“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
Maragret Sanger (letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, Dec. 19, 1939)
The below comes via The American Spectator
Feminist icon Gloria Steinem has received America’s highest honor. President Obama bestowed upon Steinem the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In so doing, he honored the work of not only Steinem but Margaret Sanger, liberalism’s iconic racial eugenicist. Celebrating her award at the National Press Club, Steinem said she hoped Obama’s action would be “honoring the work of Margaret Sanger.”
It indeed has done just that.
Margaret Sanger longed for a more enlightened time when birth control would be (as she put it) “part of the regular welfare service of the government.” In this, she was inspired by Stalin’s Soviet Union — literally. In 1934, she undertook a fact-finding pilgrimage to Moscow, where she, like many American progressives, believed the Bolshevik government might well have discovered the Brave New World. Many American progressives — public education father John Dewey among them — thought the Soviets were perhaps merely a few steps ahead of us. We needed to look there. We needed to go there.
Upon her return, Sanger reported her findings in the June 1935 edition of her organization’s flagship publication, Birth Control Review. In an article titled, “Birth Control in Russia,” Sanger noted, “Theoretically, there are no obstacles to birth control in Russia. It is accepted… on the grounds of health and human right.” She said of America: “[W]e could well take example from Russia, where there are no legal restrictions, no religious condemnation, and where birth control instruction is part of the regular welfare service of the government.”
Sanger could not have known it, but she was speaking of Barack Obama’s America, where birth control is being thrust upon us as a basic “human right” and form of “health care” with no obstacles in its way. In fact, it’s even easier than Sanger could have imagined: Not only do contemporary progressives want no obstacles, but Obama wants all Americans to forcibly pay for birth control. He is even forcing the religious to do so via his HHS mandate. He and his progressive cohorts are rolling right over any “legal restrictions” or “religious condemnation.” If you as a religious believer disagree, they will see you in court. You will be penalized and demonized.
Under Obama, we have arrived at Sanger’s new world, where birth control is a regular service of the federal government.
And thus, Gloria Steinem honoring Margaret Sanger with Obama’s Presidential Medal of Freedom is so perfectly fitting. It really is. In fact, if Obama thought about all this more deeply, perhaps he’d consider a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom for Margaret Sanger. She was way ahead of her time. A veritable progressive prophetess.
But there’s something even more significant and ironic at work here.
Margaret Sanger not only championed Bolshevik birth control services, she also championed racial eugenics. The Planned Parenthood matron wanted to advance what she called “racial health” and “race improvement” in America. She lamented America’s “race of degenerates.” This meant purging the landscape of its “human weeds” and “the dead weight of human waste.” This included the “feeble-minded,” the “imbeciles,” the “morons,” and the “idiots,” but it also included a “Negro Project” that Margaret had in mind for another group of Americans.
The Negro Project was close to Sanger’s heart, as shown by a remarkable December 10, 1939 letter she wrote to Dr. Clarence Gamble of Milton, Massachusetts. (The letter is today held in the Sanger archives at Smith College. I have a photocopy.) The Planned Parenthood foundress alerted the good doctor: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
That eye-opening assertion has been disputed and defended by liberals. And, to be fair, what Sanger meant isn’t entirely clear, though I personally lean to a decidedly negative interpretation. But one group with no ambivalence about Sanger’s intentions with black Americans was the KKK.
Add the Klan to the list of those deeply grateful for Sanger’s work. They were so grateful that the boys in the white hoods invited the progressive heroine to one of their celebrations. They asked her to speak at one of their rallies. Sanger accepted. She addressed her brethren at a KKK rally in Silver Lake, New Jersey, in 1926.
What do Barack Obama and Gloria Steinem think of that? Like most leftists, either they’re totally ignorant of the fact or they look the other way as they extol the magnificence of Sanger’s other “achievements” that outweigh the more sinister ones in their ever-evolving progressive calculus.
Among Sanger’s other achievements is another bitter pill: Her Planned Parenthood is America’s largest abortion provider, and one of the greatest killers of black Americans. No other organization comes close. Planned Parenthood’s bloodletting of unborn black babies has been in the countless millions.
