Tuesday, April 3, 2012

How Many People can Connect Social Darwinism and Spencer?

The more I thought of the tactic the more I wondered what type of person it would take to connect Spencer, Darwin, Social Darwinism and politics. Spencer had a good run at the end of the 1800s especially here in the US. Darwin ultimately dismissed him because he took Darwin's ideas and tried to apply them to society and not species. But I really wonder what it would take t understand this, given what little people really know about Darwin.

On the other hand as I have remarked many times, Hofstadter from Columbia was a proto-communist and an avid anti-Catholic, as was most of Columbia for quite a while, assuming they managed to have shed that now, so one may look more to Hofstadter for a definition rather than Spencer. But still how many people watching MSNBC or Fox, or worse PBS or the Networks, even have a true intellectual clue? Have they read Darwin, Spencer, even Hofstadter? Unlikely, so why the reference? Perhaps there is some other agenda.....perhaps.