Marge Sanger’s smoking gun is a book called “The Pivot of Civilization,” which you can download for free:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1689/1689.txt
P.S. Epstein, you need a new headshot. That one looks like a 1970s child star.

Random Sanger quote:
“Moreover, woman shall further assert her power by refusing to remain
the passive instrument of sensual self-gratification on the part of
men. Birth Control, in philosophy and practice, is the destroyer of
that dualism of the old sexual code. It denies that the sole purpose
of sexual activity is procreation; it also denies that sex should
be reduced to the level of sensual lust, or that woman should permit
herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction. In increasing and
differentiating her love demands, woman must elevate sex into another
sphere, whereby it may subserve and enhance the possibility of
individual and human expression. Man will gain in this no less than
woman; for in the age-old enslavement of woman he has enslaved himself;
and in the liberation of womankind, all of humanity will experience the
joys of a new and fuller freedom.”

This is another example of how paleoconservatives are becoming less and less like conservatives. This whitewash of history is something we expect from neocons. Are you guys so bitter about being removed from The Heritage Foundation’s Rolodex that you now must praise Leftist icons?

This site has touted Social Justice, Darwinist naturalism and now Planned Parenthood. Enough already. We need a new conservatism in this country that doesn’t recast last year’s liberalism.

Today’s paleocon is just a neocon whose query letter was rejected by Rich Lowry.

What is life?

Define it.

I really need you to define life Marcus.

“...NAACP founder W.E.B. Dubois.”

Huh? Pardon me, but the NAACP is almost entirely a Jewish construct, as can be seen here:
http://wsi.matriots.com/JewsNAACP.html

“What is life?

Define it.”

I’m not Marcus, but I’d define it thusly:

Philosophically, off the top of my head: The actuality of an internal principle of nutrition and/or growth and/or etc., where nutrition, growth, etc. signify the various powers of the soul.

Biologically, this would translate as something like “the primary condition of that which is naturally one when the cells that constitute it are moving of their own accord.”

Peter Ramus is right.

Let’s follow Marcus’s logic:

1. Margaret Sanger was not in favor of abortion.
2. She was, however, in favor of eugenics.
3. She founded Planned Parenthood to advance her eugenicist views.
4. Planned Parenthood eventually began providing abortions.
5. Therefore: a) Margaret Sanger is not responsible at all for the actions of the organization she founded (since she was not in favor of abortion); and b) the organization she founded, which has never publicly repudiated her eugenicist views, is unfairly attacked for the views of its founder, because they were held by “many people of her time” (even though most of the people who held them did not form organizations to advance those views).

Did I miss anything?

The only way Marcus’s argument makes sense is if he believes that the mission of Planned Parenthood, then and now, is a laudable one.  Since I doubt that Marcus believes that, I’m at a loss as to why he would write such a post.

Sanger was right on her views.  The Republican National Convention should adopt a resolution that no person may accept its nomination for president who does not accept them and pledge to carry them out.

Her words jar because the truth jars.  Our society has gone the wrong way and we see the fruits of lying to ourselves for decades.  Bad genes kill a civilization based on good genes.  Filtering out bad genes is a basic job of life.  Life can not continue if bad genes are not filtered out.  It is the task of every generation.

Sanger was a eugenicist, but so was everybody else.  She was against abortion, and the main motivation for her contraceptive zeal was not eugenics, but sexual liberation.  These are useful clarifications.  Needless to say the provoke the usual tiresome “Paleos are n*ggerloving tools of the J*ws” spam.  Maybe much abortionism has a racial agenda, one some of our commenters may share.  You could certainly cite the Rockafeller study and so on.  But if even Sanger can be quoted pro life, this something to be noted and made use of.  Now the Catholic position seems to be that sexual liberation is inherently antilife, and maybe Sanger was wrong not to go the whole hog, but we don’t need to misrepresnt what she thought, as even I might have done.

Although many favored eugenics, support was by no means universal, and the Catholic Church, both here and in Europe, was a vigorous opponent.  The sole dissenter to Oliver Wendell Holmes’ deservedly infamous opinion in Buck v Bell was Pierce Butler, a conservative Catholic.  Of course, Cardinal von Galen of Munster was a famous opponent of Nazi eugenics laws, which resulted in compulsory sterilization and murder.  (A good history of the Nazis and eugenics may be found in Walker Percy’s last novel, “The Thanatos Syndrome.")

I’m tempted to suggest that Mr. Purcell’s remarks above must be in jest, since so many are so obviously incorrect.

