Red State Rabble

You've just got to love Denyse "Buy My Book" O'Leary. She's the intelligent design movement's overeager cub reporter who has established quite a record of spilling the beans on subjects her ID elders wisely prefer to keep quiet.

Famously, O'Leary let the cat out of the bag about the Discovery Institute's plan to hold a screening of "The Privileged Planet" at the Smithsonian. Discovery hoped the implied endorsement of that institution would make up for in appearance what the film so badly lacked in substance: the imprimatur of science.

O'Leary's incautious post on the subject on her Post-Darwinist blog gave science supporters the advance notice they needed to alert leaders at the Smithsonian. Wisely, the Smithsonian allowed the screening to go forward, but issued a statement withdrawing the institution's endorsement from the event.

Oh, did they howl in Seattle.

Not having learned the lesson that loose lips sink ships, Denyse is at it again.

Today, she's calling attention to an egregious violation of intellectual integrity by Richard Weikart -- a Discovery Institute fellow who seemingly has never met a quote he couldn't distort.

Prof. Weikart's claim to fame, he's now been embraced for his so-called scholarship by Ann Coulter, is writing books and giving speeches that claim Charles Darwin's theory of evolution "played a key role in the rise of eugenics, euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis."

In her post, Denyse is amazed that "it should matter so much to some people whether Hitler was a Darwinist, a creationist, or something else."

RSR supposes that to people who make a living distorting the words of others for propaganda purposes, it would come as a bit of a surprise that others take history, facts, and intellectual honesty seriously. Those people -- fools that they are -- actually think you can learn from history. but that in order to learn, you must first try to understand.

Denyse might have left the damning evidence of Weikart's methods buried in the comments where few would have seen it, but in true Denyse fashion, she's pulled it out where everyone can see.

The comment Denyse, in her wisdom, decides to call everyone's attention to is by Mitchell Coffey, who provides evidence of a "straight-out lie" by Weikart in distorting a quote from an H. G. Wells novel to assert that Wells "believed in killing off 'inferior' races. The lines quoted by Weikart are spoken by a character in the novel and meant to be ironic. In other words, Weikart has turned them on their head.

But in true Coulter fashion, Weikart must obscure the real source of the quote.

Here's Weikart's huffy defense of being caught with his hand in the cookie jar:

I did cite my source for the quote by Wells. The superscript number 5 appears immediately after the quotation. The note states: “Quoted in Diane B. Paul, _Controlling Human Heredity_ (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1995), 75.” If one looks at p. 75 of Diane Paul’s book, one will readily see that I did not misconstrue her position.

In other words, Weikart tried to throw his readers off the scent by citing a secondary source rather than Well's novel, the original source. He did that because providing the original source would have provided the context that could expose his distortion.

Now, my MLA Handbook advises students, whenever possible, to use an original source, not a secondhand one.

Why? Well, isn't the answer obvious?

Yesterday, the Anti-Defamation League blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust.

The ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute for the NIH, and wrongfully using him as part of its twisted documentary, "Darwin's Deadly Legacy."

"This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust," said ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement. "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.

"It must be remembered that D. James Kennedy is a leader among the distinct group of 'Christian Supremacists' who seek to "reclaim America for Christ" and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law."

Read more at Pharyngula which reports Francis Collins, who was originally reported to have been a participant in the program, as saying that he was "appalled," and calling the program "misguided and inflammatory."

It strikes RSR that Christian Supremacist is really the proper label for intelligent design activists such as Discovery Institute fellow Richard Weikart and others who demand that their particular interpretation of the Bible be given official status, placing it above other interpretations and varieties of religious belief by having it written into public school curriculums and the law.

Weikart, of course, remains unrepentant:

Weikart's book, From Darwin to Hitler concludes that Darwinism played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis.

"Among German historians, there's really not much debate about whether or not Hitler was a social Darwinist," said historian Richard Weikart, author of "From Darwin to Hitler" and a guest on the television special in response to the ADL statement.

However, as with all things intelligent design, the consensus that Weikart asserts isn't all it's reported to be:

In May 2005, Red State Rabble reported a speech by Robert Richards, the Morris Fishbein Professor in the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Chicago, at the Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture, titled, "The Narrative Structure of Moral Judgments in History," which discussed Weikart's work:

"Weikart offers his book as a disinterested historical analysis. In that objective fashion that bespeaks the scientific historian, he declares ‘I will leave it the reader to decide how straight or twisted the path is from Darwinism to Hitler after reading my account.

’"Well, after reading his account, there can be little doubt not only of the direct causal path from Charles Darwin through Ernst Haeckel to Adolf Hitler but of Darwin’s and Haeckel’s complicity in the atrocities committed by Hitler and his party. They bear historical responsibility.

"It is disingenuous, I believe, for the author to pretend that most readers might come to their own conclusions despite the moral grammar of this history."

Richards concludes his speech by saying, "It can only be a tendentious and dogmatically driven assessment that would condemn Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis."

And, of course, Dr. Richards is by no mean alone among historians in his assessment of Weikart's writings.

Red State Rabble reader James Williams has sent along this report of Discovery Institute fellow Richard Weikart's April 7 speech at Seattle Pacific University:

I’ve just returned from Richard Weikart’s lecture entitled “From Darwin to Hitler,” given tonight at Seattle Pacific University. Weikart is a history professor from CSU-Stanislaus who’s got a new book out, and I found him to be a kind, intelligent man. A thin, gray-bearded academic sporting a snazzy maroon blazer, he seemed like the sort of person who could be any student’s favorite professor.

Although he framed his talk in the context of history, Weikart’s chief conclusions were highly philosophical—and admittedly political. Using the terms “Darwinism” and “Social Darwinism” more or less interchangeably (because, as he later told me, one can’t really separate science and philosophy), he attempted to link Darwinism with the eugenics movements in Nazi Germany and early twentieth-century America.

I found his historical examples fascinating, and I wish there had been more of them. Instead of stopping with Hitler, though (who only gets one chapter of his book), he continued on to lambaste contemporary writers like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett by way of selective quotation. Glossing their subtle arguments and aiming for the moral jugular, he hastily linked their names, and Darwin’s, with euthanasia, infanticide, and so on.

In addition, rather than maintaining a historical impartiality, he frequently chose to introduce certain terms sarcastically. These tended to be words that would seem odd to a religious audience: “speciesism” or “consciousness,” for example. Such delivery prompted chuckles from the audience, who was all choir tonight: when an upcoming lecture by Intelligent Design advocate William Dembski was announced, an approving “Hmmm…” filled the room.

I had a chance to talk at length with Weikart after his address. He was very articulate, and I very much enjoyed our conversation. I pressed him with the notion that perhaps Social Darwinism and eugenics are not innate to Darwinian thought, but are instead a misapplication of scientific ideas naïvely extended into the cultural realm. He responded by saying that since a scientist’s philosophy informs his scientific work, one cannot really disentangle the two, and that therefore Darwinian science is necessarily freighted with philosophical baggage. I replied that such linkage seems unwarranted to me, since the nature of empirical investigation is such that it does not matter who carries it out. We do not link Newton’s politics or philosophy with his theory of gravity, for instance. This line of reasoning seems a bit like trying to hold Christ accountable for the Crusades.

In sum, tonight was double-edged. I realized, as I had not before, that critics of Darwin are in fact sincere. Previously I could not imagine how one could look at our accumulated scientific data and not be in awe of evolution’s grandeur and sheer explanatory scope. But now I know that this debate has nothing whatsoever to do with science. It involves a thought-step that occurs even prior to reason; it stems from an emotionally-driven fear of moral degradation. This leads into my second point: I now see with certainty that the Discovery Institute is not a scientific organization at all. They are a political one which is oriented toward a religious end. This is how you get a department of political science inviting a professor of history to come and talk about natural science, which he then extrapolates into philosophy. Such contortions!

But despite their methods, these are good people. Before I spoke with Weikart I listened as he was consoling a woman who was worried that the American political climate might once again swing toward eugenics and Social Darwinism. “What could happen that would prevent that?” she asked. Weikart replied that a “resurgence of Christianity” would certainly help.

I had always heard about the Wedge, but never seen it in action. It was less shrill than I thought, but far more subtle. I don’t know whether to be relieved or disturbed.

The latest in a series of exchanges between Red State Rabble and Dr. Richard Weikart, a History professor at California State University, Stanislaus and author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. To read the earlier exchanges look for the link in the sidebar under "Posts of Note."

