Malthusians Become Messiahs

By Phillip D. Collins | ConspiracyArchive.com

Nowadays, anyone and everyone who raises a disparaging word about the Obama Administration’s policies is immediately assigned the stigma of “alarmist,” “scaremonger,” or “paranoid.” Perhaps such stigmas are actually applicable in some cases, like Genesis Communications Network radio talk show host Alex Jones and Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck. In both of these cases, there are, no doubt, serious sanity issues involved. However, those who have familiarized themselves with the résumé of President Obama’s recently appointed Science Czar, John Holdren, have good reason to be afraid.

Before I proceed any further, allow me to dissuade readers from ascribing any sort of partisan biases to me. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Foreign policy commentator Robert Kagan once observed that this false dichotomy represents “two variations of the same worldview.” The dialectical commonalities exhibited by Republicans and Democrats bear out this contention. Neither party is interested in dismantling the labyrinthine machinations of Big Government or restoring the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Both are merely committed to the maintenance of their two-party political cartel.

‘Nuff said.

Having dispelled any accusations of partisan prejudices, allow me to provide a brief overview of Holdren’s résumé. In 1977, Holdren co-authored Ecoscience with Paul and Anne Ehrlich. Of course, Paul Ehrlich was the environmental scientist who published The Population Bomb in 1968.

This hyperbolic collection of demographic doomsday prophecies foolhardily predicted, “The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

Of course, the arrival of the 70s banished such forecasts to the realm of Chicken Little eschatology. Yet, Ehrlich wasn’t done embarrassing himself. In 1980, the wannabe demographer bet University of Maryland economist Julian Simon that an impending era of scarcity would lead to rising prices among various commodities. Ehrlich bought five different metals for $1,000 on the condition that Simon would have to pay him the difference should their combined value be higher in 1990. A decade later, the combined price of the metals had actually fallen and Ehrlich had to pay Simon $576.

It comes as little surprise that Ehrlich’s prophecies never materialized. His views were heavily influenced by the 19th century Anglican clergyman Thomas Malthus. Malthus authored Essay on the Principle of Population, a treatise premised upon the spurious thesis: “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetic ratio.” Although Malthus articulated his observations in succinct mathematical equations, the complexities of the natural order typically defy such numerical reductionism. Nevertheless, Malthus concluded that society should adopt certain social policies to prevent the human population from growing disproportionately larger than the food supply.

Malthus’ genocidal policies specifically targeted the poor. Through the promotion of hygienically unsound practices amongst impoverished populations, Malthus believed that the “undesirable elements” of the human herd could be naturally culled by various maladies. The spread of disease could be further assisted through discriminative vaccination and zoning programs. Worse still, Malthus promoted infanticide for illegitimate children, a practice that is still advocated by many bioethicists today. Peter Singer is one case in point. Ominously enough, Singer recently argued for the rationing of health care in a New York Times editorial.

Ehrlich’s prescriptions for the alleged “population bomb” were equally draconian. They included “compulsory birth regulation… (through) the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size.”

Given his failed predictions, one would think that people would have stopped listening to Ehrlich a long time ago. Unfortunately, fools abound, as is evidenced by Obama’s appointment of Holdren to the position of Science Czar. Holdren merely reiterates Ehrlich’s core normative contention: “Population control is the only answer.”

In fact, on page 786 of Ecoscience, Holdren writes, “Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

On pages 786-87, Holdren endorses “sterilizing women after their second or third child” and administering a “long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin” for “coercive fertility control.”

On pages 787-88, Holdren reintroduces the draconian notion of adding sterilants to drinking water on the condition that such a substance “must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.” How humanitarian. At least Holdren made the provision for some exemptions, like chickens, cows, pigs, and other barnyard buddies. That Holdren includes the elderly and children in the same category as livestock bespeaks a rather low valuation of human life.

