Sunday, February 14, 2010

Margaret Sanger: The Mike Wallace Interview

Margaret Sanger: The Mike Wallace Interview

THis is the elegant lady, Mrs Sanger in an original interview with Mike wallace in 1957. THey were smoking phillip morris cigarettes on the set! OMG! LOL! ANyway, No you are going to read a series of articles bent on denouncing Mrs Sanger, the founder of the Birth Control movement in the US, with being a racist, and supporting something called Eugenics, which I have never heard of until now. I am not sure how factual this information is, But I am presenting it, in the spirit of being Fair and Balanced, so that it can be worked on deciphered and rebutted where need be.

By Tanya L. Green

"…I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing’
therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live."

--Deuteronomy 30:19 (NKJV

On the crisp, sunny, fall Columbus Day in 1999, organizers of the "Say So" march approached the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. The marchers, who were predominantly black pastors and lay persons, concluded their three-day protest at the site of two monumental cases: the school desegregation Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the pro-abortion Roe v. Wade "rights" in t he latter–converged in the declaration of Rev. Johnny M. Hunter, the march’s sponsor and national director of Life, Education and Resource Network (LEARN), the largest black pro-life organization.

‘"Civil rights’ doesn’t mean anything without a right to life!" declared Hunter. He and the other marchers were protesting the disproportionately high number of abortions in the black community. The high number is no accident. Many Americans–black and white–are unaware of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s Negro Project. Sanger created this program in 1939, after the organization changed its name from the American Birth Control League (ABCL) to the Birth Control Federation of America (BCFA).

The aim of the program was to restrict–many believe exterminate–the black population. Under the pretense of "better health" and "family planning," Sanger cleverly implemented her plan. What’s more shocking is Sanger’s beguilement of black America’s créme de la créme–those prominent, well educated and well-to-do–into executing her scheme. Some within the black elite saw birth control as a means to attain economic empowerment, elevate the race and garner the respect of whites.

The Negro Project has had lasting repercussions in the black community: "We have become victims of genocide by our own hands," cried Hunter at the "Say So" march.

Malthusian Eugenics

Margaret Sanger aligned herself with the eugenicists whose ideology prevailed in the early 20th century. Eugenicists strongly espoused racial supremacy and "purtiy"," particularly of the "Aryan" race. Eugenicists hoped to purify the bloodlines and improve the race by encouraging the "fit" to reproduce and the "unfit" to restrict their reproduction. They sought to contain the "inferior" races through segregation, sterilization, birth control and abortion.

Sanger embraced Malthusian eugenics. Thomas Robert Malthus, a 19th century cleric and professor of political economy, believed a population time bomb threatened the existence of the human race. He viewed social problems such as poverty, deprivation and hunger as evidence of this "population crisis." According to writer George Grant, Malthus condemned charities and other forms of benevolence, because he believed they only exacerbated the problems. His answer was to restrict population growth of certain groups of people. His theories of population growth and economic stability became the basis for national and international social policy. Grant quotes from Malthus’ magnum opus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, published in six editions from 1798 to 1826:

All children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room is made for them by the deaths of grown persons. We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality.

Malthus disciples believed if Western civilization were to survive, the physically unfit, the materially poor, the spiritually diseased, the racially inferior, and the mentally incompetent had to be suppressed and isolated–or even, perhaps, eliminated. His disciples felt the subtler and more "scientific" approaches of education, contraception, sterilization and abortion were more "practical and acceptable ways" to ease the pressures of the alleged overpopulation.

Critics of Malthusianism said the group "produced a new vocabulary of mumbo-jumbo. It was all hard-headed, scientific and relentless." Further, historical facts have proved the Malthusian mathematical scheme regarding overpopulation to be inaccurate, though many still believe them.

Despite the falsehoods of Malthus’ overpopulation claims, Sanger nonetheless immersed herself in Malthusian eugenics. Grant wrote she argued for birth control using the "scientifically verified" threat of poverty, sickness, racial tension and overpopulation as its background. Sanger’s publication, The Birth Control Review (founded in 1917) regularly published pro-eugenic articles from eugenicists, such as Ernst Ruin. Although Sanger ceased editing The Birth Control Review in 1929, the ABCL continued to use it as a platform for eugenic ideas.

Sanger built the work of the ABCL, and, ultimately, Planned Parenthood, on the ideas and resources of the eugenics movement. Grant reported that "virtually all of the organization’s board members were eugenicists." Eugenicists financed the early projects, from the opening of birth control clinics to the publishing of "revolutionary" literature. Eugenicists comprised the speakers at conferences, authors of literature and the providers of services "almost without the exception." And Planned Parenthood’s international work was originally housed in the offices of the Eugenics Society. The two organizations were intertwined for years.

The ABCL became a legal entity on April 22, 1922, in New York. Before that, Sanger illegally operated a birth control clinic in October 1916, in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York, which eventually closed. The clinic serviced the poor immigrants who heavily populated the area–those deemed "unfit" to reproduce.

Sanger’s early writings clearly reflected Malthus’ influence. She writes:

Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents.

In another passage, she decries the burden of "human waste" on society:

It [charity] encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant [emphasis added].

She concluded,

The most serious charge that can be brought against modern "benevolence" is that is encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.

The Review printed an excerpt of an address Sanger gave in 1926. In it she said:

It now remains for the U.S. government to set a sensible example to the world by offering a bonus or yearly pension to all obviously unfit parents who allow themselves to be sterilized by harmless and scientific means. In this way the moron and the diseased would have no posterity to inherit their unhappy condition. The number of the feeble-minded would decrease and a heavy burden would be lifted from the shoulders of the fit.

Sanger said a "bonus" would be "wise and profitable" and "the salvation of American civilization." She presented her ideas to Mr. C. Harold Smith (of the New York Evening World) on "the welfare committee" in New York City. She said, "people must be helped to help themselves.: Any plan or program that would make them "dependent upon doles and charities" is "paternalistic" and would not be " of any permanent value." She included an essay (what she called a "program of public welfare,") entitled "We Must Breed a Race of Thoroughbreds."

?In it she argued that birth control clinics, or bureaus, should be established "in which men and women will be taught the science of parenthood and the science of breeding." For this was the way "to breed out of the race the scourges of transmissible disease, mental defect, poverty, lawlessness, crime … since these classes would be decreasing in number instead of breeding like weeds."

Her program called for women to receive birth control advice in various situations, including where:

  • the woman or man had a "transmissible" disease such as insanity, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, syphilis, etc.;
  • the children already born were "subnormal or feeble-minded";
  • the father’s wages were "inadequate … to provide for more children."

Sanger said "such a plan would … reduce the birthrate among the diseased, the sickly, the poverty stricken and anti-social classes, elements unable to provide for themselves, and the burden of which we are all forced to carry."

Sanger had openly embraced Malthusian eugenics, and it shaped her actions in the ensuing years.

