[wagglebee]

...a typical misunderstanding of natural selection. "Fitter" doesn't imply superiority in ways other than being more fit to survive and reproduce the genes.

I agree with you (which I'm sure surprises you as much as it does me); however, I think that Francis Galton, Leonard Darwin and certainly Margaret Sanger saw it differently.

In a strict Darwinian sense, physical strength is arguably far more important than intelligence; however, this is no longer true in the today's world and this was the angle that the eugenicists pursued.

[mamelukesabre]

A tribe only needs one “wise man”(or woman) to lift the whole tribe up to a higher level of intelligence. So the intelligence of the individual isn't important, so long as at least one person in the clan has it. Of course cooperation and discipline is needed too.

This is how I see it at least.

A small number of very intelligent individuals commanding unlimited hordes of fierce, loyal, primitive, idiots is a formidable force.

[Gondring]

I agree with you (which I'm sure surprises you as much as it does me); however, I think that Francis Galton, Leonard Darwin and certainly Margaret Sanger saw it differently.

I'm not so sure that Margaret Sanger saw it differently...she was deathly afraid of the "undesirables" reproducing at a faster rate than the "desirables"...she definitely saw the "danger" of "survival of the fittest" meaning "most likely to reproduce." That's why she pushed so hard for birth control.

I once spent some long hours going through roll after roll of microfilm, and printed the first in a series of my findings, before the publisher squashed it. The excerpts were too inflamatory.

[Gondring]

Oops...I meant to say that I went through rolls of microfilm, reading Birth Control Review.

Sanger was a very strong proponent of negative eugenics.