Reviewing the Encyclopedia, Part 2

Jun 19 by Roderick | 4 comments

Check out Martin Wooster’s review of the Cato Encyclopedia.

Incidentally, I can’t agree with Wooster’s claim that “the leading thinkers among the Progressives… were generally free of racial prejudice.” Perhaps the three names he cites were; I don’t know. But racism played a large role in a great deal of Progressive thought (Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson are obvious examples). Wooster’s contrast between racism and eugenics is also puzzling, given how deeply pervaded eugenics was by racist ideas (and vice versa).

Tags: ,

4 comments

  1. Life, Love, and Liberty’s avatar

    Life, Love, and Liberty on June 20, 2009 at 10:56 pm

    Eugene Debs was also a racist.

    Reply

  2. Jesse Walker’s avatar

    Jesse Walker on June 21, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    Debs was vocally anti-racist. You’re probably thinking of his rival Victor Berger.

    Reply

  3. Jesse Walker’s avatar

    Jesse Walker on June 25, 2009 at 10:07 am

    Apparently Debs made some racist (or “ethnicist”?) comments about Italian immigrants, so I take that back. Apparently it’s possible to be ahead of your time when it comes to black-white relations but regressive when it comes to southern Europeans.

    Reply

    1. Roderick’s avatar

      Roderick on June 25, 2009 at 12:42 pm

      Jules Verne wrote some quite good material attacking the treatment of blacks (A Captain at Fifteen) and Native Americans (Martin Paz) but was crudely anti-Semitic (Martin Paz again, Hector Servadac).

      Reply

Comments are now closed.