To be fair, he and other Social Darwinists did lend support in one form of state intervention: eugenics campaigns meant to cull the physically and mentally disabled, and thereby help speed up the coming of the new age. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., would personally fund an initiative to sterilize some 15 million Americans, for, as Spencer put it, “The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness… exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants.”
