Catholic Medical Quarterly Volume 66(2) May 2016

The Road to Hell: How Well-Intentioned Progressivism is Leading to Eugenics

Ann Farmer

How the progressive’s heaven leads to hell on earth.

Progressives are smoothing the way for overt eugenics in public policy, despite the best of intentions - paving the way not to the heaven of their imagining but to the kind of hell on earth created by totalitarian regimes that controlled the quality and quantity of the population in the interests of the state. At first sight this scenario appears unlikely - progressives would be aghast at the very idea of eugenics; but Benito Mussolini originally used totalitarianism to mean an all-embracing system of government under which “everybody belonged, where everyone was taken care of, where everything was inside the state and nothing was outside.” [1] Fascists believed that people had a duty to reproduce - or not - for the sake of the state, and the progressive mantra - ‘prevent, plan, protect’ - has been co-opted by the eugenics population control movement to prevent births, plan deaths, and protect society from the ‘unfit’, including the poor/ non-white.

Committed eugenicists may be few and far between, but the modern progressive is ubiquitous; university-educated, pro-welfare, ‘green’, anti-capitalist, equality-fixated, pro-sexual liberty, ‘pro-choice’, like the early Fabian socialists their ideas have permeated Western society like yeast in bread.[2]

The Fabians were also heavily influenced by eugenics; they helped to introduce the Welfare State, the perfect eugenics vehicle, where the poor would come to be seen not only as a burden but an expensive burden,[3] and although the Marxist Left continued to put its faith in ‘class war’ and revolution, when the Soviets invaded Hungary in 1956, many British Leftists switched their attention to ‘reproductive rights’.[4] The working classes were not interested in revolution; Communism had shown itself to be not only repressive but economically inept; capitalism was more successful in delivering prosperity to the poor, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet Communism’s demise, it appeared that there would be no resurrection. Undeterred, denim-clad Left-wing class warriors, permed, suited and booted, embraced ‘Third Way’ politics; taking “the legacy of the counter culture to the heart of government”,[5] they plundered the fruits of despised capitalism to vastly expand the Welfare State, dragging voters to the Left by building a ‘pro-welfare’ electoral base and, incidentally, providing jobs for progressives in social work and the law, picking up the pieces of the disintegrating working class.

But even before the Left stole the Right’s economic clothes in a process of ‘triangulation’, the Right had joined the Left’s war against the traditional family, by quietly providing contraception and abortion to minors without parental knowledge and consent[6.] Later, a Conservative/LibDem Coalition Government introduced same-sex marriage, risking the disapproval of socially conservative voters in their anxiety to be seen as progressive by the increasingly progressive media.[7]

Having few ideals of its own beyond anodyne watchwords like ‘fairness’, ‘freedom’, ‘choice’, etc., progressivism is vulnerable to manipulation by those with stronger but more unpalatable political nostrums, and indeed has become a useful philosophical laundering service for dangerous ideas and dirty tricks. In its confusing and chequered history, any new idea – however old – has been seized upon in the endless quest for meaning and purpose; in the Victorian age, the laissez faire economic individualist and “unambiguously anti-religious” Herbert Spencer achieved wide popularity for his sociological works based on evolutionary theory; despite coining the expression ‘the survival of the fittest’,[8] his ideas were seized upon by French and Italian anti-clericalists to justify their left-wing programmes of ‘solidarity’ and state economic intervention.[9]

In America, where evolutionism became a litmus test for ‘forward-thinkers’,[10] liberals were labelled “conservatives” by progressives who labelled themselves liberals just as they began embracing Fabian-style interventionist totalitarianism.[11] Later, socially conservative but economically liberal ‘old liberals’ were labelled ‘neo-conservatives’, as the “New Left” emerged from “neo-progressivism” and “transformed American politics”.[12] The British Liberal Party, which started out as economically libertarian, became more and more controlling and interventionist in competition with the newly formed Labour Party; finished as an electoral force by the 1920s, the Liberals (later ‘Liberal Democrats’ or ‘LibDems’) only grasped the reins of political power again in 2010 in coalition with the Conservatives, and are now more socially libertarian than liberal.[13]

Jeremy Corbyn’s radical political approach is more left-wing than New Labour’s, but he is fortunate not to have to suffer comparisons with the Soviet Union. Communism may be dead, but it is impossible to kill its ghost; instead of promoting a discredited belief system, the far Left seeks to discredit democracy, under the influence of Marxist “cultural criticism”;[14] embracing the Frankfurt school’s ‘long march through the institutions’ of Western civilization,[15] they accentuate the negatives of capitalism rather than the fabled positives of Communism. However, progressives are inspired neither by “selfish interests nor evil intentions but mostly honest convictions and good intentions”.[16] Exposed to the ‘politics’ of poverty, inequality and racism at university, and their alleged cause – capitalism – and deeply ashamed of their own privileges, they embrace any approach, as long as it does not involve a return to ‘outworn’ Christianity.

