Very well written. Thanks
Very well written. The left will never give up that thesis; it proves the similarities between the Nazi's and Douglas.
Like I said, it just rots your gut that Tommy is considered the Greatest Canadian ever. If this was anything other than sour grapes you would have made an effort to provide us with the full info you're basing your smear job on rather than simply plucking bits and pieces out of context. Anyway, who cares. You're a nobody so it's not like you're going to change the public's opinion.
I would qualify that statement as "Tommy Douglas" greatest Canadian Myth.
Hey DT: I see the moonbats still cannot articulate a reasoned factual counter argument......then Robert's stock in trade is substituting name calling for reasoned substance....he wasn't voted the worst blogger of the year for no reason ;-)
Robert sure gets personal, doesn't he?
Robert, The Greatest Canadian contest on CBC made people ask questions about who Tommy was, as a person. Nothing more. You just can't stand the truth about the man.
Robert, if you had the thesis, would you post the entire thing on your blog?
DT, I doubt Robert would ever post it, or even acknowledge it for that matter. But, once he reads it, he will know the truth, and I always say 'never under estimate the power of the truth'.
My great uncle campaigned hard for Alan Blakeney in 1971, he was extremely devoted to the CCF/NDP. He now campaigns for Maurice Vellacott, which is too far of the beaten path for me, but it shows how much people can change.
Even my left-wing-card-caring-union-member-brother has left the NDP. There is always hope.
R.McClelland;
Please stop referring to Tommy Douglas as the "Greatset Canadian".
That was a piece of CBC "dreck'
presented as entertainment.
The list was laughable.
MOst of the eugenic theories that abounded at the time were taken up by the Right, of course. We do see differences, though, in these period-pieces: the Right wanted to sterilize or do away with whole ethnic groups or "races," as well as the "unfit." It wasn't long ago that several US states could forcibly sterilize a person for being epileptic.
So, yes, context is important; and it's disingenuous to do this trash job on Douglas without paying a lot more attention to it.
In my neigbourhood when I was young there lived a "sub-normal" family. They produced ten children, as I recall. I'm in no way a eugenicist--I don't believe in breeding human beings like cattle--but I will end with this question, meant to be provocative: what do you do about unfettered reproduction of those who are cognitively impaired, assuming we are clear on what the latter means?
Dr. Dawg - a 'subnormal family', with 'subnormal' defined as below normal IQ, could not have lived on their own as a family. They would have required extensive social service assistance and I doubt if this was available at the time.
Therefore, your memory and perception of them has to be faulty.
There is no reason to presume that their children would have been also 'cognitively impaired'.
Dr. Dawg,
Prove it. Where are these Canadian politicians with their so-called "right-wing" theories about eugenics? I would be very happy to read them.
If you make the effort to read T.C.'s thesis, and I hope you do, you will read the following: "Since the child’s birth about a year and a half ago, this girl has been in hospital for miscarriages, and has had to be
sterilized for the protection of the community."
the actually thesis is far worse than what is referred to here.
Dawg: If you'd take the time to go to a University and dig up the thesis, you'd find that instead of doing a disingenuous hack job, I've been incredibly even handed and kind to Tommy.
I could easily have made the point, that judging by his thesis Tommy suffered from psychopathy... I could've made him out to be even more of a woman hating moralizing supremacist with no capacity for empathy. Instead, I toned it down simply because one thesis is not enough to make that much of a judgement.
If I could post the thesis I wouldn't have had to write a thing... just let the work speak for itself. Anyone with any psychological or analytical skills would've figured it out for themselves. And, my conclusion does put his work in context. Tommy had decades, indeed a century or more, of very libertarian compassionate work to draw on, especially from among his Baptists and other Christians. Tommy "chose" to have his views... they weren't an accident of history.
I can assure ET that such a family existed. Even someone with an IQ of 90 can get a job. Perhaps, though, if he won't take my word for this particular example, he might agree that the Elva Bottineau ménage is a more recent instance.