Dr. Weikart writes:

Yesterday I stumbled across your report on my Seattle lecture on your blogsite. It’s ironic that when I try to demonstrate with considerable historical evidence that Hitler was a Darwinist, shouts of protest ensue on your blogsite. But when someone posts a malicious insinuation that I am a follower of Stalin advocating the murder of judges, not one peep of protest, not a single voice pointing out that this is “quote mining” or making “selective quotations.”

On the other hand, I appreciated James Williams’ thoughtful critique of my lecture. I respectfully disagree with many things he said, and I think he misrepresented both me and the Discovery Institute in some places.

However, I’m not inclined to carry on a conversation about my disagreements on a blogsite with so little regard for the truth that it permits slanderous accusations to stand unchallenged.

Red State Rabble replies:

Dr. Weikart, it seems to me that you are exceedingly thin-skinned for a man who is making a career of linking Charles Darwin, evolution, and science with Adolf Hitler, the dictator who sent 6 million Jews to the ovens. When you play with matches, you should not be overly surprised when things catch fire.

Red State Rabble is sometimes sharp-tongued, but we try to be scrupulously fair. Rest assured we would never let anyone make the "malicious insinuation that you are a follower of Stalin advocating the murder of judges" to go unchallenged.

It is the policy of Red State Rabble to allow comments on our posts -- even comments that we do not agree with. When we disagree, we post a reply. For example, while we don't agree with you about the factors leading to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi's, we have nevertheless published your comments in full and without revision on three -- now four -- separate occasions.

Fortunately, you have read the comment in question incorrectly. "Steve J." a reader who posted the comment that you object to, was quoting comments made by Edward Vieira, not you, about Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Vieira made his comments at the "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" meeting held following the court's decision in the Terry Schiavo case in Washington earlier this month. (Here is the link to the Washington Post article by Dana Milbank that reports on Vieira's intemperate comments.)

"Steve J.'s" comment is one of a series on that post. It refers in part to a previous comment, and in part to Williams observation of you "consoling a woman who was worried that the American political climate might once again swing toward eugenics and Social Darwinism. 'What could happen that would prevent that?' she asked. Weikart replied that a 'resurgence of Christianity' would certainly help."

It is Red State Rabble's sense that "Steve J." is not saying that you hold "Stalinist" views, but that he doubts your statement that a "resurgence of Christianity" would help in light of the views held by Vieira and shared by so many others who think of themselves as born again Christians.

If "Steve J." intended to say you are a Stalinist, Red State Rabble believes he is incorrect. However, if we are wrong, you might reflect on the similarity of method between his linking of your ideas to Stalin, and your own statements that Darwin, evolution, and science are key factors in the rise of Nazi ideology.

For the record, Red State Rabble does not think you are a Stalinist, Dr. Weikart, quite the opposite.

By the way, we hope you didn't miss our post on the speech delivered by Robert Richards, the Morris Fishbein Professor in the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Chicago, in this year’s Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture.

Dr. Richards was kind enough to share his speech, "The Narrative Structure of Moral Judgments in History," with Red State Rabble in which he says the following about your views:

"Weikart offers his book as a disinterested historical analysis. In that objective fashion that bespeaks the scientific historian, he declares ‘I will leave it the reader to decide how straight or twisted the path is from Darwinism to Hitler after reading my account.’

"Well, after reading his account, there can be little doubt not only of the direct causal path from Charles Darwin through Ernst Haeckel to Adolf Hitler but of Darwin’s and
Haeckel’s complicity in the atrocities committed by Hitler and his party. They bear historical responsibility.

"It is disingenuous, I believe, for the author to pretend that most readers might come to their own conclusions despite the moral grammar of this history."

Richards concludes his speech by saying, "It can only be a tendentious and dogmatically driven assessment that would condemn Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis."

We hear quite often from old school proponents of creationism and their more cutting-edge cousins, the intelligent design "theorists," that Neo-Darwinism, by which they mean the scientific understanding of the common ancestry of all living species, is single-handedly responsible for the ills of Western Civilization.

Dr. Richard Weikart, a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and the author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, for example, argues that the theory of evolution has played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis.

In an exchange of views published on Red State Rabble, Weikart furthermore maintains that a direct link between Charles Darwin, the theory of evolution, and social Darwinism has been conclusively proven.

"It is dismaying to see such opinions being passed off as results of scholarly research," says Sander Gliboff, of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, in a review of Weikart's book.

"The book's few merits only deepen the dismay because they suggest that Weikart knows better," continues Gliboff. "His book is rich in primary material, thoroughly documented, and clearly and concisely written... Unfortunately, Weikart only repeats their most outrageous stances on ethics and human evolution and omits their criticisms of the still-Christian (despite Darwin) societies in which they lived. In short, he does not strive for a contextual understanding of the selected writers any more than for an explanation of Hitler. They are only characters in a contrived, cautionary tale against religious apostasy, Darwinism, and free inquiry into the foundations of ethics."

Fortunately, contextual understanding is provided by the Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, an enormously informative interactive website hosted by the Dolan DNA Learning Center at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The site has recently added upgraded search features, enhanced cross referencing, and interactive images, including 2,500 photographs, letters, articles, and scientific reports related to the eugenics movement.

RSR spent a good part of last night exploring the site, and we strongly recommend it to those who want to learn more about the sad history of eugenics in this country.

We find highly ironic that opponents of evolution on the religious right continue to condemn science for its supposed connection with the eugenics movement in the early part of the last century, even as many of those same high-minded critics of science remain locked in an ugly embrace with latter day social Darwinism, now re-branded as self-reliance, rugged individualism, and the ownership society.

The anti-gay frenzy so much in vogue on the religious right today, held up as a defense of marriage, is but another holdover from the eugenics movement of the early part of the last century.

Real opposition to eugenics these days comes not from creationists or intelligent design proponents on the religious right, but from scientists at places such as the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and from organizations such as the American Medical Association, which, in association with the U.S. Holocaust Museum sponsored a lecture series, and a special exhibition, "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race," at the museum in 2005.

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement reflects an attempt to come to grips with the legacy of the eugenics movement in a serious way. Truly understanding our past, rather than some tendentious charicature offered by those, such as Weikart, who are in thrall to a right-wing religious ideolgy, is an important step in the right direction.

It is no accident that Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is taking a hard look at the past, now. Today, the laboratory is playing an important role in the Human Genome Project. It once served as the Eugenics Record Office during the early part of the last century. As we gain a deeper understanding of the human genome, difficult ethical issues are sure to present themselves. It is crucial that we avoid the mistakes of the past. The Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement is one such effort to do just that.

Readers may also want to take a look at, "The Eugenics Movement, and its Relevance Today," by Jim Regan, in The Christian Science Monitor.

When University of Idaho President Timothy White and Cornell University President Hunter Rawlings III forcefully stated the obvious, that intelligent design has about as much relation to science as fish have to bicycles, the Discovery Institute's Evolution News and Views blog cried long and loud that they were being persecuted.

Likewise, they were deeply offended by the unfortunate e-mails sent by religious studies prof. Paul Mirecki, and quick to condemn his "calous (sic) and nasty comments over the years about religon (sic)." The university, they sniffed, would be investigating Mirecki's "anti-religious and bigoted" comments.

But, that doesn't seem to stop them from smearing Darwin, scientists, teachers, and supporters of science education as racists, Nazis, eugenicists, and baby killers. Of course, anyone who opposes intelligent design is, by their somewhat tortured definition, an atheist. This last, by the way, is no mere accident. It is part of the strategy laid out by Phillip Johnson. It is done cold-bloodedly and with malice aforethought.

The latest example of this strategy can be found in Evolution News and Views which has published not one, but two, posts condemning the widely acclaimed Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History.

In the first, published Dec. 1, "Museum Exhibit Supresses (sic) Darwin's Real Views on Eugenics, Race, and Capitalism," John West writes, "Charles Darwin was an early booster of both eugenics and the application of his biological theory to issues of race and economics."

Here's how it's done:

• "It's true that Darwin wasn't a champion of forced sterilization, but that's because the technology for sterilization wasn't developed until well after Darwin died."
• "Finally, although Darwin opposed slavery, he firmly believed that the evolutionary process had created superior and inferior races."

West, apparently, wasn't satisfied with his first effort, so yesterday, on Dec. 13, we got the second installment, "Rewriting History: Museum Fails to Disclose Own Role in Social Darwinism."

