The Eugenicist Temptation

Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity, by Harry Bruinius (Knopf, 416 pp., $30)

THE United States is an amazing country. Our system of liberty under law is the gold standard of political freedom. Our dynamic free market drives the world economy. Our sacrifices of blood and treasure to free subjugated peoples and succor victims of natural and man-made calamities are too many to recount. Yet, in our history we have also inflicted terrible wrongs upon vulnerable people. Slavery, Jim Crow, and our treatment of indigenous populations can hardly make us swell with pride.

About the Author

Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith is an author and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism.

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Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity, by Harry Bruinius (Knopf, 416 pp., $30)

THE United States is an amazing country. Our system of liberty under law is the gold standard of political freedom. Our dynamic free market drives the world economy. Our sacrifices of blood and treasure to free subjugated peoples and succor victims of natural and man-made calamities are too many to recount. Yet, in our history we have also inflicted terrible wrongs upon vulnerable people. Slavery, Jim Crow, and our treatment of indigenous populations can hardly make us swell with pride.