In Defense of Darwinian Classical Liberalism: A Reply to "Darwinian Reactionary"

In "Darwinian Reactionary vs. Darwinian Conservatism vs. Darwinian Left," Darwinian Reactionary (DR) claims that he and I are the two contenders "for the crown of The One True Darwinian Social and Political Theory."  He argues that his "Political Theory of Teleoformalism" is far superior to my Darwinian Lockean libertarianism.

In response, I will make three points.  First, what I am defending is Darwinian classical liberalism--not libertarianism.  Second, my Darwinian classical liberalism largely agrees with DR's Teleoformalism and its four principles of justice.  Finally, DR fails to see that those principles of justice motivate us to act only insofar as they appeal to the natural desires of evolved human nature.  

Although I often lean towards libertarianism, my thinking has been mostly in the tradition of evolutionary classical liberalism as represented by John Locke, Adam Smith, Edward Westermarck, and Friedrich Hayek.  I have also embraced the tradition of Ordoliberalism that began at the University of Freiburg in Germany in the 1930s. The central concept of the Freiburg School was captured by the German word Ordnung or the Latin word Ordo.  Liberalism, the Freiburg theorists argued, requires a market order that is a constitutional order, and thus true liberalism must be an ordo-liberalism.  Some proponents of laissez-faire liberalism sometimes convey the impression that free markets can function best without any rules enforced by government, and indeed some of them (like Murray Rothbard, for example) have been anarchists.  But the Freiburg ordo-liberals have argued that a free-market order is not anarchistic, because it depends upon a constitutional framework that sets the rules of the game of free competition, in which all economic agents meet as legal equals and coordinate their activities through voluntary exchange and contract.  This constitutional order of liberty includes both the informal norms that arise through cultural evolution and the formal norms of legal and political design.

This might seem to violate the classical liberal principle of spontaneous order as an unintended order that is free from governmental planning.  But while arguing for the deliberate planning of a constitutional framework of general rules within which markets work spontaneously, the ordo-liberals argue against the attempt to deliberately plan an economy to achieve specific outcomes.  The deliberate planning of the constitutional order can indirectly improve the economic order by facilitating the spontaneous emergence of free economic coordination, but this is very different from the effort of economic planning through specific interventions to achieve directly some desired outcome.  Liberal planning creates general or abstract rules enforced equally over all individuals, so that government does not create special privileges for anyone.  This ordo-liberalism is very similar to James Buchanan's "constitutional economics."

According to DR's teleoformalism, the end of the state is to advance the four principles of justice that serve four biofunctional norms of interpersonal behavior: "tit-for-tat non-interference, kin altruism, mutually beneficial exchange aka reciprocity, and cooperative conventions."  DR claims that while his teleoformalism and my libertarianism agree on the first principle--tit-for-tat non-interference--my libertarianism does not support the other three principles.  But DR is mistaken.  Because my Darwinian classical liberalism agrees with his teleoformalism that the state must advance all four of these principles.

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE

"The first principle of justice," DR explains, is "the common belief that the state's primary function is to protect individuals from harm from other individuals, groups, or itself.  Teleoformalism interprets harm bioformalistically: harm is any human behavior that reduces an individual's ability to live out its form of life as excellently as he or she is willing and able."  This ability to pursue the good contains "the traditional Lockean notions of life, health, liberty, and property."  So, with respect to this "primary function" of the state, DR agrees with my Lockean liberalism.

THE SECOND PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE

The second principle of justice is "kin altruism" in the "private sphere" of "genetically related family members."  Evolution has shaped our human nature so that one of the primary natural ends of life is finding a sexual mate with whom we can produce children and then rear them in the best possible environment for their development into adults.  

DR notes that Locke recognized this in the First Treatise: "For Children being the course of Nature, born weak, and unable to provide for themselves, they have by the appointment of God himself, who hath thus ordered the course of nature, a Right to be nourished and maintained by their Parents" (para. 89).  This right of children to parental care creates a duty for the parents to provide that care (para. 90).  DR doesn't cite the pertinent passages in the Second Treatise, where Locke affirms that parental authority is derivative of parental obligation: "The Power, then, that Parents have over their Children, arises from that Duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their Off-spring, during the imperfect state of Childhood" (para. 58).  DR also doesn't mention that Locke wrote a whole book--Some Thoughts Concerning Education--about the duties of parents to nourish, protect, and educate their children morally and intellectually.

