Perfecting People

I perused a book last night. War Against the Weak was written by a journalist, Edwin Black I believe, about eugenics. The topic was not entirely new to me. I was interested in some of the connections he claimed to make between the movement and the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations. There were other claims and suggestions, but something I found puzzling was a current that went through some of the leaders' proclamations. They were against helping the downtrodden(sp?), the disadvantaged and impoverished. Without charity, they reasoned, the true fittest would survive and the least worthy would die off as a breed. That odd conclusion was coming from elite and sometimes even intelligent sources like Margaret Sanger, although I might want to further check the citation. But recently I saw something on the Neanderthals in Europe and there, as with other anthropological studies I have read, marking a species as human rather than animal had everything to do with compassionate charity. Finding skeletal remains of members who must have been cared for in order to live as long as they did proved their humanity. What an interesting circle of thought. Survival of the fittest may have something to do with evolution but eugenic theory certainly tips toward devolution.