I must have missed something. I asked what it was about Darwinism people should be disabused of. You replied "the Ascent of Man." I point out that Darwin never wrote about "the ascent of man," and you accuse me of changing the subject???
So far, one person has claimed that Darwin's responsible for an idea because he didn't specifically disavow it, and now you say he's responsible for a phrase he didn't write because someone else did. It's hard to get a fix on exactly what "Darwinism" is supposed to be, since there doesn't seem to be a requirement that it have anything to do with what Darwin himself actually wrote. I'm starting to think that "Darwinism" just means "anything I don't like about science or the modern world."
No, not really. The problem is with the scientific popularizers and journalists, who (mis)translate what little they know of science for mass consumption.
It is they who have popularized in the culture the idea of "The Ascent of Man" -- which leads to the "if man is here why are there still monkeys" and the idea that evolution works by the successive replacements of one species by a "superior" one.
Most of what the science says ("changes in allele frequency within a population") is inaccessible to the lay person, since they don't know the words, nor do they always have the background to (correctly) interpret the scientific claims. So they are left jousting at (very) approximate windmills.
Cheers!