Screeds
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Are We Good For Us, Part Two: The Ontology Of Coercive Population Control
April 28, 2004
In the closing of yesterday's screed, your Curmudgeon invited you to assume that anti-natalists' drive for coercive power to limit human fecundity was not motivated by any wholesome utilitarian goal; that is, that it was either a route to something the anti-natalists would not want discussed, or an end in itself. Neither branch of that exploration is pleasant. Neither leads to a positive assessment of the anti-natalist community. But the wholesome alternatives have all been refuted, both in theory and practice. We're left with nothing but unappetizing choices.
This is not to say that no anti-natalist remains sincerely convinced that limiting human births by force is ecologically or societally necessary. Many do believe precisely that. They just happen to be wrong. Being wrong is no shame, as long as one is willing to concede one's errors and try to do better in the future.
The problem lies with those who do know that the worthy arguments for coercive population control have been disproved. They are men who "have a reason they do not wish to tell," in Ayn Rand's words. Getting those untold reasons out in front of the wider public has become crucial. They tie the entire metaphysic of the Left into a single bundle, making the Left's stances easy to understand -- and dismiss -- for anyone in the know.
The first untold reason we must address is simple hatred of Man. There's no question that there are persons who genuinely hate the entire human race. These would prefer a world devoid of human presence to any other kind, including one with only them in it. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is only the most blatant and unusual of their manifestations. Given their attitude, they're not guaranteed to organize at all.
Obviously, if Smith, that notorious hater of Mankind, can't extinguish the entire human race by some definite program, the next best thing by his lights would be to reduce its numbers, or at least prevent them from increasing. This translates into the aggressive promotion of anti-natal policies and arguments that appear to promote them. Smith might be adept at arguing for these things, or he might not.
Smith is also likely to be conspicuous in support of environmentalist canards that have a deleterious effect on human life and health. For example, it is now apparent that DDT is the only truly effective weapon against the anopheles mosquitoes that spread malaria. In the poorer regions where malaria is endemic, this disease reaps many thousands of lives per year. The most likely to die of it are the old and the very young. Smith would nonetheless absolutely oppose the use of DDT on the grounds of unsubstantiated environmental destruction, while stoutly maintaining that "there are better ways" to fight malaria...even though he can't cite any.
The giveaway to Smith's nature is that, when his arguments are refuted by objective evidence, he will not change his mind. He'll dismiss objective evidence as erroneous or deceitful. He'll attack the motives or character of the refuter. He'll be ready to raise the temperature of the exchange as high as necessary to cause his opponent to back away in revulsion.
There's no arguing with Smith. It would be incorrect even to call his anti-natal position an article of faith. His true faith is in the desirability of the extinction of Man.
The other untold reason to be considered is the desire for unbounded power over others. The legal privilege to decree who may and who may not reproduce carries with it an enormous freight of implied power, sufficient to destroy all privacy and to eliminate, for practical purposes, the right to life. The government of Communist China has exhibited one of the implications with its practice of compulsory partial-birth abortion of "unauthorized" babies. Some of the others, such as the power to decree mandatory regular pregnancy tests for all women of childbearing age, whose results must be reported to the State, have yet to make their appearance. The idea is quite as horrible as anything implied by the most absolute opponents of abortion.
To the man who has no interest in it, the desire for power over others can be inexplicable. Yet it exists. The most notorious examples took incredible tolls on human life, to say nothing of the other costs of the wars, hot and cold, that arose from their ambitions.
Jones the power-seeker may be quite as adept as Smith the humanity-hater in rationalizing his desires. Tactically, the two will diverge. Where Smith will go on the attack against anyone who challenges his overt rationale, Jones will often present an appearance of "flexibility on the details." Because his main interest is power over others, he will put his greatest effort into establishing, as an abstract matter, the defensibility of State control over reproduction as a permissible technique for dealing with ill-specified "emergencies." The unacceptable amounts of power and discretion this would put into the State's hands can be difficult for the average man to see.
Jones only begins to resemble Smith when challenged on his assertion of abstract principle. At that point, he'll try to reverse the tables by claiming that his opponent's "paranoia" has rendered him numb to "the suffering that could be averted." He might even remind us that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact"... a strange argument to make for the privilege of legally murdering the innocent.
There's really no arguing with Jones, either. His tactics might be flexible -- that's a requirement of the competent power-seeker -- but his goal will not change.
Your Curmudgeon imagines that you might be asking yourself "What's the point of this? These are just two more subcategories of evil. Do we really need to know anything more about them?"
Perhaps not. Yet the freedom-minded have been less than successful at opposing the Left in many areas. How would the score change if we could show an identity between the anti-natal movement and the other highest-profile causes championed by the Left: environmentalism, abortion on demand, no-growth economics, and rigorous government planning of cities and suburbs? Would the convergence of the death cults become perceptible to the ordinary, indifferently political American?
It strikes your Curmudgeon that there's immense opportunity here. At any rate, the stakes are worth playing for.
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