As G. K. Chesterton remarked, when people stop believing in God they do not believe in nothing, but everything,[17] but while Marxists plot to undermine Western civilization,[18] progressivism is more about tribalism, defined by being seen to hold the correct views - ‘virtue signalling’[19] - a ‘“climate of opinion”’ rather than a minutely worked-out plan. But although progressives favour the “environmental” approach - education, education, education – their foundational belief system is evolution,[20] and they support the same biological approaches as eugenicist population controllers, albeit under the rubric of ‘choice’.

Moreover, although representing only a minority, the progressive voice influences public policy, especially on health, education, child protection, crime and poverty, because it is amplified by media outlets, most notably the BBC, which portray the majority conservative viewpoint as belonging to a cranky, isolated minority.[21]

Meanwhile abortion is promoted in popular culture; the media even export the eugenics message to poor countries[22] and, despite their anti-racist views,[23] progressives ignore the disproportionate impact of abortion on the poor/non-white,[24] inadvertently furthering the aims of its eugenics pioneers. Needless to say, Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger are now regarded as feminist icons for offering women ‘choice’.[25]

No futurist, the progressive longs to return to the economic Eden from which capitalism cast out mankind;[26] he continues to fight yesterday’s battles - against slavery and capitalist greed, and for women’s suffrage and the welfare state - because combating old “dragons” is his raison d’être[27] - although the newest ‘dragon’ is discrimination against ‘sexual diversity’, which has to a large extent replaced racial issues on the progressive’s ‘hit list’ of dragons.

But progressives also fight against the family – the foundation of society[28] - and in redefining moral problems like sin as inappropriate behaviour, and sinful attitudes like hatred and bigotry as mistaken ideas that can be educated away, they have merely succeeded in underlining the eugenicist argument that human problems are caused by problem humans – that stupid people will never learn and had better be eradicated, preferably before birth.

The progressive’s ambitious, expensive and yet simplistic solution to poverty is its abolition; this sounds admirable, but also strengthens the case for much cheaper biological ‘solutions’; as F. A. Crew insisted, poverty ‘handed down’ over several generations is proof of genetic inferiority.[29] The eminently progressive Soviet Union and Communist China tried to ‘plan away’ hunger but achieved mass starvation, and turned to population control;[30] China discovered that a draconian one-child – now draconian two-child - family policy was much easier and cheaper than upholding justice, but leads to top-heavy populations and economic stagnation.

The Neo-Malthusian solution to such problems is euthanasia, which has received a progressive make-over as the ‘right to die’; but wherever the suicide of the sick is accepted, it swiftly becomes expected.[31] Despite this, comfortably-off progressives, anxious to plan their own deaths, ignore the dangers for the poor and disabled; similarly, they ignore the disastrous effects of sexual liberation and welfare dependency on poor communities as the traditional family is broken up, putting thousands of children at risk of poverty, ill health and abuse.[32]

But the self-help and mutual help that used to be provided gratis by families – preventive health care, welfare, childcare, elder care, monetary assistance, counselling – is now the responsibility of the state, incidentally providing work for progressives in the law and social work generally. The progressive would argue that the poor ‘cannot help themselves’ in sexual and reproductive matters, and therefore must be offered the choice of fertility control; the eugenicists agree that the poor cannot help themselves, but believe that this is because they are lesser-evolved organisms and therefore must be subjected to long-acting contraception, i.e. sterilization.[33] Those who cannot control themselves must be controlled.

Progressives prefer welfare as the solution to poverty, but the far Left believes that ameliorating the conditions of the poor merely delays the Glorious Revolution; both are suspicious of charity, which they regard as exploitation. Eugenicists see charity as merely perpetuating the problem of problem people, and progressives at least prefer to work for heaven on earth, however elusive. Christians, they believe, actually perpetuate earthly injustice by promising heavenly happiness.

This shows that progressives seldom open a Bible - or a history book, since, overwhelmingly, crusades against injustice have been inspired by religious faith,[34] and modern health care has emerged from the Judeo-Christian worldview. In contrast, the patron saints of the Neo­Malthusian movement, Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant deplored Christian charity and medical care for increasing the numbers of the weak;[35] population controllers blamed doctors for increasing the population ‘at both ends’; to preserve life was actually anti-social, as biologist A. S. Parkes recalled:

Addressing the World Congress [of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 1970] would give me yet another chance to remind medicos that they were indirectly responsible for the population explosion by keeping people alive and to ask what they were doing about it.[36]

Such anti-life arguments were not widely popular, for obvious reasons, but more recently, abortion has been smuggled under the public’s radar as a ‘health measure’; campaigners for reproductive and genetic tinkering have employed ‘compassionate’ slogans,[37] effectively putting Christian critics on the back foot. Similar compassionate buzzwords have been highly effective in the Orwellian ‘death with dignity’ campaign; high-profile cases of individual suffering have been exploited to make the case for killing the disabled and those who are not dying, and to remove legal protections from the vulnerable. When the slogans are challenged, however, and the underlying arguments systematically exposed and properly debated, as with the Marris Bill, they can be defeated.

