posted on Feb, 4 2010 @ 08:32 PM
Social Darwinism’ is often taken to be something extraneous, an ugly concretion added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing
Darwin’s image. But his notebooks make plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were written
into the equation from the start
Darwins notes state that he was a eugenicist.
Sounding more like Colonel Blimp than Lieutenant Columbo, Darwin envisions a far grimmer future for races or sub-species less fit than the
Anglo-Saxon. “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and
replace, the savage races throughout the world,” he predicts. “At the same time the anthropological apes … will no doubt be exterminated. The
break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state … even than the Caucasian,
and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.”’
‘Darwin is cavalier about the extermination of lesser breeds. He estimates that minimal force will be required, for “when civilized nations come
into contact with barbarians the struggle is short, except where a deadly climate gives its aid to the native race.
His followers were quite happy to run with such ideas, and Darwin would not seem to disapprove. Consider his son:
‘In 1912, in his presidential address to the First International Congress of Eugenics, a landmark gathering in London of racial biologists from
Germany, the United States, and other parts of the world, Major Leonard Darwin, Charles Darwin’s son, trumpeted the spread of eugenics and
evolution. As described by Nicholas Wright Gillham in his A Life of Francis Galton, Major Darwin foresaw the day when “eugenics would become not
only a grail, a substitute for religion, as Galton had hoped, but a ‘paramount duty’ whose tenets would presumably become enforceable.” The
major repeated his father’s admonition that, though the crudest workings of natural selection must be mitigated by “the spirit of civilization”,
society must encourage breeding among the best stock and prevent it among the worst “without further delay”.’
Concludes Quinn:
‘Educated at the best schools, winners in a global competition that has driven anonymous millions to the wall, the Gentle Darwinians’ effort to
turn Charles Darwin into the sainted founder of a humanist creed undoubtedly reflects their own high position in today’s world order. But unlike
their Victorian predecessors, they prefer a Darwin devoid of his social theories and his role in linking evolution with rank prejudice.’
It is time Darwin is taken off his pedestal and treated to rigorous and penetrating scrutiny. Numerous works have been penned on this subject. Richard
Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany would be a good place to begin for those who are really
interested in such matters. The truth is, bad ideas have bad consequences, and Darwin had his fair share of them.
if you believe this stuff you are welcome to it. And you must be held in the ranks of eugenicists. You think you are somehow superior to other men?
Or are you willing to commit suicide for the betterment of the race?