(257)S11E6/2: True Conspiracy of Science - The Black Stork
Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. Today's story is a story about the gods, those supernatural beings of old who were worshiped by ignorant barbarians. But we moderns, we know better. We know that the gods of old were really no gods at all. And even if they were, they were too fickle and capricious to be deserving of our worship.
Derek Kreider:Of course, other people's gods always are too unworthy of worship. If they were worthy, we would make them our gods. I mean, who today would ever make a deity like Ares their god? No. Aries is a myth well left to the ash heap of the dethroned deities of the past.
Derek Kreider:No longer are we to be controlled by the stupor of myth. The thing is, we humans love myth because we love stupor. There's something euphoric about forgetting. Sometimes that forgetfulness comes through the stupor found in a bottle and sometimes through the stupor brought about by a syringe. Sometimes it comes through the mindless stupor illuminated to us by our various technologies.
Derek Kreider:But oftentimes, our stupor comes to us through the medium of myth. Myth is often nothing more than a medium of forgetfulness, dressed up as a medium of remembrance. It's the forgetfulness that the evils of our past are ours to bear as much as the victories of old are ours. Myth may often be used as a tool which seeks to propel us into a bright future, but it does so by causing us to forget the darkness of our past. We recognize the danger and foolishness of myth in the ancients, but like the forgetful creatures we are and seek to be, we fail to find gods and myths in our own closet.
Derek Kreider:We don't uncover them there because the closet is where we also keep all the skeletons we don't want to find. Every once in a while, we may open the door to our past and give an obligatory glance around, but we never shine the light in there to illuminate what we've so tidally packed away. We peer into the dark and say, nope. No Ares here. We're not ignorant barbarians.
Derek Kreider:Of course, one of the reasons we have such a difficult time finding the worship of the gods in our past is because we're so busy worshiping them in our present. Take the God of war, for instance. 1 of our modern worshipers of Aries was once asked, quote, we have heard that half a 1000000 Iraqi children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is is the price worth it?
Derek Kreider:Now what was the worshiper of the God of War's response to this question? Her response was, quote, I think that is a very hard choice, but the price we think the price is worth it, end quote. Now it should be readily apparent today. Aries doesn't merely exist as a myth of old. He exists as reality and is worshiped even as I speak.
Derek Kreider:Of course, his temples and his acolytes look a bit different today than they did in the past. Ares has transformed from a crude god of superstitious polytheists into a more sophisticated deity. The God of War is now a triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or executive, judicial, and legislative. Like the gods of old, our triune God of War may seem fickle and capricious to those who experienced the lightning bolts he so frequently throws in the midst of his holy wars, wars waged for that which he calls freedom. But that misunderstanding of our God exists merely because those unenlightened heathens from shithole lands haven't yet learned how to control the gods like we have.
Derek Kreider:Our God of War is not capricious. Sacrifices, oblations, and genuflections are all that the gods have ever required. So you moderns don't at all think that the gods and myths of old are gone today. No, Not at all. God exists, and he is American.
Derek Kreider:When we talk about control and power in our modern times, we are dealing no less with gods and myths than people in ancient times. Blind fanaticism, nationalism, and idolatry are easy to see in regard to war as the destruction of war is more accessible to us today as a result of social media. Even where the mainstream media does its best to shelter us through silence from the effects of our politics and warmongering as they have done so well with conflicts like the one going on in Yemen, you can still access the horrors of war easily if you know where to look. Wars are hard to hide, though that doesn't mean we don't try to hide them or ignore them. But there are other forms of power in our world beside the wielding of death.
Derek Kreider:It is also possible for us to worship the power of life. Now while the god of war, Ares, may be a far more famous god than Asclepius, the god of health, Asclepius is no deity to be scoffed at. Asclepius was a renowned god of old, and we worship him still today too, as evidenced by the time, money, reverence, and sacrifices of freedom and comfort were willing to lay at the altar of Asclepius. But no further than the World Health Organization, whose central symbol, a staff with a snake coiled around it, is the very symbol that represents Asclepius. But seeing the modern day worship of Asclepius and the impact that this worship has on our world is often much harder to identify than the impact of the god of war.
