
Eugenics and Other Evils
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Narrated by:
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Derek Perkins
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By:
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G. K. Chesterton
During the first three decades of the 20th century, eugenics, the scientific control of human breeding, was a popular cause within enlightened and progressive segments of the English-speaking world. The New York Times eagerly supported it, gushing about the wonderful "new science." Prominent scientists, such as the plant biologist Luther Burbank, were among its most enthusiastic supporters. And the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations generously funded eugenic research intended to distinguish the "fit" from the "unfit."
This prophetic volume counters the intellectual nihilism of Nietzsche, while simultaneously rebuking Western notions of progress - biological or otherwise. Chesterton expands his criticism of eugenics into what he calls "a more general criticism of the modern craze for scientific officialism and strict social organization."
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Eugenics at it's midpoint
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Surprisingly Relevant
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A still relevant topic in the current year
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To fully understand the irony of the current wave of racism, you really need to start with that silly syphilitic Nietzsche, and work your way through Hitler and Rand to our current little titans.
Or, you could read this book. Sort of the Cliff Notes to the devolution of a stupid idea. Clear thinking about how evil people can be when their self-serving biases make them think they are doing good. With jokes.
Never more timely
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Great Reas
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Very insightful and incisive and revealing
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“Now it is plain that this sort of chaos can possess the powers that rule a society as easily as the society so ruled. And…it is the powers that rule who are chiefly possessed by it—who are truly possessed by devils. The phrase, in its sound old psychological sense, is not too strong. The State has suddenly and quietly gone mad. It is talking nonsense; and it can't stop.”
Yet for all his dire analysis, Chesterton can still make you laugh out loud – a sure sign of his profound sanity. As he says, “We have to be flippant about these things, as the only alternative to being rather fierce.” To reviewers who want to peg him as liberal or conservative, I can only say he was Catholic, and so able to take the best from both sides (no doubt an essential source of his sanity). As with The Everlasting Man, Derek Perkins' delivery suits Chesterton’s style to perfection.
Note: For an historian’s account of the eugenics movement, there’s no better picture that Richard Overy’s The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars.
Anarchy from Above
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Good
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Prescient thoughts and logic
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While the book is 100 years old, it remains relevant.
Remarkably relevant
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