Tuesday, July 14, 2009

That Is One Unruly Teenager

Earlier today I posted one, saying, aren't you glad your mother isn't like this? Well, here's one for us parents of teenagers, we can all say, aren't you glad your kid isn't like this? Sheesh, kid goes to CVS and spends 2,000 times as much money as the national debt. My kid never did that, at least!

From The Consumerist blog:
Kids these days! Dale writes, "My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday [my teenaged daughter] charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store." You would think Visa would have caught the error and addressed it, if you were high. What Visa actually did was slap a $20 "negative balance" fee on it, of course.

Dale writes,
The embarrassingly-named VISA BUXX card is a debit card for teenagers: parents get reports, control, etc. My daughter has one.

My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday she charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store. That's 2,000 times more than the national debt, which is a paltry 11 trillion.

The ever-vigilant folks at VISA added a $20 "negative balance fee," and have suspended the card.

When I called, they said that there was a "system problem," and that the "help desk was working on it."

Unruly Teen Charges $23 Quadrillion At Drugstore

They have a picture of the Visa statement. And hey, good luck getting that fee canceled.

32 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

July 15, 2009 4:22 AM  
Anonymous magneto said...

how much is this guy paying TTF?

July 15, 2009 6:57 AM  
Blogger JimK said...

It looks like somebody wants to sell some watches to TTF readers and has figured out how to get around the spam blockers. I hope I don't have to spend the day watching for this stuff.

JimK

July 15, 2009 7:08 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

We all know that the gay "pride" parades regularly held in most major North American cities are a blessing to the pro-family movement as they set back the pro-gay movement by highlighting the depraved and exhibitionist tendencies of the gay community.

Now, a similar phenomena is taking place in movie theaters. A movie that is supposed to satirize homophobia, "Bruno", will likely have the opposite effect. The most disgustingly pornographic movie ever shown in the local suburban cineplex is there courtesy of the lunatic fringe gay advocacy movement.

It's not helping your cause, guys.

July 15, 2009 9:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here's what the new head of NIH thinks of the debate between cognitive vs embodied view of individuals that Jim recently discussed.

If Jim's right, Obama's nominee is not swimming with the stream here:

"Dr. Francis S. Collins, one of the world's leading scientists who works at the cutting edge of DNA, concluded that "there is an inescapable component of heritability to many human behavioral traits. For virtually none of them is heredity ever close to predictive."

In reviewing the heritability of personality traits, Collins referenced the estimates of the percentage of various human personality traits that can be ascribed to heredity from the Bochard and McGue research.

The heritability estimates for personality traits were varied: General Cognitive Ability (50%), Extroversion (54%), Agreeableness (42%), Conscientiousness (49%), Neuroticism (48%), Openness (57%), Aggression (38%) and Traditionalism (54%).

Kirk et al. (2000) in their research using a community-based cohort of Australian twins reported a heritability estimate of 30% for homosexuality. Whitehead (1999, 2006) in his extensive review of the research cites 30% as the estimate of heritability for homosexuality as well, though he views the estimate as a maximum.

Estimates of heritability are based upon careful analyses of studies conducted with identical twins. Such studies are important and lead to the conclusion that heredity is important in many of these traits. It is important however, to note that even in such studies with identical twins, that heritability is not to be confused as inevitability.

As Dr. Collins would agree, environment can influence gene expression, and free will determines the response to whatever predispositions might be present.

Dr. Collins succinctly reviewed the research on homosexuality and offers the following: "An area of particularly strong public interest is the genetic basis of homosexuality. Evidence from twin studies does in fact support the conclusion that heritable factors play a role in male homosexuality. However, the likelihood that the identical twin of a homosexual male will also be gay is about 20% (compared with 2-4 percent of males in the general population), indicating that sexual orientation is genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations."