Sanger was a eugenicist, but so was everybody else.

As Mr. Piatak has pointed out, that is certainly not true, and even Marcus has simply claimed that Sanger was an eugenicist, “Like many people of her time.” (I’d only add that even “many” makes sense only if we’re talking primarily about Eastern “opinion leaders” of a WASP extraction.)

the main motivation for her contraceptive zeal was not eugenics, but sexual liberation.

Unless I’m missing something (and perhaps I am), Peter Ramus doesn’t seem to be suggesting that the passage he quoted from Sanger reveals what Mr. Purcell claims it does.  (Ramus, in fact, calls it a “random quote,” not a “central” one, or an “exemplar,” or somesuch.)

Anyone who understands anything about early 20th-century progressivism (as Mr. Purcell certainly does) knows that “many” people (though certainly not “everybody") believed in both sexual liberation and eugenics.  Reading Sanger, there is no particular reason to place sexual liberation as more important in her thought than eugenics.  And Planned Parenthood, while she was still alive, focused its efforts primarily on poor, immigrant, Catholic women and blacks--not the middle-class and wealthy women who might have “benefitted” from “sexual liberation.”

Needless to say the provoke the usual tiresome “Paleos are n*ggerloving tools of the J*ws” spam.

Since Mr. Ramus was the only commenter before Mr. Purcell to use any form of the word “paleo,” it seems reasonable to assume that Mr. Purcell’s remark is aimed at Mr. Ramus.  Now, Mr. Ramus and I have tangled on more than one occasion, and it’s certainly true that Mr. Ramus is no fan of mine (or, for that matter, of my religion), but I think that it’s clear that he’s being unfairly judged here.

Mr. Ramus criticized Marcus, not for being one of those “n*ggerloving tools of the J*ws,” but for defending Planned Parenthood, an organization founded on eugenicist principles.  That may not have been Marcus’s intention, but as I pointed out in my comment above, this article really doesn’t make any sense unless Marcus thinks that the mission of Planned Parenthood, then and now, is laudable.  Hence, Mr. Ramus’s comment is perfectly reasonable and cannot reasonably be interpreted as racist.

The gist of Marcus’s post was not to support abortion or planned parenthood but to point out the idiocy of screaming “racism” back at left-liberals and appropriating the ideological and propagandistic terminology of one’s enemies. This foolishness is self-defeating in that it reifies the odious neologism of “racism,” the most pernicious word in the English language, and legitimizes the leftist indictment of American society and history.

@SK:

And yet this post, unlike Marcus’s previous post on abortion, is not about racism, but about eugenics.  The reason it is silly to scream “racism” at supporters of abortion is because there is a logical difference between the two.  Pro-lifers are, in fact, wrong (or at least silly) to rely on the rhetoric of anti-racism as a primary tool in the fight against abortion (even if the tool is just rhetorical).

In this case, however, that logic doesn’t apply.  Planned Parenthood was founded and exists today because of Sanger’s eugenicist views.  To say that pro-lifers should not point out such things because “the guilt by eugenics argument is not restricted to abortion” is ridiculous. 

Why should it matter to us that “Discussions of affirmative action, immigration, and even tax cuts are inevitably attacked by liberals as the product of eugenic thinking”?  If we know that they aren’t, then we should have trouble attacking true eugenicists while still talking about such things.

The only reason this becomes a problem for those engaged in such discussion is if the liberals are right--if they, like Margaret Sanger, are making arguments that are ultimately based on eugenics.  But unless Marcus is claiming that that is what he is doing, he shouldn’t be overly concerned if those who stand against abortion discuss the historical roots of Planned Parenthood--roots that the current organization has never renounced.

One correction: In the second to last paragraph of my previous comment, “then we should have trouble” should, obviously, read “then we should have no trouble.”

In other words, think of it this way: Marcus, who says that he is “sympathetic” to the pro-life cause, but who, I’m sure, would be the first to admit that he doesn’t spend much (if any) time working on such cause, is telling pro-lifers that they should sweep under the rug historical facts about Margaret Sanger and the origins of Planned Parenthood because he finds that the pro-lifers’ discussion of such facts somehow makes it harder for him to discuss issues that he is not merely “sympathetic” to, but passionate about.

The proper response, it seems to me, would be for Marcus to work harder in his own policy discussions and to leave pro-lifers to their own devices.

