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Originally Posted by wikipedia
The Sterilization Act provided for compulsory sterilization of persons deemed to be "feebleminded," including the "insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded or epileptic"[2]. These two laws were Virginia's implementation of Harry Laughlin's "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law"[3], published two years earlier in 1922. The Sterilization Act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Buck v. Bell 274 U.S. 200 (1927), which appealed the order to involuntarily sterilize Carrie Buck and her family, who were inmates in the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.. In support of his argument that the interest of the states in a "pure" gene pool outweighed the interest of individuals in their bodily integrity, he wrote:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.
Holmes concluded his argument with the infamous phrase: Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
Carrie Buck was paroled from the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded shortly after her sterilization was performed. Her mother and three-year old daughter were also sterilized under the same statute. The daughter, Vivian Buck, died in 1932 of "enteric colitis", possibly as a delayed complication of her sterilization surgery.
Carrie Buck eventually wed William Eagle and they remained married for twenty-five years before he died. As scholars and reporters visited Carrie it became abundantly clear to everyone that Carrie Buck was a woman of normal intelligence.
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Obviously some people with severe mental impairment should not be living alone, let alone living alone with children. This doesn't mean they should be sterilized.
It means they should be given help. Many can probably go on to learn to function perfectly well alone or even possibly a parent with the right treatment.
Sterilizing them is just an easy way to sweep the issue under a rug and pretend it doesn't exist.
The problem is determining which freedoms should limited and to what extent? Can you deny blind people the freedom to drive? How about the freedom to own a gun? What about the freedom to procreate?
Too many people fail to understand the difference between "better for society" and "better for me". This is where laws like these come from.
It's difficult (if not impossible) for people with power to put their selfish interests aside. It's human nature. I understand it all too well.
Personally I fear that the growing Hispanic population will have a detrimental affect on the U.S. I dislike almost everything about their culture. On a personal level I'm probably fairly racist in this regard.
But just because limiting their growth would be good for me does not mean it would be good for society. I'm not able to determine that. Nobody is.
A government must only restrict those freedoms which provide a tangible benefit to society as a whole vs. a benefit to those in power (be it a politician or a segment of society--white people for example). Any further curtailing of freedom and liberty is simply unacceptable.
edit: nvm?
What the original creators of the sterilization act didn't foresee is that the feebleminded are nessesary for society to function properly.
If everyone was smart and highly educated who would run the farms, dig ditches, work at macdonalds, and do tech support?
Oh, wait I guess thats what the mexicans are for!
*squelches the facsist*
The answer to your hypothetical is "robots" for all cases except tech support, which really shouldn't need to exist at all.
However, I'd agree that the feebleminded are required for society to function properly.
Most rational people would reason that a society made up of only the best and brightest competing with each other would thrive. This may seem counterintuitive but I'm not entirely sure that's true.
I think human societies require conflict and catastrophe more than anything else. Without this the status quo would stagnate and our culture would become stale. Our progression slow and collapse.
The obvious sources of conflict are war, natural disasters and the like. I'd like to hope these primitive sources of catastrophe can be eradicated in the future. Certainly humans will always need to fight--I'm not certain death or even injury needs to be a part of this, however.
The idea that stupidity is a conflict of opportunity for intelligent people is a disgusting thought to say the least. Still I think there is some merit in it. Incomprehension by people of things you think even a monkey should understand might make you think about things differently.
More importantly, not all human advancements are technological in nature. Those with less desirable traits can push social evolution far faster and further than Nietzsche's superman could.
There's a basic human desire toward homogeneity, I think, which becomes self-destructive in the end. You simply can't guide random mutation (and I don't solely mean biological random mutation) and expect a long-term positive result.