Negative eugenics: destructive and stupid

Day 18 – O’Keefe – positive and negative eugenics

The idea of restricting immigration comes from the eugenics movement.  Countries have always kept enemies out, and have paid attention to who came in.  But restricting immigration in order to shape and sculpt a new and proud population is a new idea in history, brought to us by the eugenics movement.

Eugenics is a serious effort to shape a new human race – or at least some nation – by controlling the genetic pool.  A simple slogan spelled out this goal on the cover of a key journal of the eugenics movement in the 1930s: “More from the fit, less from the unfit.”  Getting more “fit” babies – or “positive” eugenics – has never worked well; killing off the “unfit” – or “negative” eugenics – is much easier.

For a century, the eugenics movement has been promising that they would learn to control genetics, and produce super-babies.  Whatever you think of the goal, they haven’t achieved it.  Instead, they identified and aborted tens of thousands of children with Down syndrome.

For a century, the eugenics movement has tried to persuade Nordic types to have larger families.  Whatever you think of the goal, they haven’t achieved it.  Instead, they launched depopulation propaganda in developing nations, and drove down population growth in Africa and Latin America.

For a century, the eugenics movement has tried to backstop population control by immigration control.  If you can’t improve the whole world by eugenics, can you improve one nation?  So they did manage to pass laws keeping out peoples whom they considered inferior.  First target: the Chinese.  A generation later, between the two world wars, the focus was on Jews.  I’m not sure how important IQ is, or whether we can measure it successfully; but it is ironic that we tried to improve our national IQ by excluding Chinese and Jews.  Right?

Today, many Americans are deeply concerned about the widening gaps between faith and national life.  The Catholic bishops (to take the most prominent example) assert that religious freedom is under assault as never before in our nation’s history, and have launched or supported dozens of lawsuits to protect religious freedom.  And many Americans are deeply concerned about trouble in family life. Over 40 percent of children born in the USA are born to unmarried women.  Rates among some groups and in some areas are much higher than that. 

I would argue that we are in the middle of a catastrophic mistake.  Just as it seemed bizarre to keep out the Chinese and Jews when we were worried about intelligence, so today it is bizarre to keep out Catholic Latinos when we are concerned about faith and family life.  And when we do let some in, we divide families aggressively.  This is not only unbiblical, unjust, inhospitable, and shameful; it’s also stupid and ironically counter-productive.

We can do better.  The opposite of eugenics – including restrictive immigration policies – is Mother Teresa, who sees the face of Jesus in the face of the poor.

 Mr. Parrott?