The Perfectionist Project

A Tale of Kanye, Margie Sanger and a Guy Named Bacon

Recently Candace Owens released a 2022 Covid-time interview she did with Kanye West. It had the feel of a message in a bottle washing up on a distant shore, an odd chat that had both Kanye and Candace falling asleep at one point. Kanye had some cancel inducing comments regarding Jews, Black Israelites and the racism of progressive whites. At one point he riffed on his belief that abortion is bad for black folks, and that in fact abortion was created by white folks as a way to keep black culture chaotic: “Six million Jewish people died in the Holocaust, [but] over twenty million darker Jews – black people – have been aborted. More babies are aborted in New York than [are] born.”

This kind of talk reminded me of what he said in a Forbes Magazine article sometime before this interview with Owens: “Planned Parenthoods have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work.”

Devil’s work. Strong stuff. Kanye here is attacking the original philosophy of Planned Parenthood and the organization’s founder, Margaret Sanger. Sanger, a darling in the second half of the 20th Century and still a revered icon in progressive circles. (To illustrate just how revered, two memorials stand out, a street named after her in Manhattan and a statue of her in the Smithsonian). But as we know, or, as we are meant to believe, Kanye West is crazy. In this substack I want to figure out just how crazy he is by tracking the utopian visions of Margaret Sanger. Then, I will end with a peek at where all this crazy leaves us in this New World we call 2024. 

First. Some history. Who was Margaret Sanger? 

Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins in 1879 in Corning, New York. Her father was an Irish stonemason who referred to himself as a free thinker, which, a hundred years ago, was shorthand for atheist. By the time Margaret reached her teenage years, Sanger’s father had become a serious activist for women’s suffrage and free public education. Anne, Margaret’s mother, came to the U.S. with her family to escape the Irish Potato famine. She married Margaret’s father and proceeded to conceive 18 children, eleven of whom survived childhood. Sanger’s mother died at the age of 49.

Margaret was married at age 23, to a prominent architect and well-known political activist. The new couple settled in Westchester, a suburb of New York, and from there Margaret got busy. Spending time in the bohemian world of Greenwich Village, she proceeded to join countless organizations, including the Women’s Committee of the New York Socialist party and the Industrial Workers of the World. She wrote for the left wing newspaper The New York Call. In that paper she wrote many articles on sexual education and the earliest forms of birth control. Eventually, at about the time she initiated divorce proceedings with her husband, she started a monthly magazine called The Woman Rebel. That eight-page monthly had as its motto, “No Gods, No Masters.” Margaret was becoming famous with the New York elite. In October of 1916, Sanger founded Planned Parenthood.

Reading about Sanger, you get the feeling that you know her. Her life has the contours of that person you knew in high school, the one who had few friends and couldn’t care less what you thought about it. Sanger was that indefatigable chick who always had a side hustle, and a tattoo, and no interest in algebra or Glee Club. She’s that person, except her side hustle ends up changing just about everything. 

Her expertise? Birth control. Her goal? Free women from men by freeing women from having unwanted babies. 

But how is this racist? Why is Kanye equating her movement with a black holocaust? For that we need to look at Sanger’s “lig”, which, in this substack, is shorthand for her re-lig-ion; or if you prefer, her ligament-like beliefs that bind her world view.

Webster tells us this in his dictionary:

Is this what Sanger stood for, was this the idea that motivated her to action? Was her religion selective human breeding?

Here is a speech she gave at the New York Historical Society in 1932. The title of the speech is My Way to Peace.

My way to peace would be first, to put into action the fourteen points of President Wilson’s, upon which Germany and Austria surrendered to the Allies. The second way to peace is to have Congress set up a special department for the study of population problems, and appoint a Parliament of Population Directors representing the various branches of science.

The Parliament of Population second only to Wilson’s Fourteen Points? Wow. So what is the Parliament of Population, and how would it bring peace? It turns out the Parliament of Population would have three main objectives. Sanger tells us these goals:

To raise the level and increase the general intelligence of our population. To increase the population slowly by keeping the birth rate at its present level and finally to keep the doors of immigration closed to certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feeble-minded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred from entrance by the Immigration Laws of 1924.

