Last week in a Twitter response to Princeton historian Kevin Kruse, Dinesh D’Souza linked to a 2017 article published on Breitbart.com in which he claimed the following:
Hitler learned a great deal from the Democrats and from American progressives. He got some of his core policy strategies from them.
Specifically, D’Souza claimed Hitler copied three policies from American Democrats – the treatment of native Americans, the segregation of African-Americans, and sterilization laws and the eugenics movement from the first half of the last century. While all of these claims are problematic, my intention in this post is to fact check him regarding immigration laws and eugenics.
1924 Immigration Act
D’Souza wrote:
Hitler also appealed to the racially exclusionary provisions of U.S. immigration laws, specifically the 1924 Immigration Act that had been pushed by American progressives as a model of enlightened eugenic legislation.
As Kruse pointed out on Twitter, the 1924 Immigration Act was sponsored by two conservative Republicans, Albert Johnson (R-WA) and David Reed (R-PA) and signed into law by Republican president Calvin Coolidge. When Republicans controlled the House, Johnson was the chair of the House Immigration and Naturalization Committee. While chair of that committee, Johnson appointed eugenicist Harry Laughlin to be the committee’s “Expert Eugenics Agent” and routed funds for eugenic research to Charles Davenport’s lab at Cold Spring Harbor where Laughlin also worked.
While it is true that the supporters of eugenics and race-based immigration had common cause, it is not true that the Democratic Party was the sole or even leading influence. Members of both parties voted for the bill but it was sponsored and promoted heavily by Republicans.
On a related note, Republicans today are typically the ones who want to slow immigration into the U.S. It was a recent Republican president who wondered why we couldn’t take more people from Norway than from “sh*thole” countries.
Sterilization Laws
D’Souza wrote:
Third, Hitler learned from progressive sterilization laws that had been enacted in America through the influence of activists like Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.
Progressive eugenicist Paul Popenoe, himself an advocate of euthanasia by poison gas, praised Hitler for being on the front lines of modern eugenics. Harry Laughlin and Charles Davenport’s Eugenic News termed the Nazi sterilization program “a milestone which marks the control by the most advanced nations of the world of a major aspect of controlling human reproduction.”
It is true that Hitler praised America’s laws allowing the sterilization of people deemed to be deficient in various ways. It is also true that many of the leaders in the eugenics movement supported Germany’s movement to enact similar laws. However, Sanger had little to do with sterilization laws because the eugenics supporters cited by D’Souza didn’t want her help.
While it is safe to say that Margaret Sanger was progressive in her views, she wasn’t viewed as a colleague by those in the mainstream of the eugenics and sterilization movement. She hoped to attach herself to it to further her own cause but leaders in the eugenics movement didn’t seem to want her. Read what eugenics leader Paul Popenoe said in a letter to fellow eugenicist Madison Grant about Sanger’s American Birth Control League:
Dear Mr. Grant,
I have been considerably disquieted by the letter you showed me yesterday, suggesting a working alliance between the American Eugenics Society and the American Birth Control League. In my judgement we have everything to lose nothing to gain to such an arrangement.
[The American Birth Control League] is controlled by a group that has be brought up on agitation and emotional appeal instead of on research and education… With this group, we would take on a large quantity of ready-made enemies which it has accumulated, and we would gain allies who, while believing that they are eugenics, really have no conception of what eugenics is and are actually opposed to it.
[At a recent international birth control conference] two members of our advisory council … put through a resolution at the final meeting, urging that people whose children gave promise of being of exceptional value to the race should have as many children, properly spaced, as they felt that they feasibly could. This is eugenics. It is not the policy of the American Birth Control League leaders, who in the next issue of their monthly magazine came out with an editorial denouncing this resolution as contrary to all the principles and sentiments of their organization.
If it is desirable for us to make a campaign in favor of contraception, we are abundantly able to do so on our own account, without enrolling a lot of sob sisters, grand stand players, and anarchists to help us. We had a lunatic fringe in the eugenics movement in the early days; we have been trying for 20 years to get rid of it and have finally done so. Let’s not take on another fringe of any kind as an ornament.
Sincerely,
Paul Popenoe
Acknowledged eugenics leader Popenoe called Sanger’s group “sob sisters” and a “fringe.” The principle leaders in the movement to enact sterilization laws were people like Popenoe, Davenport, and Laughlin.
Popenoe and Gas Chambers
Although Popenoe did support Hitler’s goals of racial purity, I can’t find any evidence that he supported “euthanasia by poison gas” as D’Souza claims. On the contrary, in his 1918 book Applied Eugenics, Popenoe rejected execution as a means of achieving eugenic ends. At the beginning of chapter 10, Popenoe wrote:
The means of restriction can be divided into coercive and non-coercive. We shall discuss the former first, interpreting the word “coercive” very broadly.
From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution. This has been used since the beginning of the race, very probably, although rarely with a distinct understanding of its eugenic effect; and its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated. It is a method the use of which prevents the rectification of mistakes. There are arguments against it on other grounds, which need not be discussed here, since it suffices to say that to put to death defectives or delinquents is wholly out of accord with the spirit of the times, and is not seriously considered by the eugenics movement.
