holy book, I'm no Islamic scholar, which was mentioned.   But it's more than possible that just the rumor of such a desecration, as Myer's alleged he performed, could be enough to get people killed.  That would be proved when the Florida "pastor" announced his intention to burn a copy of it.  I have not checked to see if PZ commented on that incident but I may and will report what I might find.  Atheists on the blogs I frequented condemned the Florida pastor for threatening to do what, perhaps, their hero PZ Myers had already done to widespread atheist approval.   Consistency in such matters is not to be found among the atheists of the blogs.  It's entirely a question of who they hate more on what occasion.  Mocking Muslims is only somewhat less popular among blog atheists than anti-Christian and, especially, anti-Catholic hate talk.

But things really didn't get going until I found out a detail I'd missed in my general indifference to PZ's great stunt.  In a discussion of whether or not PZ had gotten the consecrated host from someone who stole it, someone pointed out that part of the tale is that it was sent to PZ by an apostate Catholic who had brought a consecrated host home and kept it until he became an atheist, when, for some reason, he'd sent it to Myers in time to be used in his star turn.  I found that particular assertion fishy.

Wowbagger at comment 319:

He made it quite clear the crackers he received were sent to him by now ex-Catholics who’d taken them when they were still members of the church. None of them were ’stolen’ by anyone.

I said this:


321.   Anthony McCarthy Says: 
July 15th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
He made it quite clear the crackers he received were sent to him by now ex-Catholics who’d taken them when they were still members of the church.

Is that what PZ claimed? I find it very hard to believe that. I’ll bet it was never consecrated, I’ll bet it was a fake.

PZ's fans quickly took offense at my skepticism and  in the discussion that followed, what they said made me even more skeptical than I'd been about the authenticity of his publicity stunt.  The scenario as laid out by them was seeming ever more far fetched.  For reasons known to him alone, PZ, himself jumped into the long discussion for the first time soon after that.


329.   Anthony McCarthy Says: 
July 15th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Oh, I forgot this.
—- Catholics on the threads admit taking the cracker home rather than eating it; why is it such a stretch that they may have kept it? Wowbagger
I came from a very Catholic family and know a very large number of Catholics. I have never once heard of one of them doing that, not even the ones who left the church and wouldn’t have any reason to not talk about it. I’ll have to ask someone who’s still active in the Church what they’re saying about it these days, but back when I was still a Catholic there were extremely strict rules about how a consecrated host was supposed to be treated.
I think it’s a fake.
330.   PZ Myers Says: 
July 15th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
The source of the cracker was documented on video.
331.   PZ Myers Says: 
July 15th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Of course, anyone who believes it was fake are free to do so. Those people, though, would then have nothing to complain about.


Which I thought was PZ throwing in the towel awfully fast.  The You-tube he asserted was his evidence of the authenticity of his stunt has been taken down,  I don't know how soon  after this.  I did see it when I could get to a faster connection (was on dial-up at the time) it showed nothing that could be positively linked to PZ's "host".

Apparently, everyone is supposed to believe, this Catholic boy, for some reason, while he was still a Catholic, just happened to have had video of himself taken while he was given communion.  Remember PZ's fans said this was while he was still a Catholic, well before the boy turned atheist and sent PZ a consecrated host.    The coincidence of a Catholic having a video of him going to communion on that one occasion is too big a stretch to be credible.  Adding in the extreme unliklihood that a faithful Catholic, in violation of church law I was taught when I was six, had taken it home for some unstated reason  instead of eaten it, the story is absurd.   As I said, the more details that were added to the story, the more like a fake it seemed.   I said that I was certain, if that's how the story was being told, that it was a total fake, either PZ had faked his desecration diorama or that the kid was hoaxing him and PZ was a victim of what he wanted to believe was true.   And I still think it was a fake.

In the ensuing hundreds of comments - really,  hundreds of them -  many of PZ's adoring fans defended their faith in the authenticity of his publicity stunt, to which I pointed out the simplest explanation was that PZ had faked the "host" by cutting it out of paper or flattening a circle cut out of Wonder Bread or that Myers could have ordered communion wafers which are available online, something I hadn't know about when the brawl started.  I pointed out there were a number of explanations,  more credible and parsimonious, than the Catholic boy happening to have had a video taken of the time he stole a consecrated host, only to turn atheist and send it to PZ so he could desecrate it in the wake of the Webster Cook incident.  And, as I noted, PZ Myers had destroyed any possible evidence that could prove his staged photo was a fake or if it might be real when he threw it away.  That, is, of course, exactly the same thing that even a real skeptic would point out about any claim they didn't like.  But skepticism is another thing that atheists hold themselves to be immune from.   And note:

Despite PZ Myers' mantra that "it was just a cracker",  asserted all through the incident, one thing that was proved was that to him and his fans, it was extremely important that everyone believe that it was a genuinely consecrated host.  And that all must believe in PZ's Desecration Diorama.  PZ and his fan base PROVED IT WAS NOT "JUST A CRACKER" TO THEM.

