Jonah Goldberg has some follow-up thoughts from his earlier post:
Which brings us to the first emailer, who sees eugenics as “social Darwinism” on speed. I think this a very common way of thinking about social Darwinism and eugenics, and I think it is entirely wrong. The salient point about social Darwinism, as laid out by Herbert Spencer, its chief author and the man who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” is that it was an argument for radical libertarianism. Spencer was a passionate foe of statism. He was precisely the “‘Laisser Faire’ individualist” Webb had in mind. This is why it is so infuriating when liberal historians and intellectuals blame Spencer for eugenics, Hitler, etc. Spencer would have been horrified at all that. Why it should continually be news to some liberals is beyond me: but the Nazis were not laissez faire.
The missing piece of the puzzle is what the historian Eric Goldman and others have called “reform Darwinism.” This was the view that Darwinism legitimized state interference on eugenic grounds. Holmes’s expressed desire to use the law to “build a race” was quintessential reform Darwinism. Buck v. Bell was reform Darwinism. Holmes’s ridicule of Spencer in Lochner was perfectly consistent with Holmes’s statism and his reform Darwinism. The problem we have today is that any concept of reform Darwinism has dropped out of the discussion. All people remember is the term “social Darwinism,” which is supposed to describe both Hitlerism (hyper statist) and radical laissez faire (the opposite of hyper statism). Social Darwinism may be bad on any number of fronts (bad politics, bad science, bad philosophy, bad morals, etc.) but it isn’t statist.
Leftists who attempt to distance themselves from Hitler like to emphasize the (trivial) differences between Hitlerism and Stalinism, while ignoring the much more important commonality — both were murderous totalitarianisms, and (as Jonah notes) hyperstatisms. The difference was pretty much transparent to the user. And the notion that Nazism was “right wing” doesn’t sit very well with the notion that libertarianism is. Something has to give in this mindless left/right taxonomy.
“Leftists who attempt to distance themselves from Hitler…” “Something has to give in this mindless left/right taxonomy.”
Take yr own advice, good sir. The recent trend towards making Nazism and Socialism synonyms is ridiculous. If we were to really graph this stuff, the line would have to start at “Anarchy” and end at “Totalitarianism.” It’s possible for Progressivism and Libertarianism to fall very near one another on that continuum.
The recent trend towards making Nazism and Socialism synonyms is ridiculous.
Yes, it’s purely coincidence that “Nazi” was shorthand for a party that called itself the National Socialist German Worker’s Party.
If we were to really graph this stuff, the line would have to start at “Anarchy” and end at “Totalitarianism.” It’s possible for Progressivism and Libertarianism to fall very near one another on that continuum.
Ignoring the laughability of that statement, consider the possibility that it’s not possible to plot political beliefs on a single-dimensional axis. Only a simpleton would think that it is.
If you’re going to squeeze it into a one-dimensional axis, plotting it from Anarchy to Totalitarianism gives you a much more useful model than Left/Right. At least then everyone can agree on the definition of the words they’re throwing around.
If so, “progressivism” would be much closer to the totalitarian end, and libertarianism much closer to the anarchic one.
And everyone can agree, anarchy and totalitarianism are both undesirable states.
And everyone can agree, anarchy and totalitarianism are both undesirable states.
I’m pretty sure that anarchists and totalitarians would disagree. 😉
This is true. I’m using “everyone” loosely, referring to the (I imagine, anyway) vast majority of Americans. I watched the Anarchists’ convention in 2008 on CSPAN, and it looked like two hundred kids in a high school cafeteria.
I’m left wondering, who organized the Anarchists convention?
Anarchy is a temporary phenomenon, a phase between the collapse of one power structure and the emergence of another. It is a power vacuum, and power vacuums eventually get filled. In the meantime, people dont’ have to put up with government crimes, but they’re vulnerable to the private-sector crimes that the public sector used to be a check against.
Power in the hands of the few versus power diluted to the many. Socialism was supposed to be power diluted to the many but it never worked that way. Socialism required power in the hands of the few to keep the individual down or individuals would rise and take power. Those trying to impose socialism believed that if any individual could rise and take power it had better be them.
Kind of like Congress exempting itself from the HCR.
It should also be pointed out that there were, at the low level, lots of “conversions” from Naziism to Communism and vice versa.
Both were (and I suppose still are, to the extent the former still exists) nearly religious in their pattern of adherence (and disenchantment and rejection), and in their practical relation to the State, etc.
Socialism isn’t Naziism, but Naziism was Socialist, at least at the start, and attracted a lot of support that way.
(End-stage Naziism was more purely and merely totalitarian than “Socialist”, but then Socalism tends to a Total State, doesn’t it?
I agree that they’re not synonyms, in that the vast majority of Socialists aren’t, and indeed actively despise Nazis.
They are, however, related, in that Naziism is one of the varied Socialist movements.
Socialists don’t like it when you point out that the Bolsheviks were a “Socialist” party, either. But that doesn’t change that they were described as that both by themselves and their opponents. In fact, the Bolsheviks were a fraction of a “Social Democratic” party, which is extra ironic.)