The humanist movement will not give up campaigning for the ‘right to die’, which they have long supported,[38] and such campaigns have boosted humanism’s media profile ­ the very word ‘humanism’ implies that critics are inhuman - while its ethical framework has escaped public scrutiny. In America, where, historically, socialism has been regarded with suspicion, the American Left disguised itself as humanist,[39] whereas in Britain, even the opponents of socialism regard it as an ethical, if mistaken, movement - although many of its ideas have been borrowed from humanism.[40]

Anti-life measures were not originally part of mainstream Leftist thinking,[41] but state intervention was, and Hillary Clinton’s “politics of meaning” continues to regard the state as a benign instrument;[42] progressives worship the all-embracing State, the only force capable of creating heaven on earth, provided that the right people – i.e. the Left people – are in control.[43] Progressives see themselves as the voice of the powerless; they view ‘the community’ as blameless as regards crime,[44] but will imply in secular sermons that they are unhealthy, greedy, materialists, as well as xenophobic bigots, homophobes, closet racists, and, no doubt, secret wife-beaters – all in the interests of ‘tolerance’ and ‘non-judgementalism’.

Paradoxically society needs a change of direction to get to the same destination, but it must be a heavenly, not an earthly Paradise; however, dissenters need to offer hard scientific facts and positive arguments that will demolish the eugenics population control case, while reclaiming the role of protectors of the poor and weak, and champions of freedom and choice.

Unfortunately a climate of fear has arisen especially among Christians who risk social retribution for daring to demur; but Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah all experienced failure, frustration at not being listened to, and terror of being killed.[45] John the Baptist paid with his life for calling Herod to account for his sins.[46] We may fear giving offence, and yet the weak and vulnerable will pay with their lives if we fail to speak out against the Culture of Death, with its lethal medicine for that terminal disease - life.

At a time when terrorism is never out of the news, it is a sobering thought that the progressive worldview shares some of its features; if we can kill the innocent, nobody is safe. Progressives would argue that they favour choice ­ the ‘right to choose’ abortion, and the ‘right to die’ – but they ignore the unborn child’s right to life, and it is becoming increasingly clear that if we accept the right to be killed, or the right to abortion, we must force medical personnel to provide these ‘services’; for why should one person’s conscience overrule someone else’s rights?[47]

In contrast to terrorism, however, medical killing takes place in private; the public need not be disturbed. The progressive’s road to hell is the easy, wide road of indifference, but it just as surely leads to the culling of the ‘unfit’ – the unborn, poor, sick, disabled and elderly. In the eugenics paradise, death is the panacea for unplanned pregnancy, poverty, sickness, disability and old age; the hard, narrow road of caring and cures will be shunned. There will be a systematic repression of civil rights, achieved not by brute force, as in Orwell’s 1984,[48] but with ‘human rights’, ‘equality’ and ‘anti-discrimination’; ‘compliance’ will be encouraged by vilifying anyone who dares to disagree. Just as C. S. Lewis foresaw, “the safest road to Hell” will be “the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without mile­stones, without signposts”[49] - and it will be paved with good intentions.

Online extra. References

This article contains extensive references which triple the length of detail and length of this article. The references have therefore been published online only are are below the author's biography.

ABOUT ANN FARMER

One of five children born and brought up in Chigwell, Essex, Ann Farmer is married with three children and four grandchildren.

She has a Masters Degree in Jewish-Christian Relations from the Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations in Cambridge; Dissertation, ‘Has the Holocaust influenced Views of G. K. Chesterton’s ‘anti-Semitism’’; she was awarded the 2000 Jewish Christian Relations Essay Prize and contributed online student guidance.

She was Chair of the Labour Life Group, and edited Labour Life Group News.

As well as published books, she authored ‘Population Control and Democracy – an Uncivil Partnership” in the forthcoming The Purple Book (Ed. D. Lindsay).

She has contributed studies on Chesterton and anti-Semitism to The Chesterton Review; articles on Catholic history in Catholic Life magazine, and on life issues in various journals. For many years she contributed homilies, articles and cartoons to Redemptorist Publications, and research for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.

A full-length work on G. K. Chesterton, 'Chesterton and the Jews: a fully rounded Portrait', has now been published.

