Whoa, there, cowpoke. Like it or not, eugenics is practiced all the time and most people seem to be okay with it. If a couple gets “genetic counseling” because some dread disease runs in the family, they’re practicing eugenics. Someone getting in vitro fertilization and choosing the best embryos is practicing eugenics. The state executing really bad criminals is practicing eugenics. Even putting criminals away for many decades is eugenic, putting aside those women who chase bad boys in prison. Having an immigration policy that favors immigrants from certain parts of the world over others is practicing eugenics. The alternative is dysgenics, which doesn’t work out so well for a society in the long run.
Eugenics justifiably got a really bad name because you-know-who used it to do some very crazy and evil things. However, eugenics was all the rage among the beautiful people back in the 1920s — people you’ve heard of, and maybe even like. In the famous (infamous?) Buck v. Bell Supreme Court ruling (8-1), which is still partly in force btw, esteemed jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote, in the majority opinion:
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
I can’t say I’m entirely unsympathetic to his point.
Like it or not, there’s going to be more eugenics in the future. Parents want the best for their offspring and that process can get started before birth — before conception even. There are some ethical land mines ahead but lots of folks will be willing to try to hop over them. It’s happening already and it’s guaranteed to increase. There will also be mistakes; that is inherent with anything new.
The good news is that leftist kooks have a lower fertility than normal people. Overall fertility is below replacement in the West but this will probably fix itself once people regain their telos. At least, I hope that it works out this way.
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I get your point. But my sense is that this is a far more complicated field than what you post above.
Eugenics IMM is a government-run program of picking winners, and especially losers, and forcefully removing their decided-upon losers from the gene pool. You are certainly a good enough historian to know that in its heyday in the late 20’s and early 30’s. some at least 115 citizens (I believe the number was about that, though I’ve forgotten the exact one) were forcibly sterilised because of eugenics. Building a “master race” was very much on people’s minds, especially the “educated elite”. Margaret Sanger didn’t arise in a vacuum, which is, i believe, your point.
What you say is the basic desire of any parent that their child exceed them - in ability, mentation, skill, success in life. THAT is hardly a government run program. Indeed, even the mere consideration that government could or should run such a program is scary to me. Very little decision-making ability has so far shown me anything near that level of ability. ONE reason we were conceived as a free nation of people.
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What’s the difference between eugenics and hypergamy?
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Somebody should tell him he is right, he shouldn’t reproduce. Also, given his admission of low talent, he should be asked why he thinks he is qualified to select or raise a genetically superior individual?
To be serious: I wonder how much of that is an attempt to get attention.
I didn’t go to the Substack so I don’t know if it was written by a male or female, but males use this type of poor me strategy to get attention. Maybe females do too, I just have personal experience with males doing it.
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You can make up your own definition if you like, but doing so makes communication with others difficult. I’m sticking with the dictionary definition, which does not restrict the meaning to government action. Furthermore, the context was a Substack post by some misguided fellow who makes no such allusions. That said, some of the measures I mentioned do involve government action: immigration, corrections policy, and Justice Holmes.
I know all about the crazy dreams of a failed Austrian painter (you-know-who). Heck, I already mentioned him in my comment. There are more things in heaven, earth, and eugenics than are dreamt of in your version of history. Invoking the ghost of scary-bad-man isn’t the slam-dunk you imagine.
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Good point. Generally speaking, girls practice hypergamy while boys have historically been advocates of other forms of eugenics.
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You-know-who didn’t have any safety schools for art/painting?!
He must have been crazy!
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