Excursions, Ep. 25: Barack Obama, Social Darwinism, and Survival of the Fittest, Part 2
906 views · Published 13 January 2015 · 12:54 · Indexed 24 October 2026
Channel: Libertarianism.org · 2015 · News & Politics
George H. Smith continues his discussion of Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, explaining how they explicitly repudiated the ideas associated with social Darwinism. Spencer and Sumner opposed state charity – i.e., charity that is coercively financed through taxation – but both favored voluntary charity. This was a crucial distinction, since they believed that coercion changes the essential nature of an act and alters its impact on society in general. Nevertheless, even in their own day the positions of both men were frequently misrepresented. Read this essay: http://bit.ly/1ygCBLA Download the .mp3: http://bit.ly/1ybCLVW
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