"Darwinian Conservatism"
What a great theme for a blog:
The Left has traditionally assumed that human nature is so malleable, so perfectible, that it can be shaped in almost any direction. Conservatives object, arguing that social order arises not from rational planning but from the spontaneous order of instincts and habits. Darwinian biology sustains conservative social thought by showing how the human capacity for spontaneous order arises from social instincts and a moral sense shaped by natural selection in human evolutionary history.
Well, it's a false dichotomy, between an infinitely malleable human nature and an arational, instinctual nature, but at least we're moving in the direction of a scientific foundation for considering basic human values. It's been decades since leftists could pretend to any moral authority on scientific grounds, but instincts and tradition aren't what got us out of our caves.
The Left has traditionally assumed that human nature is so malleable, so perfectible, that it can be shaped in almost any direction. Conservatives object, arguing that social order arises not from rational planning but from the spontaneous order of instincts and habits. Darwinian biology sustains conservative social thought by showing how the human capacity for spontaneous order arises from social instincts and a moral sense shaped by natural selection in human evolutionary history.
Well, it's a false dichotomy, between an infinitely malleable human nature and an arational, instinctual nature, but at least we're moving in the direction of a scientific foundation for considering basic human values. It's been decades since leftists could pretend to any moral authority on scientific grounds, but instincts and tradition aren't what got us out of our caves.