Category Archives: Eugenics

What if we could use science to eliminate disease, deformity, and mental disabilities? What if the tools of modern technology could make us smarter, stronger, and more beautiful?

What if we could put an end, once and for all, to every mothers fear that their child might be born with something not quite right?

These are the questions Chinese researchers are trying to answer. Theyve recently announced a breakthrough in using genetic engineering to remove certain defects in human embryos responsible for congenital conditions. This should be good news, right? After all, what is science for, if not to help us live longer, healthier, and more productive lives? The problem is, this kind of thinking has taken hold in America once before, and with disastrous consequences.

In the early 20th century, science was all the rage. Educated men thought they could use their superior knowledge to improve the human race. What a noble endeavor! With knowledge of genetics recently having come into prominence thanks to the works of Charles Darwin, college professors and men of science were eager to apply the findings in a practical way. If traits are passed down from generation to generation, they reasoned, then the species can be improved by choosing only to pass down good traits, while screening out bad ones. This process was known as eugenics, and its proponents included many well-respected people, most notably President Woodrow Wilson, the only president ever to hold a doctoral degree.

But how do you stop people with undesirable traits from breeding and passing them on to future generations? Easy, by forced sterilization. In the same way you would neuter a dog to keep it from reproducing, state governments across America passed laws permitting the forced sterilization of people deemed to be insane, feebleminded, deformed, or otherwise posing a menace to the health of the species. This frequently included criminals, as criminality was at the time believed to be an inherited characteristic. All told, 60,000 Americans lost their right to reproduce at the hands of a scientific community that insisted it could improve mankind.

Ultimately, the horrors of the Nazi movement in Germany, which took eugenics to extremes undreamt of by most Americans, soured the national appetite for forced sterilization. By the mid-1970s the practice came to an end even in mental institutions, but the Supreme Court decision finding such sterilization constitutional has never been overturned.

Now, what does this have to do with the Chinese research on embryos? Surely such direct manipulation of the egg will result in more healthy reproduction, not less, and requires no interference with individual freedoms, right? Dont be so sure.

Imagine a world where, for the right price, you can guarantee that your children wont have any genetic defects, that they will be tall, strong, resistant to disease, symmetrical, and intelligent, all through a simple medical procedure. Now imagine that not everyone can afford this procedure. What do you think will happen after a couple of generations? The normal people, unaltered by genetic modification, will not possibly be able to compete with the supermen and women created by science. They will be inferior in every way, and thus ineligible for the best jobs, unable to keep up in the best schools, and forget about sports or any kind of athletic competition. Social mobility will not be an option, and their children will be doomed to the same fate, a permanent underclass at the mercy of their betters.

How long could such a system persist? How long before the genetically inferior humans become mere leeches dependent on state charity, or else utilized as menial slaves for everyone else, or perhaps be outright forbidden from procreating? It sounds like science fiction, but its a simple and logical progression from a system that allows some people to be dramatically improved by genetic engineering while others are left behind.

Aside from these practical concerns, there are any number of moral and ethical problems with tinkering with human life. Modern medicine has indeed done wonders for our way of life, but there is a good reason why many governments have banned human cloning and other such genetic experiments. Blind allegiance to science without stopping to consider broader philosophical questions of humanity, liberty, and justice, can only end badly, as history has taught us on more than one occasion. Engineering works great for building bridges; Its much less advisable for designing societies.

Logan Albright is a researcher for Conservative Review and Director of Research for Free the People. You can follow him on Twitter @loganalbright73.

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Designer babies and the chilling echoes of eugenics - Conservative Review

CBS San Francisco Bay Area

Palo Alto Schools Named After Leaders Of Eugenics Movement To Get New Names CBS San Francisco Bay Area PALO ALTO (CBS/AP) School officials in Palo Alto have unanimously voted to rename two middle schools that bear the names of leaders in the eugenics movement. The Palo Alto Unified School District Board of Education voted Friday 5-0 to rename ... Palo Alto: Eugenics controversy spurs school name changesThe Mercury News 2 schools named after eugenics advocates to get new namesKTAR.com Damnatio Memoriae in Silicon Valley. Is Helen Keller Next?VDARE.com all 6 news articles »

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Palo Alto Schools Named After Leaders Of Eugenics Movement To Get New Names - CBS San Francisco Bay Area

A yearlong campaign to rename two Palo Alto middle schools, whose namesakes promoted the eugenics movement, will go before the school board for a formal vote Friday with nearly unanimous support from trustees.

Four out of five school board members said Tuesday they were ready to vote on the topic and plan to cast votes to rename Jordan Middle School and Terman Middle School.