The next possible method castration. This has practically nothing to recommend it, except that it is effective—an argument that can also be made for the “lethal chamber.” The objections against it are overwhelming. It has hardly been advocated, even by extremists, save for those whose sexual instincts are extremely disordered; but such advocacy is based on ignorance of the results. As a fact, castration frequently does not diminish the sexual impulses. Its use should be limited to cases where desirable for therapeutic reasons as well.
It is possible, however, to render either a man or woman sterile by a much less serious operation than castration. This operation, which has gained wide attention in recent years under the name of “sterilization,” usually takes the form of vasectomy in man and salpingectomy in woman; it is desirable that the reader should have a clear understanding of its nature.
While it was ghastly for Popenoe to even list execution in his discussion of eugenics, it is false to say he advocated gas chambers.
Paul Popenoe – A Republican
According to information unearthed by PhD history student Jeff Nichols, Popenoe was a registered Republican from the 1920s through the 1960s (e.g. 1934). His son David Popenoe confirmed this in a 1991 essay written for the Institute for American Values. About his father, the younger Popenoe wrote:
My father often called himself a Victorian man and turn-of-the-century Republican.
In good Victorian fashion, he also exhibited what many today would call a profound sexual prudishness. He claimed to have been a virgin at the time of his marriage at age 32 and even to have successfully eschewed masturbation; he viewed prostitution and pornography as among the world’s great evils. Around women, he was awkward and shy.
Although Popenoe supported birth control and sex education, as noted above, he wasn’t a fan of Margaret Sanger or her progressive agenda. He eventually developed a relationship with James Dobson, the founder of Focus of the Family. Dobson was one of his assistants at his American Institute of Family Relations. Popenoe wrote the Foreward to Dobson’s breakthrough book, Dare to Discipline. Popenoe was adamantly opposed to homosexuality and any blurring of gender roles. In contradiction to D’Souza, the facts show that Popenoe wasn’t a Democrat and he certainly was more conservative on many issues than progressive.
Charles Davenport – Fiscal Conservative, Rifleman
Charles Benedict Davenport was the director of the Cold Spring Harbor laboratory on Long Island which housed the Eugenics Record Office. This lab kept genetics and health records on families and was the base of operations for the eugenics movement. In 1910, he wrote Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding.
While I am not certain Davenport was a Republican (although a Charles Davenport is listed a Brooklyn paper as participating at a Republican event in 1911), he was a fiscal conservative as president of the Oyster Bay Taxpayers League and supported the formation of Rifle clubs and a Home Defense League. In his social life, Davenport was traditional enough to compel his daughter to apologize for tearing down an anti-suffrage poster.
Davenport was the recipient of a famous letter from Republican Teddy Roosevelt in which Roosevelt expressed support for eugenics. Roosevelt told Davenport:
I am greatly interested in the two memoirs you have sent me. They are very instructive, and, from the standpoint of our country, very ominous. You say that those people are not themselves responsible, that it is “society” that is responsible. I agree with you if you mean, as I supposed you do, that society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind. It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding. Any group of farmers who permitted their best stock not to breed, and let all the increase come from the worst stock, would be treated as fit inmates for an asylum. Yet we fail to understand that such conduct is rational compared to the conduct of a nation which permits unlimited breeding from the worst stock, physically and morally, while it encourages or connives at the cold selfishness or the twisted sentimentality as a result of which the men and women who ought to marry, and if married have large families, remain celebates or have no children or only one or two. Some day we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world! and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.
Harry Laughlin – Served in Republican Administrations
Harry Laughlin was committed to the eugenics cause and I believe would have worked with members of any party who supported eugenics. The fact remains that he served under Republican office holders who held the same views as he did.
As noted previously, he served as “Expert Eugenics Agent” for Republican Albert Johnson’s House Immigration and Naturalization Committee. Laughlin also served as an envoy for Republican Secretary of Labor James J. Davis. Davis openly promoted a “pro-Nordic” position in his position in three Republican administrations. For instance, in Congressional testimony in support of the 1924 Immigration Act, Davis said:
…historians and scientists tell me that all the great civilizations of the past have fallen, not through hostile invasion, but through the peaceful penetration of alien peoples, usually entering their gates as workers or slaves.
He also wrote that America’s status as a Nordic country required that immigration policy should bar other races which are
physically, mentally, morally and spiritually undesirable, and who constitute a menace to our civilization.
Laughlin and Republican Davis teamed up to push for both eugenics and laws restricting immigration to Northern Europeans.
Charles Goethe – Leading California Republican
D’Souza identified Charles (C.M.) Goethe and E.S. Gosney as two additional “progressive” eugenicists. Both men were registered Republicans.
A further example of progressive enthusiasm for Hitler involves Charles Goethe, founder of the Eugenics Society of Northern California, who upon returning from a 1934 fact-finding trip to Germany to examine Nazi sterilization programs, wrote a congratulatory letter to his fellow progressive Eugene Gosney, head of the San Diego-based Human Betterment Foundation.
Goethe was a prolific “letter to the editor” writer the papers across the nation on behalf of eugenics and, as suggested by one of his many letters shown above, was a white supremacist who supported exclusionary immigration policies.