DR complains that Locke says nothing about what should be done if parents refuse to care for and educate their children or otherwise neglect or even abuse them.  In that case, the teleoformalist norms of kin-selection dictate that the state enforce some child protection laws.  By contrast, DR says that some libertarians claim that children are the property of their parents, and therefore they have the right to treat their children as they wish without any interference from the state.

But DR does not recognize that parental ownership of children is only one of four competing theories of the parental role that libertarians have proposed.  The other three are parenting as charity, parenting as voluntary social contract, and causal parental obligations in the creation of peril.  Jake Desyllas (2025) has made a persuasive argument that the first three theories are flawed and that the theory of causal parental responsibility in the creation of peril is the most defensible libertarian theory of parenting, and it is the only theory that is compatible with Lockean liberalism.

Creation of peril is a legal principle in both tort and criminal law that imposes a duty to act when a person's own conduct creates a dangerous situation for someone else, even if the initial act was accidental or unintentional (Alexander 2017).  For example, while you do not generally have a duty to rescue people in a burning building, if you have accidentally started the fire, then you do have a duty to rescue the people who are in danger because of your action.

Similarly, if you engage in sexual intercourse, there is some chance that your gametes will be fertilized, and you will create a child who will be born in a condition of mortal helplessness.  Having put that child in a state of peril, you are positively obligated to care for that child, because refusing parental care would be an act of aggression against that child.  And under the Lockean principle of non-interference or no-harm, the state can intervene to protect the child's natural right to be free from aggressive harm.

Desyllas lays out the argument in five steps:

1. People are responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their actions, whether intended or not.

2. As a consequence of creating a child, parents have put another human being (the child) in a state of peril.

3. Children cannot consent to being born.

4. Since the child did not create their own state of peril nor consent to it, the child's peril is entirely the responsibility of the parents.

5. Therefore, parents have a positive obligation to do whatever is necessary to remove the child from a state of peril, since not doing so would constitute an act of aggression as a form of tort (197).

Notice that the positive obligation of parents to care for their child is ultimately rooted in the negative obligation to refrain from an act of aggression that would lead to the child's death and thus violate the child's right to life.  Having created a child who is utterly helpless, parents who would refuse to properly care for that child would allow that child to die, and consequently they have a positive obligation to prevent that mortal peril from happening.  

A Lockean government has the authority to enforce that natural duty of parental care under the non-interference principle of justice--that no man has the right to aggressively threaten the life of another.  Locke suggests this when he says that parental power cannot "extend to Life and Death, any time, over their Children, more than over any body else" (ST, para. 170).  So just as we have no right to aggressively take the life of any other person, parents have no right to refuse to care for their children and thus allow them to die.

But while Locke implied this argument, he did not elaborate it explicitly.  The first clear statement of the causal responsibility for parental care from the creation of peril was in William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765).  In his chapter on the rights and duties of parent and child, Blackstone explained:

The duty of parents to provide for the maintenance of their children is a principle of natural law; an obligation, says Pufendorf, laid on them not only by nature itself, but by their own proper act, in bringing them into the world: for they would be in the highest manner injurious to their issue, if they only gave the children life, that they might afterwards see them perish. by begetting them therefore they have entered into a voluntary obligation to endeavor, as far as in them lies, that the life which they have bestowed shall be supported and preserved.  And thus the children will have a perfect right of receiving maintenance (1979, 1:435).

Blackstone added to the parental duty for maintenance of the child the duties to protection and education.

Desyllas sees here the essential elements of the causal parental responsibility argument:

1. As a result of their action of bringing children into the world, parents are responsible for their children's condition of helplessness.

2. If parents were to fail to care for their children, the result would be that the children would perish.

3. Therefore, parents have an obligation to maintain their children to prevent this from happening.

A Lockean liberal government can rightly enforce this parental duty to care for their children and the right of the children to receive such care under the principles of no-harm and kin-altruism.  Therefore, DR is wrong in arguing that Lockean liberalism cannot legally enforce the parental duty to care for their children.

