It merits thinking about.

One of the more sobering aspects of living in a culture of death is that we are, indeed, living in it, and being human persons, that truly wondrous amalgam of body, soul, reason, heart, will, intellect, emotions, and psyche, we soak up culture like a sponge.

Any attempts we make to exclude ourselves from it, valiant though they be, bring to mind the little ditty from Sesame Street: "Can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go around it, gotta go through it."

Being thus akin to fish swimming in a tainted river, we might be excused from overlooking the murkiness of our environment, or the almost infinite capacity of our culture to assimilate noxious ideologies.

But noxious ideologies abound, as any day's newspaper gives evidence. Just one example from the National Post: a laudatory story detailing the development of a pre-natal screening technique that allows for the earlier detection of Down syndrome.

Earlier detection, the article explained, is significant because it makes it "safer and less traumatic" for women who might opt for a eugenic abortion of their allegedly (the test is not 100 per cent accurate) imperfect child.

Of course, the article does not use the term "eugenic abortion," since the topic of eugenics is generally not openly discussed in the press. But clearly, eugenic ideas have a greater hold in our culture than we may have noticed.

American pro-life activist John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe and his sister Katharine O'Keefe have documented the development and consequences of eugenics--that pernicious creed which advocates the building of a master race through selective breeding.

The early eugenicists coined their crudely accurate motto, "More children from the fit, less from the unfit." Among their unsavoury recommendations were mandatory sterilization of "mental defectives" and the "underclass".

But, as Cavanaugh-O'Keefe points out, with the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and its eugenic aspirations, American (and Canadian) would-be architects of the new humanity had to couch their creed in more palatable terms.

It seems they have succeeded. Certainly, from the cultural soil fertilized by eugenics has sprung any number of aberrant, but, strangely, socially accepted ideas. I was reminded of this when reading a story of the defence of his country by a young American who wrote that the ideals Americans most cherish are "freedom, self-reliance and reward based on merit."

Intentionally or not, he pinpointed a curious reality of American society: it is being increasingly organized along meritocratic lines. This reveals both a present tolerance of eugenic ideas and a disposition for acceptance of them.

Surely reward based on merit is just? Reasonable reward is to be expected for work done well, and done for any number of good reasons: personal fulfilment, service to the common good, the glory of God. But in the sense that "merit" refers principally to naturally endowed talents, one must look closely at underlying assumptions.

A democracy that worships at the altar of talent at best undermines its own viability, and at worst, is in a fair way to becoming a dystopia, as pointed out by the late social historian Christopher Lasch, in his book Revolt of the Elites.

A meritocracy or "aristocracy of talent" is a parody of democracy; in it the best and the brightest flee the common lot and buttress themselves in a world of privilege, which, as Lasch wrily observed, is "the very definition of meritocratic success.

This runs counter to the needs of a vigorous democracy, which include (among other things) the broad distribution of property and "a rich civic life accessible to all"--regardless of one's upward or downward mobility.

Meritocratic tendencies in late 20th-century American society included "segregation of the social classes; contempt for manual labor; collapse of the common schools; loss of a common culture," Lasch wrote. Meritocrats, incorrigible global opportunists, display neither gratitude to their forebears nor a sense of obligation to the common good.

One of Lasch's more interesting contentions was that the rise of the "self-esteem" movement paralleled the rise of meritocratic ideas. After all, if one is lacking in intelligence or talent, what's left but to soothe this sense of inferiority through therapeutic means?

(Conscientious parents may be unwittingly influenced by meritocratic principles when they push their children to excess, enrolling them in any number of activities, ostensibly to assist their development and future success.)

With intelligence and talent so inordinately admired and the rewards of them so blatantly displayed, with disdain, for those perceived as weak or defective, eugenics is a compelling doctrine for many.

One exercise Cavanaugh--O'Keefe suggests in his study of eugenics (a must read), is that we reflect on the Magnificat. It is in the month of May that we celebrate the Visitation, when Mary greets her cousin Elizabeth with this incomparably beautiful hymn of praise to the all-loving God, whose ways are not our ways: "He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly/He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away."

Lianne Laurence is a freelance writer working on a biography of Manitoba pro-life champion Joseph Borowski.