The Choice in 2012: Social Darwinism or a Decent Society (Robert Reich)

[ProSense]

The Choice in 2012: Social Darwinism or a Decent Society

The returns aren’t all in yet on today’s Republican primaries but President Obama didn’t wait. He kicked off his 2012 campaign against Mitt Romney with a hard-hitting speech centered on the House Republicans’ budget plan – which Romney has enthusiastically endorsed.

That plan, by the way, is the most radical reverse-Robin Hood proposal propounded by any political party in modern America. It would save millionaires at least $150,000 a year in taxes while gutting Medicaid, Medicare, Food Stamps, transportation, child nutrition, college aid, and almost everything else average and lower-income Americans depend on.

Here’s what the President had to say about it:

Disguised as a deficit reduction… it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly veiled social Darwinism.

We are likely to hear a lot more about social Darwinism in the months ahead. It was the conservative creed during the late 19th century – legitimizing a politics in which the lackeys of robber barons deposited sacks of money on legislators’ desks, and justifying an economy in which sweat shops were common, urban slums festered, and a significant portion of America was impoverished.

<...>

Could there be a better summary of what today’s regressive Republicans believe?

http://robertreich.org/post/20438607043

[postulater]

1. The more the Dems mention Darwin

the more they repel Repubs like my mother who have no idea what Social Darwinism is. They just think he's accusing them of being related to a monkey.

Any words bigger than what a 6th grader would use just angers them. They think he's too smart.

That's my 86 year old mother. Love her dearly but she's stuck in the old days.

[ProSense]

3. Part of

The more the Dems mention Darwin

the more they repel Repubs like my mother who have no idea what Social Darwinism is. They just think he's accusing them of being related to a monkey.

Any words bigger than what a 6th grader would use just angers them. They think he's too smart.

... the reason this country is in this situation is the Republicans' dumbing down of the electorate. It has nothing to do with big words.

It's Fox and the RW feeding them a daily dose of BS. I mean, snow means there is no global warming. This idiocy afflicts even the most educated right wingers.

In 2008, Obama won 63 percent of voters without a H.S. education.

[postulater]

4. That too but my mother said

she didn't vote for Kerry because he was too smart. Maybe she's a subset of one.

And she does listen to too much Fox.

[ProSense]

5. There's

"That too but my mother said she didn't vote for Kerry because he was too smart. Maybe she's a subset of one."

...not much you can do about it when people think being smart is a negative. When that happens you get Bush.

I don't think pretending to be not smart is an asset. See Mitt Romney (though I'm not sure he's pretending).

[lapislzi]

7. Wait a second....

So there are people who wouldn't want the smartest person in the room running the show?

I jest, but I jest because I know that to be true and I simply don't understand it.

[postulater]

9. Crazy isn't it.

[haele]

11. If someone's smarter than them, they can't be social equals.

To the vast mass of average humanity that is suspicious of "teh smart" - their reasoning goes: good smart people are supposed to be doctors, scientists and inventors and that sort of thing. As long as they're doing something obviously constructive with the smarts, and you don't have to interact with them other than when you pay them to do something, it's okay.
Bad smart people are lawyers, bosses (MBA types), university professors or thinkers, politicians - social interactive types. They're the people who are using their smarts to affect your life and choices for their benefit without your consent or approval whenever they want to.

It's not that they're dumb - in fact, many have a lot of talent, experience or are "book-smart" with graduate degrees themselves - it's that they're passive thinkers.
An active thinker or "smart" person knows that it's easier to deal with another smart person than with a passive thinker, and will tend to pass over or ignore that passive thinker because they're not going to stop and take the time to goad that person into thinking more actively.

I've seen it too many times. If you take the time, and jolly them along, a passive thinker will eventually accept active thinking, but it's very hard to come up with that amount of time and know the balance of the level of false passivity needed to bring them along with you.
Con artists have the folksy knack to maintain that balance. Passive thinkers fall for it all the time, if you try to pretend to be like them and tell them what is comfortable...
And that is also what makes the passive thinkers distrust people who are "too smart". They'd rather hear "comfortable" on their own terms than be forced to think and perhaps have to go through the mental acceptance that they have to change their view on a subject or situation.

Haele

[SidDithers]

2. K&R...nt

Sid

[hifiguy]

6. Professor Reich nails it once again. nt

[longship]

8. I love this rhetoric

The social Darwinist meme is one we shouldn't let go. We need to keep labeling the GOP as such and keep hammering it home.

[salvorhardin]

10. Reich made a couple of minor errors in that blog post regarding Darwin and Sumner

1. Reich wrote, "Social Darwinism encapsulated the idea of survival of the fittest (a phrase Charles Darwin never actually used)..."[br][br]That's not right. It's true that Darwin didn't coin the phrase "survival of the fittest," rather Herbert Spencer did. However, Darwin began using the phrase starting with the fifth edition of "On the Origin of Species." It's the Chapter IV title, and he repeats the phrase several times. Project Gutenberg has the 6th edition of Origin. Ref: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2009/2009-h/2009-h.htm#2HCH0004[br][br]
   
2. Reich refers to Sumner as the leading proponent of social Darwinism in the U.S. Sumner's ideas were odious, but he wasn't known as a social Darwinist in his time. Richard Hofstadter was the one to first apply that label to him, IIRC.