The Harlem Clinic

In 1929, 10 years before Sanger created the Negro Project, the ABCL laid the groundwork for a clinic in Harlem, a largely black section of New York City. It was the dawn of the Great Depression, and for blacks that meant double the misery. Blacks faced harsher conditions of desperation and privation because of widespread racial prejudice and discrimination. From the ABCL’s perspective, Harlem was the ideal place for this "experimental clinic," which officially opened on November 21, 1930. Many blacks looked to escape their adverse circumstances and therefore did not recognize the eugenic undercurrent of the clinic. The clinic relied on the generosity of private foundations to remain in business. In addition to being thought of as "inferior" and disproportionately represented in the underclass, according to the clinic’s own files used to justify its "work," blacks in Harlem:

  • were segregated in an over-populated area (224,760 of 330,000 of greater New York’s population lived in Harlem during the late 1920s and 1930s);
  • comprised 12 percent of New York City’s population, but accounted for 18.4 percent of New York City’s unemployment;
  • had an infant mortality rate of 101 per 1000 births, compared to 56 among whites;
  • had a death rate from tuberculosis–237 per 100,000–that was highest in central Harlem, out of all of New York City.

Although the clinic served whites as well as blacks, it "was established for the benefit of the colored people." Sanger wrote this in a letter to Dr. W. E. Burghardt DuBois, one of the day’s most influential blacks. A sociologist and author, he helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 to improve the living conditions of black Americans.

That blacks endured extreme prejudice and discrimination, which contributed greatly to their plight, seemed to further justify restricting their numbers. Many believed the solution lay in reducing reproduction. Sanger suggested the answer to poverty and degradation lay in smaller numbers of blacks. She convinced black civic groups in Harlem of the "benefits" of birth control, under the cloak of "better health" (i.e., reduction of maternal and infant death; child spacing) and "family planning." So with their cooperation, and the endorsement of The Amsterdam News (a prominent black newspaper), Sanger established the Harlem branch of the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau. The ABCL told the community birth control was the answer to their predicament.

Sanger shrewdly used the influence of prominent blacks to reach the masses with this message. She invited DuBois and a host of Harlem’s leading blacks, including physicians, social workers, ministers and journalists, to form an advisory council to help direct the clinic "so that our work in birth control will be a constructive force in the community." She knew the importance of having black professionals on the advisory board and in the clinic; she knew blacks would instinctively suspect whites of wanting to decrease their numbers. She would later use this knowledge to implement the Negro Project.

Sanger convinced the community so well that Harlem’s largest black church, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, held a mass meeting featuring Sanger as the speaker. But that event received criticism. At least one "very prominent minister of a denomination other than Baptist" spoke out against Sanger. Dr. Adam Clayton Powell Sr., pastor of Abyssinian Baptist, "received adverse criticism" from the (unnamed) minister who was "surprised that he’d allow that awful woman in his church."

Grace Congregational Church hosted a debate on birth control. Proponents argued birth control was necessary to regulate births in proportion to the family’s income; spacing births would help mothers recover physically and fathers financially; physically strong and mentally sound babies would result; and incidences of communicable diseases would decrease.

Opponents contended that as a minority group blacks needed to increase rather than decrease and that they needed an equal distribution of wealth to improve their status. In the end, the debate judges decided the proponents were more persuasive: Birth control would improve the status of blacks. Still, there were others who equated birth control with abortion and therefore considered it immoral.

Eventually, the Urban League took control of the clinic, and indication the black community had become ensnared in Sanger’s labyrinth.

Birth Control as a Solution

The Harlem clinic and ensuing birth control debate opened dialogue among black about how best to improve their disadvantageous position. Some viewed birth control as a viable solution: High reproduction, the believed, meant prolonged poverty and degradation. Desperate for change, others began to accept the "rationale" of birth control. A few embraced eugenics. The June 1932 edition of The Birth Control Review, called "The Negro Number," featured a series of articles written by blacks on the "virtues" of birth control.

The editorial posed this question: "Shall they go in for quantity or quality in children? Shall they bring children into the world to enrich the undertakers, the physicians and furnish work for social workers and jailers, or shall they produce children who are going to be an asset to the group and American society?" The answer: "Most [blacks], especially women, would choose quality … if they only knew how."

DuBois, in his article "Black Folk and Birth Control, " noted the "inevitable clash of ideals between those Negroes who were striving to improve their economic position and those whose religious faith made the limitation of children a sin." He criticized the "mass of ignorant Negroes" who bred "carelessly and disastrously so that the increase among [them] … is from that part of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly."

DuBois called for a "more liberal attitude" among black churches. He said they were open to "intelligent propaganda of any sort, and the American Birth Control League and other agencies ought to get their speakers before church congregations and their arguments in the Negro newspapers [emphasis added]."

Charles S. Johnson, Fisk University’s first black president, wrote "eugenic discrimination" was necessary for blacks. He said the high maternal and infant mortality rates, along with diseases like tuberculosis, typhoid, malaria and venereal infection, made it difficult for large families to adequately sustain themselves.

Further, "the status of Negroes as marginal workers, their confinement to the lowest paid branches of industry, the necessity for the labors of mothers, as well as children, to balance meager budgets, are factors [that] emphasize the need for lessening the burden not only for themselves, but of society, which must provide the supplementary support in the form of relief." Johnson later served on the National Advisory Council to the BCFA, becoming integral to the Negro Project.

Writer Walter A. Terpenning described bringing a black child into a hostile world as "pathetic." In his article "God’s Chillun," he wrote:

The birth of a colored child, even to parents who can give it adequate support, is pathetic in view of the unchristian and undemocratic treatment likely to be accorded it at the hands of a predominantly white community, and the denial of choice in propagation to this unfortunate class is nothing less than barbarous [emphasis added].

Terpenning considered birth control for black as "the more humane provision" and "more eugenic" than among whites. He felt birth control information should have first been disseminated among blacks rather than the white upper crust. He failed to look at the problematic attitudes and behavior of society and how they suppressed blacks. He offered no solutions to the injustice and vile racism that blacks endured.

Sadly, DuBois’ words of black churches being "open to intelligent propaganda" proved prophetic. Black pastors invited Sanger to speak to their congregations. Black publications, like The Afro-American and The Chicago Defender, featured her writings. Rather than attacking the root causes of maternal and infant deaths, diseases ,poverty, unemployment and a host of other social ills–not the least of which were racism–Sanger pushed birth control. To many, it was better for blacks not to be born rather than endure such a harsh existence.

Against this setting, Sanger charmed the black community’s most distinguished leaders into accepting her plan, which was designed to their own detriment. She peddled her wares wrapped in pretty packages labeled "better health" and "family planning." No one could deny the benefits of better health, being financially ready to raise children, or spacing one’s children. However, the solution to the real issues affecting blacks did not lay in reducing their numbers. It lay in attacking forces in society that hindered their progress. Most importantly, one had to discern Sanger’s motive behind her push for birth control in the community. It was not an altruistic one.

Web of Deceit

Prior to 1939, Sanger’s "outreach to the black community was largely limited to her Harlem clinic and speaking at black churches." Her vision for "the reproductive practices of black Americans" expanded after the January 1939 merger of the Clinical Research Bureau and the American Birth Control League to form the Birth Control Federation of America. She selected Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, of the soap-manufacturing company Procter and Gamble, to be the BCFA regional director of the South.

Gamble wrote a memorandum in November 1939 entitled "Suggestions for the Negro Project," in which he recognized that "black leaders might regard birth control as an extermination plot." He suggested black leaders to be placed in positions where it would appear they were in charge. Yet Sanger’s reply reflects Gamble’s ambivalence about having blacks in authoritative positions:

I note that you doubt it worthwhile to employ a full-time Negro physician. It seems to me from my experience … that, while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors, they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table, which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. They do not do this with white people and if we can train the Negro doctor at the clinic, he can go among them with enthusiasm and … knowledge, which … will have far-reaching results among the colored people.

