The year is 1941, and the Nazis are in the midst of their Lebensborn program. Men of pure Aryan stock — especially members of the Waffen-SS, thought the cream of the crop — have a special purpose. In many occupied countries, they are encouraged to mate with blonde-haired, blue-eyed women — those reflecting the very picture of the Aryan ideal themselves. And “mate” is the word; romance is not necessary here, nor marriage, nor moral constraints. For the program is to serve as a baby factory that will produce future Aryan supermen for the Third Reich.

Lebensborn grows out of what is central to the Nazi philosophy: eugenics, which is the improvement of the human race through the process of selective breeding. And the Nazis embrace it for a very interesting reason: They have a penchant for indulging ancient myths, and one of these is that they are descended from a race of Aryan supermen who lost their superhuman capabilities because they procreated with inferior races, thus visiting upon themselves a kind of biological devolution. And they aim to reverse the process by jump-starting and accelerating evolution in a sort of hothouse environment.

Of course, talk of breeding supermen based upon an ancient template
sounds kooky; speaking of inferior races disgusts the modern palate; and
“eugenics,” now joined at the hip with the Nazis, has become a dirty
word. Yet it is not at all accurate to say that the Nazis created
eugenics. It is more correct to say that eugenics created the Nazis.

Eugenics, at least in a more primitive form, dates back to the time of
the Greek philosopher Plato, who, inspired by the Spartans, advocated
murdering “weak” children. It wasn’t until 1883 and the theory of
evolution’s ascendancy, however, that the word “eugenics” was coined by
English scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. It was at
this time that the field was catching on like wildfire, and it would
gain increasing acceptance during the next few decades. For, while it
may be hard to believe today, eugenics was considered to be Science with
a capital “S,” a “thinking man’s” philosophy, the politically correct
theory of the age, only finding opposition from those shackled by faith
and fancy. And although German Nazis made it infamous, in the United
States in the early 20th century, it was downright popular.

Eugenics Breeding Grounds
Helped by well-heeled benefactors such as the Carnegie Institution, the
Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman railroad fortune, the eugenics
movement was already roaring in the Roaring ’20s. And it sometimes
manifested itself in relatively innocuous ways. For instance, writes
Carol Squiers in Perfecting Mankind: Eugenics and Photography:

“Fitter Families” contests were staged at state agricultural fairs throughout the U.S. in the 1920s. They judged the eugenic worth of local families. Mary T. Watts, the co-organizer of
the first contest at the 1920 Kansas Free Fair, explained that when
anyone inquired what the contests were, “we say, ‘while the stock judges
are testing the Holsteins, Jerseys, and whitefaces in the stock
pavilion, we are judging the Joneses, Smiths & the Johns.’” The
American Eugenics Society supported the contests, which grew out of a
“Better Baby” competition at the 1911 Iowa State Fair. The family
contests were featured at seven to ten fairs yearly and were held in the
“human stock” sections.

As is always the case when man is reduced to animal, however, the eugenic mindset inspired darker actions as well. Edwin Black treated this subject in The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics, writing:

Elements of the [eugenics] philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in
twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt
such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized
some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly
segregated thousands in “colonies,” and persecuted untold numbers in
ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive
sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the
state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

… Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the
American eugenics movement came from California’s quasi-autonomous
eugenic societies, such as the Pasadena-based Human Betterment
Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society,
which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research
Society in Long Island. These organizations — which functioned as part
of a closely-knit network — published racist eugenic newsletters and
pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics, and propagandized for the Nazis.

Yet it would be a mistake to place the United States in the same league as Nazi Germany; rather, it’s more correct to say that many Germans embraced the same fallacy as most of the secular world. For
eugenics’ popularity knew few borders. Sure, while Theodore Roosevelt,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, the National Academy of Sciences, and the
National Research Council were supporters, eugenic policies were
instituted in Australia, Japan, Canada, China, Sweden, France, and many
other nations as well. In fact, among its most prominent advocates were
two foreigners: famed English writers H.G. Wells and George Bernard
Shaw.

