Declan McCullagh wrote:
From: David Boaz <dboaz@cato.org> Subject: Social Democrats Sterilize the Inferior By JIM HEINTZ .c The Associated Press
The program stemmed from the pursuit of eugenics, a once-popular movement to improve humanity by controlling genetic factors in reproduction.
AB wrote:
The problem is that from a purely scientific evolutionary point of view, the human race is surely regressing, the masses of negative evolutionary pressures are certainly pushing this way.
The sterilizations targeted a wide range of people: those of mixed race; unmarried mothers with several children; people judged to be habitual criminals; even a boy considered ''sexually precocious.''
''Grounds for recommending sterilization: unmistakable Gypsy features, psychopathy, vagabond life,'' reads one document cited by Dagens Nyheter.
AB wrote:
Welfare cases in the UK are encouraged to have children by the way the system is structured. A single mother is the highest priority case, with pretty much guaranteed 16 years of preferential treatment, higher payouts, higher on housing priority lists, and so on. Female divorcees with children often get more money, better accomodation, and more extra fringe benefit handouts than they would ever have married. Welfare is better than the minimum wage earners lot by a significant amount.
It seems to me that today's society, like Nazi society, is heavily involved in influencing the evolutionary direction of "humanity by controlling genetic factors in reproduction." However, as Adam points out, society currently weights it's eugenics program in favor of those whose survival and/or level of subsistence is based on the incomes earned by other people who are more fitted for survival.
The issue of forced sterilization stands to be even more troublesome, because it was conducted under the ostensibly benign gaze of the Social Democrats - that party that built Sweden's welfare state and proclaimed it a paragon of enlightened government.
And today we have a forced child-bearing program based on rewarding those who bear children with survival support that they would not otherwise receive. Even when the individual has a desire to change their position in life, they usually get little support for that. Instead, we make it much easier to just pop a little-one in the oven and say goodbye to all of your survival woes.
Not only did eugenics foresee an improved human race, it also was appealing to Social Democrats, who were beginning to see that Sweden's welfare state would be costly and wanted to limit the number of people who would have to be supported, the newspaper said.
AB wrote:
The problem is what can you do about it? Well I guess you could negatively structure the welfare hand out system to discourage them. You could scrap the welfare system. They already offer free birth control advice to teenagers and hand out condoms free without questions etc. Free abortions?
The problems are *known* problems which remain unsolved--the question is, "Why?". AB wrote:
The real problem is that the pervasive bleeding heart socialist/communist welfare system mentality will ensure that you'll never manage it.
That, indeed, is half of the problem. The other side of the coin is that the capitalist/fascist earned income and/or welfare system is now just as dependent on maintaining the status-quo. As is the law enforcement/judicial/prison system of justice. It used to be the occasional war which sustained a robust economy. Now it is a 'constant' war which helps to sustain the economy. The War on Drugs. How many people in this country owe their jobs to drug addicts. A damn large number, but do drug addicts get any thanks for boosting employment (and TV's)?
"The children" is a war cry which will ensure the continuance of state funded negative evolutionary pressures.
Praise the Lord! I think much of the country is beginning to realize that we are now in a Catch-22 situation where "solving" societies problems will "cause" a great many problems in itself. Solve the drug problem tomorrow, and we will have doctors, lawyers, policemen and social workers out begging in the streets to feed their families. Solve the welfare problem tomorrow, and we will have riots in the streets by those on 'both' sides of the issue, no matter what the nature of the changes. {e.g. - I can give everyone on welfare, in the whole world, a good paying job in Inuvik, starting tomorrow. So now we can begin the violent, bloody debate on "forced relocation."} ---------
From http://www.hill.se/mag.htm (Re: Swedish Sterilization)
Blackmail and threats: The Medical Board approved of the operation. Since physical force was prohibitied, the school management and the doctor used blackmail to make Astrid consent to sterilization. If she did not approve of this little operation, they threatened her, she would face life incarceration. Thousands of healthy, intelligent persons were submitted to the same treatment as Astrid was. The medical arguments were, however, a little different according to what sex the individuals belonged to. Boys ready for sterilization were rather described as unreliable, dishonest and mischievous. (irreverent cypherpunks!) There has not been a real settlement with the period of sterilization. The National Institute of Racialiology was never discontinued, but had its name changed into The Institution of Medical Geneticsnd was assimilated into Uppsala University in 1959. --------- I already knew a lot about the history of the eugenics movement, as well as its 'shift' to new organizations with the same old faces, and the same underlying ethics and rational behind them. I didn't learn about this on the ABC TV News, nor in Time Magazine, nor any of the 'mainstream' media. I learned about this on the types of websites which gave me information on the reptilian Nazi aliens from outer space, who live in underground bunkers throughout the world. This is also where I learned about Planned Parenthood and its successors being an offshoot of the Eugenics/Purification movement. And about the U.S.'s rich and politically elite of today owe much of their family's money to working closer with Hitler than any of the Death Camp guards. And about the U.S. gun laws being based on the Nazi gun laws of Hitler's era. To tell the truth, I have absolutely no interest in becoming a raving lunatic who believes in reptilian Nazi's from outer space living in underground bunkers beneath my home town, but the problem is that the rest of the information I am getting on the 'lunatic' sites is proving much more reliable than the information I received in my years of education within the public school system. The problem with lunatic sites is that too many of them are not afraid to supply facts and references from established, reliable sources, including government documents, while the corresponding government-backed versions of events involve "magic bullet"'s and John Does who appear and disappear like the Cheshire cat, at the government's convenience. The problem with mainstream news sites is when a story surfaces which lends credence to the wild-eyed claims of the 'lunatic' news sites, the story suddenly disappears, to be replaced with a story of a fireman saving a cute kitten from a tree. The problem with reading both the mainstream ~and~ the lunatic news sites is that a very disturbing picture develops. Portions of the 'free world' imprison more people than dictatorships, but for the "right" reasons, instead of the "wrong" reasons. Human-rights-defending liberals have sterilized many, many times the number of people that genetic-purification-monster Nazi's ever dreamed of, but for the "right" reasons, instead of the "wrong" reasons. Every evil that has ever been done under the sun (or the moon, for that matter) is still being done, but under the "right" name, using the "right" terminology, and for the "right" reasons. (The chief justification always seems to lie in a variation of 'renaming' the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.) "Assassination Politics" is beginning to sound more and more like a valid electoral system. One dollar, one vote. Perhaps Jim Bell and Tim May can corroborate on a sequel, "Nuclear Assassination Politics." LonesomeOneryAndMeanMonger