60 Replies to “Let’s Do It For Tommy!”

  1. Now that’s telling, particularly his abhorrent views on the role of the state.
    “…and Increased Knowledge of Birth Control.”
    Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1927, c. 36, s. 207(1)(c):
    Every one is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to two years’ imprisonment who knowingly, without lawful justification or excuse,
    (c) offers to sell, advertises, publishes an advertisement of, or has for sale or disposal any means or instruction or any medicine, drug or article intended or represented as a means of preventing conception or of causing abortion or miscarriage; or advertises or publishes an advertisement of any means, instructions, medicine, drug or article for restoring sexual virility or curing venereal diseases or diseases of the generative organs.
    S-s. 207(2) provided a defence of “public good” which the defendant had to prove; s-s. 207(3) made it a question of law for the court or judge alone.
    What were you advocating, Tommy? A role for the state in promoting contraception or abortion, contrary to the criminal law?

  2. Kate, I think you may have committed a Saskatchewan version of treason, dissing the local Saint.

  3. wooo, I love it when Tommy talks dirty like that!
    You know, the “problems” (read “opportunities to bash the opposition”) may change, but the remedy suggested is always the same.
    1) More, bigger government.
    2) More, higher taxes to pay for it.
    3) Less freedom for us peons.
    SHOVE IT!

  4. …and of course “subnormal” is defined as anybody who does not agree with Dear Leader…
    …he forgot the fourth remedy… a stint in the re-education camp…

  5. Tommy was absolutely right in this statement from the perspective of a socialist. Of course socialism is the cause of these problems so it certainly can’t be the cure. Socialism is reverse Darwinism. In a socialist state the “subnormal” thrive. Get rid of welfare, and public health care, and the subnormal can do whatever they want. If I’m not paying the bills they are free. When I have to pay for the education and incarceration costs of all the bastard children who are wards of the state, I’m going to want a say in running their lives.
    Get rid of socialism and all the problems go away.

  7. The socialist idea that only eligible people should be parents is still with us today, but in a moderated form.
    Every once in a while you will see a socialist suggesting that people should be licensed to have kids.
    Barring that, the answer is for the state to control kids’ education and development.
    Witness Ontario’s preference for a monlithic, state-controlled education over and against parent-driven education.

  8. “Tommy was absolutely right in this statement from the perspective of a socialist.”
    Then how does that explain Bible Bill Aberhart, Ernest Manning and the other Socreds and social conservatives on the plains who, unlike Tommy, never rejected eugenics and actually promoted and passed mandatory eugenics laws?
    Eugenics is certainly an abhorent practice, but it seems hardly more aligned to socialism than conservativism, especially when it was the quack socialist, and not the conservative, who was smart enough and mature enough to change his mind about eugenicism.

  9. Hey wait a minute, there are many people who shouldn’t be allowed to have kids. Drug users, heavy alcohol drinkers, chronically unemployed, mentally ill, very young unmarried girls. Any Indians come to mind when you real this?
    We all pay for the defective children who grow up to be defective adult. We have enough trouble and expense right as it is. Our society is already breaking down fast with stupid immigration policies and lax law and order.
    When will anything every be done to clean it up?
    Just asking.

  10. Ted, I’ll await similar quotes to back up your statements about conservatives. BTW, why do you always change the subject of the thread?

  11. Ted, maybe I wasn’t clear. He is like a socialist in his desire to control the lives of other people. He thinks that since the state is responsible for those people, they then have a obligation to look after them. They can then control their lives. If you leave people alone, they can do as they please, and it becomes non of the states business. Then we will all be free to control our own lives.

  12. TEd, no other party in this province is running around wearing buttons championing their dead political heroes. No other party is bringing in the spawn of their dead political heroes to stump for them.
    That’s why quotes by other politicians of the past are utterly irrelevant.

