Malthus and Darwin

[Brad De Long]

>Louis Proyect wrote:
>
>> >Thus, instead of a unified genetic inheritance as grist for the mill,
>> >Ehrenreich presents us with picture of a conflicted dynamic
>> >inheritance.  While her thesis doesn't bear immediately on human nature
>> >vis-a-vis economic cooperation vs. competition, it does inspire us to
>> >think more complexely about the nature of our prehistoric inheritance,
>> >and the mutability and flexibility of "human nature."
>> >
>> >--
>> >Paul Rosenberg
>> >Reason and Democracy
>>
>> I guess I have gotten used to how bad the Nation magazine has become, but
>> every once in a while I run into something so rancid that I have to pause
>> and catch my breath. This was the case with a review by DSA leader Barbara
>> Ehrenreich of 3 books on war. This review was accompanied by a review by
>> Susan Faludi of Ehrenreich's new book on war titled "Blood Rites". All this
>> prose is dedicated to the proposition that large-scale killing has been
>> around as long as homo sapiens has been around and that it has nothing much
>> to do with economic motives. Looking for an explanation why George Bush
>> made war on Iraq? It wasn't over oil, "democratic socialist" Ehrenreich
>> would argue. It was instead related to the fact that we were once "preyed
>> upon by animals that were initially far more skillful hunters than
>> ourselves.

Ummm...

Barbara Ehrenreich is not engaging the question of why older men in rooms
with walls lined with green silk try to send young men off to fight and die
for the balance of power or the low price of oil. Barbara Ehrenreich is
trying to figure out why the young men go--and why even those of us who do
not go seem, on some level, to approve of the sentiment: "Dulce et decorum
pro patria mori"...

Brad DeLong