Why have Eugenics Studies and Policies fallen out of favor?

Discussion in 'Opinion POLLS' started by Polar Bear, Feb 27, 2012.

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Why have Eugenics Studies and Policies Fallen out of favor?

Poll closed Feb 10, 2013.
  1. The eugenicist movements Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were no longer popular

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. Americas universities were besieged by Marxist Jews during FDRs tenure

    1 vote(s)
    8.3%
  3. German eugenicists were smeared for admitting the obvious

    3 vote(s)
    25.0%
  4. America "won" WWII, therefore academic freedom ended

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  5. Eugenics are a myth. Therefore, immigration from Somalia should be increased

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  6. Eugenics was pseudoscience, it failed to take into account Africa's gifts to modern civilization

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  7. Those who opposed eugenics were right

    5 vote(s)
    41.7%
  8. 20th century eugenicists are just pure evil

    3 vote(s)
    25.0%
  1. Polar Bear

    Polar Bear New Member

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    Those who breed canines, cattle and horses know there are methods to increase intelligence, size, as well as other desirable traits of the offspring by practicing selective (scientific) breeding - AKA Eugenics. Go to the horse racing industry, cattle auctions, or the dog show circuit, and you will find eugenicists abound. They know which breeds to use, and which not to use.

    Given that human genetics are almost identical to other mammals, especially great apes, where the similarity is greater than 98 percent, why in the last 60 years have academics and political leaders decided the laws of nature do not apply to humans?

    Moreover, is it any coincidence that the demise of Eugenic studies and policies coincided with the rise of cultural Marxism (after WWII) in America's universities and its halls of government?

    If Eugenics do not matter, as most politicians and ivory tower academics would have you believe, why are the countries that historically employed Eugenic policies (Germany, Canada, Australia, etc.) so much better off than countries where Eugenic policies were never in place (Mexico, Brazil, the Caribbean, etc.)?

    Could it be that centuries of smart, scientific breeding, as opposed to the wanton race-mixing festivals of the lower latitudes, gave certain European and North Asian peoples genetic advantages that aided in the spreading of their respective civilizations?
     
  2. skeptic-f

    skeptic-f New Member

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    I shouldn't be responding to an overt racist, but his post answers his own question. The history of the idea of eugenics got inextricably mixed up with the idea of the superiority of the (north) European over other races. Whites used it to claim racial superiority and to further persecute "inferior" races (after using pre-determined measurements like culturally biased IQ tests and cranial shapes).

    True eugenics would have measured populations with race-neutral tests and measured the variation of intelligence, physique and other genetic gifts and/or drawbacks. The worst would be sterilized and the best would be encouraged to have lots of children (tax breaks, free nannies?). Now if Polar Bear had suggested true eugenics I would have at least given him a listen, but since he is trotting old century-old flawed arguments (he seems to do that a lot) my advice is to ignore this thread.
     
  3. YukonBloamie

    YukonBloamie Banned

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    I can't think of any Eugenics study that was well conducted, ethical, or showed any evidence of causal effects in relation to ethnic diversity.

    Eugenics would go under a social science category. It will probably make a minor comeback with improved technology in mapping the human genome. I think there is some minor value in human eugenics but only in the sense of how alchemy has value in relation to modern chemistry.
     
  4. Polar Bear

    Polar Bear New Member

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    I would be willing to submit America's population to the Pepsi Challenge anytime! I already have a pretty good who contributes to society and who doesn't.

    If a race-neutral measurement were administered on the US Population, the results would still be racially imbalanced, and you all know it. On top this, probably half of registered Democrats would be barred from procreating. :laughing:



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  5. YukonBloamie

    YukonBloamie Banned

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    So you admit that you understand that 'race' is merely a political category (like say pro-lifers), but yet fail to grasp that any political category has no intrinsic interpretation and is subject to change at the whim of society as a whole? Add to that there being no eugenics hypothesis grounded in natural law and I would say you're probably just a troll.
     
