Everyone is talking about Atlas Shrugged in reference to current economic woes, but to me the arguments of the Faux News crew are more reminiscent of those made by Herbert Spencer and other "social Darwinists" in the latter half of the 19th century. (Check out Banquet at Delmonico's for more);
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Nicholas Wade (a friend of mine's Dad actually) was on the Colbert Report talking about cloning wooly mammoths. Colbert asks the obvious question: why don't we just staple shag carpeting to an elephant?
Last week, I wrote about the FDA's warning about the zinc-containing "homeopathic" cold remedy known as Zicam.
Yes it's the speech that has gone around the world via email.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias
I'm not a fan of Toby Keith at all, but I'll make an exception for this one time.
You know the folks who take this seriously are the ones most likely to end up on the B Ark anyway, so it hardly seems to be something to realistically worry about.
Wow... All the CEO's, hedge fund managers, tv pundits & Randits gathered on one island!
Time to reconsider my position against nuclear weapons...
As far as I know, Spencer was a Lamarckist, rather than a Darwinist.
Johannes; I did think about that when I posted. I don't actually like the term "social Darwinism" but I have to admit I used it in the title to grab people's attention. If I said "Spencerism", which would probably be more accurate, I'm sure some people would miss the irony. I probably should have gone for accuracy though.
Moopheus:
Given the overlap between the set of people who talk about "going Galt" and the set of people responsible for [expletive deleted-ing] the country, a better analogy might be Magrathea. Let's see, the Magratheans destroyed the Galactic economy by creating massive wealth imbalances, then went and hid, not planning to come out until it was all over. Hmmmmm.
I smell a thesis here. "The Static Electricity Motor and the Infinite Improbability Drive: From Golgafrincham to Galt's Gulch." Definite possibilities for subversive exegesis.
The main problem with "social darwinism" (besides the stupidity of the name) is that it focuses only on selection at a single level: the individual. Evolution requires selection operate based on measurement of optimized function of all levels of operation: protein, organelle, cell, organ, organism, and society. Social Spencerism is a dumb "greedy algorithm" designed to optimize individual function without regard to ability to operate within society.