Here, West writes: "The Museum's current exhibit glancingly mentions eugenics as an aberration, but this so-called aberration was supported by most of America’s elite universities and scientists for several decades."

Darwin -- like Abraham Lincoln, who also opposed slavery, but thought blacks inferior -- was a man of his times. Many, though not all, educated people once embraced eugenics.

But, it is also true that many Evangelicals -- the well from which support for both creation "science" and intelligent design "theory" is drawn -- were also ardent supporters of eugenics.

Mary Teats, the National Purity Evangelist for the Women's Christian Temperance Union, for example, served as both a lecturer for the National Purity Association, and the Correspondence School of Gospel and Scientific Eugenics. Here she is in full cry:

The great and rapidly increasing army of idiots, insane, imbeciles, blind, deaf-mutes, epileptics, paralytics, the murderers, thieves, drunkards and moral perverts are very poor material with which to "subdue the world," and usher in the glad day when "all shall know the Lord, whom to know aright is life everlasting." There are hundreds and thousands of men and women today to whom in the interests of future generations, some rigid law should say, "Write this one childless." Men and women whose habits of life are such as to curse their offspring, should be prohibited from marrying.

For those RSR readers who would like to read more about Evangelicals and eugenics, an article by Dennis L. Durst, "Evangelical Engagements With Eugenics, 1900-1940" is available online from Ethics & Medicine magazine.

Although William Jennings Bryant, and other fundamentalist Christians opposed eugenics, it should not surprise us that many others -- who were concentrated in the Old South where support for slavery, Jim Crow, and opposition to evolution has always been most deeply rooted -- should also have been among the strongest supporters of eugenics.

Today, ringing denunciations of evolution are delivered from the very same pulpits where slave holders were once assured that they were doing god's work. The biblical literalism that lies behind both creationism and intelligent design finds no condemnation of slavery in the bible -- and much support for discrimination against women.

Kansas Sen. Kay O'Connor, a fundamentalist opponent of evolution who has been quick to condemn the Mirecki e-mails, for example, once said that giving women the vote was a symptom of weakness in the American family.

These days, support for Social Darwinism, comes not from scientists or the universities where it has been soundly rejected, but from the religious right -- they call it "rugged individualism" -- which forms the base of support for creationism and intelligent design.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, for example, says that "the philosophy among Republicans of sink or swim explains why some Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans still live in cars while Republicans in Washington prepare next week to enact $70 billion in tax breaks," reports Barbara Liston of Reuters.

"It's called the 'Ownership society' in Washington. This isn't the first time this philosophy has appeared. It used to be called Social Darwinism."

The primary water carrier in the effort to tar Darwin and science with the brush of racism and Nazism is Richard Weikart, the author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. In that book, Weikart argues that Darwinism played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis.

Red State Rabble has had a number exchanges with Weikart. You can read them, here. Weikart's book has also been reviewed by Sander Gliboff of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University:

The American creationist movement has been waging war against Darwin and modern science for decades, but their strategy is evolving. Instead of pitting only the Bible against the biology, they are cultivating their credentials in a variety of academic disciplines and attacking from many new directions. On the history front, Richard Weikart's book appropriates the Holocaust and indeed the entire course of Western civilization for the creationist side, as it traces a decline in Western morals from the Origin of Species to the origin of National Socialism. It is being sold at a big discount by the Discovery Institute, one of several organs of the religious right that is touting it as an argument against teaching evolution.

Gliboff goes on to note that Weikart skillfully "deploys the bugbear of naturalism to draw attention away from anti-Semitism, with its inconvenient Christian connections, as well as from any other intellectual, political, social, cultural, economic, diplomatic, military, or technological components of Nazism or factors in Hitler's success. The result, by scholarly standards, is an overly narrow and selective history, which makes only cursory use of the extensive secondary literature on the origins of National Socialism and the history of Darwinism."

The lesson in all this is that scientists and science educators must be very careful not to offend our sensitive brothers at the Discovery Institute. Scientists especially, used to the rough and tumble of ordinary scientific discourse, must use care.

No slight is too small to go unnoticed.

Do not blow off steam in an e-mail. Most important, do not approach a member of the brotherhood of bible college biologists and wish them a heart-felt Happy Holiday, or even a sincere Season's Greetings. If you do, you will be a bigot who is discriminating against them and their god.

In an exchange of letters with Red State Rabble, Richard Weikart has denied that he draws a straight line between Darwin and Hitler in his book, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. He writes:

Second, note my terminology carefully—“played a key role.” Nowhere do I claim--and in the introduction of my book I specifically deny—that Darwinism is the sole cause or sole factor behind Nazi ideology.

That this quibbling is not to be taken seriously has already been made clear by Weikart's participation in a widely condemned television program produced by right-wing fundamentalist D. James Kennedy on the Coral Ridge Hour which featured, among other experts, Ann Coulter.

Kennedy, of course, has no trouble making the connection:

"To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler," says Dr. Kennedy. "Hitler tried to speed up evolution, to help it along, and millions suffered and died in unspeakable ways because of it."

To this we can now, we can add the reaction of Johnathan Witt, a fellow of the Discovery Institute:

What is striking is how straightforwardly many of the horrors documented in Weikart's book follow from Darwinian principles.

To be sure, Weikart has salted this "history" with pettifogging caveats designed to shield him from criticism in the academic world, but it is nothing more than right-wing propaganda with only the with the thinnest of academic veneers. The fundamentalist audience Weikart's book is directed to knows better than to read the fine print.

Red State Rabble is posting a new round in an ongoing discussion with Dr. Richard Weikart, a fellow at the Discovery Institute, and author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, over whether Darwin's theory of evolution or Herbert Spencer's distortion of it -- social Darwinism -- is at the roots of Nazi ideology. Readers can find Red State Rabble's initial post here, and Dr. Weikart's first reply along with RSR's comments here.

Dr. Richard Weikart responds:

Pat, Thanks for your reply. First of all, I think it’s premature for you to say that you find my thesis unpersuasive, when you apparently haven’t read my book. It’s convenient to (publicly) criticize my lecture (and by implication, book) without giving it a hearing.

Second, note my terminology carefully—“played a key role.” Nowhere do I claim--and in the introduction of my book I specifically deny—that Darwinism is the sole cause or sole factor behind Nazi ideology. I specifically mention in my book that Darwinism had nothing to do with the origins of Nazi antisemitism (though antisemitic ideologists before Hitler intertwined social Darwinism and antisemitism, and I explain how they did this). So, I agree, the roots of Nazism are more complex, and my book specifically says so.

You will be happy to know that I also specifically deny that Darwinism leads inevitably to Nazism, so I am not as unable as you think to account for differences between various countries (though I don’t do a lot of transnational comparisons). You claim that I only mention a few historians. This is because I didn’t have time to list dozens more. It is completely uncontroversial among historians (though apparently not among bloggers who know little about the historiography) that Hitler was a social Darwinist and that social Darwinism was an integral part of Hitler’s ideology.

Stern never denied that in his quote, though he focused on a different dimension of Nazism that is much more controversial. Though some historians disagree, most historians still (rightly) see Hitler as more anti-Christian than Christian.

All historians writing on eugenics and euthanasia under Nazism have mentioned social Darwinism as a fundamental underpinning of those programs.

I don’t know who you define as “the Christian right,” but Phelps most certainly has been criticized by evangelical Christians and the vast majority of evangelicals do not endorse his views. One example among many is Christianity Today’s article, “Called to Hate? How antihomosexual crusader Fred Phelps discredits the church” by Jody Veenker.

To “accuse” Discovery Institute of not speaking out against Phelps is silly—they don’t issue statements pro or con about any issues of that sort. Has the NAS or the NCSE or the AAAS issued statements opposing Phelps? I invite you to read my book and look at the evidence.

Best regards,
Richard Weikart
Department of History
California State Univ., Stanislaus


Red State Rabble replies:

Dear Dr. Weikart,

You and I are in agreement about the evils of social Darwinism. If you had limited yourself to a criticism of social Darwinism, we would not find ourselves in disagreement now.

It is my opinion, however, that you play somewhat too fast and loose with the distinctions between Darwin and evolution on the one hand, and the distortion of his theory by proponents of social Darwinism, such as Herbert Spencer, on the other.

In your first letter you write, "many historians… have discussed the role of social Darwinism in the formulation of Nazi ideology." In you second letter you write, "Hitler was a social Darwinist and that social Darwinism was an integral part of Hitler's ideology."

Your book and lecture, however, are titled "From Darwin to Hitler…" If your intention was to write a critical history only of social Darwinism, you might more accurately have titled them "From Spencer to Hitler…"

The fact is, the thesis of your book, and your upcoming lecture (here, I rely on the promotional material posted on the Discovery Institute website) is that there exists a direct causal link between Darwin's theory of evolution and the rise of Nazi ideology, and here you drop the qualifying word "social" from Darwinism.

Despite what you write, social Darwinism is not a product of evolutionary theory. It is a distortion of it. Social Darwinism is a tragic example of the misapplication of a theory – applicable only to the biological sciences – that was hijacked for the purpose of social engineering. These distortions are not implicit in evolutionary theory, rather, they flow from underlying cultural assumptions about race and ethnicity that were once widespread, and perhaps still are, but which science has now proven are without merit or basis in fact.

Over time, many charlatans have tried to appropriate science for their own very different ends, or bask in the reflected glow of its achievements. We have experienced scientific socialism, Lysenkoism, even Christian Science. Today, some in the arts and social sciences have proposed that the uncertainties of the micro world of quantum mechanics also apply to the macro world of human relations.

Neither science nor Darwin can or should be held responsible for the misapplication of their ideas or methods by others.

Christians and Nazis

Your beef with evolution is that evolutionary theory marks "a radical departure from traditional ways of grounding morality" which you believe undermines the "Judeo-Christian conception of body-soul dualism, which endued humans with greater moral and spiritual significance…" (Weikart: Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?)

Evolution, you write, by asserting that humans descended from simian ancestors denies that man is created in the image of God. This blurs the distinctions between humans and animals, in your opinion, and leads to the barbaric crimes perpetrated by the Nazis.

The obvious difficulty with your position – and the one you studiously avoid addressing in your reply to me – is how so many Christians, grounded as they were in "traditional" moral values could act as such willing participants in Hitler's crimes.

Was Hitler Anti-Christian?

It has been widely observed that ideology and religion often blind their followers to reality. This ideological or religious blindness finds a reflection in your own work when you write, "Hitler's world view was diametrically opposed to Christianity, for which (he) had nothing but contempt." (Weikart: Roots of Hitler's Evil)

Was Hitler a nonbeliever as you assert, or, as Fritz Stern observes, "a brilliant populist manipulator who insisted and probably believed that Providence had chosen him as Germany's savior"? Whether Hitler believed or not, the great mass of his followers were believers, and they were attracted to his movement not by some vague attachment to social Darwinism, but by the many overt appeals to Christianity embodied in his speeches and writing. To take but one example from many hundreds available:

"My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter," said Adolph Hitler, in a speech given April 12, 1922. "It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders…"

The reality is that traditional moral values, or religious belief, did not act as a barrier for people who wanted to become Hitler's willing executioners. In fact, the religious movements of the day may have provided one of the most fertile recruiting grounds for the Nazis.

For those of us who truly want to understand the roots of Nazi ideology in order to prevent its reoccurrence that means we have to dig deeper than you have. We have to learn how the underlying cultural assumptions about race and ethnicity were developed and maintained. We need to know how ordinary people were manipulated and mobilized to commit genocide. We are faced with the urgent task of developing human institutions to prevent those horrors from happening again.

Side Issues:

Let's clear up a number of smaller issues that you raise in your latest reply:

Early on you ask me to note your terminology carefully: "Nowhere do I claim," you write, "… that Darwinism is the sole cause or sole factor behind Nazi ideology."

Before writing your reply, you might first have taken note my terminology. I do not claim that you say it is the sole cause, in fact, I accurately paraphrase your argument in the first paragraph of my post:

"I find your thesis – that Darwinism played a key role in the rise of eugenics, euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial experimentation, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis – unpersuasive."

I remain unpersuaded.

You also write that I claim you only mention a few historians to support your position, explaining that you "didn't have time to list dozens more."

Once again, you have missed the point. In my post, I write: "Your letter consists primarily of appeals to the authority of a small group of writers and historians… there are other points of view."

My point is not the size of your list, but the fact that you employ a logical fallacy – an appeal to authority – to make your case. In order to argue from authority, there must be an adequate degree of agreement among other experts. If, as is the case here, there is a significant amount of dispute among experts, the argument must be deemed fallacious.

Fred Phelps:

In closing, I'd like to say I'm pleased that you provided me with a condemnation of Rev. Phelps from Christianity Today. Should Discovery Institute also take a stand? Perhaps it's a stretch. However, you should be aware that here in Kansas we see articles in the newspaper like this almost every day:

"Emboldened by their success getting a proposal to ban gay marriage before Kansas voters, some clergy leading that fight say they will tackle other issues, including the teaching of evolution in public schools." (John Hanna: AP, Feb. 5, 2005)

I'm aware that gay marriage is a controversial issue, however, these same ministers also supported a ballot initiative in Topeka that would have rescinded civil protections for gays, and, as you can see, they are key activists in the battle against evolution teaching in this state.

The Discovery Institute, of which you are a part, is playing a key role in this and other fights over evolution teaching across the country. If a group of professional scientists or educators were to launch an attack against the civil liberties of a segment of our population, I would speak out immediately, and I would demand that organizations such as the National Center for Science Education speak out as well. So, perhaps, it not so much of a stretch for you to ask your fellows at the Discovery Institute you speak out against the actions of those who are allied with you in Kansas, after all.

Regards,
Pat Hayes

Red State Rabble is old, but we are, apparently, still somewhat naive. That's why we were astonished when we initially heard the charge from those on the religious right, who are the mainstay of the intelligent design and creationist movement, that Darwin and evolution are somehow connected to Hitler and the Nazis.

RSR has had a long-running exchange with Dr. Richard Weikart, a History professor at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. Weikart contends that Darwinism played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis.

The charge that Darwin and evolution are linked to everything bad in the world is part of the "Wedge Strategy" developed at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, where Dr. Weikart is a fellow. This imagined link is straight out of the right's political playbook which recommends demonizing political opponents rather than debating their ideas honestly.

Now, a real link between those on the religious right, including those who support the teaching of intelligent design, and the notorious racist David Duke has been reported on Daily KOS and AmericalBlog.

It seems that the Family Research Council, headed by Tony Perkins, paid the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, David Duke, $82,000 in 1996 for a "who's-who-of-racist-America mailing list."

Is there any real link between the Family Research Council and intelligent design or creationism? While the Family Research Council is probably best known for its anti-gay, anti-abortion positions, in its list of core principles FRC has this to say:

"God exists and is sovereign over all creation. He created human beings in His image."

And, in the section of the FRC website that lays out the group's education policy on creationism versus evolution, you'll find this: a report on last month's Kansas science hearings. Here's what they say:

"Although intelligent design proponents are the ones accused of injecting religion into science, it now appears that it is the evolutionists who treat their theory as unquestionable dogma, and their critics who are persecuted as heretics."

Right out of the old playbook, wouldn't you say?

Here's RSR's question. Will the Discovery Institute -- and Dr. Weikart -- who have been so assiduous in promoting the utterly false myth of a link between Darwin and Hitler -- now dissociate themselves from the racists in their own ranks?

Only time will tell.

With apologies to Lee Dorsey:

Workin' in a quote mine
Goin' down down down
Workin' in a quote mine
Whop! about to slip down

This is the third of three exchanges between Red State Rabble and Dr. Richard Weikart, a History professor at California State University,Stanislaus. He is the author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany.

You can read Red State Rabble’s original post, "Little Kansas Nazis" here . You can read Dr. Weikart’s initial response and Red State Rabble’s reply, Darwin and Hitler: An Exchange With Richard Weikart here. Our second exchange, Darwin or Social Darwinism?: The Roots Of Nazi Ideology, A Debate With Richard Weikart, can be found here.

Here is Dr. Weikart's latest contribution to the exchange of views:

Thanks for your comments. Concerning social Darwinism, who is it who wrote:

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races."

Or

"The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been elimnated by the higher civilised races throughout the world."

I'll give you a hint: It wasn't Spencer. For the citations, you can see ch. 10 of my book.

Mike Hawkins book, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought presents abundant evidence to demolish the misconception that Specer is responsible for social Darwinism and Darwin was free from social Darwinism. Desmond's and Moore's biography of Darwin also proves conclusively that Darwin was a social Darwinist. Before dismissing this as "appeals to authority," let me remind you that I have read extensively in the primary sources and present this evidence extensively in my book, but I cannot rehearse all that evidence to you in the course of an e-mail, so I'm referring you to books that incisively present the evidence for my position.

In any case, I agree with you that Darwinism does not entail racism, and nowhere have I said it does. I agree that Darwinism does not entail Nazism, and I specifically warn against that view in my book.

Concerning Hitler's views, it's interesting that religious skeptics, such as I take you to be (forgive me if I have jumped to a wrong conclusion). are so skeptical about anything religious, but are willing to believe an avowed liar (Hitler) in his public speeches (in private he criticized Christianity and Christian morality). You might be interested to know that I am currently working on a book on Hitler's religion, in which I intend to clarify these issues. I don't have time to present all the evidence in this e-mail (I have losts of grading to do, I will be out of town quite a bit in the next two weeks, etc., so please understand if this is my last e-mail). Just to whet your appetite, in my book I will demonstrate that Hitler was a pantheist. Even Richard Steigmann-Gall, by the way, in his overzealous attempt to show that Hitler and many other Nazis were Christians, shows that their religious views were most compatible with *liberal* Christianity, not conservative values. He admits that they were adamantly opposed to Catholicism and more traditional forms of Christianity.

I'm happy to hear that you don't swallow appeals to authority. Now you know why I don't swallow everything Darwinists say (and I might add, they regularly use appeals to authority when confronted with inconvenient evidence). Also, in the course of accusing me of a logical error, you make a gigantic logical error yourself, when you state:

"My point is not the size of your list, but the fact that you employ a logical fallacy – an appeal to authority – to make your case. In order to argue from authority, there must be an adequate degree of agreement among other experts. If, as is the case here, there is a significant amount of dispute among experts, the argument must be deemed fallacious."

Really? So, if there is a "significant amount of dispute among experts" that Darwinism is true, then Darwinism "must be deemed fallacious"? This is obviously silly, as I'm sure you can see if you apply it to other fields, such as things views you support. What you must have meant to say is that the argument "could be" or "might be" wrong, and should be examined carefully.

I probably won't write again, as I need to get on to other things (though I'll certainly read any response you want to send me).

Red State Rabble replies:

What a shame that the press of work requires that you end this exchange of views before you have addressed the central element of my criticism of your work, namely that you focus narrowly on what you see as the scientific or evolutionary roots of Nazi ideology to the exclusion of the role of Christianity.

In your latest contribution to our little exchange, you write: “Concerning social Darwinism, who is it who wrote:” and then you supply two quotes from Charles Darwin.

For our last exchange I had written a few paragraphs about your tendency to take quotes out of context, but in the end did not use them because I felt the post was already too long. I will address that issue now, but before I do, I’d like to relate a little story from my days as a graduate student.

I was taking a class that was team taught by two classics professors. I deeply respected both of them and they liked the work I was doing. Then one day a paper I had written came back with a “B” on it. I will admit to being perhaps a little too proud of my work, and compulsive about grades at that time of my life, as well.

After class I asked to meet with the professor who graded my paper. She invited me to her office, sat down at her desk, and began to peel an apple with a very sharp paring knife she kept in the drawer.

“You don’t like your grade,” she said without looking up from her apple.

“No,” I said.

“I’ll let you rewrite it,” she said, looking up at me now from her apple, “but remember, you are a graduate student at this university.” She pointed with her knife at a sentence in my paper that she’d underlined in red. “I don’t ever want you to think you can get away something like that” Then she explained how I had mishandled a passing reference to Greek mystery cults.

Although my face burned with shame as we discussed the issue, I have always been deeply grateful to her for demanding the highest level of intellectual integrity and scholarship from me. She also tried to break me of using the coma splice, but I must confess, despite her most diligent efforts, she was notably less successful there.

I have made my share of mistakes. We all do. That being said, even as an undergraduate, I would never have dared (or wanted to) employ the sort of quote mining that is routine in your published work. It is a shame that the professors who guided your education did not require you to fully engage the people and ideas that are the subject of your research.

Now to your “proof” that Darwin is a social Darwinist. Here is the first of your quotes in its full context (I bolded your citation, amounting to less than a full sentence from the whole, and which you use without ellipsis):

“The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies -- between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae -- between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly xterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.” (Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2nd edn., London, John Murray, 1882, p. 156)

When the whole context is supplied it is quite clear that Darwin is not rooting for the civilized races to exterminate the savage. Rather, he is discussing apparent gaps in the fossil record, and what the state of things in 1882 might look like to observers in the future.

Our understanding of race and our sensitivities to words like “savage” and “civilized” has – there’s no other way to say it – evolved since Darwin’s time. Language has a way of doing that. When we try to understand people who, like Darwin, lived in another era we have to look at them in the historical context in which they lived. We have to account for the ways that the use of language has changed in the intervening years.

Your other citation, from a letter Darwin wrote to W. Graham and reprinted in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. (F. Darwin, ed., New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1905) as well as the quote you open your Darwin to Hitler book with, can both be disposed of in the same way.

A useful resource on this subject can be found on the TalkOrigins web site “The Quote Mine Project: Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines”

You write that skeptics like myself are a little too willing to believe the worst about religion. Our prejudices, you feel, have allowed us to be fooled by Hitler’s public appeals to Christianity. Your own belief is that Hitler was a pantheist.

Here is what I wrote:

Whether Hitler believed or not, the great mass of his followers were believers, and they were attracted to his movement not by some vague attachment to social Darwinism, but by the many overt appeals to Christianity embodied in his speeches and writing.

Moreover, and this is what you have not – through the course of three letters – responded to, or accounted for:

The reality is that traditional moral values, or religious belief, did not act as a barrier for people who wanted to become Hitler's willing executioners. In fact, the religious movements of the day may have provided one of the most fertile recruiting grounds for the Nazis.

Your position – that Darwinism devalues life and, unlike religious belief, does not provide a sufficient moral underpinning to prevent tragedies like the rise of the Nazis in Germany – can’t be successfully defended until you explain this paradox.

You accuse me of making a gigantic logical error, but in fact there is no significant dispute among experts about the explanatory power of evolution and its central role in modern biology. Simply put, evolution is a fact. The Discovery Institute has made no headway, despite the expenditure of enormous sums of money, to win over scientists to the "theory" of intelligent design, or to assemble a group of scientists -- not theologians -- to oppose teaching of evolution in public schools. I refer you to the National Center for Science Education's "Project Steve" as a real-life example of the overwhelming support among experts for the theory of evolution.

You also remind me that you’ve read extensively in the primary sources. I would say extensively, but not deeply. As a university professor, you have had the rare privilege of reading, thinking and writing for a living. I think it’s a shame you’ve wasted the opportunity to come to a deeper more rounded understanding of all the factors involved in the rise of Nazi ideology, and allowed yourself to become a mere propagandist instead.

Demonizing Darwin, evolution, and science is not a noble calling.

Regards,
Pat Hayes

Yesterday we reported that the Seattle-based intelligent design belief tank, the Discovery Institute, has embarked on a cynical campaign to discredit science by linking the naturalist Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution to the crimes of Hitler and the Nazis.

It doesn't matter to "scholars" like Richard Weikart and Jonathan West, both Discovery fellows, that murderous Christian anti-Semitism predates Darwin by centuries or that Darwin died 40 years before the Nazi party was even formed.

But before Weikart and West go rummaging through evolution's closets for evidence of racism, the might want to clean Discovery's attic first.

As we pointed out yesterday, Howard Ahmanson, the Christian Reconstructionist whose personal bank fortune underwrites the activities of Weikart, West, and other Discovery fellows, was a close personal associate Rousas Rushdoony. Ahmanson served on the board of directors of Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation for more than 10 years.

In 1970, two years after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Rushdoony had this to say about the legacy of slavery:

... the white man is being systematically indoctrinated into believing that he is guilty of enslaving and abusing the Negro. Granted that some Negroes were mistreated as slaves, the fact still remains that nowhere in all history or in the world today has the Negro been better off. The life expectancy of the Negro increased when he was transported to America. He was not taken from freedom into slavery, but from a vicious slavery to degenerate chiefs to a generally benevolent slavery in the United States. There is not the slightest evidence that any American Negro had ever lived in a "free society" in Africa; even the idea did not exist in Africa. The move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially and spiritually as well as personally. The Negroes were sold from a harsh slavery into a milder one. Slavery was basic to the African way of life, to the point that slaves were the actual money of the African economy. Elsewhere, gold and silver served as money; in Africa, it was slaves....

