The term “eugenics” only entered the lexicon in the 1870s. I want to say it was Francis Galton who coined it. Galton was one of those guys like T.H. Huxley (“Darwin’s Bulldog”) who made “Darwinism” into a substitute religion. “Eugenics”, then, was another scheme of secular salvation — the “scientific management” of the human population, no different, really, from Marxism in politics or Taylorism in business. That was the Gilded Age for you, but the point is, even though the term “eugenics” was new in 1870-ish, eugenic-type arguments were being made decades before. Antebellum defenders of the “Peculiar Institution”, for instance, made more-Galton-than-Galton arguments all the time: As modern life is inevitably trending towards greater mechanization, financialization, and integration, the human subtypes that can’t biologically handle those conditions will inevitably die out, unless …1
But then a funny thing happened. Twice, actually. The first one was the triumph of the Puritan fanatics in the Unpleasantness of 1861-5. Because they were certified Goodpeople (certified by themselves it goes without saying), and because their worldview triumphed through force of arms, they gave themselves a blanket indulgence to peddle the most repulsive kind of “scientific racism”. They just dropped the “racism” part and doubled down on the “scientific”. They called it first “Darwinism”, then “eugenics”, but the upshot of both was that they gave themselves the right, duty, and of course pleasure of pruning the human garden (to use one of their favorite metaphors).
All those mandatory sterilization laws, the kind of “three strikes and you’re permanently out” crime reduction measures we can only dream of? It wasn’t conservatives pushing those. It was Proggies. Sane deal with the “Fitter Family Contests” that proliferated in the US right up to WWII.
We didn’t get that stuff from [Hitler; he] got it from us.
And that was the second thing, of course — all the Nazis’ nonsense about a “master race” […] They would, could, and did point out that what they were doing was in no way different from the stuff agonizingly self-righteous American Proggies were pushing every single day — as the Nazis saw it, they […] merely had the courage of their convictions. St. Margaret Sanger of the Holy Coat Hook, for instance, looked forward to blacks dying out thanks to her abortion activism. As the Nazis saw it, they were just cutting out the middleman.
Severian, “On Duties”, Founding Questions, 2022-04-07.
- Many people made this argument, but Josiah Clark Nott defended it at greatest length, if you’re interested in that odd little branch of American intellectual history. Anthropologists try very hard to be the #wokest people on the planet (even other eggheads find them obnoxious, if you can imagine), so it’s fun to needle them with the history of their field — y’all know the so-called “American School” of anthropology was dedicated almost entirely to justifying slavery, right?
Update, 21 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
[…] ANOTHER VILE IDEA OF THE VILE LEFT: The rise of Eugenics. […]
Pingback by Instapundit » Blog Archive » ANOTHER VILE IDEA OF THE VILE LEFT: The rise of Eugenics. — January 21, 2026 @ 04:30
As a right-wing White nationalist, I fully support eugenics. We must reduce the number of low-IQ blacks and browns somehow, or the world will be overwhelmed by them.
Comment by George Strong — January 21, 2026 @ 06:06
Well, you glossed over some important details. Every US president since (and including) Teddy Roosevelt has been a eugenicist, with the only exceptions being Ronald Reagan and possibly GW Bush. Teddy was absolutely a eugenicist, while Herbert Hoover actually sat on a eugenics board, IIRC. So being a Progressive (you correctly noted that all Progressives were eugenicists) was a cross-party thing and still is. For instance, Trump’s endorsement of some people (including himself) having superior genes is easily documented with a google search.
So, trying to label either Democrats or Republicans as exclusively eugenics-minded is impossible. In the inter-war period, every European country was headed by eugenicists. Certainly America was. WW II was thus a fight between English and American eugenicists against their copy-cat ideological eugenics-minded progeny in Germany. In this eugenicist-vs-eugenicist fight, the eugenicists won. John Dwyer’s “War Without Mercy” is an excellent primer on the topic.
Comment by Steve Kellmeyer — January 21, 2026 @ 08:51
Yes, the progressive movement was cross-party in the 1890s onwards. It still is but not quite to the same degree … you know that most Democrats are progressives, but not all Republicans are (but too many of them are).
Comment by Nicholas — January 21, 2026 @ 16:21
I cannot tell you just how much I enjoy your posts.
They are enlightening, thought provoking, and link to issues that are not touched by other bloggers.
Keep going!
Comment by Linda S Fox — January 21, 2026 @ 10:19
Well, thank you. It’s always nice to have a satisfied reader around the place!
Comment by Nicholas — January 21, 2026 @ 16:22
“If heredity were not overwhelmingly more important than environment, you could teach calculus to a horse.”–Robert Heinlein
Comment by Rick Costa — January 21, 2026 @ 12:00