The Social Darwinism of Movement Conservatism

Movement conservatism's covert furthering of class, masquerading as tax and entitlement policy is, in Lincoln's terms, an attempt to "overthrow" the principles of the Founders. (See below.)

Yesterday Matthew Yglesias wrote:

The budget House Republicans have written cuts $0 in Medicare spending over the next ten years. It cuts $0 dollars in Social Security spending ever. It increases national defense spending. It sharply cuts cuts rates on high-income families. And it balances the budget. So who loses out? Poor people. It is true that starting in Year 11, the House GOP budget begins to cut Medicare spending. But it does so in a way that does very little to protect the interests of low-income retirees. And the cuts to Medicare are not used to avoid cuts in programs for the poor. In fact, the cuts to Medicare are not even used to avoid tax hikes on the poor. The style of tax reform favored by the House GOP ensures that along with spending on programs for the poor being cut, working class families will pay more in taxes.
Just to sum up—the actually existing GOP agenda overwhelmingly suggests that not only do Republicans think that government spending is bad, but also that government spending on the poor is an especially pernicious form of spending. They appear to believe that taxes are bad, but that taxes on the poor are an especially benign form of taxes.

Merriam Webster defines Social Darwinism as:

a sociological theory that sociocultural advance is the product of intergroup conflict and competition and the socially elite classes (as those possessing wealth and power) possess biological superiority in the struggle for existence

Russell Kirk included in his Ten Conservative Principles:

For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality. The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at levelling must lead, at best, to social stagnation.

To give further wealth to the wealthy on the backs of the poor, while undermining what remains of the humanitarian safety net meant to succor those afflicted by poverty or illness, in the name of the "health" of a civilization founded on the proposition that all are created equal, is a heartless betrayal of what George Washington called "the public good." In his Farewell Address he spoke of the error which

gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens ... facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation. (Emphasis added.)

Public good. Literally, the good of the people. Not the good of the "civilization" at the expense of the sick and the poor in the name of better "orders and classes." Lincoln said that the United States had advanced beyond the Old World order of "classification, caste, and legitimacy," and the first Justice Harlan, in his dissent to Plessy v. Ferguson, declared, "Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Yet if Yglesias is correct in his analysis, we now have the Republican Party surreptitiously advancing a wealthy class; and if the Merriam Webster definition above is correct, this favoritism toward the rich reveals a social Darwinist theory of sociocultural advance which is fundamentally incompatible with "all men are created equal."

Let's look at the rest of what Lincoln said about "legitimacy." Lincoln is referring to the sentence from the Declaration which begins "We hold" and asserts, among other things, that all are created equal:

But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. ... The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities" another bluntly calls them "self evident lies" and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to "superior races." These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard ... of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves. (Emphasis added.)

Movement conservatism's covert furthering of class, masquerading as tax and entitlement policy is, in Lincoln's terms, an attempt to "overthrow" the principles of the Founders, "supplanting the principles of free government."