Dr. Collins noted that environment, particularly childhood experiences as well as the role of free will choices affect all of us in profound ways. As researchers discover increasing levels of molecular detail about inherited factors that underlie our personalities, it's critical that such data be used to illuminate, not provide support to idealogues.

July 15, 2009 10:10 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Citing such dangers, Dr. Collins referred to the book written by activist Dean Hamer who declared the discovery of the God Gene (this same author also is associated with "discovering the gay gene").

Dr. Collins noted that the "evidence" in Hamer's book "grabbed headlines," but was "wildly overstated."

A reviewer in Scientific American suggested that Hamer's book on the God Gene should have been titled, "A Gene That Accounts for Less than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study."

Unfortunately, much of the research in areas such as homosexuality, has been not only misrepresented in the media but by the scientists themselves through the tendency to overestimate the quantitative contribution of their findings.

Perhaps the best example of this media misrepresentation was the two studies conducted by J. Michael Bailey. In Bailey's first study, he reported a concordance rate of 52%. In a second study, Bailey reported a concordance of 20-37.5%, depending on how loosely you define homosexuality. The first study received a great deal of press. The second study received almost no media attention.

Bailey himself acknowledged probable selection bias in his first study---he recruited in venues where "participants considered the sexual orientation of their co-twins before agreeing to participate." The second study, using the Australian Twin Registry with its anonymous response format, made such bias unlikely.

Regarding the contributions of genetics to areas such as homosexuality, Dr. Collins concluded, "Yes, we have all been dealt a particular set of cards, and the cards will eventually be revealed. But how we play the hand is up to us.""

July 15, 2009 10:10 AM  
Blogger JimK said...

Anon's comments were copied and pasted from the NARTH web site, in case you wondered, from a 2007 article that has been soundly debunked by Francis Collins himself.

I have not read The God Gene but saw some reviews and agree that it appears to have been misnamed and is overblown. The biological factors that result in religious faith are the exact same ones that cause humans to have knowledge of all kinds, which is not the same as possessing information but is a unique talent, social and linguistic, hierarchical and irrational, found only in human beings.

Francis Collins can read the studies and evaluate the role of DNA in sexual orientation, but cannot evaluate the effect of upbringing or any other environmental phenomenon, because there is no research addressing those topics. If it is known that genes account for X percent of the variance in the data, you can say that "other factors" account for (100 - X) percent, but you can't say what those factors are, without further research targeting other hypotheses.

I think Francis Collins was a perfect pick for a politician to make. With this choice Obama can pay lip-service to the religious population and satisfy the scientific community as well, and how can you beat that? It doesn't mean he is a good manager or anything related to the job, but it was a smart political move. We have seen the bigots try to appropriate his views and fail, he's no anti-gay holy roller.

JimK

July 15, 2009 11:28 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The NARTH article says that Collins believes that genetic factors aren't the main factor.

He seems to confirm that in the comments you linked:

"It troubles me greatly to learn that anything I have written would cause anguish for you or others who are seeking answers to the basis of homosexuality. The words quoted by NARTH all come from the Appendix to my book “The Language of God” (pp. 260-263), but have been juxtaposed in a way that suggests a somewhat different conclusion that I intended. I would urge anyone who is concerned about the meaning to refer back to the original text.

The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence. But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved. That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.

Your note indicated that your real interest is in the truth. And this is about all that we really know. No one has yet identified an actual gene that contributes to the hereditary component (the reports about a gene on the X chromosome from the 1990s have not held up), but it is likely that such genes will be found in the next few years."

Where is the difference between this and what NARTH reports?

That the environmental factors may not be alterable? While that wasn't emphasized by NARTH, I don't think they contradicted it.

Both Collins and NARTH would agree that genetics don't play a determinative role, right?

July 15, 2009 11:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Both Collins and NARTH agree that genetics do play "a" determinative role, but not "the" determinative role.

