Re: Social Darwinism; was: So Long Judge Moore, We'll Miss You

> > It can't get any clearer--
> > 
> > "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those
> > that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised
> > men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of
> > elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the
> > sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost
> > skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is
> > reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a
> > weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the
> > weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who
> > has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this
> > must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon
> > a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of
> > a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any
> > one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."
> > 
> > Deal with Darwin's own words.
> 
> Darwin was a product of his time and culture. Also, nobody has said
> that Darwin was right about everything. 

You have no disagreement from me on that.

A few posters, however, were insisting that Darwin's only spoke of
evolution in the sense of physiologial processes, and that he never
applied it to societies and races.

They, and Carol Lee Smith was among them, were simply dead wrong.
That's the totality of the point I was making.

Searle