Lincoln and religion

[Mike B.]

(03-23-2013 07:38 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.

Hitler was anything but laissez-faire. He was a totalitarian, fascist dictator who took control of the German economy, as well as most other aspects of German life, and essentially ran the economy for the benefit of powerful corporate interests and the so-called Aryan race. His dictatorship was an example of extreme nationalism. He did not believe that those who were most successful proved their fitness, unless those who were most successful were Aryan. Many European Jews were economically and socially accomplished in Germany, Vienna, and other large, cultural meccas. But since Hitler literally considered Jews vermin, whether they were rich or poor, he did not believe that they showed their fitness for anything. The Nazis believed that they were perfectly justified in confiscating Jewish wealth, and imprisoning and murdering Jews.

To put it another way, Hitler acted as many another ruthless dictator in history has acted, by squelching dissent, getting rid of undesirables, annexing territory and then eliminating or attempting to eliminate undesirable populations in the new places that the military took control of. There was nothing laissez-faire about it. Hitler's aim was to artificially create a world order according to his own vision. If he had been a Social Darwinist, he would have allowed peoples and nations to "evolve" in an organic way, with no manipulation, let alone mass murder.

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.