As is the case with most proponents of population control, Holdren’s recommendations invariably assume a eugenical character. On page 838, he states, “If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility…”

It comes as little surprise that, at a July 30 hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller said, “Dr. Holdren, I don’t want to embarrass you but I sometimes refer to you as walking on water.”

Of course, the Senator is a scion of the Rockefeller dynasty, a lineage of consummate American oligarchs who have harbored a historical flirtation with eugenics. The Rockefeller Foundation, which was formed by John D. Rockefeller in 1909, created and directed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics and Human Heredity. The chief executive of this institution was none other than Swiss psychiatrist Ernst Rudin, Hitler’s director of genetic sterilization and a founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene.

Rockefeller’s messianic portrayal of Holdren underscores the power elite’s disturbing preoccupation with population control. The unsettling rationale for this preoccupation comes into clearer focus when one considers a study conducted by the Royal Commission on Population in 1944. Formed by King George VI to examine the declining fertility rates in the British Commonwealth, the Commission observed that the demographic implosion advanced “fastest among the higher occupational categories.” Apparently, a distinct fertility differential was making itself evident along socioeconomic demarcations. According to the Commission’s official report, it was the aristocracy that was demographically receding.

This fertility differential was attributable to the oligarchs’ tradition of “deliberate family limitation.” The demographic costs of such practices were becoming evident. Not surprisingly, Malthusianism and its theoretical correlative, Darwinism, were promoted by scientific minds within elite quarters. The theories of Malthusianism and Darwinism were formulated according to the sociological considerations of the ruling elite. Out of these two pseudo-scientific theories would emerge the socially and politically expedient concept of eugenical population control.
Simply stated, population control is camouflaged class warfare. In truth, the oligarchs are not concerned with carrying capacity. Ultimately, they are concerned with the capacity of their control. For the adherents of the gospel of elitism, a Malthusian like Holdren is, indeed, a messiah.

The Return of the Aristocrats

By Neil Davenport | spiked-online.com

The real scandal to emerge from the MPs expenses debacle is the demand for even less representative democracy. For certain commentators it seems the best way to restore the British state’s integrity is to reinstate the divine rule of those who ‘know best’ – the aristocracy and the House of Windsor.

Monarchists have leapt upon the expenses scandal in an attempt to rehabilitate the power of the undemocratic sovereign of Britain. For instance, in the Daily Telegraph Simon Heffer argued that the Queen should have a ‘role to play in steadying the ship’ of a battered parliament and that she ‘has the authority to act’ if the legitimacy crisis deepens.

As Brendan O’Neill argued on spiked, such sentiments reveal the institutionalised menace to democracy that the monarchy represents (see Beware the Vultures Circling Westminster, by Brendan O’Neill). Even taking into account the current giddy, panic-ridden behaviour of the political class, it is quite remarkable that such pro-monarchy views are uttered so loudly and proudly in the twenty-first century.

However, in recent years it is not only the usual conservative cranks who have been fawning over the aristocracy and the House of Windsor. Many more radical campaigners and liberals have been equally doe-eyed over the posh. In a recent supplement in the Guardian, a headline that bellowed: ‘Hugh FW for Parliament!’ (This is a chummy abbreviation of the name of upper-class celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.) The writer was seriously suggesting that the chef could and should offer leadership for Brits.

In the past Fearnely-Whittingstall, through his television programmes, has lectured us on such crucial issues as organic farming and ‘chicken’s rights’. In these recession-struck times, the Guardian thinks it appropriate to introduce some ‘Hugh FW’ directives forcing us to buy only overpriced, organic fruit and veg and free range chicken.

Other green campaigners and writers would dearly love to see prince Charles control our lifestyles. The lionisation of Charles by liberals is perhaps one of the strangest developments of recent years. Back in the Eighties and Nineties, Prince Charles was widely derided and ridiculed. His views on architecture, organic farming and his habit of talking to plants were rightly lampooned across the political spectrum. Now a weird and alarming reverence surrounds the prince and his nutty pronouncements are taken very seriously indeed.