Trent: I'm talking then, not now. There is a grand tradition of eugenics on the Right from Gobineau to Hitler and beyond. The notion of "defective" human beings has been around for quite a while, and cannot readily be identified with one part of the political spectrum to the
exclusion of all others except by what you might call secondary
characteristics--"race" for the Right, "subnormal familes"
(non-racialized) on the other. The proposed solutions differ, too--gas chambers for (some of)the Right, sterilization for (some of)the Left.
Douglas wrote his thesis in the early 'thirties, when he was 29. For the time, it was quite unremarkable. As I noted, far more recently epileptics were forcibly sterilized in various US states. Bringing Douglas' views on eugenics forward seventy years later to prove some kind of partisan point is frankly disingenuous.
So, DT: What would your solution to the problem of the "subnormal family" be,assuming we could ever agree on what we mean by that phrase? This was once widely debated on all sides as a social problem to be resolved. Such discourse seems a little dated now, of course, not to mention suspect. But, posed as a "problem" once upon a time, people discussed solutions. Douglas' solutions were, for their time, unfortunately pretty mainstream.
I have difficulty believing, by the way, that he blamed poverty on the poor. Had he done so, he would have had a promising future in the Conservative Party of the time--and even now!
The Greatest Canadian, eh! More like the Greatest Con! As P.T. Barnum said "There is a sucker born every minute" and Snake-Oil Tommy mesmerized a whole lot of suckers.
Tommy's so-called "thesis" it seems, is based solely upon opinion rather than scientific sampling and statistical analysis. His results are laughable, if not outright psychopathic.
What Tommy recommends as solutions for the "subnormal", is equatable today with the North African and European Muslims performing clitirodectomys on women under Sharia (Islamic) law.
Tommy Douglas had not one shred of empathy or respect for humanity. His public personna was simply a well-calculated guise used to manipulate voters into the CCF/NDP, and provide him the political grandstand he needed to feed his overblown ego and lust for power.
Without Canadian democracy constraining him, Tommy had the potential to be a very dangerous man.
Dawg: You are trying to score cheap political points without any backing:
"Had he done so, he would have had a promising future in the Conservative Party of the time--and even now!"
I articulated my position on this clearly, so I have little to add as you are simply asking questions that I have already answered. I have read extensively on this period and had politically active relatives who lived in this period who were from Tommy's exact class; so I stand by what I said. And that, is that Tommy had a vast resource of intellectual and Christian doctrine to draw from which he chose not to do.
You are making apologies for Tommy, yet I sense, that were he not "T.C. Douglas of the CCF" you'd be roasting him. That, by the way, is one thesis (pardon the pun) of my post series. And that, is proved by YOUR reference that it was usually "conservatives" who held these views.
Found in Wikipedia...
"Tommy Douglas, for his Master of Arts degree, wrote a thesis titled, "The Problem of the Subnormal Family". Unlike most scholarly work which depends heavily on research and corrective devices such as a double-blind structure, the Douglas thesis amounts to little more than 34 pages of Tommy’s bigoted and ultra-conservative views on the causes, impact, and remedies for families that are considered “Subnormal”. Douglas’ definition of the Subnormal Family was as follows:
By “subnormal” we mean (1) a family whose mental rating is low, i.e. anywhere from high grade moron to mentally defective; (2) a family whose moral standards are below normal, and who are delinquent; and (3) as a usual but not necessary corollary, a family subject to social disease, and (4) so improvident as to be a public charge.’
From the onset, Douglas makes assumptions that even when taken in the context of the 1930’s, are bigoted, cruel, and supremacist:
‘it remains for us to consider remedies that at least mitigate, if not remove, the problem of the subnormal family from the midst of modern society.’
While this sort of thinking may have been fashionable in the 1930s, thinking that gave rise to the likes of Adolf Hitler, it epitomizes the ideological slant that most contemporary NDP/CCF governments have adopted -- a firmly held belief that government should take care of the people because people are not capable of taking care of themselves."
Sounds like, ugly?
