Exactly!
Eugenics is alive and well, it has simply been "rebranded" to make it more acceptable to the public.
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” Eugenics is alive and well, it has simply been “rebranded” to make it more acceptable to the public. “
Yep
The Germans were great at engineering ‘perfect human bodies’.
However, the ‘mind’ is another thing.
“I dont want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people who I might want to kill I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board just as he might come before the income tax commissioner and say every 5 years or every 7 years just put them there and say , ‘Sir or madam will you be kind enough to justify your existence if youre not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little bit more then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive. Because your life does not benefit us and it cant be of very much use to yourself.’”
-George Bernard Shaw
“In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”
- Jacques Cousteau, 1991 UNESCO courier
a petty thief isn't a mass murderer, either, but both are related by the practice of malice.
“I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feebleminded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them
The emphasis should be laid on getting desirable people to breed
”
Roosevelt, Twisted Eugenics, in The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, op. cit., National Edition, XII, p. 201.
I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing
War
has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full
The state of affairs might be somewhat unpleasant, but what of that? Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other peoples
There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority
- Bertrand Russell, THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY 1953
“IN THE 1920s and 1930s, scientists from both the political left and right would not have found the idea of designer babies particularly dangerous though of course they would not have used that phrase. Today, I suspect that the idea is too dangerous for comfortable discussion, and my conjecture is that Adolf Hitler is responsible for the change.
Nobody wants to be caught agreeing with that monster, even in a single particular. The spectre of Hitler has led some scientists to stray from “ought” to “is” and deny that breeding for human qualities is even possible. But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability? Objections such as “these are not one-dimensional abilities” apply equally to cows, horses and dogs and never stopped anybody in practice.
I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitlers death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasnt the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?”
-
Richard Dawkins
“No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child
without a permit for parenthood.”
- Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) in her proposed The American Baby Code, intended to become law.
“The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
- Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.
“The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members.”
John Maynard Keynes
“Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes.”
Margaret Sanger
The Pivot of Civilization
“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind....Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Buck v. Bell (1927)
U.S. Supreme Court
May 2, 1927
“A prevention of the faculty and opportunity to procreate on the part of the physically degenerate and mentally sick, over the period of only six hundred years, would not only free humanity from an immeasurable misfortune, but would lead to a recovery which today seems scarcely conceivable.”
Adolf Hitler
Mein Kampf (English translation)
This is so punctuated with errors it is hard to know where to begin. To start with, the very definition of eugenics is in error.
It is based on the rudimentary understanding of genetics that began with Gregor Mendel in the 19th Century, combined with the farmer’s knowledge of how to improve plants and animals with selective breeding.
This meant two things: some horrific diseases were actually *inherited* from parents, and if people could figure out how and why, they might avoid having their children so cursed; and, as with farm animals, might it be possible to breed a better person? Smarter, stronger, faster, healthier, etc?
So, for example, in the 1920s, Germans were intensely interested in separated at birth identical twins, to try and find out deductively traits they had in common and traits their learned in their upbringing. Thus started the debate of “nature vs. nurture”, which continues today.
However, on top of this was the dark side of eugenics, that was even more widely embraced: that if you want to breed good people, you have to prevent bad people from breeding.
Almost every western nation embraced some form of this or another. It was just too easy to imagine eliminating from society people who were physically or mentally flawed, generally just sterilizing them so they couldn’t breed.
The latest most blatant example of this was in France, where the health authorities knew that the blood component needed by hemophiliacs was contaminated with HIV, but kept that information secret until almost every hemophiliac in the country was infected and died. Thus in a decade, they eliminated hemophilia from France.
They probably rationalized it as like the elimination of smallpox. “France is better without hemophilia.”
Yet the bottom line is the same for eugenics. That people might someday choose a mate based on their genetics, with the idea that their children will not be afflicted with inherited diseases, and that they might lead better lives.
Yep they now call it “Women’s reproductive rights” and make them believe it is for their own good and is good for them.Funny how the rates for breast cancer can be seen rising right after wide spread birth control pill usage began and again a few years after abortion became legal in 1973...bt don’t forget it is “healthy” and good for you!
Yep they now call it “Women’s reproductive rights” and make them believe it is for their own good and is good for them.Funny how the rates for breast cancer can be seen rising right after wide spread birth control pill usage began and again a few years after abortion became legal in 1973...but don’t forget it is “healthy” and good for you!