  13. Shamrock: Bill Aberhart and Preston Manning’s dad were staunch social conservatives and eugenicists. Are you denying that? I said eugenicism is as much and as little socialist as social conservative. I think social conservatives have just as strong leanings to control our individual lives and behaviours, and history has shown this to be so.
    And this is dead on target: if Kate’s going to keep raising this ruse of Douglas being a eugenisist, I’ll keep reminding readers that in fact he wasn’t but there were plenty of prominent social conservatives who were far stronger and more active eugenicists. It is a bit silly and petty and incorrect to call Douglas a eugenicist, like calling Reagan a New Deal Democrat, or Harper a member of the Liberal Party. At one point in their lives… maybe, but clearly they moved on.
    A whole heck of a lot of social conservatives did not.

  14. Didn’t we hang a bunch of judges in Nuremberg for doing basically the same thing?
    I mean, seriously, “Sterilization of the Unfit”?

  15. Ted: Who the Hell said that Tommy moved on ? You? That little gutter snipe moved on from nothing.He advocated every thing that he believed in till the day he died and he educated his followers to do the same.Thats why they hold dictators in such high esteem.

  16. No Spike, that’s not correct. In 1938, after visiting Nazi Germany, he publicly rejected the policy and then when he was Premier and could have done something, he never passed any laws relating to eugenics, unlike BC and Alberta.
    There is plenty of stuff in Douglas’s real and lasting political beliefs to reject and scorn. No need to mischaracterize in this way.
    And if I have a bigger point that is it: Douglas was a socialist who believed the state should run the economy and not private business or individuals. That is what defines him. The NDP today are trying to hitch a ride on that reputation. So attack that. Have a real debate of issues. Does Calvert believe the same things? Do Saskatchewan voters support that? I think the Saskatchewan Party benefits from a real debate about real issues, frankly.
    And conservatives are no worse at this than the left. Rather than discuss issues and policy differences, Martin tried to scaremonger. And while, yes obviously Harper is a small, petty, vindictive, mean-spirited, power-mongering control freak, but so were Chretien, Mulroney and Trudeau. So get over the crappy side issues and talk about policies.
    We Canadians aren’t so dim witted as politicians and their partisans like to treat us.

  17. Seems to have struck a sore spot with Tommy worshipping Ted.
    “It is a bit silly and petty and incorrect to call Douglas a eugenicist”
    Really?
    I suppose Tommy’s thesis, titled: ‘The problems of the subnormal family,’ submitted to McMaster U., March 17, 1933, is “silly and petty and incorrect,” then, is it?
    Here’s another Tommy quote from his introduction:
    “The subnormal family presents the most appalling of all family problems. By “subnormal” we mean, (1) a family whose mental rating is low, i.e. anywhere from high grade moron to mentally defective; (B) a family whose moral standards are below normal, and who are delinquent…but having seen the causes and their effects, it remains for us to consider remedies that at least mitigate, if not remove, the problem of the subnormal family from the midst of modern society,”
    Do you have a mustache as well Ted?

  18. Who decides who is ‘unfit’ in a society? If it were up to me I would feel compelled to consider some of the people that troll thru the blogs.
    Hmmmm… Just thinking.
    CRB

  19. Ted, I understand your point; however, Kate supplied a direct source, so, notwithstanding yours or my opinions about what this or that person stands for, I am asking for quid pro quo here – supply citation to show how your thesis is relevant to this thread. (BTW, which conservatives didn’t “move on?”)
    Is that so hard, Ted?

  20. Shamrock: “(BTW, which conservatives didn’t “move on?)”
    This is only Wikipedia, but it’s obviously hard to find online direct sources from that period (it is only to pillory Douglas that someone went back and scanned the thesis he himself rejected). However, the laws are clearly documented and hard to argue didn’t exist:
    “In 1928, the Province of Alberta, Canada, passed legislation that enabled the government to perform involuntary sterilizations on individuals classified as mentally deficient. In order to implement the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta in 1928, a four-person Alberta Eugenics Board was created. In 1972, the Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed [Ed note: by Progressive Conservative Lougheed], and the Eugenics Board dismantled. During the 43 years of the Eugenics Board, it approved nearly 5,000 individual sterilizations, and 2,832 procedures were actually performed.”
    “The province of Alberta was the first part of the British Empire to adopt a sterilization act, and were the only ones who vigorously implemented it. The western provinces, British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, were close to the United States and highly influenced by American trends – during early debates regarding a sexual sterilization bill in Alberta, there were many references made to the U.S. legislation.”

