• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

Status
Not open for further replies.
No. Not any kind of progressive I'm familiar with.

It's fair to say that progressives early in the last century weren't the only ones, given that eugenics was rather well accepted all around. Quite a few progressives did support it, though. Naturally, that's one of the many things that have changed in the last century.
 
It's fair to say that progressives early in the last century weren't the only ones, given that eugenics was rather well accepted all around. Quite a few progressives did support it, though. Naturally, that's one of the many things that have changed in the last century.

What were their names?
 
From wikipedia

One of the most prominent feminists to champion the eugenic agenda was Margaret Sanger, the leader of the American birth control movement. Margaret Sanger saw birth control as a means to prevent unwanted children from being born into a disadvantaged life, and incorporated the language of eugenics to advance the movement.

Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood.

FDR was apparently supportive of eugenics, as well. There, that's 2 fairly big names.
 
Yeah right, because access to birth control equates to eugenics. :rolleyes:

Sanger actually did want to use birth control for eugenic reasons. She was a creep like that. But this is a more legit, less controversial one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Fisher
Irving Fisher (February 27, 1867 – April 29, 1947) was an American economist, statistician, inventor, and Progressive social campaigner. He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt deflation has been embraced by the Post-Keynesian school.[1] Joseph Schumpeter described him as "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced",[2] an assessment later repeated by James Tobin[3] and Milton Friedman.[4]

He also defended eugenics, serving in the scientific advisory board of the Eugenics Record Office and as first president of the American Eugenics Society.[28]
 
Last edited:
Tulsi Gabbard has reached the 65K donations it takes to take part in the Democratic primary debates. :)

So we can look forward to some bimbo asking her why she is an Assad apologist. And maybe some serious topics brought by her. Very nice. So the primary purpose of my signature has been reached and maybe I'll change it to something different until it's time for Tulsi to kick Teh Donald in the orange butt. ;)

Although I quite like it. FTR:

:heartbeat:ALOHA:heartbeat:
 
Last edited:
Tulsi Gabbard has reached the 65K donations it takes to take part in the Democratic primary debates. :)

So we can look forward to some bimbo asking her why she is an Assad apologist. And maybe some serious topics brought by here. Very nice. So the primary purpose of my signature has been reached and maybe I'll change it to something different until it's time for Tulsi to kick Teh Donald in the orange butt. ;)

Although I quite like it. FTR:

:heartbeat:ALOHA:heartbeat:

Do you think Gabbard represents a plurality or some other significant number of Democrats?
 
Sanger actually did want to use birth control for eugenic reasons. She was a creep like that. But this is a more legit, less controversial one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Fisher


I would like to point out that you have to be very careful with what you actually believe about Sanger. Filthy lying Christians have flooded the world with misinformation about her. You really have to be careful with your sources when researching her.
 
I think there was a progressive wave, from the late 1800s until about 1950 or so, that was focused on using the state to reform humanity. "Progress" in this period was progress towards the goal of making better humans. This wave crested with Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet Union.

Marx had predicted that humanity would evolve naturally into a better form. In turn, this better humanity would build a better society - the worker's paradise. Lenin proposed that it should be possible to trigger this evolution artificially: Build the better society first, and build the better humanity from it. This experiment failed miserably, and with horrific results.

Since the 1950s, there has been another progressive wave, more intent on reforming the state itself, but also still desiring to reform society, and ultimately to reform humanity into something better.

Anyway, that's what we see among "first wave" progressives: People who dreamed of a Better Humanity, and who saw the state as the proper agent to make that Humanity. Thus eugenics as a tool of progress.

Thus also the enthusiasm for new, more totalitarian forms of government. Fascism and communism were seen as progress, as innovations that would take humanity to the next level, beyond what liberal democratic systems could achieve. Fascism fell out of favor not because progressives recoiled from the idea of the state molding its citizenry towards a goal, but because everyone recoiled from Adolf Hitler's obscene perversion of the idea.

Even today, there are American progressives who still see the totalitarian state as an agent of progress.

And progressive denunciation of the Soviet experiment has always been surprisingly diffident.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom