The ‘Social Darwinist’ Smear

“Is it raining libertarians, or what?” by Stephen B. Young

Once again here is another clear-cut example of the official party line that Democratic progressives have been issued to attack Ron Paul and other libertarians. Call them cruel, heartless, and uncompassionate “social Darwinists.”

The Spencer Myth, by Donald J. Boudreaux

The Real William Graham Sumner, by Jeff Riggenbach

Origins of the myth of social Darwinism: The ambiguous legacy of Richard Hofstadter’s Social Darwinism in American Thought, by Thomas C. Leonard

Neither the noted English philosopher/sociologist Herbert Spencer nor the American economist/sociologist William Graham Sumner were the stereotypical “social Darwinists” mischaracterized in these attacks. Social Darwinism was largely a myth created by the former Communist historian Richard Hofstadter in 1944. But the public would never know these facts or about this important book that debunked and destroyed Hofstadter’s credibility and reputation from reading these smears.

Hofstadter soon became one of America’s premier establishment “court historians.” He was largely responsible for pioneering the disingenuous concept of the establishment (academics, journalists, politicians) to marginalize and demonize their intellectual opponents as “paranoid” or “conspiracy theorists” rather than engage in honest and open debate, as if the entire world had become Trotskyites to be treated with derision and contempt.

Although he formally left the Communist Party, Hofstadter continued his life-long hatred of capitalism. His disgraceful legacy of vilification, smear, and attack continues with his ideological descendants.

Share

8:12 pm on June 3, 2012