The Population Control Holocaust

By Robert Zubrin | Spring 2012 | The New Atlantis

Editor’s Note: The essay below is adapted from Robert Zubrin’s Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, the latest in our New Atlantis Books series.

There is a single ideological current running through a seemingly disparate collection of noxious modern political and scientific movements, ranging from militarism, imperialism, racism, xenophobia, and radical environmentalism, to socialism, Nazism, and totalitarian communism. This is the ideology of antihumanism: the belief that the human race is a horde of vermin whose unconstrained aspirations and appetites endanger the natural order, and that tyrannical measures are necessary to constrain humanity. The founding prophet of modern antihumanism is Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), who offered a pseudoscientific basis for the idea that human reproduction always outruns available resources. Following this pessimistic and inaccurate assessment of the capacity of human ingenuity to develop new resources, Malthus advocated oppressive policies that led to the starvation of millions in India and Ireland.

British ‘Ethicists’: Babies Can Be Killed

By William Bigelow | April 12, 2012 | Breitbart

Two medical ethicists connected to Oxford University are arguing in Oxford’s Journal of Medical Ethics that babies have no moral status, and can be killed because they are only “potential persons” rather than “actual persons.” They also argue that if a newborn is disabled, it can be killed.

The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said in their defense, “The goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.” When asked about the threats made against the article’s authors, he casually categorized them as “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society.”

Read the full article here.

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Progressivism: The After-Birth Abortion Ideology

The Blaze

By Nick Rizzuto

Both sides of the political spectrum appeared to be appalled at the suggestion made by Australian ethicists Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva that newborns “are not persons,” making them ineligible for the rights western society traditionally affords them and opening the door to the moral acceptability of what they term the ”after-birth abortion.” Hand wringing aside, what makes this idea dangerous to us here in America is that it is absolutely consistent with Progressive ideology, the dominant political ideology of the left.

For some historical context, the Greek city-state of Sparta provides us with the first documented program of systematic after-birth abortion. A Spartan child born with a deformity or who was perceived in any way as being weak would be thrown into a chasm. For these ancient Greeks, the program was a winning proposition. The death of the inferior child reduced the strain on scarce resources. It made perfect sense for a society that considered austerity to be chief among virtues. The greatest minds of the time saw nothing particularly unethical about what Spartan society was doing. In fact, the idea was even co-opted by Plato as an integral component of his utopian Republic.

Fast forward 25 centuries or so and the American Government’s plan to subsidize population control measures is still, ultimately, a strategy for controlling the consumption of resources. Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius accidentally let that fact slip recently, when in front of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health she said, “The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception.” It’s simply a matter of dollars and cents.

Read the full article here.

The Ryan Test: Demagoguery Versus Ideas

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Jonathan S. Tobin | August 11, 2012 | Commentary Magazine As John wrote earlier today, liberals are convinced that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate offers them a golden opportunity to savage the Republicans about the Wisconsin congressman’s budget plans. Predictably, the New York Times delivered one of the first such salvos in its editorial posted […]

Smoking Obama’s Crack and Yearning for the Mud

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Vanderleun | August 10, 2012 | American Digest [From 2008. Only the names have been changed because the target has changed.] This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it’s a fall, not […]