Trustee Todd Collins did not say how his vote was affectedby the 50 or so students, parents, alumni and community members who attended Tuesdays meeting. At a meeting on the topic the week before, he indicated support for renaming Jordan schoolbut had some doubts about renaming Terman.

Some speakers advocated for a name change classifying the eugenics movement and its advocates as racist and out of line with the districts values of diversity, equity and inclusion.

A few students made passionate pleas about how it hurts them knowing theyre going to a school named after someone who likely thinks they are inferior because of their race or disabilities.

Some parents said they support the majority recommendation of the Renaming Schools Advisory Committee to rename the schools, but suggested that perhaps this is not the year to take such action because of the districts $3.3 million budget shortfall. Cost projections for the changes range from $50,000 to $200,000.

Other speakers, including a few committee members, oppose the renaming, stating either that they are against judging David Starr Jordan and Lewis Terman out of the context of the era in which themen lived or that renaming the schools will erase the positive relationshipalumni have to their alma maters.

Collins asked to continue the meeting to another day so that the board has adequate time to discuss the topic and explain their votes.

I would really like the opportunity to collect my thoughts and be able to understand and listen to the comments of my colleagues and vote appropriately, Collins said, and I think its very hard to do that at 10:30 at night after seven hours of meetings today.

Collins acknowledged the importance of the matter and the patience of the community, but also pointed out that the matter is not urgent.

Trustee Melissa Baten Caswell said she feels ready to make a decision, having received extensive community feedback from hundreds of people for the last year and a half.

Trustee Jennifer DiBrienza also said the board should make a decision Tuesday for the publics sake.

Our community is ready to move forward, DiBrienza said.

Board members eventually agreed to continue the meeting for the integrity of the process.

The board is expected to meet at 1 p.m. at the district office, 25 Churchill Ave., to discuss the issue and vote.

If the board accepts the committees recommendations, then it will also have to decide the best approach to renaming the schools.

The board will consider whether to form a new committee to come up with three new names for the schools by Jan. 1, 2018 and whether to approve funding for a curriculum for students about the history and impact of the eugenics movement that would start in the second semester of the 2017-18 school year.

The board doesnt plan to take further comments from the public at the meeting since its a continuation of Tuesdays meeting. The topic also was open to public discussion at length during a March 7 meeting dedicated to the matter.

After an eight-month review, the majority of the 13-member Renaming Schools Advisory Committee concluded in December that the district should rename Jordan and Terman middle schools and Cubberley Community Center.

Four committee members offered a compromise and said Jordan Middle School should keep its name with the clarification that the school is no longer named after David Starr Jordan.

Three committee members said Terman also could retain its name by rededicating the school to be named after only Frederick Terman and not his father, Lewis Terman.

The senior Termanwas a Stanford psychologist who actively supported eugenics. Proponents of eugenics believed the human race could be improved through selective reproduction including forced sterilization.

The younger Terman was an engineer and Stanford University provost who hired Jewish professors and pioneered recruiting students from underrepresented communities.

Some committee members wrote a minority opinion that said the schools should retain their names because the names have meaning beyond honoring their namesakes.

Continuity and tradition are important and form a tapestry of identity for our community, these committee members said.

Collins said at the March 7 board meeting that the concern about renaming Terman is that it unfairly condemns Frederick Terman for the beliefs of his father with guilty by association.

One community member who spoke Tuesday against the renaming drew parallels to censorship and asked if the community supported censoring parts in Huckleberry Finn because of its racist language. Is the community repeating history by blacklisting and judging Jordan and Terman for their flaws?

The majority of community members, however, support the renaming effort.

Names and symbols matter, Superintendent Max McGee said Tuesday. We are not erasing history, we are facing it.

The district, which received more than 200 emails on the topic, has been chided with being politically correct as well as failing to stand up to a history that is antithetical to the districts values.

McGee said he supports the committees recommendations, including incorporating the history and consequences of the countrys eugenics movement, and Palo Alto and Stanford Universitys roles, into class curriculum.

Though Jordan was an accomplished scientist and Stanford Universitys first president, he was also an active and highly effective leader in promoting the betterment of the human race by sterilization, McGee said.

It is hard to imagine the countless PAUSD students who would not have even have been born if eugenics thinking, policies and practices as widely and deeply articulated by Mr. Jordan had become as prevalent as he desired, McGee said.

Jordans legacy was the subject of a book report by one of these students, Kobi Johnsson.

More than a year ago, as a seventh-grade student at Jordan Middle School, Johnsson decided to learn more about the man his school was named after. What he learned, and shared with his parents and classmates, started the community effort to rename the school.

