The history of eugenics

An exhibit in Canada explores the history of the eugenic movement and does not shrink away from who its major advocates were; namely, left wing intellectuals. Read this review, entitled Socialists made eugenics fashionable. The author, Michael Coren, summarizes the utopian plans of the still-respectable H. G. Wells:

“People throughout the world whose minds were adapted to the big-scale conditions of the new time. A naturally and informally organised educated class, an unprecedented sort of people.” A strict social order would be formed. At the bottom of it were the base. These were “people who had given evidence of a strong anti-social disposition”, including “the black, the brown, the swarthy, the yellow.” Christians would also “have to go” as well as the handicapped. Wells devoted entire pamphlets to the need of “preventing the birth, preventing the procreation or preventing the existence” of the mentally and physically handicapped. “This thing, this euthanasia of the weak and the sensual is possible. I have little or no doubt that in the future it will be planned and achieved.”

The people of Africa and Asia, he said, simply could never find a place in a modern world controlled by science. Better to do away with the lot. “I take it they will have to go” he said of them. Marriage as it is known would have to end but couples could form mutually agreed unions. They would list their “desires, diseases, needs” on little cards and a central authority would decide who was fitted for whom.

Population would be rigidly controlled, with forced abortion for those who were not of the right class and race. Religion would be banned, children would be raised in communes and all would be well. The old and the ill would, naturally, have to be done away with and doctors would be given the authority to decide who had a right to live, who had a duty to die.

The exhibit also exposes the eugenic agenda of George Bernard Shaw, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and a plethora of socialists and Marxists. It’s interesting to learn that these luminaries would also sterilize Christians.

Note that these arguments, derive, in essence, from an application of Darwin’s theory of evolution. I’m waiting for an exhibit that documents THAT.

UPDATE: Along these lines, read Jonah Goldberg’s piece on Margaret Sanger from his excellent book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.