Another project director lamented:

I wonder if Southern Darkies can ever be entrusted with … a clinic. Our experience causes us to doubt their ability to work except under white supervision.

Sanger knew blacks were religious people–and how useful ministers would be to her project. She wrote in the same letter:

The minister’s work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members [emphasis added].

Sanger’s cohorts within the BCFA sought to attract black leadership. They succeeded. The list of black leaders who made up BCFA’s National Advisory Council reads like a "who’s who" among black Americans. To name a few:

  • Claude A. Barnett, director, Associated Negro Press, Chicago
  • Michael J. Bent, M.D., Meharry Medical School, Nashville
  • Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, president, National Council of Negro Women, Washington, D.C., special advisor to President Roosevelt on minority groups, and founder of Bethune-Cookman College, Daytona Beach
  • Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, cum laude graduate of Tufts, president of Alpha Kappa Alpha (the nation’s oldest black sorority)k, Washington, D.C.
  • Charles S. Johnson, president, Fisk University, Nashville
  • Eugene Kinckle Jones, executive secretary, National Urban League, New York
  • Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor, Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York
  • Bishop David H. Sims, pastor, African Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia
  • Arthur Spingarn, president, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Even with this impressive list, Sanger ran into resistance when she tried to present a birth control exhibit at the 1940 American Negro Exposition, a fair that traces the progress blacks have made since the Emancipation Proclamation, in Chicago. After inviting BCFA to display its exhibit, the Exposition’s board later canceled, citing "last minute changes in floor space."

Sanger did not buy this and issued a statement urging public protest. "This has come as a complete surprise," said Sanger, "since the Federation undertook preparation of the exhibit upon an express invitation from a member of the Exposition board." She said the cancellation resulted from "concerted action on the part of representatives of the Roman Catholic Church." She even accused the church of threatening officials with the withholding of promised federal and state funds needed to hold the Exposition.

Her statement mentioned BCFA prepared the exhibit in consultation with its National (Negro) Advisory Council, and it illustrated "the need for birth control as a public health measure." She said the objective was to demonstrate how birth control would "improve the welfare of the Negro population," noting the maternal death rate among black mothers was nearly 50 percent higher, and the child death rate was more than one-third greater than the white community.

At Sanger’s urging, protesters of the cancellation sent letters to Attorney Wendall E. Green, vice chairman of the Afra-Merican Emancipation Exposition Commission (sponsor of the Exposition), requesting he investigate. Green denied there was any threat or pressure to withhold funds needed to finance the Exposition. Further, he said the Exposition commission (of Illinois) "unanimously passed a resolution," which read in part: "That in the promotion, conduct and accomplishment of the objectives (of the Exposition) there must be an abiding spirit to create goodwill toward all people." He added that since the funds for the Exposition " came from citizens of all races and creeds, any exhibit in conflict with the known convictions of any religious group contravenes the spirit of the resolution," which seemed to support Catholic opposition. The commission upheld the ban on the exhibit.

"Better Health for 13,000,000"

The propaganda of the Negro Project was that birth control meant better health. So on this premise, the BCFA designed two southern Negro Project "demonstration programs" to show "how medically-supervised birth control integrated into existing public health services could improve the general welfare of Negroes, and to initiate a nationwide educational program."

The BCFA opened the first clinic at the Bethlehem Center in urban Nashville, Tennessee (where blacks constituted only 25 percent of the population), on February 13, 1940. They extended the work to the Social Services Center of Fisk University (a historically black college) on July 23, 1940. This location was especially significant because of its proximity to Meharry Medical School, which trained more than 50 percent of black physicians I the United States.

An analysis of the income of the Nashville group revealed that "no family, regardless of size, had an income over $15 a week. The service obviously reached the income group for which it was designed," indicating the project’s tar get. The report claimed to have brought "to light serious diseases and making possible their treatment, … [and] that 55 percent [354 of the 638] of the patients prescribed birth control methods used it consistently and successfully." However, the report presented "no definite figures … to demonstrate the extent of community improvement."

The BCFA opened the second clinic on May 1, 1940, in rural Berkeley County, South Carolina, under the supervision of Dr. Robert E. Seibels, chairman of the Committee on Maternal Welfare of the South Carolina Medical Association. BCFA chose this site in part "because leaders in the state were particularly receptive to the experiment. South Carolina had been the second state to make child spacing a part of its state public health program after a survey of the state’s maternal deaths showed that 25 percent occurred among mothers known to be physically unfit for pregnancy." Again, the message went out: Birth control–not better prenatal care–reduced maternal and infant mortality.

Although Berkeley County’s population was 70 percent black, the clinic received criticism that members of this group were "overwhelmingly in the majority." Seibels assured Claude Barnett that this was not the case. "We have … simply given our help to those who were willing to receive it, and these usually are Negroes," he said.

While religious convictions significantly influenced the Nashville patients’ view of birth control, people in Berkeley County had "no religious prejudice against birth control. But the attitude that treatment of any disease was ‘against nature’ was in the air." Comparing the results of the two sites, "it is seen that the immediate receptivity to the demonstration was at the outset higher in the rural area. " However, "the final total success was lower [in the rural area]." However, in Berkeley, "stark poverty was even more in evidence, and bad roads, bad weather and ignorance proved powerful counter forces [to the contraceptive programs." After 18 months, the Berkeley program closed.

The report indicated that, contrary to expectations, the lives of black patients serviced by the clinics did not improve dramatically from birth control. Two beliefs stood in the way: Some blacks likened birth control to abortion and others regarded it as "inherently immoral." However, "when thrown against the total pictures of the awareness on the part of Negro leaders of the improved conditions, … and their opportunities to even better conditions under Planned Parenthood, … the obstacles to the program are greatly outweighed," said Dr. Dorothy Ferebee.

A hint of eugenic flavor seasoned Ferebee’s speech: "The future program [of Planned Parenthood] should center around more education in the field through the work of a professional Negro worker, because those of who believe that the benefits of Planned Parenthood as a vital key to the elimination of human waste must reach the entire population [emphasis added]." She peppered her speech with the importance of "Negro professionals, fully integrated into the staff, … who could interpret the program and objectives to [other blacks] in the normal course of day-to-day contacts; could break down fallacious attitudes and beliefs and elements of distrust; could inspire the confidence of the group; and would not be suspect of the intent to eliminate the race [emphasis added]."

Sanger even managed to lure the prominent–but hesitant–black minister J. T. Braun, editor in chief of the National Baptist Convention’s Sunday School Publishing Board in Nashville, Tennessee, into her deceptive web. Braun confessed to Sanger that "the very idea of such a thing [birth control] has always held the greatest hatred and contempt in my mind. … I am hesitant to give my full endorsement of this idea, until you send me, perhaps, some more convincing literature on the subject. Sanger happily complied. She sent Braun the Federal Council of Churches’ Marriage and Home Committee pamphlet praised by Bishop Sims (another member of the National Advisory Council), assuring him that: "There are some people who believe that birth control is an attempt to dictate to families how many children to have. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Sanger’s assistants gave Braun more pro-birth control literature and a copy of her autobiography, which he gave to his wife to read. Sanger’s message of preventing maternal and infant mortality stirred Braun’s wife. Now convinced of this need, Braun permitted a group of women to use his chapel for a birth-control talk. "[I was] moved by the number of prominent [black] Christians backing the proposition," Braun wrote in a letter to Sanger. "At first glance I had a horrible shock to the proposition because it seemed to me to be allied to abortion, but after thought and prayer, I have concluded that especially among many women, it is necessary both to save the lives of mothers and children [emphasis added]."

