This is a thread from down below – I thought it might be of general interest and hope the participants carry on: (Fred and Knight – no slight intended by not including your comments – please join in.)
Mark T: Oh – you mean you want me to defend [FDR] against your accusation that he did more to destroy competitive practices than any president in history. I took that as hyperbole. Many things you did not like came out of FDR’s reign. Libertarians did not fare well, but the country, as a whole is far better off before than after his stay in office.
I cite stronger labor unions, Social Security, unemployment insurance and public works – trails that I still walk on today, dams that still hold water for parched area farmers. Just for starters. The only president I can think of who did more for the public good was Nixon.
Dave Budge: What’s that line: those that would trade freedom for security deserve neither.
Mark T: you seem to approach things from a Social Darwinist angle – that if we’re not constantly challenged for survival, that we lose our cutting edge skills. It’s not like that at all – people who are secure in their existence operate on a higher level than people who fear for survival. Do not the moneyed classes have better education and higher earnings than the working classes? If cutting edge survival skills are at the fore, why aren’t the lower classes on top?
Dave Budge: That’s a straw man argument.
Mark T: Not hardly Dave – we’ve argued many specifics, but in a larger sphere I have long thought (and said on occasion) that Social Darwinism is the heart of your philosophy.
Oh, wait – you’re going to say that even though I have made the point before, it is still a strawman. So let me be specific: The essence of your philosophy, as I hear you over time, is the idea that people need to be unencumbered by the leveling of government to allow the best of us to prosper so that the rest of us can benefit from the activities of the best of us. You believe in greater good, and differ from my side in that you think we are all better off with minimal interferences by the collective, which weighs us down and stifles our creative forces.
Is that fair? If so, then by implication, without the leveling activity of government, there has to be winners and losers, and we have to let the losers lose so the winners can win, otherwise we are all losers.
Have I misstated your philosophy? Oversimplified, I’m sure, but I think I’ve caught the essence.
Our philosophy on this side merely says that government can provide a safe atmosphere in which we carry on our business – winners still win, but losers don’t perish. It’s a little more humane. And when we all get to share basic goods like education and health care and basic foodstuffs, we are freed to pursue higher activities.
It’s the opposite of Darwinism – we’re not merely surviving – we are all blessed with a healthy life from which to start life’s endeavors.
Please, join in, anyone. I stand to be enlightened. I see Social Darwinism under just about every conservative construct. I think it’s the essential difference in all our debates.
Piece of Mindful 
First, your definition of Social Darwinism is a construct of a socialist epistemology. So, in broader terms, it means something to you that not universally accepted.
Secondly, ibid.
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“but the country, as a whole is far better off before than after his stay in office.”
Heh. Please, repeat this very often. I’m glad you have finally seen the light.
It’s the opposite of Darwinism – we’re not merely surviving – we are all blessed with a healthy life from which to start life’s endeavors.
If that is what we get. However, what we get from your scheme is a substitution of central authority fiat for market signals. How well has that worked throughout history? What have China, Russia, and Cuba taught us about the benefits of equality? Life in the bureaucracy is a Darwinian survival of the fittest, but with different traits selected than under a market system.
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Dave – you’re right in that when we use the term, we are not enlightening anyone, but merely criticizing you. But the underlying notion that support for weaker elements in society causes those elements to multiply is, somehow, some way, in the air of your ideas.
Fred – very few of us have ever thought that government was the best provider of goods and services like food and cars, minerals, clothing and IPA’s. Furthermore, we learned in teh 1970’s that wage and price controls distort the market and wreak havoc. We only say that 1) there are areas where government is a better provider, and that, for example, health care is better distributed in that manner than by the private sector, which must by its nature avoid sick people; and 2) markets need regulating otherwise they burn like wildfires.
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Oh, I see my mistake now. I was wrong about you employing a straw man fallacy. Instead you employed a fallacy ad hominem.
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Global corporations seem to operate freely outside these industrial-age philisophies. National governmental policies are easily neutralized by the likes of Wal-Mart or mega-banks. They write laws, then claim everything they did to screw us and our Constitution was done legally. Crime posing as competition. Only strong new laws will restore the rights and freedoms of real individuals. Reign in the corporate “people.” Where are the basic, enforceable laws on antitrust, health, food and water? Nowhere.
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You’re avoid the issue – the game is afoot.
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What’s the issue, that I’m a Social Darwinist or that FDR was harmful to economic liberty? I can’t tell.
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That you are a closet Social Darwinist; that “economic liberty”, as you envision it, is a social good.
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I’m having a problem deciding between Social Darwinism and Social Creationism.
(Mark— You need to have your head examined, really.)
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