The private ownership of slave labor in the American South has been the subject of extensive distortion. The Negroes were slaves to their tribal heads in Africa, or prisoner-slaves of other tribes. The monetary unit in black Africa was man, the slave. The Negro moved from an especially harsh slavery, which included cannibalism, to a milder form. Much is said about the horrors of the slave ships, many of which were very bad, but it is important to remember that slaves were valuable cargo and hence property normally handled with consideration.

Perhaps, before calling Darwin, a man who was an outspoken opponent of slavery, a racist, it would be better for Discovery to purge its own ranks. If they now want to wage a campaign against racism and anti-Semitism, shouldn't Discovery at least demand that Ahmanson publicly disassociate himself from Rushdoony's plainly racist views before they accept another dime from him?

After all, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw bricks.

The Discovery Institute's Johnathan Witt writes that Darwin's theory of evolution has resulted in violence. The crimes of the Nazis, writes Witt, "follow from Darwinian principles."

It may seem strange to some readers that those who learn nature's secrets and describe how they operate might somehow be responsible for the crimes of others, especially when these crimes are committed decades after the discoverer has gone to his grave.

But, according to Witt and Richard Weikart, the author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, one thing led directly to the other.

This notion fails to take into account the fact that natural selection, the mechanism that drives evolution was also discovered by Alfred Wallace. If Darwin hadn't moved quickly to claim credit, Weikart, Witt, and others might today be decrying the evils of "Wallacism."

If neither Darwin or Wallace had gone on to write about their joint discovery it seems unlikely in the extreme that some later discoverer of the workings of evolution would likewise have remained silent. Would that later discoverer have also been made to take responsibility for the religious intolerance and extreme nationalism that led to the Third Reich?

If, as Witt and Weikart suggest, we're to go to go back into history to place blame for the crimes of the Nazis, why stop with Darwin. Aren't his ideas, after all, built on the foundation of Charles Lyell's unraveling of the great age of the earth? Could it be that the theory of Uniformitarianism is what really drove the Nazis to commit their crimes?

And why stop with Lyell for that matter, either? It was Darwin's trip around the world on the HMS Beagle that started him thinking about evolution.

Shouldn't Christopher Columbus shoulder some of the blame, too? After all, if Columbus hadn't discovered the new world, Darwin would never have gone there. He wouldn't have learned that species are descended from a common ancestor through the mechanism of natural selection, and the Nazis would never have come to power in Germany.

It's so simple, anybody could understand it.

We all agree with Discovery Institute fellow Richard Weikart that "Darwinism played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis."

Weikart's thesis that Darwinism leads ineluctably to Nazism has been endorsed now by the sober judgement of Ann Coulter and D. James Kennedy, so what's not to agree with. Right?

That's why it's hard for someone operating under self-imposed constraints like Red State Rabble to come up with a ready explanation for this:

"Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel), and "[a]ll writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk," were banned by the Nazis.

The invaluable Nick Matzke reports over at Panda's Thumb that some of these books may have fueled the bonfires that illuminate, for many. the Nazis hatred of science, just as the glow of the ovens sheds light on their hatred of Jews, gypsies, communists, and labor activists.

As we say, this is all too much for Red State Rabble to comprehend, although we're sure Dr. Weikart will have no problem with the mental gymnastics required to make sense of his novel thesis and the facts as we find them.

Intelligent design, it seems, has a way of finding adherents who are capable of the extreme mental contortions the theory requires of its adepts.

What do you do when the courts reject your arguments, the public votes your supporters out of office, and school boards that once fell for your subterfuge wake up, put their shoulders to the wheel and roll your Trojan horse out of their schools?

Well, if you're a creationist or an intelligent design activist you avoid introspection at all costs. Certainly, you never allow yourself to ask why scientists, teachers, judges, and voters -- reasonable people all -- find your arguments unconvincing. No, for the creation scientist/ID theorist the only possible answer is to escalate your arguments beyond all reason.

We're seeing the first signs of that now:

"The Coral Ridge Hour" plans to broadcast "Darwin’s Deadly Legacy," a program that falsely asserts "Charles Darwin should share with Hitler the blame for the 11 million or more lives lost in the Holocaust" on Aug. 26-27 according to WorldNetDaily.

"This show basically is about the social effects of Darwinism, and shows this idea, which is scientifically bankrupt, has probably been responsible for more bloodshed than anything else in the history of humanity," says Jerry Newcomb, one of two co-producers.

Ann Coulter, Discovery Institute fellow Richard Weikart, Lee Strobel, author of "The Case for a Creator," Jonathan Wells, author of "Icons of Evolution," will appear on the program.

WorldNetDaily reports that Francis Collins, Project Director of the Human Genome, is also scheduled to appear. However, PZ Myers reports that he's received an e-mail from Collins "stating that he was interviewed about his book, and that was then inserted into the video without his knowledge."

That little bit of dishonesty alone is enough to show that this program is propaganda at its crudest.

For our part, Red State Rabble wonders if Coulter, Weikart, and the others will grapple with this:

"... Hitler’s success in fusing racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity was an immensely powerful element in his electoral campaigns. Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics, but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas." Fritz Stern, a refugee from Hitler's Germany and scholar of European history.

No mention of Darwin there. Perhaps, in the interests of objective inquiry, "The Coral Ridge Hour" will examine this statement by Mary E. Teats, the National Purity Evangelist for the Women's Christian Temperence Union, a lecturer for the National Purity Association, and a lecturer for the Correspondence School of Gospel and Scientific Eugenics:

The great and rapidly increasing army of idiots, insane, imbeciles, blind, deaf-mutes, epileptics, paralytics, the murderers, thieves, drunkards and moral perverts are very poor material with which to "subdue the world," and usher in the glad day when "all shall know the Lord, whom to know aright is life everlasting." There are hundreds and thousands of men and women today to whom in the interests of future generations, some rigid law should say, "Write this one childless." Men and women whose habits of life are such as to curse their offspring, should be prohibited from marrying.

We can count on the assembled Coral Ridge experts to come to grips with the role of Southern churches -- still in the forefront in their opposition to evolution -- in defending slavery and Jim Crow, can't we?

The baseless charge by creationist and ID activists that Darwin -- long dead when these movements came on the stage of history -- is somehow responsible for the Holocaust, eugenics, and abortion -- sounds suspiciously to RSR like saying that Wilbur and Orville Wright are responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

If Coulter, Weikart and the other so-called experts truly want to inquire into the causes of the Holocaust, and if they don't care if the culprit was already in his grave when those events unfolded in all their horror, they might want to look into this statement by the founder of their religion, Martin Luther:

What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:

First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians.

It was the sort of circus only Kansas can provide.

Just weeks after social conservatives took back control of the state school board in 2005 and put evolution squarely in the crosshairs again; nearly 200 people, perhaps nursing a sense of déjà vu, pushed their way into the auditorium at Schlagel High School in Kansas City, Kan. for a public hearing on the drafting of new science standards.

These kinds of meetings almost never draw more than a handful of people. Rarely is there any news coverage of them at all. That night, with the state school board under new management, television news trucks lined up in the parking lot, their live broadcast antennae pushing up into the sky like the masts of sailing ships at anchor.

Inside, reporters prowled the room, camera operators in tow, seeking a sound bite that would give them the lead on that night's news. A brightly colored array of leaflets pro, con, and some simply bizarre, were pushed into eager hands at the door. A long line formed quickly at a table near the back for speakers to sign in. Around the room, longtime political opponents, most battle-scarred veterans of the 1999 attempt to write creationism into the curriculum, eyed each other warily, wondering what strategy the other side was plotting.

Members of the science standards committee were duly introduced, time limits established, and preliminaries out of the way, speakers for and against followed each other in quick succession to the microphone at the front of the auditorium.

A science professor explained the difference between fact, hypothesis, and theory. A young mother stood up to say the schools, in banning prayer and teaching evolution had turned their backs on God. She’d been taught the creation story when she went to school and she wanted her children to learn it too. A science teacher from a Catholic high school countered that evolution and religion aren't necessarily incompatible; at least they aren't in her school.

In all truly entertaining spectacles, long stretches of high drama must be punctuated by brief moments of low comedy, and in that respect the Schlagel science standards hearing provided all that could be desired.

"If people come from monkeys," bellowed one speaker who clutched a Bible in one hand while speaking in the practiced cadences of a street-corner preacher, "then why are there still monkeys?"

