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From: Socialists made eugenics fashionable (http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=592291 - broken link)
From the opening:
An exhibition of the history of those scientific ideas that gave a grimy intellectual veneer to the Nazi genocide opened recently at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. The collection centres on eugenics, the notion that humanity can be improved and perfected by selective breeding and the elimination of individuals and groups considered to be undesirable. Entitled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, it reveals how it was not thoughtless right-wing thugs as much as writers and scientists, the intellectual elite, who led the movement.
The exhibit is important, accurate but, regrettably, long overdue. It also fails to stress just how much the socialist left initiated and supported the eugenics campaign, not only in Germany but in Britain, the U. S. and the rest of Europe. Playwright George Bernard Shaw, English social democrat leader Sydney Webb and, in Canada, Tommy Douglas were just three influential socialists who called, for example, for the mass sterilization of the handicapped. In his Master's thesis The Problems of the Subnormal Family, the now revered Douglas argued that the mentally and even physically disabled should be sterilized and sent to camps so as not to "infect" the rest of the population.
And a bit further down:
In the United States socialist writer Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and the mother of the abortion movement, called for a radical eugenics approach as early as the first years of the 20th century. She wrote of the need for "a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring. It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization."
The key of civilization. Unlocking the doors of a hell once unimaginable but now, after the Holocaust, the Ukrainian genocide, Pol Pot and Mao's mass slaughter, entirely within the grasp of contemporary sensibilities.
Eugenics was popular with all walks of people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was part of the way of thinking back then.
But it persists today. The rhetoric has changed (due largely to the Holocaust when we saw what the eugenics cult mixed with fascism does), but the argument is still around. And sadly, a lot of it still comes from the left-leaning side of intelligentsia.
That's a good article. Thanks for posting it! The conclusion in particular was very telling:
Of course the 1990s are not the 1920s and 30s, and we have seen what eugenics and fascism can do. If there is to be a new popular eugenics in industrialised countries, it will have to come in disguise. On the other hand, the scientific basis of eugenics is a lot more plausible now. The success of genetics is also fuelling popular genetic determinist attitudes about personality and behaviour that are very similar to those common in the first part of this century.
At least initially, a new eugenics will most likely be a laissez faire eugenics. The dominant concept now is consumer choice in reproduction, an idea unheard of in the 1930s. Although we are unlikely to see a new generation of eugenic activists publicly arguing for such policies, the outcome will tend to be the same. It is rather pointless to debate definitions and whether or not we call this eugenics. The point is that the underlying drive towards control of reproductive mess is still very much alive, and scientific and social conditions are right for this drive to be expressed.
The danger we will need to guard against is the development of a kind of eugenic common sense, that it is irresponsible to refuse to undergo tests, and that every child has the 'right' to a healthy genetic endowment. It may soon become common sense that sex is for fun, but having a baby is a serious matter, not to be left to chance. We will need to be vigilant for eugenics disguised as public health measures.
It is vital that we have an informed public debate about eugenics and where we are going with the new genetics.
EERIE subject, Eugenics !! At one time, it had a certain 'respectability'. There was a time, right here in America, when the "thinking" supported lobotomies for the 'criminally insane' .....and sterilization of "the feeble-minded'. Hard to believe this happened, right here in the USA, not too many decades ago. Such life-changing 'invasive surgery' was actually done, on thousands of people, without their consent.
Its connection with the horrors of Nazi Germany probably went a long way in discrediting much of the 'legitimacy' of Eugenics...but I DO recall reading a very "creepy" article, some years back.
It seemed that in the State of Vermont, "eugenics" had been accepted, just like everywhere, "way back when"...and in the 1990's, someone happened across a huge store of old "info" from the 1920's, stored in a basement, regarding patients and 'cases' in the Vermont 'system'...some of whom had been 'treated' in various ways. It was info that painted a grisly picture of how society dealt with its 'undesirable elements', not all that long ago.
The 'creepy' part was that the lady who worked in the state archives, who helped the authors put together the article, told them (off the record, of course)..."Sounds pretty primitive, I know....and it's chilling to think about. But Vermont is a very small state. There aren't many secrets here...and between you and me, I can tell you that some of those same large families that were considered 'social problems' back then, full of 'undesirables' , the 'feeble minded', and 'wards of the state'...are STILL AROUND today..and a large number of their members are STILL in chronic 'trouble' today, and in need of all sorts of state intervention and assistance"
Interesting footnote, for sure, to a very 'eerie' story. No, the lady (state archives clerk) didn't believe in 'eugenics', and , because Vermont is overwhelmingly white, there doesn't seem to be any 'racial' component to the story...the only point seemed to be that "large, extended families of problematic, violent, trouble-prone members, often persist, generation after generation, more-or-less on the 'fringes' of society"....or something like that.
Makes you sort of 'think', I guess....and wonder just exactly what it all means...
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