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Strange Bedfellows: Eugenics and the Tea Party

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posted on Jul, 8 2010 @ 09:49 PM
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Most people are aware by now that the Tea Party movement has been astroturfed by an organization called FreedomWorks, chaired by former Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and self proclaimed 'Austrian economist', Dick Armey. Whether or not people consider this to be of any importance is another story, but I'm hoping this helps open a few eyes.

Dick Armey has sat aboard the secretive Council for National Policy, an organization described by Mark Crispin Miller as a


"highly secretive... theocratic organization -- what they want is basically religious rule.


The CNP's memberships rosters reveal that the organization is essentially the hidden 'brain' behind the GOP - everyone from Oliver North, Phyllis Schlafy, Tom Delay, Trent Lott, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Reverend Sun Myung Moon have attended, with the purpose of networking conservative, religious parties to help shape public policy. Michael Chertoff, George W. Bush, and John Ashcroft have addressed the CNP; it is rumoured that Sarah Palin is a member.

Beneath the veneer though, a disturbing trend emerges inside both FreedomWorks and the Council for National. Let's look at FreedomWorks first.

According to this PDF file found on the website for the little known conservative foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley foundation gave FreedomWorks $25,000 to help finance "general operations." Other estimates have put the grants from the foundation to FreedomWorks at a total of $105,000 over the course of three years.

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has given considerable sums of money to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank (and architect of Reagan's national and foreign policy) whose former head, Edwin Feulner, was a member of the Council for National Policy. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has also given grants to the Americans for Prosperity. Wikipedia says:


In 2003, an internal rift between Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) and its affiliated Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation led to a split in which the latter organization was renamed as a separate organization, called Americans for Prosperity, while Citizens for a Sound Economy rebranded as FreedomWorks.


The Foundation also provided much of the funding for the notorious Project for a New American Century.. One of the signers of the PNAC 1998 to President Clinton was one William Bennet, the former Secretary of Education to President Reagan. Bennet was also the co-chairman of the board of Empower America. Says Sourcewatch:


Empower America was a right-wing think tank established in 1993. In July 2004 it merged with Citizens for a Sound Economy to form a new group called FreedomWorks.


Another co-chair of Empower America was Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a former fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, letter signer in the 1998 PNAC letter, and pro-Israel lobbyist with positions held in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Kirkpatrick also received money directly from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

The Bradley Foundation has poured money into even less reputable places: according to nndb.com, the foundation has given over $1 million in funds to Charles Murray.


The Bell Curve is a best-selling 1994 book by the late Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and American Enterprise Institute political scientist Charles Murray. Its central argument is that intelligence is a better predictor of many factors including financial income, job performance, unwanted pregnancy, and crime than parents' socioeconomic status or education level. Also, the book argues that those with high intelligence, the "cognitive elite", are becoming separated from those of average and below-average intelligence and that this is a dangerous social trend. Most of the controversy concerns Chapters 13 and 14, in which the authors wrote about racial differences in intelligence and discuss the implications of those differences. The authors were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that these IQ differences are genetic, and they did indeed write in chapter 13: "It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences." The introduction to the chapter more cautiously states, "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved."


Wikipedia: The Bell Curve

Funding for The Bell Curve also came from the Pioneer Fund, an organization with countless ties to questionable scientific pursuits in the name of racism, as well as direct contact with hate-mongers and neo-nazis of every shape and size. One of the funded projects of the Pioneer Fund is the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics, which has supported eugenics research, population control and segregationist politics since its inception in Scotland in 1959.

Two members of the IAAEE include the pro-Segregationist Senator for North Carolina, Jesse Helms, and reclusive oil millionaire, Nelson Bunker Hunt. However, these two men have something else in common, other than an apparent common interest in eugenics: both have sat in the Council for National Policy. Hunt, whose brother Ray Lee Hunt would sit on the board of Halliburton and be appointed by George W. Bush to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, was a primary financier in the 1980s of Western Goals Foundation, a "private intelligence dissemination network active on the right-wing in the United States." The Tower Commission would reveal that the WGF was used by Oliver North as part of the Iran-Contra conspiracy. Notable indeed, considering that Oliver North was also part of the Council for National Policy.

There is also an interesting connection, albeit indirect, between the Pioneer Fund and FreedomWorks:


When Steven Forbes heads to New Hampshire for next week’s Republican primary, he will be dogged by criticism of his relationship with Thomas Ellis, a former director of the Pioneer Fund, a foundation established in 1937 to prove that whites are genetically superior to blacks.