Johnsson said he finds it astounding that the debate over renaming the schools has lasted this long, and that he doesnt understand what stands in the way.

Its pretty obvious that these people are bad people, that what they did wasnt right, Johnsson said. If you were forcibly sterilized by anybody, you would not like that you wouldnt want something as commemorative as a school to be named after this.

Johnsson said eugenicists likely would have labeled him feeble-minded and wanted himsterilized and this goes against the values of the Palo Alto community.

I dont want to go to a school, I dont want to say I went to a school, thatwas named after somebody like this, Johnsson said.

Excerpt from:

Palo Alto school board set to strip schools of eugenicists' names - The Mercury News

We entered a new phase as a species when Chinese scientists altered a human embryo to remove a potentially fatal blood disorder not only from the baby, but all of its descendants. Researchers call this process germline modification. The media likes the phrase designer babies. But we should call it what it is, eugenics. And we, the human race, need to decide whether or not we want to use it.

Last month, the scientific establishment weighed in. A National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine joint committee endorsed embryo editing aimed at genes that cause serious diseases when there is no reasonable alternative. But it was more wary of editing for enhancement, like making already-healthy children stronger or taller. It recommended a public discussion, and said that doctors should not proceed at this time.

The committee had good reason to urge caution. The history of eugenics is full of oppression and misery. In the 20th century, it was used by the powerful to demonize marginalized groups and to enact laws that prevented the unfit from having children. But the committee was also right to support limited embryo editing. This time around, eugenics could be a force for good.

Eugenics was coined by Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, from the Greek words for good and born. Galton argued that rather than rely on the chaotic process of evolution, humanity could take its future into its own hands by seeing to it that people with the best genes had the most children.

The early eugenicists were idealists men such as Theodore Roosevelt and Alexander Graham Bell who hoped to harness science to build a better world. It did not take long, however, for what Galton called his virile creed, full of hopefulness to turn into something darker.

Starting with Indiana in 1907, a majority of states enacted laws authorizing forced sterilization of the feebleminded, a malleable category that included people who did poorly on primitive and wholly unreliable IQ tests. The laws also called for sterilizing people who were deaf, blind, sick or poor all thought to be heritable conditions.

The Supreme Court weighed in strongly on the side of eugenics. In a now-infamous 1927 decision, it ruled that Virginia could sterilize Carrie Buck, a young woman falsely labeled feebleminded. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., writing for an 8-1 majority, called for more sterilizations to remove those who sap the strength of the State.

Before the eugenic era ended, some 70,000 Americans would be forcibly sterilized many of them, like Carrie Buck, perfectly healthy, both mentally and physically. Eugenics did far more harm in Nazi Germany, where 360,000 or more people were forcibly sterilized in the service of a warped racial ideology.

Given this track record, we should certainly debate human embryo editing and all of the new human-breeding discoveries yet to come. But we should also recognize that there is a crucial difference between the old eugenics and the new. Rather than demonizing unfit people and working to sterilize them, the new eugenics regards their inherited disabilities as treatable medical conditions and seeks to help them have healthy children.

Some of the biggest supporters of human-embryo editing today are people who carry genes for serious disorders like beta thalassemia, the disease the Chinese scientists were working on. Jeff Carroll, a Western Washington University neuroscientist who inherited the mutation for Huntingtons disease which can cause people to lose bodily control and slowly go mad, like his mother did has been outspoken in favor. I am saying, please, please do mess with our DNA, he told the MIT Technology Review.

What we have to think about more carefully is expanding the definition of disability to the point that parents are editing embryos to remove shortness, shyness or other qualities they may find undesirable. We could conclude, as a society, that parents can do as they wish. Or we might conclude that editing human embryos for enhancements of this kind is too close to the old eugenics and that through parents individual choices to design a better baby we run the risk of collectively trying to make ourselves into a master race. The point is that we need to figure out what we believe.

We must also guard against any attempt to make human-embryo editing mandatory. It is not, after all, such a great a leap from you can have a genetically improved baby to you must have a genetically improved baby. At the same time, we will have to make sure that everyone has the option to use the new technologies. There would be serious equity concerns if genetic screening and therapies were only available to the well-off and inherited diseases became the exclusive preserve of the poor.

Most sobering is the fact that edits to a human embryo can be passed on to future generations. Anything with the potential to change humanity forever must not be undertaken lightly.

As a practical matter, though, the genie is already out of the bottle, and it is unlikely we could stop embryo editing if we wanted to. New advances are coming rapidly, and gene editing is only becoming easier, faster and cheaper.

Again, that need not be a bad thing. Twentieth century eugenics has rightly been called a war on the weak its goal was to stop people with conditions like Huntingtons disease from reproducing. Twenty-first century eugenics can enable people with the Huntingtons gene to have children without it. The new eugenics can be a war for the weak.

Adam Cohen is the author of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, which is being published in paperback this month.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

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Is there such a thing as good eugenics? - Los Angeles Times

Editors note: This commentary is by Steve May, a former member of the Vermont AFL-CIO executive board and past vice president of the Champlain Valley Central Labor Council. May is also currently an elected member of the Richmond Selectboard and the founder of The Forum on Genetic Equity.

A century ago, Americans led in what was then considered to be a promising area of scientific research. It had been used to bridge the gap between research and the conventions of society to explain why certain subsets of civilization were predisposed towards certain intellectual pursuits or physical ones. That area of scientific research has a name: eugenics. Eugenics involved attributing features about race and ethnicity to ones biology or genetic profile. Most Americans and Vermonters are aware that this genetics-driven view of the world was at the core of Hitlers political ideology. Biology and politics were to have been on center stage at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. The games which were designed largely to be a propaganda platform for the success of eugenics was foiled when African-American sprinter Jesse Owens won the 100-meter sprint over Hitlers pure-blooded Aryan athletes running for the motherland. It would be another decade before the theories of ethnic purity would be discharged at the business end of Allied war efforts on European battlefields.

As such, Charles Murray, in coming to Middlebury and putting his beliefs front and center, has done us all a tremendous favor. Murrays visit allows us to revisit this dark and largely forgotten chapter of our common history. He is in fact our useful idiot. Across this Vermont visit and his career-long support for the use of race and biology to address data and societal trends, Murray perverts the relationship between that which is ascribed to nature and that which is ascribed to nurture to prop up the basest of all views of the human condition in its rawest form. Murrays research and writings permits us to look at not only at his own half baked ideas, but also at the modern-day pre-cursor to genotyping, called eugenics.

While we as Americans tend to associate eugenics with Hitler and the Nazis, it is actually a cadre of Americans researchers who actually created the field as an area of medical and scientific inquiry. One of the leaders of the field was on faculty at UVM. His name was Dr. Henry Perkins, and he was a professor of zoology. In 1925, he organized the Eugenics Survey of Vermont as an adjunct to his heredity course. Its mission was threefold: eugenics research, public education on their findings, and support for social legislation that would reduce the apparent growing population of Vermonts social problem group. Most notorious of these reforms was Vermonts 1931 eugenic sterilization law, A Law for Human Betterment by Voluntary Sterilization. Vermont was ultimately one of more than 27 states that had a forced sterilization program. Ultimately native peoples including the Abenaki, people with intellectual and physical disabilities and certain ethnic populations, including Irish and French Canadians immigrants, were among those targeted for forced sterilization in the early part of the 20th century by researchers associated with Perkins and his program.

The present-day heir to eugenics and its dark legacy must be seen as the potential for misappropriation of genetic material and information.The present-day heir to eugenics and its dark legacy must be seen as the potential for misappropriation of genetic material and information.

Murrays visit has served to return our gaze to a period of time which may be largely unknown to most Vermonters these events in fact did happen, and to some extent they happened in our name. Certainly the seal of authority in the shape of the State of Vermont granted these activities permission to occur. It is appropriate that we consider the legacy of our collective behaviors.

The present-day heir to eugenics and its dark legacy must be seen as the potential for misappropriation of genetic material and information. We are awash today in genetic information and personal health information data, all of which is considered privileged in one way or another. The advent of the age of big data means that there is an amazing amount of biomedical information available and it is prudent that we take all reasonable steps to safeguard that information.

Our history, heritage and common humanity all demand a full and thorough accounting publicly for these events. This can only be seen as the very beginning of what is necessary to address this chapter on behalf of all Vermonters. Efforts to pervert the scientific method and misappropriate genetic information demand a thorough reckoning beyond an apology or even the act of convening a truth and reconciliation process. We collectively need to safeguard the genetic privacy rights of all Vermonters. Currently, the right to privacy is an implied right in general and only applies when a grant of authority is made with regard to a specific area or interest under our system currently. FERPA the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act for example applies only to education and education policy. A grant of authority with regard to privacy issues is granted only within the scope of that given area (in this case education) broadly to all who are specifically noted within the scope of the authority granted within the rule or statute.