If you are unaware, her use of the words idiot and moron are actual clinical terms in this era. It’s akin to someone using science today to call you a diabetic, or a dyslexic or a redhead. “You’re an idiot” in 1920 meant you were bad at IQ tests. A moron was a person who was really bad at IQ tests. I am writing true things at this very moment, I really am.

But Sanger, and her very New World friends weren’t done. Again, from her speech, My Way to Peace: “The Parliament of Population would apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization, and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.”

To summarize, Sanger is saying: Let’s sterilize morons already because morons make war and create chaos! And though you wish she were, she’s not finished yet. Her very famous speech needs some good old fashion segregation to spice things up. She continues:

To insure the country against future burdens…the government would “pension” [retire] all persons with transmissible disease [read moron or idiot here] who voluntarily consent to sterilization. [For those who don’t consent] the dysgenic population would have its choice of segregation or sterilization. The dysgenic population would be sent to farm lands and homesteads where these segregated persons would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.

Yep. You are reading that correctly. To avoid heavy burdens, society should sterilize morons. And if for some reason a moron doesn’t choose to get sterilized, well, then morons get to go to a work camp for a period not less than, wait for it… the rest of your life.

Such an idyllic location for a lifetime of forced labor.

 The jury’s in. Sanger was a eugenicist. Sorry. People arguing that she wasn’t are, ahem, morons? The debate is closed. Margaret Sanger loved eugenics. 

But was she a bonafide racist? A black person hater?

Though I’d love for wacky Kanye to call me and ask me to hang, I’m going no on this one. I don’t think she was a racist. Her eugenics nonsense, the tests and the nasty science behind genetic inheritance and civic success, all of that landed hard on the black community and other “unwanted populations” to be sure. Eugenicists were no allies of minorities. But the real ugly and vicious kernel buried deep within the Eugenics movement was the tyrannical inclination to breed perfection. I think Margaret Sanger was a perfectionist. Her world, her lig, is about snuffing out impurities so that we may all move closer to the perfect, the good, a life worth having.

She is a believer in utopia. A zealot for progress. She and her Light People pals see history in a linear way, going from bad to better to best. Getting rid of losers just needs to happen, whatever their race. Sanger’s life’s work was making sure people were free to get rid of the unwanted people. Cleaner gene pools meant cleaner societies and happiness for everyone. And guess what? Our government liked her dreams. Sanger’s initiatives not only legalized the destruction of baby genes in the womb of a woman, it also paved the way for legislation that ended in 70,000 forced sterilizations.

Just to clarify, sterilization laws looked like wrestling people onto a gurney and having their reproduction parts chopped out. Sorry. It needs to be said. These laws put repeat drunks in a paddy wagon that dropped them off at the doctor’s office to get fixed. Check out the case of Carrie Buck. It’s not a pretty thing. 

So yes, Sanger was trying to push society toward reducing certain populations. She was an equal opportunity perfectionist. And her perfectionism steamrolled the vulnerable.

And that’s where true-blue New Worlders tend to coalesce as one big team in history. The Nazi project shares a lot in common with the Soviet project, which shares a ton in common with the French Revolution project, which of course, is a cousin of the American project to create a more perfect union. Tom Jefferson, Ben Franklin, the Puritans who settled Massachusetts and the progressive liquor haters of the prohibition movement; all these do-gooders share a utopian world view. They all believe in perfecting society. They all believe in a better world, and in a better future, on earth, right here, where we live and breathe. And all of them bake their utopian pot pie using a recipe they got from a guy named Bacon. 

Can we take a look at Francis Bacon for a second?

Born in 1561 near the Strand in London, Francis’ father was a bigwig whose public handle was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Really. It was. His mother was Anne (Cooke) Bacon (that’s funny), the daughter of the renowned Renaissance humanist Anthony Cooke. Young Bacon was homeschooled, more like castle-schooled, really. One of his teachers was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Another was a person called The Queen of England, a.k.a. Queen Elizabeth, sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen (the title that gave us the name of our American state of Virginia). Baby Francis Bacon went on to become a famous member of the English parliament, and then became the attorney general of England under James I. This was how he became inextricably linked to the founding of North America by British settlers. He helped finance the first trip of England to what we know today as Canada, and he is the father of what we call the scientific method. To top it all off he was a novelist, his most famous and memorable novel being The New Atlantis. 

