I often wonder how many of the commenters advocating forced sterilization of parents on welfare, mothers of criminals, women of a criminal bent, etc. are anti-abortion in private life. I've actually scanned pages and pages of certain commenters' posting history for incidence of the words "abort" or "abortion." Do they regard abortion as a valid, ethically neutral choice, or do they consider it a tool of social control to be wielded against those deemed undesirable?
I haven't yet found a clear instance of a single commenter declaring that welfare mothers should be sterilized, then turning around and condemning abortion. I'm not looking for hypocrisy, exactly. Hypocrisy requires a coherent political and ethical worldview, which few enough commenters display. I'm looking for confirmation that they truly hold eugenicist views.
Likewise, I wonder how many commenters who demand license to micromanage and impose intrusive regulations on people receiving public assistance are small-government conservatives in private life. I've quoted Anne Lamott before, and her aphorism has become my watchword: "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do."
In this world, there are the fit and the unfit, composition of such groups to be determined by any idiot with a screen name. The fit may be allowed to reproduce, seek happiness and prosperity, etc., under circumstances dictated by an elite composed, naturally, of MLive commenters. The unfit aren't even granted a guarantee of bodily autonomy. Permission to reproduce may be doled out, if they are well-behaved, at the sufferance of the elite. And this constitutes the totalitarian nanny state the very same commenters profess to abhor.
Here's the rhetorical question: is this doublethink? Do they skate over the cognitive dissonance? Or do they recognize the dissonance yet believe that they will somehow, through great moral and financial rectitude, retain their privileged position?
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