The University of Vermont, the Legislature and the State of Vermont have never acknowledged their roles in this episode or apologized for its larger participation in this field of inquiry or its impacts on Vermonts citizens. The one past effort of some significance which attempted to foster debate and reconciliation in Montpelier was headed by Rep. Anne Donahue of Northfield. Sadly, no formal apology or action resulted from that effort in 2010. Persons and groups affected by this dark legacy deserve a formal apology. An act which it appears has never been issued by our Legislature or our institutions, all of which have failed these patients and their antecedents. These neighbors, friends and family members were targeted in a manner that can only be considered to be systemic, and often they were targeted either without their actual awareness or their ability to consent. In total, this period demands a much fuller accounting. A public reckoning through a truth and reconciliation process designed to more completely address past misdeeds associated with the Vermonts eugenics experiments could serve as an important model to facilitate healing, advocacy and social action as needed.

A commitment to treat personal health information and genetic profiles with the highest level of regard and care practicable should be the stated goal of the people and state of Vermont in light of the eugenics work that happened a century ago. Vermont in light of this history should aspire to set the gold standard in caring for genetic and personal health information. It is the least we can do. A comprehensive genetic privacy act enacted at the state level here in Vermont would better serve to protect Vermonters in this emerging age of big data. In light of these historical challenges to individual genetic privacy rights, Meaningful reconciliation with this history is essential as we move more deeply towards an age of personalized medicine.

Continued here:

Steve May: Vermont's eugenics history demands public reckoning - vtdigger.org

WASHINGTON The progressive mob that disrupted Charles Murray's appearance recently at Middlebury College was protesting a 1994 book read by few if any of the protesters. Some of them denounced "eugenics," thereby demonstrating an interesting ignorance: Eugenics controlled breeding to improve the heritable traits of human beings was a progressive cause.

In "The Bell Curve," Murray, a social scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, and his co-author, Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein, found worrisome evidence that American society was becoming "cognitively stratified," with an increasingly affluent cognitive elite and "a deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive ability distribution." They examined the consensus that, controlling for socioeconomic status and possible IQ test bias, cognitive ability is somewhat heritable, that the black/white differential had narrowed, and that millions of blacks have higher IQs than millions of whites. The authors were "resolutely agnostic" concerning the roles of genes and the social environment. They said that even if there developed unequivocal evidence that genetics are "part of the story," there would be "no reason to treat individuals differently" or to permit government regulation of procreation.

Middlebury's mob was probably as ignorant of this as of the following: Between 1875 and 1925, when eugenics had many advocates, not all advocates were progressives but advocates were disproportionately progressives because eugenics coincided with progressivism's premises and agenda.

Progressives rejected the Founders' natural rights doctrine and conception of freedom. Progressives said freedom is not the natural capacity of individuals whose rights pre-exist government. Rather, freedom is something achieved, at different rates and to different degrees, by different races. Racialism was then seeking scientific validation, and Darwinian science had given rise to "social Darwinism" belief in the ascendance of the fittest in the ranking of races. The progressive theologian Walter Rauschenbusch argued that with modern science "we can intelligently mold and guide the evolution in which we take part."

Progressivism's concept of freedom as something merely latent, and not equally latent, in human beings dictated rethinking the purpose and scope of government. Princeton University scholar Thomas C. Leonard, in his 2016 book "Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era," says progressives believed that scientific experts should be in society's saddle, determining the "human hierarchy" and appropriate social policies, including eugenics.

Economist Richard T. Ely, a founder of the American Economic Association and whose students at Johns Hopkins included Woodrow Wilson, said "God works through the state," which must be stern and not squeamish. Charles Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin, epicenter of intellectual progressivism, said: "We know enough about eugenics so that if that knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation." Progress, said Ely, then at Wisconsin, depended on recognizing "that there are certain human beings who are absolutely unfit, and who should be prevented from a continuation of their kind." The mentally and physically disabled were deemed "defectives."

In 1902, when Wilson became Princeton's president, the final volume of his "A History of the American People" contrasted "the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe" with southern and eastern Europeans who had "neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence." In 1907, Indiana became the first of more than 30 states to enact forcible sterilization laws. In 1911, now-Gov. Wilson signed New Jersey's, which applied to "the hopelessly defective and criminal classes." In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginia's law, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes saying that in affirming the law requiring the sterilization of "imbeciles" he was "getting near to the first principle of real reform."

At the urging of Robert Yerkes, president of the American Psychological Association, during World War I the Army did intelligence testing of conscripts so that the nation could inventory its human stock as it does livestock. The Army's findings influenced Congress' postwar immigration restrictions and national quotas. Carl Brigham, a Princeton psychologist, said the Army's data demonstrated "the intellectual superiority of our Nordic group over the Mediterranean, Alpine and Negro groups."