Derek Kreider:Whereas Ares can't help but leave his footprint wherever he goes, Asclepius, like the snake which represents him, slithers discreetly into the nooks and crannies of history, concealing his true venomous self. The god of health, as we've already identified in our first episode of this section, has a number of tricks up his sleeve. The primary trick is that he hides his destructive nature behind good intent, behind benevolence. He's so often a consequentialist, one who can justify enacting a great evil so long as he can imagine it leading to an even greater good. He actually does evil so that some potential good might arise and assumes that evil is an equation of sums rather than that of products.
Derek Kreider:One might end up with something left over if you can subtract a great evil from an even greater good. But if one multiplies the greatest good by evil's factor, which is always 0, what are we left with? Nothing but evil, which is nothingness itself. To put it more crudely, how small of a piece of poop would I have to mix into a batch of brownies and you still eat it? One drop ruins the whole batch.
Derek Kreider:It's behind this batch of poopy brownies that Asclepius hides behind a convoluted and bankrupt moral framework. The God of Health, like the God of War, attempts to hide behind the myths which develop out of our histories. These myths are narratives which cause us to forget the evils done by the gods and cause us only to proclaim their wisdom and benevolence. Today, I want to lay the gods bare before you, for you to see who it is that we truly worship today in Asclepius. I wanna begin with an extended quote from a newspaper article I came across the other day.
Derek Kreider:The article was written in response to a case where a doctor had determined that a newborn was unfit to live and therefore withheld resources from the child unto death. The article I came across was a defense of this doctor's actions. Listen to the rationale. Quote, there is one objection, however, to this weeding of the human garden that shows a sincere love of true life. It is the fear that we cannot trust any mortal with so responsible and delicate a task.
Derek Kreider:Yet have not mortals for long ages been entrusted with the decision of questions just as momentous and far reaching, with kingship, with the education of the race, with feeding, clothing, sheltering, and employing their fellow men? In the jury of the criminal court, we have an institution that is called upon to make just such decisions as doctor Hazelden made to decide whether a man is fit to associate with his fellows, whether he's fit to live. It seems to me that the simplest, wisest thing to do would be to submit cases like that of the malformed idiot baby to a jury of expert physicians. An ordinary jury decides matters of life and death on the evidence of untrained and often prejudiced observers. Their own verdict is not based on a knowledge of criminology, and they are often swayed by obscure prejudices or the eloquence of a prosecutor.
Derek Kreider:Even if the accused before them is guilty, there is often no way of knowing that he would commit new crimes, that he would not become a useful and productive member of society. A mental defective, on the other hand, is almost sure to be a potential criminal. The evidence before a jury of physicians considering the case of an idiot would be exact and scientific. Their findings would be free from the prejudice and inaccuracy of untrained observation. They would act only in cases of true idiocy, where there could be no hope of mental development, end quote.
Derek Kreider:Now upon hearing this, one's mind might immediately go to Alfie Evans, a terminally ill child from the UK whose parents wanted to treat him, but who doctors determined not to treat. I think this happened just a few years ago. The doctors determined that the best course for Alfie was not to prolong his life, and perhaps a consideration of resources was was a part of that too. I don't really know the whole story. But whatever the case, the medical experts, the acolytes of Asclepius, held the power of life in their hands.
Derek Kreider:And in Alfie's case, they withheld that life from him. But that's not the case that this quote quote I, just read is from. Actually, the quote comes from a case more than a 100 years prior to Alfie's case. The once famous, but now largely forgotten case of baby Bollinger. In that case, a baby was born under the jurisdiction of doctor Harry Hazelden.
Derek Kreider:Now Hazelden was a staunch Eugenicist, and he determined that baby Ballinger had some medical issues which made him unfit to live. There's a a great recap of the case in a Guardian article, which I'll link in the show notes, but I wanna pull out an extended excerpt of that, that article here. Quote, at 4 AM on November 12, 1915, a woman named Anna Bollinger gave birth at a German American hospital in Chicago. The baby was somewhat deformed and suffered from extreme intestinal and rectal abnormalities, as well as other complications. The delivering physicians awakened doctor Harry Hazelden, the hospital's chief of staff.
