Here’s an extract from a TNR piece by Alvaro Vargas Llosa on Charles Darwin:
“Herein should lie Darwin’s appeal to the right: The English naturalist gave scientific validity to the revolutionary idea that order can be spontaneous, neither designed by nor beholden to an all-powerful authority. The struggle for existence that drives natural selection according to Darwin has nothing predetermined about it. In fact, he maintained that the presence of certain habits, values and institutions, including religion–themselves part of man’s adaptation to the environment–can impact evolution. The instinct of sympathy, for instance, drives some stronger members of the human species to help weaker ones, thereby mitigating the struggle for existence.
“It is fascinating that conservatives who advocate for a spontaneous order–the free market–in political economy and decry social engineering as a threat to progress and civilization should resent Darwin’s overwhelming case for the idea that order can design itself. In an essay in the British publication The Spectator, the conservative science writer Matt Ridley reflects on the paradox that the left has claimed Darwin even though leftist political ideas contradict his basic teaching: “In the average European biology laboratory you will find fervent believers in the individualist, emergent, decentralized properties of genomes who prefer dirigiste determinism to bring order to the economy.”
“The bicentennial of Darwin’s birth is a good opportunity for those on the right who trash him as an icon of the left to give the author of The Origin of Species another chance.
Read the whole thing.
The reasoning is there, it’s the transition that’s the catch, as it promises to be anything but “conservative.”
From Llosa’s article:
Darwin was not an atheist but a Victorian believer.
Either I missed something, or this is a stunningly dishonest statement. Darwin didn’t claim to be an atheist, but he was certainly no believer, and he called himself an agnostic. He was also rather clear that his studies led him in this direction, along with the traumatic death of a favored daughter.
Most conservatives like free markets except when it comes to genes.
Most conservatives like free markets except when it comes to genes.
???
Do you mean conservatives favor eugenics? That’s not really the case. It was the progressives who pushed that. In fact, Llosa makes another boner when he identifies Social Darwinism with eugenics, as the eugenicists used that label to describe people heartless enough to leave breeding to the people.
“The instinct of sympathy, for instance, drives some stronger members of the human species to help weaker ones, thereby mitigating the struggle for existence.”
This is misleading, as cooperation isn’t necessarily “mitigating’ the struggle for existence, but can be an example of it. The “evolution as strong-smashing-weak” is so outdated that the rest of the argument suffers.
“It is fascinating that conservatives who advocate for a spontaneous order–the free market–in political economy and decry social engineering as a threat to progress and civilization should resent Darwin’s overwhelming case for the idea that order can design itself.”
The issue is that these are two different kinds of conservatives. The Darwin rejectionists are usually religious, many of whom are economic populists, centrists or even liberals. Compare, e.g., Huckabee.
The feeding habits of the Ichneumonidae (Darwin’s example) don’t reflect any better on the moral qualities of mindless self-organizing systems than they do on the moral qualities of the Ichneumonidae’s postulated designer (if one existed). The difference is that few people are foolish enough to expect moral outcomes from a mindless biological system, but apparently quite a few expect them from a mindless economic system.
Or to put it another way: to the extent that the metaphor holds, a corporation is a profit-making and externality-shifting machine the way a shark is a killing, eating and making baby sharks machine. Both can be quite good at what they do, but it doesn’t make either one a good neighbor. Venturing into the economy without intelligently designed regulation may be as foolish as venturing into certain parts of the ocean without an intelligently designed shark cage.
Polichinello
Do you mean conservatives favor eugenics? That’s not really the case. It was the progressives who pushed that.
Your first sentence was in present-tense, but the rest refers to the past-tense. There WAS a strong progressive push for eugenic policies in the late 19th and early 20th century, but it certainly wasn’t exclusively pushed by the progressives. I don’t know whether you consider National Socialism progressive, but they all either considered themselves “third-way” or accepted being called “far-right” and would vehemently deny being either progressive or leftist.
While today, I would say that the vast majority of people inadvertently support policies that are eugenic in nature (laws against consensual adult incest for example), the handful of people that openly advocate for it would primarily identify with the right-wing. For instance, Republican Lousiana Rep. John LaBruzzo recently ignited a storm of controversy for advocating voluntary sterilizationa for those seeking welfare benefits. Try finding a self-described progressive lawmaker in this day and age that supports such a policy.
I don’t know whether you consider National Socialism progressive…
The Nazis did consider themselves such and had warm words for many a progressive. They even liked FDR in the beginning. What the Nazis did NOT consider themselves to be was conservative. If you watch Triumph of the Will, it’s “reactionaries” who get the lion’s share of lambasting from Hitler.
