The View From 1776

-------------------
David Airth emailed the following essay, which he wrote for a philosophy forum to which he contributes.

Mr. Airth writes:

HYPOCRISY - “EVOLUTIONISTS FOR STALIN”

I just finished reading an article entitle “Evolutionists for Stalin”. Sounds a lot like “Spring time for Hitler.”

The article blames Darwin’s theory of evolution and its materialism for the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. I find that a mighty stretch. I also find a liberal bashing behind the author’s conclusion. As a traditional conservative he believes the bulk of societies ills are due to liberal ideas. Darwin’s theory of evolution, in traditional conservative thinking, is a liberal idea, responsible for the atheism that led to fascism, tyranny and a whole host of other problems that have befallen humankind.

[My question: why mischaracterize my view, stated quite specifically, then spend an article attacking a straw man of your own construction?

I did not write that Darwin was responsible for atheism, nor that his theory of evolution and its materialism caused Hitler’s and Stalin’s atrocities.

I wrote, rather: “The 20th century was the most sanguinary epoch in history, because of the application of the atheistic and materialistic doctrine of evolution as a justification for atrocities by collectivized, socialistic governments.  Darwin’s role was to affix the imprimatur of one of the physical sciences to the so-called social “science” ideas of Henri de Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, and Karl Marx.

The impetus for Napoleon, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler came from the atheistic materialism of the French Revolution.  Marx’s theories came directly from those of the French Revolutionary philosophers.  When he was writing in England in the mid-1800s, the intellectual climate was very receptive to his theories, because of the writings of Darwin, Mill, and other advocates of secular materialism and, in Mill’s case, of socialism specifically.]

Mr. Airth continues:

Hitler and Stalin acted on something Darwin theorized?  One might just as well blame the second law of thermodynamics for their atrocities. That excuse was used in the French Revolution.

[To repeat, I did not say that Hitler and Stalin acted upon Darwin’s ideas, but that Darwin’s ideas were widely and vociferously employed to justify Hitler’s and Stalin’s theory of government.

My question: what specific evidence, historical or theoretical, is there to substantiate your apparent belief that philosophical ideas play no role in subsequent economic and political events?  What specific excuse was used in the French Revolution to blame what?]

Mr. Airth continues:

I had to read the article again because I was amazed at its conclusion. In a sense its argument passes the buck. It is not like traditional conservatives to blame a doctrine or theory for somebody’s criminal actions, as in this instance. Under conservative thinking people are supposed to be responsible for their own actions. According to conservatives, people are the source of their own criminality, not society in general. However, conservatives recently have been doing what they accuse liberals of, blaming a particular social order for their own failings.

[My question: in what way are conservatives blaming their own shortcomings on a particular social order when the people acting criminally are the liberal atheists, under the impetus of a particular social order, i.e., their religious faith in socialism’s ability to perfect mankind?]

Mr. Airth continues:

I say that conservatives have failed and are hypocritical because they didn’t try hard enough to stop Hitler or Stalin in their nasty deeds. Conservatives are the ones who didn’t want to enter WW2, an entry that could have tackled fascism and totalitarianism at the outset.

[My question: Do you consider Winston Churchill to have been a liberal?  Who among American conservatives supported Stalin?  How do you explain the fact that, in 1939, public opinion polls showed that 80% of the American public opposed our entry into the war just declared by England?  How do you explain the fact that the most prominent public opponents of the war were Charles Lindbergh, novelist John P. Marquand (the liberal satirist of WASP New England), and George T. Eggleston, editor-in-chief of Scribner’s Commentator, a new magazine dedicated to keeping America out of the war?  How do you explain the Wikipedia entry that says, inter alia, “In World War II, much (though by no means all) of the world’s Left took its lead from the Soviet Union, moving from an anti-war stance while the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact held, then becoming some of the most ardent proponents of war once Nazi Germany broke its deal with the Soviets.”?]

Mr. Airth continues:

It was a conservative, a conservative!, Herbert Spencer, who first twisted Darwin’s theory and applied to the social order. He is the one who said that life is about ‘the survival of the fittest’, not Darwin, as many believe. He was the one, who drew it from Darwin’s theory of evolution, a theory, as we know from reading here, traditional conservative detest. However, conservatives rallied around that mindset once, as a template for organizing society. As I said, that idea suited them once. They thought it would help create the ideal society. Now I understand that is not the way they think because that idea for them has caused too much brutality in the world. Sounds hypocritical to me.

[My question: whence do you draw your conclusions that Herbert Spencer and Adolph Hitler were conservatives? 

Conservatives believe in preserving the traditions upon which a political society was founded.  Both Spencer and Hitler were active voices for uprooting those traditions and replacing them with intellectual products of the French Revolution.  Spencer’s views specifically emanated from the secular materialism of the Revolution.

Party affiliation, by the way, is not necessarily a good index to anyone’s views, witness Nelson Rockefeller.  