You can find out more about Ann on her website: http://www.annfarmer.co.uk/

References

  1. J. Goldberg, Liberal Fascism (London: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 14.
  2. At least the early English Fabians had a positive policy to permeate – chiefly the nationalization of industry – which they hoped to achieve by infiltrating their members and supporters into institutions, political parties and Parliament, thus spreading their ideology throughout society, like yeast raising a batch of dough; see: B. Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-Imperial Thought 1895-1914 (London: Geo. Allen & Unwin, 1960); N. Mackenzie, J. Mackenzie The First Fabians (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977); M. Bevir, ‘Fabianism, Permeation and Independent Labour’, The Historical Journal 39 (1), 1996, pp. 179-196; G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: A study in British politics and political thought 1899-1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971).
  3. Economist John Maynard Keynes, Liberal MP Sir William Beveridge and Labour supporter Richard Titmuss all supported eugenics, as did Fabian socialists Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Beatrice and Sidney Webb; Julian Huxley believed in a modified version of Spencer’s ‘survival of the fittest’; all advocated environmental improvements for the poor which, they argued, would reveal the ‘residuum’ – individuals who could not ‘evolve’ but remained poor even when their environment was improved - who thus could be indentified and ‘bred out’ of ‘the race’; as C. J. Bond maintained: “For [the innately criminal and the congenitally feeble-minded] there will be neither use nor room in the Great State. Even now the problem of how to eliminate this residuum of human Unimprovability urgently presses for solution” (C. J. Bond, in H. G. Wells et al., Socialism and the Great State (New York/London: Harper, 1912), p. 152). Eugenics Society Secretary C. J. Blacker proposed abortion as part of a state population control policy (‘The Meanings of Family Planning’, Population Policies Committee 1st draft report, Chapter B4, July 28, 1945 (Eugenics Society Archive (SA/EUG/C199)). A “mandarinate” of unelected ‘experts’ – civil servants, intellectuals, economists, sociologists and psychologists – committed to population control helped create the appearance of an intellectual consensus that led to the welfare state’s creation; a group of intellectuals “deserted” laissez faire economics for state intervention, and “acted as a pressure group for the development and extension of social welfare”; many were eugenicists, including Keynes, Beveridge and Titmuss, the welfare state’s architects; Cyril Burt, the London County Council psychologist before the Great War, was closely involved in government projects thereafter, in the Home Office, Ministry of Health and Board of Education, where his theories of heredity were immensely influential (G. Jones, Social Darwinism and English Thought: The Interaction between Biology and Social Theory (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1980), pp. 170-171). In his study of the political origins of the welfare state, Addison mentions (in addition to Beveridge, Keynes and Titmuss) prominent eugenics sympathisers of all political persuasions who played a part in the process, including Nancy Astor, Robert Boothby, Eva Hubback, Julian Huxley, François Lafitte, Harold Laski, Hugh Molson, David Owen, Eleanor Rathbone, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, H. G. Wells and Barbara Wootton; their eclectic political associations strengthened the appearance of a welfare state consensus. The London School of Economics, which influenced sociology and sociologists worldwide, and was connected to Beveridge and Titmuss, also promoted the welfare state (P. Addison, The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975), p.181).
  4. Abortion campaigners Keith Hindell and Madeleine Simms noted that the 1966 Election brought an “influx of new Labour MPs… professionally qualified and articulate”, among them Peter Jackson, noted ‘Steel’ campaigner; Labour MP Edwin Brooks remarked that “disillusioned left-wingers (post Hungary)” were “seeking a new identity: a new ethos integrating humanism and socialism. They shifted from the confusions of hard-core traditional issues (such as public ownership) into the retreat of furthering the ‘easier’ social causes like family planning” (A. Leathard, The Fight for Family Planning (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 134-135). Popular uprisings in communist Hungary had been savagely repressed, making communism appear a less attractive political option.
  5. Influential leftists like Tony Blair’s political ‘guru’ Anthony Giddens, and prominent feminists Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt were key figures in the substitution of sexual politics for economic issues – rather than promoting the nationalisation of industry and the banks, the Left focused increasingly on the ‘nationalisation’ of the family (P. Morgan, The Marriage Files (London: Wilberforce Publications, 2014), p. 102). See: A. Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999).
  6. Such practices were challenged in 1985 by a mother, Victoria Gillick, but a subsequent appeal opened a gigantic legal loophole in child health and welfare: “And so ended one of the most amazing ideological battles in British history. The Government, using all the powers of the mass media, the machinery of officialdom, the propaganda of the sex education lobby and the influence of the medical profession, had won the legal battle to provide contraceptives to children without the knowledge or consent of their parents” (Norman, 2003, p. 212). Ironically, Mrs Gillick’s name was used to prescribe contraceptives to under-16s without parental consent: following ‘Gillick v. West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority [1985] 3 All ER 402 (HL)’ further legal clarifications were discouraged, and judgement on whether children were ‘Gillick competent’ was left to the doctor concerned ([http://www.fnf.org.uk/gillick.htm] at September 6, 2005). The ruling later covered abortion and ‘emergency contraception’; the Department of Health subsequently ruled that health workers need not tell police about under-13s in sexual