Dawg,
Why do your so-called "subnormal family" even require a solution?
And, because Tommy wrote the thesis when he was 29, does not excuse his thinking. That rationalization means that individuals are not capable of intelligent thought or accountable for their actions until much older. My son would like your logic.
I also think the thesis points out Tommy's true thoughts. These writings are a more true portrayal of Tommy versus his sanitized beliefs rendered for public consumption.
"...these same apologists continue to raise Douglas onto a pedestal. Yet, the same class rage tirelessly against any opponent who so much as offers valid critique of any Socialist Utopian pillar. So much as a murmur of criticism against the liberal judiciary, gay marriage, universal healthcare, militant feminism, or multiculturalism, is met with outcries of “racist”, “bigot”, “imperialist”, or worse yet; not representative of “Canadian Values.” Individuals who critique socialist tenets are removed from committees, raged against in the media, and called names that should be reserved for those who… who hold views like Tommy Douglas..."
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you exhibit A: Dr. Dawg.
Heh. Well that's telling me.
Since I have never put Douglas on a pedestal, I'm not being critized here--some convenient strawman is.
But what I said stands: there was nothing extraordinary about his views at the time. They were fairly widespread. The Right and the Left did, however, have different solutions for this widely-discussed "problem."
I notice that DT didn't deal with a single substantive point I made--the more recent use of forced sterilization in the US for epileptics (not to mention anti-miscegenation laws, come to think of it); the difference in Left and Right approaches vis-a-vis eugenics; the lack of evidence for claiming that Douglas blamed the poor for their own plight (the quotes certainly do not back this up). Even my challenge to propose his own solution to the "problem" that Douglas and so many others of all political stripes addressed has met with no response.
Blaming poverty on the poor is indeed a cornerstone of Right thinking. Just check out any of the usual suspects during the Katrina mess. Surely I don't have to provide examples.
"Just check out any of the usual suspects during the Katrina mess." ????????? Wow, talk about using "pink" colored glasses.
And yes, provide examples, and be sure to give them full context. Mr. Dawg, you are grasping at straws, so I suggest you give specific references to your so-called proofs, and be sure again to give context, as any fact without it is useless.
Needlemeyer, I have no idea what you're on about. Proofs of what? I, for one, want proof that Douglas blamed poverty on the poor. I want proof that Douglas was some kind of Nazi. I want proof that eugenics is or was a Left phenomenon. I want proof that eugenics wasn't a widespread concern at the time Douglas wrote his thesis.
So far, nothing.
Katrina? Check out the poisonous references cited here: http://drdawgsblawg.blogspot.com...l-
probably.html
The conflict about what equality means to a utopian socialist and what it means to a conservative is perhaps the lesson you’ve provided, DT, within the character of Tommy.
I used to think that socialism was like a lab experiment that went wrong, like a Frankenstein movie.
It now appears that Tommy was more like a Jekyll and Hyde movie. Maybe that’s true of socialism generally.
Jekyll and Hyde is less forgivable than Frankenstein; the latter could be simply considered a mistake that went terribly wrong. But Jekyll and Hyde is about a deeply immoral psychopathology. It’s about the constant war within us of good and evil and that same conflict which sets societies against each other.
Because the left is utopian they can’t comprehend that this struggle is as natural a phenomenon as the tides. The utopians think that they can socially engineer the problem away and make everybody equal. In contrast, conservatives admit the struggle won’t go away and instead attempt to structure law and order in such a way as to reward good behaviour and punish bad. Conservatives have no expectation to end up with everybody equal; rather they simply wish to give everybody a chance to achieve their best.
It seems Tommy couldn’t fathom everybody being capable of becoming worth something – morally, financially and spiritually.
All of which means to me that because the left is so pessimistic about human abilities to rise to the occasion that they adopt a utopian outlook to counter their pessimism. However, conservatives are able to live with the unpleasant reality of good and evil in the world because their optimism allows them to believe that the evil can perhaps be conquered by an approach as simple as: peace, order and good government.
