Darwin, Lincoln and Diamond:

The first two of these men were actually born on the same day 200 years ago this year. Both men shook society to its very foundation. Darwin by his observation of natural science and Lincoln by changes he made to a social order. More will be said about Dr. Jared Diamond later in this essay.

Charles Darwin’s seminal work “On the Origin of Species” has stood the test of time and is no longer debated within the scientific community. Among the lay public his ideas still are a source of controversy. I finally heard a good reason why this is so. Essentially the reason folks oppose this idea is because it removes the idea of direct divine intervention in the creation of the human species. No longer can we envision God kneeling in the dust and molding man out of inanimate materials. As warm and fuzzy as that idea may be it is sadly misguided. As long as people want to believe an idea there will be followers of that idea.

When we come to Lincoln the problem is slightly different but Abraham Lincoln was no less of an agent of change than was Charles Darwin. I will not try to compete with the huge number of scholarly essays on this America’s greatest president. Lincoln forever changed the relationship between American citizens. Dred Scott v. Sandford resulted in a ruling that stated “… people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants—whether or not they were slaves—were not legal persons and could never be citizens of the United States, and that the United States Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. This ruling was rendered in 1857. The first emancipation proclamation was made in September of 1862. The union was committed to ending slavery.

I would like to think that Lincoln’s ideas are widely accepted however there are still people that cling to the belief that all races other than the white race are inherently inferior. Jim Crow laws did not fall in much of America until the 1960s. Indeed Martin Luther King was shot and killed in 1968 by a man called James Earl Ray. This caused James Earl Carter to run as Jimmy Carter. So odious was the first two names. Lester Maddox was elected as governor of Georgia from 1967 to 1971 largely based on his pledge to refuse service to blacks in restaurant he owned.

Lastly we come to the third member of this group. The seminal theory that Jared Diamond proposes is that the elite and rich of a society must share the pain of change or real change simply will not occur. He illustrates this by what has happened in New Orleans. He contrasts the levy system with the system of dykes protecting Holland. The reason that the dykes work in Holland is that if the dykes fail the rich will suffer as well as the poor. The rich in New Orleans live on the high ground and were largely immune to the flooding in the rest of the city. Failure of the levies caused no discomfort to the wealthy of New Orleans. This necessity that the rich must have their well being at risk seems to apply to the changes needed in America today. If the rich do not suffer from the change then it can be argued that real change has not occurred.