Derek Kreider:Hazelden came in at once. He consulted with colleagues. There's great disagreement over whether the child could be saved, but Hazelden decided that the baby was too afflicted and fundamentally not worth saving. It would be killed. The method?
Derek Kreider:Denial of treatment. Catherine Walsh, probably a friend of Bollinger's, heard the news and sped to the hospital to help. She found the baby, who had been named Allen, alone in a bare room. Walsh pleaded with Hazelton not to kill the baby by withholding treatment. It was not a monster, that child, Walsh later told an inquest.
Derek Kreider:It was a beautiful baby. I saw no deformities. Walsh had patted the infant lightly. Allen's eyes were open, and he waved his tiny fist sitter. Begging the doctor once more, Walsh tried an appeal to his humanity.
Derek Kreider:If the poor little darling has one chance in a 1,000, she pleaded, won't you operate to save save it? Hazelden laughed at Walsh, retorting, I'm afraid it might get well. He was a skilled and experienced surgeon trained by the best doctors in Chicago. He was also an ardent eugenicist. Alan Bollinger duly died.
Derek Kreider:An inquest was convened a few days later. Hazelden defiantly declared, I should have been guilty of a graver crime if I had saved this child's life. My crime would have been keeping in in existence one of nature's cruelest blunders. A juror shot back. What do you mean by that?
Derek Kreider:Hazelden responded. Exactly that. I do not think this child would have grown up to be a a mental defective. I know it. End quote.
Derek Kreider:Now Hazelden was quickly investigated for his actions, but he wasn't at all worried about what was gonna happen. You know, he thought that what he did was the right thing. And, you can see that in in a signed statement that he wrote for the, the coroner's jury. He he said, quote, I say again that it is our duty to defend ourselves and the future generations against the mentally defective that we allow to grow and suffer among us, and add to our burden and our problem. So let us be sensible.
Derek Kreider:Let us approve of the sterilization of the insane and the defective, and of the children of habitual drunkards, when both father and mother are so. Let us reproduce ourselves in 100% fashion, so that by weeding out of our undesirables, we decrease their burden and ours, and lay the foundation for a normal race, which would result 4 generations from now. Let us venerate a standard with soul and sense instead of desecrating it with crumbling tradition and mindless sentimentality. End quote. There were definitely many who were opposed to Hazelden's act, but there were also quite a lot who supported his position as well.
Derek Kreider:Do you remember that first quote that we read at the beginning here about, you know, juries maybe selecting whether children should live or not? That was penned by none other than Helen Keller, the famous woman who went blind and deaf from an early childhood illness. You know, I played the doctor in a play at my high school that we did for Helen Keller, which shows you how poor the talent pool must have been that I was able to get on stage even in a small role. But, yeah. I played the doctor, and I realized now that I should have just let Helen Keller die.
Derek Kreider:Right? She was gonna be just a, you know, an an idiot worthless baby. You know, Hazelden left baby Bollinger to die, and Helen Keller, I guess, did not see kind of the the irony in all of this. Of course, therein lies the danger of holding the power of life in one's hands. Who could possibly know whether a child's gonna live and die and what's gonna become of them?
Derek Kreider:And does what they become really change the value of their life in that moment anyway? Who knows what would have become a baby Bollinger? Now politicians and physicians, kings and priests, they often find that they overstep their bounds because they attempt to play a different role. These, priests and kings attempt to play the role of prophets. You know, those who wield the powers of death and life aren't prophets, but they they try to play them.
Derek Kreider:Nope. Those with power are to be prophesied to and held accountable. They are not to try to prophesy. Science and medicine were even, back then in 1915, gods of their age, and the doctors were prophesying as to what the gods wanted them to do. Clearly, the feeble and unfit were to be sacrificed.
Derek Kreider:It was the will of the gods. Wasn't it? The false prophet, Hazelden, declared it so. There were functionally no consequences for Hazelden, who continued to practice medicine unimpeded. Hazelden also used his fame to enter Hollywood with an infamous film entitled The Black Stork, which you can find fully on YouTube.
Derek Kreider:The, the Psychology Today resource, which I'll link in the show notes, sums up the film very well. It says, quote, in the film, mother gives birth to a baby that the doctor, played by Hazelden, labels as physically, mentally, and morally defective. The doctor suggests to the mother that she allow her baby to die, but the mother is unsure. She falls asleep and dreams about what would happen if the baby lived. The baby grows up to be a violent criminal who returns to the hospital and murders the doctor for allowing him to live a miserable life.
Derek Kreider:The mother awakens and tells the doctor that she agrees to allow the child to pass away. The doctor looks on as the child's soul leaves its body and enters the arms of an awaiting Jesus Christ. End quote. I mean, damn. That's, that's got all the good stuff right there.
Derek Kreider:Doesn't it? And I don't use that, that curse lightly. Like, man, you watch it, and you feel damned. You feel just dirty. And this is, you know, there isn't CGI or anything.
Derek Kreider:This is like, I think it was made in, like, 1917. You go there and there's there's no talking or anything. It's got, like, those those cue cards that come up and kind of describe what's going on in the scene. I didn't watch the whole thing. It's so boring.
Derek Kreider:And and, I put it at 2 times speed, but I watched, you know, the first 20 to 30 minutes in the last 20 to 30 minutes. And that that that right there kinda gives you a good enough picture of what it is. But it is like like, when you know what's going on and you know the context of this all, it is just like it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, knowing who wrote this, why they wrote it, what's going on at this time. But I I want you to notice, like, if you go watch it or or just even if you don't, just think about the the review. I want you to think about what components this film has in it.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. There's the bettering of society. Right? Because people who it was a technical term to call them idiots, like idiots, morons, and I forget the third one. But, imbeciles.
Derek Kreider:I think it it went idiot was the lowest, then imbecile, then moron maybe or whatever. But, essentially, you're bettering society, because these people were thought, not only are they gonna drain resources, but they also become criminals. Like, if it it you must be mentally defective if you're a criminal. And so yeah, you're gonna better society. You have medical authority that's that's portrayed in the film.
Derek Kreider:You have it's motherly love to actually have this child killed. There's compassion, and there's religion. I mean, even if you don't wanna watch as much as I told you to watch, just go watch, like, the last I think it's 5 minutes and see this baby soul enter the arms of Jesus after he's murdered. It's just insane, the the the fusing of religion and, and injustice, which I guess is kind of a historical, normalcy. Isn't it?
Derek Kreider:But in this film, Hazelden's Eugenic ethic was put on full display for the world to see, and a case was made for Eugenics. Of course, we've all heard about Eugenics before, but none of you have probably heard of the Black Stork or Baby Ballinger. You probably think that's because this crazy Eugenic stuff is a thing of the distant past, and even then, you know, it was kind of a fringe idea at the time. Right? And it was held in obscurity, so, of course, we don't hear about it.
Derek Kreider:And you'd you'd sort of be right, but just sort of. See, Keller's death panels never officially came to fruition. Sure. Kind of. The Eugenics Movement wasn't as apocalyptic as we imagine.
Derek Kreider:You know, the the full acceptance of Eugenics, was not embraced. But the next few decades after 1915 would show what applied scientific and medical theory could accomplish. Now at this point, it would be really easy for us to delve into Nazi Eugenics because that's where everybody wants to go. And because Nazis and Eugenics, they just go hand in hand, and what they did was horrible. For as horrible as Nazi Eugenics was, it's unfortunate that harping on that atrocity actually exacerbates the problem that we're trying to uncover here today.
Derek Kreider:By focusing on Nazi Eugenics and pretty much Nazi Eugenics alone, we elevate the inhumanity of one group of people at one moment in history, namely the Germans. And simultaneously, we obscure the fact that the Eugenics Movement was much, much, much broader than Nazi Germany. I've also seen some articles and videos do a good job of linking the German Eugenics Program with the US Eugenics Program, as people like Madison Grant and other Americans were extremely influential on on Hitler's Eugenics program. Now just quick side note, Madison Grant was a Eugenicist and Philanthropist who did a lot of great, good things, like, funding and starting the Bronx Zoo. Of course, this ends up being the same zoo that less than a decade after he helps to start it, puts a black, aboriginal on display as one of the exhibits, you know, right right next to, like, the orangutan or the monkey or whatever chimp.
Derek Kreider:And, this this guy named Oda Banga. Literally, this this man is put on display in the zoo. So, yeah, Hitler had some interesting influences on his life, that that come straight from the United States and this crazy history that so few people know about. Nevertheless, I still think that focusing on how the Nazis were influenced by American Eugenics, it still misses the point of what we're trying to get at today. What most people end up concluding from the American influence is that there were a few crazy Americans who had some bad ideas, and those bad ideas really only became mainstream in a place like Nazi Germany, where the people there were corrupt enough to actually implement those crazy fringe immoral ideas.
Derek Kreider:It's that whole mythologization idea that we've we've discussed throughout the season. This Nazi narrative obscures our evil and allows us to ignore our dark past, and instead, we elevate ourselves. Like, no. No. No.
Derek Kreider:We don't have that, skeleton of Eugenics in our closet. We actually defeated the Eugenicists. Like, we are we are benevolent. So I'm gonna largely ignore the Nazis in this episode in an attempt to focus on demolishing our own pantheon of gods who are hiding behind history and myth. So let's go back to 1915 in the US.
Derek Kreider:What transpired following the Balling Bollinger case? We didn't get death panels, but was the United States just silent on Eugenics following baby Ballinger? There were definitely laws on the books that persisted through the Eugenics era. Anti miscegenation laws, which were on the books for 100 of years, persisted, showing up even as late as the the late fifties with the famous loving case that was recently turned into a movie. You know, interracial marriage was illegal in many states, and marriage relationships even penalized, and broken up through law enforcement.
Derek Kreider:And that was in part because of Eugenics. Right? I mean, that that's sort of a Eugenics thing, not wanting, mixed babies, not wanting to mingle blood. And, of course, immigration laws persisted, developing criteria for immigration based on physical fitness and restricting certain regions of the world and applying quotas to other regions. Adam Cohen, author of the book, imbeciles, which I highly recommend, provides an interesting insight into how these immigration laws played out, specifically the law of 1924.
Derek Kreider:You can find the full NPR interview linked in the show notes. Cohen says, quote, one very poignant aspect of it that I've thought about was, as I was working on the book is in the late nineties, some correspondence appeared, was uncovered in which Otto Frank was writing repeatedly to the state department begging for visas for himself and his wife and his two daughters, Margo and Anne. And he was turned down, And that was because there were now these quotas in place. If they if they had not been, it seems clear that he would have been able to get a visa for his whole family, including his daughter, Anne Frank. So when we think about the fact that Anne Frank died in the concentration camp, we're often told that it was because the Nazis believed the Jews were genetically inferior, that they were lesser than Aryans.
Derek Kreider:And that's true. But to some extent, Anne Frank died in a concentration camp because the US Congress believed that as well. End quote. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Right?
Derek Kreider:What a joke. What a beautiful line of propaganda and myth. When president Trump talked about not wanting people from shithole countries, he wasn't saying anything that wasn't on the books for at least a 100 years. We just don't like it when people verbalize that kind of stuff, the kind of stuff that's true, the kind of stuff that we've all been thinking for our whole history. I mean, this kind of thinking as a nation was par for the course in many parts of the world, and for for most of US history, and still, it kinda more hidden in our history, right, as we have to kinda cover it a little bit more.
Derek Kreider:And it's just it's all over the place, even still today. Yet that kind of thinking, for as bad as we might think that it is, it doesn't seem to be in quite the same vein as Hitler's Nazi Germany. Now keeping the unwanted out is different than exterminating them, even when keeping them out leads to their extermination. The level of injustice, though, changed a little bit in 1927 when an infamous case came before the Supreme Court. The case was Buck v Bell.
Derek Kreider:Now Carrie Buck had a difficult life, and as an unwed mother, had recently given birth to a child, which was the product of a sexual assault. The state of Virginia deemed that miss Buck's moral deficiency, generational poverty, and what they called feeble mindedness was hereditary because it seemed to be generational in her family. What was best for miss Buck and for society? Well, Virginia law allowed the state to forcefully sterilize those that they deemed feeble minded. It was for their own good and for society's good.
Derek Kreider:So it was okay. Right? It was benevolent. It's that scientific and medical benevolence that we've we've been talking about. And what did the Supreme Court have to say in their decision?
Derek Kreider:In an 8 to 1 decision, the court decided that it was perfectly legitimate for forceful sterilization to take place. In a famous quote from that decision, justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, 3 generations of imbeciles are enough. Unlike some other huge travesties of justice, like the Dred Scott decision, which was eventually overturned, Buck v Bell is still on the books today. Now there's so much of interest in this case, and it's it's something that you absolutely ought to check out. And I will make sure to to link some things in the show notes for you to follow-up on, including I mean, this didn't happen all that long ago.
Derek Kreider:There are actually video interviews of of people who are forcefully sterilized that you can get on YouTube that some news stations did. But it's not really the scope of this episode to parse out Buck v Bell, just to reference it as a piece of the puzzle that we're addressing today. So please go check out the links that I'm I'm gonna put in the show notes, where you can find those interviews and all that stuff, the scope of sterilization across the country, and and learn more about the specific. There's even also a a, like, mini conspiracy that takes place within the actual court case itself, and that Carrie Buck's appointed lawyer was actually in cahoots with the Virginia legislation because her lawyer was himself pro eugenics. So you you basically have, like, a you know, it it's a it's a setup to get things to to get eugenics laws passed.
Derek Kreider:So, anyway, go check out the links. So what we've discovered in this episode so far is that, you know, while Helen Keller's death panels never officially happened, forced sterilization panels did. And these weren't some obscure cases. This was state law, nationally upheld at the Supreme Court level and vocally supported by, maybe not a majority of people, but by quite a lot of very, very powerful people. Now these sterilization panels led to the forced sterilization of some 70,000 people, important caveat here, that we know of.
Derek Kreider:But beyond the direct impact of Buck v Bell in the decades immediately following the decision, we see that Eugenics ideas persisted well beyond that case. It wasn't until 1942 when Skinner versus Oklahoma that compulsory compulsory sterilization of criminals was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But that's only, you know, of criminals, important to note. Even after Skinner v Oklahoma, prisoners were subjected to all kinds of medical and governmental experiments, at least at least through the seventies. And it's recounted, perhaps the best in the book Acres of Skin, which is about, the Holmes Holmesburg Prison as kind of a case study in Philadelphia, where that kind of stuff is going on.
Derek Kreider:Prisoners and the poor, a significantly overlapping group, weren't the only groups being exploited either. Native Americans also encountered coerced sterilization at least through the mid seventies. Various studies have shown that between 1970 and 1976, at least 25%, and in some cases, up to 5th or upwards of 50% of Native American women between the ages of 15 44 were sterilized by Indian Health Services in the United States. Sometimes, the women were talked into procedures that they didn't need. Sometimes, they woke up from a medical procedure to find that they'd also had tubal ligations.
Derek Kreider:Such a procedure had long been known as a Mississippi appendectomy because violating bodily autonomy was common during the process of undergoing other surgeries, like appendectomies. And sometimes, there were threats or implied threats against these women that certain governmental services would be withdrawn if they didn't consent to sterilization procedures. Madness may not have ended there in the seventies either. We know that Oregon performed its last forced sterilization in 1981, and their eugenics borders only disbanded in 1983. We also know that at least 150 inmates were sterilized in California prisons as late as 2,006.
Derek Kreider:And as late as 2020, a whistleblower declaring how she had seen unnecessary and coerced sterilizations taking place on immigrants and ICE facilities in Georgia, I mean, that's relatively new, and I don't know whether investigations ended up showing that this last case is true or not. It it might still be kind of, in being investigated. But the fact is that knowing who we are as a nation makes it not only believable that this actually happened, but I would say probable. And this is just pulling on the strand of sterilization here. We just scratched the surface from 1915 on.