July 15, 2009 12:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Laughing. Only a liberal can say that "the grass is green" and then, when he doesn't wish it to be so, say: "I didn't say that the "the grass is green" I SAID, "the grass is green."

And all of the liberals nod at this wisdom, solemnly saying...."see, he didn't say the grass is green. He said "the grass is green"!

Sotomayor is doing the same thing in her confirmation hearings.

July 15, 2009 1:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think "determinative" is like "perfection". It either is present or not.

Collins above estimate that heritability contributes about 30% of the factors. The rest of the factors are non-heritable ones, which may or may not be alterable. This is much less than for other characteristics like agreeableness, extroversion, neuroticism, et al.

We wouldn't hesitate to say these factors might be due to raising or other experiences. We wouldn't warn anyone before we suggested methods for dealing with them.

Why is homosexuality being promoted as a protected trait?

Usually, the excuse is that it is a non-controllable characteristic but there is no proof of that.

To be determinative, a factor would have to be 100% of the contributing factors.

July 15, 2009 1:19 PM  
Blogger JimK said...

Anon, Collins can only talk about genetic influences. Take a frinstance. There have been some surveys showing that the more older brothers you have, the more likely you are to be gay. The explanation is that the mother's body changes when she has a male in her uterus, there may be an adjustment so she does not reject the fetus as a foreign body, and the more sons she has carried the greater is her adjustment. Perhaps her adjustment, in turn, affects the development of the fetus in a way that manifests later as homosexual orientation. This is not a genetic factor but it has nothing to do with how a child is raised.

On the other hand, there is no research, none at all, showing any significant effect of any child-rearing practice on the sexual orientation of the child, including having gay parents (the APA says, "Taken together, the data do not suggest elevated rates of homosexuality among the offspring of lesbian or gay parents.").

Two morals here: do not equate genetic heredity with "determinism," and do not attribute variance to causes such as child-rearing in the absence of any research evidence.

JimK

July 15, 2009 1:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't and I haven't. Still, just as you say there is no proof that child-rearing is a factor, there is also no proof that any other non-genetic influence is a factor.

Fact remains that no one gets up in arms about efforts to alter any number of other characteristics that seem to have a higher heritability factor than homosexuality.

This whole objection to efforts to overcome self gender attraction amounts to cult-like behavior among gays. They just don't want to lose any members.

Just back off and let people seek their own path and listen to who they want. Stop misusing science to make a case against self-determination.

July 15, 2009 3:31 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Silly anonymous,

Re: Pride parades harming lgbt rights. I refer you to Mardi Gras, Las Vegas, and fraternities, not to mention the straight BDSM communities and swinger communities, and the harm they do to straight rights. You are referencing not truth, but prejudice. Pride and pride parades are fabulous events for our community, and only your and Peter's portrayal of them harm us.

Re: Bruno. Have you seen "The Hangover", essentially a satire of men? You should. I've seen the trailers for Bruno, and it more appears to me more to ridicule queer people than people who are not, except perhaps by projecting stereotypes in people's faces and then berating them for responding to them. It certainly is not a product of lgbt advocacy, or advocates. I thought "The Hangover" was hilarious; what I've seen of Bruno, it looks stupid to me. I have no interest in seeing it. Did you spend your money and time? Why?

Re: Your weak attempts to bring up yet again the question of whether being gay is a product of genetics and how that should affect our rights. The question is irrelevent. I refer you to protections in our constitution and laws for religion.

Re: Narth. Everything they produce is related to their basic thesis that being queer can be altered by whatever methods they support at any given timeand should be. That question has long since been settled.

Why do we have to repeat these things to you? It's like trying to convince someone, for example, not to jump out from under bridges and eat children. I wonder if that tendency is genetically determined.

Since we're thread-jacking today, I've been reading Cicero's, Augustine's and Aquinas' thoughts on Just War, a topic very relevant for a country that is the world's foremost military power, and has been for the past 60-odd years. Interesting stuff.