It appears Tommy was a real pessimist.
Who said, that eugenics was a theory of the left... it was a theory of Tommy Douglas, and that's what my post was about.
"Blaming poverty on the poor is indeed a cornerstone of Right thinking."
So, I see that we have now deflected the Douglas story into the Conservatives aparant hate for the poor. I won't even bother debating that one; we might as well start debating on whether or not there is a god.
All of which means to me that because the left is so pessimistic about human abilities to rise to the occasion that they adopt a utopian outlook to counter their pessimism.
Indeed, the Left is optimistic about human abilities to rise to the occasion. It is conservatives who are not, and who think that, whatever we do as a society, there will always be winners and losers.
So, I see that we have now deflected the Douglas story into the Conservatives aparant hate for the poor.
Well, not exactly. But that is a corollary, and I gave a few references.
If I wrote about Charlotte Whitton that way, and attempted to spin that into a generalization about the Right without being upfront enough to admit that this was a motive, how would you react?
In any case, why not address even one of the points I made? Talk about deflection. I appreciate that you did a lot of work on your series--but you didn't do enough to prevent it looking as tendentious as it is.
Dr Dawg,
I am a Conservative, who do you think you are to tell me how I think? Can you read minds? Tommy tells us how he thought in his thesis. It is clear the man had a diseased mind, period.
Any person that supports ideas like Tommy lays out in his thesis does not deserve to be a member of the Order of Canada.
Dr. Dawg: Again, you are tossing around such broad generalities that I'm not even going to debate them. For every generalization about the "right" there is one about the "left".
I'll stake my beliefs on historic and current reality as I live it daily. Don't forget, I live in the socialist utopian capital of Canada, which has given me every reason to believe that my views are sound. I live and see every day what Socialist Utopianism brings, and I know one thing, that no socialist in his right mind will ever reduce poverty, destitution, crime, etc., because to do so means to get voted out... the perpetuation of these, in Saskatchewan, while professing falsely to care, is the socialist ticket to re-election. The poorest, and worst crime district in the province is that of the premier... and under his loving care, it has only gotten worse. NDP socialism does not work... period. In the end, its gotten Sask. the worst longest waiting lists for healthcare, the murder capital of the country, the theft capital, the obesity capital, a literal flood of our best and brightest running from the province, and mind numbing government expenses for the size of the province. Socialist Utopians thrive off of social problems, so they make sure to never fix them. Just think, since the day Tommy took the premiership, this province has been Socialist virtually every day... and look what we have.
There is a reason why the National NDP will never be more than a fringe.
I am sure if you send this information to the CBC, they will hastily construct a documentary and apologize for calling him the Greatest Canadian. Right?
If you'd like to examine the history of the 'progressive' eugenics to which Tommy Douglas belonged and its ties to the 'progressive' and oft-praised Margaret Sanger, visit:
http://www.inklingbooks.com/inkl...linguniversity/
You might also want to read G. K. Chesterton's 1922 classic, Eugenics and Other Evils, which explores eugenics in the UK.
--Mike Perry, Seattle
Robert McClelland, you are one of the sickest puppies the world has ever seen.
"Like I said, it just rots your gut that Tommy is considered the Greatest Canadian ever. If this was anything other than sour grapes you would have made an effort to provide us with the full info you're basing your smear job on rather than simply plucking bits and pieces out of context. Anyway, who cares. You're a nobody so it's not like you're going to change the public's opinion."Or I could quote any of the other twisted crap you post all over the Internet.
— Robert McClelland
Hey Dawg: Is it possible to find a lefty moonbat that doesn't either deny the historic record or revises it to suit their sick political agenda?
If your pitiful historic reflection on eugenics is and attempt at painting the fascist eugenics regimes as "right",...that flushing sound you hear is your intellectual credibility.
