Reviewing the Encyclopedia, Part 2

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).

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4 Responses to Reviewing the Encyclopedia, Part 2

  1. Life, Love, and Liberty June 20, 2009 at 10:56 pm #

    Eugene Debs was also a racist.

  2. Jesse Walker June 21, 2009 at 12:08 pm #

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

  3. Jesse Walker 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.

    • Roderick 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).

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