Beck’s War on Darwin

Here’s Glenn Beck and his morning zoo sidekicks repeating their theory that Charles Darwin is the father of modern racism.

A few points on this.

First, when discussing historical figures from 150 years ago in the context of race, it’s important to note that just about every white person was racist by today’s standards.

Second, Beck thinks evolution is a progressive plot and so it shouldn’t be taught in schools. Regardless of Darwin’s ideas on race, the science is real. It’s provable. Evolution can be observed and documented in a variety of organisms right now. There’s no gray area here. But it shouldn’t be taught in schools, says Beck and his zookeepers, because the man who first theorized the origin of species and natural selection was a racist and because a sick bastard decided to use the theory to murder scores of people decades later.

Third, you know who else was a racist? George Washington. This guy:

beck_washington_slaves.jpg

From the official Mount Vernon website:

He became a slave owner when his father died in 1743. At the age of eleven, he inherited ten slaves and 500 acres of land. When he began farming Mount Vernon eleven years later, at the age of 22, he had a work force of about 36 slaves. With his marriage to Martha Custis in 1759, 20 of her slaves came to Mount Vernon. After their marriage, Washington purchased even more slaves. The slave population also increased because the slaves were marrying and raising their own families. By 1799, when George Washington died, there were 316 slaves living on the estate.

Gasp! Maybe we shouldn’t teach George Washington in school either, based on Beck’s standards. But actually, Beck is against all schooling anyway, except for homeschooling.

Let’s see. Who else? Cleon Skousen — Glenn Beck’s hero — who referred to black children as “pickaninnies” and suggested that there was no need for “forcible emancipation.”

And what about this guy?

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  • http://kcdad.livejournal.com Charles Brown

    Beck: “I said it, so it’s true. I said it, so it’s news.”Abraham Lincoln made the same comments as Darwin about Africans.

  • http://kcdad.livejournal.com Charles Brown

    … and if you don’t teach Intelligent Design, Conservatism falls apart.

  • http://kcdad.livejournal.com Charles Brown

    See what Glenn is doing? He is trying to equate racism with those who accept the theory of evolution… when in reality, evolution theory suggests that race is not a biological concept and no human is more evolved than another because we are too young a species.

  • http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2010/03/morning_awesome_859.html Bob_Cesca

    Thanks, Charles. Lincoln’s position on African-Americans from the 4th Lincoln-Douglas debate:

    I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

  • http://cousinavi.wordpress.com cousinavi

    Goddamn science. Bombs, guns, sharp things…We need to put an end to discovering and inventing things because people do nasty things with them…and some of the people who discover and invent those things have flaws.Why did no one think of this sooner?We need to return to that time BEFORE we ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.THAT’S the problem.Ignorance is bliss, people!/Glenn Beck is BLISS.

  • Pixie

    Ah! Would you stop trying to revise revisionist history with fact? My scorecard is getting messy.I can’t wait for the day that beck fades into well deserved obscurity.

  • Mather Z

    This is nothing new – just the classic ad hominem attack style: You can’t counter the argument, so you attack the person. So what if Darwin was racist? If Jonas Salk was a pedophile, should we let ourselves get infected with polio? If Pasteur was a cannibalistic homophobe, should we expose ourselves to anthrax? The point here is that nothing Beck said has anything to do with evolution.Oh, and here’s a handy thing to have in your brain the next time someone gets on the “theory of evolution”: Evolution is not the theory.Theories are what we come up with to explain observations. For example, the observation is that things with mass attract each other – the theory is gravity. The observation is that continents move around – the theory is plate tectonics. The observation is evolution – the theory (it’s in the subtitle of “Origin of Species”) is natural selection. The diversity of species and their connectedness is a thing we can see all around us, all the time. The “how”, the theory, is (a now much more refined and complex version of) natural selection, driven by mutations and sexual competition.(and if you’re going to pick on theories, we’re on much shakier ground with gravity than we are with either of the other two)

  • ec

    Beck could give a crap about racism.

  • MCHLTerp

    Not to mention Darwin was an abolitionist:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/books/review/Benfey-t.html

  • alopecia

    Every few years, some mouth-breathing yahoo decides that Charles Darwin was a racist, not because they know anything about Darwin or care about racism, but so they can needle liberals. “Hey, I thought you liberals were against racism. Well, Charles Darwin was a racist, nyah-nyah-nyah.”Enter Mouth-Breathing Yahoo, 2010 Edition. Glenn Beck knows nothing about Charles Darwin or evolutionary biology and proves it definitively in roughly four minutes.Blaming Darwin for eugenics or the Holocaust is like blaming Frank Whittle for the 9/11 attacks. By the standards of his day, Charles Darwin was pretty open-minded when it came to race; in fact, watching how slave-holders abused their slaves changed his opinion of both race and the institution of slavery. He would be gobsmacked by today’s attitudes toward race, but I doubt he would find them unfathomable.In short, Glenn Beck is a lying buffoon.

  • Allen Frederick

    Glenn Beck said something? Wow. Riveting. I’d better get all upset about it and try to convince his fans that he’s wrong. That’s a worthwhile use of time.It’s getting to the point that Bob Cesca is the Bizarro Glen Beck.

  • ec

    This isn’t about Darwin or racism. This is about Beck trying to seem like he cares about blacks so he can justify his choice of day and location for his self-indulgent rally.

  • Jerry Melton

    Love the Whittle analogy but in all fairness, we must blame Earnst Heinkel. Damn that He 178!

  • Tony61

    Pixie says, “I can’t wait for the day that beck fades into well deserved obscurity.”I feel your pain, but the world is full of Becks and another will emerge as if out of a Pez dispenser. He is a product of our unevolved (?devolved) society that relies on limbic fear and eschews higher cerebral processes.Darwin was a scientist and some of his hypotheses were not proven to be correct. Like all prolific scientists he was wrong on occasion. His ideas about race, as Bob Cesca has pointed out, were consistent with the views of most Caucasians at the time. Subsequent knowledge of genetics and biology elucidated the problem of differentiating between races within a species. If Darwin had lived another 50 years, not only would he have seen his error of language, but I’m comfortable saying he would have been a proponent of expelling the word “race” from our scientific, political and legal nomenclature.I can’t prove it, but I *believe* it based on my study of Darwin. (For that Beck would call me a religionist, a “believer*!)