Fascism = nation socialism = statist olicharchial socialism .....it entailes the same central control of society/economy/the individual by government as all the other socialist dogmas.....the same post modernist leftist dogma that allowed Tommy Douglas to assume the state has a role as a eugenics vicariate and had a right to dictate the reproductive worth of the individual and the nation's population control. Yeah really "right" wing.....even the economic darwinists of the day couldn't touch the left's (progressive) statist hubris it takes to presume a government holds the divinity to decide who is worthy to reproduce and who is not.
Today the statist Orwellianism of the proto-eugenics leftists is alive in the abortuaries and euthenasia lobbies of the nation....and the Dippers are front and center when it comes to offering society the Kevorkian solution to population control.
Would that be the same Robert McClelland who posts "Fuck The Jews"
on his website, and this Jew hater pretends he has an opinion on eugenics....typical fucked in the head communist.!
Thanks, WLM. You are exactly right. Dawg's (I really can't call him 'Dr') constant iteration that the ideology of fascism is a 'right' political mode is completely wrong.
Fascism is 'left', i.e., it is socialist, it is a centralist authoritarian governance that rejects local decision-making. It is extremely intrusive, all-embracing control over people's lives. That's socialism; that's the 'left'. The 'right' removes government centralism, removes authoritarian controls and enables individual and local decision making.
Dawg doesn't seem to understand this basic fact.
Just for the record.
Douglas is considered the greatest Canadian ever only by the socialist run CBC.
I would imagine with a little digging proof could be found that the NDP mounted a call-in campaign to get him the votes. Grass roots organisation has always been their strength. That and the belief that only they know what is good for Canadians.
ET: Pull the other one. Hitler championed the individual over the mass. No amount of revisionist chit-chat is going to change the inconvenient fact that Hitler stood for every value dear to the right. He was anti-abortion, anti-gay, racist, sexist and nationalist.
Here, for your edification (since you've obviously failed to complete your research) are a few quotes from Herr Hitler that should settle this matter once and for all:
"Thus at the origin of the material civilization which flourishes
to-day we always see individual persons. They supplement one another and one of them bases his work on that of another. The same is true in regard
to the practical application of those inventions and discoveries. For all
the various methods of production are in their turn inventions also and
consequently dependant on the creative faculty of the individual. Even in
purely theoretical work, which can not be measured by a definite rule and
is preliminary to all subsequent technical discoveries, is exclusively the product of the individual brain. The broad masses do not invent, nor does the majority organize or think; but always and in every case the individual man, the person."
"Therfore not only does the organization possess no right to prevent men of brains from rising above the multitude but, on the contrary, it must use its organizing powers to enable and promote that ascension as far as it
possibly can. It must start out from the principle that the blessings of
mankind never came from the masses but from the creative brains of
individuals, who are therefore the real benefactors of humanity. It is in
the interest of all to assure men of creative brains a decisive influence
and facilitate their work. This common interest is surely not served by
allowing the multitude to rule, for they are not capable of thinking nor
are they efficient and in no case whatsoever can they be said to be gifted. Only those should rule who have the natural tempermant and gifts of leadership."
"Though all human civilization has resulted exclusively from the
creative activity of the individual, the principle that it is the mass
which counts--through the decision of the majority-- makes its appearance
only in the administration of the national community especially in the
higher grades; and from their downwards the poison gradually filters into all branches of national life, thus causing a veritable decomposition."
"Marxism represents the most striking phase to eliminate the dominant significance of personality in every sphere of human life and replace it by the numerical power of the masses. In politics the parlimentary form of government is the expression of this effort. We can observe the fatal effects of it everywhere, from the smallest parish council upwards to the highest governing circles of the nation. In the field of economics we see the trades union movement, which does not serve the real interests of the employees but the des
[I obviously ran out of space. Here's that last quotation of mine, plus a little more commentary]
"Marxism represents the most striking phase to eliminate the dominant significance of personality in every sphere of human life and replace it by the numerical power of the masses. In politics the parlimentary form of government is the expression of this effort. We can observe the fatal effects of it everywhere, from the smallest parish council upwards to the highest governing circles of the nation. In the field of economics we see the trades union movement, which does not serve the real interests of the employees but the destructive aims of international Jewry."
