Arizona's public school chief admits he anonymously blogged racist rants

Around here and I’m sure other places the old time racists compliment each other by saying “Why Thanks, That’s Mighty White of You”. Usually in response for some act of kindness or generosity. I explained this to one of my sons who was born in Peru and has a deep Copper complexion. I should have known better because he’s delightfully perverse and this put him in hysterics. Now his response to various assholes of any color is to state…“Why that’s mighty white of him”.

Without doubt Mr. Huppenthal is Mighty White. My son could sure give the school chief an education.

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or dishonesty just flows out that naturally.

I’ve regrettably met many of these type of conservatives in person. The dishonesty and asshole-isms flow quite naturally. I honestly think they were born this way.

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Can anyone explain this bit about “It was Darwin, not Hitler, who named the Germans the master race”? Where does something like that come from? It just doesn’t even seem plausible.

It boggles my mind that someone in charge of education is making strongly-felt statements that seem to have been pulled at random from The Weird Part of the Internets. Darwin named Germans the Master Race? Sanger “given the job” of black genocide?

I wonder what his stand on the Gray Alien question Is. And his thoughts on HAARP weather control.

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I think google can explain without much effort:

https://www.google.com/search?q=darwian+beliefs+and+master+race#q=darwinian+beliefs+and+master+race

That search doesn’t tell me much of anything.

Ever hear the “Hitler brushed his teeth” thing? I’m sure there’s a name for that fallacy, but just because Hitler liked Darwin doesn’t mean Darwin would have liked Hitler. I think it’s widely known that the Creation Museum and other places use Hitler to condemn Darwin. (And yet, they have nothing to say about brushing your teeth or painting?)

I’ve never heard that Darwin proclaimed that the Germans were the master race, or that Darwin wanted to get rid of Africans or Jews. I was curious if there is some scholarship on this topic that I had somehow overlooked or if it’s just pure Crazy.

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You were wondering how anyone had the idea that drawin said something.

Just do some reverse telephone, and it’s completely reasonable.

When your search result fails to find attribution for the quote outside of Ken Hamm’s “Answers in Genesis” and a bunch of creationist web sites, it may be time to question the attribution.

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Meh, unless we’re presupposing Arizona’s public school chief is an intelligent filter, given this article as context, a quick google search that shows how often darwin is linked to master race documents should be sufficient answer to how someone could believe darwin himself said something.

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Well, to parse it out a little bit for you, at one point in The Descent of Man, Darwin discusses why there appears to be a sort of gap in coverage of the spectrum of all types of monkeys/apes. (Edited this sentence for clarity twice.)

The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae—between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. ‘Anthropological Review,’ April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

With respect to the absence of fossil remains, serving to connect man with his ape-like progenitors, no one will lay much stress on this fact who reads Sir C. Lyell’s discussion (19. ‘Elements of Geology,’ 1865, pp. 583- 585. ‘Antiquity of Man,’ 1863, p. 145.), where he shews that in all the vertebrate classes the discovery of fossil remains has been a very slow and fortuitous process. Nor should it be forgotten that those regions which are the most likely to afford remains connecting man with some extinct ape- like creature, have not as yet been searched by geologists.

Places like Answers in Genesis and Harun Yayha quote mine one part of it of it:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. ‘Anthropological Review,’ April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, ** as we may hope**, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

They then read this as meaning Darwin hoped that the civilized races would exterminate the other races. Some say that it means that Darwin thought that baboons and Australians are more related, and on and on. Needless to say, I read it as Darwin getting a bit excited in the H G Wells style and imagining what might happen in the future - that man in a more civilized state (he hopes) than Caucasians might wipe out other races and the great apes, leaving a large, hard to understand gap in the relationship between remaining species. (Edited this one too for clarity.)

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Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that. I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be a dishonest asshole, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the conservative issue the same way.

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Given the mindset of his kind of conservative I’ll bet he and his friends view him as the victim in all this. Forget about all the people he denigrated with his slurs, this will all be about poor little him.

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To further explain:

It’s a blur of eugenics (breeding with with an intent) with the theory of evolution (a passive activity). Basically, they’re trying to use Hitler’s actions to discredit Darwin. It’s a total sham.

In reality, Darwin thought all men were equal or at least cousins because they descended from the same ancestor, and this was in direct opposition to many of his closest allies, in part because he extended that belief to people of color.

“His opposition to slavery in principle is well known, as are his appalled reactions to the evidence of its brutality he encountered on his Beagle voyage, such as the use of thumbscrews to punish slaves, or the man who cowered at his harmless gesture, reflexively anticipating a blow.”

He also encountered truly “savage” peoples in his travels, and when he did, even though he at first had trouble accepting they were like him, “one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures,” he eventually found humanity within them. Desmond and Moore when writing on him say, “believed that the Fuegians were ‘essentially the same’ as himself, ‘fellow creatures’ of one God.” Some men of his time would have only ever thought them apes.

More can be read here:

The most insulting part of the argument is that Darwin’s theories supposedly must be added to atheism to result in the wanton killing of Jews. Hitler wasn’t an atheist (he spoke of belief in a “creator”) and supported what was called “Positive Christianity”. In other words, under strict law, you could only worship the way the leaders chose. So really this is a dual attack against both the theory of evolution and atheism.

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OMGG! In the parlance of the old board game, “Go to the Head of the Class,” this guy needs to go back to Kindergarten!

As an over 50 Liberal / free thinker with many friends in my age and philosophical group - AND seeing many Tea Party adherents in the 40-something and under group - I need to disagree with this over-generalization.

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you have the ability to decide not to do that. I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be a dishonest asshole, but I have the desire not to do that

At least with the conservatives in question that I’ve met, I honestly don’t think they have the built-in self-awareness to muster your ability to not be lying, cheating, self-serving assholes. Their brains aren’t wired that way and they have literally no desire to change themselves. I’ve seen some success with shrooms on one of them but I think that was an anomaly considering he was willing to take shrooms in the first place.

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Evolution doesn’t imply progress, nor is it goal-directed, so it can’t be "making or trying to make a Master Race.

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and that explains why you can’t reason with so many people. The way he blogs actually makes sense to them, in the mind frame they live in.

And that mind frame is why people listen to Lush Rimbaugh and Blenn Geck.

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I’m over 50. And my parents certainly practiced both manipulation and violence (though never cruelty) in the process of programming me for survival in a complex society. Yet, I do not have a lot of beliefs in common with this man. Perhaps you are overgeneralizing.

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Exactly. A separate world, where things look differently and words have different meanings. Alternative reality. Judging it as crazy makes understanding difficult and collaboration impossible.