I was trying to imagine a Catholic anarchist, and I failed. My thought process went: perhaps everyone is responsible for their own families, where the highest secular authority is one's father? But then how does the parish->diocese->universal Church authority come in? It becomes essentially a theocracy.
Also, I was thinking about eugenics after your brief mention above. Is it still eugenics if, rather than prevent a given group of people from reproducing, their genes are altered so that they can't pass on a specific trait? I can't think of any specific trait which if absent would make the "superior race" folk feel better about the "lesser races", but I know that there are people who can't hear who insist on the capital letter in Deaf and desire the ability to choose that their children be unable to hear, and claim that preventing this choice is discrimination against all Deaf people. If everyone with genetically-transferred deafness had gene therapy such that all of their children without exception would hear, that would seem like "improving the human race", but I'm not at all sure that there's not something terrible I'm missing.
And, lastly, I really appreciate essays like this. The history classes I took never went into any depth on anything, and in any event my US history classes generally stopped at the Civil War or maybe as far as 1900 (as I went to school in Montana and Montana became a state in 1889).
no subject
Also, I was thinking about eugenics after your brief mention above. Is it still eugenics if, rather than prevent a given group of people from reproducing, their genes are altered so that they can't pass on a specific trait? I can't think of any specific trait which if absent would make the "superior race" folk feel better about the "lesser races", but I know that there are people who can't hear who insist on the capital letter in Deaf and desire the ability to choose that their children be unable to hear, and claim that preventing this choice is discrimination against all Deaf people. If everyone with genetically-transferred deafness had gene therapy such that all of their children without exception would hear, that would seem like "improving the human race", but I'm not at all sure that there's not something terrible I'm missing.
And, lastly, I really appreciate essays like this. The history classes I took never went into any depth on anything, and in any event my US history classes generally stopped at the Civil War or maybe as far as 1900 (as I went to school in Montana and Montana became a state in 1889).