By 1949, Sanger had hoodwinked black America’s best and brightest into believing birth control’s "life-saving benefits." In a monumental feat, she bewitched virtually an entire network of black social, professional and academic organizations into endorsing Planned Parenthood’s eugenic program.

Sanger’s successful duplicity does not in any way suggest blacks were gullible. They certainly wanted to decrease maternal and infant mortality and improve the community’s overall health. They wholly accepted her message because it seemed to promise prosperity and social acceptance. Sanger used their vulnerabilities and their ignorance (of her deliberately hidden agenda) to her advantage. Aside from birth control, she offered no other medical or social solutions to their adversity. Surely, blacks would not have been such willing accomplices had they perceived her true intentions. Considering the role eugenics played in the early birth control movement–and Sanger’s embracing of that ideology–the notion of birth control as seemingly the only solution to the problems that plagued blacks should have been much more closely scrutinized.

"Scientific Racism"

Planned Parenthood has gone to great lengths to repudiate the organization’s eugenic origins. It adamantly denies Sanger was a eugenicist or racist, despite evidence to the contrary. Because Sanger stopped editing The Birth Control Review in 1929, the organization tries to disassociate her from the eugenic and racist-oriented articles published after that date. However, a summary of an address Sanger gave in 1932, which appeared in the Review that year, revealed her continuing bent toward eugenics.

In "A Plan for Peace," Sanger suggested Congress set up a special department to study population problems and appoint a "Parliament of Population." One of the main objectives of the "Population Congress" would be "to raise the level and increase the general intelligence of population." This would be accomplished by applying a "stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation [ in addition to tightening immigration laws] to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring."

It’s reasonable to conclude that as the leader of Planned Parenthood–even after 1929–Sanger would not allow publication of ideas she didn’t support.

Sanger’s defenders argue she only wanted to educate blacks about birth control’s "health benefits." However, she counted the very people she wanted to "educate" among the "unfit," whose numbers needed to be restricted.

Grant presents other arguments Sanger’s supporters use to refute her racist roots:

  • blacks, Jews, Hispanics and other minorities are well represented in the
  • the former, high-profile president of the organization, Faye Wattleton, is a black woman;
  • "aggressive" minority hiring practices have been standard procedure for more than two decades;
  • the "vast majority of the nation’s ethnic leadership solidly and actively supports the work" of the organization.

These justifications also fail because of what Grant calls "scientific racism." This form of racism is based on genes, rather than skin color or language. "The issue is not ‘color of skin’ or ‘dialect of tongue,’" Grant writes, "but ‘quality of genes [emphasis added].’" Therefore, "as long as blacks, Jews and Hispanics demonstrate ‘a good quality gene pool’–as long as they ‘act white and think white’–then they are esteemed equally with Aryans. As long as they are, as Margaret Sanger said, ‘the best of their race,’ then they can be [counted] as valuable citizens [emphasis added]." By the same token, "individual whites" who shoe "dysgenic traits" must also have their fertility "curbed right along with the other ‘inferiors and undesirables.’"

In short, writes Grant, "Scientific racism is an equal opportunity discriminator [emphasis added]. Anyone with a ‘defective gene pool’ is suspect. And anyone who shows promise may be admitted to the ranks of the elite."

The eugenic undertone is hard to miss. As Grant rightly comments, "The bottom line is that Planned Parenthood was self-consciously organized, in part, to promote and enforce White Supremacy. ... It has been from its inception implicitly and explicitly racist."

"There is no way to escape the implications," argues William L. Davis, a black financial analyst Grant quotes. "When an organization has a history of racism, when its literature is openly racist, when it goals are self-consciously racial, and when its programs invariably revolve around race, it doesn’t take an expert to realize that the organization is indeed racist."

Sanger’s Legacy

Its is impossible to sever Planned Parenthood’s past from its present. Its legacy of lies and propaganda continues to infiltrate the black community. This poison is even more venomous because, in addition to birth control, Planned Parenthood touts abortion as a solution to the economic and social problems that plague the community. In its wake is the loss of more than 12 million lives within the black community alone. Planned Parenthood’s own record reflect this. For example, a 1992 report revealed that 23.2 percent of women who obtained abortions at its affiliates were black---although blacks represent no more than 13 percent of the total population. In 1996, Planned Parenthood’s research arm reported: "Blacks, who make up 14 percent of all childbearing women, have 31 percent of all abortions and whites, who account for 81 percent of women of childbearing age, have 61 percent."

"Abortion is the number-one killer of blacks in America," says Rev. Hunter of LEARN. "We’re losing our people at the rate of 1,452 a day. That’s just pure genocide. There’s no other word for it. [Sanger’s] influence and the whole mindset that Planned Parenthood has brought into the black community ... say it’s okay to destroy your people. We bought into the lie; we bought into the propaganda."

Some blacks have even made abortion "right" synonymous with civil rights.

"We’re destroying the destiny and purpose of others who should be here," Hunter laments. "Who knows the musicians we’ve lost? Who knows the great leaders the black community has really lost? Who knows what great minds of economic power people have lost? What great teachers?" He recites an old African proverb: "No one knows whose womb holds the chief."

Hunter has personally observed the vestiges of Planned Parenthood’s eugenic past in the black community today. "When I travel around the country...I can only think of one abortion clinic [I’ve seen] in a predominantly white neighborhood. The majority of clinics are in black neighborhoods."

Hunter noted the controversy that occurred tow years ago in Louisiana involving school-based health clinics. The racist undertone could not have been more evident. In the Baton Rouge district, officials were debating placing clinics in the high schools. Black state representative Sharon Weston Broome initially supported the idea. She later expressed concern about clinics providing contraceptives and abortion counseling. "Clinics should promote abstinence," she said. Upon learning officials wanted to put the clinics in black schools only, Hunter urged her to suggest they be placed in white schools as well. At Broome’s suggestion, however, proposals for t he school clinics were "dropped immediately," reported Hunter.

Grant observed the same game plan 20 years ago. "During the 1980s when Planned Parenthood shifted its focus from community-based clinics to school-based clinics, it again targeted inner-city minority neighborhoods," he writes. "Of the more than 100 school-based clinics that have opened nationwide in the last decade [1980s], none has been at substantially all-white schools," he adds. "None has been at suburban middle-class schools. All have been at black, minority or ethnic schools."

In 1987, a group of black ministers, parents and educators filed suit against the Chicago Board of Education. They charged the city’s school-based clinics with not only violating the state’s fornication laws, but also with discrimination against blacks. The clinics were a "calculated, pernicious effort to destroy the very fabric of family life [between] black parents and their children," the suit alleged.

One of the parents in the group was "shocked" when her daughter came home from school with Planned Parenthood material. "I never realized how racist those people were until I read the [information my daughter received] at the school clinic," she said. "[They are worse than] the Klan … because they’re so slick and sophisticated. Their bigotry is all dolled up with statistics and surveys, but just beneath the surface it’s as ugly as apartheid."