In his novel, Bacon recasts the gospel according to John. He turns John’s light of the world, Christ, into a new light, a different light, one he names “reason”. And what would Reason do as his protagonist in The New Atlantis? You guessed it, the god of Reason would allow weak human beings to become strong human beings. Reason would grant humans to be masters of their own universe, it would allow us losers to create a long lasting heaven on earth. Like all Deists of the time, he thought there was a god, but that the creator god had absconded. The New Atlantis of Francis Bacon was a perfectionable place wound up like a watch, but no longer subject to the winder.

And do you know, his novel was a hit! Thomas Jefferson put Bacon on the shortlist of the greatest humans to ever live. Here’s Jefferson’s top three. Number one? Isaac Newton. Two? John Locke, the Light Person Shakespeare of political writers. And number three? Has to be Jesus, right?

No, foam fingers were not popular until Isaac Newton.

 Wrong.

And if you said Jesus you’re not just wrong, you are a moron, and should probably live on a segregated farm for idiots. No, Jefferson actually cut the Bible to pieces in order to take out the passages about Jesus doing miracles. He actually used an exacto knife to remove things like the resurrection and that whole water to wine moment. All of them. The miracles. Snipped. Jefferson excised every irrational miracle from his bible, and then our government put his mangled bible in our national museum called The Smithsonian. Jefferson’s bible now sits for all to see at his beloved University of Virginia. So no, Jefferson did not rank Jesus third on his coolest people list. The third greatest human of all time as per Thomas Jefferson was none other than Francis Bacon, the lightest enlightened guy ever. 

But what’s this got to do with Margie Sanger and eugenics and Kanye?

Well, Sanger’s world view, her “lig”, is a direct descendant of the world of Francis Bacon, and Jefferson and all those important figures from the Enlightenment who share deeply in a utopian world view. Utopia. Here’s a definition:

It’s clear. Margaret Sanger is a major player in the Light Person perfection project. Light People perfectionists say things like, “We can end human suffering.” They say things like, “We can create total equality,” and, “We can end human poverty.” Today the tools of the utopian trade are perfect algorithms, perfected food molecules and preternatural pharmaceutics. Hitler, Stalin and their security apparatus progeny (think CIA, Mossad, the CCP and the list goes on) perfected the art of state oppression. Margaret Sanger perfected the art of culling gene pools, and to do this she taught us how to use her super tool; abortion. 

Margaret Sanger and her pals trust humanity’s ability to orchestrate perfection. And that’s just not how Old World people think.

To illustrate, let me end with a story. Recently a friend of mine who works for First Things in Sierra Leone (we offer aid to incredible locals who do great things for themselves and their communities), was suffering from not one, but two pink eyes. At the same time, he was feverish with malaria. Needing to eat, he went to the market for some dinner. Arriving at his favorite peanut stall, he tried to order a handful of ground nuts from his market lady friend, Adama. Adama was intrigued,

“You can’t see me can you?” She said.

My friend laughed and tried to arouse some pity. “No, not really, I mean a bit. And also, I think I have malaria.”

Adama laughed. “It’s good for you,” she said after taking his hand and filling it with a brown bag of nuts. 

“Oh really Adama. It doesn’t feel good for me.”

“It should. You are blessed. By suffering you are able to remember your gifts. And to remember God.”

And that was that. My pink eye pal went back and had a snack while nursing a fever and a certain brand of blindness.

That’s the Old World! 

Suck it up. Suffering is good. The Old World “lig” is at odds with the perfection project. It’s at odds with Margaret Sanger’s project to end suffering through the manipulation and elimination of certain human lives. Her world view, Bacon’s world view, clashes with Adama’s and her weird embrace of an unforgiving natural world that invites us to grow closer to God. And if you listen carefully, you can hear in all of this the underlying tectonics that are threatening national and cultural collapse on every continent on this rock we call “the world”. The global perfectionists are in a deathmatch with the less-global imperfectionists. The test makers are in a fight with the test takers. And all of it is playing out on the streets in the name of “jobs” or “fairness” or “nationalism”. 

The great divide the Enlightenment wrought can be seen everywhere once you start to truly open your eyes

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