  21. …We all pay for the defective children who grow up to be defective adult…
    No, John West, that is not the root cause of the problem.
    The root cause is giving free money to those who do not work.
    If that practice is stopped, it does not matter how many defective children are born. If they are that bad that they can’t survive w/o free money, they’ll starve themselves to death. If they are not all that bad, they will find a niche job to do.
    Free money flow from the pockets of productive members of society to non-productive is the root cause of all evils. It must be stopped, the rest will remedy itself.

  22. Irwin: That’s being a bit daft. I have read quotations by Ronald Reagan supporting New Deal government stimulation of the economy and a quotation from Stephen Harper supporting Trudeau when they were first getting involved in politics. Is Reagan therefore a Democrat and Harper a Liberal? Of course not.
    Like I said, why invent silly straw men and red flags in a debate, when a guy like Douglas gives you so many real targets, like the ideas and policies he actually believed in and that defined him and his political life.

  23. “Free money flow from the pockets of productive members of society to non-productive is the root cause of all evils.”
    Because, as everyone knows, there was no such thing as evil or crime or bad parents before government assistance and the social safety net. It wasn’t the snake and the apple, folks, that ruined paradise. You’ve been misled; it was unemployment insurance and the Canada Pension Plan!!
    ________________
    Thanks, Aaron. That really gave me a good Friday laugh. Great way to start the weekend. Have a good one, folks.

  24. Ted, buddy. Tommy changed his mind on one detail, Eugenics as a desirable policy of social control.
    He did NOT change his mind on social control by the state as a desirable thing. People are too stupid to be allowed out without a keeper, according to Tommy.
    Tommy was anti-personal freedom until the day he shuffled off this mortal coil. The NDP continues that sick, destructive tradition to this day.
    Additionally, any attempt by a politician to have THAT debate will be quashed immediately as being “too American”.
    Here’s a challenge for you Ted. Name me one issue where the NDP’s answer is NOT increased regulation, inspection, licensing, taxation and etc. I’ll check back tomorrow to see if you can dig one up.

  25. “Because, as everyone knows, there was no such thing as evil or crime or bad parents before government assistance and the social safety net.”
    No one said that this was not the case, but If I don’t pay for it, I don’t care about it, and have no say in it. People are free to do whatever they want on their own dime. It is only when other people become financially responsible for the subnormals that they feel a desire to tell the subnormals what to do. If the subnormals want to remain free of state eugenics programs they shouldn’t be looking for government handouts.
    Get rid of socialism and everything else fixes itself.

  26. Partly true, as “bad” and “abnormal” politicians are also (technically) “wards of the state.”

  27. “Hey wait a minute, there are many people who shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.
    Posted by: John West”
    This kind of sentiment scares the crap out of me. The corollary of this is that certain people should be mandated to have children.

  29. That’s my point Phantom.
    Why dredge up a misleading anecdote about a politician’s past that he himself rejected, when you have such a wealth of idiotic positions to expose him on?
    My goodness, we’re in agreement again.

  30. “Irwin: That’s being a bit daft. I have read quotations by Ronald Reagan supporting New Deal government stimulation of the economy and a quotation from Stephen Harper supporting Trudeau when they were first getting involved in politics. Is Reagan therefore a Democrat and Harper a Liberal? Of course not.” – Ted
    I think the fact that Tommy wrote a 60 page thesis supporting eugenics is a little different than a quotation from Reagan about FDR and a quotation from Harper about Trudeau.
    But maybe it’s just me.
    Great attempt at the typical lefty obfuscation through equivalence tactic though.

  31. Irwin: Great attempt at missing the point. You do it well.
    It’s a 60 page thesis written when Douglas was in school, that he rejected outright before entering into public life after seeing what Hitler was doing in Germany, and that never showed up in any way in his decades of governing and leading the CCF and the NDP.
    Frankly, stories of him being abusive of his wife throughout his life have more veracity and are more damaging; that is, if you remains so fearful of tactling his beliefs and policies head on, and prefer having fights over side issues and personality traits over issues and principles.