relationships, since it could breach confidentiality rules and deter children from seeking contraception (sexual intercourse with a child aged 13 or under constitutes statutory rape) (Daily Telegraph, April 7, 2006). The Department for Education and Skills stated that although “all young people can access advice and treatment without their parents being informed, so long as they are judged competent to understand the implications of the proposed advice and treatment”, but “confidentiality” was not “absolute” and could “be breached where it is in the best interests of the child”, for example where there are concerns about “an abusive or coercive relationship” (personal communication, April 12, 2006). More recently, this practice has been blamed for countrywide organised sexual abuse of minors, for example, Torbay Safeguarding Children Board found that up to 40 vulnerable girls as young as 13 were victims of “sexploitation” by a group of men between 2006 and 2011, but health workers “were more focussed on handing out contraception than spotting the signs of abuse” (Daily Telegraph, March 1, 2013, p. 14).
  7. Prime Minister David Cameron, anxious to rid the Conservative Party of its ‘nasty’ image – not least its historic ruling that schools should not promote homosexuality - has said that he supports same-sex marriage because he is a Conservative, and has been praised for his stance by a leading sexual diversity campaigner, while losing electoral support to the UK Independence Party (‘Peter Tatchell: At least Cameron has got it right on gay marriage,’ London Evening Standard, May 21, 2013, accessed at http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/peter-tatchell-at-least-cameron-has-got-it-right-on-gay-marriage-8625581.html at July 13, 2013).
  8. Introduction, Greta Jones, Robert A. Peel (Eds.), Herbert Spencer: The Intellectual Legacy (London: The Galton Inst, 2004), p. xii.
  9. Naomi Beck, ‘The Diffusion of Spencerism and its Political Interpretations in France and Italy’,  Greta Jones, Robert A. Peel (Eds.), Herbert Spencer: The Intellectual Legacy (London: The Galton Institute, 2004), pp. 37-60; “People tended to know what Spencer represented – the triumph of the evolutionary idea – rather than have a close acquaintance with his actual arguments” (Greta Jones, ‘Spencer and his Circle’, Greta Jones, Robert A. Peel (Eds.), Herbert Spencer: The Intellectual Legacy (London: The Galton Institute, 2004), p. 9).
  10. In Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925, high school biology teacher John Scopes was tried for contravening the state’s Butler Act forbidding the teaching of “‘any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”’ However: “The trial quickly degenerated into a media circus”, with “one of the main protagonists...a leading conservative religious spokesperson”, former US Secretary of State and Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, who performed poorly, opposed by “a leading intellectual and lawyer”, Clarence Darrow. Scopes was found guilty, but he and Darrow were generally seen as winning “a moral victory. Nonetheless, popular opposition to evolution remained high”; few textbooks mentioned evolution until the early 1960s (Religious Tolerance.org (Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance), ‘Origins of species, etc.: A brief history of the conflict between evolution and creation science: Scopes’ Trial’, available at http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_hist.htm at November 17, 2015).
  11. J. Goldberg, Liberal Fascism (London: Penguin Books, 2009), pp. 221-222.
  12. Kevin Slack, ‘Liberalism Radicalized: The Sexual Revolution, Multiculturalism, and the Rise of Identity Politics,’ Heritage Foundation, August 27, 2013, accessed at http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/08/liberalism-radicalized-the-sexual-revolution-multiculturalism-and-the-rise-of-identity-politics at August 31, 2013).
  13. See: P. Adelman, The Decline of the Liberal Party 1910–1931 (London: Longman, 1995).
  14. Mostly middle-class metropolitans or ‘metrosexuals’, the political viewpoint of progressives is shaped by a university-acquired “sophisticated Marxism” characterized by “cultural criticism”, an influence powerful because internalized; thus “Weber’s prophet” has been “replaced by the socialist, egalitarian individual” while containing not “a single element of Marx” (A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Touchstone, 1987), p. 225).
  15. “[T]he “Frankfurt School”, or Institute for Social Research, set up by...Marxist intellectuals in Germany in 1923”, was “affiliated to the University of Frankfurt and independently of the Communist Party, which has been influential in the development of Marxist theory ever since. The founding of the Institute marked the beginning of a current of ‘Marxism’ divorced from the organised working class and Communist Parties, which over the decades merged with bourgeois ideology in academia” (‘The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory,’ Marxists Internet Archive, accessed at http://www.marxists.org/subject/frankfurt-school/ at October 28, 2013). The “Critical Theory” approach was aimed at the pillars of Western culture, especially Christianity and capitalism, the authority of the family, traditional hierarchies, sexual morality, patriotism, and political and social conservatism. Leading members of the Frankfurt School - George Lukács, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, Jürgen Habermas “initially believed that its intellectual work would aid the practical prospects for revolutionary action by the proletariat”, but during the 1930s “the revolution degenerated in the Soviet Union, and its prospects in Europe faded”; the rise of Fascism led the ‘Frankfurters’ to question their “long-standing leftist beliefs in the inherently progressive character of science and technology, popular education, and mass politics” (S. E. Bronner, Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 3).
  16. “[I]t is neither selfish interests nor evil intentions but mostly honest convictions and good intentions which determine the intellectual’s views”; indeed, “the typical intellectual is today more likely to be a socialist the more he is guided by good will and intelligence” (F. A. Hayek, The Intellectuals & Socialism, reprinted from The University of Chicago Law Review, Spring 1949, pp. 417-420; 421-423; 425-433; published in G. B. de Huszar (Ed.), The Intellectuals: A Controversial Portrait (Glencoe, Illinois: the Free Press, 1960) pp. 371-384, accessed at http://www.iea.org.uk/publications/research/the-intellectuals-and-socialism at June 14, 2013).
