{"id":673,"date":"2012-07-01T23:33:04","date_gmt":"2012-07-01T23:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=673"},"modified":"2013-02-19T23:36:12","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T23:36:12","slug":"people-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/people-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"People Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n

City Journal<\/em><\/p>\n

A review of\u00a0Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism<\/em>\u00a0by Robert Zubrin (Encounter, 328 pp.)<\/p>\n

A\u00a0ruling idea of the last two centuries has been materialism: the notion, as arch-materialist Daniel Dennett asserts, that \u201cthere is only one sort of stuff, namely\u00a0matter<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology \u2014 and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon.\u201d One consequence of this belief has been the rise of antihumanism \u2014 the stripping from people of their transcendent value and a reduction of them to mere things in the world to be studied, understood, reshaped \u2014 and ultimately controlled.<\/p>\n

As Robert Zubrin shows in his valuable survey\u00a0Merchants of Despair<\/em>, antihumanism\u2019s reductive view of human nature has underpinned movements like eugenics, population control, and radical environmentalism, all of which have been eager to sacrifice human life and well-being to achieve their dubious utopias. Zubrin, a PhD in nuclear engineering and fellow of the Center for Security Policy, has previously authored popular books on energy and space exploration. He shows an engineer\u2019s sharp eye for things as they are and a scientist\u2019s respect for the limits of knowledge, especially as regards various pseudoscientific fads.<\/p>\n

Zubrin begins with Thomas Malthus, \u201cthe founding prophet of modern antihumanism,\u201d who claimed in his 1798\u00a0Essay on the Principle of Population<\/em>that any population always geometrically grows larger than the food supply. Malthus\u2019s argument ignored humans\u2019 creative ingenuity, but his theories had catastrophic consequences when applied to the real world. Believing that Ireland was overpopulated, for example, the British government allowed this food-exporting island to spiral downward into famine partly because, as Malthus himself urged, \u201ca great part of the population should be swept from the soil.\u201d Over 1 million Irish died of starvation and disease caused by malnutrition. Thirty years later, the same policy of neglect contributed to a famine that killed as many as 10 million people in India, again because of the Malthusian fallacy that, as Sir Evelyn Baring told Parliament, \u201cevery benevolent attempt made to mitigate the effects of famine and defective sanitation serves but to enhance the evils resulting from overpopulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charles Darwin embraced Malthus\u2019s apocalyptic theories, too. Overpopulation, he believed, would eventually be cured by natural selection, the \u201cweeding out of \u2018unfit\u2019 individuals and races.\u201d As Darwin wrote in\u00a0The Descent of Man<\/em>: \u201cAt some future period . . . the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.\u201d Like Malthus, Darwin had no patience with sentimental Christian or Enlightenment ethics that sought to alleviate suffering and improve human life with medical advances such as vaccinations, or with asylums and other social-welfare institutions that cared for the sick, insane, or poor. Because of this effort \u201cto check the process of elimination,\u201d Darwin maintained, \u201cthe weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.\u201d As Zubrin summarizes Darwin\u2019s argument: \u201cPeace, plenty, care, and compassion were interferences in the course of nature. All progress was based on death.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mixture of Malthusian and Darwinian theory soon conjured up racist eugenics. At the forefront of the early eugenics movement was Darwin\u2019s cousin, Francis Galton, who also decried humanist sentimentalism. The \u201cunfit\u201d must be kept from procreating, he argued, for \u201cif these continued to procreate children, inferior in moral, intellectual and physical qualities, it is easy to believe the time may come when such persons would be considered as enemies to the State, and to have forfeited all claims to kindness.\u201d By the turn of the twentieth century, these ideas had become articles of faith among many liberals and socialists.<\/p>\n

Such cruel pseudoscientific theories took a fatal turn in Germany, where eugenics found its deadliest champion in biologist Ernst Haeckel, \u201can extreme racist, virulent anti-Catholic bigot, anti-Semite, anti-Pole, pro-imperialist, Pan-German fanatic\u201d as well as a \u201cmilitant atheist.\u201d Haeckel and his followers sought to replace Christian ethics with \u201cMonism,\u201d the aim of which was to further human evolution through Germany\u2019s conquest of inferior races and the elimination of abnormal children and invalids. The ideas also took hold in America, championed by men like General Francis Amasa Walker, president of MIT. In 1896, Walker wrote in the\u00a0Atlantic<\/em>\u00a0that Hungarian, Bohemian, Polish, Italian, and Russian-Jewish immigrants were \u201cbeaten men from beaten races; representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence,\u201d possessing \u201cnone of the ideas and aptitudes which fit men to take up readily and easily the problem of self-care and self-government.\u201d Theodore Roosevelt would lateragree<\/a>, expressing his disdain for \u201cthe prevalent loose and sloppy talk about the general progress of humanity, the equality and identity of races, and the like\u201d as the product of \u201cwell-meaning and feeble-minded sentimentalists.\u201d These widespread prejudices, buttressed by biased IQ tests, ultimately led in 1924 to the discriminatory US law that shut down immigration from countries considered inferior and provided a pseudoscientific justification for race-based segregation.<\/p>\n

