The writer is author of ‘Hayek’s Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right’
Since the full scope of Nazi crimes was revealed, eugenics has fallen deeply out of fashion. Yet if the term has become taboo, some of the practices associated with it have not. Today we are witnessing the emergence of what could be called libertarian eugenics.
Eugenics has always had two sides, positive and negative — not in the moral sense, but rather in terms of the distinction between measures designed to encourage the birth and flourishing of some people and those meant to limit or prevent the reproduction of others. Prenatal genetic screening, for instance, once rare but now routine, functions as a kind of positive eugenic tool.