  17. The oft-quoted maxim has been traced to Father Brown: ‘“People readily swallow the untested claims of this, that, or the other. It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstititon. ...It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are”’  (American Chesterton Society, accessed at http://www.chesterton.org/discover-chesterton/frequently-asked-questions/cease-to-worship/ at July 23, 2013); see: Chesterton, G. K., ‘The Oracle of the Dog,’ The Complete Father Brown (London: Penguin, 1981), pp. 367-368).
  18. See: Chapter 11, ‘Who’s getting at our kids?’, M. Whitehouse, Whatever Happened to Sex? (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978).
  19. James Bartholomew, ‘I invented ‘virtue signalling’. Now it’s taking over the world: It’s a true privilege to have coined a phrase – even if people credit it to Libby Purves instead’, Spectator, October 10, 2015, available at http://new.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/i-invented-virtue-signalling-now-its-taking-over-the-world/ at November 16, 2015.
  20. F. A. Hayek, The Intellectuals & Socialism, reprinted from The University of Chicago Law Review, Spring 1949, pp. 417-420; 421-423; 425-433; published in G. B. de Huszar (Ed.), The Intellectuals: A Controversial Portrait (Glencoe, Illinois: the Free Press, 1960) pp. 371-384, accessed at http://www.iea.org.uk/publications/research/the-intellectuals-and-socialism at June 14, 2013.
  21. A former employee maintained: “To succeed at the BBC it is necessary to sign up to – or, at the very least, not publicly dissent from – a range of attitudes and opinions. Collectively the tribe’s values might be termed ‘liberal’” - not “tolerant”, but “merely the opposite of ‘conservative’” (R. Aitken, Can We Trust the BBC? (London: Continuum, 2007), p. 60). Typically, BBC journalists have a background in Left/liberal periodicals (Ibid, p. 70). See also: B. Goldberg, Bias: a CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (Washington, D.C.: Regency Publishing, Inc., 2002). The head of BBC TV news admitted: “There are problems with reporting what are considered to be aberrant views. Consensus can work to exclude certain ideas”; it was “not about being restricted by external forces”, but “certain ideas [being excluded] from debate because they do not feel comfortable including them” (P. Horrocks, Independent on Sunday, January 8, 2006, in A. Browne, The Retreat of Reason: Political correctness and the corruption of public debate in modern Britain (London: Civitas, 2006), p. 96). The appearance of balance can be achieved by having equal numbers of audience members ‘for’ and ‘against’ controversial proposals, failing to reflect reality, as on the BBC’s The Big Question; the panel of political programme Question Time can include socially conservative commentators, who probably represent the majority; furthermore, the programme often “provides a platform for ‘ordinary members of the public’ who frequently turn out to be local party activists and councillors” (Political Scrapbook, March 8, 2013, accessed  at http://politicalscrapbook.net/2013/03/question-time-audience-member-slams-ukip-on-immigration-stats/ at June 14, 2013).
  22. This propaganda has been projected more explicitly in soap operas designed with the BBC’s help to deliver population control propaganda to poor countries. Labour’s Health Minister Yvette Cooper enthused about under-age pregnancy stories in ‘soaps’ (Interview, GMTV, March 1, 2000), as did feminist Suzanne Moore (‘Something for all the family,’ Independent, April 3, 1997). The BBC World Service Trust, aided by a former BBC Eastenders director, funded a ‘health project’ in Cambodia to produce Taste of Life, a “gritty and authentic” series, which explored “health issues in a dramatic form”, covering “HIV and AIDs, sexual and reproductive health…maternal and child health”, including abortion (UK Department for International Development, developments, 2nd Quarter, 2005, pp. 29-31).
  23. Having spurned fruit grown in Apartheid South Africa, many now boycott produce grown in the Israeli ‘occupied territories’, since despite more apt examples, they see Israel as a racist state (W. D. Rubinstein, Israel, the Jews, and the West: The Fall and Rise of Antisemitism (London: Social Affairs Unit, 2008), p. 50); in 2010 President Ahmadinejad of Iran, who has expressed doubts about the Holocaust, addressed the UN Conference on Racism (D. Conway, ‘Expose this ignorant bigotry,’ Jewish Chronicle, January 7, 2011).
  24. British Eugenicist Helen Brook pioneered aiming birth control at ethnic minorities in the 1960s. New Labour’s response to disproportionately high rates of ethnic minority abortions was to instruct “agencies working on teenage pregnancy” to “reach out to and engage with” them; Children’s Minister Beverly Hughes and Public Health Minister Caroline Flint, in guidance to councils and health authorities, noted with concern “significantly higher than average” rates of teenage motherhood among mothers of “‘black Caribbean’, ‘other black’ and ‘mixed white/black Caribbean’ ethnicity”; ethnic minorities accounted for 9% of all abortions among under-18s, despite constituting only 3% of females aged 15-17 (Daily Telegraph, July 22, 2006). In 2002, the US-based Guttmacher Institute found African-Americans had 409,000 abortions, or 32% of the country's total, despite constituting 12% of the population; African-American teenagers’ abortion rate was double the national average – 41 per 1,000 among 15- to 19-year-olds, against the national average of 18, and four times that of white teenagers (ten per thousand) (Sarah Terzo, ‘The racist underpinnings of the abortion movement,’ LifeSiteNews, March 26, 2013, accessed at https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/the-racist-underpinnings-of-the-abortion-movement at March 27, 2013); the Radiance Foundation highlights this disturbing phenomenon; see: http://www.theradiancefoundation.org/. Fifty years after Dr Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to 250,000 people who had joined the 1963 March on Washington, his niece Dr. Alveda King said that “the struggle for human rights continues. ‘For me...fifty years of “I Have a Dream” and the March on Washington should include the sanctity of life”’ (Jonathon van Maren, ‘The dream fifty years on: an interview with Dr. Alveda King,’ LifeSiteNews, July 23, 2013, accessed at https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/the-dream-fifty-years-on-an-interview-with-dr.-alveda-king at July 24, 2013).
