The Sick Social Darwinism Driving Modern Republicans

[one...two...tree 2,762]

What kind of society, exactly, do modern Republicans want? I’ve been listening to Republican candidates in an effort to discern an overall philosophy, a broadly-shared vision, an ideal picture of America.

They say they want a smaller government but that can’t be it. Most seek a larger national defense and more muscular homeland security. Almost all want to widen the government’s powers of search and surveillance inside the United States – eradicating possible terrorists, expunging undocumented immigrants, “securing” the nation’s borders. They want stiffer criminal sentences, including broader application of the death penalty. Many also want government to intrude on the most intimate aspects of private life.

They call themselves conservatives but that’s not it, either. They don’t want to conserve what we now have. They’d rather take the country backwards – before the 1960s and 1970s, and the Environmental Protection Act, Medicare, and Medicaid; before the New Deal, and its provision for Social Security, unemployment insurance, the forty-hour workweek, and official recognition of trade unions; even before the Progressive Era, and the first national income tax, antitrust laws, and Federal Reserve.

They’re not conservatives. They’re regressives. And the America they seek is the one we had in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century.

It was an era when the nation was mesmerized by the doctrine of free enterprise, but few Americans actually enjoyed much freedom. Robber barons like the financier Jay Gould, the railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, controlled much of American industry; the gap between rich and poor had turned into a chasm; urban slums festered; women couldn’t vote and black Americans were subject to Jim Crow; and the lackeys of rich literally deposited sacks of money on desks of pliant legislators.

Most tellingly, it was a time when the ideas of William Graham Sumner, a professor of political and social science at Yale, dominated American social thought. Sumner brought Charles Darwin to America and twisted him into a theory to fit the times.

Few Americans living today have read any of Sumner’s writings but they had an electrifying effect on America during the last three decades of the 19th century.

To Sumner and his followers, life was a competitive struggle in which only the fittest could survive – and through this struggle societies became stronger over time. A correlate of this principle was that government should do little or nothing to help those in need because that would interfere with natural selection.

Listen to today’s Republican debates and you hear a continuous regurgitation of Sumner. “Civilization has a simple choice,” Sumner wrote in the 1880s. It’s either “liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest,” or “not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.”

Sound familiar?

Newt Gingrich not only echoes Sumner’s thoughts but mimics Sumner’s reputed arrogance. Gingrich says we must reward “entrepreneurs” (by which he means anyone who has made a pile of money) and warns us not to “coddle” people in need. He opposes extending unemployment insurance because, he says, ”I’m opposed to giving people money for doing nothing.”

Sumner, likewise, warned against handouts to people he termed “negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent.”

Mitt Romney doesn’t want the government to do much of anything about unemployment. And he’s dead set against raising taxes on millionaires, relying on the standard Republican rationale millionaires create jobs.

Here’s Sumner, more than a century ago: “Millionaires are the product of natural selection, acting on the whole body of men to pick out those who can meet the requirement of certain work to be done… It is because they are thus selected that wealth aggregates under their hands – both their own and that intrusted to them … They may fairly be regarded as the naturally selected agents of society.” Although they live in luxury, “the bargain is a good one for society.”

Other Republican hopefuls also fit Sumner’s mold. Ron Paul, who favors repeal of Obama’s healthcare plan, was asked at a Republican debate in September what medical response he’d recommend if a young man who had decided not to buy health insurance were to go into a coma. Paul’s response: “That’s what freedom is all about: taking your own risks.” The Republican crowd cheered.

In other words, if the young man died for lack of health insurance, he was responsible. Survival of the fittest.

Social Darwinism offered a moral justification for the wild inequities and social cruelties of the late nineteenth century. It allowed John D. Rockefeller, for example, to claim the fortune he accumulated through his giant Standard Oil Trust was “merely a survival of the fittest.” It was, he insisted “the working out of a law of nature and of God.”

Social Darwinism also undermined all efforts at the time to build a nation of broadly-based prosperity and rescue our democracy from the tight grip of a very few at the top. It was used by the privileged and powerful to convince everyone else that government shouldn’t do much of anything.

Not until the twentieth century did America reject Social Darwinism. We created the large middle class that became the core of our economy and democracy. We built safety nets to catch Americans who fell downward through no fault of their own. We designed regulations to protect against the inevitable excesses of free-market greed. We taxed the rich and invested in public goods – public schools, public universities, public transportation, public parks, public health – that made us all better off.

In short, we rejected the notion that each of us is on his or her own in a competitive contest for survival.