In 2005 Charles demanded that then US president George W Bush should prioritise tackling ‘global warming’. Hardly an eyebrow was raised over an unelected figurehead finger-wagging at a democratically elected president. To the contrary, he was cheered. The Times (London) asked earnestly ‘should Bush listen to Prince Charles?’, as if he was offering sound and insightful advice.

Charles’ regular global-warming warnings are enthusiastically greeted by green-minded journalists, like when the prince said, in front of industrialists at St James’s Palace, that capitalism and consumerism are destroying the planet. His Rainforests Project – which calls for ‘green economics that recognises that the rainforests are worth more alive than dead’ – was fawned over by the broadsheets and bloggers, too. One newspaper columnist wondered whether Charles ‘should be seen in a great tradition of dissidents who then become leader, such as Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, and Lech Walesa’. A contributor to the newspaper’s online discussion board thanked the prince for using his ‘considerable influence’ to try to change things.

A blogger called him ‘a symbol of environmental awareness’, while the website supergreenme offers pure hagiographic support for Charles. ‘Hopefully the actions of Prince Charles will inspire other leaders to not only promote change, but actually live a green life as well’, it said.

The support from apparent leftists for Charles’ environmentalism is indicative of just how far material aspiration has disappeared from progressive political thinking. After losing the arguments on the economy and social change, liberal left wingers’ promotion of green ideas and ethical living – effectively swapping materialism for moralism – found a welcome ally amongst the upper classes.

For a long time, aristocratic conservatism has laid dormant in British politics, even within the Conservative Party, which first adapted to liberal modernism via the One Nation Conservatism programme and, later, through New Right economic ideas. The old left’s desire to give an ‘anti-capitalist’ twist to environmentalism has only succeeded in giving very posh reactionaries like Zac Goldsmith and Jonathon Porritt an aura of radicalism. But the demands for Charles to ‘use his influence’ are far worse.

Much of modern political history in Britain has been a struggle to shift power from the monarch to parliament – from the hands of individuals who presumed the God-given right to rule and into the hands of those commoners in the House of Commons who stand or fall at the ballot box. The Magna Carta of 1215 limited the absolute power of monarchs; the 1642 to 1651 English Civil War between parliamentarians and royalists further undermined the monarchy; the Bill of Rights of 1689 established the freedom of parliament to make laws and elect its members without royal interference.

The encouragements of Charles to challenge elected officials flies in the face of these historic gains. It is understandable that mainstream politics is held in low esteem these days, but is this really an excuse to grant a future king political authority?

The support and goodwill that surrounds Prince Charles and aristocratic greens also means they are now more likely to get their own way in preventing important development projects. Last month, for example, the heir to the British throne scuppered plans for a £1billion development which was to create 552 new apartments on the 12.8-acre site of the old Chelsea barracks (6). Now, a new design will be put forward.

More generally, the regulations against building on the Green Belt, which toffs at what is now the Campaign to Protect Rural England helped establish in the 1950s, ensure that many of us cannot afford a decent-sized home with a garden. Extraordinary though it might seem, 0.6 per cent of the British people own 69 per cent of the land – and they are mostly the same families who owned it in the nineteenth century (7). Whereas in the past such a backward state of affairs would be an obvious signpost of the deeply class-ridden character of British society, today such an imbalance can be justified in the language of environmentalism, anti-consumerism and even anti-capitalism.

Not long ago, the landed upper classes and royalty were widely despised and mocked, even by those of a moderate political persuasion. They were rightly seen as a barrier to Britain becoming a modern liberal democracy. Now, it seems, many can’t get enough of the upper classes’ ‘green credentials’. From hectoring us on healthy eating to preventing new homes being built, the dead hand of these deadbeats is weighing heavy on ordinary citizens. This is a far bigger scandal than any MP claiming expenses for duck islands, moat cleaning or porn flicks.

