Utopia by Sterilization

Published by admin, on September 12th, 2010%

by H.L. Mencken

First published in The American Mercury, August 1937

DISCUSSING IN THE PLACE a few months ago the sorrows roweling the great Republic we live in, I ventured to throw out a double-headed suggestion. The first part of it was to the effect that an easy way to reduce those sorrows today, and almost obliterate them tomorrow, would be to sterilize large numbers of American freemen, both white and black, to the end that they could no longer beget their kind. The second part was that the readiest way to induce them to submit would be to indemnify them in cash.

The suggestion failed . . . → Read More: Utopia by Sterilization

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Sterilizing Criminals

Published by admin, on September 12th, 2010%

Today is H.L. Mencken’s 130th birthday, and we commemorate it here with two important and seldom seen essays by the Master of the Pen himself. –Ed.

by H.L. Mencken

THE RECURRENT EFFORT to eliminate criminal stocks by sterilizing criminals is opposed violently by sentimentalists, and also by the pseudo-scientists who argue fatuously that character is not inheritable. Common experience shows that it is, and all really scientific evidence supports the experience. The late Judge Frederick Bausman of Seattle (1861-1931) proposed after World War I that a sharp distinction be made between murderers whose crimes are of such a character that any normal persons, under the circumstances, might . . . → Read More: Sterilizing Criminals

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