In the first half of the 20th century, the U.S. 60,000 sterilized Americans, to which California contributed a very robust 20,000. One of the more haunting features of an excellent new cable documentary coming out this summer, What Hath Darwin Wrought?, is the setting where many of its interviews with scholars were conducted: the grounds of the old Stockton State Hospital in Stockton, California.
[Yes, that same California in which, today, stars boast proudly of out of wedlock pregnancies. … Not that I make it my business; I do not pay taxes there, and they do make lots of money, so I assume that deadbeat dads can be brought to justice.]
A leading center for coerced sterilization in that dark era, the hospital today looks quite picturesque as the backdrop to conversations with my Discovery Institute colleagues, political scientist John West and historian Richard Weikart (who teaches at the Cal State University campus of which the state hospital building is now a part). Along with philosopher and mathematician David Berlinski, another Discovery fellow, they do a remarkably lucid and informative job of sketching a side of 20th-century history — the malign cultural and moral influence of Darwinian evolutionary thinking — that tends to get overlooked.
A huge scandal. All worth reading.
The sad part is, all most people actually want is an acknowledgement of what happened. If many people never had children due to a failed ideology, well, those people have now died and they are dead. Best let the dead rest in peace.
But the living want an acknowledgement of the Darwinist eugenics scandal. It really happened, and we want an admission. Darwin’s followers were wrong. They thought they knew who should live and who should die.
Oh so, you Darwinists are God now? When did He vacate his throne and a bunch of tax-funded profs take it over?
A hundred years ago, my great grandfather brought out his family from County Cork, Ireland, and he had an axe and rope with him. Having been informed of the exact location of his land, he roped everyone together and hewed his way through the bush.
Gosh, if a eugenicist could have got hold of all of them, … [- 30 -]
Maybe the mosquitoes drove the eugenicists off?