If you want to go through the entire thread to read how very rigorously skeptical these atheists are NOT of their great hero, you can find some real gems of credulous faith in PZ and his great act of attention getting.    I will confess that I had a lot of fun raising one point after another before the blog owner called an end to it at comment 856.  Really, it went for 856 comments.

*  The "Science Blogs" are mostly a vehicle for conventional scientism and self-congratulatory religion bashing with a bit of science reporting thrown in.  The "Science Blogs" that concentrate mostly on science seem to be less popular than those that regularly feature atheist boy-bonding hate rap sessions.  At their worst they are hate-jock talk, call-in radio in print.  I once challenged Myers to see just how interested in science his fan-boys and girls were by going all-science-all-the-time for a few weeks to see how many of them stuck by him, and then he could resume his Rush Limbaugh level content later. to see if his audience returned.     He flatly refused to run the experiment to test his blogs scienciness.  I have posted that exchange here.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Making Eugenics As Real As A Young Girl's Life and Body

For once, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about Leilani Muir, one of the surviving victims of eugenics who is quite able to speak for herself. Ms. Muir was one of the 2,800 girls and women sterilized by the Alberta Eugenics Board after her abusive mother dumped her at the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives.   Despite the fact that she has quite normal intelligence, the, no doubt "science-based" program and staff kept her there and sterilized her without her knowledge in 1955, ten years after the crimes of German eugenics were exposed to the world and punished by an international tribunal.    But Ms. Muir can say that better than I can.

Here is an interview of Leilani Muir from the CBC Radio show The Current.  

I will call your attention to the clip of former Eugenics Board member,Dr. Margaret Thompson starting after 16:00, where she describes how they met with the people they were going to sterilize to see "what kind of people" they were.  Here is the way the ruling in Ms. Muir's successful lawsuit described how the Board acted:

The circumstances of Ms. Muir's steriliz­ation were so high-handed and so con­temptuous of the statutory authority to effect sterilization, and were undertaken in an atmosphere that so little respected Ms. Muir's human dignity that the community's, and the court's, sense of decency is offended*.

You should listen to Leilani Muir at about 17:45 talking about her confrontation with Thompson, during a break in Ms. Muir's successful lawsuit for her involuntary sterilization.  She told Thompson that she had no conscience, only to be told by Dr. Thompson that no one has one. If you want an insight into how the crime of eugenics happened, that is as good a piece of evidence as any.

*  The ruling discusses Dr. Thompson's testimony in the case and entirely refutes her characterization of the Eugenics Board's activities on a number of important issues.

The ruling also notes that Alberta Eugenics Board was a bigoted  operation posing as a progressive, idealistic enterprise.  In its history, sterilizations were approved for Aboriginal and Metis in numbers proving that racism was one of the motivations of those involved.   About 27% of sterilizations were of  Aboriginal and Metis individuals, though those groups were about 2.5% of the population.  74% of cases involving Aboriginal and Metis subjects resulted in sterilization, as compared with 14% of all others.  Ethnic, regional and religious groups were also targeted for sterilization,   It is clear that, in reality instead of stated intent,  promoting a British majority population was one of the goals of eugenics.

Sterilizations under the Eugenics Board continued into 1972 when it was disbanded.   Eugenics was an ongoing thing, it didn't disappear with the Nazis, it was in effect in North America into living memory.  I have no doubt that it could return.

As a leftist, the ruling's details about how eugenics came about in Canada and its history has some disturbing details with few reassuring instances of people changing their minds.   The contemporary left was as responsible for eugenics as anyone else, including some people considered heroes of enlightened progress.  If there's one thing a leftist needs to face it's the worst of our own history.   It's the only way to learn and prevent history from repeating itself, it helps us to understand what we need to change.  Lying about history should be one of the things that is unacceptable for the left because it is dangerous.   People who like to think of themselves as humanitarians, who sell their proposed programs on the basis of their stated good intentions can do some quite depraved things.   It's necessary to look past those self-deceptive poses.  That's something the left needs to do as much as anyone else.   No one should be allowed to remain a hero and a symbol of the left when their real biography contains this kind of thing.  It's better to have no heroes than to maintain them by lying about them.