The link between the presidential aspirant and Mr. Ellis, a member of the board of the Pioneer Fund from 1973 to 1977, was first established a couple of weeks ago when Mr. Forbes was campaigning in the Granite State and was fleshed out this week in a New York Times column by Bob Herbert, who described Mr. Ellis as an “informal adviser” to Mr. Forbes. Now, the extent of the foundation’s involvement in controversial research projects, borne out in a background report prepared by the Anti-Defamation League, is threatening to cast an even larger shadow over his run for the Republican nomination.


Pioneer Fund: The Steve Forbes Connection (April 26th, 2010)

In 2006, Steve Forbes joined Dick Armey on the Board of Directors of FreedomWorks. Nine years earlier, Forbes put his signature on the Statement of Principles for the Project for a New American Century.

(cont'd below)



posted on Jul, 8 2010 @ 09:49 PM
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(cont'd)

Though there are numerous more ties that I could mention between the Pioneer Fund, the IAAEE, the CNP, Iran-Contra networks and the PNAC, I will only mention one last very interesting bit of information:

The chairman of the board of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is a well known and respected businessman by name of Thomas L. Rhodes. Here is a short timeline of some of his credentials:

1974 - Joins Goldman Sachs
1977-1982 - VP of Goldman Sachs
1982-1985 - Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs
1986-1992 - Partner in Goldman Sachs
1993 - Founds the "Project for the Republican Future"
1993-1995 - Chairman of the Project for the Republican Future

He also sat on the Council for Foreign Relations and was a trustee at the Manhattan Institute (where, incidently, the above mentioned Charles Murray held a Bradley fellowship) and the Heritage Foundation. But most interesting, aside from that tantalizing Goldman Sachs connection, is that Project for the Republican Future, which is listed simply as an 'affiliate' of the New Citizenship Project...


New Citizenship Project (also New Citizenship Project, Inc.) is a non-profit organization funded by large right-wing foundations. Founded in 1994, NCP initiated the Project for the New American Century, one of the key behind-the-scenes architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy. According to his senate biography, John McCain served as a president of NCP, "an organization created to promote greater civic participation in our national life."[1]

NCP shares the same address and suite as PNAC. According to NCP's listing in The Right Guide, NCP and the Philanthropy Roundtable share the same phone number. The Philanthropy Roundtable's office is on the same floor of the same office building as PNAC and NCP.


Just some things to mull over...



posted on Jul, 8 2010 @ 10:15 PM
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reply to post by Someone336
 


Yeah Armey is a douchebag, along with FreedomWorks.

I just looked over the FreedomWorks website and I couldn't really find anything on the war.

They have decent libertarian stances on basically everything else, not much published on the war though.

Obviously anyone that supports the war is neither an Austrian Economist or a libertarian. Austrian economists tend to be anarchists, which Armey is definitely not.

If you want some real eugenics nightmarish nonsense, look up Margret Sanger.



[edit on 8-7-2010 by mnemeth1]



posted on Jul, 8 2010 @ 10:28 PM
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reply to post by mnemeth1
 



Obviously anyone that supports the war is neither an Austrian Economist or a libertarian. Austrian economists tend to be anarchists, which Armey is definitely not.


Exactly! This is why every American who follows the Tea Party because they believe that it holds libertarian principles needs to be wary; they may say these things, but I worry that they simply attempting to lead the sheep to the proverbial slaughter. Astro-turfed, co-opted, whatever, it's all gearing up for the big NeoCon return after the [fake] change of Obama.


If you want some real eugenics nightmarish nonsense, look up Margret Sanger.


Oh, definitely. I have actually heard that Sanger worked with Harry Hamilton Laughlin, one of the founders of the Pioneer Fund, though I haven't been able to pin this down for sure. Such a fascinating topic, though!

EDIT: I did find an interesting fact on a webpage called Eugenics and Environmentalism: From quality control to quantity control that points out that an individual named Guy Irving Burch, who wrote for Sanger's Birth Control Review, was involved with John D. Rockefeller's Population Council. The Population Council's first president was Frederick Henry Olson, who is listed on the Pioneer Fund's website as one of its founders.