With the exception of that last anti-Semitic flourish, these ideas seem to reflect respectable mainstream conservative thinking. Without attribution, I could have gotten a lot of heads nodding here, I suspect.
Of course, if you're running back and forth on that other axis, the one with statism on one end and libertarianism on the other, be my guest, but that doesn't really help to define the Right and Left categories. Augusto Pinochet was/is a darling of the Right, for example, and he was no anti-statist. Ditto George W. Bush, when you get right down to it.
For the record, I took that little political quiz awhile back (the one everyone here has probably taken as well) and came out on the libertarian side. Imagine that! :)
As for the yahoo who posted just before you, let me note that I usually debate only with those who know how to spell. It's just an idiosyncrasy of mine.
Dawg,
What about gun control? That is one of the most left-wing socialist ideas out there. The Federal NDP hold that up a sacred cow. Hitler was all for it.
But even if Hilter wasn't a socialist, like you claim. Let us say that he did just "borrow" the term to get "credibility" and win over millions of "fair minded" socialist voters. This is what you would like us to believe, correct? Well if that were to be true, you have to remember that Hilter was only one man! In your twisted argument you openly admit that Hitler's followers were socialists; his followers are the ones that ran the concentration camps! It took MILLIONS of people - most of them left-wing socialists according to you - to commit the mass murders under Hitler.
And by the way, no right-winger would EVER let anyone call him/her a socialist. That would be paramount to spitting in her/his face.
In your twisted argument you openly admit that Hitler's followers were socialists; his followers are the ones that ran the concentration camps!
You're raving.
Hitler championed the individual over the masses
Ummmmm... I've likely read 500 books on that period of history, and I'm sorry sir, you are way off on this one. The Nazis Regime was a socialist regime where conformity and central control were complete. Individualism went as far as tending your garden.
Fascism, in every single instance in the history of humankind was Socialist in nature in the purest sense. It could be argued, that Fascism was more purely socialist than Communism. Please explain how Fascism, was "rightwing" in the contemporary context of what is rightwing and leftwing today. ie: Fascism = conservative, libertarian (championing the individual), rightwing
Just as a little aside from history: The greatest survival rate for Jews in Western Europe during WW2 was in Denmark and in Germany. In Germany, as Cornelius Ryan documented, the salvation of Jews was largely done by the German Baptist Congregations, which hid the survivors and many of whom ended executed for their compassion. Baptist = rightwing christian = Tommy Douglas' denomination. Like I said, Tommy had no excuse for his radical views.
Dawg says at 7.33 PM, “It is conservatives who are not (optimistic), and who think that, whatever we do as a society, there will always be winners and losers.”
No. Again there is the word “loser” automatically defaulted to by the pessimistic left so that they can position their utopian ideology of “equality” as being the only fair solution.
Conservatives don’t want “losers” any more than the left does. We can agree on that much, I think. But conservatives are realistic enough to realize there will always be a pecking order in whatever society or sub-culture that we are members of: be it economics, academics, business, sports etc. In all these endeavours people are not equal.
But the way conservatives handle inequality is to try and create a country where the boat rises for all that are in it. We try to get everyone in the boat and above water. But we don’t expect all those in the boat to be equal. The evidence is clear globally that this conservative method will keep more people above water than socialism.
Dr. Dawg: Your use of this quote must be taken in context with everything else that Hitler was saying at the time and doing. He was speaking of intellectual creative strength of the individual; yet at the same time he was harnessing all institutions under the direction of central state control. As well, he only classed the creative power of the "genetically pure" as worthy of freedom. Not even the slavic races were counted in his personal views. The reality of Adolf's philosophy was the rolling back of individual rights, and only expanding those of a select few. The National Socialist Party of Germany was on paper the perfect model of what socialists espouse today. For you to use this quote, which by the way does nothing to show that the governmental/economic/social structure set up by Hitler "valued" the individual, is disingenuous. Surely, you know the reality of Hitler's Germany and how he structured it. Surely, you must know that his party was the "National Socialist Party". Surely, you must know that central top down governance was Germany after Hitler took power with a minimum of personal freedom.
