Some of the most earnest global warming alarmists look to China as the model for radically controlling human population in order to SAVE THE PLANET! But that is to long for tyranny. Example: China is forcing thousands of people to be involuntarily sterilized for violating the “one child” policy. From the story:
Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise — by force if necessary — almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist. About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.
Radical environmentalism increasingly seems sympathetic to tyrannical “solutions.” China is the last country that we should seek to emulate.
April 24th, 2010 | 10:28 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, teri g and Wesley J. Smith, Wesley J. Smith. Wesley J. Smith said: Mandaory Sterilization in China » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog http://shar.es/mu4UW [...]
April 24th, 2010 | 11:27 pm
[This note is FYI, not for posting].Wesley, are you overworked, sleep-deprived? (I ask out of sincere concern for your well-being, not as a taunt.) You have three typos in this entry. Write “Mandatory” not “Mandaory.” Write “too long for tyranny” not “to long for tyranny.” Write “one child policy” not “one country policy.” If you’re sleep-deprived, please take good care of yourself. Your voice is important. I want you to stay well to continue your important work.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
April 25th, 2010 at 8:15 am
ColeKoray: Thanks for your concern. I wrote that when very rushed and distracted and didn’t do the usual reread and spell check. I have corrected the typos, but “to long for tyranny” is correct, because I wrote that it is “to long for tyranny, ” as in to want it, not “too long for tyranny,” as in an overly extended time. Awkward phrasing, I will admit. Thanks.
April 25th, 2010 | 6:27 am
Although English is not my mother tongue I believe your title should read ‘mandatory’ and not ‘mandaori’, or am I missing something?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
April 25th, 2010 at 8:13 am
I forgot to do my spell check. It was a typo. Thanks.
April 25th, 2010 | 8:56 am
Wesley:
Also, such sterilizations are ultimately self defeating. China faces a serious labour shortage. Worse, the demographic imbalance will eventually destroy the regime because it’ll be at a complete loss as to how to deal with the millions of permanent bachelors
xavier
April 25th, 2010 | 1:49 pm
Must say that it’s a bit extreme to do it that way, but it’s a subject we doo need to focus on. While it may not be much of a problem today it most certainly will in a few years from now if the populations keeps increasing as it does now.
The problem is that the population won’t just increase lineary but exponential so it will just go faster and faster unless we do more to slow it down.While it’s bit that big a problem yet here in the modern countries it’s already a big problem in many countries and it will only get worse.
April 25th, 2010 | 4:18 pm
I think a serious discussion in the US over reproductive licenses would be interesting and is of time. [Global warming is among the least of reasons to have such permits here in the US.]
Why should everyone have a de facto right to reproduce at will?
Good luck and safety to the “eugenicist” who dares to broach this subject openly.
Many discussions in private among people of the most varied religious and political backgrounds and status suggests widespread, closet agreement in principle.
I was hoping Octomom would get this conversation started.
April 25th, 2010 | 10:02 pm
David and Charles, it’s clear that neither of you have any idea about how natural populations grow.
Say an oasis full of rabbits contains a pair of wolves and no predators of wolves. Naively, one might think that there will be an exponential growth of wolves until the oasis is full of wolves and there are no more rabbits….at that point all the wolves die out.
But if you actually try this experiment, you’ll discover that this is *not* what happens. What happens is that eventually there will be dynamic equilibrium where the number of wolves does not exceed the number of rabbits necessary for their survival.
This has also been observed in human populations. Left unchecked, there will not be an exponential population explosion. There is a dynamic equilibrium where disease or starvation or even the expensive price of property or other causes limits the growth of population.
We do not need the social engineers fiddling with the human population. History has shown that these elites game the system in their favour, have yet to have a clear success, and have many atrocities to their credit. God’s wisdom in designing the world far exceeds our own.