UPDATE:   Also from the decision in the lawsuit:

I do not accept Dr. Thompson's evi­dence concerning the discussions that she had with Dr. le Vann regarding the taking of testicular tissue from vasectomized or cas­trated trainees. Both she and Dr. le Vann were conducting studies of "male mongols", males with Down's syndrome. She gave Dr. le Vann detailed instructions about how to take samples of the tissue that resulted from the sterilization. In all the circumstances, this constituted encouragement to Dr. le Vann to use the trainees as medical guinea pigs. This is all the more repugnant because, from the 1940s on, Dr. Thompson and the Board knew, as did all those involved in genetics, that male "mongols" are infertile: their sterilization was unnecessary.

Dr. Thompson's evidence demonstrates that the operations of the Board, initiated on a purported scientific rationale, degenerated into unscientific practices. The, decisions of the Board were not made according to the standards imposed on them by the legisla­tion, but because the members of the Board, like Dr. Thompson, thought that it was socially appropriate to control reproduction of "these people".

It's pretty obvious that Dr. Thompson and the board authorized the castrations to supply her and her colleague with material for their studies, clearly, without consent. I'm sure they considered it for the better good, that is how German eugenics was presented, that's how Haeckel presented his early calls for murdering "deaf-mutes" and other named groups of people. Whether or not it's admitted, those are the kinds of things that can be done when you consider people to be objects.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Atheists Granted Indulgences* by PZ Myers

* It should be known from here on as The PZary Indulgence. 

It's a growing problem, the intellectual decadence that flows from the atheist blogs.   As I mentioned in my recent series on Darwin, Eugenics and Haeckel,  most of the people who claimed that Darwin has nothing to do with either of those do so from the position of never having read any of what the relevant people said about it.  Including Charles Darwin.  Some of them rely, at best, on secondary sources which are often motivated by ideology.  And  most of those I've encountered argue out of tertiary garbage only occasionally based on secondary sources,  when they're not also based on other tertiary garbage or complete lies.  But it gets even worse than that when an atheist demands the privilege of speaking out of absolutely no knowledge at all.

The most commonly encountered statement of that privilege on the blogs comes from P.Z. Myers in defense of his friend, Richard Dawkins'  radically minimalist scholarship in his The God Delusion.   In many reviews from real scholars, a number of them atheists, it was noted that Dawkins made his would-be, two-fisted, final slam-down of theology firmly standing on the shoulders of such specialists as Douglas Adams and Carl Sagan.   In fact, it would seem from that book and his response to those critics, that Richard Dawkins knows quite a very little about theology other than that he does not like it.  I'm unaware of any evidence that he has, in the ensuing years, corrected that gap in his education.   Since the book comes from a man who held an endowed chair at Oxford University as he wrote the it, his exposition from ignorance raised a number of objections.  

To his rescue came P. Z. Myers, an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota at Morris and, more importantly, the owner of Phrayngula blog*, with his "Courtier's Reply" .  "The Reply" is rather repetitious and mostly trivial** but, in order to prevent P.Z.'s  nay-men choir from pulling out the old "quote mining" charge, I'll give it as he did, in full.  I will, though, underline what seems to be the substance of it. 

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor’s boots, nor does he give a moment’s consideration to Bellini’s masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor’s Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor’s raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk.

Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.

Personally, I suspect that perhaps the Emperor might not be fully clothed — how else to explain the apparent sloth of the staff at the palace laundry — but, well, everyone else does seem to go on about his clothes, and this Dawkins fellow is such a rude upstart who lacks the wit of my elegant circumlocutions, that, while unable to deal with the substance of his accusations, I should at least chide him for his very bad form.

Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor’s taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.

To paraphrase, I'd say it meant, P.Z Myers is upset that his friend Richard Dawkins is being criticized for  neglecting to know enough on a topic he wrote about in what was supposed to be a serious book by an Oxford scholar.  And the best he can do is pretend that it's not a requirement of serious scholarship to know what you're talking about.   And the excuse for not knowing what you're talking about is that you don't need to know what you're talking about when P.Z Myers and Richard Dawkins don't like the topic of Dawkins' book.  Which is, apparently, an acceptable intellectual stand among many atheists. 