Mr. Richert is correct.  The American supporters of eugenics were by and large northeastern WASPs of the type whose descendants have moved almost entirely to the left. 

Mr. Richert is also correct that Planned Parenthood has never renounced Sanger’s eugenicist views.  (My own view is that Planned Parenthood is, and always has been, a thoroughly evil organization.)

I take Mr. Epstein’s column for the sound advice that it is in that pro-lifers and other patriots ought to avoid the favored battle cry of the Marxists - e.g., shouting “Hypocrisy!” in order to gain a rhetorical advantage.  Neither should we wield another favored Marxist tool - e.g., assailing some position or other of the Left’s via shallow, ‘drive by’ guilt-by-association smears.

It would be more fruitful to explain that while Magaret Sanger’s views on immigration, as quoted by Mr. Epstein, were sound, her views on eugenics were immoral and promoting the former in no way allows or encourages a pursuit of the latter.

The Left has gained much traction by demanding that its opposition be ‘perfect’ before becoming legitimate.  None other than hoary old Newt Gingrich often said to fellow conservatives: “Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good”.

Scott Richert whined

“[Planned Parenthood] has never publicly repudiated her eugenicist views”

Hmm, that’s odd.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/margaret-sanger-14115.htm
“[Sanger] agreed with the “progressives” of her day who favored

* incentives for the voluntary hospitalization and/or sterilization of people with untreatable, disabling, hereditary conditions

* the adoption and enforcement of stringent regulations to prevent the immigration of the diseased and “feebleminded” into the U.S.

* placing so-called illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, and dope-fiends on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct

Planned Parenthood Federation of America finds [Sanger’s popositions] objectionable and outmoded.”

After all these comments I am still wondering, why is the once praised practice of eugenics now considered bad?
Isn’t it at its core just a re-affirmation of the general principle of “survival of the fittest”, which created intelligent beings in the first place?
Aren’t all these “social” programs the left promotes, designed to set incentives that run counter to these principles?
And judging from the state of intellect the general population in the US today, these programs seem hugely successful in that respect.
Now only one question remains: Who really benefits? Is it all designed to build a more manageable or pliable mass of people? A kind of domestication of the human animal?
I am just wondering.

The person going by the pseudonym of “Garett [sic] Hardin” points us to a page on Planned Parenthood’s website.  It’s an interesting page, in part a repudiation of some of Sanger’s views (and, to that extent, I acknowledge my error in saying that PP has never repudiated any of her views).

It’s also interesting for its continued attempts to whitewash Sanger’s views, and I’d encourage readers to take a look at it for themselves.  There, they will find that the only statements repudiating Sanger’s views are the ones quoted in the comment above.  The rest of the page is an attempt to explain her views away, in contradiction of Sanger’s own statements, many of which the reader can find in the document that Peter Ramus linked earlier in this discussion.

It would be more fruitful to explain that while Magaret Sanger’s views on immigration, as quoted by Mr. Epstein, were sound, her views on eugenics were immoral and promoting the former in no way allows or encourages a pursuit of the latter.

And when Marcus does so, I’ll be the first to offer praise.  But as he left it, we’re not supposed to criticize Sanger’s eugenicist views for fear that others will claim that our opposition to immigration is somehow eugenicist.

Much of the praise for Margaret Sanger comes from the fact that many, if not most, people in our society enjoy fornication and see it as a fundamental human right. If said degeneracy produces unfortunate consequences, they can always be chopped into pieces and sucked out through a tube. Getting some %$@# $#@%! for your ?&$% must be worth it.

Mr. Ramus is exactly right about the reason for support of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood.

Marcus, you want to exculpate Sanger from her opinons on eugenics because everybody was doing it. One big problem with that is that everybody wasn’t doing it. An almost exact contemporary to Sanger was Ludwig von Mises who denounced eugenics as I write about in “Margaret Sanger vs. Ludwig von Mises on the Poor” http://blog.mises.org/archives/005756.asp

It is often unfair when a historical figure’s opinions on A are dismissed because they also happened to hold a now politically incorrect opinion on B. But what if their whole life’s work was fundamentally about B? Then their opinions on that matter are not a distraction from considering them fairly, but a central aspect of considering their legacy.

Ignorance is strength

Slavery is freedom

War is peace

The petri dish of capitalism requires cheap labor, pigmentation, cultural differences and religion are all unimportant in the quest to drain the batteries of humanity for the matrix of greed.

