We’ve been here before and we are here again as the Republicans want to return us to the “good old days”, you know, before unions, before workplace safety rules, before women could vote, before food safety and environmental laws, and Social Security and Medicare. With their “war against women” I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these folks would like to see the repeal of the 19th amendment to the Constitution giving women the vote. I don’t know why any of us should be surprised about what is going on with the GOP.
The Republicans, especially the Tea Party, seem more and more to support the 19th century philosophy of Social Darwinism which expressed itself as simply being “survival of the fittest.” The belief in the late 19th and early 20th century was that if you were successful, i.e. rich and powerful, it was due to God loving you the most! On the other hand, if you were poor and powerless it was because God valued your life not at all. While Social Darwinism fell out of favor it never completely disappeared from our political discourse and is increasingly apparent in the present Republican Party.
Social Darwinism justified the more exploitative forms of capitalism in which workers, including children, worked brutally long hours doing back-breaking work for just pennies a day. Social Darwinism also provided the justification for the refusal of big business to acknowledge labor unions and implied that the rich need not donate money to the poor or less fortunate, since such people were less fit anyway. Besides, helping the less fortunate would only encourage them to continue their “immoral” ways. Sure sounds familiar!
Another ugly aspect of the theory concerned the consequences of war. Believing that certain groups were weak and less able to survive would provide the rationale for seizing land and resources and generally interfering with nations we deemed inferior. Casualties on the losing side were dismissed as of no consequence because of their unfit status. It also provided the ethical basis for colonial governments to use brutal and repressive tactics on their subjects.
I ran across an article titled “Social Darwinism in America” which comes from the book “Discovering America As It Is’ (1999) by Valdas Anelauskas and the following paragraph comes from that article.
The elevated value that Americans place on non-intrusive government, carefully and consistently nurtured by corporate public relations and media propaganda, allows government to go on about its business protecting the enormous property of the wealthy few and maintaining the status quo. Released from the exigencies of protective legislation, regulation and restrictions on its use of labor, U. S. Capitalists are freed of any barrier to maximizing their profit. Police, prisons and a growing apparatus of government repression guarantee the protection of their interests, should the mental stranglehold enforced by its propaganda break down. Thus American elites are able to openly attack the notion of equality and democracy, while at the same time hypocritically claiming to preserve it. (Emphasis mine)