Perhaps, but it is applicable now. For one thing, a virus that changes from using bird cells to using human cells is making a huge leap. It is as if a rabbit one day abandoned vegetables and started eating horse flesh. For another thing, nothing says our species is perfect. It is impossible to be perfect when the world around you is constantly evolving new ways to kill you, such as new diseases.
The assumption that evolution theory can tell us much about man can lead to nasty conclusions, such as racial theory, which are leaps to judgement about the worth of certain kinds of human being.
This is only true if someone wants to believe that white men are superior, starts from that assumption, and uses whatever means necessary to "prove" it. Someone who starts from basic premises will realize that the current domination of the European and Asian cultures and people is because of an enormous head start they had on the road from hunter-gatherer to modern civilization. Of all the important domesticable animals, only one (the llama) occurs outside of Europe, Asia, or Northern Africa. Of all the major crops, only one occurs outside those regions, and corn took thousands of years longer to evolve because its ancestor was barely useful as a food source. The enormous head start of having almost all the useful crops and animals directly resulted in the history of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia being the history of the world.
There has been since Darwin a tendency not to recognize that between the chimp and the human is a giant leap. But this is to depreciate the gifts of the chimp as well as those of the man. Human intelligence and animal intelligence are, all the evidence shows, of different kinds. But it is more just to recognize that the chimp is a chimp and not a defective man, and the human being is not a super chimp.
Why do you blame Darwin? Do you think ignoring the truth would make us better people? If someone takes a theory and misuses it, it is the fault of the person, not the fault of the theory. Or do you believe in gun control laws? What about legalized abortion? Why did you suddenly conveniently forget about personal responsibility?
Darwin was the product of a certain cultural mileiu, one already disposed to racism and other notions of social hierarchy. Herbert Spencer was already famous, so "social darwinism" was simply his appropriation of natural selection. His theory was appreciated by Carnegie and the industrialists since it justified their practices. But it was the Gedrmans who created "darwinism" as an overarching theory. As Darwin himself admitted, he was not much on theory. Natural selection was less a theory an operational devise. The Germans turned it into a theory of humanity.