Terry Scambray \/\/ New Oxford Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the\nLaw that Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants\nOut of America<\/em>, Daniel Okrent. Scribner, 2019. 402 pp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Daniel\nOkrent has marshalled a compendium of damning statements and information which\ndemonstrates the ignominy of the eugenics movement and how its advocates\ndesperately sought to limit immigration to the United States. Though this tale is not new, Okrent\u2019s telling\nof it is clear, well organized and full of the smaller stories and details that\nenrich a narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Francis\nGalton began the eugenics movement, the stimulus for which came from his\ncousin, Charles Darwin. As Okrent\nwrites, \u201cwithout Darwin\u2019s influence, Galton would likely never have begun his\nexplorations into the nature of heredity.\u201d Darwin had\nsupposedly demonstrated how nature made itself by the process of natural\nselection. Better known as \u201cthe survival\nof the fittest,\u201d natural selection was thought to be the engine of evolutionary\nprogress, relentlessly forcing nature to better itself by killing the unfit\nwhile preserving the best and the brightest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This\nsimple material process, however, had the profound consequence of making a\nCreator superfluous. Thus, as Okrent writes, \u201cDarwin\u2019s On the Origin of Species<\/em> was\nrevolutionary.\u201d It showed \u201ca universe\nliberated from the intangible and unverifiable homilies of religion,\nsupposition, and superstition. If the development of the species was not guided\nby a divine hand, Galton reasoned, then neither were the minds of men.\u201d Supported by a bevy of assorted \u201cfacts\u201d\nwhich made his efforts appear scientific, Galton advocated what amounted to the\nselective breeding of humans with woke people like himself doing the selecting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Okrent tells\nthe consequential and disturbing story of how eugenicists with their impressive\nscientific credentials insisted that immigrants from Southern and Eastern\nEurope, especially, were inferior breeds who threatened to pollute the gene\npool of Americans. Eugenics had found\nfavor in Europe and from there it quickly spread to the United States where a\nbroad swath of influential individuals enthusiastically got on board. Boston Brahmins like the Lodges, Cabots and\nthe Adams\u2019 united with labor leader, Samuel Gompers, and along with eminent\nscientists like Charles Davenport and\npopular figures like Theodore Roosevelt, Helen Keller and liberal theologians\nlike Henry Fosdick were all proponents of restricting American citizenship to\nnorthern Europeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However,\nprominent individuals from America\u2019s aristocracy like Charles Eliot, president\nof Harvard, favored immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe as did\nbusinesses who wanted cheap labor and likewise steamship companies who profited\nfrom having immigrants occupy what might otherwise be empty space in steerage\nin their trans-Atlantic voyages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Literacy tests\nfor immigrants were another plank in this guarded gate which attempted to limit\nimmigration as well as to show the inferiority of undesirable newcomers to\nAmerica. Enough opposition existed to\nsuch tests, however, so that they became a political football with Congress\nequivocating on the issue. President\nGrover Cleveland, decidedly, opposed such tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it became\nknown that Hitler and his cadres justified the Holocaust with rationales drawn\nfrom eugenics, the ardor for it cooled in the 1930\u2019s; then outright repugnance\nfor such ideas set in after 1945 when the horror of the Nazi death camps was\nrevealed, shattering any lingering belief that eugenics was a shortcut to\nutopia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Okrent shows\nhow the renowned anthropologist Franz Boaz opposed the eugenics movement\nbecause he believed that environment shaped humans as opposed to their\ninherited, ethnic characteristics. But\nBoas, as a materialist, saw humans as merely one among the myriad organisms in\nnature just as Darwin did. For example,\nBoas arranged for six Alaskans to be brought to America where people could pay\ntwenty-five cents apiece to see them on display. When four of the Alaskans died, \u201cBoas had the\nflesh stripped from their bones, which became part of the collection\u201d at the\nAmerican Museum of Natural History.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, The\nGuarded Gate<\/em> has some glaring omissions which devalue it as worthy history. For one thing, it fails to mention the\nevangelical Christians who were articulate opponents of Darwin and early on saw\nthe calamitous destination that the eugenics\u2019 express was headed toward. Also barely mentioned is William Jennings\nBryan who was also a conspicuous critic of eugenics because he saw that\nDarwin\u2019s leveling of man began the reductionism that would lead to the Final Solution. Likewise the Catholic Church was the most\nprominent institutional critic of eugenics as was its celebrated convert, G.K.\nChesterton, its most notable individual critic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonetheless,\ndespite the opposition to immigration, between 1880 and 1924 more than 20 million immigrants arrived in America,\nincluding four and a half million Italians and two million Jews. America\u2019s population was 50 million in 1880\nand rose to around 106 million by 1920 making immigrants a substantial part of\nthe population even subtracting those immigrants who returned to Europe which\nmay have been a substantial number, accurate statistics on this being hard to\ncome by. And even at that, a miniscule\nnumber were denied entry for health reasons. \nSo the guarded gate was not as imposing it sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alas, in his\nconclusion, Okrent tells of the thousands of pages written by leaders of the\neugenics movement that he read in preparing his book, writings which now serve\nto incriminate the leaders of this inhumane program. Okrent goes on to speculate that when future\nhistorians write about \u201cthe ant-immigrant activists of the 2010\u2019s, there will\nlikely be no papers to turn to \u2013 or, at least, no private papers\u201d because \u201cPeople today , I believe, don\u2019t want\ntheir unfiltered selves made public, even posthumously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does\nOkrent presume his readers to be of a lesser intellectual stock, speaking in\nthe argot of the present discussion? \nPatronizing your readers is also bad manners as Okrent certainly knows,\nhaving been an editor at The New York Times<\/em> as well as at respected\npublishing houses and magazines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All of which is to ask Okrent, if he knows the\ndifference between \u201cthe anti-illegal<\/em> immigrant movement\u201d and \u201cthe\nanti-immigrant movement?