Stuff You Didn't See on the News!

By Rich Kozlovich

I know that this isn't a green issue, but I don't restrict myself to just reading and researching articles and books dealing with green issues. Just about everything fascinates me....a bit of a curse by the way. However, I don't typically link articles or make comments on other pressing human issues, although when working on "green" you find yourself immersed in just about everything. Which kind of surprised me! I think what I found most disturbing at this  realization  of  "surprise" is that I was surprised in the first place. That realization should have been totally predictable. It wasn’t! It does show how subtle and insidious the watermelon movement really is.

Recently I have started adding more links to articles on non-green issues. I believe I will be doing more of that when I start my semi-retirement next year. I have discussed taking Paradigms and Demographics into the direction of becoming a news service. One that will be devoted to following stories about the events that impacts humanity which no one else is telling; and I wish to do so with a strong historical foundation. I do believe we have far too many attorneys, journalists and political scientists directing things and not enough historians.  As a result we have far too many opinions that are not much more that "bold experimentation" that sounds reasonable, but lacks foundation.   And there are far too few people who say....hold on.....this isn't new.....this has happened before..... and these were the results!  The failing and expenisve green energy policies of today already failed once before.  It was called the Carter Administration and these same failures are being repeated again....only at an expense never dreamed of during Carter's years.  So why are we trying it again?

At any rate…I do think that today’s links are really going to upset a bunch of people.   I can live with that!  It is well known that Margaret Sanger’s views influenced Hitler to a large degree, and eugenics was practiced in many countries in the world until after WWII.

“The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1883, drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin. At its peak of popularity eugenics was supported by a wide variety of prominent people, including Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Linus Pauling and Sidney Webb. Many members of the American Progressive Movement supported eugenics, seduced by its scientific trappings and its promise of a quick end to social ills. Its most infamous proponent and practitioner was, however, Adolf Hitler who praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf and emulated Eugenic legislation for the sterilization of "defectives" that had been pioneered in the United States.”

Today it is considered a human rights violation because of the abuses of the Third Reich. Here is the rest of the Wikipedia’s discussion.  You will find this interesting.   Hitler's predecessors were American do-gooders and "scientists" – The Early Days of Eugenics

Below is an editorial from the 1911 "Scientific American". It sounds very reasonable but that makes it an even better example of the deplorable "unintended consequences" of government interventionism

ADA JUKE is known to anthropologists as the "mother of criminals." From her there were directly descended one thousand two hundred persons. Of these, one thousand were criminals, paupers, inebriates, insane, or on the streets. That heritage of crime, disease, inefficiency and immorality cost the State of New York about a million and a quarter dollars for maintenance directly. What the indirect loss was in property stolen, in injury to life and limb, no one can estimate…. (Remember that this was printed in 1911. RK)

Here are some comments by John Ray from Australia and publisher of Greenie Watch and Disecting Leftism.   Everything from this point on are from one of his sites, and I wish to thank Dr. Ray for allowing me to republish his works. 

More academic evidence of the importance of genes and the UNIMPORTANCE of your home environment

"Human values: Genetic and environmental effects on five lexically derived domains and their facets"
By Walter Renner et al.

Abstract

Whereas a substantial genetic component of Conservatism and Religiosity is well documented, there is little evidence with respect to the behavior genetics of other aspects of human values. A sample of 157 monozygotic and 74 dizygotic twins reared together received the Austrian Value Questionnaire (AVQ), which measures a broad variety of value domains and their facets, found by the lexical approach in the German language. Family resemblance of Intellectualism, Harmony, Materialism, and Conservatism was best explained by additive or dominance genetic and non-shared environmental effects, whereas the influence of the environment shared by twins was negligible. In contrast, Religiosity was transmitted by additive genetic, shared and non-shared environmental influences. At the level of facets, the Intellectualism and Harmony showed a homogenous etiology while Religiosity, Materialism, and Conservatism were etiologically heterogeneous.
Personality and Individual Differences. In Press, Corrected Proof - doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.09.003

Aren't you glad that there's someone around to translate that academic Double-Dutch for you?

Note initially that after decades of research it is now generally accepted that both political and religious ideology is substantially determined by your genes. You didn't CHOOSE to be a Conservative or religious: You were BORN that way. That still grates on the teeth of most people but that is what the inheritance research has repeatedly shown. Exactly WHAT is inherited which makes you a Leftist is still not pinned down but my bet is that it is a tendency to be miserable. Happiness is definitely a stable trait and conservatives are certainly happier, which again shows up repeatedly in research.

But that is all prelude. The researchers above were looking for OTHER things that might be genetically inherited. They found that traits of Intellectualism, Harmony, Materialism, and Conservatism were all determined heavily by genetics but hardly at all by the environment. Religiosity, however, was to a degree influenced by your environment. Pretty simple, really -- even if runs against almost everybody's preconceptions.

You now see why elections are won or lost according to how well the candidate appeals to the voter in the middle. Most of us are born conservative (happy) or Leftist (miserable) and can't be changed from that. It's only the minority who are half way between happy and miserable who can be swung. Background on previous research in the area here

Clarifying note: It is your tendency to be religious in general that is inherited, not your particular religion.

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