Thursday, November 13, 2014

Smarter Than Galton

According to Galton, the broad swath of the population, that is its diversity alone, has a lot to offer but that is not believed by everyone.


Planned Parenthood was created as the American Birth Control League in 1921 by Margaret Sanger for the purpose of establishing birth control clinics, clinics that would explain and promote birth control methods in the Black and Latino communities. In her book The Pivot of Civilization she states her target was the control of "reckless breeding," "dysgenic breeding" and the like.She was, in essence, the embodiment of those early Progressives who, filled with the glow of science, tried to apply technology--and a dispassionate logic--to the living world. She was associated with the controversial "Negro Project" which encourage birth control among American Blacks. There is a famous quote:  "we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." This quote has been cited by Angela Davis to support her claims that Sanger wanted to exterminate black people but that appears to me to be a harsh reading from the esteemed Ms. Davis. It sounds much more that she was concerned about being misunderstood. 

Thomas Malthus was a 19th Century cleric and professor of political economy. He believed a population crisis was looming and thought poverty, deprivation and hunger was proof. He condemned charity as only exacerbating the problem and wanted to restrict population growth to certain groups.
From Malthus’ magnum opus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, (published in six(!) editions from 1798 to 1826):
All children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room is made for them by the deaths of grown persons. We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality.

This was the early phase of intellectual tinkering that brought forth the political technocrat. Wilson--and especially the engineer Hoover--embodied this confidence in logical, dispassionate and--importantly--predictable analysis and manipulation by governing bodies. It wasn't until the Third Reich got very good at it that such thinking receded--or at least turned its coat for a more benign look.

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