To: one_less who wrote (15764 ) 8/15/2007 1:02:41 PM From: average joe Respond to "Chesterton, G.K. Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized Society. Edited by Michael W. Perry. Seattle: Inkling Books, 2000. Originally published in 1922, this astonishingly prescient text has much to say about our understanding of eugenics then (and now), and about the mass seduction of pseudoscience. Chesterton's was one of the few voices to oppose eugenics in the early twentieth century. He saw right through it as fraudulent on every level, and he predicted where it would lead, with great accuracy. His critics were legion; they reviled him as reactionary, ridiculous, ignorant, hysterical, incoherent, and blindly prejudiced, noting with dismay that "his influence in leading people in the wrong direction is considerable." Yet Chesterton was right and the consensus of scientists, political leaders, and the intelligentsia was wrong. Chesterton lived to see the horrors of Nazi Germany. This book is worth reading because, in retrospect, it is clear that Chesterton's arguments were perfectly sensible and deserving of an answer, and yet he was simply shouted down. And because the most repellant ideas of eugenics are being promoted again in the twenty-first century, under various guises. The editor of this edition has included many quotations from eugenicists of the 1920s, which read astonishingly like the words of contemporary prophets of doom. Some things never change - including, unfortunately, the gullibility of press and public. We human beings don't like to look back at our past mistakes. But we should."NEXT Bibliography , Pages 426, 427 Michael Crichton
