blacktext wrote:
What makes people uneasy is the direction that public policy will take to reflect Sarko's brand of thinking. Such as - why should the state spend money on prevention if criminals, cancer patients, and the suicidal are born and not made?
To be clear, I don't know everything about Sarkozy and his thoughts on this, however my personal feeling is that people are born with chararistics, but also have the ability to make choices in life, and to adapt. Now, the questions as to how prone a person is in one direction or another in a given area will vary from one person to another.
Now that I have this article again I believe it to be rather vague and over-presumptive.
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Is this Nicolas Sarkozy claiming that adolescent suicides and paedophilia are genetically predetermined? There’s no hint of a hoax about it.
Not exactly, he claimed what he claimed (in a free-flowing conversation) that caused him to apparently apologize although I can't find the quote to that apology.
He said, "“I disagree; I am inclined personally to think that people are born paedophiles, and that it is a problem that we do not know how to treat this pathology." Now here he says that people are "born paedophiles." Later, in regards to smokers, that "Our circumstances are not the only factor, what is inborn in us plays a huge part.” Now perhaps he views philological determination differently then psychological determination. Or perhaps he mispoke. Or perhaps he, to put it simplistically, that people are "born paedophiles." I have watched enough criminal documentaries to understand he would not be alone it this belief.
Let's move forward.
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For five years now the presidential candidate has shown himself to be a keen supporter of behaviourist theories, developed in particular in the US.
OK, now the article must establish this is the case. After explaining what it beliefs "behaviorist theories" to be it says...
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Without saying as much, Nicolas Sarkozy clearly follows this line of thought.
Oh! That does make it easier to say doesn't it.
Reporter: Hi, Bob Dole. Do you support X?
Bob Dole: No.
Reporter: Are you a racist?
Bob Dole: No.
Reporter: But doesn't the fact you don't support X mean you are a racist?
Bob Dole: No, I support X because of A, B, and C.
Reporter: Hmm...I'm think your a racist.
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He has already shown this same “social Darwinism” with the “Domestic Security” law of March 18th 2003. “Under this law, prostitutes, beggars, the homeless and youths from the suburbs are punished as though they are delinquents, thus turning penal violence back on the victims of social violence”, observed the French magistrate Évelyne Sire-Marin. In the same vein, the 2004 report by the UMP deputy Jacques-Alain Benisti aimed to establish a pseudo-scientific “graph of a youth’s deviation from the correct path.” The real future of a delinquent, starting out, very young, with trouble speaking French, ends up, as an adult, committing “robbery with violence”…
This essentially argues that the policy of putting criminals in jail is the same as Social Darwinism. Since am a Social Darwinism, but I believe in putting criminals in jail is a good way of fighting crime let me assure you that the two are not fundamentally equal by default. Similarly, attempting to analyze where and how crime emanates is not Social Darwinism but part of the Social Sciences. Such tools are vital if crime fighting, and have been used by non-Social Darwinists in this country for years.
Non-English speaking immigrant populations to the United States generally did have a higher crime rate then the native-born population. The same has been the case in France. Over time the crime rates dropped as encouragements to assimilate and natural inclinations to do the same took their effects.
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Without developing entirely this reasoning, Nicolas Sarkozy has attempted, over many long months, to establish in early drafts of the bill for the “Prevention of delinquency”, the principle of an “early detection of behavioural problems which may lead to delinquency” in all 3 year-olds. He was supported in this goal by the infamous report produced by INSERM, the French National Institute for Medical Research. Published in 2005, it advocated studying children from the age of three or four years for “predictive” signs of a future delinquency. Among these, “emotional coldness”, “unruliness”, “impulsiveness”, or any other “indications of low morality”…
I take no position on this without further information.
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Faced with the powerful mobilisation of the collective behind the “Pas de zero de conduite” petition which opposed this measure, the ex-interior minister has finally dropped it, at least for the time being. As for INSERM, the institute was rebuked on the 6th of February, by the CCNE, the French National Consultative Bioethics Committee. “The history of science shows us the futility of attempting to reduce the determination of an individual’s future to such and such criteria”, wrote the CCNE. A point of view which clearly, Nicolas Sarkozy has not considered.
Here is a link to the CCNE report. From a cursory review of it, although I have not read the recommendation by Sarkozy, I have some doubts at to the credibility of the report. Again, I take no position of the measure itself.
08 May 2007, 7:49 pm
