Lincoln and religion
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03-23-2013, 07:03 PM
Post: #72
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RE: Lincoln and religion
(03-23-2013 06:38 PM)Liz Rosenthal Wrote: I just had a little discussion with my historian husband about this. He confirmed what I thought, which was that Hitler did not subscribe to Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism has been used by governments and the economically well-off as an excuse to do nothing to tamper with society. It was a justification for laissez-faire economics. Survival of the fittest in the social sense meant that the fittest would always rise to the top - by themselves. Social programs benefiting the poor would just interfere with this "natural" process. I would agree with this. There is a book I once had called, "Hitler's Table Talk" which was a lot of transcriptions he had talking to his closet advisors. He had a lot of strange notions of course, that weren't "Darwinian" or scientific. He saw the Jews as a sort of parasite race. There is nothing in evolutionary biology that would say that. He also saw the Slavs of Eastern Europe as infearior and the land should be owned by Germans, for libensrum or "living space." So a war to wipe out Poles, Russians, etc. was necessary for his world view. To get back to Lincoln... I would say Lincoln was not a social darwinist economically. As a Whig he supported internal improvements such as canals, roads, and so forth paid for by the state. As President he instituted Federal money for higher education. Lincoln's main economic idea was the "right to rise" and he saw the state or government having some sort of role in that. In short, he wasn't Ayn Rand. |
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