The following quotes from Steinem and other “lauded” feminists in the university (“higher” learning) come from two sources and can be better referenced by them:
1) Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011);
2) and my chapter in my book on feminism, Gnostic Feminism: Empowered to Fail.
Author and journalist Natalie Angier begins an article in the New York Times by writing, “Women may not find this surprising, but one of the most persistent and frustrating problems in evolutionary biology is the male. Specifically… why doesn’t he just go away?” (Natalie Angier, “The Male of the Species: Why Is He Needed?” New York Times, May 17, 1994)
In a CNN interview with Maureen Dowd about her 2005 book, Are Men Necessary? Dowd says, “Now that women don’t need men to reproduce and refinance, the question is, will we keep you around? And the answer is, ‘You know, we need you in the way we need ice cream—you’ll be more ornamental.” (“Are Men Necessary?” CNN.com, November 15, 2005, http:// www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/11/15/dowd.men.necessary/ index.html)
Lisa Belkin, a blogger for the New York Times whose work is provocative but not overly biased, wrote, “We are standing at a moment in time when the role of gender is shifting seismically. At this moment an argument can be made for two separate narrative threads—the first is the retreat of men as this becomes a woman’s world.” (Lisa Belkin, “Are Men Necessary?” Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting blog, New York Times Magazine, June 30, 2010, http:// parenting.blogs. nytimes.com/2010/06/30/are-men-necessary/)
In an article in the Atlantic titled ‘Are Fathers Necessary?” author Pamela Paul wrote, “The bad news for Dad is that despite common perception, there’s nothing objectively essential about his contribution.” Pamela Paul, “Are Fathers Necessary?” Atlantic, July/August 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/arefathers-necessary/8136/)
For example, in the January 1988 National NOW Times, the newsletter for the organization, said: “The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist.” (William D. Gairdner, The War Against the Family: A Parent Speaks Out on the Political, Economic, and Social Policies That Threaten Us All, 295.)
Well-known feminist author and co-founder/editor of Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem, said the following about feminisms end game: “Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole #@*! patriarch!” Ibid., 300 [How can a civil rights movement be interested in capitalism?] (Ibid)
One sign of an over oppressive movement is illustrated in The Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Napoleon, one of the main characters, concerns himself with the education of the young, and forcefully takes two litters of puppies away as soon as they’re weaned, saying he’ll educate them. In effect the “State” are the ones who are charged with educating and rearing them. Now compare this to a statement made by feminist Mary Jo Bane, assistant professor of education at Wellesley College and associate director of the school’s Center for Research on Woman, and the lesson taught in Animal Farm:
- “In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.”
(Fr. Robert J. Carr, “No News For You!!” Catholic Online [9-23-2004]. Found at: http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=1364 ~ last accessed 7-29-09; Here is the full quote from Father Carr’s article: “Mary Jo Bane, formerly of the Clinton Administration Department of Health and Human Services one of the major voices in the Boston Globe against the average Catholic’s right to freedom of religion. Bane’s most famous quote is ‘We really don’t know how to raise children. If we want to talk about equality of opportunity for children, then the fact that children are raised in families means there’s no equality. … In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.’”)
Alternatively, Gloria Steinem declared: “By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.” (Angela Howard and Sasha Ranae Adams Tarrant, Reaction to the Modern Women’s Movement, 1963 to the Present: Antifeminism in America: A Collection of Readings from the Literature of the Opponents to U.S. Feminism, 1848 to the Present, 153.)
NEA president/feminist Catherine Barrett wrote likewise that, “Dramatic changes in the way we will raise our children in the year 2000 are indicated, particularly in terms of schooling. … We will need to recognize that the so-called ‘basic skills’, which currently represent nearly the total effort in elementary schools, will be taught in one-quarter of the present school day. … When this happens—and it’s near—the teacher can rise to his true calling. More than a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values, a philosopher. … We will be agents of change.” (Dennis Laurence Cuddy, The Grab for Power: A Chronology of the NEA, 6.)