P.Z. Myers is taking a stand not much different from the stand that Galileo complained of  to Kepler:

.... what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the ass, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope?  What shall we make of all of this?  Shall we laugh or shall we cry?   Trans. from The Crime of Galileo by Giorgio de Santillana 

Apparently Myers has taken up the same standard of intellectual conduct that Galileo struggled against from scholastic scholars upholding geocentric astronomy.   Which, since "The Courtier's Reply" amounts to an atheist plenary indulgence to expound ignorantly, isn't that strange.   According to him you don't have to know what you're  talking about before you write a mighty tome on the subject from an endowed chair at Oxford University.   Or from his position at The University of Minnesota at Morris.  Which I'm sure many of his colleagues at his own university would disagree with.  And it's a privilege that I've heard asserted all over the atheist blogs. 

Science seems to be entering into a decadent period in which scientists who are fully as arrogant as a pantomime Cardinal in anti-religious mummery, declare themselves competent to expound on things that they not only demonstrate they have never studied but which they admit they've never studied declaring that their superior scienciness  is a virtue that allows them to expound of in complete ignorance.   Considering that, in his "Reply" post one of the reviewers he critisized by name is H. Allen Orr, whose scientific credentials are definitely more credible than Myers' and, I'd say, more than match Dawkins, his arrogance isn't just to non-scientists. 

There have always been jerks like that in science,  relying on the reputation of science and, in a few instances, their specialized and particular achievements to allow them to bluff through any other topic.  But, today, that intellectual dishonesty is entirely out of hand.   It reaches the zenith of its foolishness when the sci-guys complain on being called on their ignorance by people who know what they're talking about.   Maybe PZ should be told that his "Reply" makes him sound like one of the lying, hypocritical and pompous twits he invented to pompously assert atheists don't need to know what they're talking about .    And there's not so much as a stitch of thread to cover his self-exposed shame.   I thought it was about time someone told him that. 

* It is an astounding fact to some of the blog atheists I've discussed Myers with that he isn't the major figure in science or scholarship they imagine.  Once, in preparing a blog post about teaching science, I asked several biology teachers I know, who all have undergraduate degrees in the subject, what they thought about P.Z. Myers.   Three of them had no idea who he was and the fourth said he never bothered with blogs, being a teacher took all of his time. 

**  When I first read it I couldn't believe any serious people who ever had to write a jr. high school paper would take it as anything but P.Z. writing a slacker-quality blog post on a day he had nothing to say.  But it's gained a currency among blog atheists along such  ideas as "a Poe" and "quote mining" and it's worth saying something about.  Among blog atheists, The Courtier's Reply is taken on as a rule of logical discourse, a universal acid to dispose of any observation that the atheist doesn't know what they're talking about.   The idea of university professors and teachers speaking up for discourse out of ignorance, and doing it with a fable riddled with logical fallacies and just plain stupidity is pretty discouraging. 

Updated Temporary Linked Index of the Darwin - Eugenics - Haeckel Posts


Notice of Intent
A Note about Documentary Evidence and Primary Sources.
A Note About The Word "Darwinism"
How Much Do You Have To Quote Before You're Not "Quote Mining”  With a note about Darwin "quote mining".
Charles Darwin and Eugenics: The Standard of Evidence Required to Make the Case 

What Would It Take for Charles Darwin To Beat the Eugenics Charge
1. Galton  (case closed )
2. Leonard Darwin Schallmeyer with a note about George Darwin (note: This post should be considered an outline due to the lack of Schallmeyer available in English translation. )  Revised on Sept. 2. 2012.
3. How Much Did Darwin Really Believe In Natural Selection:  W. R. Greg, sometimes called the co-inventor of eugenics.  Darwin's anti-Irish bigotry overcomes Natural Selection.
4   Another Note About George Darwins 1870s Eugenics Activity   Francis Darwin calls it "eugenics"
5.  Darwin's Response to Gaskel Was Not a Rejection of Negative Eugenics
6.  Darwin and The Survival of the Fittest  Darwin and Spencer and Wallace
7.  Darwinism Against Economic Democracy: William Cobbett on Malthus

Darwin and Haeckel 1  Darwin endorses Haeckel 
Darwin and Haeckel 2  Darwin Publicly Confirms His Endorsement of Haeckel as Science (will be lengthened)
Darwin and Haeckel 3  Darwin Doesn't Protest Attribution of Monism To Him
Darwin and Haeckel 4  Haeckel and Darwin   Infanticide.
Darwin and Haeckel 5  Could Haeckel's Depravity Have Been Prevented If Darwin Had Objected ? with a long footnote on the future course of Darwinism in Germany and Leonard Darwin as the only one with standing to speak for his father in 1939.