Progressives derided the Founders as unscientific for deriving natural rights from what progressives considered the fiction of a fixed human nature. But they asserted that races had fixed and importantly different natures calling for different social policies. Progressives resolved this contradiction when, like most Americans, they eschewed racialism -- the belief that the races are tidily distinct, each created independent of all others, each with fixed traits and capacities. Middlebury's turbulent progressives should read Leonard's book. After they have read Murray's.

George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

See the article here:

Eugenics was a progressive cause - Goshen News

WASHINGTON The progressive mob that disrupted Charles Murrays appearance last week at Middlebury College was protesting a 1994 book read by few if any of the protesters. Some of them denounced eugenics, thereby demonstrating an interesting ignorance: Eugenics controlled breeding to improve the heritable traits of human beings was a progressive cause.

In The Bell Curve, Murray, a social scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, and his co-author, Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein, found worrisome evidence that American society was becoming cognitively stratified, with an increasingly affluent cognitive elite and a deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive ability distribution. They examined the consensus that, controlling for socioeconomic status and possible IQ test bias, cognitive ability is somewhat heritable, that the black/white differential had narrowed, and that millions of blacks have higher IQs than millions of whites. The authors were resolutely agnostic concerning the roles of genes and the social environment. They said that even if there developed unequivocal evidence that genetics are part of the story, there would be no reason to treat individuals differently or to permit government regulation of procreation.

Middleburys mob was probably as ignorant of this as of the following: Between 1875 and 1925, when eugenics had many advocates, not all advocates were progressives but advocates were disproportionately progressives because eugenics coincided with progressivisms premises and agenda.

Progressives rejected the Founders natural rights doctrine and conception of freedom. Progressives said freedom is not the natural capacity of individuals whose rights pre-exist government. Rather, freedom is something achieved, at different rates and to different degrees, by different races. Racialism was then seeking scientific validation, and Darwinian science had given rise to social Darwinism belief in the ascendance of the fittest in the ranking of races. The progressive theologian Walter Rauschenbusch argued that with modern science we can intelligently mold and guide the evolution in which we take part.

Progressivisms concept of freedom as something merely latent, and not equally latent, in human beings dictated rethinking the purpose and scope of government. Princeton University scholar Thomas C. Leonard, in his 2016 book Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era, says progressives believed that scientific experts should be in societys saddle, determining the human hierarchy and appropriate social policies, including eugenics.

Economist Richard T. Ely, a founder of the American Economic Association and whose students at Johns Hopkins included Woodrow Wilson, said God works through the state, which must be stern and not squeamish. Charles Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin, epicenter of intellectual progressivism, said: We know enough about eugenics so that if that knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation. Progress, said Ely, then at Wisconsin, depended on recognizing that there are certain human beings who are absolutely unfit, and who should be prevented from a continuation of their kind. The mentally and physically disabled were deemed defectives.

In 1902, when Wilson became Princetons president, the final volume of his A History of the American People contrasted the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe with southern and eastern Europeans who had neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence. In 1907, Indiana became the first of more than 30 states to enact forcible sterilization laws. In 1911, now-Gov. Wilson signed New Jerseys, which applied to the hopelessly defective and criminal classes. In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginias law, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes saying that in affirming the law requiring the sterilization of imbeciles he was getting near to the first principle of real reform.

At the urging of Robert Yerkes, president of the American Psychological Association, during World War I the Army did intelligence testing of conscripts so that the nation could inventory its human stock as it does livestock. The Armys findings influenced Congress postwar immigration restrictions and national quotas. Carl Brigham, a Princeton psychologist, said the Armys data demonstrated the intellectual superiority of our Nordic group over the Mediterranean, Alpine and Negro groups.

Progressives derided the Founders as unscientific for deriving natural rights from what progressives considered the fiction of a fixed human nature. But they asserted that races had fixed and importantly different natures calling for different social policies. Progressives resolved this contradiction when, like most Americans, they eschewed racialism the belief that the races are tidily distinct, each created independent of all others, each with fixed traits and capacities. Middleburys turbulent progressives should read Leonards book. After they have read Murrays.

George Wills email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

See the rest here:

Eugenics was a progressive cause | Columns ... - Weatherford Democrat

WASHINGTON The progressive mob that disrupted Charles Murrays appearance last week at Middlebury College was protesting a 1994 book read by few if any of the protesters. Some of them denounced eugenics, thereby demonstrating an interesting ignorance: Eugenics controlled breeding to improve the heritable traits of human beings was a progressive cause.

