World magazine has a brief essay and interview with historian Richard Weikart on how Germany moved from Darwin to Hitler. The essay begins, “Phillip Johnson, leader of the Intelligent Design movement, writes, “The philosophy that fueled German militarism and Hitlerism is taught as fact in every American public school, with no disagreement allowed.” The interview concludes with Weikart noting that “Darwinist terminology and concepts are prominent in many of Hitler’s writings and speeches.” In the example Weikart gives, Hitler is explaining the danger of saving and caring for the weak and imperfect:
The natural struggle for existence, which only allows the strongest and healthiest to survive, will be replaced by the obvious desire to save at any cost even the weakest and sickest; thereby a progeny is produced, which must become ever more miserable, the longer this mocking of nature and its will persists. . . . A stronger race will supplant the weaker, since the drive for life in its final form will decimate every ridiculous fetter of the so-called humaneness of individuals, in order to make place for the humaneness of nature, which destroys the weak to make place for the strong.”
Hey, maybe this is why the weaknesses in Darwin’s theory aren’t being allowed into our public schools: teach only the strengths and weed out the weaknesses. Now I get it.