Eugenics and Social Darwinism

One of the programs this Drennan household views with great regularity is the BBC Detective Murdock series. The series centers around a very scientifically oriented detective, Murdock, in the 1890’s.The British seem to just seem to write and act better than the brainless “reality” programs we find so prevalent on American TV, though it is rumored that CBS may have picked it up for the future. Nevertheless, thanks to Netflix we watch a couple of episodes a day. Alas we have reached the end of what Netflix provides us currently though they are still making episodes.

But to the point; one of the episodes had to do with eugenics, the idea that superior people ought to breed more than inferior people so that the human species will evolve at the better and faster rate. Our heroes in this episode, while intrigued, find it a bit morally repugnant, as they should.

Eugenics comes out the overall ideology of Social Darwinism; you know the survival of the fittest stuff. It takes Darwin’s evolutionary theory and applies it to sociology and politics. Hitler liked it a lot. It is part of the laissez-faire capitalism meaning just let the market determine who wins and who loses. Or, the superior folk will outdo the inferior folk as it should be. The poor are poor because they are inferior and should be poor. Though it lost a bit favor after WWII and Hitler’s practices of genocide of who he thought inferior, it still survives today under the guises of scientific racism (blacks can run faster but are dumber), imperialism (superior countries should run inferior countries), and you can toss is fascism and Nazism. It permeated the thinking of the 19^th century in our country.

The term was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in is 1860 review of the Origen of the Species. Folk who promoted the theory include Herbert Spencer and Thomas Malthus. Malthus is well known for his idea that populations will grow uncontrollably until and natural disaster such as plaque or war limits the number of the human species. One can make a good case that Ayn Rand is a modern voice in support of Social Darwinism. Ayn Rand (read her book, Atlas Shrugged,) is the ideological hero of Paul Ryan, the newly named vice presidential running mate of Mitt Romney. Any Rand was an atheist who believe altruism was evil, and condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor. It is her writings Ryan said motivated him to enter the world of politics. To be fair, that does not infer he buys all her philosophy.

It is not a stretch to see that both Romney and Ryan are modern advocates of Social Darwinism. It fits well with the economic theories of trickledown/supply side economics of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Ryan is a personable fellow but if you look at his budget ideas is seems apparent he does believe that the rich should be rewarded and the poor punished. His much ballyhooed budget would cut $3.3 trillion from low income programs in the next 10 years. Medicaid would bear the brunt of this and leads to states dropping 14 million in aid to 28 million low income families (see Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan organization.) Food stamps get cut 17%, $135 billion in the same 10 years. Housing assistance, job training and Pell grants also will take a beating. All in all as Robert Reich points out, 62% of the budget cuts would come from low-income programs.

And, while these cuts to the poor are taking place the rich will get added benefits with lower taxes making them even richer and possessing even more than the majority of wealth in this country today.

It is hard to picture Ryan as anything but a Social Darwinist. And you can make the same case for Mitt Romney who praised Ryan budget concepts from the start; Romney who condemns Obama for creating an “entitlement society.” And, of course, they stand together in wanting to repeal Obama’s health care law, resulting in 50 million Americans without health insurance.

We’ve seen this thinking before in our history. John D. Rockefeller fortune was made in Standard Oil on the basis of the survival of the fittest; or he had the bucks to drive out his competitors. Again, this was prevalent in the in the 19^th century and rejected in the 20^th century when the strong middle class was developed by a more enlightened view of Keynesian economics which said the government had the right and the moral obligation to regulate the economic order and individual greed in order to grow the middle class. That is the American Dream in contrast of how the conservatives picture it today.

The majority of Americans want the values that came to fruition in the 20^th century and a strong middle class when the country grew the best and the majority benefited. If you take the issues one at a time the country seeks the values that stand contrary to Social Darwinism. Americans want a social safety net for the poor, they want security in the senior years, they want good medical care at reasonable costs, and they are a caring people who accept the biblical ethic of caring for all people. But the smoke and mirrors of the wealthy pumping in misleading fear inducing propaganda makes it hard for the middle class to see what folk like Romney and Ryan would do to this country.

The choice is between the current Oligarchy of the rich versus the democracy we believe in.

Eugenics was a dumb idea. So is Social Darwinism. It lacks soul. It lacks compassion. It lacks the stuff dreams are made of; the dreams of the majority that is rather than the few.