In The Bell Curve, Murray, a social scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, and his co-author, Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein, found worrisome evidence that American society was becoming cognitively stratified, with an increasingly affluent cognitive elite and a deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive ability distribution. They examined the consensus that, controlling for socioeconomic status and possible IQ test bias, cognitive ability is somewhat heritable, that the black/white differential had narrowed, and that millions of blacks have higher IQs than millions of whites. The authors were resolutely agnostic concerning the roles of genes and the social environment. They said that even if there developed unequivocal evidence that genetics are part of the story, there would be no reason to treat individuals differently or to permit government regulation of procreation.

Middleburys mob was probably as ignorant of this as of the following: Between 1875 and 1925, when eugenics had many advocates, not all advocates were progressives but advocates were disproportionately progressives because eugenics coincided with progressivisms premises and agenda.

Progressives rejected the Founders natural rights doctrine and conception of freedom. Progressives said freedom is not the natural capacity of individuals whose rights pre-exist government. Rather, freedom is something achieved, at different rates and to different degrees, by different races. Racialism was then seeking scientific validation, and Darwinian science had given rise to social Darwinism belief in the ascendance of the fittest in the ranking of races.

Progressivisms concept of freedom as something merely latent, and not equally latent, in human beings dictated rethinking the purpose and scope of government.

Economist Richard T. Ely, a founder of the American Economic Association and whose students at Johns Hopkins included Woodrow Wilson, said God works through the state, which must be stern and not squeamish. Charles Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin, epicenter of intellectual progressivism, said: We know enough about eugenics so that if that knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation.

In 1907, Indiana became the first of more than 30 states to enact forcible sterilization laws. In 1911, now-Gov. Wilson signed New Jerseys, which applied to the hopelessly defective and criminal classes. In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginias law, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes saying that in affirming the law requiring the sterilization of imbeciles he was getting near to the first principle of real reform.

Progressives derided the Founders as unscientific for deriving natural rights from what progressives considered the fiction of a fixed human nature. But they asserted that races had fixed and importantly different natures calling for different social policies. Progressives resolved this contradiction when, like most Americans, they eschewed racialism the belief that the races are tidily distinct, each created independent of all others, each with fixed traits and capacities. Middleburys turbulent progressives should read Leonards book. After they have read Murrays.

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Eugenics was a progressive cause - MyDaytonDailyNews

Advocates for the rights of the disabled have already expressed concern about the direction taken by the Trump administration. Trump famously mocked a disabled reporter during the election, but this was not surprising to anyone familiar with both his bullying tactics and his tradition of promoting ideas that smack of eugenics:

Trumps father instilled in him the idea that their familys success was genetic, according to Trump biographer Michael DAntonio.

The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development, DAntonio says in the documentary. They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.

The Huffington Post dug back through the archives and found numerous examples of Trump suggesting that intellect and success are purely genetic qualities and that having the right genesgave him his very good brain.

The page about people with disabilities has been removed from the White House website. We have a Secretary of Education who had never even heard of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, prior to her appointment, and an Attorney General who actively opposes it. Now, with the rolling-back of Medicaid expansion, we seethe likelihood that disabled and autistic children will be left without coverage. In short, thisregime is primed to move in the dangerous direction of creating an illusion of wealth and prosperity by weeding out the undesirables (immigrants, the poor, the disabled).

And now a new bill, HR 1313, has been proposed, which would allow employers to require genetic testing of its employees, and give them the right to access employees health and genetic records. This bill is unequivocally opposed by the American Society of Human Genetics:

If enacted, this bill would fundamentally undermine the privacy provisions of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

We urge the Committee not to move forward with consideration of this bill, said ASHG president Nancy J. Cox, PhD. As longtime advocates of genetic privacy, we instead encourage the Committee to pursue ways to foster workplace wellness and employee health without infringing upon the civil rights afforded by ADA and GINA.

A key component of ADA and GINA is that they prevent workers and their families from being coerced into sharing sensitive medical or genetic information with their employer. For GINA, genetic information encompasses not only employees genetic test results but also their family medical histories. H.R.1313 would effectively repeal these protections by allowing employers to ask employees invasive questions about their and their families health, including genetic tests they, their spouses, and their children may have undergone. GINAs requirement that employees genetic information collected through a workplace wellness program only be shared with health care professionals would no longer apply.

The bill would also allow employers to impose financial penalties of up to 30 percent of the total cost the employees health insurance on employees who choose to keep such information private. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health coverage in 2016 was $18,142. Thus, for such a plan, a wellness program could charge employees an extra $5,443 in annual premiums if they choose not to share their genetic and health information.

Recently I had genetic testing done, of my own volition, because of my familys history of breast cancer, associated with a gene mutation common in those of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. The conversations surrounding the decision to have testing done were fascinating, because questions about ancestry, genetics, and inherited traits lead one to conversations about the racial prejudice. Being Jewish means many wonderful things, but unfortunately it means being more at risk for carrying a killer gene, and this is exactly the sort of thing that anti-semitic eugenicists love to jump on. Among the semi-educated, the talk can slip from ancestry to ancestral curses, and all the vile reasons racists have concocted, to justify their hatred and oppression of the Jews.