“Old Atlantic” wrote:

>Sanger was right on [sic] her views.  The Republican National
>Convention should adopt a resolution that no person may accept
>its nomination for president who does not accept them and pledge
>to carry them out. Her words jar because the truth jars.  Our
>society has gone the wrong way and we see the fruits of lying
>to ourselves for decades.  Bad genes kill a civilization based
>on good genes.  Filtering out bad genes is a basic job of life. 
>Life can not continue if bad genes are not filtered out.  It is
>the task of every generation.

BRAVO!!!!

But… are you by chance either self-employed or retired? I ask
because I’ve lost more than one job for saying far less than this.

Epstein’s original piece attributed to Sanger the suggestion that we
“give dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation
or sterilization.” Forced sterilization is of course barbaric; if we
want to discourage breeding among those who are truly unable to raise
a child responsibly—for either physical OR mental reasons—we
must (as every economist knows) DIS-INCENTIVIZE it. What we are doing
now is exactly the opposite: paying indigent single teens with babies
as much as they need to live independently, which is bad enough, and
then INCREASING the payment for each new illegitimate child she bears!

And then we wonder why we get exactly the opposite of the desired result.

How the world has changed since Sanger’s era. It is now realistically
impossible to segregate dysgenic populations even were such segregation
to be strictly voluntary (surely not what Sanger had in mind). Instead,
VOLUNTARY, INDIVIDUAL “neo-eugenics” groups worldwide are beginning to
form Intentional Communities, thereby peacefully segregating ourselves
from dysgenics rather than the other way around.

My crowd is aiming to segregate ourselves (well, our descendants) in
Low Earth Orbit a la the visionary science of the late space colonization
guru and Princeton professor Gerard O’Neill and the inspiring fiction of
the late Robert Heinlein.

Likeminded others are welcome to join our study group!

The ORION Initiative
http://members.tripod.com/orionaut-ivil/ [apologies for the unwieldy URL;
our mirror site under a much easier name has been down for a while...sigh...]

I am obviously no supporter of eugenics.  What, however, is unique to modern theories of eugenics is their coupling with a concept of progress, which is absent from ancient theories, which stress the ideal of the reproduction of the best elements of society (e.g. Plato’s Republic).  Another difference is that modern theories have stressed abortion (or birth control), where the ancients (Salon, the Twelve Tables, etc.) openly supported infanticide (exposure).

For an overview, see Allen G. Roper’s famous essay “Ancient Eugenics” (1913):

http://www.plausiblefutures.com/index.php?id=54552

N.B.  I am not defending an ancient theory of eugenics against the modern, but only illustrating the differences between the two.

On this one, Ramus, Richert, and Piatak are on the side of the Angels.  Eugenics is evil.  I add that it and Social Darwinism are utterly racialist and utterly opposed to Burkean Conservatism, to say nothing of spittle in the face of Christ. Mr Epstein’s attempt to insinuate eugenics is loathsomely repugnant. 

I have repeatedly warned of the virus infecting this website of fascism, Fascism, and racialist nationalism.  Now we have neo-paganism and pseudo-science. This website has kicked out the front door the cruder Judeophobes, only to see more demons enter through the back door. 

I invite Richert, Piatak, Coulumbe, and Zmirak to leave Taki Mag and consider a new blog—one free of racialism, ethnic nationalism, fascism, Fascism, Judeophobia (high brow and well as low), neo-paganism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Christianity, and pseudo-science—and one that teams up with Roger Scruton and is an alliance of Burkean Conservatives, Christian Democracy, traditional Catholics, and Austrian Libertarians. Such a website can have gentlemanly debates about protectionism, Lincoln, Catholic/Protestant, the danger of Jihad, the virtues and vices of immigration, and Dollfuß yet still be united. Think about it.

It is interesting to note that the Planned Parenthood web page whitewashing Sanger has a list of quotes wrongly attributed to Sanger that merely appeared in “The Birth Control Review.” Of course, “The Birth Control Review” was Sanger’s own magazine.

Solon, not Salon.

@ Sid Cundiff
I agree. The anti-Semites were countenanced for MONTHS before the editors were forced to removed them due to threats by readers/writers to quit the site. That’s bad enough, but at least those idiots were unsolicited and unpaid, which cannot be said for Epstein. What the HELL is going on here? How could a perfectly decent, intellectually rigorous website degenerate so thoroughly in just a few months. Besides the perversions, most of what we get here is simply writers addressing each other in articles that are best left to the comment section (e.g. I want to address what Daniel said regarding Richard’s take on John’s opinion of Paul’s piece...) The poor man’s National Review Corner.

