Progressivism was scientific if not explicitly Darwinist. And there's a good reason the Progressive constitutionalists aimed to sever the Constitution from the Declaration.

Either one is in the eye of the beholder. There is no Darwinist view of government, it doesn't apply. The TOE is a theory to explain how the variations in species over time, as indicated in the fossil record, happened. It doesn't dictate a political model, it doesn't dictate anything.

The same with Natural Law. Nature doesn't dictate, it just is. The only laws of Nature that we have to obey are those that it is physically impossible to disobey. We are free to enact any political arrangement that we see fit, constrained only by our own values. We should accept responsibility for those values, instead of blaming Nature or Darwin for them.

Robert:

And on what basis do we assess those values so we can accept responsibility for them?

This is tricky. Of course it is foolish to attempt to understand politics by reference to biological Spencerianism, or, as it is vulgarly called, "Darwinism." Biological evolution by trial and error moves so slowly as to be hard put to account for changes in the fossil record, let alone changes in the space of a few Summers.

On the other hand, technology changes with the speed of thought. A denizen of the most benighted culture is a generation away from putting his footprints on the Moon, if he may adapt.

Does this mean that we would ever discard the mos maiorem without compelling reason? On the contrary: our ways, our old ways, are proven on a thousand battlefields, and proven by all the battlefields which never were because our ways were so strong that our opponents gave up without a fight.

A Spencerian understands that one does not tamper with progress by pretending to be a "Progressive." When the state interferes with the principle of survival of the fittest folkways and institutions, the result is always counter-progressive, as though someone had attempted to preserve the dinosaurs.

Lou:

You believe in Darwin because you believe in Spencer.

Not at all. Darwinism is a fatuous attempt to undermine faith in God by subsituting therefor a blind lead of faith in the notion that the monkeys have typed Shakespeare.

Spencerianism is simply tautologous. One may as well deny existence. It is, on the contrary, the immantation of the Logos--creation through mental act. The best part is that one may so hold and still believe. It is our faith that is proven on those thousand battlefields. We have a balanced system of the successful ideas of human history, and it is the Christian sect of Yawehism that keep the whole thing in balance.

Lou:

Not "you" personally, but for people generally Spencerism (capitalism, etc.) led to Darwinism.

oj: Take a look at Michael Novak Jr.'s The Spirit of Capitalism and the Catholic Ethic for how the contemporary Church looks at free enterprise and the United States. The idea is that the Church approves of Capitalism becasue it works, and Capitalism needs Christianity to keep it in balance.

Spencer didn't like the Church and he didn't like the military. That's all right: nobody bats a thousand.

We still shouldn't be talking about "Darwinism" if we mean change in historical time. Darwinism is the monkeys on the typewriters. Social change may be natural, but it isn't random. Ideas evolve by intelligent adaptation, which is very unDarwinian. That's it. Good night. 0020 hours does it for me.

Peter

Are you looking for a seal of approval for your values? How do you assess your values? Values come from your conscience and from your ability to apply reason and experience to guide your conscience. However you describe this process, you arrive at a sense of what is right and wrong, what is sacred and what is not. Now, once you've established your values, are you saying that there needs be some external entity to assess what you have come up with, to bless it or to condemn it? Would you throw away those things that you feel deeply to be right based on this external assay?

The last thing that we should run our values by is a theory on how nature works, either in the guise of Darwinism or Natural Law theory. If we are to act like people who have free will, we shouldn't take our cues from the realm of plants and animals.

OJ:

Thanks for posting -- sorry I've come so late to the discussion.

I pointed out in my email to Orrin that Sidney and Beatrice Webb's infamous whitewash of Stalinism, The Soviet Union: A New Civilization? (question mark removed in the second edition, published in 1937), contains a chapter titled "Science the Salvation of Mankind."

I'm not really an evolution skeptic, but the way some people elevate science into the "end-all, be-all" of human existence is disturbing.

Robert:

Sure, fine for the individual living in splendid isolation,(at least until he wants very badly to do something shabby), but what about the collective? Have you anything other than rational appeals to material self-interest to offer as a basis for a public consensus on common values?

Take the Antarctic penquins we've been hearing about. Most of the global warming types this kind of thing appeals to use dubious, tenuous canary in the coalmine arguments--("First, it came for the krill...and I said nothing."). But, if you don't accept those arguments on scientific grounds, is there any reason to care a whit what happens to the penguins or any other species?

I think this problem is why a lot of well-meaning environmentalists and scientists try so desperately to paint an extremely delicate world of interlocking parts that will all come crashing down in response to the slightest and remotest ecological dislocation. They want to do the decent, human thing but have nothing but material self-interest through which to define what is decent and human.

Lou:

I'm not entirely sure I agree with what you say, but you sure do say it well.

Peter:

And on what basis do we assess those values so we can accept responsibility for them?

The basis? What works. Our economic arrangements come very close to letting the devil take the hindmost. Not particularly Christian, but very in line with Natural Law. The result works, with the irony that by not arranging our economy in such as way as to assuage those avatars of economic justice, The Vatican, we have achieved far better results for everyone.

I'm pretty certain we really haven't assessed those values, but we justify them because they work.

I think you give too little credit to material self interest as an incentive to moral behavior. In virtually all cases, a decision based solely on long term material self interest would mirror the one based solely on Scriptural Morality.

That is because contravening Morality has an attendant higher risk of negative material consequences.

Regarding "well meaning environmentalists and scientists." My guess is they are too motivated by the "precautionary principle." That is, significant measures today are justified by even a very small risk of a catatstrophic outcome.

Those same people are probably over insured, too.

Peter:

One other thing. I read this morning that whole scads of Antarctic penguins are facing death by starvation this year from ...

... too much ice.

Film at 11 on how humans are to blame for this.

Lou:

It's possible for people--like Richard Dawkins--to believe in Darwinism because they wish to believe that the monkeys eventually type something structured.

Jeff:

So these penguins are about to become extinct?

Jeff --

There is some loon in the UK who recently claimed that the Antarctic will warm up 2 degrees (Celsius, I presume) which will kill algae, which will kill krill, which will kill fish, which will kill penguins.

So it really doesn't matter - the penguins are gone.

OJ:

No, I don't meant to say that. Only to note the completely opposite news stories on virtually successive days.

First not enough ice, then, too much.

Apparently, only Goldilocks ice is correct.

There is a difference between self-interest and individual interest.

Robert's approach works well when 'self' is defined broadly as 'community,' as everybody but sociopaths and didactic theologicans does define it.

Self = everyone?

No

Sure, fine for the individual living in splendid isolation,(at least until he wants very badly to do something shabby), but what about the collective? Have you anything other than rational appeals to material self-interest to offer as a basis for a public consensus on common values?

Peter, I said nothing about material self interest or isolation. Here again is what I said: "Values come from your conscience and from your ability to apply reason and experience to guide your conscience." Conscience, reason and experience do not work in a vacuum, they take into account the community you are embedded in.

I think this problem is why a lot of well-meaning environmentalists and scientists try so desperately to paint an extremely delicate world of interlocking parts that will all come crashing down in response to the slightest and remotest ecological dislocation. They want to do the decent, human thing but have nothing but material self-interest through which to define what is decent and human.

Everyone has access to what is decent and human, if they develop that in themselves. Being a scientist or an environmentalist doesn't negate that.

Again, taking into account what I described as what my values are based on, which includes a consideration of community norms, why do I need some external theory, either Darwinism or Natural Law Theory, to assess those values against? How would that add any "value" to my values?

BTW, that was a good joke about the krill.