April 25th, 2010 | 10:53 pm
To the last couple/few posters – throughout history, the extant generations have always thought the the earth was teeming, filled to capacity, and unable to contain more people.
If you want to roll on your side laughing until your belly hurts, read the Church Father Tertullian’s thoughts on overpopulation from about 100 years after Christ. He talks about how “the population is much greater now than it was even a short while ago, and now all places are known, all the wilderness is settled and filled with human activity; thus there is no longer any more room for the number of people alive to grow very significantly without overburdening the entire world.” (Interesting sidenote – Tertullian used the fact that the number of people alive at the same time grew over the generations to disprove some of the Greek mystics/Gnostics who argued for a kind of reincarnation and recycling of souls.) (Double sidenote – bonus points for uninterrupted sidenotes! – recycling of souls is the ultimate in wastefulness and inefficiency!)
Well, Tertullian was/is much smarter than I will ever be, but using the very potent power of hindsight, we can see just how wrong he was.
Finally, I will submit the following question, and then my opinion of the correct answer: To ask if anybody has the right to reproduce at will is to ask if you yourself have a right to exist.
Well? Do you?
And the answer to that is: What is human life? (Dangit! That’s another question! Fine, I’ll answer the first question…) If it’s just a slimy happenstance, a nihilist’s down-hill slalom across a thermodynamically-favorable energy landscape, then No, or more accurately, it doesn’t eff’ing matter. Yet if we are created, loved, en-souled and serve a Divine Purpose, then Yes.
April 26th, 2010 | 10:59 am
Why on earth should David be the one to decide who does and does not have children?
April 26th, 2010 | 11:10 am
Reproductive licenses are called “marriage licenses” David. Everyone has a right to marry and procreate, but not with anyone, for example siblings, children, people married to someone else, etc. For a while, many states had anti-miscegenation laws that were intended to stop people from reproducing with someone of a different race, in order to preserve distinct races and maintain a system of white supremacy.
The Octomom wasn’t married, so in my strong opinion she should not have been allowed to intentionally conceive children at all, whether she was having one child or eight. The IVF clinic should be required to verify that the sperm and egg they are attempting to join together come from a married couple. But if she married, she should be allowed to attempt to conceive with her husband as often as she wants.
Married couples should always have a right to procreate together, no marriages should be prohibited from joining their own genes and conceiving children, as many as they want for as long as the marriage exists, which should be until death. Often people argue with me that marriage does not protect the right to procreate together, and have the nerve to cite China’s one-child policy as their proof, even though even Chinese marriages are all allowed to have one child together. [SSM comment deleted. John Howard: I don't want us to divert to that issue. Thanks.]
If overpopulation is a serious problem, the first place to cut back is IVF and new technologies to create babies for same-sex couples, like artificial wombs and female sperm and male eggs. Those should be stopped even though overpopulation is not a problem, just because they use lots of energy and cost lots of money and divert resources from caring for existing people.
April 26th, 2010 | 11:48 am
I recommend that all posters/commenters read “America Alone” by Mark Steyn.
He wrote it during the height of the Iraq conflict, and I bought it thinking it was about islam and that conflict. I was mistaken – it was about population growth. If I had known that, I probably wouldn’t have bought it – but I did, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was not only informative, but a very good read.
It was also my first introduction to Steyn, who has become better known since then. I admire his writing style, and probably _would_ buy his book today, simply for the enjoyment of reading it. I like his way with words, as well as the thoughts he expresses with them.
April 26th, 2010 | 7:17 pm
“Why on earth should David be the one to decide who does and does not have children?”
Because he’s so very enlightened, of course. Oh, and tolerant. Very tolerant.
April 27th, 2010 | 9:19 am
…unless you want to have a baby, apparently.
He should be like the JPF in Life of Brian, and agree that it’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c
April 28th, 2010 | 9:02 am
[...] How China coerces sterilization and sells the organs of prisoners From the UK Times. (H/T Secondhand Smoke) [...]
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact