Vox and Bill Gates are attacked by the Twitter mob for intimating that poverty in Africa may attributable to overpopulation: http://archive.is/z7iJn.
But I thought the left is supposed to be pro-choice and against overpopulation? Judging by the comments, I guess ‘choice’ does not apply to Africa.
As I wrote years ago, when the left talks about choice, they mean ‘choice’ for high-performing groups (whites and Asians), but ‘life’ for lesser-performing groups (blacks, Hispanics). This is why many years ago there was so much outrage by the left over the link between abortion and crime, because the implication that blacks having abortions has a prophylactic effect on crime and that therefore blacks are possibly predisposed to crime, is racist. For the left, ‘choice’ is about ‘female empowerment’, not improving overall global well-being by reducing poverty and crime.
Furthermore, the funny thing is, the Wiki for eugenics lists birth control as a form of eugenics, so that means most women are unwitting eugenicists:
In the United States 98% of sexually active women have used birth control at some point in time, and 62% of those of reproductive age are currently using birth control. The two most common methods are the pill (11 million) and sterilization (10 million).
The Pill®, abortions, and sex-ed for whites? Go right ahead. Put a Planned Parenthood on the corner of every white neighborhood. But birth control for Africa? Eugenics! Racism!
This also shows how even the bluest of liberals (Ezra Klein and Bill Gates) are not immune from the SJW mob for committing wrong-think.
Not to just pick on the left, Ross Douthat expresses similar concerns.
Understandably, Bill Gates, who is a pro-choice secularist with possible globalist tendencies, is probably not held in high regard by the ‘Catholic right’. But I don’t see any sort of insidious plot here. It’s not like anyone has even explicitly endorsed population control, but rather preventing overpopulation, which is a problem that also affects India and China, but no one scores outrage points by mentioning those examples. If quality of life is compromised by having too many people–due to insufficient resources and infrastructure thus resulting in a reduced life expectancy, increased child child mortality and suffering–the only humane option is to have fewer people until technology permits otherwise.
From the post Bryan Caplan’s “IQ With Conscience”:
2. Consider third world overpopulation: think of all the suffering and disease that can prevented with birth control, than allowing the population to surge and then die at a young age from disease. The easiest way to lessen ‘total human suffering’ to prevent low-IQ groups from breeding themselves into an oblivion of poverty and early death.
The left would rather score virtue signaling points than prevent needless human suffering.