Jan wrote:

Tyrannical wrote:Back before Hitler gave it a bad name, it was common sense he was advocating.
{snip odious content}

Your definition of "common sense" is vile. Why don't you read that list again and ask yourself honestly if you agree with everything that's in it. Then post again with the bits you truly believe are right. I'd really like to have a rational discussion with you about your views because I find it hard to believe that anyone could be as inhumane as you sometimes appear to be.

As much as I would also like that discussion, I think we both know that under the current FUA that would not be possible.
Though coloring that request with vile and inhumane makes me doubt your willingness to have a rational discussion.

But what it really comes down to is what side of the Nurture vs. Nature debate you fall on. As I fall on the "Nature" side, I must be willing to accept that some things I may personally find unpleasant are indeed factually true.

Tyrannical wrote:

Jan wrote:

Tyrannical wrote:Back before Hitler gave it a bad name, it was common sense he was advocating.
{snip odious content}

Your definition of "common sense" is vile. Why don't you read that list again and ask yourself honestly if you agree with everything that's in it. Then post again with the bits you truly believe are right. I'd really like to have a rational discussion with you about your views because I find it hard to believe that anyone could be as inhumane as you sometimes appear to be.

As much as I would also like that discussion, I think we both know that under the current FUA that would not be possible.
Though coloring that request with vile and inhumane makes me doubt your willingness to have a rational discussion.

But what it really comes down to is what side of the Nurture vs. Nature debate you fall on. As I fall on the "Nature" side, I must be willing to accept that some things I may personally find unpleasant are indeed factually true.

There is not a single point in that document that your agreement with would cause a contravention of the FUA. Indeed, agreeing with some of them would expose your views as being vile, but they wouldn't be sanctioned. Go ahead, Tyrannical, enlighten us.

There is not a single point in that document that your agreement with would cause a contravention of the FUA. Indeed, agreeing with some of them would expose your views as being vile, but they wouldn't be sanctioned. Go ahead, Tyrannical, enlighten us.

Not a single point is right, several in fact. C,D,E and maybe G would certainly start the

Sure, you can consider my views vile. But I don't hold those views because I like them, I hold them because I believe them to be factually correct.

Darwinsbulldog wrote:

Gallstones wrote:Despite the burden on yourself, this individual is fortunate to have your direct involvement in looking after his/her welfare.
My family prefers the ridicule, blame, be disgusted by and avoid method.

Thanks. I guess those people who do not care much about family or friends who have health issues probably don't turn up to carer's meetings. In mental wards it is not unusual to see folks who don't seem to have many visitors, or none at all. It makes me very sad, as if such people are just "thrown in the trash". The professionals care for them, of course, but where are their families and buddies? People are real cunts sometimes.

I had a brother two years my senior who was schizophrenic damned near his whole life, though his life was not a long one, he died at 48 some years ago now. He never got much care. His episodes would sometimes be so intensely fearful for me I couldn't stick around for fear of my life. But he was a gentle fellow and a good soul most of the time. He spent most of his adult life in prison, US Federal prisons and prisons in California. I visited him in every damned one of dozen prisons he did time in, smuggled drugs ino three or four of them for him, always an adventure.

Our parents stuck by his side until he died, but they we'ren't really in any position to help him. He stayed away mostly, even as a teenager. He was an enigma to the family but they did not ostracize or ridicule him. They always treated him as one of their own when he was around and he seemed to try hard to behave himself in family situations. The disease was progressive with him. It started in grammar school and was bad enough that he quit school in the 8th grade and joined the army. I don't think he ever attended 9th grade. But he was rather bright anyway and read a lot (what you do in prison) and later in life became a notorious jailhouse lawyer.

He never really was a criminal even though he spent all those years in prison. His first stint in the joint occrred because he claimed ownership of a handgun the police found in the glove compartment of a car he was riding in when it got stopped. He did that because the guy who actually owned the pistol was out on parole and my brother knew if they pinned that gun on him he'd be headed back to prison in a heartbeat, and he had a wife and child.