Dr. King Spanks Obama: Part 2

At the 23rd Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday Celebration in San Francisco attendees were asked to answer the question, “What would Dr. King want to say to Barack Obama?” But Dr. King actually provides the best answers to this question in his book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” For example, in chapter 3 he states:

“The Washington Post has calculated that we spend $332,000 for each enemy we kill. It challenges the imagination to contemplate what lives could transform if we were to cease killing. The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. [1]
But this is data from 1967. Has anyone performed more recent calculations with regard to Iraq, Gaza or Afghanistan? With his great interest in “transparency”, perhaps Barack Obama has already posted these statistics on his Web site. How many American jobs does it cost to kill one “enemy” in Iraq? How many American homes does is cost to kill one “enemy” in Afghanistan? Has anyone checked? I haven’t yet. But this does promise to be a very interesting study in terms of — “free trade”.

Meanwhile, I must confess to a recent error in suggesting Obama’s commitments lie outside the democratic process. [2] While it is true that Obama’s choices don’t seem to align with the interests of most Americans (or most other life forms), this does not indicate he is operating outside the democratic process. Such misinterpretations are quite understandable, and as outlined below I appear to be in good company. After all, we’re constantly taught to believe that we live in a democratic society — and to some extent we certainly do. The problem is that more than 99-percent of the US population is deliberately excluded from active daily participation in the democratic process.

“Through two centuries, a continuous indoctrination of Americans has separated people according to mythically superior and inferior qualities while a democratic spirit of equality was evoked as the national ideal.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. [1]

Though typically aimed at racial segregation, most of Dr. King’s observations also extend to the more general problems of economic and political segregation. King’s ultimate goal was racial equality to be achieved through the eradication of global poverty. His obvious ability to organize the masses in this regard, his suggestion of a Basic Income Guarantee and his vocal opposition to the Vietnam war seem the most likely reasons Dr. King was assassinated by his own government. He connected the dots between war and poverty and he was able to effectively organize the masses against both — so they shot him. [3]

What does this tell us about our democratic system? What does this tell us about our government’s agenda? What does this tell us about Dr. King’s approach to “democracy” versus Barack Obama’s? Peace activist Cindy Sheehan suggests Obama is “a sell-out in opposition to King’s legacy, not a fulfillment”:

“Besides filling his cabinet with militarists and members of the white establishment, he has selected very few persons of color. His support for a trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street shows that he has sold out himself, and the nation’s poor to be a tool of the bankers. Obama’s devotion to war (‘I am not against war, I am against dumb wars’) is not only demonstrated by his words, but by his actions, as well. While pledging to withdraw ‘combat troops’ from Iraq, he also promises to dramatically increase troop level in Afghanistan and also increase overall troop levels by almost 100,000 warm bodies. Obama recognizes Israel’s right to ‘defend’ itself by bombing the prisoners of Gaza.” [4]

Regarding Obama’s first 100 days in office, John Pilger concurs:

“Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous ‘Change you can believe in’, it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. ‘We will be the most powerful,’ he often declared… In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not ‘persons’, and therefore had no right not to be tortured… All over the world, America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up… In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office… In Afghanistan, the US ‘strategy’ of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the ‘Taliban’) has been extended… Perhaps the biggest lie is Obama’s announcement that the US is leaving Iraq… According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain ‘for the next 15 to 20 years’…” [5]

As a result, Pilger says a growing number of Americans believe they have been “suckered” — especially as the nation’s economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it. Sheehan describes Obama as a “sell-out”, and geniuses like me suggest that he’s committed to forces “outside the democratic process”. But Americans have been suckered for much longer that a mere 100 days. It’s actually been more like 230 years. If we think of democracy as a distribution of decision-making power, we see that the democratic process is alive and well in the United States and that Barack Obama tends to operate well within its boundaries. But the democratic process in the US is also monstrously skewed in favor of wealth derived from the passive ownership of capital.