And then there was this:

"Auschwitz did not come from the Nazi high command,” John James confided to the crowd, "it came from the teachings of the scientific and philosophical worlds, which produced nihilism, and I submit to you that much of that, if not vast proportions of it, came due to the teaching of evolution which, in turn, produces nihilism. So what are we doing? Are we producing little Kansas Nazis?"

Although many in the audience that night had never heard it before, creationists like James have always charged that Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution are responsible for much that is wrong with modern society.

The crimes of socialism, communism, fascism, even capitalism, have all, at one time or another, been laid at evolution's door. Likewise, eugenics, euthanasia, abortion, cloning, gay marriage, pornography, race-mixing, one world government, treason, illegal immigration, flag burning, school shootings, terrorism, atheism, secularism, multiculturalism, and post-modern malaise are all said to be the inevitable result of teaching evolution to impressionable school children.

York is an ancient walled city in the north of England built by the Romans. It’s home to one of the Christianity’s greatest architectural wonders, and one of its darkest crimes.

Inside those Roman walls, the spires of York Minster, one of the great gothic cathedrals of all Europe, rise above a well preserved medieval city. The Minster is famous for its immense stained glass windows, some of which are among the oldest in the world. Having survived Cromwell and the iconoclasts, the earliest of these windows date back to the 12 century. The exquisite beauty of the glass, the stories told there, and the special quality of the light inside the cathedral, are all part of the precious legacy of medieval Christian faith. Nearby, brooding atop its steep motte, Clifford’s Tower stands as a stark reminder to another of Christianity’s great legacies: zealotry and fanaticism.

A few years ago I attended vespers in the serene interior of York Minster before walking the town’s medieval streets to climb the battlements of Clifford’s Tower to contemplate the horror that took place inside those walls.

York’s Jewish community took refuge there on the night of March 16, 1090. They were hotly pursued by a mob incited by “crusaders preparing to follow their king against the Saracens, burgesses envious of Jewish wealth, barons indebted to the Jews, and fanatical clergy,” according to English Heritage.

"Before attempting to revenge ourselves upon the Moslem unbelievers," went up the cry, "let us first revenge ourselves upon the 'killers of Christ' living in our midst!"

The tower, in those days a wooden structure, was set afire. Many took their own lives rather than be baptized or tortured by the mob that waited outside. In the end, those who could not bring themselves to commit suicide were slaughtered. In all, some 150 men, women, and children were killed.

Anyone who listened to James blame evolution for the Nazi’s final solution at the science standards meeting that night, at least anyone who was even dimly aware that the bloody history of Christian anti-Semitism predates Darwin and evolution by centuries, must have wondered if, as James claimed, Darwin and evolution were really to blame for the Nazi’s crimes.

Certainly, there is plenty of blame to go around. Governments around the world, including in the United States, that turned away Jewish refugees must accept some of responsibility for what happened at Auschwitz. Religious leaders such as Pope Pius XII, who stood by silently as the Germans rounded up European Jews and butchered them in concentration camps played a role as well. Ultimately, those who rallied to the Nazi cause, especially those who ordered and carried out these crimes, including politicians, military men, industrialists, academics, religious leaders, as well scientists and physicians for whom a distorted understanding of evolution served as a justification for their racism and anti-Semitism, must all bear the judgment of history.

Fritz Stern, the noted Holocaust historian, professor emeritus at Columbia University, and refugee from Nazi Germany, doesn’t number Darwin and evolution among the chief factors that led up to the Holocaust. Higher on his list are the Protestant clergy, who he says were filled with anti-Semitic doctrine and shared Hitler's "hostility to the liberal-secular state and its defenders." Hitler, Stern believes, came to power by fusing racial dogma with Germanic Christianity. He probably saw himself as executing a divine mission.

"Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics," says Stern, "but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured [Hitler's] success, notably in Protestant areas."

When Judge John Jones ruled, in December of 2005, that intelligent design isn't science and the only real effect of the Dover school board's ID policy was to advance religion, the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based intelligent design advocacy group, found itself with a problem on its hands.

Discovery's strategy, its very raison d'etre, had been to promote a renamed and re-branded creationism as science in order to skirt a damaging series of court rulings, most prominently the 1987 Supreme Court Edwards v. Aguillard decision, in order to bring both God and Genesis back into the nation's public school science classes.

As Discovery's Phillip Johnson, the UC-Berkeley law professor who plotted legal strategy for the intelligent design movement, told Elizabeth Nickson, a columnist for the National Post in 2004:

"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."

Jones' ruling was a humiliating defeat for Discovery because it knocked the legs out from under that carefully crafted strategy. Jones saw through the sham, and in one stroke, not only laid waste to the intelligent design project to dress up creationism as both scientific and secular, he killed the notion that it might somehow pass muster in the courts, and find its way back into public schools, as well.

The depth of Discovery's crisis was revealed by a series of embarrassingly lame attempts to label Jones, an observant Lutheran and conservative Republican appointed to the bench by George Bush, an activist judge. That no one but the ID faithful could be convinced was demonstrated by Jones being named to Time magazine's list of the "100 Most Influential People in America."

When the activist judge label failed to stick, Discovery attempted to smear his ruling as plagiarized. Legal experts were unmoved by the charge, which came across to the public at large as nothing more than sour grapes, and to add insult to injury, excerpts from Jones' landmark ruling were subsequently published in the 2006 edition of Best American Nonrequired Reading.

Jones' ruling brought another calamity down on Discovery as well. The ruling effectively brought a close to any serious examination of ID's merits in the mainstream news media. The period leading up to the Dover ruling featured widespread news coverage of intelligent design claims, some of it credulous, but the plain, well-crafted language and compelling logic of Jones' ruling convinced journalists to turn a more skeptical eye to Discovery's claims.

The transparent unfairness of Discovery's charges against Jones, combined with the increasingly shrill tone of commentary published on Discovery's Evolution News and Views blog also played an important role in convincing mainstream journalists that intelligent design is merely a clever repackaging of the same tired old creation science product, rather than a new, somehow overlooked scientific theory.

Discovery also came under increasing fire from their allies in the creationist movement. There was an embarrassing public split with the Thomas More Law Center, which represented the Dover school board. In the run up to the trial, a number of Discovery expert witnesses precipitously withdrew from the case at the eleventh hour. That left Discovery pleading that they never advocated teaching ID in public schools, a claim easily, and publicly, disproved by Thomas More's lead attorney Richard Thompson.

Young and old earth creationists, who make up the vast majority of the foot soldiers in the intelligent design ranks, began to ask what value there was to the constant denials that "the designer" was in fact the Christian God of the Bible if the ID legal strategy couldn't deliver the goods.

Thwarted by the court in their central strategic objectives, increasingly shunted off to the side by the news media, at odds with their creationist allies, and unable to produce any credible science of their own, the Discovery Institute has now adopted a cynical Plan B: If you can't build your own house, you may as well tear your neighbor's down.

Discovery’s Plan B has popped up with increasing frequency over a number of months, but got its official launch with speeches in Washington and Philadelphia earlier this week by Discovery fellow John West that quickly cut the Nazi’s six million victims to “hundred of thousands.”

According to West, “Darwinism” is responsible for “the eugenics movement that sterilized scores of thousands of Americans deemed unfit in the early decades of the last century, the concurrent rise of the abortion movement, and the extermination of hundreds of thousands of supposed social undesirables by the Nazis in Germany.”

This week’s events were preceded by the broadcast of “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy,” a production of Coral Ridge Ministries, on Christian television last August. The program, which explicitly links the crimes of Hitler to Charles Darwin featured Discovery fellows Richard Weikart, Jonathan Wells, Phillip Johnson, and Michael Behe. They were joined on the program by right-wing columnist Ann Coulter, the author most recently of Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

Weikart, the author of From Darwin to Hitler writes that “Darwinism played a key role in the rise of eugenics, euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis.” As an academic, Weikart is sometimes coy about how much responsibility he places on the shoulders of Charles Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis, but his readers have no problem drawing the intended conclusions:

“I never knew about the link between Darwin and Hitler until after reading Richard Weikart’s book,” says Coulter.

“To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler,” says Dr. Kennedy, the host of the program.” “Hitler tried to speed up evolution, to help it along, and millions suffered and died in unspeakable ways because of it.”

If what Weikart, West, Coulter, and Discovery say is true, one might think that Jewish organizations would welcome their support. However, just the opposite is true.

“Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people,” according to a statement issued by the Anti-defamation League when “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy” was aired.

“Trivializing the Holocaust,” said the ADL, “comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.