There's a maximum security prison/mental hospital in California at Atascadero, near San Luis Obispo. That's where my brother went for the gun crime, and on an indeterminate sentence no less, i.e. they can keep you as long as they think you're still sick. He served almost five years in that joint.

Eventually, he pulled a brazen bank heist and made it to Mexico with $40,000 before they caught him. That time he went to McNeil Island Federal Penetentiary near Tacoma, Washington, which has been closed in more recent years and was in fact being closed when he was there the second time, in the late 70's. He was among a few remaining inmates there (trustees all) who were engaged in the process of shutting the prison down, packing things up and shipping them out, doing inventories, deciding where stuff should be sent. It wasn't a mothball situation, either, they were shuting the place down for good.

Unbeknownst to them, 100,000 Cubans had recently come from Cuba to the US ("boat people") and many of them had been imprisoned because American officials knew they were bad people. They had 10,000 of them at Fort Chafee, Arkansas, who's families and relatives were encamped outside the facility, screaming and wailing for their men to be let loose. This eventually led to a riot, in which several people were injured, Guards and inmates alike. There may have been some deaths, I don't recall. But it was a real melee.

So my brother's sitting at his desk in the hospital in McNeil Island Federal Pen when he gets a phone call, "Cease the shut down! We're sending you a thousand Cubans!"

My brother worked 20 hours a day for the next two months getting those Cubans settled in McNeil. He spoke good Spanish so that helped. He had to interview every last one of them to record their health situation, what kinds of medications they may be on and did they have a prescription, what about dietary considerations? Is there anything you can't eat? And so on.

After that he was consdered a "short timer" and was moved to the Federal Lockup on Termianl Island in LA Harbor. Not long after arriving there (weeks) he went to a Halfway House in Long Beach and got a job. Cool!

Then Reagan won the election that November and by the next February had closed every federal Halfway House and their occupants were retuned to prison, my brother back to TI. He died in March of that year, 1981. I visited TI not long afterward and chatted with their doctor, the guy who had attended my brother. I asked him what had caused his death. "Massive heart attack, brought on by decades of prison food." Be careful what you eat.

But I think that two-month non-stop stint at McNeil wore him right out.

I've always thought it was some kind of miracle that he lived as long as he did. He was not overweight and had never suffered any health issues and had adhered to a workout regimen in all those prison years. He kept himself in good condition.

I could tell you some stories, like one morning around four I'm sleeping and the phone rings and it's my brother and he's in Las Vegas and he's "got news for Howard Hughes!" He told me he was sitting on a $Million bucks and I'd better get there quick if I wanted a cut of it. I was on a 06:00AM flight out of LAX, not for any money but because I could tell he had gone off the rails and I had to go get him (he was on parole in California at the time and wasn't supposed to leave the State, an offense for which he'd of been sent back to the slammer real quick). It took three days to extricate him from Las Vegas, what a nightmare!

There were definitely some episodes in there. But he never harmed a soul to my knowledge and he made it through some pretty exciting adventures in his time, a "wild life" some would say, and they'd not be too far off. I miss him.

Tyrannical wrote:Back before Hitler gave it a bad name, it was common sense he was advocating.

A Plan For Peace
by Margaret Sanger
The Birth Control Review
April 1932, p. 106

Second, have Congress set up a special department for the study of population problems and appoint a Parliament of Population, the directors representing the various branches of science: this body to direct and control the population through birth rates and immigration, and to direct its distribution over the country according to national needs consistent with taste, fitness and interest of the individuals.

The main objects of the Population Congress would be:


a. To raise the level and increase the general intelligence of population.

b. to increase the population slowly by keeping the birth rate at its present level of fifteen per thousand, decreasing the death rate below its present mark of 11 per thousand.

c. to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.

d. to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.

e. To insure the country against future burdens of maintenance for numerous offspring as may be born of feebleminded parents by pensioning all persons with trnsmissible disease who voluntarily consent to sterilization.

f. To give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.

g. to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.
The first step would thus be to control the intake and output of morons, mental defectives, epileptics.

