Republicans: Darwin Was Right - When It Comes To Society

Ken O'Brien

According to the National Journal, “On evolution, just 23 percent of Republicans said in a 2009 Pew poll that human life had evolved solely through a natural process, while another 26 percent said evolution had occurred under divine guidance and 39 percent said life has always existed in its present form. When Gallup phrased the choices slightly differently last December [2010], just 8 percent of Republicans said they believed human life had evolved without assistance from God, 36 percent said evolution had proceeded under divine guidance, and a 52 percent majority said God had created “human beings pretty much in their present form.”

Keeping in lockstep with this view, all current Republican Presidential candidates with the exception of Jon Huntsman inject a religious spin into this scientific debate.

The Huffington Post of January 12, 2012, in an article titled “2012 Election: Where GOP Presidential Candidates Stand On Evolution” provided the following summaries of the candidates’ views.

Newt Gingrich has said he believes in both creationism and science, stating that he doesn't "think there is necessarily a conflict between the two."

Mitt Romney has said that while he believes God designed the universe, he also believes "evolution is most likely the process he used to create the human body." The former Massachusetts governor admitted that his beliefs are complex and was hesitant to explicitly support intelligent design.

Rick Santorum -- who strongly opposes the theory of evolution -- took aim at rival GOP contender Jon Huntsman this week over his stance on evolution.

Ron Paul is a creationist who decried evolution publicly in December 2007 during a Q&A session at a meeting in Spartanburg, South Carolina

Rick Perry sparked controversy when he said that he believes evolution is "a theory" with "some gaps in it" in August.

Following Rick Perry's comments on evolution, Jon Huntsman tweeted "I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."

While a majority of Republicans nationwide as well as a majority of their candidates reject (at least to some degree) a theory almost universally accepted in the scientific community, they implicitly espouse a discredited social view with roots in the same theory.

That view is what is known as Social Darwinism. Put simply, Social Darwinism is a 19th-century theory, inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution, by which the social order is accounted for as the product of natural selection of those persons best suited to existing living conditions and in accord with which a position of laissez-faire is advocated.

Nothing has made it clearer that this is the bedrock belief of the Republican elite than the blowback directed at New Gingrich and Rick Perry for their attacks on Mitt Romney’s practices while he was the head of Bain Capital.

Despite the outrage Republican and other conservative elements mount against entitlements, they are simultaneously promoting an entitlement philosophy based upon heritage, financial and business skills and behavior that in other areas might be regarded as sociopathic.

At its core is a conviction that success (measured in financial terms) is an entirely individual accomplishment. The social fabric and the societal and governmental framework that make possible that success is irrelevant. Since it is individual effort alone that has resulted in success nothing is owed to society other than that an individual wishes to bequeath to it through their personal largess.

Totally ignored is that only a small percentage of society has the psychical gifts that allow them to be successful at business combined with the necessary ruthlessness to achieve such success.

Those whose gifts lie elsewhere, be it in the arts, the sciences, the humanities or simple physical attractiveness, are of lesser merit and are endowed with the resources to exercise their talents solely at the behest of the wealthy.

Lowest on the scale of value are those who are not particularly gifted in any area (i.e. most of us). As such we are little more than interchangeable factors of production whose opinions don’t really matter. Rather, we malleable proles are objects whose opinions must be molded and shaped in order to provide conformity with the interests of the plutocrats due to the inconveniences resulting from preserving the myth of democracy.

The attacks on Romney by Gingrich and Perry have come at a particularly inconvenient time. The recent consciousness-raising by the Occupy Wall Street movement has dramatically increased public awareness and outrage over this social economic divide.

Yesterday the Huffington Post reported, “Significantly more Americans see "very strong" or "strong" class conflict between the rich and poor, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. The results show that Americans think that conflicts between the rich and poor are stronger than immigrant and native born, black and white and young and old.”

The American public is rapidly awakening to the inherent hypocrisy of the positions being espoused by the Republican establishment. Unfortunately for the Democrats, they are perceived as only marginally better as a party in not adhering to this mindset.

With this growing social divide, the decades ahead may constitute as dramatic a watershed in American political and social history as the period between 1880 and 1910.