Eugenics

Righty: Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think we should be playing God with our fellow humans. I’m against the whole notion of "designer babies" who are pre-programmed for perfect WASP looks, Jewish brains and black athletic ability. But we have to do something about the tendency of our least fit citizens to produce the most children. The situation is entirely out of control, and it doesn’t bode well for our future. If it were up to me, I’d sterilize welfare mothers after the first two kids. (Why should the rest of us have to foot the bill for her multitudinous offspring, and her offsprings’ offspring, and so on down the line?) I’d also sterilize violent criminals and impose immigration standards that make it impossible for chronic welfare types (e.g., illiterates, retards, drug-dealers and people who refuse to learn English) to enter our country and procreate like horny fruitflies. It’s about time we realized that a nation can be only as sound as its populace... and our populace isn’t looking too sound lately.

Lefty: Have you been sitting in on lectures by Dr. Mengele, Righty? Your blatant contempt for the rights of your countrymen never ceases to amaze and appall me. You’re supposed to be the patriot here. Haven’t you read your own Declaration of Independence? "All men are created equal," remember? How can you even think about depriving some people of their natural right to bear children? Based on whose standards? Yours? Why not mine? (Hell, I might ban Republicans and Evangelical Christians from reproducing!) Your proposal is the worst sort of misanthropic and racist garbage, and it reeks dangerously of fascism.

The New Moderate:

Yes, it sounds inhumane and even fascistic to declare that some people’s genes are unworthy of replicating. At the same time, I can understand Righty’s alarm over the unfettered fertility of our lowest socioeconomic sector. What happens to our country, ultimately, if welfare mothers produce five or six children for every kid lovingly overindulged by yuppie parents? And if those welfare kids become grandparents by the age of thirty, how will a dwindling middle class subsidize all that unskilled progeny?

Sterilize them? Of course not. But let’s not make it so easy for the underclass to demonstrate its fecundity without restraint or consequences. Poor people need to be sold on the concept of contraception and reproductive responsibility. They need to be sold hard.

This isn’t eugenics or even racism; it’s simple common sense. The New Moderate isn’t advocating designer babies for the rich or forced sterilization for the poor. No sane person wants a society that puts its citizens through the genetic equivalent of SATs to determine who’s fit enough to reproduce. As Lefty argued, whose standards do we honor?

The forces of natural selection seem to value sturdy nerves over brilliant minds, anyway. Rambunctious illiterates have always reproduced more lustily than philosophy professors. So do we just let nature take its course while we force ourselves to nod approvingly at the results?

Probably. But we also need to make sure we don’t tip the scales in favor of the illiterates by subsidizing their reproductive hijinks. The fact that we oppose eugenics shouldn’t signal our tacit approval of dysgenics. We need to work seriously at breaking the chain that turns unschooled youngsters with no prospects into thirty-year-old grandparents with no prospects.

Summary: Just as no humane society would sterilize its least capable citizens, neither should it subsidize their reproductive efforts. We shouldn’t tip the genetic scales in favor of the rich or the poor.