Posted on 05/26/2009 9:11:36 PM PDT by Lorianne
H. G. Wells: novelist, historian, authoritarian, anticapitalist, eugenicist, and advisor to presidents __ Modern American liberalism, as it emerged in the 1920s, was animated by a revolt against the masses. Liberal thinkers accused the great unwashed of smothering creative individuals in a blanket of materialist, spiritually empty cultural conformity. The liberal project was, so to speak, to refound America by replacing its business civilization—a “dictatorship of the middle class,” as Vernon Parrington put it—with a new, more highly evolved leadership. But along with the ideal of the spontaneous, creative individual, liberals also embraced government economic planning, which depended on making people more predictable. The tension between the two aspirations was resolved, rhetorically at least, by proposing to place power in the hands of scientists, academics, artists, and professionals, a new and truly worthy aristocracy that could govern based on what was good for both leaders and the led.
In A Modern Utopia, written in 1905, Wells updated John Stuart Mill’s culturally individualist liberalism in light of the horizons opened by Darwin and Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics. Biologically, argues the book’s narrator, the “species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.” That means, he says, that the “people of exceptional quality must be ascendant.” Further, “the better sort of people, so far as they can be distinguished, must have the fullest freedom of public service.”
What provides the possibility for such freedom is eugenics.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
H.G. wells a eugenisit? I don’t know anything about that, all I know is that he wrote interesting books.
As the most adverent person I know (me) against the ideoligy of uthanasia, abortion, eugenetics and the brain washing of youth. Mayhaps HG was.. less than forthright about his most pubically known veiwes.
I’ll not take a stand in thinking anything against him unless I see proof. I admit he is not ‘mainstream’ within the context of the time he did his best work. My only contension is that if the extreme left wishes to bend truth or outright lie, it would not be the first time.
He was an outspoken eugenicists. The article lists several of his books and publications were his views on this subject were aired ... and well read.
Actually, you’d be surprised and the well known people who were ardent eugenicists ... if you research the subject. It was quite a popular belief
The Al Gore's, Ted Kennedy's, etc. Destroying America in the name of creating something grand. They delude themselves as they wreak havoc on our nation.
You can admire someone’s artistic or intellectual work without believing them to be correct in the least about political or philosophical views.
HG Wells coined the term “Liberal fascism” which, as you probably know, became the title of Jonah Goldberg’s book.
And he didn’t coin it to denigrate it but to advocate it as a form of achieving the socialism he desired.
H.G Wells writings have had a major impact on Western Liberalism.
Much like Marque De Sade’s writings have influenced Modern Leftism.
Interesting insight into liberal thought as developed in Western Civ upper classes (rich & educated). [Quotes from article.]
“ ‘I doubt whether anyone who was writing books between 1900 and 1920, at any rate in the English language, influenced the young so much,” Orwell wrote.’”
“A host of British visitors, from Fanny Trollope and Charles Dickens to Robert Louis Stevenson, could barely contain their disdain for their backwoods American cousins.”
Apparently the snobbery of the European rich & educated 100 plus years ago explains why the rich and expensively-educated of the US are so obviously ashamed of being Americans.
“It was Wells who made it respectable, even before World War I, for liberals in England and America to demean their own native democratic culture in the name of an imagined antidemocratic World State.”
And it looks as though Wells had a lot of input on the idea of the New World Order.
Gorsh, I guss I keent run mah life, I’ma guessin I will just leave it to them smartess folk. Them eleetz, y’know, that Goar dude and his yen for greens, and that spiffy dresser feller that acts like hes-a runnin’ the place... Ya know who I be-a talkin of ... that tall feller from Hawaii thats-a livin in that thar White House
I believe H.G. Wells was hostile to us Americans much like George Orwell and Huxley.
You can find such sentiments in their later writings.
In Wells IN THE DAYS OF A COMET, written as a prognostication of World War One, he writes of a global war caused by a global recession caused by American Industrialism.
George Orwell did not like us Yanks, he wrote criticisms of us Americans turning his Britain in a U.S.”Air Strip One”.
Similar hostility can be found in Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD.
Well if H.G. is the Godfather of liberalism, I wonder what political movement is H.P. the Godfather of?
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/
bookmark
Americans respond to slick packaging. If products aren’t packaged well we won’t buy them. Garbagy ingredients in food are bought daily in the supermarkets and eaten by millions because of the imagery of the front of the package. “Natural” and “Healthy” are buzzwords displayed prominently on the FRONT of the package. Not so prominent are the “BHT in the packaging” and the “hydrogenated (carcinogenic) oil” in fine print in the ingredient list on the BACK of the package.
Communism has been bought by tens of millions of voters because it was packaged as Liberalism and the syrupy dreams of the sixties: “hope”, “change” and “revolution”. Now the package is being unwrapped and we are finding out that what Norman Thomas (Socialist) said was true. He said we’d never buy Socialism, but if it had a label like “Liberal” on it, we’d buy the whole program.
“And it looks as though Wells had a lot of input on the idea of the New World Order.”
New World Order. It’s been advertised in Latin for 200 plus years on our dollar bill, but apparently no one paid attention.
On a related note....
Learning from History: Long Island's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
““the better sort of people”
We surely don’t have those in our government!
"I believe science is of more importance than socialism," he said. "Socialism's a theory. Science--science is something more."
And that was really all he seemed to be able to say.
We embarked upon one of those queer arguments illiterate young men used always to find so heating. Science or Socialism? It was, of course, like arguing which is right, left handedness or a taste for onions, it was altogether impossible opposition. But the range of my rhetoric enabled me at last to exasperate Parload, and his mere repudiation of my conclusions sufficed to exasperate me, and we ended in the key of a positive quarrel. "Oh, very well!" said I. "So long as I know where we are!"
I slammed his door as though I dynamited his house, and went raging down the street, but I felt that he was already back at the window worshiping his blessed line in the green, before I got round the corner.
I had to walk for an hour or so, before I was cool enough to go home.
And it was Parload who had first introduced me to socialism!
Recreant! [from "In the Days of the Comet" by H.G. Wells]
I’m reminded of my favorite line from the movie “Time After Time,” when H. G. Wells learns that one of his friends is really Jack the Ripper, and that he stole H. G.’s time machine to travel to the late twentieth century:
“Oh my God. I’ve set the Ripper loose in Utopia!”
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