NachtWolf
02-18-2003, 11:28 PM
I need to stop posting here. I’ve been thinking this for the past week, and I know that unless I make some sort of official post indicating my departure, I will simply to continue returning here and arguing ineffectually with people who won’t pay any attention. I will continue to check for private messages for a week, and after that I do not imagine that I will return.
I admit that these experiences have been somewhat confusing to me, since offline I have little difficulty of winning people over to eugenics. My students and fellow classmates are always remarking to me about “good genes” this or “I’m going to have kids” that, and it’s heartening. The last time I heard the smallest whisper of “Nazism” was from my speech teacher during a eugenics speech I made to the class, and he was seriously outnumbered by the time I was finished speaking - the students in that class could not have been more sympathetic to the idea of eugenics, and were eager to suggest possible remedies for dysgenics and ideas which could encourage the intelligent to fulfill their responsibilities and procreate!
During the course of my stay here I have deluged this board with quotes, links, studies, and miscellaneous information on eugenics; probably enough to put together into a short book. Because I was able to draw upon the entire ‘Net to support my ideas, I was able to make some of the most thorough arguments in favor of eugenics that I have ever written, yet while I’ve had some successes with these arguments and made a few friends, I would characterize my effectiveness here as “marginal.” This, combined with the opposition’s consistent failure to bring any new information or evidence to the discussion has frayed my nerves and exhausted my patience.
I will leave the way I have always posted, by submitting information for your perusal. This time, interestingly, I have gathered the information almost entirely from rabidly anti-eugenic sources. Those here who have been following the discussion would probably find it a curiosity to read over.
I might post again once I have completed my eugenics page on the web to let everyone know that it’s up, but otherwise I will allow this board to breathe a collective sigh of relief in my absence, knowing that there won’t be anyone heckling them for sources, hounding them to try harder, or pushing them to accept things they don’t have the strength to believe.
I’d like to wish a fond farewell to Spab, Simone, Renee, Frank, NJ Refugee, Stage Monster, Battletoad, Turtle_O, Spießer, and Unrepresented.
The Method and the Nation!
--Nachtwolf
________________________________
The following men were outspoken proponents of eugenics, many of them so rabidly supportive of it that they advocated forced sterelization. While they were instrumental to the eugenics movement now and then, their coolness and lack of compassion have been less than favorable to the reputation of eugenics, and it will probably come as a surprise to see these people, otherwise respected and revered, providing such staunch and uncompromising support for eugenics.
Charles Darwin
H.G. Wells
Margaret Sanger
Samuel Butler
Plato
Alexander Graham Bell
John D. Rockefeller
Theodore Roosevelt
John H. Kellog
Charles Davenport
Lewis Terman
http://www.fathom.com/feature/122169
Galton's influence was nearly immediate. Darwin declared himself persuaded by his cousin's eugenic arguments, and Galton attracted a number of distinguished disciples.
http://reason.com/hod/dl032602.shtml
Wells plays a particularly interesting role in the eugenics movement. In 1904 he discussed a survey paper by Francis Galton, co-founder of eugenics. Galton had concerned himself mainly with "positive eugenics," proposing for instance that the marriage of college professors, supposedly the best of the race, be subsidized. But this was feeble stuff for Wells, who urged the adoption of a negative breeding policy. "I believe," he wrote, "that now and always the conscious selection of the best for reproduction will be impossible; that to propose it is to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what individuality implies. The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies."
http://www.thedarwinpapers.com/oldsite/number13/number13.html
Margaret Sanger, the Founder of Planned Parenthood, advocated eugenics, describing it as a way to eliminate "human waste" from society.
"Everywhere we see poverty and large families going hand in hand. Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly. People who cannot support their own offspring are encouraged by Church and State to produce large families. Many of the children thus begotten are diseased or feeble-minded; many become criminals. The burden of supporting these unwanted types has to be bourne by the healthy elements of the nation. Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of those who should never have been born."
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/PeterMorton/vs5_eugenics.htm
Plato can be found advocating a... scheme for the propagation of the Guardians, his ruling class. In Plato's Utopia there are legal, in fact compulsory, infanticide and abortion; there are marriage festivals with unlimited opportunities for copulation for those men who have distinguished themselves in war; and there are faked lotteries to quiet the resentment of the majority not selected for breeding. (Plato's exact words justifying this fraud are: 'we shall have to arrange an ingenious system of drawing lots, so that our inferior Guardians can... blame the lot and not the Rulers’)
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) Scottish inventor known for inventing the telephone. "How to Improve the Race," January 1914 issue of the Journal of Heredity, edited by Paul Popenoe. Bell revealed himself as a "mainstream" eugenicist who believed in "positive eugenics," which aimed at increasing the percentage of healthy and talented individuals in succeeding generations, rather than in "negative eugenics," the term commonly ascribed to measures designed to prevent the spread of deleterious genes.
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) family founded Standard Oil Co. (now Mobil) and National City Bank (later Citibank).
He founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which quickly became a funding conduit for eugenics research. He was also one of the main supporters of the Eugenics Records Office--the eugencists' "think tank." Such backing has produced results in America as well as overseas.
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
In support of the eugenics movement, (Theodore) Roosevelt wrote that
"it is obvious that if in the future racial qualities are to be improved, the improving must be wrought mainly by favoring the fecundity [fertility] of the worthy types... At present, we do just the reverse. There is no check to the fecundity of those who are subnormal..."
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) a major figure in the eugenics movement founded the American Medical Missionary Board (but soon changed its name to the Race Betterment Foundation). Kellogg himself was an important and respected figure who authored numerous medical and eugenics treatises in order to lobby for policy of "national eugenics." Kellogg, who launched the breakfast cereals industry by introducing granola to the American public as a health food.
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
Charles Benedict Davenport (1866-1944) a biologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard University, pushed the American eugenics movement. In the US, he was fascinated more by the idea of the inheritability of human traits than by Darwin's focus on the evolution of species over time. Davenport's work provided a typical list of hereditary traits: eye color, hair, skin, stature, weight, special ability in music, drawing, painting, literary composition, calculating, or memorizing, weakness of the mucous membranes, nomadism, general bodily energy, strength, mental ability, epilepsy, shiftlessness, insanity, pauperism, criminality, various forms of nervous disease, defects of speech, sight, hearing, cancer, tuberculosis, pneumonia, skeletal deformities, and other traits.
In his major work, "Heredity in Relation to Eugenics", published in 1911, he advocated compulsory sterilization for those deemed to be unfit for procreation, and was against mine and factory safety laws, charitable institutions, safety standards and sewage regulations, since these would only keep those alive who in evolutionary terms should be candidates for extinction by the Darwinian law of "survival of the fittest." He also advocated capital punishment for the crime of being born of inferior blood.
"Heredity in Relation to Eugenics", that weaknesses in society were due to the unnatural preservation, by the use of modern medicine, of the "feeble-minded" and "unfit."
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
Lewis Madison Terman (1877-1956), president of the American Psychological Association and of the National Academy of Sciences. Terman was of the Galtonian school and believed that intelligence was genetic. Academically best known for his revision of the Binet Scale (1916), his co-authorship of the Stanford Achievement Tests (SAT), and his massive four-volume "Genetic Studies of Genius" (1926- 30). Terman was a major voice in the eugenics movement, and was a key member of the Eugenics Society committee on psychometry.
He declared that, "If we would preserve our state for a class of people worthy to possess it, we would prevent, as far as possible, the propagation of mental degenerates."
I admit that these experiences have been somewhat confusing to me, since offline I have little difficulty of winning people over to eugenics. My students and fellow classmates are always remarking to me about “good genes” this or “I’m going to have kids” that, and it’s heartening. The last time I heard the smallest whisper of “Nazism” was from my speech teacher during a eugenics speech I made to the class, and he was seriously outnumbered by the time I was finished speaking - the students in that class could not have been more sympathetic to the idea of eugenics, and were eager to suggest possible remedies for dysgenics and ideas which could encourage the intelligent to fulfill their responsibilities and procreate!
During the course of my stay here I have deluged this board with quotes, links, studies, and miscellaneous information on eugenics; probably enough to put together into a short book. Because I was able to draw upon the entire ‘Net to support my ideas, I was able to make some of the most thorough arguments in favor of eugenics that I have ever written, yet while I’ve had some successes with these arguments and made a few friends, I would characterize my effectiveness here as “marginal.” This, combined with the opposition’s consistent failure to bring any new information or evidence to the discussion has frayed my nerves and exhausted my patience.
I will leave the way I have always posted, by submitting information for your perusal. This time, interestingly, I have gathered the information almost entirely from rabidly anti-eugenic sources. Those here who have been following the discussion would probably find it a curiosity to read over.
I might post again once I have completed my eugenics page on the web to let everyone know that it’s up, but otherwise I will allow this board to breathe a collective sigh of relief in my absence, knowing that there won’t be anyone heckling them for sources, hounding them to try harder, or pushing them to accept things they don’t have the strength to believe.
I’d like to wish a fond farewell to Spab, Simone, Renee, Frank, NJ Refugee, Stage Monster, Battletoad, Turtle_O, Spießer, and Unrepresented.
The Method and the Nation!
--Nachtwolf
________________________________
The following men were outspoken proponents of eugenics, many of them so rabidly supportive of it that they advocated forced sterelization. While they were instrumental to the eugenics movement now and then, their coolness and lack of compassion have been less than favorable to the reputation of eugenics, and it will probably come as a surprise to see these people, otherwise respected and revered, providing such staunch and uncompromising support for eugenics.