  25. See: A. Farmer, Prophets & Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement (London: St Austin Press, 2002); By Their Fruits: Eugenics, Population Control, and the Abortion Campaign (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008); A. Franks, Margaret Sanger's Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility (Jefferson, N. Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005).
  26. Dwelling on rebellions like the Peasant’s Revolt, and movements of alleged proto-revolutionaries like the Lollards and the Levellers - and possibly singing along to William Blake’s Jerusalem at Labour Party conferences - the progressive has never ceased “from mental fight”. Even atheist Labour leader Ed Miliband joined in the traditional closing of the conference by singing the Red Flag and Jerusalem (Daily Telegraph, September 25, 2013, accessed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10332581/Labour-Party-Conference-2013-day-four-as-it-happened.html at August 20, 2014. Ironically, many among the clergy feel that Jerusalem does not qualify as a hymn.
  27. K. Minogue, The Liberal Mind (London: Methuen, 1963), cited in Peter Oborne, ‘The brave souls who resisted the relentless march of state control’, Daily Telegraph, July 4, 2013, p. 22.
  28. P. Morgan, The Marriage Files (London: Wilberforce Publications, 2014), pp. 40-41.
  29. “If it can be shown that in its distribution among successive generations living in the same environment there is a certain significant orderliness, then we can assume that it is indeed a genetic character...” (F. A. E. Crew, ‘The Genetic Background of Mental Defect’, address to the British Association, September 1931 (Eugenics Society Archive (SA/EUG/C79)).
  30. As Edmund Burke observed, they were “planning the future by the past,” and in their much-admired Soviet Union, when the grand plan failed to feed the people, they eliminated the people, not the plan. Economist Friedrich Hayek maintained that a “planned” society would inevitably lead to totalitarianism (F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (condensed version) (London: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1945/2001), p. 61); he also believed that big business would collude with big government against small traders: “Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist imaginable” (Ibid., 53–55).
  31. Belgium has extended euthanasia to children; in 1984, after the Dutch Supreme Court allowed physicians to carry out euthanasia without fear of prosecution, further legal cases allowed euthanasia for people with chronic depression (“mental pain”), children born with disabilities and other vulnerable groups; Parliament legalized euthanasia in 2001, thus “euthanasia and assisted suicide were common before being legalized” (B. D. Onwuteaka-Philipsen, A. Brinkman-Stoppelenburg, C. Penning, G. J. F. De Jong-Krul, J. J. M. van Delden, A. van der Heide, ‘Trends in end-of-life practices before and after the enactment of the euthanasia law in the Netherlands from 1990 to 2010: a repeated cross-sectional survey,’ The Lancet, July 11, 2012, Vol. 380, Issue 9845:908-915, September 8, 2012, published online at http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2812%2961034-4/abstract at July 11, 2012 (Alex Schadenberg, International Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, ‘Lancet Study proves significant growth in euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands: Depressed Belgian woman dies by euthanasia,’ February 6, 2013, at Christian Medical Comment, July 16, 2012, accessed at http://pjsaunders.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/lancet-study-proves-significant-growth.html at June 17, 2013).
  32. The Office for National Statistics 2011 General Lifestyle Survey Overview found eight per cent of households headed by a lone parent in 1971; in 2011 it was 22 per cent; the number of married or cohabiting two-parent families fell from 92 per cent in the early 1970s to 78 per cent in 2011; almost twice as many people were living alone than 40 years previously; the proportion of never-married women aged 18 to 49 rose from 18 per cent in 1979 to 43 per cent in 2011; women in that age group living with a partner rose from 11 per cent to 34 per cent (Daily Express, March 8, 2013, accessed at http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/382706/Rise-of-the-single-parent-family at June 14, 2013); the progressive Guardian concentrated on diet and the increase in material possessions, reporting family changes without comment (Simon Rogers, ‘Smoking, drinking and living alone: what the General Household Survey tells us about how Britain has changed,’ March 7, 2013, accessed at http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/mar/07/general-household-survey-smoking-drinking-living-alone at June 14, 2013).
  33. In April 2009 the NHS introduced a programme that tied doctors' pay “to their ability to meet certain benchmarks, including increasing the number of women using long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs)”; a study released on 2nd Apri “found that the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) increased the number of women using ‘IUDs, implants, and injectables’ by an estimated 110,000 across the UK”; according to the drugs' descriptions, “every form of LARC has the potential to cause an early abortion by preventing a newly conceived baby from implanting in the uterus” (Ben Johnson, LifeSiteNews, April 9, 2014, available at https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/uk-natl-health-services-program-encouraged-110000-new-women-to-use-abortifa at April 10, 2014). However, more direct methods have also been used: a mother-of-six with learning disabilities was ordered by the Court of Protection to be forcibly sterilised for the sake of her health. Mr Justice Cobb “declared that the woman lacked the mental capacity to litigate and make decisions regarding contraception”, and authorised medical and social services to ‘“[r]emove [the woman] from her home and take steps to convey her to hospital for the purposes of the sterilisation procedure”’, adding that ‘“necessary and proportionate steps” could include “forced entry and necessary restraint”’ (Sarah Zagorski, LifeSiteNews, February 4, 2015, available at http://www.lifenews.com/2015/02/04/judge-rules-mother-of-six-who-has-learning-disabilities-can-be-forcibly-sterilized/ at February 5, 2015).