  6. leftlegmoderate

    leftlegmoderate New Member

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    It's a worthy academic pursuit, but the problem comes when data coupled with certain beliefs meets policy makers with bad intentions. In other words, the use of eugenics could easy become biased one way or another in it's application. It's an overreach to say the lest, that a government would decide who gets to reproduce.
     
  7. Polar Bear

    Polar Bear New Member

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    Nope.

    I am saying that if you give a color blind litmus test of how productive certain members of society are, the results would still be racially imbalanced.

    You could have aliens from Pluto administer a test to the American population measuring individual productivity and the gaps would still fall along racial lines.
     
  8. YukonBloamie

    YukonBloamie Banned

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    All are subjective concepts and are adjusted by the proclivity of the society as a whole. And that you refer specifically to 'the American population' suggests that you are aware of this fact.

    Pluto is uninhabitable so I'm skeptical that there is an alien species there capable of administering a test void of all social biases. And I'd argue that their concept of 'individual productivity' would be VASTLY different to ours. Maybe you can write them and ask if they'd do that test for you.
     
  9. Polar Bear

    Polar Bear New Member

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    It is possible to derive racial statistics based on a standardized test. Happens all the time.
     
  10. Small_government_caligula

    Small_government_caligula Banned

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  11. ian

    ian New Member

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    Of course, but these are animals not humans. Any breeder also knows that the purer the breed the greater chance of genetic predispositions to deformity , we only have to look at the royal families of Europe to prove that.

    You will need to define your defintion of "laws of nature" and exactly what "exemptions" are being allowed.
     
  12. Polar Bear

    Polar Bear New Member

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    There is a difference between polygamy and selective breeding.

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  13. ian

    ian New Member

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    What point are you trying to make? Selective breeding as you propose for humans and polygamy are mutually exclusive.



    If you cant understand basic concepts perhaps you shouldnt be posting in this forum.
     
  14. skeptic-f

    skeptic-f New Member

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    Productivity is a result of culture and background and opportunity (can your family afford to send you to college). That in itself fails the race-neutral testing requirement. Polar Bear's reference to lots of Democrats failing the test shows that he has NO grasp on what true eugenics would mean and shows why historical eugenics was justifiably discredited.

    If you want to increase productivity, you need to change the culture (including subcultures) and provide more opportunities (like Affirmative Action programs). If you are actually worried about genetics, you need to look at intelligence, physical abilities and possibly criminal genes (a fair percentage of sociopaths show a common genetic trait, for example).
     
  15. Polar Bear

    Polar Bear New Member

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    Comment immediately discredited.


    Promoting the less qualified over the adequately qualified will run any civilization into the ground. Promoting the stupid over the smart is akin to intentionally running a civilization into the ground. Continue with you Jungle Fever diatribe:


    :nana:








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  16. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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    Some folks really hate the idea of allowing others to have equal rights and opportunities. But then anything is OK as long as they retain their special privileges.
     
  17. skeptic-f

    skeptic-f New Member

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    Intelligence is how smart Mother Nature made you. Education is how much schooling you successfully completed. Smart is sometimes used as a synonym for intelligence and sometimes as a synonym for education. That doesn't mean that intelligence equals education. Duh!

    P.S. I said nothing about African-Americans, so why bring up the racist "Jungle Fever" comment? Try debating the facts rather than letting your emotions get the better of you, Polar Bear. One might almost say that's inferior behavior.
     
  18. YukonBloamie

    YukonBloamie Banned

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    I'm pretty sure I addressed that with my first post so now we're just going in circles. :spin:
     
  19. Someone

    Someone New Member

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    Correction; they know how to accentuate certain features at the expense of others. Eugenics fails as a way to promote the general progress of a species towards environmental fitness.

    In other words, artificial selection usually makes the wrong choices based on artificial standards and unrealistic objectives.

    No doubt selective breeding can make more desirable products for limited economic uses. I do not want human beings to become commodities suited for economic purposes determined when conceived. Eugenics utterly fails at delivering general forward progress towards environmental fitness; it only achieves progress towards artificial goals and dysfunction.