[edit on 8-7-2010 by Someone336]



posted on Jul, 8 2010 @ 10:32 PM
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Wow,great work,and more insight to the webs woven all around us to ultimatley snare and entrap people into manadged slavery and population control. I have more to comment,but am exercising self constraint.



posted on Jul, 8 2010 @ 10:35 PM
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reply to post by beammeup
 


Thank you for your input, but I implore you, please, comment more. I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue!



posted on Jul, 8 2010 @ 11:23 PM
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I am sure there are a few intelligent members of tea partiers,

but most of them would be very well advised to not start talking about eugenics


they might not like to see how high on the list their own names were.



posted on Jul, 9 2010 @ 12:28 AM
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Eugenics is the key word to everything IMHO.
I am sure that they have the best experts, computers and resources grinding away to that end 24/7



posted on Jul, 9 2010 @ 12:49 AM
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Armey is a well entrenched NEOCON. Thank you for your efforts to expose him. But to suggest that a loosely nit ideological group called the TEA party reflects his values is a cheap shot to say the least.



posted on Jul, 9 2010 @ 07:17 AM
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reply to post by zzombie
 


Though I do not doubt that there are many in the Tea Party actually hold their libertarian views, it is clear that the NeoCons are using them through Dick Armey and FreedomWorks:


Washington, D.C.—FreedomWorks is leveraging its national grassroots infrastructure, a volunteer network over half a million strong, to launch a modern-day “tea party” protest movement our Founding Fathers would be proud of.


FreedomWorks Launches Nationwide “Tea Party” Tour




Who makes up the Tea Party movement? The Tax Day Tea Party protest movement is not as spontaneous as its organizers would like you to think. Chris Good writes, "Here is the organizational landscape of the April 15 tea party movement, in a nutshell: three national-level conservative groups, all with slightly different agendas, are guiding it. All are quick to tell you that the movement is a bottom-up affair and that its grassroots cred is real. They are: FreedomWorks, the conservative action group led by Dick Armey; dontGO, a tech savvy free-market action group that sprung out of last August's oil-drilling debate in the House of Representatives; and Americans for Prosperity, an issue advocacy/activist group based on free market principles. Conservative bloggers, talk show hosts, and other media figures have attached themselves to the movement in peripheral capacities. Armey will appear at a major rally in Atlanta, FreedomWorks said. All three groups vehemently deny that the movement is a product of AstroTurfing -- fake grassroots activism organized from the top down -- as some on the left have claimed."


FreedomWorks Behind Tax Day Tea Party Protests


Summer 2009: In summer of 2009, FreedomWorks began pursuing an aggressive strategy to create the image of mass public opposition to health care and clean energy reform at Congressmembers' town-hall meetings in their districts. A leaked memo from Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer with the FreedomWorks website "Tea Party Patriots," describes how members should infiltrate town hall meetings and harass and intimidate Democratic members of Congress:


"Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up ... You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation. Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early. If he blames Bush for something or offers other excuses -- call him on it, yell back and have someone else follow-up with a shout-out ... The goal is to rattle him ..."



In January 2010, FreedomWorks was offering a "Citizen Lobby Training" for a Tea Party Patriot group[9] whose cofounder[10] was featured in a January 15 New York Times article on the movement's push to take control of the Republican party[11]


Sourcewatch: FreedomWorks



posted on Jul, 9 2010 @ 09:16 AM
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reply to post by Someone336
 


I think there is less "using" them than you think.

People that are pissed off enough to get up off their butts and actually do something, like attend a tea party, on their own time without pay are going to be very politically engaged people.

Of the tea parties that I have attended, the majority of the people were Ron Paul types.

Of course, there will be a wide range of ideologies, as there are in any large movement, but I think for the most part the people attending the tea parties understand that republicans are not small government pro-freedom.



[edit on 9-7-2010 by mnemeth1]



posted on Jul, 9 2010 @ 10:25 AM
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Great post. S&F without question.

Heat is the universal agent to create a state where transformation can occur.

Eugenics is the Tea Party as Obama is to the Federal Reserve. In other words every dog has an owner.

What troubles me is that bits of human nature are manifested in the concept of eugenics. A child will take a toy from another child because he feels envy or jealousy. In the past the elders would diffuse this through dialogue. Today there are no elders setting a clear course for children. There are only children having children.

Eugenics at its core was a philosophy created to let some sick man justify his desires to sleep with his sister. Since it has evolved into something bigger.

Change can only occur once humanity accepts itself. America can lead this charge and set a proper example. The citizens must start by rebuking the corporate dogma and saying enough.



posted on Jul, 9 2010 @ 11:37 AM
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This just goes to show how buy-partisan our government really is. The TPM has been co-opted by nefarious elements when the progressive right and the progressive left realized it was getting popular.

