Thomas Malthus Cited by Discovery Channel HQ Gunman

By Jason Boog 

200px-Thomas_Malthus.jpgA gunman named James Lee has taken hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters in Maryland. Many news organizations attribute this webpage to the gunman.

The webpage urges the Discovery Channel to celebrate the work of Thomas Malthus and Charles Darwin. Malthus published many works about population control, a subject that obsessed the person who composed the webpage. Project Gutenberg features a free eBook version of the Malthus book, “An Essay on the Principle of Population.”

Here is an excerpt: “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second. By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.”


UPDATE: Reader Ron reminds us that the gunman also cited author Daniel Quinn. Mediaite already has a feature about his work.