Posted by David Bernstein: "Paranoid Conservatives": http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_09-2009_08_15.shtml#1250122857
Various articles, [1]such as this one, accuse conservatives of "paranoia" for thinking that health care "reform" will lead, for example, to Trig Palin being denied medical care. I agree that it's a bit paranoid, but not nearly as irrational as the critics suggest. Eugenics enforced by government dictate once had strong support on the Progressive left, more recently than some might imagine. Most casual observers probably think that enthusiasm for eugenics disappeared with Naziism, but that's a mistake. Paul Blanshard, for example, a champion of Progressive/liberal Protestantism and an anti-Catholic polemicist, criticized the Catholic Church for its unyielding opposition to coercive eugenics after World War II. In his 1949 bestseller, American Freedom and Catholic Power, Blanshard favorably cited Buck v. Bell and warned of a Catholic plot to, among other things, prohibit sterilization except as "grave punishment" by government for a criminal offense. State eugenics programs continued through the 1970s. When African Americans express paranoia about the origins of the AIDS virus or the crack epidemic, sympathetic liberals explain that this paranoia is understandable given the Tuskegee experiments. Perhaps a little understanding of the paranoia that arises from the history of eugenics in this country would be in order. (And it's not like last Fall you didn't see various modern "progressives" writing some truly awful things about Palin's decision not to abort Trig!) References 1. http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/08/12/zeke-emanuel-and-the-right-s-paranoid-style.aspx _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