The Holocaust would discredit at least the public expression of eugenics. Zubrin shows that the ideas lived on, though, repackaged as \u201cpopulation control\u201d and concern for the environment. Prewar eugenicists found a home in organizations like the postwar Population Council, whose founding roster, Zubrin writes, \u201creads like a eugenics movement reunion.\u201d The same continuity exists between eugenics groups and environmental organizations, such as the British Union for the Conservation of Nature and the World Wildlife Fund. Particularly valuable is Zubrin\u2019s examination of the eugenic roots of Planned Parenthood, whose founder, Margaret Sanger, wrote in 1919: \u201cMore children from the fit, less from the unfit \u2014 that is the chief issue of birth control.\u201d These movements, Zubrin writes, soon made up \u201cthe imposing and influential population control establishment,\u201d which became entrenched at the United Nations and in US government agencies. The efforts of these groups were suspiciously concentrated in the developing world.<\/p>\n

As Zubrin meticulously documents, the obsession with overpopulation has led to attacks on the economic and technological development that represents the best hope for improving human life around the globe. The alliance of radical environmentalism, population-control advocacy, and anticapitalist leftism continues to prolong the misery of the Third World. Rachel Carson\u2019s scientifically challenged campaign against DDT led to the deaths of millions. Paul Ehrlich\u2019s spectacularly wrong Malthusian predictions helped legitimize cruel policies, such as Lyndon Johnson\u2019s withholding of food aid to India during the 1966 famine. Ehrlich wanted food aid tied to sterilization and birth-control programs and suggested adding \u201ctemporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food,\u201d with antidotes given only when the population reached the desired size. He also wanted \u201cluxury taxes\u201d imposed on cribs, diapers, and children\u2019s toys. These neo-Malthusian theories ultimately led to the 1968 creation of the Club of Rome, whose influential study\u00a0The Limits to Growth<\/em>shapes attitudes to the present day \u2014 for example, in the animus against genetically modified foods. Now institutionalized in EU policy, the refusal to allow genetically modified food denies vital crops (containing nutrients and organic pesticides engineered into them) to the Third World.<\/p>\n

The anti-global-warming crusade against carbon-based energy is the latest assault on progress and improvement. Zubrin is correct to call the climate-change movement a \u201cglobal antihuman cult.\u201d Its assaults against dissent, embrace of messianic leaders, and apocalyptic scenarios reveal a debased religious sensibility rather than scientific rigor: \u201cRight thinking will be rewarded,\u201d Zubrin writes of global-warming thought police like Al Gore and economist Paul Krugman. \u201cWrong thinking will be punished. Many will be sacrificed. All will be controlled. The gods will take back their fire.\u201d The warmists\u2019 growth-killing programs, if implemented, would lead to mass immiseration.<\/p>\n

As Zubrin concludes, antihumanist ideas and programs represent a war against human freedom and global solidarity: \u201cIf the world\u2019s resources are fixed with only so much to go around, then each new life is unwelcome, each unregulated act or thought is a menace, every person is fundamentally the enemy of every other person, and each race or nation is the enemy of every other race or nation. The ultimate outcome of such a worldview can only be enforced stagnation, tyranny, war, and genocide.\u201d Contrary to the arguments of the \u201cterrible simplifiers,\u201d as historian Jacob Burckhardt called those who reduce people to mere matter, humans are capable of freedom, creativity, compassion, and love. We should cherish these unique qualities rather than succumbing to antihumanism and self-hatred.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bruce S. Thornton City Journal A review of\u00a0Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism\u00a0by Robert Zubrin (Encounter, 328 pp.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[87,22],"tags":[218,289,290,291,153,288,1042,93,1056],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-aR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":772,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-stupid-party\/","url_meta":{"origin":673,"position":0},"title":"The Stupid Party","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thronton FrontPage Magazine The presidency of Barack Obama has established once and for all that modern liberalism is now the stupid party. Very little of liberal thought these days represents anything fresh or new, but rather comprises what Lionel Trilling once reduced conservatism to: \u201cirritable mental gestures\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":835,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/derbyshire-learns-what-we-cannot-talk-about\/","url_meta":{"origin":673,"position":1},"title":"Derbyshire Learns What We Cannot Talk About","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Wittgenstein once wrote, \u201cWhat we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.\u201d Ex-National Review writer John Derbyshire has just learned the modern American version of this truth.\u00a0What we Americans cannot talk about is race (except, of course, in the anodyne terms established\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1960,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wall-streets-disgruntles-utopians\/","url_meta":{"origin":673,"position":2},"title":"Wall Street’s Disgruntles Utopians","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The Occupy Wall Street protesters are looking more and more like the shock troops of the Democratic Party\u2019s electoral tactic of class warfare. Responding to a question about the protesters, the President gave an oblique endorsement when he said, \u201cThe American people understand that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6606,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bruce-thornton-on-secure-freedom-radio-with-frank-gaffney\/","url_meta":{"origin":673,"position":3},"title":"Bruce Thornton on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Seth Jones, Bruce Thornton, Peter Pham, Diana West October 9th, 2013\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0Comments SETH JONES, Associate Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, joins guest host DAN BONGINO, to help explain the terror threat from and historical background of the terrorist organization al-Shabaab. BRUCE THORNTON, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2969,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/unwarranted-self-abasement\/","url_meta":{"origin":673,"position":4},"title":"Unwarranted Self-Abasement","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPageMagazine.com George Bush\u2019s vigorous defense of our national security and vocal pride in our values and goodness went a long way to getting rid of the \u201ckick me\u201d sign liberal America has hung on our collective back. You know, that reflex of guilt and shame about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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