Is it my imagination or has Social Darwinism, like a poisonous vine that just can't seem to be killed, slithered up from the slime once more to embrace the U.S. population with addictive tendrils? Homeless people, down-and-out people, people in prison, people destined for prison, illegal immigrants, people not able to make it in general; and also hate-crazed-fundamentalist-Arabs, impoverished-disease-infested Africans, tuberculosis-breeding-poor-people infesting European as well as U.S. inner cities -- need to be allowed to... well, um, die off -- like the fire that cleanses the forest of deadwood; like the Law of the Jungle. This is what I'm hearing, more and more these days.
When this proposition first surfaced in one of my sociology classes, politely, as something the student didn't necessarily recommend, just something he'd heard someone else mention and wondered how we all felt about it, there was a long silence. Finally someone asked, "How can you be sure it will be "them" who die and we who remain?"
It took several classes to infer that Social Darwinism, or ethnic-cleansing, is not only un-Christian in the sense that Jesus' teachings implied, inhumane and maladaptive from a rational-secular point of view, and just plain nasty -- it is also probably unfeasible. At this historical juncture, the only people left standing following a war of The Superior vs. The Inferior (what Samuel Huntington calls a Clash of Civilizations) are likely to be a group of generals, their staffs and families, and a tiny segment of the ruling classes they represent.
Overwhelming data reveal that no mass of citizens can successfully attack a modern military police force. Other evidence, on the other hand, just as persuasively indicates that no modern police force can any longer protect the citizens of its own nation from outside attack. No citizenry, therefore, can rationally expect Social Darwinism to operate solely in its favor. U.S. Social Darwinists cannot anticipate the extermination of those they deem expendable without expecting to be decimated themselves -- no matter how many nukes the Pentagon controls, no matter how many unmanned clones it can unleash to patrol the world for "terrorist" threats.
As we begin to grasp that our own vulnerability matches the vulnerability of those we view as "lesser," Social Darwinism's appeal to Americans will surely fade. At this moment, however, most of us still believe that Our Gang (or in Samuel Huntington's terms, the U.S. tribal civilization) possesses more power than all other Gangs combined. Our Gang may be ruthless, even despicable, but if it can achieve its goals, those allowed to live on its _turf will remain relatively secure in a world of nation-sized gangs at war. Poor people of color, and white people of the wrong gender need not apply. Others should join a fundamentalist church.
No one, it would seem, embraces this paradigm more strongly than the wealthiest, and most influential, members of our society. For them, moreover, it includes an extra scenario not portrayed to the public at large. This is the scenario where if it becomes necessary for Our Gang to police its own turf as more and more of the masses of us begin to abandon ship, turn surly, bare our teeth and shout " Give us liberty or give us death!" then Our Gang will handle such dissent with dispatch and efficiency. Most wealthy people still probably assume that U.S. police powers traditionally committed to insuring the health and comfort of the ruling class can and will prevail; even if this means imprisoning, torturing and exterminating many of the rest of us.
Unfortunately, the vulnerability of any national citizenry to retaliation by any other national citizenry in the twenty-first century would seem to apply equally within nations. Local police forces, therefore, cannot guarantee even the protection of their own ruling classes from retaliation by non-elite members of their own societies. The education necessary to enable ruling classes to grasp how absurd is the premise that they can escape chaos sanctioned, however passively, for others to experience; should probably begin very quickly and without violence. Violence would only undermine the learning process required.
Perhaps the greatest lie promulgated by current U.S. leaders -- Our Gang -- as they brazenly advertise their readiness to torture, their disgust for the Bill of Rights, and their disinterest in participative Democracy -is that if We The People reject their policies they can co-opt or suppress us. What nonsense! And how dangerous for humanity if we fall for this con.