A Feminist Dictionary, published by the University of Illinois, gives the following definitions:
- Male: “… represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. The first males were mutants… the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.”
- Man: “… an obsolete life form… an ordinary creature who needs to be watched … a contradictory baby-man.”
- Testosterone Poisoning: “Until now it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’”
(Cheris Kramarae and Paula A. Treichler, eds., Feminist Dictionary (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986), cf. male, 242; cf. male, 246; cf. testosterone poisoning, 446.)
Feminist author Ti-Grace Atkinson shows her true autonomy when stating, “the institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist.” (Daniel Dervin, Enactments: American Modes and Psychohistorical Models, 244)
Another telling quote comes directly from Atkinson’s own biography, Amazon Odyssey: “The price of clinging to the enemy [a man] is your life. To enter into a relationship with a man who has divested himself as completely and publicly from the male role as much as possible would still be a risk. But to relate to a man who has done any less is suicide…. I, personally, have taken the position that I will not appear with any man publicly, where it could possibly be interpreted that we were friends.” (Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey, 90, 91.)
Marilyn French, feminist author calls all men rapists: “All men are rapists and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes.” (Elizabeth Knowles, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 5th ed. [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999], cf. Freeman, E.A., 324.)
Let us allow Gloria Steinen, feminist extraordinaire, to set the stage with the following praises about her contemporary, Andrea Dworkin, “In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them.” (David M. Friedman, A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, 225.) Why preface Andrea Dworkin? Because she has this to say about men in general: “Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies.” (Neil Boyd, Big Sister: How Extreme Feminism has Betrayed the Fight for Sexual Equality, 23.)
Dr. Boyd continues with Dworkin’s quote: “In fucking, as in reproduction, sex and economics are inextricably joined. In male-supremacist cultures, women are believed to embody carnality; women are sex. A man wants what a woman has – sex. He can steal it outright (prostitution), lease it over the long term (marriage in the United States), or own it outright (marriage in most societies). A man can do some or all of the above, over and over again.” (Ibid.)
“What Gloria Steinem, Molly Yard, Patricia Ireland and all the rest have presented to you over the last [30-years] years has not been feminist theory.” …. Tammy Bruce goes on to show that Betty Friedan and Patricia Ireland, ex-presidents of NOW, (and others) are involved with socialist or communist political parties or organizations,
- …Betty Friedan, a former Communist Party member, was only the precursor of the hijacking of feminism to serve other political interests. Some consider Gloria Steinem, the founder of Ms. magazine and probably the second most influential feminist leader, after Friedan, of the last 30 years, to be the one who began blurring the lines between gender and race issues. This might be surprising to those who are unaware of Steinem’s involvement in socialist politics. In fact, she serves as an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, which boasts of being the largest socialist organization in the United States and is the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. Good for her, but we should know this as we explore what factors influence those who are considered feminist leaders. Steinem’s influence, combined with the socialist sympathies of NOW’s immediate past-president, Patricia Ireland, explain the co-opting of NOW by leftist ideologues. A 1996 article in Ms. quoted Ireland as saying that NOW “must offer a clear understanding of what it means to be a feminist organization concerned with ending discrimination based on race, class, and other issues of oppression [emphasis mine] that come from a patriarchal structure.” Steinem then commented, “To be feminist, we have to take on the entire caste system.” Ireland details her support of the Communist Party in her autobiography, What Women Want. She admits that her socialist sympathies and participation in pro-Communist rallies in Miami (of all places!) were due in part to the fact that her friend and future lover, Pat Silverthorn, was an activist in the Socialist Worker’s Party. There were problems, Ireland explains, with Silverthorn and her friends being Communists in Miami. “Later, after we’d become close,” Ireland writes, “[Pat Silverthorn] would confide that she, too, had wondered how much more dangerous she’d made her life by openly professing communist convictions in that volatile, violent, commie-hating city… Working closely with Pat opened my eyes about the reality of living as a political leftist in this country.”
(Tammy Bruce, The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds.)