If an extreme Environut candidate were to make a coherent-sounding “Population Control” case for a world-wide 2-child limit; enforced by the mandatory abortion of any 3rd pregnancy or execution of any 3rd child found to have been born to a family, that proposal might actually poll well at the left end of the political spectrum today – where humanity itself is viewed as a disease being suffered by Mother Earth.
How could I even imagine such a thing?
It doesn’t take much imagination. Such thinking has driven public policy before.
Public policy proposals that treat people in abstract, collectivist terms are made by people who decline to consider the individual, flesh and blood person on whom those policies would act. This inhuman thought process has produced horrors at least equal to the imaginary proposal above:
• Millions of innocent people collectively vilified for being Jewish were slaughtered in service to the idea of “genetic purity” and the achievement of some warped idea of social order. The majority of the world turned away until the horror could no longer be denied.
• Margaret Sanger normalized the idea of using abortion as a way to minimize births among the inferior races of “reckless breeders.”
• Today’s proponents of abortion – including supporters of killing of viable 2nd and 3rd-trimester babies – already include “population control,” culling babies with Downs Syndrome and other conditions among their arguments; especially when advocating for US-taxpayer-funded abortions performed on women in developing nations.
Here’s the scary part:
Public policy proposals that sacrifice a helpless minority in service to some ideal held by a majority often gain traction among those in the loosely-connected political middle.
HERE’S WHY:
People whose actual understanding of a proposal enjoys plausible deniability can readily lend their political support to a position that serves to make them appear sophisticated and popular.
Observe the rush to lavish accolades and praise on a little girl who begged the UN to crush economic liberty for billions whose difficult climb from poverty relies on the availability of fossil fuel, even when there exists not one bit of proof that the sacrifice of these billions would have a discernible impact on world climate.
The thought process engaged by this or any child advocating such a draconian denial of fundamental autonomy for so many doesn’t see individual human beings. She sees categories. She sees humans only in collective. It’s easier to deny the right to earn, to grow food, to use the resources underfoot to a category; an abstraction than it is to deny a real person his right to provide for himself.
Unfortunately, it’s also easy, having observed the popular acclaim such a person can achieve, to bask in their popularity by signaling our approval.
In today’s political environment, many people measure their political stance in social media “likes” rather than in fully-formed consideration of its consequences for flesh and blood people. And that is understandable if not excusable. We have become media-bombarded but perspective-starved body-politic.
Public policy debate is being driven by tweets, slogans and bumper-sticker philosophers. Political participation has become a mindless exercise in “virtue signaling” one’s alignment with the position that seems the most popular. This very human inclination puts frightening power into the hands of those who “mold” public opinion.
Reflecting on this phenomenon, it’s important that we recall the reasons our nation’s founders rejected democracy as our form of government. Democracy is not only vulnerable to the extremes of public opinion, it concentrates terrific power into the hands of those who manipulate public opinion (not to mention those who control elections). Consider these characteristics against the dynamics seen in contemporary society. Does it not seem we are taking on the “attributes” of democracy of late? This is not happening by accident.
Our nation was constituted on an insightful doctrine that defines the individual’s natural right to life, liberty and property as the just purpose of Law and the measure of any law’s Justice.
A democracy, by contrast, considers “just” any damned-fool (or horrifying) thing that can be ‘sold’ to 51% of the voting population. This unstable, unsustainable form of government presents a real threat to the rights of the individual under the constant drumbeat of Statist propaganda.
Any policy proposal that seems to emerge from an idea shared by a significant part of the voting public – even proposals that warp the shared idea – can attract consequential political support.
The more public policy is driven by public opinion rather than by the timeless recognition and defense of the INDIVIDUAL’s natural rights, the more regressively barbaric public policy is likely to become. This inclination becomes even more pronounced as the power of the “opinion-makers” grows and is amplified by the echo-chamber effect of social media.
Respect for the natural rights of the individual is an impediment to the advance of the Statist agenda. So it should not be surprising that the Statist narrative offered by the political Left considers people in collective, abstract terms. Today’s public-school Kindergarten students are being taught about white privilege and that humanity is a scourge on the Earth.
Thinking of people in collective terms rather than as individuals removes normal human empathy from public policy discussions; thereby shifting public opinion toward further exercise of state power in pursuit of the “greater good.”
Indoctrination by propaganda is the greatest enemy of Liberty today. And the antidote to Statist propaganda is the understanding and APPLICATION of the timeless and self-evident truths on which our nation was constituted:
• The natural rights of the person to life, liberty and property are manifestations of Created human nature.
• Society consists of consenting interaction among people whose natural rights enjoy equal standing and defense.
• Ordered Liberty, Prosperity and Progress are the natural fruits of our Equality under Law.
• The equal defense of our natural rights as individuals is the reason we institute government, so it’s also the measure of its justice.
