You are not Conservative. Not by a long shot. You are Regressive. Not only are you regressive, you are social Darwinists as well.
The Rebirth of Social Darwinism
What kind of society, exactly, do modern Republicans want? Ive 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 cant be it. Most seek a larger national defense and more muscular homeland security. Almost all want to widen the governments powers of search and surveillance inside the United States eradicating possible terrorists, expunging undocumented immigrants, securing the nations 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 thats not it, either. They dont want to conserve what we now have. Theyd 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, laws against child labor, and official recognition of trade unions; even before the Progressive Era, and the first national income tax, antitrust laws, and Federal Reserve.
Theyre not conservatives. Theyre 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; children worked long hours in factories; women couldnt 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 Sumners 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.
Survival of the fittest. That's what is read over and over again in so many posts here.
Listen to todays Republican debates and you hear a continuous regurgitation of Sumner. Civilization has a simple choice, Sumner wrote in the 1880s. Its 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 Sumners thoughts but mimics Sumners 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 calls laws against child labor truly stupid, and says poor kids should serve as janitors in their schools. He opposes extending unemployment insurance because, he says, Im 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 doesnt want the government to do much of anything about unemployment. And hes dead set against raising taxes on millionaires, relying on the standard Republican rationale millionaires create jobs.
Heres 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.
You practice Darwinism and are regressive in your views. You are not out to conserve anything but the status quo of the rich getting richer and the others getting poorer because you feel they don't have the ability to succeed. You have no compassion for those who are not rich and well taken care of.
Other Republican hopefuls also fit Sumners mold. Ron Paul, who favors repeal of Obamas healthcare plan, was asked at a Republican debate in September what medical response hed recommend if a young man who had decided not to buy health insurance were to go into a coma. Pauls response: Thats 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 shouldnt do much of anything.
But America did reject this in the past and will reject it again. I say good riddance to your regressive social Darwinism.