A more recent account uncovered a Planned Parenthood affiliate giving condoms to residents of a poor black neighborhood in Akron, Ohio. The residents received a "promotional bag" containing, among other things: literature on sexually transmitted disease prevention, gynecology exams and contraception, a condom-case key chain containing a bright-green condom, and a coupon. The coupon was redeemable at three Ohio county clinics for a dozen condoms and a $5 McDonald’s gift certificate. All the items were printed with Planned Parenthood phone numbers.

The affiliate might say they’re targeting high-pregnancy areas, but their response presumes destructive behavior on the part of the targeted group. Planned Parenthood has always been reluctant to promote, or encourage, abstinence as the only safeguard against teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, calling it "unrealistic."

Rev. Richard Welch, president of Human Life International in Front Royal, Virginia, "blasted" the affiliate for targeting low-income, minority neighborhoods with the bags. He said the incident revealed "the racism inherent in promoting abortion and contraception in primarily minority neighborhoods."

He then criticized Planned Parenthood: "Having sprung from the racist dreams of a woman determined to apply abortion and contraception to eugenics and ethnic cleansing, Planned Parenthood remains true to the same strategy today."

Untangling the Deceptive Web

Black leaders have been silent about Margaret Sanger’s evil machination against their community far too long. They’ve been silent about abortion’s devastating effects in their community–despite their pro-life inclination. "The majority of [blacks] are more pro-life than anything else," said Hunter. "Blacks were never taught to destroy their children; even in slavery they tried to hold onto their children."

"Blacks are not quiet about the issue because they do no care, but rather because the truth has been kept from them. The issue is … to educate our people, " said former Planned Parenthood board member LaVerne Tolbert.

Today, a growing number of black pro-lifers are untangling the deceptive web spun by Sanger. They are using truth to shed light on the lies. The "Say SO" march is just one example of their burgeoning pro-life activism. As the marchers laid 1,452 roses at the courthouse steps–to commemorate the number of black babies aborted daily–spokesman Damon Owens said, "This calls national attention to the problem [of abortion]. This is an opportunity for blacks to speak to other blacks. This doesn’t solve all of our problems. But we will not solve our other problems with abortion."

Black pro-lifers are also linking arms with their white pro-life brethren. Black Americans for Life (BAL) is an outreach group of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), a Washington, D.C. based grassroots organizations. NRLC encourages networking between black and white pro-lifers. "Our goal is to bring people together–from all races, colors, and religions–to work on pro-life issues," said NRLC Director of Outreach Ernest Ohlhoff. "Black Americans for Life in not a parallel group; we want to help African-Americans integrate communicational and functionally into the pro-life movement."

Mrs. Beverly LaHaye, founder and chairman of Concerned Women for America, echoes the sentiment. "Our mission is to protect the right to life of all members of the human race. CWA welcomes like-minded women and men, from all walks of life, to join us in this fight."

Concerned Women for America has a long history of fighting Planned Parenthood’s evil agenda. The Negro Project is an obscure angle, but one that must come to light. Margaret Sanger sold black Americans an illusion. Now with the veil of deception removed, they can "choose life … that [their] descendants may live."










(I doubt the authenticity of this image, but becasue I am no expert on the history of the event I give it a 40-60 chance of having happened. The picture however is a poorly photoshopped clip in of Mrs. Sanger supposedly at a KKK rally. I could have done better and I suck at photoshop. Look at this picture for 2 seconds and you can tell it has been photoshopped over an authentic pictire of a KKK rally from a much later time period then Mrs. Sangers clothing, and that the "podium" is just some crates. ANyway, let us look at the rest of the documents presented. By the way this all comes off of one blog called the "Magic Negro Watch" blog, claiming to be run by a black man, but I have a feeling his skin is a good deal paler then he lets on.

(This article first appeared in the January 20, 1992 edition of Citizen magazine)
How Planned Parenthood Duped America

At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the "black" and "yellow" peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood.

Sanger's other colleagues included avowed and sophisticated racists. One, Lothrop Stoddard, was a Harvard graduate and the author of The Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy. Stoddard was something of a Nazi enthusiast who described the eugenic practices of the Third Reich as "scientific" and "humanitarian." And Dr. Harry Laughlin, another Sanger associate and board member for her group, spoke of purifying America's human "breeding stock" and purging America's "bad strains." These "strains" included the "shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South."

Not to be outdone by her followers, Margaret Sanger spoke of sterilizing those she designated as "unfit," a plan she said would be the "salvation of American civilization.: And she also spike of those who were "irresponsible and reckless," among whom she included those " whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers." She further contended that "there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped." That many Americans of African origin constituted a segment of Sanger considered "unfit" cannot be easily refuted.

While Planned Parenthood's current apologists try to place some distance between the eugenics and birth control movements, history definitively says otherwise. The eugenic theme figured prominently in the Birth Control Review, which Sanger founded in 1917. She published such articles as "Some Moral Aspects of Eugenics" (June 1920), "The Eugenic Conscience" (February 1921), "The purpose of Eugenics" (December 1924), "Birth Control and Positive Eugenics" (July 1925), "Birth Control: The True Eugenics" (August 1928), and many others.

These eugenic and racial origins are hardly what most people associate with the modern Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), which gave its Margaret Sanger award to the late Dr. Martin Luther King in 1966, and whose current president, Faye Wattleton, is black, a former nurse, and attractive.

Though once a social pariah group, routinely castigated by religious and government leaders, the PPFA is now an established, high-profile, well-funded organization with ample organizational and ideological support in high places of American society and government. Its statistics are accepted by major media and public health officials as "gospel"; its full-page ads appear in major newspapers; its spokespeople are called upon to give authoritative analyses of what America's family policies should be and to prescribe official answers that congressmen, state legislator and Supreme Court justiices all accept as "social orthodoxy."

Blaming Families

Sanger's obsession with eugenics can be traced back to her own family. One of 11 children, she wrote in the autobiographical book, My Fight for Birth Control, that "I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jails with large families." Just as important was the impression in her childhood of an inferior family status, exacerbated by the iconoclastic, "free-thinking" views of her father, whose "anti-Catholic attitudes did not make for his popularity" in a predominantly Irish community.

The fact that the wealthy families in her hometown of Corning, N.Y., had relatively few children, Sanger took as prima facie evidence of the impoverishing effect of larger families. The personal impact of this belief was heightened 1899, at the age of 48. Sanger was convinced that the "ordeals of motherhood" had caused the death of her mother. The lingering consumption (tuberculosis) that took her mother's life visited Sanger at the birth of her own first child on Nov. 18, 1905. The diagnosis forced her to seek refuge in the Adirondacks to strengthen her for the impending birth. Despite the precautions, the birth of baby Grant was "agonizing," the mere memory of which Sanger described as "mental torture" more than 25 years later. She once described the experience as a factor "to be reckoned with" in her zealous campaign for birth control.

From the beginning, Sanger advocacy of sex education reflected her interest in population control and birth prevention among the "unfit." Her first handbook, published for adolescents in 1915 and entitled, What Every Boy and Girl Should Know, featured a jarring afterword:

It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stoop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them.

To Sanger, the ebbing away of moral and religious codes over sexual conduct was a natural consequence of the worthlessness of such codes in the individual's search for self-fulfillment. "Instead of laying down hard and fast rules of sexual conduct," Sanger wrote in her 1922 book Pivot of Civilization, "sex can be rendered effective and valuable only as it meets and satisfies the interests and demands of the pupil himself." Her attitude is appropriately described as libertinism, but sex knowledge was not the same as individual liberty, as her writings on procreation emphasized.