  32. “No Spike, that’s not correct. In 1938, after visiting Nazi Germany, he publicly rejected the policy and then when he was Premier and could have done something, he never passed any laws relating to eugenics, unlike BC and Alberta.”
    First of all Ted, prove this statement, I bet you can’t.
    Secondly, the mental hospital in Weyburn, Tommy’s town, DID sterilize patients on a regular basis throughout the time it was open under the CCF government.

  33. Missing what point Ted?
    Your misdirections?
    Douglass was 29 years old and married at the time he wrote it. Typically by that age, values, beliefs, “issues and principles,” are fairly well established. Furthermore, he was leader of the CCF a short nine years later and premier, two years after that.
    He rejected a dissertation that he himself wrote and submitted to a university, so what? He still wrote it.
    It’s like David Duke rejecting his past in order to run for political office. It doesn’t make it go away.

  34. “It’s like David Duke rejecting his past in order to run for political office. It doesn’t make it go away.”
    Wow. Uber-political correctness and comparisons to the KKK to score political points. Did I mistakenly get re-routed to rabble.ca?

  35. I wonder if the NDP will be like its cohorts in North Korea and declare their dead leader as their eternal leader.

  36. Holy sh*t, the NDP holding Tommy as their poster child in the election is arguably just as bad as continuously presenting it as news that Douglas supported eugenics as a student. It’s like, “Douglas supported eugenics!?! NO!! Say it ain’t so?!” I’m curious, did anyone here not know this before it was posted again? Beyond writing for the sake of provocation, do you have anything that comes as news to write about? No wonder I’m apathetic about this election. All the parties suck. Any person with the ability to separate themselves from their partisan support for two seconds would realize that, yes as most would agree, the NDP’s buttons touting Tommy are ridiculous, a sign perhaps of a party in need of new ideas, but they would also realize that it was a product of a naive student, and more importantly, a product of the times. If what he was proposing was so ludicrous in the context of the day in which he lived, then he would have been vilified back then.
    Showing up to this website to see it presented as some kind of “smoking gun” is a pathetic illustration of the need for a truly intellectual exchange of ideas. That is not happening on SDA. This debate has been had time and time again. You got the left touting Douglas as some kind of God and the right preaching that he was the Anti Christ, huge diametric opposites. Obviously I don’t see the world as so black and white and in some ways that groups me into certain ideological doctrines, but I would still submit that both sides need to grow up and take the debate beyond this childish banter. As others have aptly pointed out support for eugenics wasn’t tied to any specific ideology.
    I don’t support the NDP, but I’m also not dumb enough to think that the vast majority of their members support eugenics just because they have Tommy Douglas on their buttons. They support the persona that has been created in his legacy as a fighter for the people, whether that’s accurate or not is less important when taking their intent into context.
    Where you reside in the political spectrum does not necessarily define you as a human being, especially the vast majority of the voting populace who aren’t ideologues and can look beyond someone’s voting practices when casting judgement.

  37. I don’t have the energy to deal with your intellectual honesty at this time, Kate. Suffice it to say Tommy Douglas reformed himself in the 30s after his meeting with Hitler, volunteered for military service with the Winnipeg Grenadiers, but was turned down for health reasons, and helped Mackenzie King implement the draft, and later as Premier of Saskatchewan and unlike his compatriots in Alberta and British Columbia refused to sign eugenics legislation, instead working to improve the situations for the mentally ill in asylums.
    All of which you left out.

  38. steve, unlike you, I am a capital C Conservative… and I also believe in honesty. Kate left out rather a large chunk of the Tommy Douglas story, don’t you think?

  39. Oh — he volunteered for military service pre WW2 because he say conflict as inevitable and he fully supporter our war effort. He had previously met Adolf Hitler and came away with the conclusion the man was mad and must be stopped. He also seriously started rethinking his eugenics ideas and by the time he was Premier, was more correct in his thinking than the others in the SK legislature, who wanted eugenics legislation, which went into effect in both BC and AB.

  41. “They support the persona that has been created in his legacy as a fighter for the people, whether that’s accurate or not is less important when taking their intent into context.”
    Pardon?
    Turning Tommy into an idol by rewriting the past – lying, in other words – is justified because people will have good intentions when they believe it?
    That’s even stupider than the usual “end justifies the means” nonsense.