Derek Kreider:There's plenty of history in the black community and then in the more distant past that we could have addressed too in regard to, you know, medical conspiracies and shenanigans. There are also other strands of injustice towards the undesirables that that we could have addressed too. Like, we could have dug deeper into experiments on prisoners, on black bodies, and on vulnerable groups in the US controlled territories. We could have dug into the Willowbrook experiments where children at a school for those with disabilities were purposefully exposed to harmful substances. Another school for the so called feeble minded laced the children's oatmeal with radioactive substances for testing.
Derek Kreider:And as late as the mid nineties, the Fenfluramine studies in New York City exposed siblings, unknowingly to Fenfluramine or Fen Phen to see if they could determine delinquency in families because their their, their siblings were had been delinquent. You know, they'd gone through the the justice system. And so they went to their homes and got their brothers and sisters who are younger than them, and did these tests on them. Man. And and, you know, these are only representative.
Derek Kreider:They're representative of a much, much, much larger list of injustices, and only of the few injustices that we've uncovered and that we know about. Like I've said several times so far, I will definitely link some, some resources in the show notes, and we'll also cover a bunch of things on our resource episode at the end of the subsection. Of course, all of these evils have been done in the name of Benevolence. Scientists, doctors, and politicians just want to make the world a better place for the majority of people. Unfortunately, acquiring this knowledge and power requires that some be sacrificed.
Derek Kreider:But, fortunately, leaders and experts can determine who those sacrifices ought to be. In 1915, it was the feeble minded. Who is it today? Now I don't wanna spend a lot of time in this episode talking about the COVID issue. In fact, I really, really wanted to avoid it altogether for this season.
Derek Kreider:I, nevertheless, I think I I need to talk about it just very briefly here. I vacillated on the issue of of COVID vaccinations and all that kind of stuff as information on COVID has shifted back and forth. And just to be completely upfront, whenever there were mask mandates and things, I wore the masks. I respected, for as much as I despise government. I respect that they have authority, and so, you know, I wear the mask and stuff didn't bother me if it helps other people to feel better.
Derek Kreider:And if it has even a a small chance, okay, I'll wear I'll wear a mask. I'll comport. And we got vaccinated. I wasn't in an in an age group that I thought I had to worry too much about side effects, if it helped my family, if it helped me to, you know, to to have more access to people and to help whatever. I got the vaccines.
Derek Kreider:It didn't bother me. But, you know, I I have vacillated on what I I thought should be done. You know, I thought, at first, that the far right was being really crazy, when they said that COVID was just a bad flu. And I still think they're nuts. They're nuts about that.
Derek Kreider:Like, I knew a lot of people who are impacted significantly by COVID. And, several who died, a bunch of people in my my parents' church died. Now I don't know anyone in my whole life who has ever died from the flu. I know lots of people die from the flu each year, but, like, this just was was so much different than the yearly flu. Like, people were dying all over the place, like, people that that we knew of.
Derek Kreider:And I I couldn't think of anybody in my whole life, extended family, friends, whatever, grandparents of friends who had died from the flu. I'm sure some existed somewhere, but it just wasn't common. COVID was different. At the same time, we saw the left going gung ho and advocating for restrictions, fines, consequences on on people, all that kind of stuff. And they were doing all of this on on very limited information.
Derek Kreider:And I understand that decisions had to be made with limited information. I I get that. I also understand and expect that information on something like COVID is gonna change over time because science is like that. Good science makes hypotheses, but it expects that some of those hypotheses will be overturned as more data comes in. Or, I mean, especially with something like virus, the virus changes over time.
Derek Kreider:So, of course, things are gonna change. A change in information doesn't always mean that there are shenanigans going on. But plenty of times, it means that good science is being done. But I also now get the far right's position a lot more than I I did. When you dig into the history of the government and the medical community, you should be extremely wary of legislation and medical advice.