Goethe was also a wealthy Republican. In 1926, he listed his occupation as “capitalist” and consistently registered as a Republican. In 1964, Goethe was called one of California’s leading Republicans in this Valley News article documenting his support for a state ballot initiative to fund higher education. Significantly, a key promoter of the measure also supported GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
With Ezra (E.S.) Gosney*, Goethe was a founding member of the Human Betterment Foundation. As D’Souza wrote, Goethe credited the Foundation for shaping the opinions of the Nazis on the matter of eugenics. However, D’Souza apparently assumes Goethe was a Democrat when he in fact he was a Republican.
Goethe’s eugenic and immigration ideas were linked. In a 1940 letter to The Indianapolis Star, Goethe lamented France’s falling rates and predicted similar results in the United States. He wrote:
The present census reveals that the United States is following France herein. The real menace is greater than the returns disclose, for these do not show the workings of the differential birth rates law. Our high powers are race suiciding, our morons breed.
Goethe’s and the eugenicists’ rhetoric reminds me of the Charlottesville white supremacy chants of “you will not replace us.”
E.S. Gosney – Boy Scout, Popenoe’s Board Member, Republican
Businessman E.S. Gosney assembled a list of prestigious capitalists, industrialists, bankers, educators and clergy to form the Human Betterment Foundation. There are no Democrats in the list of incorporating members (which includes a Rabbi and a Methodist and Presbyterian minister). How can Democrats have a legacy of eugenics if the key sterilization organization was made up of Republicans?
Gosney, a registered Republican, was active in the Boy Scouts and served on Paul Popenoe’s American Institute for Family Relations, a decidedly conservative organization which favored traditional marriage and opposed homosexuality and divorce.
Summary
Most, if not all, of D’Souza’s list of progressive Democrats appear to be Republicans. When one reviews the record, his theory falls apart. He will probably deny it but readers can judge for themselves. I ask again: How can the Democrats get the blame for a legacy of eugenics when so many of the leaders and developers of the movement were Republicans?
These Republicans (or in some cases not obviously aligned men) believed strongly in social engineering while at the same time holding Republican views on other issues. In fact, eugenics was for a brief period of history very near the mainstream. While it is surprising and sad, it cannot be blamed on any one political party. People in both parties supported various aspects of the eugenics movement for different reasons and people in both parties opposed those beliefs. D’Souza’s “big lie” is a actually a big bust.
I want to give a hat tip to Jeff Nichols who got me started looking at this with tweets about three of these eugenics leaders.
*E.S. Gosney’s first name is Ezra not Eugene as D’Souza mistakenly wrote.
Popenoe mentions execution as a means of accomplishing eugenics because historically it was important. This does not however mean killing the mentally retarded as such. It means that laws that removed criminals from the breeding population had an important eugenic effect.
Edward Dutton, author of a recent book about the decline of innate intelligence, talks about this.
It’s nice finally to see somebody add something to the work that I’ve already done in this area. I tracked down and posted the passage in Popenoe about “lethal chambers” last summer, and I inferred that Popenoe must have been generally conservative from the fact that Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, was his protégé — but I didn’t trace the party-affiliations of all the eugenicists that D’Souza names.
Instead I bypassed the difficulty of researching details about relatively obscure persons by looking at the party-affiliations of key figures in the history of American eugenics: in particular, governors and USSC justices. I believe not only that this information was easier to find, but also that such easily confirmed facts (about governors and Supreme Court justices) are more effective in an argument than obscure, hard-to-verify facts. For example, anybody can quickly verify that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (“Three generations of imbeciles are enough”) and Governor J. Frank Hanly (first head of state in the entire world to sign eugenic sterilization into law) were Republicans.
D’Souza seems to have a preference for turning any controversy into a trivia quiz, and to avoid consideration of well known facts. For example, D’Souza prefers the obscure question of how many Dixiecrat politicians later joined the GOP, to the notorious fact that the Dixiecrat states of 1948 all voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964. He is a master pettifogger and it is usually better to reject his framing of an issue — if you want to win the argument in a way that the audience will be able to recognize.
I’ve been posting that governors meme (below) since 2017. I think that my posts on D’Souza’s Twitter page must be at least as visible as Kevin Kruse’s, and I’ve been at it longer than he has, but somehow what I say isn’t worthy of the Huffington Post’s notice. Perhaps they are trying to spare D’Souza the humiliation of having had his ass kicked by an obscure blogger. Definitely, D’Souza would rather say that his work is disputed by an Ivy League professor than by me, even if I was saying exactly the same thing long before the fancy credentialed person even thought of it.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b48e1890bd93baba029bc756585ba2487be5bdd36a8ff61d8e7d61e1bb2f39e7.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9a18b3ea96a959fba5bb38c346c7d3c3044e3880577f8a68116a3fd24b434579.jpg
Thank you for your diligence in exposing the Orwellian nightmare of Fascist Zionist Republican bastards.
Let me guess: dirty communist Democrats are not only anti-Christian but also anti-Semitic bigots?
Wow. Chip on the shoulder much?