Luckily, I tested negative for the gene. But what if I hadnt? What if, a few years from now, I suddenly found myself denied health coverage because of this curse? If this bill passes, how many women (and men) who carry the breast cancer gene are going to find themselves unable to procure health care? And would people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent or other genetically at-risk demographics be especially targeted for mandatory testing?

This is untenable from a pro-life standpoint. This is part of a larger plan which is driven, not by humanitarian motives or by any acceptable ethic, but by an insidious movement to remove support from the most vulnerable, for the sake of the evil dream of eugenics.

image credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Eugenics_congress_logo.png

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HR 1313: part of the trend of eugenics - Patheos (blog)

The progressive mob that disrupted Charles Murrays appearance last week at Middlebury College was protesting a 1994 book read by few if any of the protesters. Some of them denounced eugenics, thereby demonstrating an interesting ignorance: Eugenics -- controlled breeding to improve the heritable traits of human beings -- was a progressive cause.

In The Bell Curve, Murray, a social scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, and his co-author, Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein, found worrisome evidence that American society was becoming cognitively stratified, with an increasingly affluent cognitive elite and a deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive ability distribution. They examined the consensus that, controlling for socioeconomic status and possible IQ test bias, cognitive ability is somewhat heritable, that the black/white differential had narrowed, and that millions of blacks have higher IQs than millions of whites. The authors were resolutely agnostic concerning the roles of genes and the social environment. They said that even if there developed unequivocal evidence that genetics are part of the story, there would be no reason to treat individuals differently or to permit government regulation of procreation.

Middleburys mob was probably as ignorant of this as of the following: Between 1875 and 1925, when eugenics had many advocates, not all advocates were progressives but advocates were disproportionately progressives because eugenics coincided with progressivisms premises and agenda.

Progressives rejected the Founders natural rights doctrine and conception of freedom. Progressives said freedom is not the natural capacity of individuals whose rights pre-exist government. Rather, freedom is something achieved, at different rates and to different degrees, by different races. Racialism was then seeking scientific validation, and Darwinian science had given rise to social Darwinism -- belief in the ascendance of the fittest in the ranking of races. The progressive theologian Walter Rauschenbusch argued that with modern science we can intelligently mold and guide the evolution in which we take part.

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Progressivisms concept of freedom as something merely latent, and not equally latent, in human beings dictated rethinking the purpose and scope of government. Princeton University scholar Thomas C. Leonard, in his 2016 book Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era, says progressives believed that scientific experts should be in societys saddle, determining the human hierarchy and appropriate social policies, including eugenics.

Economist Richard T. Ely, a founder of the American Economic Association and whose students at Johns Hopkins included Woodrow Wilson, said God works through the state, which must be stern and not squeamish. Charles Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin, epicenter of intellectual progressivism, said: We know enough about eugenics so that if that knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation. Progress, said Ely, then at Wisconsin, depended on recognizing that there are certain human beings who are absolutely unfit, and who should be prevented from a continuation of their kind. The mentally and physically disabled were deemed defectives.

In 1902, when Wilson became Princetons president, the final volume of his A History of the American People contrasted the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe with southern and eastern Europeans who had neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence. In 1907, Indiana became the first of more than 30 states to enact forcible sterilization laws. In 1911, now-Gov. Wilson signed New Jerseys, which applied to the hopelessly defective and criminal classes. In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginias law, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes saying that in affirming the law requiring the sterilization of imbeciles he was getting near to the first principle of real reform.

At the urging of Robert Yerkes, president of the American Psychological Association, during World War I the Army did intelligence testing of conscripts so that the nation could inventory its human stock as it does livestock. The Armys findings influenced Congress postwar immigration restrictions and national quotas. Carl Brigham, a Princeton psychologist, said the Armys data demonstrated the intellectual superiority of our Nordic group over the Mediterranean, Alpine and Negro groups.

Progressives derided the Founders as unscientific for deriving natural rights from what progressives considered the fiction of a fixed human nature. But they asserted that races had fixed and importantly different natures calling for different social policies. Progressives resolved this contradiction when, like most Americans, they eschewed racialism -- the belief that the races are tidily distinct, each created independent of all others, each with fixed traits and capacities.Middleburys turbulent progressives should read Leonards book. After they have read Murrays.

George Wills email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

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George Will: Eugenics was a progressive cause - The Saratogian