Social Darwinism

Robert Reich, writing in The American Prospect, takes conservatives to task for trying to have it both ways: rejecting Evolution but embracing Social Darwinism, a concept that followed Darwin’s theory by a few years introducing the idea of “survival of the fittest” to excuse the greed during the Guilded Age of the late 19th Century.

“Social Darwinism,” Reich writes “…allowed John D. Rockefeller, for example, to claim that the fortune he had accumulated through the giant Standard Oil Trust was ‘merely a survival of the fittest”... the working out of a law of nature and a law of God.’“

“The Conservative Movement, as its progenitors like to call it, is now mounting a full-throttled attack on Darwinism even as it has thoroughly embraced Darwin’s bastard child, social Darwinism. On the face of it, these positions may appear inconsistent. What unites them is a profound disdain for science, logic, and fact.”

“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.”