    You are misunderstanding the laws of nature, and why artificial selection is suboptimal in the context of those laws. Our concepts of what is environmentally adaptive are almost always wrong. We would eliminate useful traits because they are considered suboptimal in the present environment, only to leave ourselves vulnerable in the future.

    Not even remotely. Marxists are humanists, and therefore reject the commoditization of humanity as proposed by eugenicists.

    Utterly irrelevant to the present political and economic climate in those countries. A stronger correlation lies with a history of colonial oppression and industrial suppression.

    This is not scientifically valid; the child of two smart parents is statistically likely to be less intelligent than they are.
     
  20. montra

    montra New Member

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    Eugenics was the popular science of the day back during the turn of the 20th century. It was led by people like Margret Sanger who thought it a good idea to promote contraception to black people, so as to wean their reproduction so as to strengthen the human gene pool. She did this by creating Planned Parenthood.

    Of course, the climax was the Nazi fascination with eugenics and the subsequent racist and genocidal implications that went along with it. This pretty much put the nail in the eugenic coffin. Had it not been for this I'm pretty sure scientist would still be promoting it. In fact, society still promotes in via abortion. If your unborn child is "defective" then in the garbage he or she goes. Of course, people who advocate abortion would never admit to as much, but them is the facts.
     
  21. Someone

    Someone New Member

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    Organizations often seek goals different from their founders.

    Scientists in most of the non-fanatical world had already rejected eugenics as a flawed concept before the Nazis came to power. It's just not statistically or theoretically valid. It certainly wouldn't have been supported after the development of population genetics.

    There is something of a difference between aborting a fetus that will face debilitating mental or physical disabilities--or those that will likely die shortly after birth due to untreatable genetic conditions--and a systematic program to redirect human evolution. Eugenics goes quite a lot further than simply working to eliminate inherently and undoubtedly debilitating genetic errors from the gene pool. There's a huge difference between aborting a fetus with, say, Tay-Sachs disease and proposing a systematic campaign to eliminate all black people because their skin color is deemed inferior.
     
  22. montra

    montra New Member

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    So eugenics can be used with livestock and animals but not people?


    Hmmm. What then is the major difference in your opinion between animals and people?
     
  23. montra

    montra New Member

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    Are you saying that abortion and eugenics are mutually exclusive so long as the reasoning for such abortions do not target the "defective" unborn from having offspring?
     
  24. montra

    montra New Member

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    Yep, kinda like the United States government.
     
  25. Polar Bear

    Polar Bear New Member

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    Not all "features" are good. Therefore accentuating the good ones at the expense of the bad ones is not a horrible thing, it is smart evolution.


    Economic "uses"... Economics are the fundamental component of any society - those societies who failed to realize this are now the poorest. A unit of labor is a unit of labor, whether that labor is producing animal hides or automobiles. Some groups were able to build farm communities and eventually begin the process of trade specialization. These more successful groups should have every right to safeguard their utopias from dysfunctional foreigners who will only detract from society, especially foreigners who have no track record of building or maintaining civilization.


    Societies have been known to commit suicide. An autopsy of ancient history would show that seemingly megalithic civilizations vanished for the most innocuous of reasons. Even contemporary examples like Rome prove that its experiment with multiculturalism and tolerance led to its downfall - at the hands of hostile outsiders no less. These foreign tribes had no chance of assimilating into Rome and should not have been allowed into Roman society to begin with.

    Exactly, Marxists would prefer and would probably thrive in any society where everyone lives in equally sized mud huts, in a land with infinite resources. Marxism in its purest form, which mandates universal equality unto all, has failed everywhere it has been implemented.

    I don't buy the tireless "blame Whitey" argument. Explain how north Asians, notably the Japanese and the Koreans, have managed to build societies that rival or even exceed European standards of civilization, even though they have been enslaved, colonized and exploited for centuries by Europeans as well as each other.




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