\u201d No\nsignificant \u201canti-immigrant movement\u201d exists in the United States just as no\nsignificant \u201cwhite supremacist movement\u201d exists here. These are Democratic Party talking points\nused to stimulate the party\u2019s base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even at that, why would Okrent\nassume that those in \u201cthe anti- immigrant movement\u201d would be ashamed of having\ntheir words revealed? Likewise, does he\nconsider that those in the \u201cpro-illegal immigrant movement,\u201d which includes all\nof the Democratic Party candidates as of October 2019 as well as Chamber of\nCommerce Republicans, would be proud to have their private talk on this topic\nrevealed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, is Okrent proud of his<\/em> book\nwhich can be seen as a polemic, suggesting that the eugenicists are comparable\nto Americans who want their border laws enforced? Will he have given, in whatever small way,\nmore impetus to those who support \u201cthe open borders, illegal alien movement\u201d\nwhich will fundamentally change America if not irrevocably ruin her for our\nchildren and grandchildren? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking\nof revealing private conversations, Slate<\/em>, the online magazine, has now\nrevealed the transcript of a meeting in which the editors of The New York\nTimes<\/em>, thwarted by the failure of Russia-gate to undo President Trump, are\nabout to deploy their \u201c1619 Plan<\/em>\u201d to white out the beginning of America\nin 1787, changing it to 1619 when the first black slaves were brought here in\nchains. Of course, slavery existed in\nAmerica, as it did elsewhere in the world, prior to 1619. Nonetheless, the plan is to impute racism to\nthe white males who founded America; therefore, white male, Donald Trump, is a racist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But America only became a country in 1787 not\n1619. Besides, slavery, however\nhorrendous it is anywhere, was a regional institution in America, confined almost\nexclusively to the one party Democratic\nSouth though supported by the national Democratic Party. So too The Guarded Gate <\/em>seeks\nto indict America for embracing eugenics, whereas the\nmovement actually was driven by a tiny minority, intellectuals, as usual, duped\nby progressivism\u2019s bastardization of science in its attempt to perfect the\nworld by ridding it of \u201cGregor Mendel\u2019s recessive genes.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n However,\nOkrent\u2019s biggest omission is his failure to recognize that eugenics was a\nforeshadowing of the top down, junk science, profiteering initiatives which granted\nexperts power, the dream of progressives from their beginning in the 19th<\/sup>\ncentury. And this dream has not died\ndespite the nightmare of eugenics and the Final Solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider\nthe top down programs which continue to poison our landscape: \u201csex education programs,\u201d given the original\nimpetus by sex-o-crat, Alfred Kinsey, the charlatan pervert; infanticide and\neuthanasia endorsed by governors and by intellectuals like Peter Singer,\nprofessor of Bioethics at Princeton; the continuing presence of Planned\nParenthood clinics in mostly black neighborhoods, a chilling reminder of the\nracism inherent in the selective breeding of the eugenics program, the\ncallousness of which is revealed by the Project Veritas videos showing Planned Parenthood\nofficials cutting deals over the sale of baby parts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So also with the many social programs\nconcocted to alleviate poverty but which destroyed,\nfor example, black families and increased poverty by making fathers redundant; the global cooling hoax along with the mass starvation hoax of the\n1970\u2019s led by Stanford\u2019s Paul Ehrlich; trade agreements which promised to make\nChina fair and transparent in her trading policies and her treatment of her own\npeople! And, of course, the latest and most egregious is the global warming\/\nclimate change cult that threatens to destroy civilization if one is to take\nseriously the proposals of progressives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Okrent, apparently, fails to see this as the\nlesson of his vibrant narrative so intent is he on presenting another polemic\non America the bad. That he would be so\nbiased or so ill-informed is disappointing. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Certainly\nit is understandable that the many material improvements in the 19th<\/sup>\ncentury gave people hope that such progress could be applied to solving\nhumanity\u2019s various conundrums. And,\ncertainly, material improvements are often necessary to resolve such problems. But they are not sufficient to do so. Expertise has its place, but experience\ndemonstrates that when the sublime Judaic-Christian doctrine that each\nindividual is made in the image of God is ignored, then scientism and cults\nlike eugenics flourish. Though\nprogressives may see this doctrine as anachronistic, if not laughable, they\nwould not chose to live where it is ignored. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps\nthe best summary of the tumultuous history of immigration to America was simply\nand eloquently put by the late Joseph Sobran who, not incidentally, was a\nCatholic: <\/p>\n\n\n\n