Chilling Past History - You Won't Believe It

Some background:

As most of you know, I am sort of an amateur historian. I haven't quite gotten to the point yet where I'm writing articles for American Heritage, but it's one of my goals at some point.

Anyway, for the past several months I have been trying to document the American political and social mindset in the early 20th century. My theory is that the U.S. was actually a lot closer to becoming a neo-fascist state by the 1930's than most folks realize.

I'm not going to bore you with the minutae of my research (but email me at jskoziol@msn.com if you're interested), but heree the shocker:

Did you know in the early 20th century, in many states, it was perfectly legal to sterilize the mentally handicapped and institutionalized???

And that some state bills advocating euthanasia for the mentally ill and handicapped narrowlly avoided passing in many legislatures (Illinois comes to mind)?

Pretty scary stuff, huh?