For example, we could note that The Time Machine, perhaps
Wells’ most famous work, has a eugenicist message. Yet we need not
interpret symbolism to understand his position on the matter, as he said
quite explicitly, “This thing, this euthanasia of the weak and sensual,
is possible. On the principles that will probably animate the
predominant classes of the new time, it will be permissible, and I have
little or no doubt that in the future it will be planned and achieved.”
As for Shaw, he echoed these sentiments, saying, “A part of eugenic
politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal
chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence
simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.”

Yet, in the early 20th century, the United States was a burgeoning
power, and as such, it was often at the forefront of the sciences. And
eugenics was no exception. In fact, many German eugenicists looked to
America’s policies as a model; Hitler himself said to a fellow Nazi that
he had “studied with interest the laws of several American states
concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in
all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.”
And, truth be known, the spoiled fruits of eugenics still plague America
to this day.

Spoiled Fruits of a Movement
One of these would be the Planned Parenthood organization. While many
are unaware of the fact, the organization’s founder, Margaret Sanger,
was a eugenicist with some particularly odious views. For example, in
her work Women and the New Race, she wrote, “The most merciful
thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill
it.” And this culture-of-death spirit certainly lives on. Planned
Parenthood affiliates perform more than 300,000 abortions a year,
turning a profit of more than $100 million and collecting more than $300
million of your tax money in the process. Sanger also expressed
Nazi-like views long before the National Socialists took power. For
example, in her 1922 book The Pivot of Civilization, she wrote,
“Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every
congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite
importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less
importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in
one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes.” (Emphasis added.)

Perhaps it is passions such as the above that inspired Sanger to create
the “Negro Project,” an organized campaign to limit — and some say
exterminate — America’s black population. Black author Tanya L. Green
sheds some more light on Sanger’s motivations in her piece “The Negro
Project: Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Plan for Black Americans,” writing:

Margaret Sanger aligned herself with the eugenicists whose ideology prevailed in the early 20th century. Eugenicists strongly espoused racial supremacy and “purity,”
particularly of the “Aryan” race. Eugenicists hoped to purify the
bloodlines and improve the race by encouraging the “fit” to reproduce
and the “unfit” to restrict their reproduction. They sought to contain
the “inferior” races through segregation, sterilization, birth control
and abortion.

It is easy for pro-life people, such as I, to look askance at the Margaret Sangers of the world, just as it is easy for anti-American bigots to place the onus on America, or blacks to place it on whites.
While there certainly are villains in this story, however, it is more
important to expose destructive ideas than deluded people. After all,
ideas live on long after idealists pass on.

Certainly, the desire to have strong, vibrant citizens and children is
nothing new. The aforementioned Spartans would kill a male infant if he
was perceived to have any defect whatsoever, and parents typically hope
and pray for healthy, intelligent, and strong sons and daughters. And,
of course, offspring’s characteristics can most assuredly be influenced
through selective breeding. For example, consider the dogs we have as
pets today. The breeds many of us know and love — the Rottweiler, cocker
spaniel, Neapolitan Mastiff, etc. — never existed until they were bred
by man. Their unique characteristics are the result of taking a group of
canines, breeding the ones that exhibit desired traits, and killing
those that do not. And repeating this proc-ess generation after
generation yielded unique beasts ideally suited to whatever purpose they
were to be used for.

And this is the problem with eugenics. We must not “use” people or view
them as objects that serve a “purpose.” Yet why does the science
endeavor to create a better human? It is for that very reason: so that
they will serve the purpose of being better soldiers, citizens,
scientists, producers, etc. But, then, what happens once you’ve reduced
people to objects, to cogs in the machinery of the state? Well, when it
seems that a baby will be insufficient for his purpose, you give him the
Spartan treatment; and when a cog gets too old to serve its purpose,
you euthanize it — for the good of society. And you then have embraced
the eugenicist position that there are “human beings who never should
have been born,” as Sanger said; or that there is “life unworthy of
life,” as the Nazis said. The point here is that you don’t value people
based on what they can do. You value them based on what they are.

Yet this brings us to a very interesting question: What are they? And is
it just a coincidence that eugenics took hold in the wake of
evolution’s acceptance? Is it possible that classical evolution’s
conception of “what they are” engenders a eugenicist mindset? Let us
examine the matter.

