Eugenics and the Progressive Movement

My earlier LRC Blog post today has generated much reader interest regarding Woodrow Wilson, the Ku Klux Klan and racism.  We must never forget that Wilson served during the Progressive movement, which esteemed researchers such as Murray Rothbard and Robert Higgs have demonstrated was the seedbed for much destructive mischief.  It was during this time that the Eugenics movement came to fruition.  Many leading Progressives were enthusiastic supporters of the pseudo-scientific theories and racist postulations behind this fraudulent idea.  It was out of such spurious notions as “race suicide” that the Holocaust was born.  LRC readers are advised about three very intriguing books which further explore this subject:  Edwin Black, War Against the Weak:  Eugenics and America’s Campaign To Create a Master Race; Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus:  America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust;  and Jerry Leonard, Hitler Is Winning:  How Hitler’s Plan For A Master Race Was Created By The West And Is Being Implemented TodayHow many of today’s “progressives” at HuffPo and MoveOn know of this dark history of their ideological forebears?  Puts a whole new spin on the “anti-Birthers” rhetoric, doesn’t it!

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2:15 pm on August 7, 2009