The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct.

Having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense -- defending the unborn against their own disabilities....

With the future citizen safeguarded from hereditary taints, with five million mental and moral degenerates segregated, with ten million women and ten million children receiving adequate care, we could then turn our attention to the basic needs for international peace....

We can't be friends anymore, can we?

The comforts of being perfect, what's it like?

Gallstones wrote:We can't be friends anymore, can we?

The comforts of being perfect, what's it like?

Of course we can be friends, I am tempered somewhat with compassion. I just can't quite remember where I put it sometimes And I'm far from being perfect myself, I just don't live in denial about certain unpleasant truths.


Now I do feel sympathy for Fact-Man2 and the difficult life situation he went through with his brother. You may not be able to control the mental state of a person, but you can control the person. What his brother lacked was strong external control, because left to his own he made unwise decisions that resulted in numerous stints in jail. In short, he probably should never have been trusted to make his own decisions.
Option "G" is not forced slavery, but it is work and it does serve to provide purpose in life. A controlled environment where people that are incapable of making their own life decisions are both cared for and allowed to be productive is a better and cheaper alternative to a life in and out of prison or mental hospital.

g. to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.

Tyrannical wrote:Back before Hitler gave it a bad name, it was common sense he was advocating.

A Plan For Peace
by Margaret Sanger
The Birth Control Review
April 1932, p. 106

Second, have Congress set up a special department for the study of population problems and appoint a Parliament of Population, the directors representing the various branches of science: this body to direct and control the population through birth rates and immigration, and to direct its distribution over the country according to national needs consistent with taste, fitness and interest of the individuals.

The main objects of the Population Congress would be:


a. To raise the level and increase the general intelligence of population.

b. to increase the population slowly by keeping the birth rate at its present level of fifteen per thousand, decreasing the death rate below its present mark of 11 per thousand.

c. to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.

d. to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.

e. To insure the country against future burdens of maintenance for numerous offspring as may be born of feebleminded parents by pensioning all persons with trnsmissible disease who voluntarily consent to sterilization.

f. To give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.

g. to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.
The first step would thus be to control the intake and output of morons, mental defectives, epileptics.

The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct.

Having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense -- defending the unborn against their own disabilities....

With the future citizen safeguarded from hereditary taints, with five million mental and moral degenerates segregated, with ten million women and ten million children receiving adequate care, we could then turn our attention to the basic needs for international peace....

Tyrannical, you might be able to convince me that you were just trying to have "a rational discussion" by posting fascist literature, if the name you chose for yourself were not Tyrannical, if your avatar didn't say you hated everyone, and if your chosen signature were not a dare to the forum administrators to ban you. Seeing that all of these things are true, it's kinda hard to think that you're doing anything except trolling.

Tyrannical, you might be able to convince me that you were just trying to have "a rational discussion" by posting fascist literature, if the name you chose for yourself were not Tyrannical, if you did not have the avatar that you have, and if your chosen signature was not a dare to the forum administrators to ban you. Being that all of these things are true, this is the kind of thing that makes it seem, to me, that you are trolling.

I can't deny your astute observations, though it is still only argumentum ad hominem.

I've used Tyrannical continuously for almost twenty years. My previous handle of Destruction became a little too hot after a but of internet mischief back in '90.
I like Scrooge McDuck, and I thought my fans would appreciate the avatar.
The quote is fun too, and I bet it causes the occasional cringe. Someone even spoofed it with "If you can't beat them, make stuff up " Not that I ever have to make anything up

Tyrannical wrote:

Tyrannical, you might be able to convince me that you were just trying to have "a rational discussion" by posting fascist literature, if the name you chose for yourself were not Tyrannical, if your avatar didn't say you hated everyone, and if your chosen signature was not a dare to the forum administrators to ban you. Being that all of these things are true, this is the kind of thing that makes it seem, to me, that you are trolling.