Derek Kreider:We know that subjective interpretations and political motivations can take objective information and wield that in unjust ways, all while hiding behind the guise of benevolence. In the case of Buck v Bell, we can see how vaccine legislation actually set the legal precedent for forceful sterilization. It was used. Right? If compulsory vaccination is, is legal, despite the fact that vaccines can lead to potential illness or death, especially, you know, farther back in the day, being vaccinated, had some more dangers until they they figured out all the adjuvants and whatever you call them, and how all that stuff work together, how to make it safe.
Derek Kreider:Right? It was it was less safe. Even if it was a minuscule chance, vaccines could cause illness or death and still can. So if you could have compulsory vaccinations by the state, all on the justification that it's for the greater good, then, you know, something like legislating forced sterilization makes a lot of sense, or you can at least see how you'd make that jump. And that's exactly what justices like Oliver Wendell Holmes concluded.
Derek Kreider:Now people wanna make the claim that this connection between vaccines and sterilization legislation is weak. And, certainly, there there is a jump that takes place there in terms of, you know, how how imposing it is, how how intrusive, the legislation is. But the underlying philosophical and moral justification is the same. It's only the moral threshold that raises a little bit. And in a field like science, which prides itself on pragmatism and the benevolence that is the greater good, the price of something can only be evaluated in relation to the product being procured.
Derek Kreider:Forced sterilization may have been a higher moral cost to pay than compulsory vaccinations, but scientists and politicians only needed to propose a product that was worth that cost to make consequentialist politicians salivate at the prospect of doing great evil that an even greater good might abound. The black community knows all too well about this kind of formula as they specifically have had a long history of aversion to medical experts and for very good reason. We all know about the Tuskegee experiments, but there are a whole lot more atrocities to dig into. If you want to get an account of some of this distrust from those who have experienced shenanigans by the medical community, check out the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks or Virtus Hardiman's book, Hole in the Head, which is is very similar to the Tuskegee Experiments, that second book. The point is, history shows us that we ought to be wary of Asclepius.
Derek Kreider:Our worship of him can lead down some very dark roads. Sure. Science and medicine are important, and they are, in a sense, objective. The information that the universe gives us is purely objective data. But the application and the values behind the interpretation and implementation of data are subjective because they're determined by subjects.
Derek Kreider:Should Kerry Buck have bowed the knee to Asclepius and willingly submitted to sterilization because it's what he demanded? Should the Native Americans of the seventies, Californian prisoners, and migrants have bowed the need to Asclepius and been sterilized? And should we have bowed the need to Asclepius in seeking government legislation and consequences during COVID, especially considering the lack of information and and the changing data. Now if you know history and understand our worship of the gods and the human sacrifices that our god so frequently require, it ought to make one far more hesitant to give them worship and power because we've seen how that power is so often wielded self righteously and benevolently. No matter where you land on any given issue, there needs to be a whole lot more nuance and skepticism, but also an openness to follow the data.
Derek Kreider:Polarization is not the answer. I think the answer to COVID should have been much more in the middle. But we know that polarization is generally indicative of propaganda, and it makes sense that neither side trusted the other at all on the issue because nobody could listen to reason. One side had to deny the fact that COVID was definitely worse than the flu, and the other side had to deny that the government's scientists and doctors have a history of of doing some messed up things, lying and manipulating the public and all that kind of stuff. Like, why would you wanna give them the power that the left was wanting to give them?
Derek Kreider:In the end, I think that the lesson today is that the god of Asclepius is particularly scary because he's so deceptive and cunning, like the snake that represents him. He holds the power of life, and he seems benevolent for it. He hides behind this benevolence, and he uses it to whitewash all of his actions and to garner our unwavering favor. And while he may do a lot of great good, we must not forget that he does have fangs. When he bites, as he always eventually does, he's extremely venomous.
Derek Kreider:Fortunately, for some of you, you don't have to worry about the fangs. If you're wealthy, white, American, and well bred, the steak rarely bites you. So continue to worship at the temple of Asclepius. That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.
Derek Kreider:This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom Living.
