Modern welfare system's 'eugenic roots'

The English academic Francis Galton, often described as the father of eugenics, wrote a novel based on the idea 100 years ago that has only just been published for the first time.

Dr Matthew Sweet, who has written an introduction to the book, titled Kantsaywhere, explains that there is a "direct link between Galton's ideas and many of the things that we continue to enjoy today" such as the welfare state, the NHS, the IQ test or even the NHS.

He says that these ideas are "rooted in the Galtonean idea" of measuring the population, looking at its health and subsequently seeing how it can be improved.

news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9642000/9642836.stm

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SIR FRANCIS GALTON, FATHER OF EUGENICS: “It must be introduced into the national conscience, like a new religion. It has, indeed, strong claims to become an orthodox religious, tenet of the future, for eugenics co-operate with the workings of nature by securing that humanity shall be represented by the fittest races…. I see no impossibility in Eugenics becoming a religious dogma among mankind.” (Eugenics: Its Definition Scope and Aims, 1904)

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (In response to Galton’s 1904 paper): I agree with the paper, and go so far as to say that there is now no reasonable excuse for refusing to face the fact that nothing but a eugenic religion can save our civilization from the fate that has overtaken all previous civilizations.

ON BREEDING IMPERFECTIONS IN MANKIND

"With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man itself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden him self whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage."

Source: Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2nd Ed. (London: John Murray, 1882), Chapter V, pp. 133-34.

The noted poet, eugenics advocate and supposed great Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the majority opinion in which he stated: ”The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes,” and he then concluded, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Holmes declared that it was proper for the state to compel sterilizations for those who were deemed “socially inadequate.” After the trial was over and the sterilization had taken place it was proven that the charge of three generations of feeblemindedness in the Buck family was a total fabrication!

Bill Gates: Vaccines Can Help Decrease Surplus Population

From Politically Correct to Incorrect

Population control is not a mere eastern innovation but has an impressive pedigree among the sages of the West. In fact, up until the early 20th century, it was politically fashionable for liberals to talk about decreasing the surplus population. 20th century advocates of population control would often draw on the social theories of men like of Sir Francis Galton and Thomas Malthus who, a century earlier, had argued that the poor were draining the world’s recourses. (One of Malthus’s solutions was to reduce the surplus population by introducing policies specifically designed to bring death to large numbers of peasants. For example, he encouraged poor people to move near swamps, so that they would catch diseases and begin dying off.)