  34. See: G. Himmelfarb, ‘Feminism, Victorian Style,’ The De-moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit, 1995), pp. 88-124.
  35. Charitable endeavour, especially by the Church merely perpetuated “dysgenic types”, causing them to survive and reproduce, eventually taking over by sheer weight of numbers and placing an increasing burden on the ‘fit’; Bradlaugh and Besant rejected Marx’s notion that the poor contributed to the production of wealth; moreover, philanthropy and social improvements for the poor were seen as problematical because they increased the burden borne by the wealthy and resulted in even more children (A. Farmer, Prophets & Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement (London: St Austin Press, 2002), p. 72; p. 122). John Stuart Mills' Malthusianism led him to advocate laws against imprudent marriages; Francis Galton believed that disease, war and famine were failing to check population growth, as in the past, resulting in the survival of the ‘unfit’ (G. Jones, ‘Theoretical Foundations of Eugenics’, in R. A. Peel (Ed.), Essays in the History of Eugenics: Proceedings of a Conference organised by the Galton Institute (London: Galton Institute, 1998), pp. 1-19). Neo-Malthusians condemned as useless welfare programmes that simply "encouraged the poor to perpetuate their misery" (R. Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question in England 1877-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), p. 181).
  36. A. S. Parkes, Off-beat Biologist: The autobiography of Alan S. Parkes (Cambridge: The Galton Foundation, 1985), p. 397.
  37. See: Christopher Bechtel, Calum MacKellar (Eds.), The Ethics of the New Eugenics ( (New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014).
  38. Media campaigner Mary Whitehouse recalled the launching of the British Humanist Association in 1963, when its members “committed themselves ‘to survey and reform laws which are justified only or chiefly by Christian beliefs and particularly the laws relating to Sunday Observance, marriage, divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality, abortion and sterilisation’”; she noted the “in-breeding” characteristic of organisations like the National Council for Civil Liberties (later ‘Liberty’), the BHA and the Abortion Law Reform Association, also “the ‘Gay Liberation’ Movement, the Camp for Homosexual Equality, the Euthanasia Society, the Paedophile Movement”, evident in “the current campaign to reduce the age of consent” and “remove the crime of incest from the Statute Book”, showing “a training in ideological warfare” (M. Whitehouse, Whatever Happened to Sex? (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978), pp. 71-72).
  39. See: C. Chambers, The SIECUS Circle: A Humanist Revolution (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1977).
  40. As Himmelfarb notes, the British Enlightenment was distinguished from the French and American versions in that it was not about “reason but the ‘social virtues”’, and firmly based on religion (G. Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity: the British, French and American Englightenments (London: Vintage Books, 2008), p. 19).
  41. See: A. Farmer, Prophets & Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement (London: St Austin Press, 2002); By Their Fruits: Eugenics, Population Control, and the Abortion Campaign (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008).
  42. J. Goldberg, Liberal Fascism (London: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 328; however, in contrast to ‘liberals’ the ‘New Left’ has not been shy of using violence, like Hitler’s and Mussolini’s followers, to ‘make things happen’ (Ibid, pp. 190-191).
  43. Under the influence of Hegel and Darwin, the “godfathers of the liberal God-state”, progressives saw history as “an unfolding evolutionary process” and the state as its “engine”, with Darwinian man “part of a larger organism, governed and directed by the state as the mind guides the body” (J. Goldberg, Liberal Fascism (London: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 218).
  44. Although, according to the 1929 Royal Commission on Police Powers, the British police had “never been recognized, either in law or by tradition, as a force distinct from the general body of citizens” (P. Hitchens, The Abolition of Liberty: The Decline of Order and Justice in England (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), p. 62), progressives view the institution as designed to oppress the poor/non-white.
  45. “...I have become a laughingstock all the day; every one mocks me. For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’ For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long”; however: “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jeremiah 20: 7-9).
  46. Mark 6: 14-29.
  47. The Supreme Court failed to uphold the right of conscientious objection for two senior midwives who refused to supervise abortions performed on a labour ward (SPUC, press release, December 17, 2014). An article in the Winnipeg Free Press explained that Dying with Dignity, Canada's leading euthanasia lobby group, was pressuring the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba to require doctors to refer patients for euthanasia (Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, October 19, 2015, accessed at http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/dying-with-dignity-pressures-college-of.html at November 18, 2015).
  48. Orwell portrayed future repression as a “boot stamping on a human face” forever (G. Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Penguin, 1984), p. 65; p. 280).C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil (Glasgow: Collins, 1942/1984), p. 65.
  49. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil (Glasgow: Collins, 1942/1984), p. 65.