Constitutionalism is a threat to these people, so is non interventionism, which is why FreedomWorks mentions nothing about the wars. Great research.



posted on Jul, 9 2010 @ 03:30 PM
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reply to post by mnemeth1
 


I hope you are right, Mnemeth. But adding up the facts gives me a real uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. If anything, the fact that we have political leaders and intelligence agents operating this close and often hand in hand with these radical, vitriol spewing racists. Even the seemingly straight-shooting Ron Paul has some ties that I find very troubling, to say the least. I know that saying such things is blasphemy in some circles in America, and I'm trying to turn this into a partisan thing; I just want them pointed out before people through their faith into something without thinking for themselves.

Ron Paul has repeatedly appeared on the Political Cesspool, a weekly talk radio show that often has hate-mongering guests, such as politicians of British National Party, former KKK grand wizard David Duke, propagandist extraordinaire Jerome Corsi (whose boss at WND, Joseph Farrah, is a member of the Council for National Policy), and Chris Simcox, whose Minute Civil Defense Corps is funded, in part, by John Tanton. The Political Cesspool's founder, James Edwards, an affiliate of Stormfront, is a former contributor the American Free Press. Ron Paul has contributed to this magazine for many years.

AFP was founded by one of America's leading holocaust deniers, Willis Carto, and was published by Carto's racist organization named Liberty Lobby. Liberty Lobby was co-founded, with Carto, by Roger Pearson, one of the top beneficiaries of grants from the Pioneer Fund. Pearson chaired the 11th conference of the World League for Freedom and Democracy, the international anti-communist organization whose American branch, the United States Council for World Freedom, was heavily implicated in the Iran-Contra affair. This is important, because the USCWF was founded by John Singlaub (a member of the Council for National Policy) and other interests from the right-wing American Security Council. Investigative journalist Russ Bellant, in his book Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, has shown numerous ties between Liberty Lobby and the American Security Council.

Sorry for the digression, I just worry about the intentions of these people based on the company they keep.



posted on Jul, 11 2010 @ 11:17 AM
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A bit more information:

Reported April 15th, concerning the FreedomWorks Tax Day Tea Party:


Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who was introduced as "tea party tested and tea party approved," complained that Obama administration policies "drain our vitality." He called for the elimination of the IRS and the federal tax code, and, like Bachmann, claimed that the Obama administration had privatized more than half the economy.

King said Mr. Obama voted to the left of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, when he was in the Senate.

"The question is not whether the president is a socialist, we're talking about what's to the left," he said.


Tea Party Protesters Rally Against "Gangster Government" (How ironic)

Representative Steve King is an excellent example of the blatant neo-conservative influence in the Tea Party. This is an individual who, aside from acting as propagandist extraordinaire, voted "yes" for military action in Iraq, and has opposed a timetable for withdrawing our troops from the region. He, like so many in the Tea Party/FreedomWorks/CNP realm, also maintains ties to questionable, racist organizations and individuals:


King has not only stood side by side with anti-immigrant extremists, he has also been a financial beneficiary of their political action committees.

King's campaigns have been a consistent recipient of PAC contributions from the U.S. Immigration Reform (USIR) PAC, which was originally the PAC of FAIR. Mrs. John Tanton is the President of this PAC, to which she and her husband have been major financial contributors.

In 2008, Rep. King received $1,000 from USIR PAC. During the 2006 cycle, King Received $2,000, in 2004, he received $1,000, and in 2002, during his first election campaign, Rep. King received $2,500. Additionally, in 2006, King also received $1,000 from Minuteman PAC.

In total, King has received some $7,500 from anti-immigrant PACs.


Rep. Steve King (R-IA): Carrying the Banner for Anti-Immigrant Extremists (Hey, didn't Adam Smith argue that open borders are essential to free trade?)

Who is John Tanton?

The quote above mentions both FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) and John Tanton. Tanton is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the "puppeteer" behind the 'immigration reform' movement in this country, acting as the main source of funding for the wide array of groups that are mostly of his creation. According to an Anti-Defamation League document entitled Is FAIR Unfair?, the organization has received some $600000 from the Pioneer Fund.

But this is not the only tie between Fair/John Tanton and racially motivated promotion of eugenics: Tanton himself is a firm believer in population control, the first necessary step of which is to curb immigration into the United States.

It gets better.

Remember this fun little story?


PINAL COUNTY, AZ - JT Ready and a group of armed men are taking Arizona's border battle into their own hands this weekend.

"This is the Minutemen project on steroids," he said.

Ready is a member of the Nationalist Socialist Movement, and he and his citizen's militia group are tired of waiting.

"We're going to go all night and shut down the drug corridor that comes directly into Phoenix," Ready said. "We have guys that are going to be doing some covert stuff and we have some snipers coming out."


