Eugenics started it

Eugenics – artificial selection of human beings to eliminate “deleterious” characteristics – is almost as old as civilization. Plato toyed with the concept – though he did not give it that name – over half a century before Alexander’s Wars. But it didn’t really get its start until the publications of the seminal works of two men of science. Those two – Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel – couldn’t have had more opposite worldviews. But Darwin’s followers turned Mendel’s work into a rationale for discrimination. Worse still – a certain woman used it as a rationale for wiping out large groups of people by attrition. She did this by encouraging them to stop their own children from being born. Yet the American left still regards her as a heroine for “women’s rights.”

Contraception as a tool of eugenics

The premise of eugenics is brutally simple. Now that civilization has removed the usual pressures of “natural selection” (make that wild selection), enlightened leaders must apply artificial selection to make sure the human species continues to improve. Germany’s National Socialists tried to apply this idea practically, with genetic (or at least ancestry) tests for applicants to key services, and the direct arrangement of, if not exactly marriage, certainly of coupling. The National Socialists called their program Lebensborn – literally “fountain of life.”

In the United States, a woman named Margaret Sanger likely knew that no such program as Lebensborn could ever succeed. So she chose a much more crude method: persuade populations she regarded as inferior, to extinguish themselves by attrition. She founded what became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. And from the beginning she sought to hide the true purpose of her program. Obviously if word got out, that program would fail.

Most people who hear anything about Margaret Sanger associate her only with contraception – as a matter of women’s convenience.To hear the real reason she popularized contraception – and sought to make it selectively available – would come as a shock. So great a shock would it be, that her biographers deny that such was her intent or purpose. (See, for example, the entry about her in The Encyclopedia Britannica.)

Two nights ago, Twitter journalist Dom Lucre (“Breaker of Narratives”) dropped a thread intending to reveal the truth. After that, none can deny the connection of contraception to eugenics.

The thread

Dom Lucre’s thread runs to twenty-one tweets. As usual it starts with an ironic heading, to get attention. But this time, his thread header speaks directly to an accusation against conservatives he likely regards as unjust. (And not only unjust but more properly applicable to their enemies.)

Herewith the thread, as its odd numbers:

Most of the images and videos come from collections, the curators of which are sympathetic to Margaret Sanger’s memory. What those curators would say, were anyone to confront them with the full implications of Sanger’s words, none can imagine.

Sometimes Lucre embeds a video without quoting from it; he expects people to play it and listen for themselves. For example, consider Mike Wallace’ 1957 interview with Sanger. He asks her whether she believes in the concept sin. And she says:

I think the biggest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be human beings, practically, delinquents, prisoners, all [unintelligible] just marked when they’re born.

But as to “sin in the ordinary sense,” she refused to answer. No doubt Mr. Wallace expected her to answer exclusively that no such thing as sexual sin exists, and that facilitation of fornication or adultery was a noble aim. Was he prepared to hear her say that some children are better off never born? No one knows – because no one ever asked him.

Reaction

Two hours after he finished the thread, he added this tweet:

Most people treated the thread favorably. Some got the point at once:

Two users commented on the ironic nature of the anchor tweet – which, again, is typical of his threads:

Analysis – from eugenics to a death cult

Your editor first read about Margaret Sanger in a history textbook.¹ Its authors described Sanger typically as a heroine of women’s rights, showing them how to avoid problem pregnancies. Lay aside for a moment the oversexualization of modern human beings – adult, adolescent, and young child alike. But those six authors (three of whom from the History Department at Yale University) failed to mention Sanger’s scientific racism. That racism derived from her embrace of eugenics – and her decision that all members of a certain group were genetically inferior to members of the dominant group.

But of course they failed to mention that. After all, the United States led a multinational Alliance to overthrow a megalomaniac whose own eugenics notions informed his actions. To admit that the greatest heroine and liberatrix of women shared this man’s ideology would scarcely do!

But perhaps people forget Sanger’s embrace of eugenics because today, eugenics does not seem to drive the “abortion movement” as it did. (This despite research showing that Planned Parenthood sets up shop in black neighborhoods more than any other kind of neighborhood.) You don’t hear about eugenics anymore, and certainly not from Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, et al. Instead you hear that society has too many mouths to feed – or that humans are a blight on the planet. Thus a pure cult of death has replaced the eugenics movement – and society has even less excuse for tolerating it.

1 Blum, John M.; Morgan, Edmund S.; Rose, Willie Lee; Schlessinger Jr., Arthur M.; Stampp, Kenneth M.; and Woodward, C. Vann. The National Experience: A History of the United States, 3^rd ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.