A good friend of our family, a Baron, an industrialist, the inventer of the two way internal hydrolic piston (like on hatchbacks), and owner of a large firm in Germany went to a concentration camp because he failed to conform to top down government dictations under Speer. Even as a wealthy industrialist, he was not spared the socialist nazi system.
Hitler produced nothing remotely like socialism, DT. He stood for everything I oppose, but which conservatives adore: anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro-nationalist and so on.
Because he used the word "socialist" to woo Germans away from the Communist Party doesn't make him a "socialist" at all. A key proof of this is that he co-opted capital rather than confiscating it--but that's another discussion.
Incidentally, according to that little political quiz you know about, I'm aligned with libertarianism. How about that? Does that make me a conservative? :)
Hitler produced nothing remotely like socialism, DT. He stood for everything I oppose, but which conservatives adore: anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro-nationalist and so on.
Now you really have me laughing. I think its time for you to go back to reading a bit of history, and boning up on definitions. Furthermore, your generalization of what conservatives think and believe is insultingly presumptuous. Your grasp of modern conservativism is very dated.
Dawg, you’ve labelled lesbian/feminist Mayor Charlotte Whitton a conservative. She’s a person who that after graduation ..“from Queen's she became the director of the Canadian Council on Social Welfare and helped bring about a wide array of new legislation to help children.”
All this is could very well mean she is indeed a conservative, this resume neither makes her conservative not disqualifies her from being conservative. But again, what is it about her that makes you label her conservative?
Whoops , sorry about the double post, I meant to add ..
BTW Dawg, libertarianism might temporarily work in a commune in Nevada while living in a Volkswagen bus painted psychedelic colours. But it doesn’t work in a global population of 6.5 billion people in an economically interdependent world. Also, libertarianism certainly won’t work while we’re at war against Islamofascism.
Nomdenet:
I'm finding myself in the same discussion on two different boards. I posted my references about Whitton over at SDA.
DT:
Your non-response tells me that your "modern conservative" is pro-choice on abortion, not anti-gay, and not nationalist. (I could have mentioned Hitler's opposition to unions, too--you will tell me that consefvatives are now pro-union, I imagine).
Well, if that's the case, you could have fooled me. Those identifying with conservatism in the blogosphere, then, should be more accurately described as paleoconservatives, then--it that what you're saying?
I wouldn't mind a couple of examples of these modern conservatives of yours. In the meantime, I'll continue with my fond and foolish belief that Canadian conservatives tend to dislike unions, code their homophobia as opposition to SSM, defend patriotism, and oppose choice on abortion. Note, please, that I said "tend to." A quick romp through the right side of the blogosphere should bear me out.
Mr. Dawg: You are of course entitled to you views. I'm sure you base them on what you feel is sound logic. We are now into a debate though, that is completely circular and not capable of termination; so forgive me if I bow out. It's almost like argueing over "whose dad is stronger!"
I will continue to base my beliefs largely on what I've experienced in reality, not in theory. And, as I live in the Socialist Utopian capital of Canada, I do have some grounds for my beliefs (at the same time, I will acknowledge that a balance of people in Sask. have voted socialist for decades). But, I take enormous and smug pride in being able to tell my fellow socialists, "I told you so!" as my province slowly sinks into the gutter despite being rich in resources. But, I digress.
If you want to debate Douglas, and his thesis, I'll do that. I will not fall for the technique of changing topics by introducing hardly relavent facts that lead to other issues. I've done enough of that here already. Did you consider, that any one of your deviations from topic could themselves take hours of debate to even offer proper thesis and counter thesis with evidence, not to mention accurate context?
The topic is T. C. Douglas and his thesis... not rightwing/leftwing/fascist definitions and the condensed history of Adolf Hitler.
