If you’ve ever argued with someone on the far right, the type that drinks daily from the cup of Human Events and WorldNetDaily, you’ve likely heard and become familiar with the argument that Darwin and Margaret Sanger were racist eugenecists; ergo evolution, abortion, and family planning are racist and evil. Sadly, these bits of spin have become “mainstream,” through such breathtaking works of staggering genius as Expelled, and bear commentary.
Let’s pretend this is a motion for summary judgment, and accept all of “plaintiff’s” allegations of fact as true, just for the sake of argument. So, let’s assume that Sanger and Darwin were both monsters who wanted to “select” or “engineer” away other racists. What of it?
The answer is, nothing. Especially in the case of science, where the idea evolves exponentially beyond its original conception, a “founder’s” personal beliefs are practically meaningless. More generally, there’s no concept “original sin” in philosophy; provided a belief system does not retain the bigoted beliefs of its adherents, it retains none of the guilt for the same. If a philosophy, like a snowball rolling down the incline of history, gathered all the scum of its adherents, no idea would be innocent. All of Christianity would be counted a murderer (the Crusades), all of Islam the same (the wars of expansion), and even democracy and America would be irredeemable (the Indian wars). The mere fact of the continuance of history requires us to forgive the sins of our ideological fathers, and focus on the present. Since conservatives so readily agree that historical revisionism is a flawed way of looking at the world, it’s odd (or, unsurprising) that fundamentalist conservatives forget that simple truth when it comes to ideas they don’t like.
Wernher von Braun was a Nazi, so rocket science is evil. It’s all so simple….
Posted by James F | July 17, 2008, 2:29 pmExactly! I think I’ve written on this before but it just pisses me off SO MUCH.
Posted by Ames | July 17, 2008, 3:52 pmI think the point that bears repeating and expanding on is really “The founder is meaningless”. Arguing against Darwin is arguing against something that’s well over a century out-of-date. He and his works have got no more relevance to present-day biology than his contemporary Abner Doubleday (or Alexander Cartwright) does to the rules of present-day baseball. Does a guy who was popularizing baseball and recording its rules before there were balls or called strikes, while pitchers had to throw underhand, and fly-outs included one-hoppers really have much to say regarding the game as it’s played today? No, not at all. So if you want to argue whether Alex Rodriguez should’ve been called for interference or not back in May against the Blue Jays, why would you even mention them? Well, dredging up Darwin is an equivalent to that, I think. The man’s got no relevance.
Posted by Steve | July 17, 2008, 7:10 pm