The second edition of Sanger's life story, An Autobiography, appeared in 1938. There Sanger described her first cross-country lecture tour in 1916. Her standard speech asserted seven conditions of life that "mandated" the use of birth control: the third was "when parents, though normal, had subnormal children"; the fourth, "when husband and wife were adolescent"; the fifth, "when the earning capacity of the father was inadequate." No right existed to exercise sex knowledge to advance procreation. Sanger described the fact that "anyone, no matter how ignorant, how diseased mentally or physically, how lacking in all knowledge of children, seemed to consider he or she had the right to become a parent."

Religious Bigotry

In the 1910's and 1920's, the entire social order–religion, law, politics, medicine, and the media–was arrayed against the idea and practice of birth control. This opposition began in 1873 when an overwhelmingly Protestant Congress passed, and a Protestant president signed into law, a bill that became known as the Comstock Law, named after its main proponent, Anthony Comstock. The U.S. Congress classified obscene writing, along with drugs, and devices and articles that prevented conception or caused abortion, under the same net of criminality and forbade their importation or mailing.

Sanger set out to have such legislation abolished or amended. Her initial efforts were directed at the Congress with the opening of a Washington, D.C., office of her American Birth Control League in 1926. Sanger wanted to amend section 211 of the U.S. criminal code to allow the interstate shipment and mailing of contraceptives among physicians, druggists and drug manufacturers.

SEE PART 2 next post

Glen Becks evil plan for the anniversary of MLK day speech. evil man...check out the vid



Glenn Beck: The Plan (VERY SCARY MAN THAT GLEN BECK-Nutcase thats for sure)

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November 23, 2009 - 13:08 ET


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GLENN: We are at a tipping point. We are, could the government become more corrupt and us survive? I don't think so. Could they listen to you less than they do now and you have any voice? I don't think so. Would they spend more and you have any future left for your children? I don't think so. Could they be any more politically correct? There was a story in the New York Times yesterday. Who caused the shooter at Fort Hood? Who built him? Surprise, surprise: You did. The United States of America made him into a killer. Could we be any more politically correct? Could we fight this war with any more sunshine and lollipops and daisies out of the barrels of our gun and survive? I don't think so. Are we headed in the right direction? Are we making these things less of a problem or more of a problem? You know the answer to that. I don't care what party you're in. You know the answer. We have a stewardship. We have been given a great nation. We have been given freedom that no one else has ever had. We have been given wealth that no one else has ever had. We've been given security that no one else has ever had. And we have taken it for granted too many times. We've given our country over to a bunch of corrupt politicians because we had faith in the system. But because this has been happening now for over 100 years, and both the Republicans and the Democrats, they are very smart. They had us arguing against each other and, no, no, it's the Democrats' fault; no, it's the Republicans' fault; no, it's the Democrats' fault. Well, change this congress and things will change; change it back and things will change again. Changity change, change, change. We were drunk on our own wealth and power, we were, we were high on our own assets and home and big screen TV and brand name clothing. We just didn't see it coming. When you can have a senator take a $100 million bribe, they don't even talk about the bill. Let the bill stand on its own. It's either right for the nation or it's not. When you have a $100 million bribe in the bill, three pages, and it's disguised. So you have to kind of figure out who it's for, $100 million, and then that senator come out and correct and say, no, no, no, it's not $100 million; it's $300 million! And they do it without shame. We're in a different world. We are, we are at the point of singularity. We are at the tipping point. The paradigm is about to shift, no matter what it is you want to call it. You feel it in your gut.

Saturday I went out to The Villages in Florida. The official number given to the Times and then not printed at any given number was 25,000 people. The Villages told me that they thought the number was closer to 35,000 but they didn't want to say. They just didn't, they don't ever want to overestimate. I will tell you they were two miles out and there were people walking from their cars, and their cars were parked on the lawns and in the grass because there was no place else to park. I looked at Joe who is my right‑hand man and I looked at him and I said, "Joe, dear heavens. Look how desperate people are for someone with an answer." As I walked up to the stage, it was extraordinarily humbling, and I want you to know, I just want you to know I'm doing my best.

I'm coming to you next year with a plan, and it's multilayered. The first is ‑‑ and I started working on this in August. A 100‑year plan for America. This country was destroyed, and it began 100 years ago with the progressive movement. We weren't destroyed overnight. We were destroyed piece by piece. So how do we get it back? Libertarians lose because they say "I'm going to abolish the IRS." Well, no, you're not. It took 100 years to get this thing. I'm going to abolish, I'm going to abolish the Department of Education, or, I'm going to pull all of my troops home. Nature abhors a vacuum. You cannot pull our troops back. Even though I now agree with you, you can't do it overnight. There has to be a plan, and it won't happen with one administration, and it won't happen with just one party. We must invite Republicans and Democrats who like freedom and small government. We must invite them into a plan that makes sense! That encourages sustainability. We must get them into ‑‑ you know the saying, into the tent. But see, the tent doesn't mean anything anymore. What is the purpose of a tent? A tent is to keep the elements away, to keep you safe in case of a rainstorm. But see, we don't have a tent anymore with these two parties. There is no tent. Show me the tent. "Well, we agree on blah, blah‑blah." There can't be a tent. Because a tent requires stakes. A tent requires some sort of stake to hold it down to the ground. Well, what are those stakes? They're principles and they're values. We don't have any principles anymore. The principle is, are we going to pass healthcare because we don't want the other side to look like we passed healthcare, or we were against healthcare. We've got to go and be in part of this. Well, we've got to make sure that we get SEIU on board. Do we have them on board? How much money are we getting over here? Hey, can we get Louisiana a $300 million bribe? There's no principles anymore. So there can't be any tent because there's nothing to stake that tent down! And both the Republicans and the Democrats know it. They know it. But they don't fear anything. I'm an alcoholic in recovery. It's tough. It's tougher when you're drinking to stop. Everybody has their own bottom. Until I started having blackouts and my doctor said you're going to die, you keep doing this, you'll be dead within six months, it still wasn't enough until I had blackouts, doctor gives me six months to live, my best friend Pat, he can't work with me anymore, and I lie to my children that I finally said I've got to stop. Well, where is the bottom for the Republicans and the Democrats? Where is their bottom? They don't fear their political death. They don't fear the party's demise. Well, they need to. And if they don't wake up, if they don't go back and look for the stakes of that tent and the principles of those tents, if they don't look back for the principles and the values of our Constitution, they should be destroyed! We're not destroying them; they're destroying themselves. We're trying to save ya. But nobody can save an alcoholic from himself. He's got to turn the corner himself. So we're not waiting for them. You want to come, you want to wake up and join us? The best thing you can do is join us because you already have the structure! Until that time we're going to build the structure.