  42. `Turning Tommy into an idol by rewriting the past – lying, in other words – is justified because people will have good intentions when they believe it?`
    My intent was to more or less point out that we idolize a lot of people in our society that were complicit with practices or values that don’t jive with our values of today. George Washington helped found a country that was reliant on slavery for much of its economy. Yet he graces the $1 bill. Similarly Sir John A McDonald made no effort to extend the franchise to women or give them status as “persons”. Should we hold him in low regard now because of this?
    Countries with some form of universal health care far exceed the standards of health systems that do not. Many of the most successful have found ways to hybridize state intervention with private involvement. Canadian health care needs reform, no questions asked, but we need not adopt US styled health care, which is what we may very well have had if it weren’t for Douglas.
    I don’t consider myself a socialist, more of an institutionalist. I understand that the free market can create a lot of good and incentive in society, but I also think the idea that the state can’t work with enterprise for the better good, to be rhetoric of ideological dogma. History is a wonderful tool, but we’re also creating history based on lessons from the past, and in doing such we don’t necessarily recreate the past. In essence I don’t think one set of ideas ever creates inherently good results. There are positives and negatives to be found everywhere. I think a lot of people like framing it in an “us vs them” context because it makes it easier to digest and get on board when you’re presented with a set of answers along with protagonist and antagonist. To me, that’s the way things work in fairy tales and movies, but not real life.

  43. The irony is that many in todays NDP would probably fit into Tommy’s “unfit” or “(B) a family whose moral standards are below normal, and who are delinquent” categories.

  44. steve and chritopher,
    Where do you live? It can’t be Saskatchewan, because if you did live here you would realize the irony in Kate posting Tommy the Commie’s thesis. Kate is post the CCF/NDP’s past because all they talk about in this election, or any other election, is their revisionist view of the past.
    Yopu know, I know, Kate knows and almost everyone reading this knows T.C.’s past, but if the NDP want to continue to bring up Tommy, Kate and the rest of us are going to make sure that the ENTIRE story of Tommy is told, not just the neo-socialist revisionist version.
    BTW, do either one of you want to discuss any of Tommy’s pre-Hilter meeting comments? You know, how he felt his trip to Germany was going to be a wonderful meeting with his fellow SOCIALISTS!

  46. trent, you have a good point… but Kate should mention the whole deal too. I used to be on her side on this, and read said thesis… I think Douglas was flawed to be sure… and I know he thought Hitler would be grand… the point is, he was a decent enough man he could look evil in the face and make a new decision… one which he felt stronger enough to volunteer for the infantry.

  47. Christoph,
    I was in grade 12 in 1986 when Tommy died. Very little was mentioned at that time. A few years ago when the NDP and CBC tried to resurrect Tommy as a Saint I decided to read up on Tommy and learn whatever I could. Fascinating man, fascinating life, undeniably a story that should be told, but the truth about Tommy is absolutely nothing like the story the NDP and CBC have tried to tell. One of the most interesting things about Tommy is that his biggest battles were not with Liberals or Conservatives, but rather with his fellow CCF/NDP. I think everyone should learn the REAL story of Tommy Douglas, not the CBC Prairie Giant garbage, but the fights he had with David and Stephen Lewis over the direction of the Party and his battles to keep his fellow CCFer’s (like C.M. Fines) from robbing the government blind.
    Ok, so I’m rambling, but read up on Tommy, he was fascinating.

  48. Folks,in case you didnt know Reagan WAS a Democrat when he was head of the screen actors guild.Thats how he got elected and what made him such a good Republican president,he knew how the Democrats think.

  49. The most racist party in the 20’s and 30’s was the Tories. They backed up the KKK. That’s a historical fact. And you guys try to blame Tommy Douglas. I’m a Pollack and that’s why alot of Jews and immigrants voted for CCF because of racist policies which your party practiced and continue to do so. You are exclusive no matter what you claim. Go Bullshit someone else. I was born at night but it wasn’t last night.

  50. I wish I could live in the past like ok4ua and worship the icons of the past.
    The 20s and 30s? Hokey smokey.
    My calendar says 2007.

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