Social Darwinism: you're on your own, buster.

by Mary

Jonathan Chait looks up Richard Hofstader's definition of American Social Darwinism and finds that it describes the Republican party pretty well.

But the main guiding principle is a defense of the free market as a moral arbiter, rather than merely a tool for creating wealth. Just as natural selection allows better-adapted species to thrive and poorly adapted ones to die out, the free market rewards talent and hard work and punishes laziness or lack of talent, in a perfect or near-perfect way.

That's why Mitt Romney now says that only people who have continuously had health care insurance deserve health care coverage - everyone else can go blow even if they don't have a job that covers it and can't afford it or have an pre-existing condition. Obviously, those people don't deserve to have health care coverage.