I'm going to teach you how to be a community organizer next year, oh, because two can play at that game. I'm going to teach you how to be self‑reliant next year. We've divided the country up into seven regions. I don't know how many of these we're going to be able to do, but we're going to do these, what would you even call them? Day‑long education seminars, and the first one we announce is going to happen in March in Orlando, Florida, where we're going to teach you everything you need to know. And I'm going to try to bring in some experts. How do you build a lifeboat? What do we do right now to be able to save our country, to be able to get them to wake up before an election? Can we get them to wake up before the election? Can we get them ‑‑ I've had enough of calling these clowns; they don't listen to us. Well, the next time we go to Washington, the next time, you know, Michele Bachmann says, hey, you've got to come to Washington, well, thousands of people did go to Washington and they still passed the damn thing. Because we don't have teeth. Well, it's time to find our teeth and sharpen our teeth, and we're going to do it. And then on August 28th ‑‑ write this down in your calendar because this will be most likely the last large gathering on the mall in Washington, D.C. August 28th, I ask you to meet me. Take your family. We move ‑‑ we had something planned. We moved it to August 28th because I wanted your family to be able to be there and your family not in school, et cetera, et cetera. So come to the feet of Abraham Lincoln on August 28th. By that time I hope to have enough things out there that you will at least have some teeth to the ‑‑ so the politicians will see you and hear you and fear you! The reason why I say I think it's going to be the last large gathering on the mall is because our government has decided that there will be no more gatherings, large gatherings on the mall with Abraham Lincoln and the Lincoln Memorial as of 2011. This will be historic. In the meantime piece by piece, little by little I'm developing this plan, and I will explain more to you a little later. It's not something I take lightly. It is not something that is something I can whip out. But two can play at this game, and I'll give you more details as things continue. But I want you to know we are all stewards of this country, and I take my stewardship of my part of the republic seriously, and I take your faith in me extraordinarily seriously. We're in it together.

Who’s Amish Now?

Is avoiding the health care mandate worth fastening your clothes with straight pins?
From the stiff wooden pews of my grandmother’s Mennonite church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,  I often heard a story that perfectly illustrates the Anabaptist approach to profession of faith. It’s a part of Anabaptist lore, told and retold from the simple pulpits of unadorned churches across the country. As it turns out, the story belongs to one Rufus P. Bucher as much as it does to the Amish and Mennonites I grew up surrounded by. Chris Armstrong recently retold it at his blog:
When Brethren evangelist Rufus P. Bucher was asked by a stranger in a railway station, “Brother, are you saved?” he replied that since he might be prejudiced on the question, his interrogator should go ask his wife, children, and neighbors. “I’ll be ready to let their answers stand as my own.”
There’s a reason why the Anabaptists believe in showing and not telling. For a couple of hundred years they were sought out, tortured and murdered for their faith. And not just by their neighbors, but by their state. Fleeing from Switzerland to escape the horrors of the Radical Reformation, Anabaptists, who ascribe to adult baptism and are comprised of Amish and Mennonite sects, headed first to Germany, then to Russia and the infant United States. They never looked back. The need to escape religious persecution at home became the need to find religious tolerance wherever it existed. Today Mennonite and Amish populations live on every continent, in every country that will allow them freedom to live their modest lifestyle, outside the strictures of modern society or government laws. You won’t find a group of believers more versed in the necessity for strict separation of church and state; the Anabaptists know better than most what happens when a nation’s rulers adopt theocratic laws: somebody’s bound to get killed.
All this makes conservative commentator Don Surber’s recent claim that “We are all Amish now” intriguing, if not a bit demeaning. Surber and other luminary conservative commentators, including Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham’s blogger Raymond Arroyo—an odd bunch that insists government should stay out of their lives but not out of others’—got wind of the exemption for Anabaptists in the new health care bill. Amish and Old Order Mennonites will not be required to pay the health care mandate, a fee for government-facilitated health care that, if unpaid, will result in a fine comparable to a percentage of one’s salary. Surber writes, “I’d say the Amish have about 16 million people who might want to become Amish and be conscientious objectors to being drafted into Obamacare.”
Michelle Malkin predicts, citing New York state’s Watertown Daily News which first reported the exemption, “I think there’s going to be a wave of religious conversions this year…Amish families can claim an exemption from the Demcare’s planned government health care insurance mandate as a matter of faith.” Her point, that some faiths are more exempt from government intrusion than others, is further “explained” by Raymond Arroyo:
So get this straight: the Amish, Old Order Mennonites and possibly Christian Scientists can opt out of the health care plan, with no penalty, while Catholics and other Christians are bound to pay premiums that fund abortion. How is that fair? Hundreds of Christian, pro-life hospitals, doctors and nurses may soon be forced to violate their consciences and offer or perform procedures they consider morally objectionable.
Beyond the fact that health care reform will not force Catholics nor other Christians to perform abortions—the Hyde, Church, Coats, and Weldon Amendments protect provider “conscience” rights, but sadly, not patients’ (speaking of unfair)—Arroyo misses the point completely.  Contrary to the media’s unrefined reportage on the greatest “culture war” issue of all time, not every Christian denomination is theologically defined solely by their opposition to abortion.
While this talk of conversion may make a fantastic image—Michelle Malkin fastening her clothes on each morning with straight pins, giving up makeup and the spotlight, baking four shoe-fly pies on a wood stove, and not speaking unless spoken to (ok, that’s appealing)—what they display is a resolute and impassioned ignorance of religious nuance. They conflate vastly divergent religious convictions into one monolithic Christian ideology, their own. And they’ve slapped a label on it: FAITH.
What they all get wrong is why Amish and Mennonites are exempt from paying the proposed insurance mandate: Anabaptists don’t believe in insurance. And they never have. Anabaptist theology reaches back, with surprising purity, to its earliest founding principle: two worlds. There’s no point in saving the world because it is fallen and doomed to evil. The second, holy world, the Anabaptist Kingdom, lives separate from society, self-reliant and independent of modern government services, laws, banks or taxes. As Richard Kyle writes:
…the “true church” had to separate from the world and live by the ethic contained in the Sermon on the Mount. In practice, this notion of separation meant several things for the Anabaptists: they advocated the disestablishment of the church and its separation from the world; they renounced warfare and use of the sword; they refused to conform to many civic mores, including swearing by the civil oath and bringing suit in courts of law.
And they refused to rely on the worldly insurance industry to catch them if they fell. In recent decades, “mutual aid” organizations have been established to shield Mennonites from catastrophic loss; the Amish tend to pool their resources when a member is ill, just as they would to build a barn. And you won’t find Orthodox Anabaptists tapping out political screeds on blogs or picketing the local Planned Parenthood clinic. One’s faith and conscience are private, lived by example, “in the world but not of it,” not demonstrated through democratic activism, government lobbying, or proselytizing for federal laws. This kind of separate-from-the-world life is probably not what Malkin had in mind.
As the word of Anabaptist exemption got around the Web last week, Kansas Redneck decided to form his own Reformed Amish sect, offering to be “transitional deacon” while the group got going. The objective would be to get out of the health care mandate but not have to wear those funny clothes and give up cars. He writes, “Heck, what is there to lose? We agree to not accept social suckery [social security] and in exchange are exempted from Obambi care [health care].” A “true patriot’s” dream, no doubt.
While I understand that this conversion talk is in jest, when one considers America’s predilection for shopping around for a new faith like a new coat—often switching denominations repeatedly—choosing one’s faith based on grounds of convenience sounds a bit like the less pithy version of selecting the God you’d most like to have a beer with.
Having narrowly avoided membership in the Mennonite church myself—I come from a long line of Mennonites, my earliest ancestors can be traced back to the Radical Reformation and the initial Anabaptist settlers of Pennsylvania—I’m still bothered by the ease with which these comments suggest adopting a “plain” lifestyle. Faith, they seem to say, is a convenience, not a conviction; a simple matching up of environment and chosen lifestyle to a copacetic denomination, preferably one that will get you out of taxation.
As the week progressed, “We’re all Amish now” devolved into more pointed discrimination of Anabaptists. As one commenter, who mis-remembers the nature of the Establishment Clause, writes, “A clear-cut violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment if I ever saw one … the government is favoring one religion over all others by this exemption.” The muddy implication is that objection to the health care mandate on grounds of faith—never mind the nature of that faithful objection—should be applied to all believers, not just the Anabaptists.
My first reaction to all this commentary is one of profound sadness: not only for the ahistorical, a-theological defamation of other faiths, but for the proud commenter’s ignorance of the laws of religious tolerance the US was founded on—and their purpose. My second reaction is one of challenge: I just dare you all to go “plain”; I wouldn’t give you two weeks in the Anabaptist’s Kingdom, health care mandate or not.