In the context of your use of “Zionist” it tells me that you are opposing the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Besides the fact that it’s anti-Semitic (a bogus theory that the left has proposed that all Israelis are descendants of White Europeans who never had connection to that particular land but supposedly stole it from indigenous Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. The fact is that indigenous Jews were kicked out from that land to Europe while Arabs have conquered it by force) but it is also very personal to me because I have family who live there. So, whenever I hear leftists demanding that Israel be destroyed and all Israelis move to Europe and the land be given over to Arab oppressors wannabes, I feel like they are insulting my family. What makes it more sickening is that these crazy Democrat-voting communism-liking leftists justify their anti-Semitism in the name of oppressed groups such as blacks, Hispanics, and gays by linking Palestinian terrorists (yeah, attacking soldiers with knives and rocks, is terrorism) and then getting shot for that with the oppressed groups. Without wanting to negate anybody who truly experienced racism and homophobia, I cannot ever justify anti-Zionism which is hateful to the very core.
Apartheid is your thing.
If the shoe fits for you.
Reality is vastly different from your chip on the shoulder determination to silence free speech.
I am sure you resemble the remark.
Oh, sir. I support your right to free speech comparing me to apartheid and racism supporters, and you are entitled to your thoughts just like I am entitled to mine that whatever leftists are advocating for, endorsed by the Democratic Party, is very similar to former USSR and and it is very harmful to America. I am also grateful that people like D’Souza are raising awareness about it.
Your assumptions and projections are truly defining.
The Scoffield Buy-Bull is the birth of Zionism in the USA.
It’s so good to see you defining yourself as in blind support of:
1) Apartheid.
2 Rogue Nuclear
3) Illegitimate
4) lying leech on America’s ass
5) Khazar mob run
6) Genocidal arms dealing
7) Land thieving
8) the “greater Israel” pogroms of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.
Reality over religion.
Who is Scoffield and what does he have to do with Israel? Speaking of Israel, it’s founding has primarily to do with ethnicity rather than with a religion. You know being Israeli is mostly about just speaking Hebrew and not necessarily about practicing Judaism or believing in God for that matter. And what about those fanatics who now control Gaza? Aren’t they doing that in the name of their religious interpretation of Islam?
I know that D’Souza is also being disliked for his ardent support for Israel’s right to exist and defend itself. Well, that’s a position of many people who have logical common sense, something that unfortunately , many professors in the US secular colleges tend to lack.
Deflection at its finest.
Wow. Impressive follow-up of D’Souza’s outright lies and attacks on Democrats and history. Thank you. What was D’Souza’s original point that led him to post the Breitbart link on Twitter to Kruse? Currently, D’Souza is championing the use of the National Guard to ‘protect’ free speech on the nation’s campuses, but I don’t see how eugenics and Hitler fit into that. So there must have been yet another Dinesh f**k up to explain the delusions refuted here. Just curious.
I am still not sure if D’Souza considered all progressives in his book as registered Democrats. This post is about his book on how supposedly both progressives and Democrats supported eugenics who then through this influenced the German Nazis. To fully understand what D’Souza is saying, I need to read the whole book. As for him wanting the National Guard to protect free speech of conservatives, Evangelicals, and Republicans in public colleges, I see a value in this because of numerous events how such people experienced intimidation, threats, and even violence at the hands of SJW, feminists, gay rights activists, Democrats, and other so-called progressives.
Do you have a dark cloud over your head full of missed points?
1) Belief in eugenics was close to mainstream and bipartisan. D’Souza’s error is trying to tie only Democrats to the belief and from there tying Hitler’s atrocities based on eugenics to the Democrats alone.
2) You and D’Souza should be interested to know that the President of the US cannot call out the national guard. The national guard belongs to the states. D’Souza is claiming Eisenhower called in the national guard in 1957 to protect the Little Rock Nine. In fact, Gov. Faubus had called the NG in to keep the LR9 from entering the school and Eisenhower called in federal troops from the 101st Airborne to protect the students. Do you really see an equivalence in the “SJW violence” and the LR9?
http://crdl.usg.edu/export/html/dde/ddetimeline/crdl_dde_ddetimeline_130.html?
I have not read this book of D’Souza as a whole, so I can’t make a judgment whether he is tying only Democrats to Hitler’s atrocities, or pretty much anybody who is considered a progressive. My point was that regardless of who can call out the national guard, I think that in general it can be helpful if local police cannot do their job properly.
Dr T just produced the proof above. What about it confuses you? Your obsession with progressives is a distraction and doesn’t make sense.
I am confused whether he accurately portrayed D’Souza’s book “The Big Lie.” I’d rather read it as whole, because I don’t tend to accept things at a face value.
I am confused whether he accurately portrayed D’Souza’s book “The Big Lie.” I’d rather read it as whole, because I don’t tend to accept things at a face value.
Well then you should consider refraining from comment until you have read it as a whole rather than cast aspersions on others who write about it.
I don’t cast aspersions on Dr. T, because as I indicated elsewhere, I agree with some of his criticism of D’Souza but I am not sure that I would agree with everything else.
This whole thread is you attempting to justify and hand wave away solid, researched criticisms while avoiding responsibility for explaining your own position specifically. It’s dishonest.
What D’Souza has done pretty consistently, is to disguise the fact that Republicans were heavily involved in eugenic sterilization by calling them progressives. When he really is talking about Democrats, however, you can be sure that he will use the party-label. The audience tends to assume that when he says “progressives” he is still talking about Democrats. That is how the deception works.