EVOLUTION, evolution Ideology and the Continuation of Life
1.  Part one  The Enormous Scope of Evolution, Its Complexity,  Science has only scratched the surface
2   Interlude Scherzando and Early Selections   Biological Determinism, its Depravity and Hypocrisy
3   The People   Biological Determinism Negates Democracy with a long footnote about the “aid which must be given” paragraph
Dissing an Idol and Feeling Better For It
It's a Dirty Political Brawl Adapt or Die

The Popular Misunderstanding of the Huxley - Wilberforce Debate

A Closing Comment   Darwin Provided Himself Cover, His Position in Science Culture as Opposed to Today's Science

Update:   I will probably keep working on these posts which were written very quickly, especially the second of the Darwin and Haeckel posts.   I had intended to write a 2a because there is just so much material showing that Darwin and Haeckel were saying many of the same disturbing things as they were in contact and I will expand that theme in the future.   I am intending to put these in a more permanent order on a new blog, probably finishing some of the posts that are still in draft.

Since the purpose of these was to show what Charles Darwin could be fairly charged with as he was alive and writing I haven't gone nearly as far into what people who Darwin never heard of said about his inspiration of them.  There is much more that could be said about that.   It is a major intellectual scandal that so many people who present themselves as scholars blatantly lie about this.  I think some of that is clearly ideological,  Darwin is the mascot of scientism,  materialism and atheism.  A lot of it is done in ignorance of the record.  Some of it is done out of cowardice, knowing that writing about Darwin's relationship to eugenics in the English speaking world and Germany will make you a pariah and attract attacks and distortions of what you said.   I hope to show how the eugenics and Social Darwinism that were present at the start and which have been one of the major catastrophes in the history of science have survived and are promoted by prominent and some infamous scientists.  I will do so in their own words, trying to hold to the same use of primary source material, where that is available.  But that is for the future.  

Why?  Several reasons.  First and foremost because the record supports the idea, that record is there and, as I said, its existence is the only justification anyone needs for exposing it.  Second, it is important politically and in terms of human life and society.  Eugenics led to more than one attempt to destroy groups of people and to deprive people of their most fundamental rights.  Third, there is great interest and controversy about these facts.


Monday, September 3, 2012

Darwinism Against Economic Democracy: William Cobbett on Malthus

Plainly said, nothing is said now that has not been said before.  Racine

About five years ago, I was mighty proud of myself when I realized that in all of Darwin's many frettings and frailings about the catastrophe that would come with mass vaccination, giving minimal aid to the poor, keeping the weak and lame and the Wretched of the World in the notably stingy charity available in mid-19th century England, it came to me that he left out the laws against theft as probably the greatest inhibition of natural selection as a way of doing away with the "weaker members" of society.   I noted that in the footnote to a post four years ago.

Well, since then I've read more of William Cobbett.  I'd read from his Cottage Economy years ago.  Looking at his "Advice to Young Men" he'd said the same about Darwin's great inspiration in natural selection,  Parson Malthus.

The audacious and merciless MALTHUS (a parson of the church establishment) recommended, some years ago, the passing of a law to put an end to the giving of parish relief, though he recommended no law to put an end to the enormous taxes paid by poor people. In his book he said, that the poor should be left to the law of Nature, which, in case of their having nothing to buy food with, doomed them to starve. They would ask nothing better than to be left to the law of Nature; that law which knows nothing about buying food or any thing else; that law which bids the hungry and the naked take food and raiment wherever they find it best and nearest at hand; that law which awards all possessions to the strongest; that law the operations of which would clear out the London meat-markets and the drapers' and jewellers' shops in about half an hour: to this law the parson wished the parliament to leave the poorest of the working people; but, if the parliament had done it, it would have been quickly seen, that this law was far from 'dooming them to be starved.'

Darwin was a rich man,  upper middle class when the services and goods of poor people were to be had for next to nothing.  He considered himself a better investor than a scientist and the guy raked in a lot of money through investment that kept him and his children in wealth for decades.  If I wanted to be really inflammatory, I'd give his description of how his family lived during a the food crisis brought on by the famine of the 1840s.   And I might change my mind and give that, someday.  [That day came in today's e-mail.  See Update below] For now, asking why this rich man, the son of two dynasties of prosperous manufacturers and landowners, why he neglected to note that repealing the laws against theft would soon allow him and his family to be subjected to the very laws of nature he asserted.   Something that Cobbett figured out years before Darwin ever looked at Malthus on Population "for amusement," as Darwin put it, himself.   Given how far prepared he was willing to go in repealing even more basic laws of human charity and decency, and if not him then his closest followers and colleagues, it's entirely appropriate to ask how he could have neglected that those civil laws made his class of people even less subject to natural selection than the poor relying on the barest of a living provided to them.  At a minimum, the laws that prevented the "fitter" among the poor from taking everything  that belonged to the Darwin and Wedgewood families, were at least as great a violation of his proposed natural law as vaccinating and feeding the poor could be imagined to be.

