2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

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RecoveringYuppy said:
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.
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Absolutely, but this is legit:

http://time.com/4081760/margaret-sanger-history-eugenics/
In a 1921 article, she wrote that, “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”
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Skeptic Ginger said:
Yeah right, because access to birth control equates to eugenics. :rolleyes:
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BobTheCoward said:
First of all, where does it say Sanger was a progressive?
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The request was for names, was it not? The part about Planned Parenthood was there to clarify who Sanger was, given that I wouldn't expect anyone to immediately recognize the name, unlike FDR, not establish that she was a progressive or say that access to birth control equates to eugenics.

Now, with that said, when it comes to Sanger and eugenics, I think that this passage helps sum it up.

For all of her advocacy work, Sanger was not without controversy. She has been criticized for her association with eugenics, a branch of science that seeks to improve the human species through selective mating. As grandson Alexander Sanger, chair of the International Planned Parenthood Council, explained, "She believed that women wanted their children to be free of poverty and disease, that women were natural eugenicists, and that birth control, which could limit the number of children and improve their quality of life, was the panacea to accomplish this." Still Sanger held some views that were common at the time, but now seem abhorrent, including support of sterilization for the mentally ill and mentally impaired. Despite her controversial comments, Sanger focused her work on one basic principle: "Every child should be a wanted child."
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It may be worth noting, again, that relatively mild forms of eugenics were pretty well accepted throughout much of society in those days.

As for the question of whether Sanger was a progressive... It's certainly true that that Sanger is not specifically named as a progressive in the article that I had supplied. The most important of the reasons that I identify her as that, though, is her overt attempts to advance progressive causes.
 
Aridas said:
The request was for names, was it not? The part about Planned Parenthood was there to clarify who Sanger was, given that I wouldn't expect anyone to immediately recognize the name, unlike FDR, not establish that she was a progressive or say that access to birth control equates to eugenics.

Now, with that said, when it comes to Sanger and eugenics, I think that this passage helps sum it up.



It may be worth noting, again, that relatively mild forms of eugenics were pretty well accepted throughout much of society in those days.

As for the question of whether Sanger was a progressive... It's certainly true that that Sanger is not specifically named as a progressive in the article that I had supplied. The most important of the reasons that I identify her as that, though, is her overt attempts to advance progressive causes.
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Which progressive causes were that?
 
BobTheCoward said:
Which progressive causes were that?
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The kind that get her included in most lists of prominent progressive reformers of the Progressive Era.

For example, -

Progressive reformers wanted to end political corruption, improve the lives of individuals, and increase government intervention to protect citizens.

The suffrage movement was part of this wave of Progressive Era reforms. Prominent suffragists led other progressive causes as well. Jane Addams established Chicago’s Hull-House, a settlement house that educated and provided services for local immigrants. Ida B. Wells-Barnett led a campaign against the lynching of African Americans.

While earlier generations discouraged women from participating in public, political movements, society began to embrace female activism in the late nineteenth century. Progressives often argued that women’s politics complemented their traditional roles as wives and mothers, caregivers and keepers of virtue. Margaret Sanger argued that birth control would improve family life, especially for working classes. Charlotte Hawkins Brown worked to ensure that black children received a good education. Florence Kelley fought for laws that protected women in the workplace. By turning women’s traditional social roles into public and political ones, this generation of reformers began to win broader support for women’s votes.
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Matthew Best said:
But in the case in question there was a reason given, and you still said it was a good thing she was threatened with jail.
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Well I'm an "ends justify the means" kind of guy. The program worked and is considered a huge success that was emulated in numerous other cities and was a key platform plank when Harris ran for and won the election for state Attorney General.
 
SezMe said:
I have used up (already!) my NYT free articles so I couldn't read your link, although I did see that it was written by Friedman so would have had to read it with more than the normal skepticism. In any case, can you give a quickie summary.
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You know what it says. Something like:

"While talking to a taxi driver in Beijing last week about Davos, it occurred to me that the American left is often a lot like the Chinese toy makers we passed by as they were eating lunch outside. Many want to believe that progress can only come from governments, but progress is like power; it can be addictive."

Bla bla bla....
 
OMG! I just clicked on it and I wasn't that far off!

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.
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ETA: the text of the article has absolutely nothing to do with the sentence "Even today, there are American progressives who still see the totalitarian state as an agent of progress." Here Friedman is just complaining about the GOP and calling us a "one party democracy" because the GOP was obstructing Obama and the democrats. Or something like that.
 
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CORed said:
I've kind of lost track. Has the number of Democratic candidates reached the point where you need to switch from a spreadsheet to a database to keep track of them yet?
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There are 1,048,576 rows in an Excel spreadsheet, so no, not yet.
 
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