Hyde’s Eugenics Response
Lest it be deleted, here is Jeffrey Sykes‘ comment on Jeff Hyde‘s disastrous eugenics post at The Greensboro Guardian:
This piece exhibits the worst type of naivete in an effort to fit complex issues into a simple political context. Even more troublesome is the habit of modern conservatives to interpret past events through the lens of current belief.
The eugenics movement took root in North Carolina amidst an atmosphere of economic depression and fear. Our state had long been dominated by a patriarchal conservative elite that wielded unchecked power over the state’s government and economy. In that context powerful monied interests were ever fearful, much like grassroots conservatives today, of the costs of welfare for the less fortunate.
The agricultural, tenant farmer economy of the era up through the depression meant that ours was a rural state. Because of this, New Deal programs meant to address the mostly urban problems of the larger nation were either not suitable to address our state’s needs or stymied by our conservative Democratic Party power brokers. The Gardner Machine that dominated Democratic state politics of the era were staunch conservatives, as much Republican in their policy pursuits as JP Morgan, Calvin Coolidge or Herbert Hoover.
It is in this context that monied power elites in North Carolina banded together to promote eugenics in an effort to cut down on the potential need for “relief payments”. The entire philosophical and political rational for eugenics was grounded in a conservative desire to lower the state’s future expenses for social programs.
Thus it is undeniable that conservative business interests, imbued with a heavy dose of animus toward social welfare spending, acted as the overwhelming driving force behind the eugenics movement in North Carolina.
Recent scholarship has shed light on our state’s expansion of forced sterilization after 1945, at a time when most other state’s were abandoning or curtailing their programs. These efforts have painted a second undeniable picture of conservative forces pushing this expansion of sterilizations to include a large percentage of blacks in our state and almost exclusively involving female victims.
Lastly, to say that the state’s eugenics program remains unexamined is another gross error. The Winston-Salem Journal published an exhaustive series on the issue that is available for anyone to read.
Here’s Hyde’s ridiculous response, which merely quotes John Hood of the John Locke Foundation. The comment fails to address Sykes’ damning assertions and Hood’s posts on the subject in no way reflect Hyde’s upside down contention that eugenic sterilization was carried out by progressives. Hyde’s comment, which is totally unlike the post, plainly shows the idiot we have come to know and lends further credence to the notion that someone else actually wrote the diabolical post for him.
Holy cow. He’s dense.
Yeah, Jeffrey is all over the map. He sounds like Obama with his shifting of blame.
===It was the conservative Democratic power brokers.
===It was the patriarchal conservative elite trilateral commission, no not that one, the one that was presumably running NC government for over a century.
===It was a rural state.
===It was the depression.
===It was JP Morgan.
===It was Calvin Coolidge.
===It was Herbert Hoover. (I don’t know how he forgot Amelia Earhart — She was alive then too)
===It was the entire philosophical and political rational for eugenics that was grounded in a conservative desire to lower the state’s future expenses for social programs even though progressive liberals ran the entire state for over a century.
This Jeffrey guy needs to write fictionalized nonfiction historical accounts of future policy as it relates to how “Jonah and the Whale” mythologized “Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land”.
He seems skilled at making the nonsensical plausible.
Jeffrey. Some advice – self publishing on Amazon and Smash Words.
Mr. Johnson says “even though progressive liberals ran the entire state for over a century.” And this is really the only point that matters.
No progressive liberals have ever run North Carolina. The Democratic Party ran North Carolina for more than a century via control of the legislature, but it was the conservative wing of the traditional southern Democratic Party. Anyone who studies our state’s political history knows that the liberal wing of the party was trounced year after year in the primaries. I recommend “The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics” for the novice reader as it gives a great overview of the complexities of our state’s history.
Thus, and again this is the only reason I rise to address the matter, is that it is a gross distortion of actual history to claim that “progressive liberals” were in power in our state at any time between 1929 and 1974. Kerr Scott was one populist exception to the control of the conservative Democratic machine over the governor’s house and Terry Sanford could be argued as having represented the progressive wing on matters of race and education in the early 1960s.
Earlier representatives of “progressive” ideas in the 30s or 40s would have involved labor matters, which were sternly beaten down by the business elite. Moving into the 1950s and early 1960s “progressive” would have involved racial matters but again the “progressive” forces would have been turned back at the polls time and again.
A good place to begin to understand aspects of this topic are the 1950 senate race between Graham and Smith, in which the progressive Graham was race baited out of his appointed seat by supports of segregation.
Again, to claim that “progressive liberals” ever controlled North Carolina politics is erroneous.
Does it really matter where the blame lies when it comes to paying the victims? Pay them and be done with it.
Agreed, Billy, which is what makes Hyde’s gobbledygook so insidious: as he repeats, with no substantiation whatsoever and contrary to the facts, that “progressives” were behind the state’s eugenics programs, he distracts from the fact that it is Hyde’s political brethren who are blocking recompense. Davenport and John Walker (“Jeri”) are happy to support the misdirection.
Conservatism has something to contribute to modern governance, but it is going to be perpetually handicapped as long as voters must chose between thinking and the idiocy of muddleheads like Walker and Hyde.
Jeri Johnson is Polifrog? Wow. That explains a lot.
I left the same comment with Jeff Hyde. He replied: “Billy,
How about we understand the reasons that caused it, so that it or something like it doesn’t happen again. I am all for compensation for a terrible deed done to citizens against their will by our State. Can we also learn from it so that we don’t do it again?”
I answered, “Jeff, Problem is: We’ve had years and years of finger pointing in which no one has gotten paid and many have already died. How about we pay first and finger point later? Is that too much to ask?”
We’ll see where that goes and if he’s really interested in reparations or finger pointing.
Fec, You didn’t know Jeri was Froggy?
Frog might be Jeri, but neither are John.
John is a liar.
It is yours to defend.
Jeff Hyde of Family Raffle fame says: “Life is really quite simple, as individuals we should do what is right (in a moral context) and respond to adverse occurrences in the best possible way making good choices”.
Unbelievable. Anybody else get a good laugh out of that one?
I rolled my eyes. Sure, there are some fundamental precepts in life that are pretty simple, but there is a huge difference between living a simple life and being a simpleton. Failing to acknowledge complexity or pretending to tackle complicated matters while declining to deploy intellectual rigor makes one an annoying simpleton detached from reality.
What Roch said.
That was good Tony W, you got to love the lottery fame. I am glad I did not buy a ticket, I heard the odds were 0% if you are not a family member. Lol, just a joke, no harm intended.