Citizen's group taking border battle into own hands

J.T. Ready is not only a member of the racist Nationalist Socialist Movement; he's a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, another organization in the long list of organizations connected to John Tanton. J.T. Ready also has questionable ties to the Republican Senator of Arizona, Russell Pearce:


* Pearce was also criticized for his association with white supremacist J.T. Ready.[13] Pearce endorsed Ready for Mesa City Council in 2006[14] and appeared with him at several rallies. Pearce has since indicated he was unaware of Ready's neo-Nazi affiliations at the time he made the endorsement.[15]


Wikipedia: Russel Pearce

Russel Pearce is the man who introduced the controversial, hotly debated Arizona SB1070, also known as the "Papers Please" law. What is not widely known is that it was lawyer Kris Kobach who was the actual architect of Arizona SB1070. The FreedomWorks website lists Kobach as the main speaker at a Tea Party rally in Riley, Kansas, February 27th, 2010.

One last bit of information:

Kris Kobach is the chief counsel for the Washington DC based Immigration Law Reform Institute.


FAIR established the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) as an organization that describes itself as "America's only public interest law organization working exclusively to protect the legal rights, privileges, and property of U.S. citizens and their communities from injuries and damages caused by unlawful immigration."


Wikipedia: Other Groups Created by FAIR


[edit on 11-7-2010 by Someone336]



posted on Jul, 11 2010 @ 11:38 AM
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This is probably going to make me unpopular, but... from a humanist perspective, eugenics is anathema to everything that liberty, freedom and equal rights stands for. However, in the reality of society where there are limited resources to support a burgeoning population, eugenics is a necessity.

Just putting that out there...

If you can be objective for a moment (difficult on such a touchy subject), there is a clear logical case for the containment of society within, admittedly broad, but clearly defined lines of order. When societies are small, these do not tend to matter, however, as societies grow and interact then there are clear reasons for restricting and controlling the way that they develop.

This is simply a method of prevention of the breakdown in the perceived structure of the society that exists. It isn't right or wrong per se, it is about promoting a method of ensuring the survival of a society and its infrastructure.

Now of course, you also have to ask, "Should that society actually survive?" Is there any benefit in maintaining the status quo? Personally, I wouldn't say that there is but this raises another problem - eugenics by omission. Rather than promoting an ideal, you simply neglect the antithesis of that ideal. This usually just requires physical containment or segregation - not feasible on a large scale and with disparate group sizes of the ideal and their antithesis.

We accept 'eugenics', under many other names, within all fields of human endeavour, from horse racing to crop development. Why not in humanity?

Again, this is not an advert for eugenics, I'm just throwing it out there...



posted on Jul, 11 2010 @ 11:53 AM
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reply to post by SugarCube
 


I understand completely what you are saying. However, what we are dealing with here is racially motivated eugenics where people are advocating the removal of other races to make more room for the 'superior' white race.

If we are to curb population growth, it needs to be as an incentive based program; tax breaks and other 'prizes' for couples who only have one or two children. If the state steps in and makes it mandatory, then we have a crisis.



posted on Jul, 11 2010 @ 12:32 PM
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reply to post by Someone336
 


Hi Someone336, firstly, thanks for reading my post properly and not simply replying with a dogmatic response


In your reply, you have hit the nail on the head and raised the primary issue of whether eugenics is bad or whether the selection process for an idealised member of society is bad. The distinction has to be made, no matter the connotations of the labels applied to 'eugenics' from historical application.

Let us be clear, eugenics based purely on skin colour is a nonsense. It has validity whatsoever. Also, matters of race and ethnicity should not be confused with cultural classification, although the two are linked in a derivative pattern.

The problem is that society is almost wholly defined by 'culture' and the issue of race or ethnicity is not really handled correctly in this context wince the relationship is not fully understood. It is also true that the concept of eugenics is not contained merely to the 'biological' standards that define an improvement in the human condition.

Your concept of providing beneficial programmes for the development of society (i.e. the carrot rather than the stick) is of course the ideal goal, however, human nature being what it is, society and government has always demonstrated an ignorance in matters of how society actually functions - rather ironically since this is the real goal of governance and the methods of politics used to attain these ideals.

I fear that it is easier to use the stick than to dangle a carrot - every responds to the stick whereas some people just do not like carrots or are not even capable of ingesting them. Sorry, bit of an extension of my metaphor there.

To get the to the point, eugenics (or implied eugenics) is sorely misunderstood and used within a certain political mindset without really understanding the point of it. It is merely presented as a method of (incorrectly) supporting the prejudices of a group of people in maintaining the superiority of one group over another.




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