A BRIGHTEOUS CAUSE (via Tom Corcoran):

Humanizing Eugenics: A bad idea bred of good intentions (CHRISTINE ROSEN, February 28, 2006, Opinion Journal)

Harry Bruinius takes the title of his book about eugenics, "Better for All the World," from Holmes's now notorious opinion. Eugenics, a term coined by British scientist Francis Galton in 1883, means "good in birth"; its adherents hoped to improve the human race through better breeding. The notion proved particularly appealing to Americans in the early 20th century, as they confronted waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and fretted about the "purity" of the native Anglo-Saxon American population.

Many states passed marriage-restriction laws, barring the feeble-minded and epileptic from obtaining marriage licenses, and laws requiring the compulsory sterilization of the feeble-minded residing in state institutions. State fairs even featured "fitter families" contests, where judges assessed each competing family's eugenic merit. In 1924, Congress passed an immigration-restriction law based on eugenic principles, assuming that certain national groups possessed better "germplasm"--or heritable traits--than others. Progressive politicians, intellectuals and religious leaders supported eugenics, seeing in it an enlightened, scientific attempt to cure humanity's ills. [...]

Mr. Bruinius's intention is to humanize the story of eugenics by exploring the "age-old passions and human desires" behind the movement. He offers portraits of men like Aubrey Strode, a progressive-minded state senator from Virginia who sponsored the sterilization law that was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court; Charles Davenport, a biologist who notably secured funds from Mrs. E.H. Harriman, the widow of the railroad magnate, and from the Carnegie Institution to fund eugenics research in the U.S.; and Harry H. Laughlin, the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., who advised Congress during debate over the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act and, as a major supporter of sterilization, assessed Carrie Buck's pedigree and declared her "shiftless, ignorant, and worthless."

The Dutch solution (Alisa Craddock, February 27, 2006, Enter Stage Right)

Holland is always on the cutting edge of progress in social issues. The age-of-consent (for sexual activity) in that country is 12 (unless an "interested party" files a complaint), euthanasia is practiced, supposedly observing a set of guidelines which require consent of the euthanized, but horror stories do emerge more and more frequently, and the aged, poor, and infirm feel compelled to carry little cards with them that say "Do not euthanize me" for fear some doctor will decide their quality of life is not good enough (for whom?) and compassionately end their life.

The latest forward thinking proposal coming out of Holland is mandatory abortion of unwanted children. (Of course, if you have to force the woman to abort a child, one is inclined to question who it is that doesn't want it.) The woman who is proposing this "debate" is Marianne van den Anker, who is the official in charge of Rotterdam's health and security portfolios. The communities she wishes to target are Antilleans and Arubans, She is specifically looking to target teenaged mothers, drug addicts and the mentally handicapped, and has a litany of "compassionate" reasons for her proposal, complete with a worst case scenario (in typical liberal fashion) with which to define the entire debate in order to defend what many of us regard as the reprehensible.

No one doubts that progressives mean well, it's just that the results they render are always stacks of corpses.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 2, 2006 12:00 AM