So, as Noam Chomsky suggests, most Americans are passive spectators (“ignorant and meddlesome outsiders”) in the democratic process. [6] It’s no coincidence that those same people are also the most active daily participants in the economic process of generating wealth — for somebody else. The passive claimants of all that wealth are the owners of capital — and it’s no coincidence that those people (less than 1-percent of the US population) also happen to be the most active daily participants in the democratic process. Moreover, the interests of workers and the interests of passive ownership are directly opposed. [7] After more than 200 years “Americans” are finally beginning to see that something is terribly wrong with this picture. [8] But it’s not a new problem. This is actually a manufacturer’s defect.

The United States was not founded on the principle that “all people are created equal”. It was founded on the principle that “all MEN are created equal”. The term “men” denoted white male property owners. The term “property” denoted land and slaves. Much like a factory recall, the American Civil War eventually replaced slavery with capitalism as a new and improved way for passive ownership to siphon wealth and income away from the active participants (workers) who produce it. Black slaves were literally tossed to the wolves as the exploitation of labor was extended to every human being who was not an owner of capital.

Meanwhile, the right to vote in the US is controlled at both the state and federal levels, and its history is replete with legislation intended to discriminate against certain (especially ethnic) groups. But in general, only white male property owners (about 10 to 16 percent of the US population) had the right to vote at the time the US Constitution was written. By the beginning of the Civil War, the property-ownership requirement had finally been dropped, and most white male citizens could vote. Women and Native Americans achieved the right to vote in the 1920s, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally guaranteed blacks the right to vote in the United States without racial discrimination. [9] [10]

But the right to vote in no way guarantees either the right or the opportunity for active daily participation in the democratic process. As Dr. King laments, the laws have changed, but the democratic process hasn’t improved at all. In fact, the exclusive control of US democracy has shrunk from 10- to 16-percent of the population in 1787 to less than half of a percent today. So despite our many historic struggles for the right to vote, our democratic process is now more heavily skewed than ever before in favor of property ownership and wealth accumulation. The decisions that most deeply affect our daily lives are being made for us by others. According to Dr. King, “someone or some system has already made these decisions for me, and I am reduced to an animal”. [1] David Chandler’s “L-Curve” is the best graphic representation I’ve found for illustrating the aggressive assault on US democracy: [8]

“The horizontal spike [on the curve] has the votes. The vertical spike [on the curve] has the money. Who wins, when it comes to electoral politics? Who has influence? Whose interests are being represented in Washington? Can democracy meaningfully exist where the distribution of wealth, and thus the distribution of power, is this concentrated? We recently went through an economic boom where people on the horizontal spike showed little if any improvement in their condition while those in the vertical spike showed huge gains. Can this be considered “prosperity”? Do we really want to gear up our national policies to repeat this performance?” [8]

Less than half of a percent of the US population are passive economic claimants and active political participants. The rest of us are active economic generators and passive political spectators. Does this suggest that Barack Obama and his corporate puppet-masters are operating outside the “democratic process”?

No. In fact we, the people, are imposters in our own democratic system — deliberately excluded from an economically skewed distribution of “democracy”. The good news is that this problem can be corrected. The bad news is that correcting the problem involves something called “cooperation”. Dr. King calls it “cooperative alliance”, and it is the very foundation of genuine democracy: “For an alliance to have permanence and loyal commitment from its various elements, each of them must have a goal from which it benefits and none must have an outlook in basic conflict with the others.” [1] Thus, the antagonistic relationship between workers and passive ownership cannot exist in any truly democratic society. While Dr. King’s work might have helped make it possible for a black man to become President of the United States, Barack Obama is in no way a fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream. To “normalize” our democratic process, the extreme influence of unearned income derived from passive ownership must be removed from the distribution.

