Via NLS, here's a video of Del. Jeff Frederick, chair of the Republican Party of Virginia, trashing Charles Darwin on the floor of the House of Delegates.
Frederick claims Darwin said some humans are "more evolved" than others. If you google Darwin and "some are more evolved" and you get nothing but right-wing blogs. This makes sense when you consider the charge was made up by right-wing blogs.
Darwin was not only against racism, he was against the concept that the races were biologically different, arguing against "ranking the so-called races of man as distinct species."
Contrary to what some people believe, I don't wake up in the morning looking for excuses to bash Republicans. In fact, growing up in New England, Republicans like Bill Weld, Lincoln Chafee and Jim Jeffords were my homeboys. But when the head of the Virginia Republican Party is bashing one of the pioneers of modern science on the floor of the General Assembly ... the Republican party has long since evolved far past moderation into a frightening new breed of extreme conservatism.
4 comments:
Maybe he was against racism...
But the name of the book as published was,"The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection—or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life."
And in "The Descent of Man," he wrote,"...civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world."
So I can understand the confusion.
Wow, the Frederick posts just bring the anonymous commenters out of the woodwork, huh?
Anyway, Darwin was using "civilised" and "savage" in the sociological, not biological sense. For example, the European-American slaughter of the American Indian was already well underway when Darwin wrote The Descent of Man in 1871. But no one (least of all Darwin) would argue that was due to white people being the superior race - it was due to their guns and horses and complete indifference to killing people they viewed as savages.
Frankly, I wonder if there are deeper motives when conservatives put racist words in Darwin's mouth.
Comment rejected
Anonymous, if you'd like to make any more comments, please have some guts and put your name on them.
Posting comments anonymously is normal and refusing to accept comments just because they are written anonymously is ludicrous. Refuse them based on criteria such as abuse/harrassment/trolling. The first Anonymous post had a valid enough argument - and you countered it wonderfully. I hope you didn't prematurely stifle any further honest discussion just because some commenters wanted to maintain their privacy. (I am not the Anon)
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