Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Inhumanity with a Human Face

Agnes R. Howard, reviewing Matthew Connelly's Fatal Misconception: the Struggle to Control World Population, offers this chilling analysis:

Population control carries the implication that it would be preferable for some people not to be. Whether these undesirables are defined as a Yellow Peril threatening to sink the West, hordes of the hungry ready to kill each other or you, or even just slovenly neighbors bullying your babies or absorbing welfare checks, fear of other people's children has been a powerful engine of public policy. "Population control presented itself as a charity like any other," Connelly observes, "helping less fortunate people. But it was the only one that promised to make them go away."

That thought serves primarily as a condemnation of the population control movement, but it also is useful as a reminder to all of the human capacity to allow ideology to blind people to the cruelty inherent in their own ideas.

HT: Collecting my Thoughts

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