RE: RE: Social Darwinism and Progressivism [Scott Eric Goldberg]

A reader writes:

That last post you wrote on social Darwinism didn't make any sense.  Do you mean to say we can't call the left social Darwinists because they already call us that for being neo-liberal and laissez-faire and we don't want to associate laissez-faire practices with Nazism? 

Sigh.  Let me explain this again: the left calls the laissez-faire philosophy "social Darwinism."  But both the left and right consider social Darwinism (and Herbert Spencer, who I discuss briefly, based on someone else's work, in my very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care) the root of Nazism.  So we can't call Hillary a "social Darwinist" without reminding the left of who the real social Darwinists were then (Nazis) and now (us).  If the left mistakes their despicable philosophy for ours, we're going to have a hard time getting Bush elected again.

COURTESY

Comments

[Ahistoricality]

Boy, they're gonna be confused when they follow the trackbacks....

[SEK]

I only hope my readers aren't confused by this. I think most of them familiar enough with The Corner...but those who read the RSS only might be a wee bit confused by the posts themselves.

[Ahistoricality]

I'm not a Corner reader, but after the third or fourth I figured it out, then the more familiar names started to come out.

[SEK]

I'm not either, actually. Someone sent me an email about the social Darwinism nonsense, and I became so irate I wrote twenty posts imitating their idiocy...but I promise you, there's a punchline. May not be the best of all punchlines, but it's coming nonetheless.

[Sisyphus]

Ye Gods! Scott's finally lost his head --- he's exploded into a dozen different personas --- I can't quite tell if he's become schizophrenic or simply postmodern.

Sadly they are all conversing with each other about ridiculousness rather than collaborating on the dissertation, more's the pity. Imagine how much faster MutantScott(tm) would complete his writing with twelve heads and laser beams for eyes.

---Or at least go on a good rampage against his committee.

---That's right Bob, we haven't seen a really top-notch committee rampage in a while.

[Karl Steel]

Imagine how much faster MutantScott(tm) would complete his writing with twelve heads and laser beams for eyes.

I don't imagine 12 heads are better than none when those 12 are Cornerheads. Especially if one of the heads were Jonah Goldberg's: in that case, SEK/Goldberg hybrid alone would push the average time to PhD from 9 years to 80.

This is frightening stuff, Scott. I'd expecting to find a piece on Hermione Lee when I check out Sadly No today...

(isn't Ross Douthat supposed to be a thoughtful conservative or rightist or whatever the hell those people are? No one's doing much to convince me that they're not all dingdongs and knaves. Just googling Douthat, ran across a quote from his memoir of going to Harvard (now there's a niche that needed to be filled!), where he decries the lack of serious conservative scholarship: well, this dreck is hardly footing the bill.)

[SEK]

This is frightening stuff, Scott.

What happened was I read the Podhoretz article on Bergman in The Post, followed the trail back to the corner, saw all the stuff on Darwin and Spencer, and couldn't help myself. Plus, I've done nothing but read Mark Twain the past few days, so I was in what could be called "a mood."