Positive
Positive Eugenics.
The perfect example would be of Hitler’s Aryan race. The propaganda of his reign illustrated the blond haired, blue eyed Germanic race to be greater than all others. The race which would lead humanity to the next stage of their evolutionary process. In fact, in the 1936 Olympics, held in Berlin itself, Hitler challenged the world to come, meet the Aryans. The third reich believed their race would show it’s brilliance in the 1936 olympic games. Although German did win more overall medals than any other country (89 to our 56), heroes such as American Jesse Owens came out to prove the reich wrong. The next two scheduled Olympics were canceled. The athletes of the world would not compete against each other for a while. Instead, they killed each other.
Margaret Sanger was a proponent of Eugenics. Positive and Negative. She believed, as many did, that parenting should be planned. Only the fit should be allowed. Even that family planning should be governmentally controlled if possible. That, as David Brower once said, “All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing the antidotes to citizens chosen for child-bearing” was a common idea.
Now many people may be angry at me for pinpointing Margaret Sanger. She is a heroine to many. She has her own plaque at Wichita State University’s Heroine Memorial. She was a historical figure who did much for women’s rights. What right’s would that be? Her right to contraceptives. Why would Margaret Sanger, proponent of Eugenics, fight for contraceptives? In her own words it was “nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit.” Her goal was to bring about an era in which mothers would refuse “to bring forth weaklings.” One which “withholds the unfit brings forth the fit.” And the “lack of balance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit’” was “the greatest present menace to civilization.”
The plaque at Wichita State University, under her name, has a quote from her. “No child should be left unwanted.” It sounds very humanitarian in the forefront, but her true meaning was, if the child is unwanted, it should not be.
Positive eugenics. Although Margaret Sanger believed that it was a woman’s duty, if her genetic material was good, to bring about children into the world, it was tied inextricably in the idea that negative eugenics needed to be practiced at the same time. It put humanity into a hierarchy of fit and unfit. Those worthy and those unworthy and the only thing that differentiated the two were genetic. We only need to look as far as the American Civil War to see how dreadfully wrong that idea is.
Jared Williams
The perfect example would be of Hitler’s Aryan race. The propaganda of his reign illustrated the blond haired, blue eyed Germanic race to be greater than all others. The race which would lead humanity to the next stage of their evolutionary process. In fact, in the 1936 Olympics, held in Berlin itself, Hitler challenged the world to come, meet the Aryans. The third reich believed their race would show it’s brilliance in the 1936 olympic games. Although German did win more overall medals than any other country (89 to our 56), heroes such as American Jesse Owens came out to prove the reich wrong. The next two scheduled Olympics were canceled. The athletes of the world would not compete against each other for a while. Instead, they killed each other.
Margaret Sanger was a proponent of Eugenics. Positive and Negative. She believed, as many did, that parenting should be planned. Only the fit should be allowed. Even that family planning should be governmentally controlled if possible. That, as David Brower once said, “All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing the antidotes to citizens chosen for child-bearing” was a common idea.
Now many people may be angry at me for pinpointing Margaret Sanger. She is a heroine to many. She has her own plaque at Wichita State University’s Heroine Memorial. She was a historical figure who did much for women’s rights. What right’s would that be? Her right to contraceptives. Why would Margaret Sanger, proponent of Eugenics, fight for contraceptives? In her own words it was “nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit.” Her goal was to bring about an era in which mothers would refuse “to bring forth weaklings.” One which “withholds the unfit brings forth the fit.” And the “lack of balance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit’” was “the greatest present menace to civilization.”
The plaque at Wichita State University, under her name, has a quote from her. “No child should be left unwanted.” It sounds very humanitarian in the forefront, but her true meaning was, if the child is unwanted, it should not be.
Positive eugenics. Although Margaret Sanger believed that it was a woman’s duty, if her genetic material was good, to bring about children into the world, it was tied inextricably in the idea that negative eugenics needed to be practiced at the same time. It put humanity into a hierarchy of fit and unfit. Those worthy and those unworthy and the only thing that differentiated the two were genetic. We only need to look as far as the American Civil War to see how dreadfully wrong that idea is.
Jared Williams
