Apple-Pie Eugenics: War Against the Weak

BreakPoint ^ | 2 Oct 03 | Chuck Colson

[Mr. Silverback]

See if you can guess the source of this quote. "It is better for all the world . . . [if] society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles is enough."

If you think that this quote came from a Nazi document, you're wrong. It's from Oliver Wendell Holmes's 1927 majority opinion in BUCK V. BELL that upheld a Virginia law mandating the sterilization of the "feebleminded."

Twenty years later, Holmes's words were thrown back in our face by Nazi defendants in the Nuremberg trials. You see, while the Nazis' worst crimes may have ended at Auschwitz, they "began on Long Island."

That's the conclusion of a new book, WAR AGAINST THE WEAK: EUGENICS AND AMERICA'S CAMPAIGN TO CREATE A MASTER RACE written by Edwin Black, who contends that American "corporate philanthropies helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele."

Eugenics, which literally means "good birth," originally referred to the use of selective breeding to "improve" the human race. Of course, what was meant by "improve" reflected the racism and bigotry of the eugenicists. Blacks, Jews, Eastern and Southern Europeans, the retarded, and even people with brown hair were the targets of the "improvers."

Thus, between 1900 and the mid-sixties, "hundreds of thousands of Americans . . . were not permitted to continue their families by reproducing." Black compares it to "ethnic cleansing," and he's right.

The tools of American eugenics included forcible sterilization, commitment to mental institutions, prohibitions against marriage, and even dissolution of already existing marriages. One Michigan legislator went so far as to introduce a bill calling for the electrocution of severely retarded infants.

Eventually, American eugenics, with help from the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, Margaret Sanger, and others, found its way to Germany. While "Nazi eugenics quickly outpaced American eugenics in both velocity and ferocity," Black writes, the connection between the two was never lost. As one American eugenicist told the Richmond TIMES-DISPATCH, "the Germans are beating us at our own game."

The Holocaust and other crimes of the Third Reich made eugenics a bad word, and the American connection was quickly swept under the rug. But the attempt to play God "never really stopped."

Today it takes the form of "human genomic science and corporate globalization." Instead of racist declarations, we have "polished PR campaigns" that hold out the promises of biotech: miracle cures and ever-increasing life expectancies.

While the word eugenics is never used, that's what it is. We are intent on eliminating "imperfection" from the gene pool. Even today, children whose "deformities" are discovered in utero are rarely permitted to be born. And as genetic technology improves, the list of those whom Black calls the "never-born" will continue to expand.

If the "abolition of man" is to be stopped, this story must be told. Christians need to pull the truth about eugenics out from underneath the rug and hold it up as a reminder of where playing God leads us. Six decades of denial is enough.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

My grandma will not go to a hospital to this day. The reason is that she saw her sister-in-law and her sister go in to have their babies and come out with hysterectomies.

I suppose we should be thankful that the doctor was content just to sterilize them.

[RichardMoore]

Eugenics in the USA is the direct result of Industrial Capitalism. By the turn of the century in 1900 the major newspapers were all owned or controlled by those who had control over industry. They realized that they could not afford to pay one man enough to have a large family so they set about to convincing the common man to have smaller families. They began promoting easy divorce, contraception and abortion, all things that the Rich were able to obtain were offered to the average Joe and Jane.

Knee-jerk accusations of Socialism should be checked at the door. We have Socialism and Capitalism coexisting in great harmony; something else that Chesterton predicted. I am no Socialist, nor a capitalist. I'm a "wage slave" like most folks today. The answers reside in some exercising of some intellectual muscles that are generally subordinated to imagination. It should be the other way around.

My debt to FJ Sheed should be acknowledged.

[RichardMoore]

Now don't get your buns in an uproar, I thought that you might be interested. The connection with good old American freethinking is what is interesting here. I say that it is also connected with "private"{it's hardly private any more} enterprise.

[Zack Nguyen]

But population control is really separate issue from eugenics.

As far as being separate activities, you may be right, though the two are sometimes tied together. Both result in fewer children from the poor. Both stem from a humanistic belief that some people (usually people that look different from us and live in a different part of town) shouldn't be a burden on the rest of us.

http://www.pop.org

[Lorianne]

I'd rather do that than live in a country where the government can violate people's bodies at will.

[Trailerpark Badass]

I'd rather do that than live in a country where the government can violate people's bodies at will.

