The following post grew out of a skype conversation between Vlad Tepes and me earlier today.
In our discussion of the scandal over little Princess Elizabeth’s Nazi salute, I mentioned Margaret Sanger, the great saint of Progressivism and admirer of Herr Hitler. Ms. Sanger, in fact, was even harsher in some of her views that Der Führer:
In 1923 Sanger called for the poor to be sterilised, the issuing of licences to those permitted to ‘breed’, and for the encouragement of ‘successful types’ to have children ((ED 10)). The following year Hitler called for the sick and those with hereditary disease to be prevented from having children, the limiting of ‘settlement certificates’ (for those moving to new territories) to the racially pure, and financial assistance to ‘healthy women’ so as to encourage them to have children ((AH 367-8)). Hitler’s attitude to the ‘mentally unhealthy and unworthy’ was kinder than that of Sanger. He wrote that education must teach ‘that it is no disgrace, but only a misfortune deserving of pity to be sick and weakly, . . .’ ((AH 368)). But Sanger taught that Eugenicists must steel themselves against feelings of pity and sentimentality ((ED 42, 62 and 64)). She labelled the poor as: ‘human weeds’ ((ED 15)).
And Margaret Sanger was not an anomaly for those times. She was fairly representative of Progressives in the 1930s. Everyone was a racist in those days. “Racial hygiene” was the big fad. Jews, Negroes, Chinamen — all were inferior. Eugenics was at the forefront, part of the avant garde. It wasn’t “conservative” or “right-wing”. Like Fascism and Nazism, it was progressive and modern, the wave of the future.
Then after 1945 collective amnesia set in. Hitler and racism and eugenics became “right-wing”.
Another fact that has been conveniently forgotten is that virtually everybody disliked Jews in the interwar period. Progressives, nationalists, monarchists, Communists, Nazis. Communists maybe less than some of the others, at least part of the time. Because so many Old Bolsheviks were Jews, until Stalin killed them off.
Social democracy was the polite non-violent alternative to Bolshevism. In the United States it was known as Progressivism. There was even a Progressive Party for a time.
Progressives were for “progress”, and that meant an historically inevitable purging of inferior strains of the human race. Progress was moving us inexorably towards a godless, racially pure, highly scientific future.
The Communists had their own variant on this ideology. Theirs involved world revolution and the destruction of inferior classes rather than races.
But it was basically the same thing: Exterminate the kulaks rather than exterminate the Jews and Negroes. The common theme was extermination — gradual or sudden, by violence or by sterilization — of people who collectively did not deserve to live.
That was the great gift of the 20th century to the history of mankind.
And once again I beat my little drum for the definitive explanation of those times and the road we traveled to Here:
Fred Siegel nails it. If you can’t afford the book, look at the readers’ reviews. As usual, 5% are progressive put-downs.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KOD9EC8/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1437709181&sr=1-1&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&keywords=peter+levenda&dpPl=1&dpID=41cuJUcAAEL&ref=plSrch
Here’s another one you might find interesting, regarding the national socialists and what came after them
Re: “Progressives were for “progress”, and that meant an historically inevitable purging of inferior strains of the human race. Progress was moving us inexorably towards a godless, racially pure, highly scientific future. The Communists had their own variant on this ideology. Theirs involved world revolution and the destruction of inferior classes rather than races.”
These two strains have now been united in the Postmodern Progressive Cultural Communism (in short, PoMoProCuCo). We are back to purging inferior strains of the human race, except now they are defined as “white” or “white Christian,” depending on the demographics. And we are back to “Equality Uber Alles,” except in an even more radical form than under the Communists. By substituting “race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion and national origin” for where the commies had just the term “class,” the PoMo ProCuCos are indeed carrying out a world revolution and a worldwide destruction of an inferior class — the middle one– that happens to overlap neatly with the white race and its culture. And quite often they are brazen enough to talk about destroying the white race itself as a way to destroy the bourgeoisie.
You’re exactly right. And the keyword for this crowd is “extermination”, for that is ultimately what they mean to do, by one method or another. Abandoning God, they arrogate to themselves godlike qualities, deciding which population groups deserve to disappear from the face of the Earth.
Very Islamic characteristic, that. It helps us understand how the Left and the Great Jihad find common ground so readily.
Right before coming here, I just read this:
“Smart cities” will surveil your every move and control everything you do.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/computers/item/21313-smart-cities-to-spy-on-you-in-ways-orwell-never-imagined
My observation: The 7 Deadly Sins are all basically different forms of excess.
Greed? Well, hey, it’s the responsible thing to do to put away some money for your old age. But a billion dollars? No.
Lust? Well, hey, if the boys aren’t attracted to the girls then the human race ceases to exist. But an orgy? No.
And so it goes for the entirety of the list.
I’d like to add the 8th Deadly Sin to the list: Tyranny: That being an excess of efficiency.
The problem with efficiency is also that it often has a rather limited and especially short-term definition.
Pondering the statistical inevitability of babies with black-American DNA ending up in the hands and specimen tubes of Planned Parenthood physician assisted homicide squads versus the death by Islamic slave trader force marches through the sub-saharan African interior during the 17th 18th & 19th century. Damn, even the 20th, Hells Bells the 21st. Yet by gosh, all for “Progress”.
Additional book recommendation: Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. An eye-opener t’was for me…
Same old moral decadence maintaining the division of political preference, the deceptive political science of splitting the psyche atom in search of the progressive big bang.
Why not a libertarian with no left or right injunctions?