Are We Headed Toward a Form of Eugenics?

The term eugenics comes from the Greek roots for "good" and "generation" or "origin" and was first used to refer to the "science" of heredity and good breeding in about 1883. Within 20 years, the word was widely used by scientists who had rediscovered the work of Gregor Mendel. Mendel had meticulously recorded the results of cross-breeding pea plants, and found a very regular statistical pattern for features like height and color.

Local eugenics societies and groups sprang up around the United States after World War I, with names like the Race Betterment Foundation. The war had given many Americans a greater fear of foreigners, and immigration to the United States was still increasing. In 1923, organizers founded the American Eugenics Society, and it quickly grew to 29 chapters around the country. At fairs and exhibitions, eugenicists spread the word and hosted "fitter family" and "better baby" competitions to award blue ribbons to the finest human stock -- not unlike the awards for prize bull and biggest pumpkin.

Eugenics was seen as such a great idea that the government got into the act. In 1924, the Immigration Act was passed by majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. It set up strict quotas limiting immigrants from countries believed by eugenicists to have "inferior" stock, particularly Southern Europe and Asia. President Coolidge, who signed the bill into law, had stated when he was vice president, "America should be kept American. . . . Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."

Well, folks, it looks like we are back at this idiocy again. Enter our “regulatory czar” Cass R. Sunstein. Mr. Sunstein, who for years was a colleague of Mr. Obama at the University of Chicago, co-authored a book with Richard Thaler, also of the University of Chicago, entitled “Nudge” in 2008.

In their book and in a blog (nudges.wordpress.com), Mr. Thaler and Mr. Sunstein favor nudging people to save more, eat better, weigh less, invest more sensibly, pay down debt, avoid hazardous mortgages, drive safely and wear bike helmets — a list that expands as new ideas and new problems conducive to nudging emerge.

Brilliant! Common sense…no? Orwellian? Lots of opinions about Sunstein, who now has real power to “nudge” people into “better” choices in their daily lives.

Let’s suppose that we have a single-payer health care system in the U.S. The question of prioritizing costs comes before Mr. Sunstein. As “regulatory czar” he has influence with the President.

Now, if we look at Obama’s remark the other day about “grandma” taking a pill rather than getting a pacemaker, we can see where Sunstein’s influence might suggest that the elderly are a fiscal drain on the new health care system. And are we going to have a plethora of “baby boomers” that will fall into that category!

So, let’s see where this scenario leads us…Twenty-year olds are less likely to need pacemakers, expensive medication, etc. However, at about age 55, according Sunstein’s own research, costs for health care begin to increase.

Now comes the eugenics part. If we had less elderly folks, the government could cover all the health care needs of the active, pre-60s workers. So, maybe this fact would necessitate extending Medicare benefits to those who turn 70, instead of 65…how about the broken Social Security system? Let’s not give benefits until a person turns 68 or 70. In a worst case scenario, let’s just authorize money for pain pills for the 85 year-old who needs a knee or hip replacement.

Oh, and by the way, let’s limit the number of children born so the government doesn’t have such a big health care bill.

Obama has appointed John P. Holdren as his science czar. This crazed maniac penned a book with Paul and Anne Ehrlich in 1977 titled Ecoscience. In this book he mentions compulsory population-control laws, laws including compulsory abortion, and that these could be sustained under the existing constitution.

He also goes on about taking children from single mothers and placing them with married couples, adding a chemical that would sterilize humans to drinking water or to staple foods.

Below are some quotes by these goofballs from their book:

From page 786:
“One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.”

From pages 786-7:
“A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men. The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”
From pages 787-8:
“Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.”

From page 837:
“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

From page 838:
“If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.”

Maybe as a 68 year-old male who has fathered nine children, I would have been required to exercise reproductive responsibility under a new health care system…gee, wouldn’t that have been nice…no sleepless nights, diaper changes, etc. Nah, my wife did all those things…

What kind of “nudge” will it take to get this President and his buddies out of the business of governance? Maybe voting him out of a second term would be a good start.