social organism Archives | Eugenics and Other Evils

A ‘vulgar Darwinism’ that displaced Christian culture permeated Germany’s Nazis

Filed under 1945, Christianity, Darwinism, Fichte, Hegel, lebensraum / living space, Nazis, race, social body, social organism, the State, transcription needed, War Crime Tribunal, Year

From Volume 5 of the ‘Blue Series’ transcript of the Nazi war crimes trial, pgs 373-378. [This was copied and pasted from a PDF, which needs to be cleaned up.] I propose today to prove to you that all this organized and vast criminality springs from what I may be allowed to call a crime …

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Wilson: Government is a Living Thing that Obeys Darwin and Evolution

Filed under 1913, Darwinism, democracy, Evolution, Laws of Nature, liberalism, social body, social organism, Woodrow Wilson, Year

Woodrow Wilson in The New Freedom, 1913 (ISBN: 978-1-947844-89-6): The makers of our Federal Constitution read Montesquieu with true scientific enthusiasm. They were scientists in their way,—the best way of their age,—those fathers of the nation. Jefferson wrote of “the laws of Nature,”—and then by way of afterthought,— “and of Nature’s God.” And they constructed …

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Galton: It will never come to lethal chambers!

Filed under 1904, Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, lethal chamber, Oops!, social organism

After Francis Galton’s address to the American Sociological Society, “Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, and Aims” a certain Benjamin Kidd responds thusly: For Mr. Pearson, I think, proposed to give the kind of people who now scribble on our railway carriages no more than a short shrift and the nearest lamp-post. I hope we shall not …

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Foster Kennedy: Euthanasia for “Nature’s Mistakes” up to the age of 5

Filed under 1941, Action T4 Program, adaptation, After-birth abortion, American Eugenics, American Psychiatric Association, applied biology, birth defects, breeders, breeding horses or cattle, Charity, civilization, compulsory sterilization, compulsory vaccination, conscious selection, death as creative, defectives, democracy, dysgenic breeding, eugenics, euthanasia, Evolution, feebleminded, Fit and Unfit, Foster Kennedy, genetic counseling, German Eugenics, hereditary courts, human breeding, humanitarianism, infanticide, IQ, medical killing, mental defectives, national degeneration, national stock, Oliver Wendell Holmes, sentimentalism, social body, social organism, Spartans, sterilization, suffering, The God Committee, unfit, useless eaters, vaccination, Year

Kennedy’s address at the 97th annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1941 encapsulates well how the acceptance of evolution and utilitarian thinking are tied into arguments for eugenics (and euthanasia), which is ironic, of course, since many advocates for euthanasia deny such connections and modern proponents of evolution become apoplectic at the insinuation …

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Sydney Webb: The parasites should not be allowed to compete as wage-earners, for it prevents natural selection from working…

Filed under 1920, Charitable organizations, Charity, criminals, death as creative, defectives, degeneration, Fit and Unfit, idiots, lunacy, mental defectives, minimum wage, moral perverts, morality, national efficiency, Natural selection, Parasitism, pauperism, poverty, Progressive Era, public welfare, social organism, Year

Sydney Webb in Industrial Democracy (regarding the minimum wage) – 1920 The problem of the Unemployable is not created by the fixing of a National Minimum by law. The Unemployable we have always with us. With regards to certain sections of the population, this unemployment is not a mark of social disease, but of social …

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Julian Huxley: Population Control, Eugenics, and Birth Control all part of the same Program