I am still not sure if D’Souza considered all progressives in his book as registered Democrats. This post is about his book on how supposedly both progressives and Democrats supported eugenics who then through this influenced the German Nazis. To fully understand what D’Souza is saying, I need to read the whole book. As for him wanting the National Guard to protect free speech of conservatives, Evangelicals, and Republicans in public colleges, I see a value in this because of numerous events how such people experienced intimidation, threats, and even violence at the hands of SJW, feminists, gay rights activists, Democrats, and other so-called progressives.
“It was a recent Republican president who wondered why we couldn’t take more people from Norway than from “sh*thole” countries.”
“calling the nations they come from “shitholes,” The exact word used by the president — not just once but repeatedly.”
— Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.)
“In regards to Senator Durbin’s accusation, we do not recall the President saying these comments specifically but what he did call out was the imbalance in our current immigration system, which does not protect American workers and our national interest. We, along with the President, are committed to solving an issue many in Congress have failed to deliver on for decades.”
—Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA) – issued statement
Warren how can Trump saying “sh*thole” countries” be reported as a fact?
Where’s the evidence?
Hear say is not proof.
Are you holding yourself to the same standards you expect from others?
The evidence is what Dick Durbin and others heard. I don’t believe Trump’s denials. In case you haven’t noticed, he lies a lot. Even if he didn’t say the word, he did (and no one including Cotton and Perdue denied it) criticize the “imbalance” in our immigration system. He wants more Nordic types.
Besides Cotton and Perdue couldn’t get their stories completely straight and Lindsay Graham was off the record confirming it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/16/the-trump-shithole-countries-flap-takes-an-even-more-ridiculous-turn/?utm_term=.643a9c29a3de
PS – After that 2000+ word post demonstrating that D’Souza wrote fake history, that is what you decide to comment about?
You have no proof of any of this, that’s my point. You write things as fact when it comes to Trump because it comes from your emotions not provable facts (name some already).
PS – And didn’t need 2000 words to prove it.
no the comment comes from several sources. It was widely reported in several different publications. Warren cited one of them.
You can say Warren has “no proof” all you want. However, for the rest of us who do understand how to properly cite sources, he does.
This was one of those occasions when Trump blurted out what probably most Republican voters quietly believe. That kind of thing got him elected.
This was one of those occasions when Trump blurted out what probably most Republican voters quietly believe. That kind of thing got him elected.
I am sure D’Souza is aware of racist history of Republicans as he is aware of the Democrats’s racism. He simply chooses not to acknowledge it for the former as he does for the latter, because he is promoting a pro-Republican bias. All these information is part of history, and it can’t be changed. However, despite D’Souza historical spin, we cannot deny that it wasn’t unprovoked. Today, there are numerous attacks on President Trump and Republican Party done by Democrat politicians and its supporters who falsely accuse them of practicing “institutional racism,” distort the reasons for wanting to toughen the immigration policy, including building the wall on the Mexican border, and simply engage in character assassination, such as this one:
https://forward.com/fast-forward/416975/georgia-democrat-hitler-took-over-nazi-party-like-trump-took-over-gop/
Btw, if Dr. T would say that just because Hank Johnson, a Democrat congressman is doing character assassination of Donald Trump and ask me if it justifies for Dinesh D’Souza to do character assassination of the entire Democratic Party throughout history, I would reply, no.
If I were as relentlessly prone to minimizing the actions of progressives as you are for conservatives- I would tell you Hank Johnson’s words regarding Trump and Hitler historical comparisons used to illustrate the capture of a major political party by the supporters of one man. But I am not like that… : )
First, why is it so hard for you to say D’Souza is lying? Full stop. It simply doesn’t matter that others are lying or attacking Trump or the Republican party. That doesn’t excuse D’Souza’s distortions in even the slightest sense. You said in your second paragraph that D’Souza is not justified. Then why bring up “the other side” at all?
Think for a minute. You argue with someone who promotes someone distorting history to attack Trump. You call them on their lies. Do you want them to respond by saying “Well, D’Souza is making up lies about Democrats!”? Or do you want them to say “You’re right, I will stop using that source.”? Be the change you wish to see. Otherwise, you’re basically arguing for a post-truth society.
As for Hank Johnson, he also feared the island of Guam would tip over, so……not the sharpest tool in the shed.
D’Souza is telling the truth when he says that in the past Democratic party was racist . Do you disagree with that? My problem is that he fails to acknowledge the same about the Republican party, whom he promotes. Overall, I am saying that both sides have been sinful in the past therefore it doesn’t justify to do character assassination of each other, whether it’s Republican or Democratic supporters
No, it is not simply that D’Souza doesn’t “acknowledge the same about the Republican party”. He has falsely claimed that several eugenicists (racists) were democrats when in fact they were republican.
You are still trying to parse his statements carefully to salvage the notion that D’Souza is doing anything but flat out dishonest propaganda. If all D’Souza had said was “the past Democratic party was racist”, he would get no argument from historians like Kevin Kruse and Warren wouldn’t have a post dedicated to him. Instead, he tried to paint the Democrats as solely responsible for Eugenics. Lying about several politicians in the process, saying they were Democrats when they were Republicans. At the same time, totally omitting the Republican party’s guilt in the thing he’s accusing Democrats of.
