International Issues | |
Eugenics in Socialist Sweden |
Last week it was revealed that Sweden imposed forced sterilization for
40 years, a practice that ended only in 1976. During this period, some 62,000
Swedes were sterilized in an effort to improve the quality of the Swedish
people. Those of mixed race, low intelligence or with physical defects
underwent forced sterilization by the state in order to prevent such qualities
from being passed on. However, there is evidence that sterilization extended
even to those who were merely rebellious, promiscuous or did not fit in
somehow. The philosophy underlying the Swedish policy, which has raised a storm
of condemnation, is known as eugenics. Eugenics grew out of scientific
advances in the field of genetics in the 19th century. As it became clear
that many physical qualities are inherited, advocates of eugenics favored
efforts to ensure that positive human qualities were fostered and negative
ones suppressed. This was to be done by encouraging men and women with
positive qualities to intermarry, while those considered defective were
to be segregated or sterilized. The Nazis carried the practice of eugenics to its ultimate end. It could
be argued that the entire Holocaust grew out of eugenic principles. Not
only were 6 million Jews murdered in the process, but thousands of gypsies,
homosexuals and others deemed to be inferior. At the same time, the Nazis
encouraged selective breeding of those considered to be outstanding examples
of the Aryan race. When the facts about Nazi atrocities became known after World War II,
there was a revulsion against eugenics for having given birth to such horrors.
That is why the news that Sweden was still practicing eugenics as recently
as 1976 has led to such an outcry. It also came as a shock that Sweden,
long known as a liberal paradise rather than some fascistic state, should
have behaved in such a patently illiberal manner. Since World War II it
has been assumed that eugenics was part of the far right's philosophy, not
the liberal left's. But in fact, eugenics has always been part of the left's collectivist
agenda.
In his book Social Darwinism, liberal historian Richard Hofstadter conceded
that eugenics was indeed part of the liberal reform agenda. "In spite
of its fundamental conservatism," Hofstadter wrote, "the eugenics
craze had about it the air of a 'reform.' Like the reform movements, it
accepted the principle of state action toward a common end, and spoke in
terms of the collective destiny of the group rather than individual success." But as the Nazi and Swedish examples show, it is too easy to use eugenics
not just to improve the physical quality of humans, but as a tool of social
control. As Aldous Huxley wrote in the forward to his utopian horror Brave
New World, eugenics can be used to control those with "dangerous thoughts
about the social system" who "infect others with their discontents."
After all, parents pass on not only their genes to their children, but
also their knowledge, values and opinions. That is why eugenics and totalitarianism
go together. Source: Bruce Bartlett, senior fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis,
September 3, 1997. |
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