Survival of the fittest? A POINT OF VIEW

After so many years of Social Darwinism, Hurricane Katrina could reawaken the American people's appetite for compassion in government.

It takes a lot to shake America to the core - 9/11 did it four years ago this weekend; the war in Iraq still has not.

It's 70 years since the satirist Eric Linklater noted in his novel Don Juan that life in America was spread over so vast an area that any number of strange and sinister interludes could be enacted without upsetting the national equilibrium.

Hurricane Katrina is one of those rare interludes which has upset the national equilibrium. While 9/11 made Americans angry, the fate of New Orleans has gone beyond that. In varying degrees the whole population is angry, ashamed, and fearful. Angry at the incompetence and buck-passing between inept local, state and federal authorities; ashamed at those relentlessly recycled pictures of the abandoned black underclass; and fearful to see that the country is still unprepared to cope with a major terrorist attack.

In my view, it is likely to have as traumatic an impact on American political life as the Great Depression of the 1930s. That catastrophe ushered in two decades of Democratic presidents - but even more, it reversed America's entrenched dedication to laissez faire Social Darwinism, a philosophy embraced by both major parties for 150 years.

Social Darwinism was a doctrine of individualism invented in England by the 19th Century philosopher Herbert Spencer, a friend of Charles Darwin's. It was Spencer who first coined the famous phrase "the survival of the fittest" and he did so nine years before the great man himself published his Origin of Species.

"I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering" President Grover Cleveland, 1877

Social Darwinism never infiltrated politics as much in Britain as it did in America where it was brilliantly propagated by a Yale polemicist named William Graham Sumner. Interventions by government to regulate housing, public health, factories, and so on, were wrong, he argued, because they impeded individual enterprise that alone created wealth. My mind, said the steelmaster Andrew Carnegie, was illuminated in a flash by Sumner's theorem that mankind progresses through the "ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong".

Politicians of all colours agreed. It was a Democratic president - Grover Cleveland - who epitomized the philosophy in a memorable decision in 1877. Asked to release $10,000 of surplus seed for drought-stricken farmers in Texas, he declared: "I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering... The lesson should constantly be enforced that though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people."

The attitude has never entirely disappeared and probably never will. Its appeal is not only to the economically powerful with a central faith in the sanctity of the marketplace, but also to the romantic ideals of Jeffersonian individualism. America has long been entranced by stories of fortunes made by hard work and perseverance without help from government. More tellingly many of them come true, truer in America than anywhere else. It is just that they are not the whole story. When people fail it leaves, exposed as a raw nerve, the question of moral duty in a civilized society.

So Social Darwinism has remained in the American psyche, sometimes submerged in the current, sometimes coming to the surface like a log in a fast-flowing river. Cleveland's sentiments might have popped up any time in the 1980s on Ronald Reagan's teleprompter. His remark that "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem" was an echo of Cleveland and many presidencies thereafter.

The log came clearly into view again when turbulence in the wake of 9/11 led to the re-election of George W Bush. His instinct for low taxes and small government has been neatly encapsulated by the evangelical tax cutter Grover Norquist: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

My judgment is that the log of Social Darwinism will disappear again under the toxic flood waters of New Orleans. The corpses floating face down in the muddy overflow from broken Mississippi levees are too shocking a sight for Americans of all classes and parties. They are too kindly a people. They will look once again for vigour and compassion in government, even at the price of higher taxes.

Before Katrina, America's greatest natural disaster was another Mississippi flood - that of 1927 - which made half a million homeless. At the time Republican President Calvin Coolidge refused even to recall Congress to vote emergency money. He was so inactive that when Dorothy Parker, a few years later, was told he was dead, she asked, "How do they know?" Two hundred people had drowned in the 1920s before the federal government intervened. It did so in the person of the Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Only three died after Hoover got involved. He waded in - literally up to his knees in floodwater - galvanizing everyone in six endangered states.

