Eugenics,Then and Now

CatholicExchange.com ^ | 10-07-06 | Ken Concannon

[Salvation]

by Ken Concannon

Other Articles by Ken Concannon

Eugenics,Then and Now

10/07/06

		One of the sorriest episodes in the 230-year history of our country is the eugenics craze that swept through America in the early decades of the last century. Endorsed by the intellectual elite and our most prominent citizens, the eugenics movement was responsible for racial, class and ethnic intolerance as well as civil rights violations that would be totally unconscionable in today’s politically correct American culture.
In This Article... They Breed Horses, Don’t They? By Any Other Name An Attack on People of Color

They Breed Horses, Don’t They?

Yet we rarely write about it, don’t talk about it, and, as best I can tell, Hollywood has never dramatized the horror of eugenic influence on our society when the craze was at its peak 80 years ago. My guess is the average American never heard of the eugenics movement. Why is that? I suspect it’s because eugenics, operating under a variety of names, is still very much alive and well in our society.

Eugenics was a term invented during the 19th century by an Englishman, Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton believed that much of the world’s societal problems — criminal activity, sexual promiscuity, even poverty — were inherited traits passed from one generation of unfortunates to another. Using statistical data to prove his theories, he argued that the weaker classes were reproducing themselves at faster rates than responsible citizens, and that if we didn’t do something about them their alarming fecundity would soon weaken the human race.

To stem the tide of rapidly reproducing unfortunates, Galton argued that the same techniques used to produce thoroughbred horses and efficient hunting dogs should be applied to the human race. Fortunately for the British, Galton’s eugenic theories did not fall on fertile soil in his native land, but across the Atlantic, American scientists and social reformers took Galton’s eugenics pronouncements very, very seriously.

By Any Other Name

Alarmed by the influx of non-Nordic immigrants to our shores, by rising crime rates and growing slums in American cities, many in the American “better classes” fell for the new “science” hook, line and sinker. The result was a 1924 immigration act designed to keep non-Nordic types from our shores, laws in 30 states that permitted the forced sterilization of so-called “feebleminded” unfortunates who found themselves wards of those states, the awful 1927 Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision that affirmed the constitutionality of the sterilization laws, and a stain on the American soul that has yet to disappear.

Thanks to the enthusiastic embrace of eugenics by the Nazis prior to and during World War II, very few Americans and no politicians dare refer to themselves as supporters of eugenic theory these days. But though the word is rarely spoken, eugenic by-products, ranging from the positive to the very negative, are still very much a part of our culture.

On the positive side, eugenicists were the first to look for hereditary causes for diseases like alcoholism, cancer and Huntington’s chorea. Francis Galton’s statistical methodology, including development of the bell curve, revolutionized scientific research in a variety of disciplines.

On the “jury is still out” side, eugenicists were the first to think of intelligence testing. Of course, their reason for the testing was to determine whom to sterilize. Their targets were “morons.” “Moron” was a term first employed by the eugenicist Henry Goddard to distinguish “idiots” (people so retarded they couldn’t talk) and “imbeciles” (adults who functioned at the level of a 4-year-old) from seemingly normal adults with a mental age raging from 7 to 12 years old. Eugenicists believed that “morons,” while passing for normal, were incapable of making intelligent life choices, especially on matters related to procreation.

An Attack on People of Color

On the negative side, the Buck v. Bell decision, according to Harry Bruinius in his excellent book, Better for All the World, has never been overturned. In fact, following World War II, after many states had repealed their sterilization laws, a number of lawsuits were filed by the victims of those laws. None of them succeeded, thanks to Buck v. Bell.

Still on the negative side, eugenic thinking has permeated the abortion movement from its earliest days. Planned Parenthood, founded by the raving eugenicist, Margaret Sanger, targeted black neighborhoods for her “family planning” clinics 80 years ago, and her evil empire has been doing it ever since. This is probably why African-American women account for a disproportionately large share of all abortions performed in this country, and why the focus of Planned Parenthood’s international “family planning” efforts are Third-World countries.

Inherent in this country’s concerns about overpopulation, in the growing euthanasia movement, and in the “unwanted child” rhetoric of the abortion industry, is the eugenic concept that the world would be a better place if the most unfortunate among us were not in it. That is a very unfortunate worldview.


Ken Concannon is a freelance writer from All Saints Parish in Manassas, Virginia.

(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)

[Salvation]

I'm not a science type, but this article was an eye opener to me. I guess I always thought that the Nazi regime and his ideas of race supremacy were Hitler's idea alone.

Go ahead and discuss this -- I just am not that well versed in this.

Is there a scientific or ethics ping list? Also the author touches on abortion. I'll ping those list keepers.

[Salvation]

You may want to weigh in here and/or ping your lists.

[Salvation]

Catholic Discussion Ping!

Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Catholic Discussion Ping List.

[LiteKeeper]

Planned Parenthood is a direct descendant of the eugenics movement!