The people who uniformly did not like eugenics programs were either religious conservatives or classical liberals.
For instance, Republican Lousiana Rep. John LaBruzzo recently ignited a storm of controversy for advocating voluntary sterilizationa for those seeking welfare benefits.,
First, I’d point out that you’re talking about a state representative, not a Congressman. Your wording makes that unclear (through no ill will on your part, to be sure). Considering all the state reps in all 50 states, it’s hardly surprising that you could find a whack. This is especially so when you consider his district is pretty cranky as it is. It’s where David Duke was elected.
Second, you do have leftists making eugenicist arguments. Nancy Pelosi did as much when she defended the birth control spending in Pres. Hopey Changey’s Spendulus Rex bill, saying it would save money by lowering the births among poor women. Also, you had Steven Levitt making the case for abortion by citing lowered crime statistics being correlated with Roe v. Wade. He’s been rebutted by Steve Sailer on his numbers, but the intent was definitely eugenic. Both of these people carry far more heft than little John LaBruzzo.
In my opinion, the feeling of sympathy has two sources. First, recognition that the “other” is part of the environment with potential as means to attainment of one’s ends of various sorts. Second, that the “other” is, to some extent, similar to oneself, rendering its utility and manner of utilization discernible via both inspection and introspection.
1) For me, conservatism is not adverse to change, merely adverse to change for mere sake of change. The sort of change where I decide I’m not happy with green curtains and exchange them for red.
2) Incest taboos (eventually written into law in various ways) are ancient. I think it is misleading to lump them in the eugenics category.
3) Spontaneous order does not fit with my understanding of natural selection, as it gives the selection a goal which is more akin to intelligent design than evolution.
4) LaBruzzo and Pelosi are idiots, but their proposals are about money, not eugenics. That neither of them are bright enough to understand the eugenic consequences does not mean that eugenics is the driving force behind their ideas.
@Polichinello – You read too much into my comment. I was just paraphrasing the article. Darwinism/evolution basically describes a free market for genes. The combinations that are successful continue; those that are not, do not. Until recently there were no regulations on which species would flourish and which would disappear forever. Survival of the fitest.
LaBruzzo and Pelosi are idiots, but their proposals are about money, not eugenics. That neither of them are bright enough to understand the eugenic consequences does not mean that eugenics is the driving force behind their ideas.
You’re right, Donna.
I like your metaphor. And it has even more applicability yet. In genetics, we know that it is not the host organism’s survival that is primarily selected for, but rather the genes riding inside. Similarly, a “host” corporation’s long term survival appears not to be of much concern to today’s management “genes” riding inside. As long as their survival is accounted for, and they get out in time, then the devil take the hindmost.
Donna B., you may be brain-damaged, but you’re still one of the more perceptive people on the ‘Net. Please, continue posting.
Reading various pundits has convinced me that the vast majority of people who support grossly stupid political causes do so not because they know or understand the consequences, but because espousing those positions is a key signal of belonging to whichever social or political movement they consider themselves to be a part of.
The consequences, whether for weal or woe, simply aren’t important to them.
I define Liberals, thus: “Those who, in determining their position on any given issue, stop their thinking at the earliest point that lets them feel good about themselves as people.”
Darwin was captured by the liberal tradition of the West because of the historic rift between science and religion over evolution.This was anticipated by Darwin as he tried to postpone the inevitable. Christians were trapped by the dichotomy of choices: Accept the Bible and fight Darwin or Accept Darwin and lose ones faith. Of course a third route eventually emerged and “rescued” the confused and ambivalent- interpret the Bible figuratively.
Darwin was himself a good liberal and country gentleman. He despised slavery but was too astute an observor not to appreciate racial differences that were real and important. He surely believed that “savages” were closer to the ape antecedents of man- a kind of hierarchy or ranking based upon civilized attributes.
In 1997 John O. McGinnis wrote The Origin of Conservatism in which he locates features of Darwinism that fit conservative philosophy.The liberal love of Darwin was based upon his science and the support for atheism and Marxism they perceived in Darwinism.Few liberals ever went beyond the secular aspects of Darwinism related to atheism and the fact of biological inequality discovered by Darwin went unnoticed for many decades. Hitler and eugenics made the very topic of race increasingly controversial and then off limits.
McGinnis makes very powerful points that we need to support publically. While the clever adaptation of Christian liberals and scientists to Darwinism is perhaps tenuous at best, McGinnis is otherwise largely correct. Darwin belongs to us and we must take him back. Read McGinnis and be proud!!Unfortunately Iam unable to hyperlink this article so I ask you to go to takimag.com and search for Matthew Roberts.Then find his Darwinian Traditionalism piece and McGinnis will appear very quickly.Good reading!