July 15, 2009 4:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In case anyone else here missed this last week, here's a CREEPY quote from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, reprinted in the New York Times Magazine. You know, no pro abortion advocates can ever give me a reasonable explanation of why they support abortion. Ginsburg has provided the answer....

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae—in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion....

July 15, 2009 10:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

P.S. When I say "reasonable" I mean -- "reasonable" from the perspective of people like Ginsburg, who apparently feel that certain groups of people shouldn't exist. Really, really, truly stomach turning....

July 15, 2009 10:21 PM  
Anonymous Merle said...

Anon, I'm surprised at you. The Ginsburg thing was yesterday's talking point, not today's. Check your memo -- today you're supposed to be quoting Sonia Sotomayor out of context, not Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

July 15, 2009 10:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

it's so interesting how these freakin' lunatics think they can dismiss anything they want by saying the magic phrase, "talking point"

try sobering up, Drick, and see if you come up with a thought

July 15, 2009 11:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, I quoted Ginsburg out of context? USA Today seems to think I have the right context. Hey -- ever hear of Margaret Sanger, the very famous founder of Planned Parenthood? Here is a small sample of gross Sanger quotes.

1. "The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.

2. "Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race."
Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.

3 "Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization."
Margaret Sanger, April 1932 Birth Control Review.

4. "We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.

5. "Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock."
Margaret Sanger, April 1933 Birth Control Review.

And by the way, Planned Parenthood has a Margaret Sanger Award program. Here's their quote about the award from the Planned Parenthood website:

"Our highest honor, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Margaret Sanger Award, is presented annually to recognize leadership, excellence, and outstanding contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement."

July 15, 2009 11:51 PM  
Anonymous Merle said...

Very good, Anon, you can copy and paste one-line quotes by any great person out of context and make them look bad. That is quite a talent to have!

July 16, 2009 7:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmmmm....the plethora of Maragaret Sanger quotes, quoted out of context as you say, is really endless...more Sanger quotes:

1. As an advocate of birth control I wish ... to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation....
On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.
Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.

2. "The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics."
Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.

3. "Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism ... [Philanthropists] encourage the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant ... We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all."
Margaret Sanger. The Pivot of Civilization, 1922. Chapter on "The Cruelty of Charity," pages 116, 122, and 189. Swarthmore College Library edition.

4. "The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind."
Margaret Sanger, quoted in Charles Valenza. "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?" Family Planning Perspectives, January-February 1985, page 44.

5. "The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped."
Margaret Sanger. Speech quoted in Birth Control: What It Is, How It Works, What It Will Do. The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference. Held at the Hotel Plaza, New York City, November 11-12, 1921. Published by the Birth Control Review, Gothic Press, pages 172 and 174.

6. "The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order..."
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.

7. "[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children..."
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.

8. "Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization."
Margaret Sanger, April 1932 Birth Control Review.

And this is a good quote from Plannned Parenthood....

"As we celebrate the 100th birthday of Margaret Sanger, our outrageous and our courageous leader, we will probably find a number of areas in which we may find more about Margaret Sanger than we thought we wanted to know..."
Faye Wattleton, Past-president of Planned Parenthood

July 16, 2009 8:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In an entry above, I mistakenly said USA Today. I meant to say US News & World Report.

July 16, 2009 8:17 AM  
Anonymous Merle said...

Anon, did someone show an interest in Margaret Sanger, or say she spoke for them in some way, or do you have some reason to believe that TTF blog readers would want to read dozens of statements by her that made sense during the era when eugenics was widely accepted and don't make sense now that the concept has been debated and decided upon?

July 16, 2009 9:01 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

Thanks for sharing your obsession with Margaret Sanger, Anon.

Maybe you'll feel better if you focus on the GOP's pro-life savior, Queen Esther Palin. Surely she can vanquish your common enemies, those dreaded freedom loving, pro-choice people. Today's WSJ has published another piece about her you might find interesting.

