Let's try to use today's definitions, shall we?
Social darwinism is the pet of TODAY'S liberals and progressives.
If conservatives don't want to be called social Darwinists, stop talking like social Darwinists.
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.
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.
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.
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