On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Michael Perelman <[email protected]> wrote: > Robert Leonard of Princeton has written about the "progressives", who > supported eugenics. Eugenics fit right in with much of the prevailing > "science" of the time. Many people become susceptible to the fads of the > time. This is a defect of the people, not the movements to which they > belong.
I disagree Michael. How else can an ideological movement be judged except by the beliefs of its proponents? There are some ideologies that are too repulsive to accept as mere foibles. E.g. I could never accept someone who supported slavery as a progressive no matter how much slavery was in fashion at that time. Besides I don't believe eugenics ever had the status of being accepted in the mainstream. It always was highly controversial. > Should my own personal defects reflect on the pen-l community? Einstein > was a bit of a womanizer, should we reject relativity? It is not a question of personal defects but ideological beliefs. Any ideological beliefs shared by a significant portion of PEN-L members does and should reflect on the PEN-L community. Unrelated: is womanizing a "personal defect"? -raghu. -- "As a matter of fact, no, I don't have a life." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