"It must be remembered,” the ADL continued, “that D. James Kennedy is a leader among the distinct group of 'Christian Supremacists' who seek to ‘reclaim America for Christ’ and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law."

Next week, Discovery is participating in the World Congress of Families in Warsaw. In doing so, they are joining with a motley crew of far-right anti-immigrant zealots who claim Muslims and other immigrants are contributing to the "demographic destruction" of Europe, extreme homophobes, misogynists, and anti-abortion fanatics who, holding life sacred, call openly for the murder of abortion providers.

Members of the European Parliamentary Working Group on Separation of Religion and Politics have protested the conference saying that several people scheduled to speak at the three-day conference have taken positions that clash with the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The launch phase of Discovery’s Plan B comes just as Chris Hedges new book; The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism is getting a lot of well-deserved attention.

“Hedges draws striking parallels between 20th-century totalitarian movements and the highly organized, well-funded ‘dominionist movement,’ an influential theocratic sect within the country's huge evangelical population,” says a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. “Rooted in a radical Calvinism, and wrapping its apocalyptic, vehemently militant, sexist and homophobic vision in patriotic and religious rhetoric, dominionism seeks absolute power in a Christian state.”

A former New York Times foreign correspondent, Hedges was an eyewitness to the slaughter in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile and Argentina, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He knows first hand the danger of religious fanaticism.

In tracing the history of Christian fascism in the United States Hedges explains the seminal role played by Rousas Rushdooney, the founder of the Dominionism, the theology behind Christian Reconstructionism.

Rushdooney “dismissed the number of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust as an inflated figure and his theories on race echoed Nazi Eugenics,” according to Hedges.

"The white man has behind him centuries of Christian culture and the discipline and selective breeding this faith requires...," Rushdooney wrote. "The Negro is a product of a radically different past, and his heredity has been governed by radically different considerations."

Dominionists, writes Hedges, operate, for now, in the contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state. They have learned to speak in code. “The code they use is the key to understanding the dichotomy of the movement, one that has a public and a private face. In this they are no different from the vanguard, as described by Lenin, or the Islamic terrorists who shave off their beards, adopt western dress and watch pay-for-view pornographic movies in their hotel rooms the night before hijacking a plane for a suicide attack.”

The Reconstructionist strategy, notes Hedges, was outlined by Rushdooney's son-in-law, Gary North:

“We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government,” says North. “Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

And who finances the Discovery Institute?

None other than Howard Ahmanson, a wealthy Californian who is heir to the Home Savings bank fortune. In the ‘70s Ahmanson joined Rushdoony’s Christian Reconstructionist movement and served as a board member of Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation for over ten years.

Ahmanson currently serves on Discovery’s board of directors and is its largest contributor. His gift of $1.5 million provided the seed money to organize Discovery’s Center for Science and Culture.

So, as West, Weikart and the other Discovery fellows go about their business, speaking their codespeak, linking Darwin and evolution to Hitler, they draw their pay from modern American fascists, Holocaust deniers, racists, homophobes, and apologists for the Nazi eugenics.

That’s Discovery’s disturbing legacy.

Red State Rabble received the following e-mail from Richard Weikart, a fellow at the Discovery Institute, and author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany :

Dear Pat Hayes,

I just saw your comments about my forthcoming lecture, including your following remark:

“Unsurprisingly, they don't see science, Darwin, or scientists as being at the root of that particular evil.”

You obviously have not read much on the Nazi era, for many historians—Ian Kershaw, Eberhard Jaeckel, Brigitte Hamann, Michael Burleigh, Henry Friedlander, and many more—have discussed the role of social Darwinism in the formulation of Nazi ideology. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum currently has a display, “Deadly Medicine,” detailing the involvement of medical science in the Nazi atrocities. They have compiled photos and text about their display in a book by the same title, wherein they discuss the involvement of scientists and medical practitioners in the Holocaust. Detlev Peukert, a highly regarded German historian, published an essay on ““The Genesis of the 'Final Solution' from the Spirit of Science,” which is published in a scholarly book, Reevaluating the Third Reich, edited by reputable historians. Much scholarship in the past two decades has shown conclusively the involvement of scientists and physicians in formulating eugenics, euthanasia, and racial ideology, which fed into Nazi thinking.

Best regards,

Richard Weikart
Department of History
California State Univ., Stanislaus

Red State Rabble replies:

Thank you for your letter on my post about your upcoming lecture, "From Darwin to Hitler." While I don't consider myself to be an expert on the Nazi era, I nevertheless find your thesis -- that Darwinism played a key role in the rise of eugenics, euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis -- unpersuasive. The roots of the Nazi ideology, I believe, are far more complex. Your letter consists primarily of appeals to the authority of a small group of writers and historians, but, as I'm sure you are aware, there are other points of view.

Fritz Stern, a refugee from and eminent scholar of the holocaust, for example, finds the roots of Nazism not in Darwin but in the mixing of religion and politics. He said the following in accepting the Leo Baeck Medal November 14, 2004:

"We who were born at the end of the Weimar Republic and who witnessed the rise of National Socialism—left with that all-consuming, complex question: how could this horror have seized a nation and corrupted so much of Europe? ...

"Hitler himself, a brilliant populist manipulator who insisted and probably believed that Providence had chosen him as Germany’s savior, that he was the instrument of Providence, a leader who was charged with executing a divine mission. God had been drafted into national politics before, but Hitler’s success in fusing racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity was an immensely powerful element in his electoral campaigns. Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics, but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas."

Likewise, while some scientists who considered themselves Darwinists were also supporters of eugenics, there were also many prominent Christians, such a Mary E. Teats, the National Purity Evangelist for the Women's Christian Temperance Union, who said,

"The great and rapidly increasing army of idiots, insane, imbeciles, blind, deaf-mutes, epileptics, paralytics, the murderers, thieves, drunkards and moral perverts are very poor material with which to "subdue the world," and usher in the glad day when "all shall know the Lord, whom to know aright is life everlasting." There are hundreds and thousands of men and women today to whom in the interests of future generations, some rigid law should say, "Write this one childless." Men and women whose habits of life are such as to curse their offspring, should be prohibited from marrying."

Many, many other examples could be cited.

Understanding the roots of Nazism or eugenics and preventing it's return remains a key task today. Each of us could search the literature to find quotes by scientists or Christians supporting Hitler or eugenics. Likewise, each of us could also find and list scientists or Christians who opposed both. Neither approach is likely to lead to the deeper understanding of the social and historical roots of those great evils.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Darwin's theory of evolution was as widely accepted by scientists in the United States as it was in Germany, and yet Nazism triumphed in Germany and not in our country. Your simple thesis, that Darwin, science, and evolution are responsible for Hitler's horrors does nothing to help us account for the different outcomes in each country.

My sense is, that as an ardent opponent of evolution, you are less interested in arriving at a deeper understanding of the factors that produced these terribly destructive social movements than in finding a handy club to beat Darwin with. This is scholarship in service of ideology rather than scholarship in the service of expanding understanding.

The right-wing play-book -- or Wedge Strategy --calls for the demonization of political opponents as a first step to winning political power. At its heart, I think this is the purpose of your book and lecture. The similarity between Christian fundamentalism's demonization of science and scientists -- for which your book and public speaking provide intellectual cover --and the Nazi's demonization of the Jews is more than just a little remarkable.

I believe that scientists and those in the medical profession have drawn the appropriate conclusions from the experience with Nazism and medical experimentation in Germany and eugenics in this country.

I don't think that the Christian right -- which forms the backbone of the movement against teaching evolution in the schools -- can say the same. Here in my home state of Kansas there is a minister named Fred Phelps who is attempting to organize a movement against gays that has distinct Nazi overtones. Gays, you will remember from your research were prominent among the victims of the Holocaust.

Rev. Phelps regularly attends the funerals of the victims of HIV Aids to harass their grieving families. He sees in the 9/11 Terror attack on New York, the hand of God reaching out to punish gays for what he, Phelps, deems to be their sins. Likewise, he welcomed the Indian Ocean Tsunami because it killed, he says, 2,000 gay Swedes who were vacationing there among the roughly 250,000 other victims.

As yet, I have heard no condemnation of Rev. Phelps from the Christian right or the fellows of the Discovery Institute.

I urge you, in your April 7 speech, to call attention to the dangers -- so reminiscent of the Nazi era -- of the mixing of religion and politics that we are living through right now in America. I urge you to speak out against men like Phelps who would build a social movement to bully and harass men and women simply because they are gay.

Regards,
Pat Hayes