Charles Darwin
H.G. Wells
Margaret Sanger
Samuel Butler
Plato
Alexander Graham Bell
John D. Rockefeller
Theodore Roosevelt
John H. Kellog
Charles Davenport
Lewis Terman
http://www.fathom.com/feature/122169
Galton's influence was nearly immediate. Darwin declared himself persuaded by his cousin's eugenic arguments, and Galton attracted a number of distinguished disciples.
http://reason.com/hod/dl032602.shtml
Wells plays a particularly interesting role in the eugenics movement. In 1904 he discussed a survey paper by Francis Galton, co-founder of eugenics. Galton had concerned himself mainly with "positive eugenics," proposing for instance that the marriage of college professors, supposedly the best of the race, be subsidized. But this was feeble stuff for Wells, who urged the adoption of a negative breeding policy. "I believe," he wrote, "that now and always the conscious selection of the best for reproduction will be impossible; that to propose it is to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what individuality implies. The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies."
http://www.thedarwinpapers.com/oldsite/number13/number13.html
Margaret Sanger, the Founder of Planned Parenthood, advocated eugenics, describing it as a way to eliminate "human waste" from society.
"Everywhere we see poverty and large families going hand in hand. Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly. People who cannot support their own offspring are encouraged by Church and State to produce large families. Many of the children thus begotten are diseased or feeble-minded; many become criminals. The burden of supporting these unwanted types has to be bourne by the healthy elements of the nation. Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of those who should never have been born."
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/PeterMorton/vs5_eugenics.htm
Plato can be found advocating a... scheme for the propagation of the Guardians, his ruling class. In Plato's Utopia there are legal, in fact compulsory, infanticide and abortion; there are marriage festivals with unlimited opportunities for copulation for those men who have distinguished themselves in war; and there are faked lotteries to quiet the resentment of the majority not selected for breeding. (Plato's exact words justifying this fraud are: 'we shall have to arrange an ingenious system of drawing lots, so that our inferior Guardians can... blame the lot and not the Rulers’)
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) Scottish inventor known for inventing the telephone. "How to Improve the Race," January 1914 issue of the Journal of Heredity, edited by Paul Popenoe. Bell revealed himself as a "mainstream" eugenicist who believed in "positive eugenics," which aimed at increasing the percentage of healthy and talented individuals in succeeding generations, rather than in "negative eugenics," the term commonly ascribed to measures designed to prevent the spread of deleterious genes.
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) family founded Standard Oil Co. (now Mobil) and National City Bank (later Citibank).
He founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which quickly became a funding conduit for eugenics research. He was also one of the main supporters of the Eugenics Records Office--the eugencists' "think tank." Such backing has produced results in America as well as overseas.
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
In support of the eugenics movement, (Theodore) Roosevelt wrote that
"it is obvious that if in the future racial qualities are to be improved, the improving must be wrought mainly by favoring the fecundity [fertility] of the worthy types... At present, we do just the reverse. There is no check to the fecundity of those who are subnormal..."
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) a major figure in the eugenics movement founded the American Medical Missionary Board (but soon changed its name to the Race Betterment Foundation). Kellogg himself was an important and respected figure who authored numerous medical and eugenics treatises in order to lobby for policy of "national eugenics." Kellogg, who launched the breakfast cereals industry by introducing granola to the American public as a health food.
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
Charles Benedict Davenport (1866-1944) a biologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard University, pushed the American eugenics movement. In the US, he was fascinated more by the idea of the inheritability of human traits than by Darwin's focus on the evolution of species over time. Davenport's work provided a typical list of hereditary traits: eye color, hair, skin, stature, weight, special ability in music, drawing, painting, literary composition, calculating, or memorizing, weakness of the mucous membranes, nomadism, general bodily energy, strength, mental ability, epilepsy, shiftlessness, insanity, pauperism, criminality, various forms of nervous disease, defects of speech, sight, hearing, cancer, tuberculosis, pneumonia, skeletal deformities, and other traits.
In his major work, "Heredity in Relation to Eugenics", published in 1911, he advocated compulsory sterilization for those deemed to be unfit for procreation, and was against mine and factory safety laws, charitable institutions, safety standards and sewage regulations, since these would only keep those alive who in evolutionary terms should be candidates for extinction by the Darwinian law of "survival of the fittest." He also advocated capital punishment for the crime of being born of inferior blood.
"Heredity in Relation to Eugenics", that weaknesses in society were due to the unnatural preservation, by the use of modern medicine, of the "feeble-minded" and "unfit."
http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/20th.htm
Lewis Madison Terman (1877-1956), president of the American Psychological Association and of the National Academy of Sciences. Terman was of the Galtonian school and believed that intelligence was genetic. Academically best known for his revision of the Binet Scale (1916), his co-authorship of the Stanford Achievement Tests (SAT), and his massive four-volume "Genetic Studies of Genius" (1926- 30). Terman was a major voice in the eugenics movement, and was a key member of the Eugenics Society committee on psychometry.
He declared that, "If we would preserve our state for a class of people worthy to possess it, we would prevent, as far as possible, the propagation of mental degenerates."