Posted on 12/17/2016 6:03:11 PM PST by ProgressingAmerica
Here's something I do not understand:
The very same people who blast Margaret Sanger, and inevitably bring up the fact that she supported eugenics, will then turn around and defend Theodore Roosevelt with the deepest sincerity knowing full well that Theodore Roosevelt also supported eugenics. Somehow TR is a good progressive, but MS is a bad progressive. How is this possible?!?!?!???? In my book, there are no good progressives and I think every last one of them ought to be thrown out onto the ash heap of history.
What follows are two quotes, and I defy anybody - anybody to off of the top of their head(no googling! no peeking!) tell me which quote is from Margaret Sanger, and which one is from Theodore Roosevelt. Neither quote is a work of fiction. To the untrained eye, you cannot tell the difference.
Who said it? Margaret Sanger or Theodore Roosevelt? It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding. Any group of farmers who permitted their best stock not to breed, and let all the increase come from the worst stock, would be treated as fit inmates for an asylum.
Who said it? Margaret Sanger or Theodore Roosevelt? If plants, and livestock as well, require space and air, sunlight and love, children need them even more. The only real wealth of our country lies in the men and women of the next generation. A farmer would rather produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts. How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan?
I will admit, when I learned of TR’s support for the eugenics movement, my respect for him diminished.
However, the philosophy of eugenics and utilitarianism was popular during that time. Many people, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Margaret Sanger, TR, and others were adherents to it. That doesn’t make it right of course.
The philosopher G. K. Chesterton was actively opposed to eugenics and regularly called out the flawed thinking of its proponents.
Not a fair point. Both quotes express simple barnyard logic that would be familiar to a country mostly composed of farmers. At the time, such sentiments were also consistent with Darwin’s supposedly advanced scientific reasoning about a “favoured race.”
Bfl
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