Whats more, even if he was correct, he’s also dishonestly trying to use this shameful period of history from the 1920s to tar the Democrats as racist today. As if it has anything to do with the modern Democratic party. The only reason he’s talking about this past is to use as a cudgel in the present. This is wholly dishonest.
And again, I’m asking *you*. If someone uses some malicious lie to attack Trump or the Republicans party and you call them out on in, show them it is untrue, do you want their response to be “Thank you for pointing out how this is wrong.” or do you want them to say “Both sides have been sinful in the past therefore it doesn’t justify to do character assassination of each other”.
Do you understand two wrongs don’t make a right? And if you really think your response adequately addresses the use of dishonestly to support your position, then why argue about anything? “Yeah, so what if Trump didn’t fake the JFK assassination from the moon? D’Souza makes up lie about Democrats. There has been sin on both sides!”
Yes, I do understand that two wrongs don’t make a right. To follow your logic, it is wrong for Democrat politicians and their supporters to accuse Trump of being supporter of white supremacy and Neo-Nazism and to try to impeach him because of what he stated regarding the Unite the Right rally. My point is had these Democrat politicians not made these things to Trump, D’Souza would not be writing this controversial book on eugenics.
That’s good. Now, answer the other question, when you show someone’s claim is dishonest, what do you want their response to be?
Yes, to follow my logic, if, just to pick a name, Rachael Maddow dishonestly uses some history, she is *wrong* and should be called out on it. People citing her as a source should acknowledge they were wrong too and they should learn from their mistakes and verify information they get from her in the future. It makes not the tiniest ounce of difference that someone else was dishonest. Why is this so hard for you to accept?
To follow your logic, since D’Souza is writing a dishonest book on eugenics, a liberal propagandist can write a dishonest book about how the Republicans are secret communists. When called out on their falsehoods, they can just fall back to “My point is, had these Republican politicians not made these things up, I would not be writing this controversial book.”. To follow you logic, this goes on forever with each new slight justifying the next, discourse never improving. Is that really what you want?
I said like 5 times that anybody who sees D’Souza’s writings as falsification of facts should publicly acknowledge it. I want everybody to dig deeper and deeper into finding the root causes of this problem, surrounding D’Sousa and Barton, by asking a lot of questions.
Who has argued that Trump should be impeached because of “what he stated regarding the Unite the Right rally”?
Further, if you knew anything about what you are talking about, you would know that D’Souza has been spreading is propaganda since long before Trump was in office. Your attempts to claim he is just doing it because of the “Trump backlash” is revisionist history on par with what Barton does.
There were quite a few Democrat representatives who either called for Trump’s resignation or impeachment, Jackie Speier and Jared Nadler come to my mind, for example. Here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
D’Souza has been writing similar things for almost 30 years and it was as a reaction to the attacks on free speech and on conservative values by the liberal progressives. Didn’t he publish this particular book and another one, after Trump was heavily criticized due to how he handled the aftermath of Charlottesville’s attack?
You need to read your own sources. According to the article you cited Nadler called for Trumps censure, not impeachment. Further, Speier called for Trumps removal under the 25th Amend. (unfit for office), NOT impeachment.
Why does it matter when D’Souza published his latest books? As you pointed out, he has been spewing his nonsense for far longer than Trump has been in office.
I thought it was impeachment. Regardless of how it’s officially called, a bunch of Democrats still want Trump to be gone because they don’t like what he said and they falsely accuse him of being racist. It is a typical behavior of radical leftists. D’Souza has been correct about people of this kind for 30 years. I know what he is saying is true because I personally experienced similar false accusations when I was in college.
A lot of people (not just democrats) want Trump gone for a lot of reasons. You are mis-characteriizing their arguments to imply it was all about 1 statement he made. It is about far more than that.
D’Souza has been lying and deceiving for many years. And there are people who do that on all points of the political spectrum. That doesn’t excuse what he does.
Like I said before, I am not making excuses for anybody, but I’m digging deep in order to understand the causes of this problem.
Barton and D’Souza aren’t really poor historians- or incompetent researchers. They lie to further their agenda. No agenda, no matter how holy, is ever aided through lies. The lies end up twisting and perverting the cause that is lied for, until the cause is no longer recognizable.
They are the philosophical “brains” justifying Trump/GOP/Evangelical propaganda.
Every time I see the word “brain” used in association with these folks- the next word I instantly think of is “disease”.
It appears like they are not different than anybody who promotes political agendas, and they are so diverse: Republican, Democratic, conservative, liberal, progressive, socialist, environmentalist, Green, feminist, anti-feminism, etc.
It appears like they are not different than anybody who promotes political agendas, and they are so diverse: Republican, Democratic, conservative, liberal, progressive, socialist, environmentalist, Green, feminist, anti-feminism, etc.
If you can’t see the difference, you aren’t paying attention.
No, sam80 is REFUSING to see the difference. Much like how Barton and D’Souza are refusing to see the facts.
No, sam80 is REFUSING to see the difference. Much like how Barton and D’Souza are refusing to see the facts.
