When Conservatives Heart Darwinism

Robert Reich has a great column at the end of the latest American Prospect issue that tackles Conseratives' hate/love relationship with Darwinism--the despising of the scientific theories espoused by Darwin and the appreciation with Herbert Spencer's re-jiggering of those theories into a societal context (aka, social Darwinism).

Social Darwinism was developed some 30 years after Darwin's famous book by a social thinker named Herbert Spencer. Extending Darwin into a realm Darwin never intended, Spencer and his followers saw society as a competitive struggle where only those with the strongest moral character should survive e, or else the society would weaken. It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest." Social Darwinism thereby offered a perfect moral justification for America's Gilded Age, when robber barons controlled much of American industry, the gap between rich and poor turned into a chasm, urban slums festered, and politicians were bought off by the wealthy.

Sounds deja vu-like.

The modern conservative movement has embraced social Darwinism with no less fervor than it has condemned Darwinism. Social Darwinism gives a moral justification for rejecting social insurance and supporting tax cuts for the rich. "In America," says Robert Bork, "'the rich' are overwhelmingly people --entrepreneurs, small-business men, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc.--who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence, imagination, and hard work." Any transfer of wealth from rich to poor thereby undermined the nation's moral fiber. Allow the virtuous rich to keep more of their earning and pay less in taxes, and they'll be even more virtuous. Give the non-virtuous poor food stamps, Medicaid, and what's left of welfare, and they'll fall into deeper moral torpor.

Now, Reich isn't necessarily arguing that the cry of Social Darwinism is coming from the Religious Conservative side, but it's certainly grounded in that region of the Conservative movement. I'm sure Old Fogey could help me out here, but this doesn't seem a very Christian notion--even from a more literal reading of the Bible.

The only consistency between the right's attack on Darwinism and embrace of social Darwinism is the utter fatuousness of both. Darwinism is correct. Scientists who are legitimized by peer review and published research are unanimous in their view that evolution is a fact, not a theory. Social Darwinism, meanwhile, is hogwash. Social scientists have long understood that one's economic status in society is not a function of one's moral worth. It depends largely on the economic status of one's parents, the models of success while growing up, and educational opportunities along the way.

A democracy is imperiled when large numbers of citizens turn their backs on scientific fact. Half of Americans recently polled say they don't believe in evolution. Almost as many say they believe income and wealth depend on moral worthiness. At a time when American children are slipping behind on international measures of educational attainment, when global competition is intensifying, and when the median incomes of Americans are stagnating and the ranks of the poor are increasing, these ideas are moving us rapidly backward