His vigour standing on the tottering levee amid the raging floods helped to win him the Republican nomination and then the presidency. He was called "the great engineer".

So why then is Hoover almost a dirty word in the history books? It is because faced with a bigger challenge than the floods - the Great Depression with 13 million out of work - he refused to recognise the responsibility of government to relieve individual suffering.

He believed that economic depressions, like natural disasters, were acts of God that must run their course. He expected voluntary acts of compassion by business and good neighbours would be enough, as they mostly had been in his humanitarian work in World War I. But the Depression affected so many millions it was too big and complex for that. So slow was Hoover to respond that the shanty towns of the unemployed became known as Hoovervilles. He refused to believe that anyone was starving.

Of the men selling apples in the streets, the symbol of the depression, he said, "many persons left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples." It was not a joke. He had a tin ear, rather like George Bush.

When GW belatedly visited the flooded region, he reminisced about his good-time days in New Orleans. His intentions were good but his off-the-cuff remark was as unfortunate as his rhapsody to the homeless about how the former Republican majority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi was going to build a "fantastic new house". Brother can you spare a dime?

And Bush, like Hoover, has found it hard to confront reality. He has said nobody expected the levees to break - thereby flying in the fact of scores of predictions in official reports, science journals and newspapers.

Back in the 30s, clinging to the log of Social Darwinism did not save Hoover. He was swept away by a riptide of anger and fear like that which may threaten the Republican ascendancy today.

In 1932 Hoover lost both his reputation and the presidency in a landslide to his Democratic challenger Franklin Roosevelt. The New Deal FDR ushered in - signing 15 bills in his first 100 days - almost drove a stake through the heart of Social Darwinism. Never before had government so directly shored up the lives of individual Americans at every social level and class.

It was the foundation of a welfare state - a ringing reaffirmation of America's commitment to huddled masses yearning to share in the great American Dream

I strongly disagree with much of Evans' analysis here, and certainly take exception to his main conclusions. But I thought it worth posting here as a contribution to the lively 'Evolution/Creationist' threads (which I've been enjoying), wherein it is sometimes held by proponents of ID that Evolutionary theory is part of a vast liberal world-view responsible for no end of our current social ills. Evans article is an excellent summary IMHO that historically this is demonstrably false. And no, I'm not advocating a return to classic 'Social Darwinism' either, though a case could be made ... : )

Right. The looting, raping, robbing, carjacking, and shooting at rescuers and people trying to repair the damage were all results of an insufficient appetite for compassion in government.

I have another theory: the war on poverty is a quagmire.

That catastrophe ushered in two decades of Democratic presidents - but even more, it reversed America's entrenched dedication to laissez faire Social Darwinism, a philosophy embraced by both major parties for 150 years.

This statement tells you that you need read no further. The writer is a kook.

I love it when a Euro-Weenie tries to interpret or understand the American way of doing things. Yes, mistakes were made with Katrina. Yes, heads should roll . . . although I would peg the blame at 80% local and state and only 20% at the national level.

But where this jackass and most other Europeans miss the boat is us every day Americans will fix the damn problems while the cover-your-ass politicians of all persuasions primp for the cameras. We get our backs bowed up and resolve our problems . . . instead of talking them to death like the Euro-Weenies do.

THAT IS THE AMERICAN WAY.

On another thread there's discussion of The Today Shows contention that Bush is "throwing billions of dollars" at NO and questions about whether the money will be effectively spent.

Do you think the Today show is advocating social Darwinism or just bashing Bush with the other side of the bat now that they can't say he isn't reacting effectively to the crisis?

The author of this article has overlooked one very big (and very important) aspect of this story. The most enduring public reaction to the Katrina story will not be one of national shame, disgust with government ineptitude, etc. -- it will be our utter revulsion that there is actually a city in this country with a social structure and underlying culture that is as dysfunctional as Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

If one of the defining characteristics of the Great Depression had been a permanent underclass that engaged in a large-scale looting campaign and attacked government relief workers throughout the country, the New Deal would have been built around a massive domestic military effort that would have killed tens of thousands of people.

