The right is eager to remind anyone who will listen that early 20th-century liberals supported eugenics. This argument is a frustrating attempt to bypass meaningful conversations on the merits of policies like abortion rights or welfare by tying them to unsavory figures from the past. It can be as underhanded as it is unconvincing– granting that Woodrow Wilson’s support for an eight hour day came from a broader worldview that was racist to the core does not mean our support for it is. The racism of progressive-era liberals is worth analyzing nonetheless– but the history of American eugenics, viewed alongside the development of laissez-faire popular economics, is a warning against nihilism rather than progressive reforms.

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