Conservation does not stop with the natural resources - Theodore Roosevelt

There is every reason to believe that human beings are as amenable to cultivation as other animals and plants.

Oh.

Well I guess that must be true. That comes from a government document. In the accompanying papers for the Report of the National Conservation Commission, on page 677.

This is probably something I don't need to cite a source for: Everybody knows who "Mr. Conservation" is, among the list of 43 presidents. Theodore Roosevelt. He described the RNCC report this way in the primary report document: (Page 1)

With the statements and conclusions of this report I heartily concur, and I commend it to the thoughtful consideration both of Congress and of our people generally. It is one of the most fundamentally important documents ever laid before the American people. It contains the first inventory of its natural resources ever made any nation. In condensed form it presents a statement of our available capital in material resources, which are the means of progress, and calls attention to the essential conditions upon which the perpetuity, safety, and welfare of this nation now rest and must continue to rest It deserves and should have the widest distribution among the people.

One thing that's consistent about progressives: they lie when they speak publicly. They lie in our time, they lied a century ago. It's true that progressives were much more honest about their beliefs a century ago, but you still often have to look in their books and journals and so forth, where they don't think people are looking.

So it is with Theodore Roosevelt, America's first hardcore progressive president. In a book titled "Progressive Principles"(which is a collection of Roosevelt's speeches), he said the following: (Page 48)

Let us remember, also, that conservation does not stop with the natural resources but that the principle of making the best use of all we have requires with equal or greater insistence that we shall stop the waste of human life in industry and prevent the waste of human welfare which flows from the unfair use of concentrated power and wealth in the hands of men whose eagerness for profit blinds them to the cost of what they do.

This was from February, 1912. Almost exactly 3 years to the day after the RNCC report.

See, this is the "Barack Obama standard". You notice that he's saying different things in different places, so you start to wonder what it is he really thinks. You start to really pick things apart to find the true nature of progressivism, because of discrepancies just like this. Is conservation about natural resources, people, or corporations? He says it's a statement of "available capital". I am not "available capital", I am a thinking, living, and breathing individual. This is how central planners look at people the masses. Here's that opening quote again, from the RNCC report's accompanying papers:

There is every reason to believe that human beings are as amenable to cultivation as other animals and plants.

This is almost word for word the exact same thing that Roosevelt said to one of his eugenic friends, Charles B. Davenport: (Text and audio)

I agree with you if you mean, as I suppose you do, that society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind. It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding.

So when he says that conservation can apply to more than just the natural resources, but he tries to couch it in evil corporations, should I really buy that? Well, I don't. The Wisconsin Historical Society's conservation page notes the following:

......including geologist and University president (1903-1918) Charles Van Hise. Van Hise chaired the State Conservation Commission, provided conservation advice to Teddy Roosevelt, and wrote the first textbook on conservation in 1910.

I'll get to that textbook in a minute. One of the very first blog postings I did was in regard to Hise's writings, who clearly laid out progressivism in three words:

"Regulation, not socialism".

Hise was an advisor to Roosevelt on conservation, and Roosevelt was a big fan of Hise having recommented the very book I just quoted from above, which is titled "Concentration and Control".

An important volume entitled "Concentration and Control" has just been issued by President Charles R. Van Hise, of the University of Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin has been more influential than any other agency in making Wisconsin what it has become, a laboratory for wise social and industrial experiment in the betterment of conditions.

Yes, you read that right. For those of you who know the history of progressivism know that Wisconsin is the birthplace for progressivism. Roosevelt loved it. But that's a side note for another day. Roosevelt recommended Hise's book repeatedly: (an article titled "Two Noteworthy Books on Democracy")

Of course our policy as regards the trusts should be frankly to accept in its essentials the doctrine laid down by President Van Hise in his book entitled " Combination and Control."

I point all this out because it's important in establishing who progressives are and what they believe, as well as their associations and etc. Now about that textbook that Hise wrote on conservation. The Wisconsin Historical Society states that it's title is "The Future of Man in America", starting on page 1718.(This link goes to a magazine called "World's Work", but 'Future' isn't a book, it's merely an article), and it's very interesting how this "book"(article) ends:

It is in order that humanity itself may be given an opportunity to develop through millions of years to come, under the most advantageous conditions, that we should conserve our natural resources and thus make possible to billions of future human beings a godlike destiny.

A godlike destiny? Who is it that's all consumed with breeding better people, breeding them like cattle? The eugenics crowd. Hise did write a full book in 1910(the same year as 'Future' was written, titled The conservation of natural resources in the United States. It has small section devoted to eugenics, in which it states:

A further proposal in reference to the conservation of man is furnished by Eugenics. Breeding has been long practiced with reference to producing high grade stock. Until recently man has given very little attention to the matter as far as his own race is concerned. It is still true, ever, in civilized countries, that defectives of various classes are allowed to propagate the race. It is certain that as a first very moderate step toward the development of the stamina of the human race, defectives should be precluded from continuing the race by some proper method. In Indiana by somewhat exceptional methods this is already accomplished so far as certain classes of defectives are concerned. By other methods, the segregation of all defectives of each sex in asylums, hospitals, and institutes, the same result may be reached. In some states this is partially done, but nowhere completely. Whatever the method chosen, it should be thoroughgoing.

That's Roosevelt's advisor, Charles Hise. In reference to the conservation of man, is eugenics.

I guess conservation does not stop with the natural resources after all.

http://tinyurl.com/bo63dtb