Quote of the Day (Quinn Slobodian, on the Current ‘Libertarian Eugenics’)

“All told, the picture is one of a consistent, if unacknowledged, libertarian eugenics. The high-tech fertility market privileges those able to pay for genetic advantage. The retreat of public health abandons the social minimum needed to ensure that all children can survive and thrive. And immigration policy redraws the body politic along racial lines, achieving by exclusion what mid-century welfare states once sought through inclusion. What emerges is not a paradox but a 21st-century return of social Darwinism, wrapped in a language of choice, freedom and national greatness.”— Canadian historian Quinn Slobodian, “Libertarian Eugenics Is on the Rise,” The Financial Times, Nov. 15-16, 2025

The image of Quinn Slobodian accompanying this post was taken at the book presentation of the German edition of "Crack-Up Capitalism" (Kapitalismus ohne Demokratie), at the University of Frankfurt, on Nov. 21, 2023, by Toter Alter Mann.

Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on ‘Unhappy Societies’)

“Unhappy societies tend to blame and punish the weakest among them.” — Novelist-essayist Marilynne Robinson, “Modern Victorians,” Harper’s Magazine, July 1995