I too can cut and paste (and even provide a link!) so here you go:

Poor, Persecuted Sarah Palin The GOP embraces the culture of victimhood.

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced her resignation two weeks ago it was after a series of strange, petty bouts with her detractors. Many "frivolous ethics violations" had been alleged against her, she noted. David Letterman had told an ugly joke about her daughter. A blogger had posted something that was probably not true. Someone had photoshopped a radio talker's face onto a picture of her baby -- a "malicious desecration" of the image, in the words of Ms. Palin's spokeswoman.

Team Palin got duly indignant at each of these. They took special, detailed offense. They issued statements magnifying their wounds. And, finally, the governor resigned her office, a good woman cruelly wronged.

The culture's fantastically unfair treatment of middle Americans is the main lesson that many will no doubt take away from Ms. Palin's time in the national spotlight. In fact, it may be the only lesson. We don't really know where the former vice presidential candidate stands on most issues. We know only that she is constantly being maligned, that when we turn on the TV and see her fair face beaming, we are about to hear that some liberal someone has slurred this noble lady yet again.

Indeed, if political figures stand for ideas, victimization is what Ms. Palin is all about. It is her brand, her myth. Ronald Reagan stood tall. John McCain was about service. Barack Obama has hope. Sarah Palin is a collector of grievances. She runs for high office by griping.

This is no small thing, mind you. The piling-up of petty complaints is an important aspect of conservative movement culture. For those who believe that American life consists of the trampling of Middle America by the "elites" -- that our culture is one big insult to the pious and the patriotic and the traditional -- Sarah Palin's long list of unfair and disrespectful treatment is one of her most attractive features. Like Oliver North, Robert Bork, and Clarence Thomas, she is known not for her ideas but as a martyr, a symbol of the culture-war crimes of the left.

July 16, 2009 9:05 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

To become a symbol of this stature Ms. Palin has had to do the opposite of most public figures. Where others learn to take hostility in stride, she and her fans have developed the thinnest of skins. They find offense in the most harmless remarks and diabolical calculation in the inflections of the anchorman's voice. They take insults out of context to make them seem even more insulting. They pay close attention to voices that are ordinarily ignored, relishing every blogger's sneer, every celebrity's slight, every crazy Internet rumor.

This has been Ms. Palin's assigned role ever since she stepped on the national stage last summer. Indeed, she has stuck to it so unswervingly that one suspects it was settled on even before she was picked for the VP slot, that it was imposed on her by a roomful of GOP image consultants: Ms. Palin was to be the candidate on a cross.

Resentment was, for example, the most-noticed theme in her famous speech at the Republican convention in September, when she introduced herself to America by taking umbrage at those Democrats who "seem to look down on" small-town ways. Before long she had become a full-time victim of the media, deploring "the bitter shots" they took at her. She imagined that reporters were threatening her First Amendment rights by criticizing her. She found a fellow underdog in Joe the Plumber, and after reviewing his mistreatment by the media she made him part of her stump routine.

But the template was apparently set even before her big roll-out. In an essay in The Weekly Standard that was written before Ms. Palin's celebrated debut in St. Paul, William Kristol somehow already knew that liberals "will ridicule her and patronize her. They will distort her words and caricature her biography. They will appeal, sometimes explicitly, to anti-small town and anti-religious prejudice." And all this contempt will serve an important propaganda purpose, he continued, with Ms. Palin becoming a "powerful symbol" for "lots of Americans who are told every day that to be even a bit conservative or Christian or old-fashioned is bad form."

Mr. Kristol's magazine has beat the persecution drum ever since. Its current issue features a cover story about Ms. Palin's suffering by Matthew Continetti, who is actually said to be writing a book titled, "The Persecution of Sarah Palin." In the course of Mr. Continetti's essay he admits to collecting insults of Ms. Palin, which he stores in a computer file that he says is seven pages long.