Eugenics should really be called “Intelligent Darwinism”
I’ve never met anyone who uses the term “Social Darwinism” who had much knowledge of either Sumner or Spencer. In fact, I’ve always found that use of the term”Social Darwinism,” like “neocon” and “trickle down economics,” is more often than not like a sign atop the user’s head, with a downward pointing arrow and the legend, “No real thinking going on in here.”
Ethan probably uses it a lot.
Too bad Murray Rothbard isn’t alive today, so Ethan could instruct him on how close anarchism is to totalitarianism. That would have been entertaining.
I wasn’t saying anarchism and totalitarianism were close at all…in fact, I referred to them as opposite but equally undesirable.
And when have you seen me use the words “Social Darwinism,” “Neocon,” or “Trickle down economics,” Bilwickrhymeswithdick?
“Bilwickrhymeswithdick”
Ah, I see you’ve been talking with my ladies . . . you just forgot to put the “huge” after “with.”
No (if I were talking I’d be talking verrrry slowly right now), I’ve never seen you use any of those terms. That’s why I said you “probably” used it. You can look up “probably” in the dictionary. That’s that large book with a lot of words in it and not many pictures. The nice librarian can show you where it is.
But seriously, I was just calling you a numbskull. Indirectly and humorously of course.
Ethan obviously knows as much about National Socialism and the history and philosophy of fascism as Chris Gerrib knows about logic and economics.
Wow. That’s…disgusting. I wonder where the libraries are on Bizzaro Planet. Guess I’ll have to check Bizzaro Google.
Ethan should understand that ad hominem attacks (as in bilwickrhyneswithwhatever) pretty much signals to anyone reading your post that you are out of logic. Bad form and bad tactics.
I was responding to an ad hominem attack myself, I only throw them around in self defense.
You can’t really respond to “Ethan must throw words like Neocon around all the time, he should wear a sign that says ‘no real thinking going on in here'” with logic.
Ethan,
The poster did not actually say what you claim he did. He did suggest you fit a particular profile, but he did not directly say you did. An answer to his argument might have involved actually telling him what you think about the issues raised instead of going for the middle school style silliness you engaged in. By going where you did, you gave the poster license to ignore your arguments completely.
So he can make a baseless attack, but because he used the word “probably,” I now have to respectfully explain why it was incorrect. Right.
I figure, if you can’t beat ’em, laugh at ’em. That’s how we do it on Bizarro Planet.
Ok Ethan you win. If you insist on not being taken seriously, who am I to argue.
Actually I didn’t see “Bilwickrhymeswithdick” as an ad hominem attack, just as kind of lame adolescent attempt at wit. If he had remembered to include the “huge” before “dick” I would have just overlooked it.
It probably was rude of me to just call Ethan a numbskull. I was trying to do the same thing indirectly and humorouly in my first post. Obviously I jest. Anyone who’s read enough of Ethan’s posts clearly knows just how intelligent, well-informed and clear-thinking he actually is.
Getting back to the original point of the Left/Right continuum, and the misleading use of “right-wing,”consider the fact term “right wing,” in common birdbrain usage, groups the anarchist-pacifist Robert LeFevre with Adolph Hitler. That’s quite a big tent! And obviously a stupid one.
Also consider that “right wing” comes from the French parliament to denote the section that was most loyal to the Ancien Regime. Considering that “liberals” (as their reaction to the Tea Parties clearly shows) are the New Tories, the term “right wing,” if it had any usefulness before, is clearly obsolete now.
I figure, if you can’t beat ‘em, laugh at ‘em.
With you we can do both.
With you we can do both.
Actually, it’s almost impossible to avoid it.
From what I remember of Goldberg’s book, the whole Nazi’s as right wing thing came from Stalin. He pretty much labeled anyone who was against him “right wing”, which after Operation Barbarossa, included Hitler.
I was responding to an ad hominem attack myself, I only throw them around in self defense.
You must be really paranoid.
The difference between Nazism and Socialism couldn’t be clearer. Under Nazism, man is exploited by man. Under Socialism, it’s exactly the opposite.
One problem with Darwinism as applied to humans is that it is working the wrong way, as foreseen decades ago in “The Marching Morons”. The problem is that intelligence and competence are counter-survival in many modern nations, where survival is defined the way it should be as having lots of offspring that survive to have offspring of their own. Mother Nature doesn’t care if you kill yourself with junk food, drink or drugs as long as you have lots of kids first.
I don’t have any figures to hand regarding the relative reproduction rates in the UK (for example) of university graduates with a steady job as against completely unqualified, unemployed underclass – but if I did have them I am very sure what they would reveal.
A related problem in the UK is that the Islamic fifth column have far more kids than ethnic Brits (if there is such an animal). I believe that the same applies to illegal Hispanic immigrants in the USA as opposed to WASPs. Correct me if I’m wrong.
So – eugenics (being directed Darwinism) is not only valid but necessary for a modern state to function, long term.
I love that movie Fletcher. I think the title is ‘Idiocracy.’