Indeed, liberal political thinkers have generally recognized the need for the legal enforcement of parental care.  For example, in his Lectures on Jurisprudence, Adam Smith observed that as a matter of general legal practice in civilized societies, the duties of familial care are often legally enforced.  Similarly, in The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek argued that while it is usually in the best interest of children to be left to the care of their parents or guardians, 

this does not mean that parents should have unrestricted liberty to treat their children as they like.  The other members of the community have a genuine stake in the welfare of the children.  The case for requiring parents or guardians to provide for those under their care a certain minimum of education is clearly very strong (377).

Moreover, it is clear that DR's teleoformalism generally agrees with Lockean liberalism in seeing the private sphere of life as a realm of liberty.  DR writes: "Other than the rules of non-interference and kin altruism, the private sphere is the place of liberty to direct one's life as one sees fit: what books and media to consume, what sexual activity one wishes to partake, religious practice, hobbies, amusements and entertainment are completely free from state regulation.  Even the wish to not pursue the human good is of no concern to justice."

THE THIRD PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE

The third principle of justice is that there should be reciprocity or mutually beneficial voluntary exchanges in the commercial sphere.  According to DR's teleoformalism, the state must regulate the commercial sphere to facilitate these reciprocal exchanges.  "All of the contemporary ways the state regulates business-contract enforcement, union rights, workplace conditions, environmental regulations, nondiscrimination, health regulations--are perfectly just under teleoformalism."

By contrast, DR argues, "although Arnhart includes property and trade among his natural desires, his theory that justice merely entails these desires be allowed to occur cannot accommodate Norms of trade be enforced, and relies on a caveat emptor system where fraud and cheating may be rampant."  But DR cannot cite me as ever having said this.

On the contrary, as I have made clear in my chapter on Adam Smith in Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Pinker (4th edition, 2016), classical liberals like Smith recognize that markets must be regulated by the rule of law.  For example, in The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek observed: "If there is to be an efficient adjustment of the different activities in the market, certain minimum requirements must be met; the more important of these are, as we have seen, the prevention of violence and fraud, the protection of property and the enforcement of contracts, and the recognition of equal rights of all individuals to produce in whatever quantities and sell at whatever prices they choose" (229).

THE FOURTH PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE

According to DR, the fourth principle of justice is supporting cooperative conventions in the public sphere that allow the cooperation of strangers in public spaces.  Following Ruth Millikan ("Language Conventions Made Simple"), DR recognizes that language is one of the most important examples of  cooperative conventions:

These are common rules that allow mutually beneficial cooperation to occur among strangers.  The conventions are widely distributed so that even people who do not know each other can be on the same page and not have to create mutual understanding over and over again with each new interaction.  Language conventions such as using the word "dog" to refer to dogs are the clearest example.

Another example that he takes from Millikan is driving on the right or left side of a road.  This allows drivers approaching one another to coordinate with one another for safe driving.  To achieve regular conformity to this rule, governments have mandated it as a traffic law.

Classical liberals like Locke explain the "cooperative conventions" that establish "common rules that allow mutually beneficial cooperation to occur among strangers" as arising from popular consent.  Locke's teaching that government arises from the consent of the people is well known.  But it's not well known that Locke explained the emergence of all social institutions as created by popular consent.  Human beings have created not only government (ST, 95-99) but also languages (ECHU, III.2.8), families (ST, 74-83), morality (ECHU, 28.10), and money (ST, 36) by consenting to their existence.  This creation of social institutions by consent expresses the uniquely human capacity of the mind for symbolic thought.

Symbolic thought allows human beings to create laws as moral rules for choosing sides in conflicts by impartial rules of action.  Classical liberals recognize that the history of law shows a transition from the illiberal conception of laws as identity rules to the liberal conception of laws as impartial rules.  Henry Sumner Maine called this the move from status to contract.  

In medieval and early modern Europe, for example, the laws were applied differently based on one's social identity.  In many parts of Europe, the nobility either did not pay many taxes or were assessed at a lower rate of taxation than were commoners.  Under the criminal law, the punishments for nobles were less severe than for commoners.  Jews, Protestants, and Catholics faced different treatment by the law.

But Lockean liberals agree with Peter DeScioli that "laws as identity rules" are what he calls "fake laws that are really threats in disguise" that support the dominance of powerful factional coalitions--such as the "nobility"--against "commoners."  Originally, in prehistoric forager societies, the many (the commoners) enforced impartial customary laws against dominant individuals and the ambitious few.  But then with the emergence of centralized states, kings, nobles, and priests were able to enforce fake laws that were really threats to suppress the many.  In a few more liberal societies (like ancient Athens), laws as impartial rules could restrain to some degree the dominant power of the one and the few, which restored to some extent the egalitarian liberty of the foraging state of nature.