Glenn Beck, Texas Textbooks, And The Erosion of Separation Between Church and State. « SpeakEasy

Glenn Beck, Texas Textbooks, And The Erosion of Separation Between Church and State. « SpeakEasy

Texas Education Board Is Trying to Infuse Schoolbooks with Ultraconservative Ideology | Civil Liberties | AlterNet

Texas Education Board Is Trying to Infuse Schoolbooks with Ultraconservative Ideology | Civil Liberties | AlterNet

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Why I am the Democratic Rottweiler to Republican Sarah Palin's Pitbull

Palin for President 2012

I am known as the Democratic Party Sarah Palin.

I may not be pretty, but I am a regular person, a mom, and a Rottweiler to SP's Pitbull.

I am a single mom too, which is even better. Plus I am not rich, and I don't shoot wolves for fun.

I don't beleive that the Government should be in my business either, especially when it comes to regulating my body or the bodies of others. Thats why I am Pro CHoice. It is one thing to protect a fetus, it is another to destroy it, doom it to a lifetime of poverty and opression, and then send it off to war and then kill it. Prolonging the inevitable for 18 years is torture. And I do not condone torture, or murder, or killing.

I also do not beleive in making both men and women impotent through the spread of infectious and deadly diseases that are caused by not wearing a condom during sex, wether you are married or not. These diseases make people barren by the millions worldwide every single year all over the world. Again, I am pro LIFE, that is why I am PRO Choice.

Another thing, is I am about empowering Americas women. Not about taking their power away. Not about making them suffer both physical and mental anguish by forcing them to have unwanted pregnancies that may or may not have been their choice to have in the first place. That is not what being an empowered woman is all about. Further, I am against domestic violence. I do not condone the behaviors of pedephiles and rapists, and I do not support their right to force children on their victims. Further, as I said, I am PRO LIFE that is why I am PRO CHOICE. If a mother of five dies giving birth to her sixth child, that leaves 6 children motherless. I am for motherhood, not against motherhood. That is why I am PRO LIFE. I am PRO CHOICE.

I do not beleif that our country should be a theocracy and I strongly beleive in a separation of church and state. Therefore, I do not beleive that traditional marriage would be in any way damaged by the right of same sex couples to marry. First of all, they cannot produce children. This will prevent many unwanted pregnancies in the country and will prevent abortion, as well as prevent chuildren that conservatives hate to pay for on the welfare rolls. THis should make fiscally conservative Republicans beam with joy since that would save possibly billions in tax payer dollars on social services, needing more public schools, and things like healthcare. L:ess poeple on the health care rolls menas more savings for the fiscally conservative out there.

Also, traditional marriage is suffering all on its own, without the help of gays. The divorce rate in this country has just hit an alltime high, and domestic violence from married couples accounts for most of the abuse in this country. Rarely do gay couples abuse each other. And their divorce rate is zero, since they can't marry. Traditional family values? Seems like gays have more family values that opposite sex couples. So I am voting for traditional family values, that is why I support gay marriages, and gay rights.

Equity and equality. I also beleive in that. I beleive in the average, struggling, hard tax paying working poor. The working poor and lower middle income families support this entire country. The upper middle classes and the rich have had enough tax breaks, and I for one am sick of welfare-corporate welfare.. Working class families need support in housing and social services, and they don't need to pay any more taxes then they already do. They also need better paying jobs, and a better federal minimum wage. So, I support not increasing taxes. You betcha.

Finally, I am an American. Actually I am one of the first Americans. Therefore, if you want to talk patriotism, then I am really your girl. Sarah Palin does not have any blood other than white. She has kept her gene pool pure. Must have been hard to do in the last 400 years but her family somehow managed it. Not mine. I am a mixed race person, and representative of most of the country right now. I am also a single parent. With almost 50 percent of adults in childbearing age being single parents, and in the working poor or lower middle income bracket, I think I am way more representative of the average American Patriot than Sarah Palin is.

I stand for decent values. Things like equity, choice, real freedom, equality and compassion for our fellow human beings no matter what their circumstances. race, creed or natonality. All are equal. Each equaly deserves the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I stand for the real AMerica that Sarah Palin shuts her eyes too. They are circling the wagons around the last vestiges of race, class, separatism, extreme nationalism, and extreme right wing Christianity, bigotry and intolerance.

I also beleive in protecting and preserving our environment, and also in stopping pollution, and I beleive in negotiation, mediated confrontation and national cooperation to offset war, as well as reparations to countries we devastate in the process. I am for educating the worlds population, increasing safe food production, bringing in safe drinking water, decent homes and shelters, and that includes our people at home right her in America.

You cannot call a disaster an act of God one week, and then the next mock environmentalists for being tree huggers and trying to "save mother earth." She cannot be your mother one week and your father the next. Gender bias has no place in environmental protections. When it suits them, the Right Wing Theocratical Republican Party will blow the horn of the end of the days and biblical prophesies when third world countries suffer devastating natural disasters with increased intensity yet do nothing to admit that man may have had a hand in it, believing that only God of the Judeo Christian bible would send such a punishment on such already impoverished people. Yet, when it snows here in our country in the Winter, they crow that environmentalists are wrong about climate change and nothing is wrong.

They equate the worshiping of the mother earth to blasphemy, and call it witchcraft, and call environmentalists hippies, yet it is a fact that the earths population would have doubled in the last 20 years due to theocratical regimes in other countries outlawing birth control and elective abortions thus causing population explosions that have caused wars, famines, droughts, mass genocide of entire populations and caused a worldwide food shortage and an agricultural crisis due to over use of the land, over-population, pollution, lack of basic necessities and infrastructure, and jobs for millions and millions of people, and also causing infant mortality and child mortality rates to soar worldwide. This is hypocracy of the worst kind. That is why I am for protecting the earth, and family planning, and an international minimum wage, and negotiation over war as a last resort, force if absolutely necessary.

Thats what I stand for. The Rottwieler to Sarahs Pit Bull.

Yes, I am the Democratic Sarah Palin. The Rottweiler is off her chain. The pitbull better hope she is faster, stronger and smarter. Because who knows who might run in 2012.

Palinites visit a Sarah Palin Grotto (A Bookstore that hosted a booksigning). THey closed the store down. Onlhy people who love Saint Sarah and bought a ticket could get it. LOL

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/ID/215826

Watch the Palinites visit the Grotto. A Sarah Palin Booksigning lkisten to the loons talk coo coo coo coo coocoo!!!!