I can't deny your astute observations, though it is still only argumentum ad hominem.

On the contrary, an argumentum ad hominem is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the opponent advocating the premise. What I was just doing is something completely different - I was not trying to address the validity of your premise (in favor of eugenics) at all. You're using this term incorrectly.

Although I will say, now that you've mentioned it, that the fascist tract you just posted is pretty much the most sickening piece of bile I can think of right now. Like most fascist ideas, it seems to be the product of a combination of two things: truly low-grade intelligence, and a complete lack of tolerance for other people.

quill wrote:

Tyrannical wrote:

Tyrannical, you might be able to convince me that you were just trying to have "a rational discussion" by posting fascist literature, if the name you chose for yourself were not Tyrannical, if your avatar didn't say you hated everyone, and if your chosen signature was not a dare to the forum administrators to ban you. Being that all of these things are true, this is the kind of thing that makes it seem, to me, that you are trolling.

I can't deny your astute observations, though it is still only argumentum ad hominem.

On the contrary, an argumentum ad hominem is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the opponent advocating the premise. What I was just doing is something completely different - I was not trying to address the validity of your premise (in favor of eugenics) at all. You're using this term incorrectly.

I see you didn't make it past the fist sentence of the Wikipedia entry
Here's a better example anyways.

http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/person.html

Argumentum ad Hominem (abusive and circumstantial): the fallacy of attacking the character or circumstances of an individual who is advancing a statement or an argument instead of trying to disprove the truth of the statement or the soundness of the argument. Often the argument is characterized simply as a personal attack.

# The personal attack is also often termed an "ad personem argument": the statement or argument at issue is dropped from consideration or is ignored, and the locutor's character or circumstances are used to influence opinion.

# The fallacy draws its appeal from the technique of "getting personal." The assumption is that what the locutor is saying is entirely or partially dictated by his character or special circumstances and so should be disregarded.

You linked me being taken serious not from what I said, but based on my user name, avatar, and signature.

Although I will say, now that you've mentioned it, that the fascist tract you just posted is pretty much the most sickening piece of bile I can think of right now. Like most fascist ideas, it seems to be the product of a combination of two things: truly low-grade intelligence, and a complete lack of tolerance for other people.

Another Argumentum ad Hominem, what a varied repertoire you must have!

You'd think that theories derived from people of "low-grade intelligence" would be simple to address using facts instead of resorting to logical fallacies.

Tyrannical wrote:You linked me being taken serious not from what I said, but based on my user name, avatar, and signature.

Yes. Once again, what I said was not an argumentum ad hominem, nor any fallacy, nor even an argument at all, because I was not even addressing your premise or positing any argument against it. I was merely saying that it's hard to think you're doing anything other than trolling.

As for my view, given separately, that fascist ideas like eugenics are the result of extreme cruelty combined with very low-grade intelligence: I really don't think it should be necessary to point out the extreme cruelty or the extreme stupidity of arbitrarily defining vast numbers of people into "dygenic groups" on the grounds that they are prostitutes, unemployed, the wrong ethnicity, etc., just so the ruling class can kill or enslave them. Margaret Sanger famously said that Australian aboriginals had almost no more intelligence than chimpanzees, and that less intelligent people needed to be forcibly sterilized and relocated into camps for the rest of their lives. "Less intelligent" is, of course, an entirely relative term - although eugenicists always managed to conclude that the minimum level of intelligence required to prevent someone of being stripped of their humanity was somewhere below their own - so as the less intelligent are sterilized and the standard of intelligence in subsequent generations rises, that only leads to more people being considered relatively feebleminded and they too must be sterilized in a cycle that never ends. This is all leaving aside the utter stupidity of thinking that someone is "dysgenic" just because they are unemployed or brown-skinned or too promiscuous for your liking. Eugenics is nothing more than a pseudoscientific excuse to kill or enslave people you don't like. The "logical" conclusion of such thinking can only lead to one place, and after 1945, it's not a place that we will ever want to revisit as a culture.

quill wrote:

Tyrannical wrote:You linked me being taken serious not from what I said, but based on my user name, avatar, and signature.