Darwin, sciency guy though he was, didn't seem to understand that his family and friends could be subjected to the very scientific laws he proposed that the "weaker members" of the human species were.   Perhaps, enjoying growing up rich in class-saddled Britain,  Darwin was incapable of noticing that other civil laws were what protected his class from the very natural law he asserted were universal.  Those laws, which  he obviously liked,  were quite a huge violation of how nature, as he asserted it, is supposed to work.  They prevented natural selection from working on his class as he said it should work on the poor. They kept the "weaker member" of the rich AND POWERFUL from being weeded out of the population.  He simply took the protection of that law AND THE ADVANTAGES IT PROVIDED TO HIM AND HIS FAMILY* as part of the way of nature.

Here is the next paragraph of Cobbett in which he goes farther with his idea.

Trusting that it is unnecessary for me to express a hope, that barbarous thoughts like those of Malthus and his tribe will never be entertained by any young man who has read the previous Numbers of this work, let me return to my very, very poor man, and ask, whether it be consistent with justice, with humanity, with reason, to deprive a man of the most precious of his political rights, because, and only because, he has been, in a pecuniary way, singularly unfortunate? The Scripture says, 'Despise not the poor, because he is poor;' that is to say, despise him not on account of his poverty. Why, then, deprive him of his right; why put him out of the pale of the law, on account of his poverty? There are some men, to be sure, who are reduced to poverty by their vices, by idleness, by gaming, by drinking, by squandering; but, the far greater part by bodily ailments, by misfortunes to the effects of which all men may, without any fault, and even without any folly, be exposed: and, is there a man on earth so cruelly unjust as to wish to add to the sufferings of such persons by stripping them of their political rights? How many thousands of industrious and virtuous men have, within these few years, been brought down from a state of competence to that of pauperism! And, is it just to strip such men of their rights, merely because they are thus brought down? When I was at ELY, last spring, there were in that neighbourhood, three paupers cracking stones on the roads, who had all three been, not only rate-payers, but overseers of the poor, within seven years of the day when I was there. Is there any man so barbarous as to say, that these men ought, merely on account of their misfortunes, to be deprived of their political rights? Their right to receive relief is as perfect as any right of property; and, would you, merely because they claim this right, strip them of another right? To say no more of the injustice and the cruelty, is there reason, is there common sense in this? What! if a farmer or tradesman be, by flood or by fire, so totally ruined as to be compelled, surrounded by his family, to resort to the parish-book, would you break the last heart-string of such a man by making him feel the degrading loss of his political rights?

The reason is that doing that is essential to maintaining the standard of living of the rich, such as the Parson Malthus and Charles Darwin, his family, his friends and his professional associates.  Either they had wealth or they aspired to it.

I first read Darwin,  Voyage of the Beagle and Origin of Species in ignorance of how truly depraved and oligarchic his source, Malthus, was.    It was when I read The Descent of Man,  how entirely saturated his scientific assertions were with a line of thought so clearly tailored to his economic and class interests became obvious.  It's hard to imagine any way that could not be considered relevant to its credibility in anyone else making those kinds of assertions as science.**

Marx was attracted to Darwin because of the usefulness of Darwinism for his attempt at a more objective materialism that wouldn't be an articulation of class privilege.  As I said in an earlier post in this series, I think Darwin became a rallying point through his use by atheists to attack religion, something that may have also attracted Marx's interest.  But if that is true then Marx betrayed large parts of his idealistic Manifesto in doing that.   Atheists who use Darwin as a standard in their war against religion do so by turning up a chance to point out the rank hypocrisy of Malthus as a clergy member of a tax supported, state church,  who called for poor people to be deprived of sustenance from the very funds that provided him with a comfortable living.  Though others who adopt his economic dogma while they reject Darwin miss the point that this Christian clergyman was entirely negating the entire gospel of Jesus and the entire Law requiring justice for the destitute and poor that is the heart of  that religious tradition.  The content of Malthus, named or not, corrupts both Darwinism and the Republican right even as those two ideologies are at odds.  

I'm struck at how repeatedly, from Haeckel, during Darwin's lifetime and with Darwin's knowledge, Darwinism has been used to articulate assertions of aristocratic superiority as having the blessings of science.  That is what eugenics was all about, the assertion that the rich are better than the poor and the poor are a danger to the human species AND THAT THEY MUST BE KEPT FROM HAVING CHILDREN at the very least.  NOT INFREQUENTLY, IT SAID, EXPLICITLY, THAT THE POOR SHOULD DIE.