[fieldmarshaldj]

"Endorsed by the intellectual elite and our most prominent citizens, the eugenics movement was responsible for racial, class and ethnic intolerance as well as civil rights violations that would be totally unconscionable in today’s politically correct American culture."

[Clemenza]

This may get me in alot of trouble, but I feel that there is nothing wrong with Eugenics.

The problem is when certain people take it and twist what should be an objective science into an excuse to prove their own "racial" supremacy. This was done, btw, by folks as diverse as Woodrow Wilson and Marcus Garvey, to say nothing of Adolf.

[doc1019]

If hitler had had any progeny they would be called “Planned Parenthood”.

[DBrow]

Margaret Sanger was a prominent American proponent of eugenics, though she tried to avoid racial overtones.

Her stated goal was to eliminate hereditary diseases that seemed to be tied to race, like sickle-cell anemia in Blacks or Tay-Sachs in Jews, as well as reduce the number of diabetics and retarded people (no, there is no connection).

She lost it after WW II when she proposed camps for stupid people, where they'd need to get sterilized to leave.

She's the founder of Planned Parenthood, which is one reason her name and eugenics does not come up too often in the MSM.

There is lots and lots of information about the eugenics movement out there- the Fabians in the UK were tied up in it, one of the outcomes of that was "Brave New World".

Like the article suggests, I don't think the movement is entirely dead yet. One recent incarnation was called Social Ecology, iirc.

Hitler's ideas were far from original and mostly derivative from the ideas floating around Europe and America. Since his defeat, eugenics has been understandably unpopular as a political stance since he took it to a very unpleasant extreme.

[Kuksool]

The sad part is that if someone tries to educate minorities about Maragaret Sanger it is deemed racist by the PC police.

[MrNationalist]

The new lure will be Transgenics. Using human and animal DNA to help treat conditions and create 'enhanced' humans.

Thus creating 'non humans', for if your made up of nonhuman material are you still human?

[DBrow]

Here is Sanger's A Plan For Peace

Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which is now called Planned Parenthood

...........................................

A Plan for Peace
by MARGARET SANGER

First, put into action President Wilson's fourteen points, upon which terms Germany and Austria surrendered to the Allies in 1918.

Second, have Congress set up a special department for the study of population problems and appoint a Parliament of Population, the directors representing the various branches of science: this body to direct and control the population through birth rates and immigration, and to direct its distribution over the country according to national needs consistent with taste, fitness and interest of individuals. The main objects of the Population Congress would be:

a. to raise the level and increase the general intelligence of population.

b. to increase the population slowly by keeping the birth rate at its present level of fifteen per thousand, decreasing the death rate below its present mark of 11 per thousand.

c. to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.

d. to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.

e. to insure the country against future burdens of maintenance for numerous offspring as may be born of feebleminded parents, by pensioning all persons with transmissible disease who voluntarily consent to sterilization.

f. to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.

g. to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.

The first step would thus be to control the intake and output of morons, mental defectives, epileptics.

The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct.

Having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense---defending the unborn against their own disabilities.

The third step would be to give special attention to the mothers' health, to see that women who are suffering from tuberculosis, heart or kidney disease, toxic goitre, gonorrhea, or any disease where the condition of pregnancy disturbs their health are placed under public health nurses to instruct them in practical, scientific methods of contraception in order to safeguard their lives---thus reducing maternal mortality.

The above steps may seem to place emphasis on a health program instead of on tariffs, moratoriums and debts, but I believe that national health is the first essential factor in any program for universal peace.

With the future citizen safeguarded from hereditary taints, with five million mental and moral degenerates segregated, with ten million women and ten million children receiving adequate care, we could then turn our attention to the basic needs for international peace.

There would then be a definite effort to make population increase slowly and at a specified rate, in order to accommodate and adjust increasing numbers to the best social and economic system.

In the meantime we should organize and join an International League of Low Birth Rate Nations to secure and maintain World Peace.

Summary of address before the New History Society, January 17th, New York City

[fieldmarshaldj]

I educated my former fiancee about PP, and that she, as one of mixed-race heritage (Asian/Hispanic/Caucasian/Native American, et al) was exactly the person that genocidal racists like Sanger wanted exterminated before birth. She'll never forget that.

[Rocko]

Here's a previous FR link. Unfortunately, the original link is no longer active....

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a7dd3740515.htm

[Doctor Stochastic]

Plato admired Sparta's version of eugenics.

[Salvation]

I would have to agree with you here.

[bws53]

Rent Judgment at Nuremburg when you have time. The best part of the movie is when Maximillan Schell (defense lawyer) quotes Virginia law and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

[Salvation]

With cloning is this already happening??

Very frightening to me.

[endthematrix]

Point?

[Salvation]

Thanks, Rocko.

Planned Parenthood's Founder: A racist

[endthematrix]

There is a problem with a possible mutation of some sort with animal part transplants. Also, our government is working on "enhancing" humans through various means. Strength, mental capacity, eliminating fatigue...you get the picture.