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Eugenics,Then and Now
CatholicExchange.com ^ | 10-07-06 | Ken Concannon

Posted on 10/07/2006 8:02:41 PM PDT by 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.)



TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: abortion; catholic; crevolist; culture; eugenics; nazis; racesupremacy; wars
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To: Coleus; nickcarraway; narses; Mr. Silverback; Canticle_of_Deborah; TenthAmendmentChampion; ...
Pro-Life PING

Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.

61 posted on 10/10/2006 4:47:18 PM PDT by cpforlife.org (A Catholic Respect Life Curriculum is available at KnightsForLife.org)
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To: 69ConvertibleFirebird; Alexander Rubin; An American In Dairyland; Antoninus; Aquinasfan; ...

Moral Absolutes Ping.

Some history of the eugenics movement and its current manifestations.

It is the ultimate materialistic viewpoint. Only stuff you can measure with instruments or see with the eyes exists; only things you can weigh and measure are of value.

The human soul? God? Love? To rabid materialists, they are worthless phantasmagoria.

When people are measured up against others (or some artificial standard) to judge their worth, watch out! Sooner or later we'll all fail the test.

What these people need to know is that every soul is valuable to God, and we have no right to judge that some are unworthy to live. [Outside of commiting a capital crime.]

Freepmail wagglebe and/or little jeremiah (me!) if you want on/off this pinglist.

Note: Funny how many peoples' idea of "success" goes right along with the eugenicists' idea of worth - good looks, money in the bank, high IQ, power, envied career and possessions. None of these actually make a person deeply happy inside, and they are all ephemeral.


62 posted on 10/10/2006 7:42:42 PM PDT by little jeremiah
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Oo[s - I spelled wagglebee's name wrong. It's WAGGLEBEE!


63 posted on 10/10/2006 7:47:20 PM PDT by little jeremiah
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To: Salvation
This is a good article. Also recommend the book, "Fatal Fruit". It goes into this in some detail. As stated Galton was a younger cousin of Charles DArwin. Galton stated that he developed this theory of social Darwinism which was widely adopted in Germany and in America in the early 1900s'. Ernst Haeckel propagated the theory of eugenics as it applied to the theory of natural selection with a little help from his friends. This was happening in Germany between 1903 and 1917. Hitler was a devote of Darwin and at once proposed it be applied soas by race, Hitler was moved deeply. With the social hatred for what Hitler called mongrel Jews without a homeland, Hitler, once he ascended to power in 1933, he borrowed heavily from Haeckel, using his exact phrases to bring thousands to their feet with his ability at oratory. Because Germany had developed harsh resentment after the Versaille treaty, the countrymen of Germany were ripe for the picking. Once Hitler ascended to power, he immediately put policies of eugenics to sterilize defectives. This soon, very soon gave way to the adoption of "mercy killing", not unlike what we did in Florida to a helpless, "defective". Now, asserting the penicle of phylogenetic developement the National Socialist Party determined by law to euthenize Poles, Gypsies, and Jews. They began the killing with soldiers, who used rifles. The Nazi leadership rapidly saw this demoralized the loyal soldier and developed a method of asphyxiation with automobile engines. But not until that "wonderful" day in history when in one day by gunfire, 33,371 men, women, and children, mostly Jewish, at the Babi Yar ravine in the Ukraine. Until this moment did the Nazis' realize that they could not kill them fast enough with bullets. As the SS stated, "What was utmost in my mind at the time of the shootings were the great strain on the men involved and this strain should be relieved by the gas-vans." In all, 11 to 14 million people were executed as a linear result of Darwin's theory of Evolution which gave rise to Galtons theory of Social Darwinism (eugenics=right living) and Ernst Haekel recommendations to apply Darwinian socialism to Germany, Europe, and the World.

This is the natural selection and law of the fittest appied. As you know, Charles Darwin, a divinity graduate and naturalist, developed his theory from seeds planted in his mind by his grandfather Eurasmus Darwin. On the Beagle he dispatched his understanding of Christianity and actively tried to develpe a substitute for God. This is what he did and you may read it in his own notes if you go to Cambridge University.

We are living the result of his rebellion against truth. We destroyed the perveyers of this desired conquest by the Ayreans in the second World War only to see it insidiously, like a cancer overtake this country, and all of Europe. Placing man on the same plane with animals means man can be treated as an animal. We are all witness to the fruit of this poisonous tree.

Today when evolutionists are questioned as to how Darwinian evolution gave birth to Hitlers' Nazism, they immediately want to beg the question, answering that facism has nothing to do with science,... but it has everything to to with racism...that fact is undisputed and irrefutable.

The moral or metaphysical nature of man is denied, and this denial mires one in his own folly. This link of moral to organic man, once disposed of can only result in this natural degration of the law of survival of the fittest as applied to man and nations. There is no other direction to take. Euphemeisms seem to be a useful tool to excuse, what people in their heart (soul) knows is evil. Repeating a lies seems to work well, as well as mass affirmations of those lies. It renders comfort, where comfort cannot reside otherwise.

So, the next time you cuddle up to your wife and tell her that you love her, be sure to tell that that statement means nothing more than if you had said "I have a pain" or "I have an itch." Remember you said every biological activity is the result of evolutionary natural selection and the knowlege that you love your wife is meaningless.

Other than these thoughts all is well with the human race. Just look around and keep telling yourself that. Ask others to tell you that. I tell you that you were made in the image of your maker, and are spritual creatures and accountable to God.

64 posted on 10/10/2006 8:29:32 PM PDT by Texas Songwriter
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To: little jeremiah

Thanks for the post. Interesting, and frightening article.


65 posted on 10/10/2006 9:33:36 PM PDT by SoldierDad (Proud Father of a 10th Mountain Division Soldier fighting in Mahmudiyah)
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To: SoldierDad

It is a companion article to this one, and if you have time, you can note some of the debate on the thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1716607/posts?page=74
Artificial Reproduction a “Grave Moral Evil” Says Archbishop Burke

Artificial reproduction means "designer babies", choosing the sex, choosing the "best" ones, and throwing away the lesser ones. It is part and parcel of the same evil.


66 posted on 10/11/2006 9:05:48 AM PDT by little jeremiah
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