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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Confession Tuesday on Wednesday

I confess I’m late! Hurry with me, I must get to the confessional.


Yes reader, I’m a day late with my confession, but I will argue with good reason.


My daughter has been in town and we did some things together yesterday which kept me away from the computer until late last night. So I confess that I did miss the mark on Tuesday but ask for special dispensation as I was doing a fatherly thing.


I have to confess that before we saw my daughter off this morning I was a bit teary eyed, though I kept myself together in here presence. I have the capacity to get like that at times. When my grandmother was alive, and lived out of the area, I would get misty eyed every time we left her place to return home. I could keep it together till we got on the road and then it would just hit me. ~0~


While Meghan was here, we went to see the exhibit Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race that is currently in Kansas City at our National Archives. The exhibit is a part of the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum and Meghan visited the Museum some years ago in Washington D.C. and has always raved about what a magnificent exhibit they have. Hence when I learned this was here through sometime in June we made plans to see it during her stay.


The exhibit was not quite what I expected but it was time well spent. I of course was aware of the concept of the “master race” that was a part of Hitler’s purge of Jews but I must confess I was not really aware of the extent to which this view was prevalent within parts of German society prior to Hitler assuming control. Equally of surprise to me was that there were societies even in this country that were subscribing to the ideology of eugenics or “good birth" (eradicating those deemed undesirable so as not to allow them to be part of the gene pool).


I was amazed at how much traction this ideology had gained in the public and how much widespread support it had within scientific communities. When I see how easy it is for individuals who collectively espouse such shallow views as say the “birthers” today to embrace and propagate their views and I compare that to the wide level of acceptance eugenics enjoyed by intellectuals and scientists, I confess that it sends shivers up my spine. Such blind faith in an ideology with no consideration of the ethics involved is scary.


I did not mean for my Tuesday Confession on Wednesday to be such a downer, but as the saying goes, it is what it is.


Thanks for listening.

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