The Darwinian Paradox of Progressivism

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Perhaps no phrase so succinctly, and so famously encapsulates Darwin’s theory as the phrase “survival of the fittest”. And yet, in that small phrase lies not only the birth of Progressivism in America, but also it’s greatest paradox. Progressivism grew out of the Darwinian model. It sought to replace the theocentric view espoused by most Americans.

This trend continues in full force with the so-called “new Progressives”, who many times pay lip-service to the idea of “God”, but are in the main Darwinian, Nietzschean atheists. Man, they would tell us, would have to fix his own ills and so it would take the best and the brightest (i.e. scientists, enlightened and brilliant political and entertainment figures) to right the ship. An oligarchy of  the intelligentsia if you will.

However, there is a problem with the very core of this theory. It conflicts wildly with the Marxist foundation upon which it rests. For if we are to truly believe Darwin, we are compelled to believe that it is through the unique individual that all evolution takes place. Transmutations in nature do not occur, according to Darwinian teaching, en masse, but rather with unique creatures who somehow mutate in ways that end up being beneficial, and result in genes that serve to self-perpetuate a superior creature capable of survival beyond the level of its predecessors.

So how does this create a paradox for Progressives? Simply put, Progressives wish to espouse Marxist or, at least quasi-Marxist, positions that require the superiority of the collective over the individual. Progressives, in Marxist fashion, are constantly promoting the concept of the collective good over the individual.

It then becomes completely inconsistent to claim you espouse “the scientific” approach as opposed to the “hocus pocus” of religion, while simultaneously promoting the collective above the individual. For if you believe the science you claim to believe, it is the individual that leads to the evolution of the species and not some communal arrangement.

So then I leave you with the Darwinian Paradox of Progressivism. Either you believe in science and exalt it above religion or you believe in any form of Progressive collectivism. You cannot, with any logical consistency, embrace both.