Ken has you fully described. Time for all to cease wallowing in an alternate reality- the current reality is that these charlatans you defend are evil (unless you happen to think spreading lies about truth is the “Lord’s Work).
I don’t think promoting a political agenda is the Lord’s Work. I believe that D’Souza, Barton, West, and Chomsky are all well-meaning people with good hearts, even though they see the world very differently from one another. I also see that you are very angry.
You are attempting to drag a red herring across the thread of this discussion by pointlessly invoking the name of someone who is not mentioned in this article. that is a crude propaganda device – used most often by those without enough facts to defend their point of view. Sorry for you.
My point is that D’Souza would not be doing what he is doing, if it wasn’t for the actions of those names I invoked. Let’s just say that in general, people on both sides are well-meaning and have good hearts, and there’s no point in demonizing each other because of that.
There are only a few things more destructive, or of greater hindrance to the truth (yes facts are truth, lies, distortions and historical ignorance aren’t) than “both-sider-ism “. the “both sides” crutch is the weakest pin the conservative leans upon these days. The “both sides” is the stuff of unhappy childhood conflict, “Tommy hit me first”,etc. Just another avoidance of reality. Conservatives continually fall into this pathetic trap.
sam80’s moral/spiritual relativism sure is important to him.
You and bluetah are not helping your cause, whatever it is, if you keep attacking posters who don’t agree with you. I’ve seen this behavior from left-leaning people numerous time, unfortunately.
Pointing out your tactics is legit. It’s not an attack, its an observation.
Why is there a need for pointing out my tactics? I am simply making arguments, either people can or cannot refute them.
Because you aren’t “making arguments” you are avoiding them. You aren’t addressing the issues being brought up (i.e. the lying/deceptions of D’Souza), instead you try to shift the discussion somewhere (“what about these people”, or try to argue he is justified because of “the left” etc).
You have yet to make an argument. It’s fair to point that out. You avoid taking any stand while blowing smoke into the room.
The people I mentioned who have good hearts were not Nazis . Btw, it was true that not everyone who participated at Charlottesville rally were Nazis, unless you think that whoever wants to keep Confederate monuments in place to preserve history are Nazis
All I said that David Barton, Dinesh D’Souza, Cornell West, and Noam Chomsky are well-meaning people with good hearts . Why bring up Nazis?
All I said that David Barton, Dinesh D’Souza, Cornell West, and Noam Chomsky are well-meaning people with good hearts . Why bring up Nazis?
Crazy. D’Souza is a convicted criminal. Barton has been caught in blatant lies repeatedly. What is their intention here that is well at all? What puts them in the same bracket as others? Do you even understand what a false equivalence is?
D’Souza is a remorseless liar. I got him to admit in December 2017 that some Republicans had promoted eugenic sterilization, but then when his next book came out, he was back to blaming it all on Democrats. I believe that the reason why he yielded to my pressure on that particular occasion was that he didn’t want to look like a blatant liar in front of Bret Baier. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d32e66c38a31708bfabd92099b35c5b71511d0f706443cefb381485028bb9901.jpg
Excellent and informative article. Thank you. I’ve learned some things about eugenics leaders I did not know, and it also reinforced my conviction that D’Souza wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him in the butt, and if it did, he’d probably kick it away so it didn’t bother him again.
It is not so much important what happened in the past, but what is happening now.
Tell that to D’Souza who apparently thinks it is important to distort what happened in the past so he can make political points in the now.
As I explained in a post below, D’Souza is not the only cause of a bigger problem.
Focus: the article is about D’Souza and not the bigger problem whatever that is.
Well, as per saying, “there is no smoke without fire,” I think you and I would agree that D’Souza is blowing a lot of smoke, but I doubt that it is necessarily he who started the fire. Also, I am pretty sure, if you ever get your license taken away for being a Christian (there is an agenda among radical leftists to deny Bible-based Christians an opportunity to work as mental health professionals), D’Souza and Barton would be the first one to defend you, and if that ever happens, you’d start praising them and forgive any indiscretions they may have.
We talked about the case of Jules Ward where Dr. T was involved .This shows that there is a hostility towards conservative Christians entering mental health professions. I was just being hypothetical in order to show how he can possibly start supporting D’Souza.
I don’t back D’Souza up, only the things he says that I personally agree with. The things that he says I disagree with and disapprove of, I publicly critize.
I care about truth and facts but I find it difficult to understand what they are at times. Yes, I do have my own opinions, like we all are, but I don’t oppose to others disagreeing with them or correcting me if I am wrong .
However, you don’t seem to care the D’Souza IS NOT concerned with truth and facts. Simply because once in a while D’Souza might say some that is factually correct doesn’t make him a reliable or useful source of information.
It is like someone who takes that adage “a stopped clock is right twice a day” to some how mean the clock is useful. It is not.
Focus: the article is about D’Souza and not the bigger problem whatever that is.
“Those who cannot remember [or don’t know] the past are condemned to repeat it.”
So many of D’Souza’s audience don’t know the past, and only believe what FOX “News” and the likes of D’Souza feed ’em.
And these people are allowed to vote.
Hmmm … just wondering who you define as those who shouldn’t be allowed to vote…
The great irony is that this quote, a leftist favorite, comes from a man who supported eugenics and chose to live in Fascist Italy. George Santayana was warning against repetition of what?
