Discuss: Conservation and Eugenics

Our nation as a whole, not any one movement, bears the eugenic stain. To imply otherwise discredits the Progressive Era’s diverse change-makers, all of whom embraced the pseudoscience to some degree. Jane Addams applauded the movement for publishing “an ever-increasing mass of information as to that which constitutes the inheritance of well-born children.” W.E.B. Du Bois condoned birth control in tandem with his “talented tenth” doctrine.  Even Helen Keller, herself labeled one of society’s “feeble-minded,” argued that some “defective” children should be allowed to die because of their inborn criminal propensities. Reaching hard enough, any writer could weave a “dark past” narrative into the history of civil rights, poverty reform or special education.
I was also disappointed in Orion art department’s choice of window dressing. A random sampling of images from the eugenics archive (which didn’t depict any of the people mentioned in the story) took up valuable space that might have been occupied by original artwork.

What I appreciate about Charles Wohlforth’s writing is the way he gathers material in an investigative way from many different sources and then examines it from different perspectives. “The Whale and the Supercomputer” is a fascinating book for just that reason. His open-mindedness and careful observations let readers think along with him, and draw their own conclusions.
  Although I was somewhat familiar with the history of eugenics, I didn’t know about its associations with the early conservation movement in this country, or that both were part of a nationalist political impulse. To me the article provides a reminder that, while we fight for what we believe in, it doesn’t hurt to temper our righteousness with a little humility. Sometimes, about some things, we’re just wrong.

Actually the Founders did grapple with corporations long before the corporations took the government, and they didn’t need to assemble an all powerful central government to address it. Remember, they had experience from the East India Company… the Boston Tea Party?
http://homepage.mac.com/kaaawa/iblog/C2128262602/E20051025182106/index.html

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water: birth control helps a lot of not-white, not-European people to live better lives.

A footnote to Kolokol’s comment:

http://www.gangsofamerica.com/

I’m with Esther.
And along those linres, i will caution anyone else tempted to follow Mike K.
Truly ratioanl minds can look at all information and weigh their value. New idas are not a personal affront, just food for thought. If you thought you were going to walk unchallenged, then you’re wearing your prior privilege on your sleeve.
The author here does seem to have a bias against government based on personal beliefs. My personal beliefs are more altruistic in that I think government can guide us to workk together for the benefit of all. The healthiest communities are the ones with a smaller gap between the richest & the poorest. The focus there is “community”. Now make that concept global & think about it some more.

Theodore Roosevelt had been my most-admired US President.  I’m afraid this article too my estimation down a peg.  As a long-time Sierra Club member, I remember the immigration proposal well and am relieved it did not pass.

Excellent history with some provocative perspectives. I suppose that it’s one of those inevitabilities when we critique the past by today’s standards. Are we not to expect that we learn and improve and so the past will look outdated and wrong, just as we will likely find in the future that where we are now is awkward and embarrassingly obsolete.
Interesting to note that while both Roosevelt and Pinchot were active advocates for conservation (and as we read, it’s implications regarding the human animal and its various forms), it warrants keeping in mind that it’s the concept of conservation as it was then and much of it sprang from the desire of wealthy white trophy hunters who wished to see the core breeding specimens of their trophy stocks protected and to stay vital and wild so that some special people like themselves will be able to have the experience of taking on the wilderness and in overcoming it From that would pour a great benefit in the form of leadership tested by nature, knowing its scale and scope, and fully engaged in being the superior specimen like a bull elk or moose or lion. Speaking of lions, many of the aristocratic class in Europe and America were actively taking safaris in Africa and experincing different ethnic and racial groups there and around the world, Of course in systemizing the perceived distinctions which make any species or natural population unique, and where one might prefer one over the other for the helf of its antlers or tusks, and as genetically undefensible as it is we would naturally have done the same for human populations.
All this and more while applying this ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality to our world perspectives (something we still do). The survival of the most cooperative’ mentality was never considered.