Then in modern liberal states, the laws are understood as general rules that apply impartially to all regardless of differences in social status, which goes even farther towards approximating the equal liberty of the evolutionary state of nature.  These are what Douglass North and his colleagues called "open access societies."  Laws as general rules are crucial for the liberal conception of the state as securing individual freedom and social cooperation.  This liberal understanding of the laws as impartial rules of action approximates the law of nature as it arose in the evolutionary state of nature.

 

THE NATURAL DESIRES AS THE MOTIVATIONAL GROUND FOR THE FOUR PRINCIPLES

Although I agree with all four of DR's principles of justice, he fails to recognize the motivational grounding of those principles in the natural desires.  Understanding these principles will not move us to act in accordance with them.  As Aristotle said, "thought by itself moves nothing," because any human action that is deliberately chosen requires a union of reason and desire.  A deliberate choice manifests either "desiring reason" or "reasoning desire" (NE 1139a36-b6).  

DR disagrees, because he thinks that as long as we understand the principles of justice as natural norms, "there is no need for the messy quagmire of sorting through desires for the good."  Really?  Why would we act to fulfill those principles if we thought their fulfillment was not desirable?

Why do we act to fulfill the principles of tit-for-tat non-interference and reciprocal altruism?  Because they satisfy our natural desire for justice as reciprocity.

Why do we act to fulfill the principle of kin selection?  Because it satisfies our natural desires for parental care and familial bonding.

Why do we act to fulfill the principle of cooperative conventions?  Because cooperative conventions as impartial rules of action satisfy our natural desire to be free from the exploitative dominance of powerful factional coalitions.

Why do we pursue the good of justice?  Because the good is the desirable.

REFERENCES

Alexander, Larry. 2017. "Duties to Act Triggered by Creation of the Peril: Easy Cases, Puzzling Cases, and Complex Culpability." In The Ethics and Law of Omissions, eds. Dana Kay Nelkin and Samuel Rickless, 180-196.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Blackstone, William. [1765] 1979. Commentaries on the Laws of England. 4 vols. A facsimile of the First Edition of 1765-1769. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Desyllas, Jake. 2025. "What Is the Libertarian Theory of Parental Obligation?" Journal of Libertarian Studies 29 (1): 186-209.

Hayek, Frederich. 1960. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

The Aristotelian and Darwinian Teleology of Ethics and Politics: A Reply to "Darwinian Reactionary"

My argument for Darwinian natural right originated as a response to what Leo Strauss had said in his Introduction to Natural Right and History.  Strauss observed: "natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe.  All natural beings have a natural end, a natural destiny, which determines what kind of operation is good for them."  This dependence of natural right on a teleological view of the universe was clearly seen by Aristotle, Strauss explained.  But the "problem of natural right" today is that "modern natural science seems to have refuted teleology."

I agreed with Roger Masters that Strauss was wrong to suggest that the question of teleology depended on physics or astronomy, because Aristotle's teleology was primarily biological, and so the question was whether teleology is necessary for explaining living nature, and whether modern Darwinian biology supports such a teleological explanation of organisms.

My answer to this question was that Darwinian biology really does support Aristotelian teleology.  My thinking here was decisively influenced by my reading of Allan Gotthelf's dissertation at Columbia University--"Aristotle's Conception of Final Causality" (1975)--and some of his other writing (see my Darwinian Natural Right, 238-43).  I was persuaded by Gotthelf that Aristotle's final causality is best interpreted as living nature's irreducible potential for form: the development, structure, and functioning of a living organism manifest the actualization of its potential for organic form, an actualization that depends on, but is not reducible to, the natural potentialities of its material elements.  Moreover, far from refuting Aristotle's teleology, modern Darwinian biology provides an evolutionary explanation for living nature's irreducible potential for form.

