Tommy Douglas

I was browsing through some recent history and came across this little gem:

Surely the continued policy of allowing the subnormal family to bring in to the world large numbers of individuals to fill our jails and mental institutions and to live upon charity is one of consummate folly.

The idea behind the quote is that the mentally feeble reproduce more than the intelligent. The quote itself is from Tommy Douglas, the first leader of the NDP from his master's thesis The Problems of the Subnormal Family. It's outlined here in the National Post. Interesting, shocking material that's not often discussed. He did not try to implement these policies later in life, and when the thesis was published (1933) he was in his late 20s, old enough to have a balanced opinion.

Also in 1968 he described homosexuality as "a mental illness, it's a psychiatric condition, which ought to be treated sympathetically by psychiatrists and social workers".

Then again, he was advocating that gays not be thrown in prison (homosexuality was then implicitly a crime in Canada). Moral relativism it would appear. Strangely when I googled "Tommy Douglas homosexuality" I found a bunch of blog posts about these quotes but less-so by media outlets. Anyhow, this is a bit late to unearth something know for so long. Still, he's father of medicare but maybe not the greatest guy that ever lived.