Evolution’s Ties to Eugenics
Traditional Christianity and classical evolution involve very different
conceptions of man’s nature. Christianity teaches that man is the
culmination of God’s creation, His sixth-day triumph. Man is not merely a
steppingstone on the way to some superior being but a finished product.
Sure, he is fallen as well as finished and needs to be perfected, but
this is not a matter of improving the flesh but of transcending it. And
this is done with knowledge of what is good and the gift of God’s grace.
Moreover, even if the flesh is broken, hampered by crippling
limitation, the person’s soul bears the beauty of the Ultimate Beholder.
The person is valuable not because of what he can do but because of
what he is: a child of God with a soul from Heaven.

In contrast, evolution tells us that we are just one stage in a long
line of creatures experiencing change in a process that is often,
amusingly, called improvement, even though we’re moving toward we don’t
know what without knowing why. But evolutionists take it as doctrine
that it is improvement, and all people want to improve the human
condition. For Christians, this means spreading the faith; for
evolutionists, it means improving the genes. Ergo, eugenics.

Of course, many evolutionists will protest, saying that they find
eugenics abhorrent. Yet the link between evolution and eugenics is
undeniable, as it was made by none other than Sir Francis Galton
himself. Galton only developed his eugenic principles after reading his
cousin Charles Darwin’s work The Origin of Species, which inspired him to build on Darwin’s work.
And this should surprise no one. Sure, today eugenics is thought
ill-considered, but it is not illogical. If evolution is improvement and
improvement is good, and if the good of the many outweighs the good of
the few, it makes sense to facilitate evolution. And because it is
logical, at least on the surface, it is necessary to look a little
deeper.

Eugenics is an outgrowth of classical evolution, which presupposes that
we are a cosmic accident and thus implies atheism. The problem with this
worldview is that it makes many assumptions, fails to ask the most
basic questions, and then contradicts itself. For one thing, if there is
no God, no Truth — no standard for determining good that transcends man
— on what basis can we determine what constitutes improvement? Why is
it better for man to survive and “evolve” than to perish? After all, ask
some of the nature-worshipping misanthropes amongst us, and they will
tell you that the world would be better off if mankind disappeared
entirely.

Yet, even if you accept — based on consensus opinion and nothing more —
that what evolutionists say is improvement is indeed improvement, what
purpose does it serve? To illustrate this point, I’ll use a variation on
a criticism G.K. Chesterton made of H.G. Wells when the latter
suggested that the purpose of life was to beget children. It is as if
you asked, “What is the use of hammers?” and the answer was, “To create
better hammers.” And then you asked, “And what is the use of those
hammers?” and the answer was “To create better hammers still.” It
doesn’t answer the most basic questions: “Why create hammers in the
first place” and “What is the good of having hammers?” The eugenicist
philosophy not only reduces man to animal, it reduces man’s existence to
meaninglessness. The Christian knows that he is trying to improve —
which he calls growing in holiness — so he can spend eternity with God.
The atheist may try to improve, and he may actually succeed. But if his
worldview were correct, it would mean that he would spend eternity as
dust, indistinguishable from a “defective” some eugenicist might have
wanted to exterminate.

Of course, if atheists were right, dust is essentially all we would be,
some pounds of chemicals and water. We would merely be organic robots —
tools, much like a hammer. And, then, why trouble over how we manipulate
these automatons’ circuitry? And what could be wrong with terminating
the function of robots that cannot serve their “purpose”? Besides,
without Truth and thus without objective right and wrong, nothing could
be “wrong” in any real sense, anyway.

Why does this philosophy matter? It’s not because eugenics will rear its
ugly head once again, because eugenics, strictly speaking, will not.
But it has not been trumped by morality, only technology. With genetic
engineering, we no longer have to select people for breeding; we can now
select the genes themselves. This science holds the promise of
eliminating birth defects, but it can also be misused. It finally gives
modern-day utopians a tool with which they can create supermen, Aryan or
otherwise, in a laboratory. And unless we want to end up as test
subjects, we had better realize that man’s value lies not in his ability
to become or create a superman, but in being born of the supernatural
and possessed of the eternal.

Photo: Sir Francis Galton, who coined the term "eugenics"