I've lived through thirteen Presidents and I've not seen as compassionate a man in the Oval Office as George W. Bush. He hugs people (even his enemies!) and he prays with people.

If a man practices his faith, lives it and is attacked unreasonably from a hundred directions, he's probably a Christian. It's an old tradition in this world.

(What I meant to say:) Living up here on the fringe of the Northwoods (where people are used to the foul balls tossed at us by Mother Nature), by far the majority opinion that I've heard expressed is that a bad hurricane hit, tore up a bunch of stuff and flooded a city that was sitting below sea level. Next.

"Social Darwinism" is an absurd construct of Progressive leftists who seek to forestall rational debate by throwing around pejorative characterizations of opposing viewpoints.

Arguing policy with anyone who would use the phrase "Social Darwinism" is an exercise in unproductivity.

That said, even if one accepts the author's characterization for argument's sake, it is clear that the last 150 years of Western civilization have been not about "Social Darwinism," but about "Political Darwinism," which is the most socially destructive kind of "Darwinism" there is.

In my view, it is likely to have as traumatic an impact on American political life as the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Just a little bit over the top. Let's see what things look like by Christmas. The seaport and airport are starting to function.

As to the underclass, regardless of color, the welfare system hurts as much as helps. We had 'welfare reform' in 1996 and since then the 'advocates' and bureaucrats have been chipping away at that and making it as ineffective as they can.

The writer is a kook.

I wouldn't call Harold Evans a kook, but he may well be the stupidest man ever to edit the Times. He's using 'social Darwinism' to mean something else entirely - laissez faire economics, which long predated social Darwinism or even Darwin.

Living up here on the fringe of the Northwoods (where people are used to the foul balls tossed at us by Mother Nature), that a bad hurricane hit, tore up a bunch of stuff and flooded a city that was sitting below sea level.

True. In all the rush to blame, people are forgetting that Mother Nature played a big role in this. You build your city on Mt. Ste. Helens, expect a volcano, build your city below the sea, expect a flood. Mans pitiful attept to hold back the sea is kind of ridiculous.

(snort) Long-distance wishful thinking from a self-congratulatory Eurobrit. Where's the notice of the outpouring of help from Texas, etc., hardly a socialist nirvana? Everything about Katrina says America Triumphant--even the howling liberal nitpicking...

I've lived through thirteen Presidents and I've not seen as compassionate a man in the Oval Office as George W. Bush. He hugs people (even his enemies!) and he prays with people. If a man practices his faith, lives it and is attacked unreasonably from a hundred directions, he's probably a Christian. It's an old tradition in this world.

Amen! The devil hates God and His children.

"So why then is Hoover almost a dirty word in the history books? It is because faced with a bigger challenge than the floods - the Great Depression with 13 million out of work - he refused to recognise the responsibility of government to relieve individual suffering.

Utter Bull-Shiite.

Hoover's mistake was listening to Congress. And what did Congress want you ask - HIGHER TAXES and TARIFFS.

That was the answer to the depression - which didn't start out as one. As tax revenues initially decreased, Congress clamored for HIGHER TAXES & TARIFFS to make up the difference. So taxes were raised and Hoover signed then into law, and naturally revenues decreased so CONGRESS and Hoover raised them AGAIN. Thereby and once again reducing revenue. SO kiddies, what did Congress do, RAISED THEM some more and wah-la, revenue decreased some more (get the picture here).

You'll note that the above scenario is the exact 'plan' the Democrats had to solve the CLINTON recession Dubya inherited in 2000 and is their answer to everything; if revenue decreases we'll raise taxes and if revenue still doesn't increases then we'll raise them some more as it's only logical (to moon bats) that we didn't raise them HIGH enough the first time.

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