Politically, Darwinism is profoundly anti-democratic, it is founded in an assertion of inequality and it denies the possibility of effectively mitigating that inequality FOR THE POOR, THE DISABLED AND THE ILL EVEN AS IT EXEMPTS THE RICH.   Darwin explicitly removed the rich and well off from being subject to his dogma*** AS SCIENCE.  And, repeatedly, I find that kind of talk among Darwinists even in the modern period.   Francis Crick was a supporter of the racist neo-eugenics of Jensen and attacked political and racial equality in Nature magazine.   That happens often enough and by those considered competent to articulate science that it can't be considered an eccentricity of  the odd unorthodox Darwinist.   It happens often enough that the same anti-democratic, aristocratic content that Darwin took from Malthus has to be considered an intrinsic feature of natural selection.   Eugenics is making a comeback under different guises and with new clothes, scientific racism based in assertions of natural selection is central to that effort.  Crick's associate, James Watson, who held Charles Davenport's position at Cold Springs Harbor, is an infamous figure in that.   These things are too numerous to constitute a coincidence.  They are not incidental to the idea of natural selection in the human species, they were built into it from the start.

*  This is especially true of the Wedgewoods and the Darwins who had a family history of chronic illness of exactly the kind Darwin complained made other people inferior, the kind that natural selection should weed out of the population, leaving the population more vigorous.  I can easily imagine Charles Darwin born as a poor man in Georgian Britain being weeded out through a combination of chronic illness and malnutrition before he married his cousin and had ten children with her, four of whom went blithely on to promote eugenics.

** You could compare the accusations of the ultra-Darwinists of Sociobiology and evolutionary-psychology, that Lewontin and Gould's critique of their version of science is motivated by extra-scientific, Marxist ideology.

*** Man accumulates property and bequeaths it to his children, so that the children of the rich have an advantage over the poor in the race for success, independently of bodily or mental superiority. On the other hand, the children of parents who are short-lived, and are therefore on an average deficient in health and vigour, come into their property sooner than other children, and will be likely to marry earlier, and leave a larger number of offspring to inherit their inferior constitutions. But the inheritance of property by itself is very far from an evil; for without the accumulation of capital the arts could not progress; and it is chiefly through their power that the civilised races have extended, and are now everywhere extending their range, so as to take the place of the lower races. Nor does the moderate accumulation of wealth interfere with the process of selection. When a poor man becomes moderately rich, his children enter trades or professions in which there is struggle enough, so that the able in body and mind succeed best. The presence of a body of well-instructed men, who have not to labour for their daily bread, is important to a degree which cannot be over-estimated; as all high intellectual work is carried on by them, and on such work, material progress of all kinds mainly depends, not to mention other and higher advantages. No doubt wealth when very great tends to convert men into useless drones, but their number is never large ; and some degree of elimination here occurs, for we daily see rich men, who happen to be fools or profligate, squandering away their wealth. The Descent of Man.

UPDATE:   All right, to the person who sent that oh-so-polite e-mail, here's the letter Charles Darwin wrote to Susan E Darwin, as posted on  the Darwin Correspondence Project .  


Wednesday 3rd Sept., 1845.
My dear Susan

Please to thank Jos for the Railway Dividend; and further ask him how it comes, that as additional shares were bought in our three Railways in July of this year, the last Dividends in all three have been the same as hitherto. It is long since I have written to you, and now I am going to write such a letter, as I verily believe no other family in Britain would care to receive, viz., all about our household and money affairs; but you have often said that you like such particulars. First, however, I am sorry to say, that poor Emma is more uncomfortable to-day than before: but her teeth are better than two days: she really has had a most suffering time and it has been so provoking that no one could come here to comfort her: Elizabeth would have been such a pleasure to her. When we shall move, and what we shall do, must remain in the clouds. Erasmus is here yet; he must have found it woefully dull for I also have not been up to my average: but as he was to have gone on Saturday and then on Monday and willingly stayed, we have the real pleasure to think, wonderful as it is, that Down is not now duller to him than Park St. I have taken my Bismuth regularly, I think it has not done me quite so much good, as before; but I am recovering from too much exertion with my Journal: I am extremely pleased my Father likes the new edition.