Here’s more from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr:

Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
Excerpts from chapter 3:

Since the institution of slavery was so important to the economic development of America, it had a profound impact in shaping the social-political-legal structure of the nation. Land and slaves were the chief forms of private property, property was wealth and the voice of wealth made the law and determined politics. In the service of this system, human beings were reduced to propertyless property. Black men, the creators of the wealth of the New World, were stripped of all human and civil rights. And this degradation was sanctioned and protected by institutions of government, all for one purpose: to produce commodities for sale at a profit, which in turn would be privately appropriated.

It seems to be a fact of life that human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some rationalization to clothe their acts in the garments of righteousness. And so, with the growth of slavery, men had to convince themselves that a system which was so economically profitable was morally justifiable. The attempt to give moral sanction to a profitable system gave birth to the doctrine of white supremacy. Religion and the Bible were cited and distorted to support the status quo. Logic was manipulated to give intellectual credence to the system of slavery. Academicians eventually climbed on the bandwagon and gave their prestige to the myth of superior race. Even natural science, that discipline committed to the inductive method, creative appraisal and detached objectivity, was invoked and distorted to give credence to a political position. A whole school of racial ethnologists developed using such terms as “species,” “genus” and “race.” It became fashionable to think of the slave as a “species of property.” It was during this period that the word “race” came into fashion.

Generally we think of white supremacist views as having their origins with the unlettered, underprivileged, poorer class whites. But the social obstetricians who presided at the birth of racist views in our country were from the aristocracy: rich merchants, influential clergymen, men of medical science, historians and political scientists from some of the leading universities of the nation. With such a distinguished company of the elite working so assiduously to disseminate racist views, what was there to inspire poor, illiterate, unskilled white farmers to think otherwise? Soon the doctrine of white supremacy as imbedded in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit. It became a structural part of the culture. Virtually all of the Founding Fathers of our nation, even those who rose to the heights of the Presidency, those whom we cherish as our authentic heroes, were so enmeshed in the ethos of slavery and white supremacy that not one ever emerged with a clear, unambiguous stand on Negro rights. Morally Lincoln was for black emancipation, but emotionally, like most of his white contemporaries, he was for a long time unable to act in accordance with his conscience. But Lincoln was basically honest and willing to admit his confusions. He saw that the nation could not survive half slave and half free.

With all the beautiful promise that [Frederick] Douglass saw in the Emancipation Proclamation, he soon found that it left the Negro with only abstract freedom. Four million newly liberated slaves found themselves with no bread to eat, no land to cultivate, no shelter to cover their heads. It was like freeing a man who had been unjustly imprisoned for years, and on discovering his innocence sending him out with no bus fare to get home, no suit to cover his body, no financial compensation to atone for his long years of incarceration and to help him get a sound footing in society; sending him out with only the assertion: “Now you are free.” What greater injustice could society perpetrate? All the moral voices of the universe, all the codes of sound jurisprudence, would rise up with condemnation at such an act. Yet this is exactly what America did to the Negro. In 1863 the Negro was given abstract freedom expressed in luminous rhetoric. But in an agrarian economy he was given no land to make liberation concrete. After the war the government granted white settlers, without cost, millions of acres of land in the West, thus providing America’s new white peasants from Europe with an economic floor. But at the same time its oldest peasantry, the Negro, was denied everything but a legal status he could not use, could not consolidate, could not even defend. As Frederick Douglass came to say, “Emancipation granted the Negro freedom to hunger, freedom to winter amid the rains of heaven. Emancipation was freedom and famine at the same time.” The marvel is, as he once said, that Negroes are still alive.

In dealing with the ambivalence of white America, we must not overlook another form of racism that was relentlessly pursued on American shores: the physical extermination of the American Indian. The South American example of absorbing the indigenous Indian population was ignored in the United States, and systematic destruction of a whole people was undertaken. The common phrase, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” was virtually elevated to national policy. Thus the poisoning of the American mind was accomplished not only by acts of discrimination and exploitation but by the exaltation of murder as an expression of the courage and initiative of the pioneer. Just as Southern culture was made to appear noble by ignoring the cruelty of slavery, the conquest of the Indian was depicted as an example of bravery and progress.