I'd rather live in a country that does neither.

[Desdemona]

I used to work in a major medical school library. There were serials on eugenics, all of which stopped publishing in the 40's. Hmmm....

There was a lot of medical material at the time, too. It was a hot topic.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Perhaps you haven't noticed that poor people the world over have significantly higher birth rates than wealthier people. Better educated (read wealthier) people have practiced "population control" on themselves first, because they are able to see its tremendous positive impact on quality of life. When they suggest that poor people should try the same thing, this isn't an effort to oppress poor people, any more than when wealthier, better educated people suggest that poor, uneducated people should be encouraged and helped to stay in school longer.

Other people's poverty and ignorance are burdens on the wealthy and educated, only to the extent that the wealthy and educated choose to take on those burdens; poverty and ignorance are burdens on the poor and ignoratnt no matter what.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Up to a point (as long as the fetus is still dependent exclusively on the mother for survival), I'd say the power to end a life should rest with the people who started it (or just the mother, if the father is the sort who can't be located).

But all sorts of eugenic practices can be implemented without abortion (and some of the worst have not involved abortion -- Hitler wasn't exactly known for his abortion programs), so as far as I'm concerned eugenics and abortion are separate issues.

[GovernmentShrinker]

It's pretty scary how the whole topic got brutally censored. I have a decent size collection of eugenics books, most of which were discarded by college libraries which completely purged the whole subject, so that now students can't find a single positive word about eugenics -- it's all "eugenics is what the Nazis did, so we must never say anything good about it ever".

Interestingly the other eugenics books in my collection were inherited from the former owners of my house, a working class black couple bent on self-improvement and the improvement of their children (two now 55-60ish daughters, both college educated professionals, who I met at the closing).

[xzins]

Most people don't think about it, but the mixture of socialism and capitalism is summed up by George Will's equation: private profit and public expense. This is the hallmark of Hitler's national socialism. I'm not one to cry nazism at everything I see, but the combination you speak of is the same formula that describes the economic plan of national socialism. The private profit enriched both the state and the "ubermensch" who became the oligarchy that ran the socialist party. The public expense was exactly that.

[RichardMoore]

I can't believe it! We are finally in agreement. Do you know how few people can accept this equation? I realize, of course that we probably agree on more things than this. Chesterton's book on Eugenics is a shock to read. He said big business and big government would join forces against the common man back in the 1920's. He is really worth reading. His books can be found at chesterton.org for free, and at ignatius.com for sale.

It really is quite unnerving to try to talk sense to many of the rah-rah neocons in this site.

[xzins]

We are in agreement! Hallelujah. (We need to mark this down.)

Actually, we are in more agreement than we know. We both believe in the Son of God, the blessed 2nd Person of the Trinity.

That makes us brothers.

X

[RichardMoore]

Amen, you are my brother in Christ!

[fatima]

Bump.

[TopQuark]

No matter what the topic, anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism have to be plugged in:

WAR AGAINST THE WEAK: EUGENICS AND AMERICA'S CAMPAIGN TO CREATE A MASTER RACE written by Edwin Black,

America's campaign? Was this sanctioned by the government or had analmost universal support of the population? Of course not. The title is a smear.

who contends that American "corporate philanthropies helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele."

Another smear. Corporate philanthropies fund research, and at the time that was research. The athor makes it sound as if corporations themselves were interested in killing the weak.

Today it takes the form of "human genomic science and corporate globalization."

Croporate globalization and eugenics? The man is an immoral moron.

[TopQuark]

I agree. It is interesting how "population control" is only utilized on poor areas - Africa and assorted third world areas. The elites want fewer poor around.

Your anger leads to haste.

Firstly, there is no need for population control among the "wealthy" because these peoples do not reproduce: both Europe and white America declines in population for over 30 years.

Secondly, even if they did not, the educated people tend to be more responsible about giving birth than the largely uneducated populations of Africa and Asia.

Thirdly, there is nothing elitist about not wanting to raise someone else's babies. When Africa can feed itself, let is have as many people as it wants. Now, you seem to have a chip on your shoulder and do not know what you mean by "elites."

[Zack Nguyen]

None of the reasons you listed give me permission, as an educated white man, to stop a poor African or Asian from having babies. This is done by coercion or trickery in some countries. It is wrong to seek to control others in that way.