presented with limited interruption

Last week, Les Jones posted something that caused me to just about come unglued, and while I felt it was important, I did not want to write about it at the time simply because I would probably start having written diarrhea and end up with something that was entirely unpublishable. Unfortunately, my feelings on the matter have not improved any over the weekend, and to make the situation worse, Joe Huffman posted another item this morning that almost elicted the same reaction out of me again. So, instead of trying to comment on either topic, I think I am just going to repost them and let you, my few readers, take from them what you will.
Les Jones’ post has to do with a certain John Holdren, who is currently Assistant to President Barack Hussein Obama for Science and Technology (the “science czar”), Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Who knew the government needed so many offices and positions regarding the one topic? At any rate, back in 1977, Mr. Holdren, along with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, published “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment”, which is currently out of print, but some of its key sections are preserved here and reprinted below:

– Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

- One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.

- Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.

- If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.

- In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?

In order, we have the belief that laws requiring compusory abortions could be Constitutional, the requirement that all “illegitimate” babies be put up for adoption, the implementation of involuntary sterilization, the requirement that certain people exercise “reproductive responsibility” (for which I can only imagine forced sterilization is the answer), and a desire for a law mandating no more than two children.
John Holdren has absolutely no regard for the most basic of human rights and civil liberties, and advocated implementing a horrifically totalitarian state just because of his personal opinion on a supposed “crisis” (overpopulation) that has since turned out to not be the world-ender everyone thought… And now he has the ear of our Glorious President concerning topics like “global warming”. As the saying goes, if you are not afraid, you are not paying attention.
And this morning, Joe Huffman posted concerning Canada’s possible reaction to an H1N1 quarantine, a reaction that can best be summed up by the screencap he took of page 420 of their presentation on the topic:

This is nothing more than yet another example of yet another not-really-crisis being exploited to ensure further govermental control of its subjects… thsi time at the muzzle of a very obvious gun. And people accept this kind of gos-se? Sometimes, I truly fear for our species.