Yes. Once again, what I said was not an argumentum ad hominem, nor any fallacy, nor even an argument at all, because I was not even addressing your premise or positing any argument against it. I was merely saying that it's hard to think you're doing anything other than trolling.

As for my view, given separately, that fascist ideas like eugenics are the result of extreme cruelty combined with very low-grade intelligence: I really don't think it should be necessary to point out the extreme cruelty or the extreme stupidity of arbitrarily defining vast numbers of people into "dygenic groups" on the grounds that they are prostitutes, unemployed, the wrong ethnicity, etc., just so the ruling class can kill or enslave them. Margaret Sanger famously said that Australian aboriginals had almost no more intelligence than chimpanzees, and that less intelligent people needed to be forcibly sterilized and relocated into camps for the rest of their lives. "Less intelligent" is, of course, an entirely relative term - although eugenicists always managed to conclude that the minimum level of intelligence required to prevent someone of being stripped of their humanity was somewhere below their own - so as the less intelligent are sterilized and the standard of intelligence in subsequent generations rises, that only leads to more people being considered relatively feebleminded and they too must be sterilized in a cycle that never ends. This is all leaving aside the utter stupidity of thinking that someone is "dysgenic" just because they are unemployed or brown-skinned or too promiscuous for your liking. Eugenics is nothing more than a pseudoscientific excuse for kill or enslave people you don't like. The "logical" conclusion of such thinking can only lead to one place, and after 1945, it's not a place that we will ever want to revisit as a culture.

Eugenics predates both fascism and Hitler, and it's scientific basis is no different than animal husbandry.
You are free to reject eugenics for moral reasons. Reject it based on scientific reasons and be prepared to also reject the concept of inheritance.

Tyrannical wrote:Eugenics predates both fascism and Hitler, and it's scientific basis is no different than animal husbandry.

Its scientific basis doesn't exist. There can be no scientific basis for categorizing someone as "dysgenic" just because they are poor or unemployed, as in your quoted letter above. Eugenicists like Sanger never had a scientific basis to begin with. What veneer of credibility they might have possessed was swept away generations ago.

And eugenics predates fascism like a foundation predates a house. It may have been around before Hitler, but the Nazis built an entire state ideology around it because it's a pseudoscience uniquely suited to their beliefs, one of the purest expressions of their ideology in fact, the idea that the state and the race are one. National Socialism is just a eugenics program on a vast scale.

quill wrote:

Tyrannical wrote:Eugenics predates both fascism and Hitler, and it's scientific basis is no different than animal husbandry.

Its scientific basis doesn't exist. There can be no scientific basis for categorizing someone as "dysgenic" just because they are poor or unemployed, as in your quoted letter above. Eugenicists like Sanger never had a scientific basis to begin with. What veneer of credibility they might have possessed was swept away generations ago.

And eugenics predates fascism like a foundation predates a house. It may have been around before Mussolini, but the fascists seized upon it, and in the case of the Nazis, built an entire state ideology around it, because it's a pseudoscience uniquely suited to their beliefs, one of the purest expression of nationalist ideology, the idea that the state and the race are one.

Hitler bad.
Hitler liked eugenics.
Eugenics bad.

Nice try, but it's not quite as simple as that. Eugenics was not just something Hitler patronized. National Socialism was eugenics. That's about all it was. You yourself said that Hitler advocated eugenics, so don't try to wiggle out of it now.

