You can maybe make an argument for eugenics when you’re talking about traits with clear genetic origins. But most eugenicists were trying to eliminate non-genetic traits like poverty, unemployment, poor education, criminality, social deviance, and Catholicism.
There are buildings and roads all over the South named for various die-hard segregationists.
Clearly this means that Charles Kuralt is tainted by his father’s nature–which he surely inherited–and should have been shut out of civic life. We must be zealous in preventing any future generations of the Kuralt conspiracy from influencing our pure, pure, humanitarian essence. Too bad we can’t round up all the eugenicists and purge their bloodlines, that this sort of thing never happen again.
Don’t tell me that’s over the top.
This is over the top:
It is only good real Americans who can be trusted. Slovene-Americans like the Kuralts bring a contempt for the equality of brotherhood of man which is alien to our Anglo-Saxon heritage and to conservative Christian values. The left is always the enemy, and only by holding fast to the humanitarian heritage that built this nation and ending immigration from the European continent can we avoid the horror of euthanasia, slavery, and homosexuality that the degenerate European race is polluted by. Also we need to flood the Chunnel.
Edited to add: Of course we should expect something like this in a place named Mecklenburg County. A Mecklenburger is practically a Pomeranian, which is practically a Prussian, and then it’s pointy helmets and concentration camps all the way!
I say we rename everything in the country that was named for a slave owner, starting with Washington, Jefferson and Madison. The jobs created just to replace all the signs would probably be enough to rebuild the economy.
OK, but only if we rename them all after breakfast-cereal advertising characters.
All Washingtons, including the state and the Federal District, will now be known as Captain Crunch. I’m sure my father will be pleased to learn that he now works for Captain Crunch University.
Washington State will be the Soggies. 
For the Apple Jack Cup!
As a Virginia resident . . yeah kind of. There are more streets named for Confederates in my area of Northern Virginia than actual American patriots. I almost used the word traitors, but that isn’t quite right, still I don’t think they are worthy of the respect they are given. Kuralt seems to be a similar case.
Nice gotcha, except not really.
From the article:
And so on. It looks like, to a very large degree, he was using the legal fiction of feeblemindedness as a way to grant poor women the reproductive choice they had no other way to get.
As for sterilizing the mentally retarded, especially when they’re women, it made sense before the pill. Childbirth was extremely dangerous, and severely mentally retarded women were presumably incapable of making an informed decision to undertake the risk of childbirth and the responsibility to care for a child. Is the alternative–subjecting mentally retarded women to the risk of an unwanted pregnancy and child–uncontroversially better?
I’m not saying what he did was uncontroversially wonderful. But linking it to eugenics policies seems unwarranted by the evidence at hand.
Eugenics did not begin in early 20th America. It began in mid 19th century Britain, and although its early advocates were racists (because just about everybody was at the time), this had little to do with what they were advocating, which was mainly concerned with the improvement of the white race by selective breeding.
I am not even convinced that it was mainly about discouraging negroes from breeding, even in 20th century America. Do you have a cite for that? I thought it was more about sterilizing mental defectives, regardless of race (although that is already a corruption of the original ideas). As others in the thread have remarked, before Hitler gave it such a bad name, eugenics was more associated with the political left rather than the right (whereas racism has always been more to the right).
Well yes, but that is because they were genetic determinists who thought these conditions (with the possible exception of Catholicism) were largely the result of genetic inferiority, inherited (as they thought) traits like laziness, low intelligence, and susceptibility to disease. A lot of people, including quite a few on these boards, still seem to pretty much think that. (I am not saying I agree.)
Anyway, has anyone, ever, not agreed that it would be a very good thing to eliminate poverty, unemployment, poor education, and criminality? (I doubt whether most forms of social deviance will find many defenders either.) There is nothing at all wrong with that as a goal. (Whether or not the means to those ends proposed by eugenicists would be effective is another matter, of course.)
Defenders, no. Customers, yes.
It’s not enough to agree with the goal. The methods being used have to have some rational connection to the goal.
Back in the 14th century, people believed the plague was caused by Jews. So every time the plague hit town, they’d go out and kill a bunch of Jews to make them stop.
Now if I had been an enlightened person back then who was arguing against killing Jews, that wouldn’t have meant I was in favor of the plague. I could be in favor of the goal of eliminating the plague but against the supposed method of killing Jews.
:mad: How much are the Jews paying you?!
The methods advocated by eugenicists pretty clearly do have some rational connection to the goal. i don’t think many rational people will deny that genetics has some effect on such things as intelligence and character traits and physical health, or that intelligence and character traits and physical health have some effect of on a person’s chances of winding up poor, or a criminal, or whatever. Whether, at any level, these are the most significant determining effects is debatable, and much debated. I am inclined to doubt whether they are, but that is not the point. Eugenic methods, based in real science rather than racism, may not be a very efficient way of bettering the human condition - the attainable benefits might be negligible compared to the costs* (or not, the issue is still unclear) - but I think it is hard to deny that there almost certainly would be some benefits, and the reasons for thinking so are certainly quite rational.
All that stuff about Jews just seems to b yet another attempt to smear eugenics as something inherently racist. It is not (although it is true that it does have features that render its concepts rather vulnerable to being corrupted and co-opted by racists, and that that did, historically, happen).
*I am not talking mainly about financial costs here, but social costs such as diminution of people’s freedom to choose whom they will marry, or how many children they will have. If you think those are unacceptable costs, I am not unsympathetic.
The methods advocated by eugenicists pretty clearly do have some rational connection to the goal. i don’t think many rational people will deny that genetics has some effect on such things as intelligence and character traits and physical health, or that intelligence and character traits and physical health have some effect of on a person’s chances of winding up poor, or a criminal, or whatever. Whether, at any level, these are the most significant determining effects is debatable, and much debated. I am inclined to doubt whether they are, but that is not the point. Eugenic methods, based in real science rather than racism, may not be a very efficient way of bettering the human condition - the attainable benefits might be negligible compared to the costs* (or not, the issue is still unclear) - but I think it is hard to deny that there almost certainly would be some benefits, and the reasons for thinking so are certainly quite rational.
All that stuff about Jews just seems to b yet another attempt to smear eugenics as something inherently racist. It is not (although it is true that it does have features that render its concepts rather vulnerable to being corrupted and co-opted by racists, and that that did, historically, happen).
*I am not talking mainly about financial costs here, but social costs such as diminution of people’s freedom to choose whom they will marry, or how many children they will have. If you think those are unacceptable costs, I am not unsympathetic.
Of course, eugenics in the sense of picking out certain people to sterilize or whatever becomes obsolete if we perfect genetic engineering.
It’s not just genetic connections that are relevant, either. Regardless of genetics, a kid who’s raised by criminals is more likely to grow up to be a criminal, too. The relevant question is not whether it’s a sensible method, but whether it’s worth it.