One of the first diaries I ever wrote for this community was called "Barefoot, Pregnant and Patriotic." I was pretty naive five years ago. I really never thought that the War on Women could get this bad. I think perhaps it's time to reconsider.
It's always dangerous to cite Nazi Germany in any modern conversation. People think you are just fearmongering. But we are facing a terrible challenge right now. It's almost impossible to convince young women (and young men, of course) what's at stake and "if we don't remember it will happen again."
So please read beyond that little orange squiggle for a short history lesson.
The Nazi movement arose during a severe economic depression. Part was worldwide; part a result of WWI devastation. People who once found it easy to get jobs now were in very tough times. They looked around and said: "Someone is screwing me. It must be that other guy, who looks/acts differently." Of course, the increased mobility of populations after that war sped up demographic changes in Europe, as well, so there were more people who "looked or acted differently" in different communities.
The Nazi party took credit for the first steps toward economic recovery in Europe during the early 1930s. They promised "jobs, jobs, jobs." Economists describe how the business associations and industrial trusts embraced the government and a renewed military/industrial complex" was reborne. You can find the details in most history books.
What's harder to find are the social changes that the Nazi party worked for. There are eerie similiarities in the rhetoric toward women in the 1930s and today. I challenge you to read these quotes and tell me if they were made in 1934 or 2004. (Bracketed edits my own)
Dear...Women and Girls...when we think back on our parents, grandparents and great grandparents, there were many children in the house. It may have been crowded and hard financially, but we were happy, perhaps because there were so many of us in so large a family. But the time came when...a false teaching arose in the last century...The fewer people there are, the more an individual child can inherit from his parents...the terrible teaching of birth control, which [some] preached and the [common people] followed...
Are you selfish, unpatriotic women paying attention yet? Here's the next quote:
[They believe that] only a determination among...women to take up their submissive, motherly roles with a 'military air' and become 'maternal missionaries' will lead the...army to victory...Population is a preoccupation for many...who trade statistics on the falling white birthrate...Every ethnic conflict becomes evidence for their worldview...The motivations aren't always racist, but the subtext of 'race suicide' is often there...out-and-out offensive against birth control...selfish white women...[do not] honor their duty to bear children for the nation.
No, the first isn't Pat Buchanan and the second Rick Santorum. The first quote is from: Dr. Groß, "Nationalsozialistische Rassenpolitik. Eine Rede an die deutschen Frauen (Dessau, C. Dünnhaupt, 1934). The entire document was the basis of the start of the Holocaust. The second, a cogent description of the "Quiverfull" movement today, from The Nation in 2007! (Think "Dougen Family")
So what's fueling the drive to force (white, Anglo-saxon) women to have more babies today? It's a combination of the tough economic times and the census, of course.
Non-Hispanic whites make up roughly 65% of the U.S. population, down from 69% in 2000. Hispanics had a 16% share, compared with 13% a decade ago.
Whites aren't in the minority everywhere yet but they are in many areas, and may be a true minority by the middle of the century. Those who "barely made it through high school" can no longer be assured of hiring preference because of how they look. Those who get and keep jobs today must be smarter, work harder and more steadily!
So the drowning relics of the 1950s reach for the "life ring" of population re-growth. They also isolate their children from the realities of diversity by creating sham charter schools, home school groups and private schools where real science and real history are ignored. These schools don't give kids employability skills, but they insure that the kid to the right and left of your child will look and probably think the way you do.
It's eerie that "libertarians" like Ron Paul and Constitution junkies like Michelle Bachmann can skip over the parts of the Constitution that insure our privacy, work for the reversal of SCOTUS decisions on privacy like Griswold, and sanction government not only knocking down our bedroom doors but invading the very bodies of young women.
Our challenge is to try to convince today's young women--who may not be motivated to vote--that this is not a story about their grandmothers, but about them and their daughters.