Anyway, glad to see you've stopped trying to defend it on scientific grounds.

quill wrote:Nice try, but it's not quite as simple as that. Eugenics was not just something Hitler patronized. National Socialism was eugenics. That's about all it was. You yourself said that Hitler advocated eugenics, so don't try to wiggle out of it now.

Anyway, glad to see you've stopped trying to defend it on scientific grounds.

I was just waiting to see if you could inject some rational discourse, or if logical fallacies were all that you could muster.

I'll assume you at least beleive somewhat in the concept of heredity.
I bet your real issue regards the difficulty in identifying negative and positive traits in individuals, which would be a fair point. But a point that only adds to the complexity of eugenic concepts, it in no way invalidates it.

My real issue, as I've made it clear, is that eugenics is 100% pseudoscience. There is no scientific basis for declaring someone "dysgenic" just because they are prostitutes or unemployed, just like there is no scientific basis for the claim that less intelligent people need to be forced into concentration camps. These are all moral and political views, not scientific ones. You can no more say that eugenics is science than you can say that dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was science. These events serve no scientific purpose. They are merely attempts to kill different groups of people for political reasons.

Tyrannical wrote:

Gallstones wrote:We can't be friends anymore, can we?

The comforts of being perfect, what's it like?

Of course we can be friends, I am tempered somewhat with compassion. I just can't quite remember where I put it sometimes And I'm far from being perfect myself, I just don't live in denial about certain unpleasant truths.

You have mentioned unpleasant truths before, what unpleasant truths?

Tyrannical wrote:Now I do feel sympathy for Fact-Man2 and the difficult life situation he went through with his brother.

And sympathy for the brother?

Tyrannical wrote: You may not be able to control the mental state of a person, but you can control the person. What his brother lacked was strong external control, because left to his own he made unwise decisions that resulted in numerous stints in jail. In short, he probably should never have been trusted to make his own decisions.
Option "G" is not forced slavery, but it is work and it does serve to provide purpose in life. A controlled environment where people that are incapable of making their own life decisions are both cared for and allowed to be productive is a better and cheaper alternative to a life in and out of prison or mental hospital.

g. to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.

What about those who are productive and contribute in beneficial--even unique ways--most of the time, but only have occasional lapses, who might be a bit difficult to understand or have behaviors that manifest from time to time that are hard to deal with.

Mental state can be managed by medication; granted, only if the person takes it.

What if the medication works well to moderate the undesirable behaviors but concurrently also attenuates the desirable behaviors?

Is there such a thing as "normal", can it be defined and recognized? If so, should it be the limit, the measure of what is acceptable beyond which people who differ from it should be brought into line as much as possible or else tossed behind the segregation fence? If so, why?

What if compassion isn't what people want, what if they want what the rest have--acceptance, respect, opportunity?

Eugenics is a power-over system. Firstly, there is the defining of groups of people, with such definition being set by those with power. They then identify less powerful people who they choose to deem 'unfit'. But the locus of power can move. Power-less people can take power & then wield it over their oppressors. Eugenicists should watch out, lest those they seek to destroy, destroy them first.

Societal evolution teaches us that eugenicists are a dying breed, with just a few memetic throwbacks surviving on the margins of society. Fortunately for them, we don't stop 'em breeding & spilling their hate-filled views about the place. Maybe we should.

From the book Touched with Fire, Kay Redfield Jamison (copyright 1993) a quote by Dr. Abraham Myerson and Rosalie Boyle in their 1941 article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. They had studied the genealogy and incidence of mental illness in the James family: Henry James and William James

RE eugenics:

"Whom could we have sterilized in this family line to prevent the manic-depressive state and at what cost of social riches, in the truer sense, would this have been done?"

Other examples of affected persons include:

George Gordon Byron
Emily Dickinson
Ernest Hemingway
Virginia Woolf
Robert Schumann
Irving Berlin
Vincent van Gogh
Georgia O'Keeffe

I have come to know that there are people who live, what I call, pastel emotional lives. They would like to consider that as normal. But those of us who live technicolor emotional lives pity them.