State Takeover of Family Predicted in 1928

By: Daniel Taylor

Bertrand Russell 1928: “State may be expected to assume the role of the father”

Recent headlines have reminded us that government, when unrestrained, will reach into every aspect of our lives.

As reported recently, Christine Duffy, a mother from Michigan, was shocked to find that a new medical law required her child to have a  “private” conversation with a nurse prior to every doctors visit. Duffy said, “The nurse would also inform my children that the doctor’s office is a safe place for them to receive information about STDs, HIV and birth control. That is what the nurse would be chatting about with my children without any pesky parental oversight.”

A 1928 book titled Whither Mankind: A Panorama of Modern Civilization outlines predictions of the future of the then intelligentsia of scientists and engineers, most of whom were open eugenicists or sympathetic to the idea. Not surprisingly, the book is held at the Eugenics Survey Library of Vermont, assembled by prominent eugenicist Henry Perkins. Bertrand Russell, scientists and philosopher famous for his writings on the ideal scientific society of elites, provided a little known essay for Whither Mankind. In it he re-iterates his other published works on the inevitable takeover of a scientific elite. As quoted, Russell states:

“…the State increasingly interferes between parents and children for example, by insisting on education and forbidding physical cruelty. It would seem likely that this tendency will continue; more particularly, the State may be expected to assume the role of the father by taking over economic responsibility for the child, on the ground that many fathers cannot be trusted in this matter. If so, there will inevitably be a breakdown of the family, which must modify social psychology profoundly, producing, in place of individuals, well-drilled armies of intelligent but submissive Janissaries, without individual differences, and without loyalties other than their loyalty to the State.”

In reality this philosophy of a state takeover of life dates back over 2000 years ago to Plato. The activities of the ruling elite in controlling population, writes Plato in The Republic, must be kept secret. He writes, “…these goings on must be a secret which the rulers only know, or there will be a further danger of our herd… breaking out into rebellion.”

These ideas have manifested in different forms across the globe. Battling ideas of liberty and tyranny have ripped through time and history. If all firewalls of Constitution, morality and foresight are lost, the ruling elite will drag humanity into a pit of despair from which there will be no escape. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “…we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses”.

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