I may have read Marcus’s commentary from my own polemical perspective but it seems to me
that his comparisons do have heuristic value. Today’s pro-abortion Left sounds very
different from the Planned Parenthood movement at the beginning of the last century,
for two reasons that Marcus only skimmed. One, the post-Marxist, multicultural Left is
not only anti-Christian but also frenetically anti-bourgeois and instinctively
anti-Western. Unlike the old natualistic, scientistic types, like Sanger, E. O. Wilson
and Garrett Hardin, their successors hate their own kind and wish to put Western white
society on the path to extinction. If they also abort some blacks and Latinos on the way,,
the more’s the merrier. In Europe the double standard applied to Western Christians and

to Muslims gives the game away. Two, our Left, as opposed to Sanger, is radically
egalitarian, although its teaching about equality is invariably applied in such a
way as to disadvantage what were once Westrn majority populations. It is simply wrong
to lump together Sanger and the current abortion-happy Left as peas in a pod. Unless
one is lecturing about who has deviated from traditional Catholic social teachings, it is
obvious that we are dealing here with very different modern ideologies.

@Werner Hoerrman,

I think you have found the flaw in the thinking, but then that is the liberal way.  Intervene in peoples’ lives to the point of micro-managing families and the way people raise their children while at the same time working against yourself in another program.  I imagine that they are quite happy with the results so far.

Unlike the old natualistic, scientistic types, like Sanger, E. O. Wilson and Garrett Hardin, their successors hate their own kind and wish to put Western white society on the path to extinction.

Margaret Sanger believed in an undifferentiated “Western white society”?  That would have come as news to her.  Her negative eugenics were aimed, in large part, at people that are commonly called white today, including Eastern and Southern Europeans, as well as Jews.  That her successors in her organization have expanded her mission to include people that Sanger would have considered white doesn’t somehow exonerate her.

Your suddenly obsessive anti-Catholicism, Paul, appears to be coloring your logic.

Not sure what is so wrong about this article. Maybe the pro-lifers should take a deep breath and read the piece again. Epstein writes:

“Let me make it clear. I am not writing this to promote eugenics or Margaret Sanger. What I am saying is that conservatives should not try to win debates by to tenuously tying their opponents to politically incorrect views held by people who died years ago.”

He is 100% correct.

Bernie, you’re missing the point (perhaps deliberately, based on previous comments you’ve made on this website).  As Stephen Carson pointed out above, “It is often unfair when a historical figure’s opinions on A are dismissed because they also happened to hold a now politically incorrect opinion on B. But what if their whole life’s work was fundamentally about B? Then their opinions on that matter are not a distraction from considering them fairly, but a central aspect of considering their legacy.”

By the way, the Planned Parenthood page on Sanger goes to great pains to explain (with quotations) that she warned against abortion only because of the possible health risk to the mother--hardly the “pro-life” message that some above have claimed.

I plan on writing a rejoinder after the rest of my pieces in this series are published.

One thing I do want to respond to now is Scott’s assertion that I have not done any work for the pro-life movement and am therefore not justified to criticize their arguments.

While I am not as passionate about the issue as others on this site, I have done more than just say I’m sympathetic to the pro-life cause.  I’ve organized half a dozen pro-life lectures on college campuses this year alone, and I helped found a number of Students for Life groups.

Finally the idea that I should stick to discussing issues that I specialize on, and let the pro-lifers do their thing would be fine, if the elements within pro-life movement haven’t become militant “anti-racists” and promoting welfare, aid to africa, and open borders.  My guess is that I work more with pro-life groups than a lot of my critics who are unaware of these developments. 

The more the pro-life movement relies on accusing their opponents of being racist and eugenecists, the worst this trend will become.

The more the pro-life movement relies on accusing their opponents of being racist and eugenecists, the worst this trend will become.

Yet Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist.  So we should rewrite history in order to make our political battles easier?  That’s what ideologues do, not conservatives.

Thanks for clarifying your commitment to the pro-life cause, Marcus.

Gee, why did the Ku Klux Klan keep inviting her to its rallies, she attended one and was invited to 12...according to her own autobiography!

http://margaretsanger.blogspot.com/

The WASP establishment of Sanger’s time thoroughly approved of eugenics until the Nazis gave it a bad name. The Jewish/WASP establishment of our time thoroughly approves of sexual liberation. The moral?:Too bad the Nazis didn’t come out four square for free love!!