Edmund Burke, the man considered to be the progenitor of modern conservatism, was not a conservative (Tory), but a Whig, the British liberal party of the day (liberal in the Adam Smith sense of maximum individual economic and political liberty).]

Mr. Airth continues:

Conservatives in America detest FDR for having introduced socialistic policies, in the form of the New Deal. He wanted to make a better society than the survival of the fittest conservative dogma offered. So he enacted the New Deal. With it he wanted to temper the harsh consequences of a survival of the fittest society. To this day conservative detest the New Deal because of its attempts to level the playing field between rich and poor.

[My question: in what way was FDR’s New Deal successful in leveling the playing field between rich and poor?  If he was successful, why did the Depression drag on for eight more years, with economic conditions in 1939 little different from those in 1932?  Why do you look only at the proclaimed objectives of the New Deal and not at the actual results?

How do you explain the fact that, after FDR raised income tax rates from 25% in the top bracket to more than 80%, and tax revenues at the Federal level rose from less than 30% of the national total to more than 70%, the total amount of wages paid to workers dropped?

What was the leveling effect of the order from Harry Hopkins, head of the Federal Emergency Relief Agency, the main conduit of funds to the states, that no one was to be hired unless he agreed to vote only for candidates approved by FDR? 

What was the leveling effect of directing very little Federal aid to the south (which wouldn’t vote Republican under any scenario) and, instead directing it mostly to the Western states with growing populations and more undecided votes for the 1936 elections? 

What was the leveling effect of TVA’s massive dams that flooded 730,000 acres ostensibly to prevent floods to 8,750 acres around Chattanooga?  What was the leveling effect of forcing 15,654 farmers from the 730,000 of land without a dime of compensation to most of them (they were mostly tenant farmers; only the land owners were compensated)?  What was the economic benefit from losing all that farm production?  Why did the TVA region lag other regions of the nation in electrification of area farms and businesses?

Why did Mussolini, when asked about the direct parallels between the New Deal’s NRA and Fascist state corporatism, tell the news reporters that he doubted the success of the NRA, because it was much too harsh on business, compared to Fascism?]

Mr. Airth continues:

In contrast Hitler and Stalin continued their conservative thinking in their adherence to the conservative dogma of the survival of the fittest.

[My question: How is survival of the fittest a conservative position?  Conservatism is rooted in personal morality, which emphasizes the Christian and religious Jewish commandments to love God and to love one’s neighbors by dealing honestly and fairly with them and by being their friends and supporters in their times of need.]

On this side of the Atlantic many conservatives admired Hitler and insisted in not getting involved in WW2 to stop him. They thought he was creating a model society. Sounds hypocritical.

It is the conservatives in America who wanted to continue doing business with Hitler. In so doing they were essentially appeasing him.

[My question: can you cite specific cases to prove that conservatives on the whole admired Hitler and wanted to continue doing business with him?]

Mr. Airth continues:

According to conservatives, appeasement is supposed to be a liberal failing. They always go on about how we liberals are appeasing the terrorists by criticizing the war in Iraq.  And they continually point to Neville Chamberlain and how he appeased Hitler by negotiating with him instead of declaring war. Ironically, Chamberlain was a conservative. I guess this is another example of how hypocritical conservatives can be because they are also capable of appeasement.

[My question:  why do you suppose that Chamberlain was compelled to resign as Conservative Party leader after Munich?]

Mr. Airth continues:

It is farfetched to say that Darwinian thinking was responsible for Hitler and Stalin’s atrocities. It is as farfetched as thinking that Bush type thinking - self-righteous, hubristic, unilateral, was responsible for 9/11. Come to think of it, I do believe that Bush type thinking was responsible for 9/11, with its mean-spiritedness, shallowness, lack of insight and ideological fervor.

[My question: was President Bush’s “mean-spiritedness, shallowness, lack of insight and ideological fervor” so powerful as to mobilize Osama Bin Ladin’s 9/11 attack nine months after his inaugural?  Were Al Queda’s bombing of American embassies in East Africa during the Clinton administration done in anticipation of Bush’s election?  Did Clinton’s lobbing cruise missiles into an Al Queda camp in Afghanistan have nothing to do with 9/11?]

Mr. Airth continues:

I wonder what caused humankind’s atrocities before Darwin came along?  I suspect conservatives might say they were caused in anticipation of Darwin.

[My question: what basis have you for that supposition?  Do you make no distinction between the political and social orders that arose from the French Revolution and the social and political orders that preceded it?  Are you unaware of the Jewish religious and Christian doctrine that humans have the potential for good and evil, but being born in sin, often do atrocious things?  Are you unaware of Biblical history that chronicles repeated lapses of the Jewish tribes from the path of righteousness?  Are you unaware that a principal message of the Bible is the repeated need for societies and their leaders to return to God’s commands?]

Visit MoveOff Network Members