Filed under 1962, altruism, American Eugenics, Andrew Carnegie, artificial insemination, birth control, birth defects, Britain, China, compulsory sterilization, compulsory vaccination, Contraception, Darwinism, defectives, degeneration, duty, dysgenic breeding, dysgenics, education, Efficiency Movement, eugenics, Evolution, Evolutionary Humanism, family planning, family size, fertility control, Ford Foundation, Francis Galton, genetic counseling, genetic load, Genetics, H.J. Muller, homosexuality, human breeding, Humanism, India, insane asylums, insanity, intelligence, IQ, Jamaica, Japan, John Rockefeller, Julian Huxley, liberalism, marriage, medical genetics, mental defectives, national efficiency, national stock, nature vs nurture, negative eugenics, Negro, over-population, Parasitism, philanthropy, planned evolution, population control, population explosion, positive eugenics, poverty, Progressives, public health, public welfare, race, race hygiene, rational selection, science, social organism, social problem group, sterilization, technology, United Nations, vaccination, vasectomy, Year

Contemporary advocates for birth control exhibit no awareness whatsoever that birth control was always conceived in the context of ‘eliminating the unfit,’ ie., eugenics. Eugenics, in turn, was considered a straight-forward logical extension of Darwinism. Eugenics was seen as human control of human evolution, and was always tied into discussions on ‘population control.’ These are …

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The Duty of the State in the Treatment of the Deformed: R. Z. Mason, Appleton WI, 1879

Filed under 1879, abortion, American Eugenics, applied biology, aristocratic, authority, Biological Laws, birth defects, breeders, breeding horses or cattle, carbonic acid gas, Charitable organizations, Charity, compulsory education, Darwinism, defectives, degeneration, drunkard, duty, dysgenic breeding, education, eugenics, euthanasia, every child a wanted child, Evolution, feeble-minded, Fit and Unfit, genetic counseling, Herbert Spencer, hereditary cripples, idiots, imbecile, imbeciles, immortality, laws of heredity, Laws of Nature, legislative eugenics, life unworthy of life, lunacy, man as animal, marriage, medical genetics, mental defectives, national stock, philanthropy, progress, Progressive Era, Progressives, public school, race, race betterment, rational selection, religion, right to life, right to reproduce, science, scientific world view, sentimentalism, social organism, Wisconsin, Year

R.Z. Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI, “The Duty of the State in its Treatment of the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind, the Idiotic, the Crippled and Deformed, and the Insane.” [Source / Italics added, bold text added] In the progress of modern civilization, the state has come slowly to a recognition of certain duties and …

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Leon Cole on the Social Body and Our Duty to Future Generations

Filed under 1907, 1911, 1914, American Eugenics, applied biology, breeding horses or cattle, Charity, defectives, duty, eugenics, Evolution, feeble-minded, First Conference for Race Betterment (1914), Fit and Unfit, Francis Galton, Herbert Spencer, infanticide, Karl Pearson, laws of heredity, Laws of Nature, life unworthy of life, man as animal, medical genetics, medical killing, national stock, Natural selection, nature vs nurture, philanthropy, Progressive Era, race betterment, racial progress, rational selection, right to life, sanctity of life, social body, social organism, Year

From The Relation of Philanthropy and Medicine to Race Betterment by Leon J. Cole, University of Wisconsin, at the First Conference for Race Betterment (1914) Among those who have in their treatment of this subject emphasized the importance of the natural selection viewpoint may be mentioned especially Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, and Karl Pearson, the …

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Eugenicists Shared in Common with the Nazis Concepts of the “Social Body.”

Filed under 1863, 1879, 1889, 1900, 1910, 1914, 2012, American Eugenics, August Weismann, Civic Biology, Darwinism, death rate, defectives, degeneration, duty, dysgenic breeding, Ernst Haeckel, eugenics, euthanasia, Evolution, First Conference for Race Betterment (1914), Greece, Helene Stocker, Herbert Spencer, immortality, John Stuart Mill, League for the Protection of Mothers, morality, Natural selection, Progressive Era, Progressives, quote collections, race betterment, Rome, social body, social organism, Utilitarianism, W. Duncan McKim, Wisconsin, Year

One of the under-appreciated elements of what animated the eugenics mindset was the view that each species could very well be conceived of as a ‘body’ of sort. A different level of moral calculation could be applied to the ‘social organism’ or ‘social body’ then the individual. This is no mere invoking of the ‘common …

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