But make no mistake: If one of the current crop of Republican hopefuls becomes president, and if regressive Republicans take over the House or Senate, or both, Social Darwinism is back.

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/153289/the_sick_social_darwinism_driving_modern_republicans/

[Misha & Ira 113]

I was for Darwin's theory until I was against it...

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Most seek a larger national defense and more muscular homeland security. Almost all want to widen the government’s powers of search and surveillance inside the United States – eradicating possible terrorists,

you do realize that Dems do this too right? You realize Obama has expanded this more then Bush ever did, right?

[luckytxn 2,264]

So we should have a federal government that cares for us from cradle to grave?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

You realize Obama has expanded this more then Bush ever did, right?

He has? When and how?

[mawilson 2,133]

He has? When and how?

Homeland security and national defense budgets continued to grow under Obama.

[Deputy Purple 1,294]

You do realize that "Social Darwinism" is a fallacy invented by racists trying to use solid scientific theory to support their own beliefs that other races are inferior to their own, right?

That alone invalidates anything that follows your title...

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Homeland security and national defense budgets continued to grow under Obama.

More so than under Bush? Really?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

You do realize that "Social Darwinism" is a fallacy invented by racists trying to use solid scientific theory to support their own beliefs that other races are inferior to their own, right?

That alone invalidates anything that follows your title...

That's not accurate. White Supremacists believe in ethnic superiority - meaning that even the dirtiest, poor white trash living in a trailer is ethnically superior to Michael Jordan. If they truly embraced Social Darwinism to the 'T', they'd acknowledge that Michael Jordan is successful because he demonstrates superior survival skills and the poor white guy living in the trailer has defective DNA.

Here's a more accurate description....

Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics.^[1] It especially refers to notions of struggle for existence being used to justify social policies which make no distinction between those able to support themselves and those unable to support themselves. The most prominent form of such views stressed competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism but it is also connected to the ideas of eugenics, scientific racism, imperialism,^[2] fascism, Nazism and struggle between national or racial groups.^[3][4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

[Obama 2012 1,714]

More so than under Bush? Really?

Watch Frontline's "Top Secret America." - They touch on it a little bit there.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Watch Frontline's "Top Secret America." - They touch on it a little bit there.

Why would you watch a left-wing propagandist show like Frontline?

[Deputy Purple 1,294]

Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics.^[1] It especially refers to notions of struggle for existence being used to justify social policies which make no distinction between those able to support themselves and those unable to support themselves. The most prominent form of such views stressed competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism but it is also connected to the ideas of eugenics, scientific racism, imperialism,^[2] fascism, Nazism and struggle between national or racial groups.^[3][4]

http://en.wikipedia....ocial_Darwinism

And your wikipedia link invalidates your rebuttal because it improperly connects Social Darwinism to Eugenics & Nazism.

Adolf Hitler was a staunch supporter of Eugenics (to the point that he reached out to a group of Eugenicists in California prior to WWII) but even he did bow so low as to try to use Social Darwinism, which is Scientific Racism at its worst, to justify his Master Race ideals.

[mawilson 2,133]

More so than under Bush? Really?

Too early to tell. Let's give it another 5 years.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

And your wikipedia link invalidates your rebuttal because it improperly connects Social Darwinism to Eugenics & Nazism.

Adolf Hitler was a staunch supporter of Eugenics (to the point that he reached out to a group of Eugenicists in California prior to WWII) but even he did bow so low as to try to use Social Darwinism, which is Scientific Racism at its worst, to justify his Master Race ideals.

That's like saying Socialism is equivalent to Nazism since they called it National Socialism. Nazism is actually a form of fascism. (but lets not go off on a tangent with that)

Look, it's not that difficult to see the distinction between the concept of Social Darwinism and Racism. You insist they are inseparable.

Social Darwinisim is the attitude that the strongest in society will rise to the top.

Racism is the belief that the strongest in society are racially pure and superior because of their race.

Now here's where you are getting tripped up - White Supremest groups embrace the concept of Social Darwinism only in the narrow view that the strongest in society will be those who are racially pure. So, they won't acknowledge that someone like Michael Jordan is socially stronger than some poor white guy living in a trailer. They would say that Michael Jordan is still racially inferior and would make some excuse why Jordan was successful rather than admit that Jordan succeeded from his own talents and determination.

Edited December 8, 2011 by Mister Fancypants

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

So we should have a federal government that cares for us from cradle to grave?

Then jump down turn around pick a bale of cotton? I thought slavery was wrong.

Edited December 8, 2011 by Crusty Old Perv