Thus through two centuries a continuous indoctrination of Americans has separated people according to mythically superior and inferior qualities while a democratic spirit of equality was evoked as the national ideal. These concepts of racism, and this schizophrenic duality of conduct, remain deeply rooted in American thought today. This tendency of the nation to take one step forward on the question of racial justice and then to take a step backward is still the pattern.

The civil rights measures of the 1960s engraved solemn rights in the legal literature. But after writing piecemeal and incomplete legislation and proclaiming its historic importance in magnificent prose, the American Government left the Negro to make the unworkable work. Against entrenched segregationist state power, with almost total dependence economically on those they had to contend with, and without political experience, the impoverished Negro was expected to usher in an era of freedom and plenty. When the war against poverty came into being in 1964, it seemed to herald a new day of compassion. It was the bold assertion that the nation would no longer stand complacently by while millions of its citizens smothered in poverty in the midst of opulence. But it did not take long to discover that the government was only willing to appropriate such a limited budget that it could not launch a good skirmish against poverty, much less a full-scale war.

There is a tragic gulf between civil rights laws passed and civil rights laws implemented. There is a double standard in the enforcement of law and a double standard in the respect for particular laws. With all of her dazzling achievements and stupendous material strides, America has maintained its strange ambivalence on the question of racial injustice. The value in pulling racism out of its obscurity and stripping it of its rationalizations lies in the confidence that it can be changed. If America is to respond creatively to the challenge, many individuals, groups and agencies must rise above the hypocrisies of the past and begin to take an immediate and determined part in changing the face of their nation. As a first step on the journey home, the journey to full equality, we will have to engage in a radical reordering of national priorities.

Are we more concerned with the size, power and wealth of our society or with creating a more just society? The failure to pursue justice is not only a moral default. Without it social tensions will grow and the turbulence in the streets will persist despite disapproval or repressive action. Even more, a withered sense of justice in an expanding society leads to corruption of the lives of all Americans. All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichmann chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

Without denying the value of scientific endeavor, there is a striking absurdity in committing billions to reach the moon where no people live, while only a fraction of that amount is appropriated to service the densely populated slums. On what scale of values is this a program of progress? In the wasteland of war, the expenditure of resources knows no restraints; here our abundance is fully recognized and enthusiastically squandered. The recently revealed misestimate of the war budget amounts to $10 billion for a single year. The error alone is more than five times the amount committed to antipoverty programs. If we reversed investments and gave the armed forces the antipoverty budget, the generals could be forgiven if they walked off the battlefield in disgust. The Washington Post has calculated that we spend $332,000 for each enemy we kill. It challenges the imagination to contemplate what lives could transform if we were to cease killing. The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

A considerable part of the Negro’s efforts of the past decades has been devoted, particularly in the South, to attaining a sense of dignity. For us, enduring the sacrifices of beatings, jailings and even death was acceptable merely to have access to public accommodations. To sit at a lunch counter or occupy the front seat of a bus had no effect on our material standard of living, but in removing a caste stigma it revolutionized our psychology and elevated the spiritual content of our being. Instinctively we struck out for dignity first because personal degradation as an inferior human being was even more keenly felt than material privation.

But dignity is also corroded by poverty no matter how poetically we invest the humble with simple graces and charm. No worker can maintain his morale or sustain his spirit if in the market place his capacities are declared to be worthless to society. The Negro is no longer ashamed that he is black — he should never have permitted himself to accept the absurd concept that white is more virtuous than black, but he was crushed by the propaganda that superiority had a pale countenance. That day is fast coming to an end. However, in his search for human dignity he is handicapped by the stigma of poverty in a society whose measure of value revolves about money. If the society changes its concepts by placing the responsibility on its system, not on the individual, and guarantees secure employment or a minimum income, dignity will come within reach for all.