My advice to Mr. Continetti: Put your insult collection aside for a moment and ask instead why people like Ms. Palin savor insults in the first place. The answer may not endear you to Weekly Standard readers, but it will take you a lot further toward understanding the world we live in.

July 16, 2009 9:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Merle -- Not relevant? Seems relevant to me. Obama is the biggest supporter of Planned Parenthood and Planned Parenthood today honors Margaret Sanger with their highest award. If they didn't agree with her bizarre thinking, one would think that they'd do away with the honoring of her.

Speaking of eugenics... we now have a "science czar", appointed by Obama, named John Holdren. Very recently, he was listing the book he had written, "Ecoscience, on his curriculum vitae. The book was written in the 1970s, but to keep that on your CV certainly suggests that you're proud of it.

Amongst other things, the book suggess putting sterilizing agents for women in the drinking water, sterilizing women after two children, mandating forced adoption of illegitimate children, etc., etc., etc.

The outrage on this blog over all of this should be deafening.

July 16, 2009 9:41 AM  
Anonymous anon-deluxe said...

The Sanger quotes posted by anon-IQ are indeed relevant. They are reminiscent of some of Darwin's statements about unfit races. Simply put, when you say life is advanced and improved by a struggle of the fittest, you're not far from saying we should help the process along.

To put it in perspective, however, prior to the Nazi movement, there was a widespread view among educated elites that science was leading us to a utopian future and eugenics was a big part of that. It took the horrors of WWII to show the world that science should be a tool, not a leader. Science is not capable of value judgments and should always be tempered by a moral perspective.

Anon-B's gratuitous comment that anon-IQ's quotes from Sanger are an obsession is pathetic. Anon-IQ provided some quotes, a lunatic claimed they were taken out of context, so anon-IQ provided some more to demonstrate their validity.

I'd say Planned Parenthood sounds more obsessed with Sanger. They should be. She founded the organization.

Sanger did, however, stop short of saying that the inferior should be killed after being born so she probably is not quite as bad as a Nazi.

"Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, a social philosophy which claims that human hereditary traits can be improved through social intervention. In 1939 Margaret Sanger started “The Negro Project”. She enlisted black preachers to support sterilization. The plan was shown in a letter to Clarence Gamble of the Procter and Gamble Empire,

We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

Methods of social intervention (targeted at those seen as "genetically unfit") advocated by some negative eugenicists have included selective breeding, sterilization and euthanasia. In A Plan for Peace (1932), for example, Sanger proposed a congressional department to:

Keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.

And, following:

Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.

Her first pamphlet read:

It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization. For upon the foundation of an enlightened and voluntary motherhood shall a future civilization emerge.

Sanger saw birth control as a means to prevent "dysgenic" children from being born into a disadvantaged life."

July 16, 2009 10:21 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Virginia, in it's social darwinist days, had a law sterilizing "morons". Then again, Virginia had a law prohibiting miscegenation, inter-racial marriages, still has a "Crimes Against Nature Law", and an amendment prohibiting me from marrying. Alas for the old dominion.

Dollbaby, these laws are a stain on the cloth of conservatism. Why do you quote them here?

July 16, 2009 12:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Uh, "dollbaby"? Sanger's statements, and the continuation and adulation of her ideals through Planned Parenthood, would be gross if they were conservative, liberal, socialist or anything in between.

July 16, 2009 1:09 PM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

Uh, "dollbaby"?

Dollbaby is a term of endearment.

Apparently Sybil isn't man enough to take it.

July 16, 2009 2:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

that's a different anon, Anon-B

just like you

I'm used to Robert

he loves to use cuddly terms for males and get a thrill out of saying "queer"

not that there's anything wrong with that!

no, siree

July 16, 2009 3:13 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

I'm here, I'm queer, anonymous is used to me. Sounds like some sort of chant. Oh wait....

July 17, 2009 6:55 AM  

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