I’m on 2 boards now too. Apologies to DT. I’ll only post here on Tommy from now on …
Dawg, I’m still confused. You say Whitton, a lesbian, is “An arch social conservative”. Is that possible? She can certainly be lesbian and conservative, I’m in favour of SSM for example. But how can she be a so-con lesbian?
I’d say you also have a bit of an oxymoron with “a feminist on the right”.
Dawg, let me cut to the chase, we’re all guilty of lumping left/right and dipper/conservative into nice tight little packages. It can’t be done. People are too complex.
To get back to the topic of what Tommy couldn’t appreciate is that people are complex. That’s why only freedom of choice (on Health Care, nanny care, employment) can work with an advanced well-educated population.
Dippers and conservatives want the same compassionate results on matters like poverty and the environment. The debate should be about how to govern ourselves in a way that optimizes the best chances of low poverty and a clean environment. Now that we got rid of the Liberals for awhile maybe we can dissent again and let ideas compete for the best solution. Tommy’s antiquated ideas of top down central planning won’t work. Even Red China has figured that out, they are more capitalist than we are. That’s why the sense of urgency by conservatives that we have to change quickly to survive economically.
Whew. I'm glad someone finally called us to order here. It looked like I was going to have to defend my entire Weltanschauung there for a while.
Back to Douglas and eugenics, then, by all means. Perhaps DT would respond to some of the points I made before I was sidetracked.
Briefly:
Why does engaging with a notion that was popular in his time render him worse, somehow, than his fellow citizens who accepted the same commonplaces?
How does his unremarkable (for the time) position on eugenics reflect on his subsequent politics? Put another way, is it possible to have supported eugenics and had a contrary politics?
How can one draw the conclusion from the quotations provided that he hated the poor rather than poverty itself? And, being well aware of the connection between eugenics and the newly-emerging science of genetics, as Douglas was, how could he be taken to have "blamed" the "defectives" he speaks of for their situation, which was outside their control?
For the record, I'm not all that keen on centralized planning myself, and I consider myself a socialist. But medicare, whatever its warts and bumps, is one hell of an achievement, in my book. One simply has to look South and count one's blessings. And we got it all without forced sterilization, too.
Or perhaps I should say, independently of it. The practice was legislated in Alberta, not a province noted for its espousal of socialism. It took the Alberta government until 1972, for crying out loud, to repeal the Sexual Sterilization Act. But you have to go back to 1933 to get in a kick at Tommy Douglas. Mote. Beam. Eye.
DT, the lack of intellectual integrity and comprehensibility displayed by dd and rm in their "far-fetched reasoning" comments to this most excellent piece is extremely sad.
Good go! for finding and posting this rot from TD. And kudos, too, for Mike Perry posting on the obvious connection between TD's twisted opinions and those of Margaret Sanger. The same llll who first wanted to forcibly sterilize the world's poor and dark-skinned, and when that wouldn't fly morphed her ideas into what today is called Planned Parenthood. Same sick ideas, but now it carries a mantle of "socialistic respectibility" among the world's politcally insane.
49er: I couldn't cover every little detail of the thesis for obvious reasons, so let me say now, that Tommy did go into a "planned parenthood" type discussion in the thesis. He was well on his way.
Dr. Dawg:
I'll simply refer you back to what I've already said in this post, especially in the latter paragraphs. All my answers to your points are there.
The left is so on the defensive now that their savior has been exposed as a eugeneticist, horror of horrors!
It must be terrifying for them to have their savior seen now in the same light as the Aryan doctors deciding who is and isn't fit to live...
Perhaps the left should drop Tommy Douglas as their savior and turn their backs on him... or they'll be tainted forever...
Poor, poor pitiful left...
Will they ever recover from their ignominious fall from exaltation?
Gosh--how will the conservatives ever leave their awful legacy of forced sterilizations in Alberta and BC behind? They gave Hitler a legacy!
Sentinel, grow up.
As for you, DT, old sparring partner, let's just say I don't believe you have made your case.
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