Meanwhile, any discussion of the problems of inequality is meaningless unless a time dimension is given to programs for their solution. It is disquieting to note that President Johnson in his message to Congress on the Demonstration Cities program stated, “If we can begin now the planning from which action will flow, the hopes of the twentieth century will become the realities of the twenty-first.” On this timetable many Negroes not yet born and virtually all now alive will not experience equality. The virtue of patience will become a vice if it accepts so leisurely an approach to social change. Conflicts are unavoidable because a stage has been reached in which the reality of equality will require extensive adjustments in the way of life of some of the white majority. Many of our former supporters will fall by the wayside as the movement presses against financial privilege. Others will withdraw as long-established cultural privileges are threatened.

What is freedom? It is, first the capacity to deliberate or to weigh alternatives. “Shall I be a doctor or a lawyer?” “Shall I be a Democrat, Republican or Socialist?” “Shall I be a humanist or a theist?” Second, freedom expresses itself in decision. The word “decision,” like the word “incision,” involves the image of cutting. Incision means to cut in, decision means to cut off. When I make a decision I cut off alternatives and make a choice. The existentialists say we must choose, that we are choosing animals, and that if we do not choose, we sink into thinghood and the mass mind. A third expression of freedom is responsibility. This is the obligation of the person to respond if he is questioned about his decisions. No one else can respond for him. He alone must respond, for his acts are determined by the totality of his being.

The immorality of segregation is that it is a selfishly contrived system which cuts off one’s capacity to deliberate, decide and respond. The absence of freedom imposes restraint on my deliberations as to what I shall do, where I shall live or the kind of task I shall pursue. I am robbed of the basic quality of manness. When I cannot choose what I shall do or where I shall live, it means in fact that someone or some system has already made these decisions for me, and I am reduced to an animal. Then the only resemblance I have to a man is in my motor responses and functions. I cannot adequately assume responsibility as a person because I have been made the victim of a decision in which I played no part. Nothing can be more diabolical than a deliberate attempt to destroy in any man his will to be a man and to withhold from him that something which constitutes his true essence. [11]

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Notes:

[1] King, Dr. Martin Luther (1968). “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?”. New York, NY: Beacon Press, pgs 80, 86, 99, 151. ISBN 0807005711

[2] Kendall, David. (April, 2009). “Dr. King Spanks Obama: Part 1″. Oped News. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Dr-King-Spanks-Obama-Par-by-David-Kendall-090412-92.html

[3] Douglass, James W. (March 15. 2000). “The King Assassination: After Three Decades, Another Verdict”. Christian Century. http://www.precaution.org/lib/09/prn_king_assassination_another_verdict.000315.htm

[4] Sheehan, Cindy. (January, 2009). “The Legacy of Dr. King”. Workers Action. http://www.workerscompass.org/mlk_sheehan.html

[5] Pilger, John. (April, 2009). “Obama’s 100 Days: The Mad Men Did Well”. World News Daily: Information Clearing House. http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22514.htm

[6] Chomsky, Noam; Carlos Peregrín Otero. (2003). “Chomsky on democracy & education”. Routledge. pg 249, ISBN 0415926327.

[7] Kendall, David. (2009). “Natural Adversaries”. Oped News. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Natural-Adversaries-by-David-Kendall-090324-854.html

[8] Chandler, David. (2009). “Tour of the US Income Distribution: The L-Curve”. David Chandler. http://www.lcurve.org/

[9] infoplease. (2009). “U.S. Voting Rights”. infoplease. http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/voting.html

[10] Wikipedia. (2009). “Right to vote: History of suffrage in the United States”. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_vote#History_of_suffrage_in_the_United_States

[11] King, Dr. Martin Luther (1968). “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?”. New York, NY: Beacon Press, Excerpts from chapter 3. ISBN 0807005711

The Superclass

Super class is a concept in sociology that refers to the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an Super class often have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy.

Speaker: David Rothkopf
Carnegie Endowment for Peace