I seem to recall California state law being extremely eugenicist until the 50’s. They were a very swingy swing state like most of the West in the early 20th and late 19th centuries. This seems consistent with the national pattern you wrote about above: California basically followed the national trend in elections until after Reagan.
I seem to recall California state law being extremely eugenicist until the 50’s. They were a very swingy swing state like most of the West in the early 20th and late 19th centuries. This seems consistent with the national pattern you wrote about above: California basically followed the national trend in elections until after Reagan.
Nice work, Warren, though it’s a unfair fight when you have real historical facts on your side. 🙂
Of course, those to whom D’Souza is preaching — those predisposed to believing any lie if it involves liberals and progressives doing evil things — won’t give two hoots that he’s promoting a tissue of lies.
And it’s ironic that D’Souza’s audience (e.g. Trump’s base of the Deplorably Scared and Ignorant) would beat the little brown fer’ner to a pulp if they happened upon him in a darkened alley.
Why do you think they would do that?
Why do you think they would do that?
Obviously someone hasn’t been paying attention…
Is it really fair to think that all white people who commit crimes against non-white immigrants are Trump supporters and they do it because they listen to D’Souza? On the other hand, we can’t ignore thousands of people illegally crossing the border and then do criminal activities in our country. It tells me that we need to do something about it legally.
Please turn off FOX “News” and come up for fresh air.
Cite? Here, I’ll start: https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/is-illegal-immigration-linked-to-more-or-less-crime/
TLDR: “As we said, there aren’t readily available nationwide crime statistics broken down by immigration status. But the available research that estimates the relationship between illegal immigration and crime generally shows an association with lower crime rates. “
While your reference is useful for debunking sam80’s nonsense, he only posted that to try to derail the conversation and hide the fact that he misrepresented what DrDJ was saying (implying).
DrDJ simply implied that if you were someone likely to be taken in by D’Souza’s lies and misrepresentations, then you were more likely to be a Trump supporter and thus more likely a violent, anti-immigrant racist.
Sam80 reversed that to imply DrDJ said something else; that all violent white anti-immigrant racists are Trump supporters. Which is NOT what DrDJ said. What sam80 hasn’t quite realized yet is that on this blog he is dealing with a crowd that is far more intelligent than the foxnews viewers.
I fail to understand how whenever anybody equates Republican voters (even those for Trump) with racists and Nazis is ever intelligent. I’m not addressing anybody in particular. Just observing a trend. As for DoctorDJ, I was just asking him or her a question. Please, calm down.
At the very least, those voting Republican and supporting Trump are comfortable enough with racism to decline to oppose it in more than empty words. You may believe that is adequate, but it is not. The modern definition of a non-racist Republican is the equivalent of the “Well intentioned liberal” that Dr. King spoke of, simply pointing out that African-Americans and other people of color have had some success, so there is little need to do more or to actively agitate for full equality. They prefer ‘order’ to justice, and thus can more easily dismiss overt racism among their fellow Republicans.
The fact is that if you are a Republican right now and you are truly not a racist, you need to leave the party as it has been taken over by actual racists, misogynists and homophobes. You won’t get their attention with platitudes, you won’t win them over by being more moderate. You will only win them over by helping deliver a series of decisive electoral defeats in favor of their opposition. When this core of racists are completely deplatformed, there will be an opportunity to rebuild, hopefully with values not based on division and vilification of the ‘other’.
sam80’s pattern of intellectual sloth might be acceptable in his church and home, but it is not a sufficient replacement for a legitimate counter-argument he clearly does not have.
Why do you hate biblical Christianity so much?
Is it really fair to think that all white people who commit crimes against non-white immigrants are Trump supporters and they do it because they listen to D’Souza? On the other hand, we can’t ignore thousands of people illegally crossing the border and then do criminal activities in our country. It tells me that we need to do something about it legally.
Is it really fair to think that all white people who commit crimes against non-white immigrants are Trump supporters and they do it because they listen to D’Souza? On the other hand, we can’t ignore thousands of people illegally crossing the border and then do criminal activities in our country. It tells me that we need to do something about it legally.
Just ridiculous. You should get out of your ideological enclave and find out how the rest of the world behaves
Come out of your ivory tower and mingle amongst the great unwashed and poorly educated, and you’ll see the ignorance, hatred, and bigotry unleashed by the present occupant of the Oval Office.
I don’t live in an ivory tower. I live in a slum.
Your firsthand experience with Trump’s supporters consists of what?
Not just my experience, unfortunately.
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/16/704125736/a-mainstreaming-of-bigotry-as-white-extremism-reveals-its-global-reach
You completely dodged the question.
The answer is, you have no firsthand experience with Trump’s supporters, and are relying on generalizations that have been fed to you.
You do this after inviting me “to mingle amongst the great unwashed,” as if this were something that you had done and I had not. Your posture was inauthentic. I know more about this than you.
How absurd, to refer to spree-shooter Brenton Tarrant on the other side of the world, as if he represented the typical Trumpist. Will you also say that the Pulse Nightclub shooter represents the typical Muslim? Will you say that James Hodgkinson represents the typical Democrat?
You really do have NOTHING.