American Eugenics Movement

[Nonsensei]

In history class until the AP level, we learned about the revolution, the civil war, and nonstop civil rights.

My 6th grade textbook had TWO PAGES on the entirety of WW2.

Our education is too focused on certain areas, combined with propaganda and a culture of uncaring and ignorant blissful society; we do not learn of these things.

It weakens us

Yeah my 6th grade social studies class didn't spend a lot of time on WW2...because later in 10th grade our entire year of history was dedicated to the topic. Sometimes the curriculum is set up that way. You learn certain things at certain times.

[gussy]

Bryson's general science book "The Short History of Nearly Everything" is amazing.  He has a way of explaining things that even scientific illiterates like myself can understand.  If you haven't read it you need to.  

In 1927, eugenics was fairly mainstream.  Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford weren't part of some crazy minority that was shouting this from the street corners.  A lot of people thought that these ideas seemed pretty logical.  
Ford had a widely circulated newspaper and Lindbergh made speeches about it to important people.  At the time, a lot of their venom was spewed at the Jews and their adulation for Hitler.  I'm sure they would never have advocated what was to follow but they will certainly go down as useful idiots in Hitler's cause.  These two are generally regarded as great Americans even today despite this.

[Atheon]

Yup... back then, eugenics was in the forefront of modern science and wasn't perceived as a bad thing in the least. The aim was to "breed" out harmful genetic disease. Little did they know the horror it would become, with the super-race breeding and slaughters of "undesirable" people in the following decades.

[SGOS]

Bryson's general science book "The Short History of Nearly Everything" is amazing.  He has a way of explaining things that even scientific illiterates like myself can understand.  If you haven't read it you need to.

Actually, I've read that book probably 7 times.  I'm not kidding.  There's too much in it to absorb in one casual read.  Much of it, I already knew.  Some of it updated me with newer information and knowledge than what I learned in college.  Much of it was just plain new to me.  One time, I finished the last chapter and didn't even put the book down.  I just went back to the beginning and started my next reading.   I'll read it again, I'm sure.