I have just balanced my 1⁄2 years accounts and feel exactly as if some one had given me one or two hundred per annum: this last half year, our expenses with some extras has only been 456£, that is excluding the new Garden wall; so that allowing Christmas half year to be about a 100£ more, we are living on about 1000£ per annum: moreover this last year, subtracting extraordinary receipts, has been 1400£ so that we are as rich as Jews. Caroline always foresaw that our expenditure would fall. We are now undertaking some great earthworks; making a new walk in the K. Garden; and removing the mound under the Yews, on which the evergreens, we found did badly, and which, as Erasmus has always insisted was a great blemish in hiding part of the Field and the old Scotch-firs; and now that we have Sale’s corner, we do not want it for shelter. We are making a mound which will be excavated by all the family, viz., in front of the door out of the house, between two of the Lime Trees: we find the winds from the N. intolerable, and we retain the view from the grass mound and in walking down to the orchard. It will make the place much snugger, though a great blemish till the evergreens grow on it. Erasmus has been of the utmost service, in scheming and in actually working; making creases in the turf, striking circles, driving stakes, and such jobs. He has tired me out several times.

Thursday morning. I had not time to finish my foolish letter yesterday, so I will today: Emma intends lying in bed till Luncheon, so that I shall not be able to say how she really is. Our grandest scheme, is the making our schoolroom and one (or as I think it will turn out) two small bedrooms. Mr Cresy is making a plan and he assures me all shall be done for 300£. The servants complained to me, what a nuisance it was to them to have the passage for everything only through the Kitchen: again Parslow’s pantry is too small to be tidy, and some small room is terribly wanted to put strangers into (as you have often insisted on) and all these things will be effected by our plan; and besides there is another advantage equally great. If it is done for 350£, which with Murray 150£ I can pay out of my income I shall think it worth while. It seemed so selfish making the house so luxurious for ourselves and not comfortable for our servants, that I was determined if possible to effect their wishes; and had we not built a schoolroom and bedroom; we should have had only two spare bed-rooms; so that for instance, we could never have had anyone to meet the Hensleighs and their children. So I hope the Shrewsbury conclave will not condemn me for extreme extravagance: though now that we are reading aloud Walter Scott’s life, I sometimes think that we are following his road to ruin at a snail-like pace. We have had some more turmoil in the village (though I have not yet been involved): old Price has been agitating building a wall across the pool, but thank Heavens he has at last aroused everybodies anger, except Sir Johns: Capt. Crosse told him the old women would hoot him through the village:and Mr. Smith cut short his usual rigmarole of his “having no selfish motives” by asking him, “if it is not for yourself, who the devil is it for?” Mr. Ainslie, the new Methodist resident at old Cockle’s house is also litigious and has been altering the road illegally; and defies us all, casting in our teeth that we allowed Mr. Price

Sunday, September 2, 2012

I Love Melissa Harris-Perry

"What in the world is riskier than being a poor person in America? I live in a neighborhood where people are shot on my street corner. I live in a neighborhood where people have to figure out how to get their kid into school because maybe it will be a good school and maybe it won't. I'm sick of the idea that being wealthy is risky. No, there's a huge safety net, that whenever you fail, we'll catch you, and catch you, and catch you. Being poor is what is risky. We have to create a safety net for poor people and when we won't because they happen to look different from us, it is the pervasive ugliness. We cannot do that." 


Watch the video at the link. Watch the righteous, honest anger.  I love her, one of the rare people on TV who cares about poor people.  This is the opposite of what the people I've been writing about the last two weeks are.  Darwin and his followers were proto-Republicans.  Only an elite pseudo-liberal-left could support their ideology. I have no doubt that Darwin would consider the people she is talking about were "savages".

Mitt Romney As a Summer Stock Harold Hill

I can't listen to Mitt Romney's stump speeches without remembering that he said the opposite of what he says even during the nomination process.  And he said other things when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts and when he ran for the Senate.   Mitt morphs faster and more often than a music video figure in the period after that technology was made cheap and EZ.  The man oozes sincerity like a desiccated prune oozes chocolate milk.

Most of all, though, Mitt Romney reminds me of a summer stock version of Harold Hill in The Music Man, rousing the rubes as he is setting them up for a fleecing.   Oh, there's lots of energy as he anticipates a far bigger pay-day than the instrument and uniform peddling Professor anticipated.  There's a work veneer of sincerity that no one really believes.  The entire production works against that.   And he's a bit old for the role, not able to do the dance numbers.   You get the feeling that his makeup artist retouches the grey at his temples every performance.

I can imagine Mitt telling someone that he'll go "Wherever the people are as green as the money... friend." But maybe only in one of those fundraisers that are closed to the press and public.   Or maybe that's what he hired, his dresser,  Eric Fehrnstrom to say.