Guest Opinion: The Barbaric Vision of 'Progressive' Heroes

There is nothing right or left-wing about being pro-life, but pro-lifers are repeatedly and ridiculously condemned and dismissed as being on the right. Life, however, is more important than political labels. But while we know of the murderous fascists of the 1940s, we need to understand something of those assumed to be the good guys - the socialist thinkers and writers who allegedly wanted only to make the world a better place.

We're Back - Greatest Meat on Earth

P>TORONTO, ON (The Interim) - There is nothing right or left-wing about pro-life, but pro-lifers are repeatedly and ridiculously condemned and dismissed as being on the right. Life, however, is more important than political labels. But while we know of the murderous fascists of the 1940s, we need to understand something of those assumed to be the good guys - the socialist thinkers and writers who allegedly wanted only to make the world a better place.

Thinkers such as the famous science fiction writer H.G. Wells, who between 1905 and 1940, was one of the most admired and influential men in the world. In describing his fellow socialist and some-time friend, George Bernard Shaw wrote of Wells, "Multiply the total by ten; square the result. Raise it again to the millionth power and square it again; and you will still fall short of the truth about Wells - yet the worse he behaved the more he was indulged; and the more he was indulged the worse he behaved." Shaw, by the way, lied about what he had seen in Stalin's Russia and when questioned by a Western journalist about the forced starvations in Ukraine threw a can of Russian meat at him. Wells, though, was worse.

At heart he was a social engineer. In massively best-selling books such as Anticipations and A Modern Utopia Wells wrote that he believed the world would collapse; from this collapse a new order should and would emerge. "People throughout the world whose minds were adapted to the big-scale conditions of the new time," he wrote. "A naturally and informally organized educated class, an unprecedented sort of people." A strict social order would be formed. At the bottom of it was the base.

These were "people who had given evidence of a strong anti-social disposition," including "the black, the brown, the swarthy, the yellow." Christians would also "have to go," as well as the handicapped. Wells devoted entire pamphlets to the need of "preventing the birth, preventing the procreation or preventing the existence" of the mentally and physically handicapped. "This thing, this euthanasia of the weak and the sensual is possible. I have little or no doubt that in the future it will be planned and achieved."

The people of Africa and Asia, he said, simply could never find a place in a modern world controlled by science. Better to do away with the lot. "I take it they will have to go," he said of them. Marriage as it is known would have to end but couples could form mutually agreed unions. They would list their "desires, diseases, needs" on little cards and a central authority would decide who was fitted for whom.

Population would be rigidly controlled, with forced abortion for those who were not of the right class and race. Religion would be banned, children would be raised in communes. The old and the ill would, naturally, have to be done away with and doctors would be given the authority to decide who had a right to live, who had a duty to die. On the Jews: "I met a Jewish friend of mine the other day and he asked me what would come of his people," Wells wrote. "That is exactly what is the matter with them - my people." Writing of World War I, Well stated,  "throughout those tragic and almost fruitless four years of war, the Jewish spokesmen were most elaborately and energetically demonstrating that they cared not a rap for the troubles and dangers of English, French, Germans, Russians, Americans or of any other people but their own. They kept their eyes steadfastly upon the restoration of the Jews."

Wells may have been the most prominent of these socialist slaughterers but he was not the only one. The American socialist Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood and is still a feminist and liberal icon. Black people and immigrants in general, were "human weeds" and "reckless breeders," "spawning human beings who never should have been born." She believed in the sterilization of the mentally ill, in "racial purification" and the elimination of those she labelled the "feeble-minded." She was aware, however, that her racism might cause a few problems and warned that, "we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population"because it might provoke "their more rebellious members."

Canada's own Tommy Douglas is widely considered one this nation's more significant heroes. He is celebrated as one of our greatest and purest voices because of his commitment to socialism and fight for socialized medicine. Yet on the subject eugenics and sterilizing the mentally handicapped he said, "some have objected to sterilization on the grounds that it is depriving human beings of an unalienable right. But medical science declares that it is possible to be sterilized and yet have sexual intercourse. In the main this is all the defective asks. Among them the parental instinct is not paramount, but is entirely subordinated to the sex urge. Thus sterilization would deprive them of nothing that they value very highly, and would make it impossible for them to reproduce those whose presence could contribute little to the general well-being of society."

The list goes on. George Bernard Shaw, Sydney and Beatrice Webb and the early founders of the socialist Fabian Society. Today, the vocabulary may be less harsh and severe, but calls for population control and international abortion availability are still common. Those leading the campaign are still very much on the political left and the actual and potential victims are still invariably the poor, the handicapped, the black and the brown. The voices may be different but the song, as they say, remains the same, and is one so terribly familiar to those of us who care about life.

© 2011, The Interim. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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The Interim is Canada’s life and family issues newspaper. Since it was founded in 1983, The Interim has provided honest reporting and insightful commentary on abortion, euthanasia, bioethics, family values and marriage.