Being ahead of one’s time is an ambiguous notion. Charlie Finley, the former owner of the Oakland A’s, was said to be someone who was ahead of his time. He promoted changing the color of baseballs to orange and suggested that a walk should be reduced to three balls, while a strikeout be set at two strikes. Charlie O, as he was affectionately called, died in 1996. But he is still ahead of his time — perhaps so far ahead that his time will never catch up with him.
Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was also a man who was considered well ahead of his time. In an 8-1 Supreme Court ruling (Buck v. Bell, 1927), he and his cohorts agreed to the forced sterilization of the “unfit.”
“Three generations of imbeciles is enough,” he wrote. Adam Cohen, in his recent book, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, describes these six words as constituting “one of the most brutal aphorisms in American jurisprudence.” Holmes was echoing the sentiments of several other prominent thinkers who also were considered to be ahead of their time. One in particular was Frank Taussig, a Harvard economist, who reasoned, “The human race could be immensely improved in quality if those of poor physical and mental endowment were prevented from multiplying.” His challenge of Genesis here is only too evident.
Was Carrie Buck, whose name has been immortalized in the history of American jurisprudence, truly “unfit”? She married twice, sang in her church choir and cared for elderly people. Having been forcibly sterilized at age 21, she always mourned her inability to have children. She, most unfortunately, was a victim of men who were ahead of their time.
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