Understanding the Darwinian teleology of human nature supports a teleological standard for both ethics and politics.  Teleological ethics is based on Aristotle's idea that "the good is the desirable" (Rhetoric 1362a22), that there are at least twenty natural desires of evolved human nature, and that to achieve the harmonious ordering of our often conflicting desires over a whole life, which constitutes human happiness or flourishing, requires good habits of choice and prudence--the moral and intellectual virtues examined in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Rhetoric, John Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.  We can then see that cultivating those virtues is the natural end of a good social order.  We can also see that a classical liberal--or liberal conservative--social order is best in cultivating those virtues.

Teleological politics is rooted in the evolved political psychology of human nature as a tense balance between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance.  Dominance is the natural propensity of a few politically ambitious individuals to seek the power over others that comes from superior rank in a regime, with these ambitious few competing for the top position.  Deference is the natural propensity of most individuals to submit to those who are politically dominant.  Counter-dominance is the natural propensity of subordinate individuals to resist exploitative dominance.  We can judge political regimes as better or worse, depending on how well they satisfy these evolved political desires of human nature.  And we can see that a liberal constitutional republic that establishes limited government with a balance of powers under the rule of law is the best political order, because it satisfies the evolved desire of the ruling few to dominate while also satisfying the evolved desire of the subordinate many to be free from exploitative dominance, which secures a balance between governmental authority and individual liberty.  What I am calling the "liberal constitutional republic" corresponds to what Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson call "inclusive institutions" and what Douglas North and his colleagues call the "open access society."

But now the "Darwinian Reactionary" (DR) is criticizing my teleological ethics and politics.  The "Darwinian Reactionary" blog has been running now for almost 13 years.  Recently, DR posted an essay entitled "Darwinian Reactionary vs. Darwinian Conservatism vs. Darwinian Left."  He says that his blog was originally inspired by his reading of Peter Singer's Darwinian Left and my Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism.  He was looking for someone who understood the implications of Darwinian science for ethics and politics.  He saw that Singer was good in showing how a Darwinian understanding of human nature made a socialist utopia impossible, but Singer didn't offer any clear program for what the ethics and politics of a Darwinian Left would look like.  

DR agreed with my attempt to revive an Aristotelian teleological understanding of natural ethical and political norms grounded in Darwinian biology.  But he found that while he agreed with many of my premises, he disagreed with most of my conclusions.  He suggests "that Arnhart is neither sufficiently Aristotelian nor Darwinian."  The main reason for that failure, he asserts, is that "Arnhart is missing the bridge between these two titans," which is "the work of Ruth Millikan, and when you walk across that bridge, I would contend, you end up with my positions."  Here he is referring particularly to Millikan's 1984 book Language, Thought, and Other Biological Causes (MIT Press).

He argues for both an ethical theory, which he calls "bioformalism," and a political theory, which he calls "teleoformalism," that he regards as superior to my Darwinian natural right of ethics and politics.

TELEOLOGICAL ETHICS

DR's starting point is Millikan's evolutionary theory of teleological functions.  He explains:

Millikan's Darwinian account of teleology holds an item's proper function is the effect which was replicated because it provided a reproductive benefit.  In the case of living things, we can see that it is the distinctive form of life itself that has been selected for replication because this form of life has proven to be reproductively advantageous.  This is the account of the good that I have called bioformalism.  For humans this is to develop our skills and excellences as children, to attract the best mate possible, to bear and support children, and to work cooperatively with others in order to produce the most advantageous environment in which to live.  The reason Arnhart does not take this path, I would contend, is partially an ignorance of the literature on function, or not fully seeing how it can be applied to Aristotelian teleology, despite spending a lot of time discussing what he calls 'immanent teleology.'  He never cites Millikan despite her being more responsible than anyone for the revival of teleology through a Darwinian lens.

I never cite Millikan because when I read her book, I didn't see that she had added much to what Allan Gotthelf had written about Aristotelian/Darwinian teleology in 1975, 19 years before the publication of her book.  Millikan did not cite Gotthelf in her book, so I assume she was ignorant of his work.  

Most of what DR says about Millikan's theory corresponds to what I have said about "functional causes" and "natural ends" (DNR, 101-105, 238-248).  For example, DR says that part of the teleological good for human beings is "to bear and support children."  I agree.  Because this corresponds to what I say about the natural desire for parental care:

The function of parental care for animals is to protect and nurture offspring that could not survive or grow to maturity without such care.  Throughout the history of the human species, infants have survived and grown only with the help of adults who were willing to feed, protect, and educate them for many years.  If we accept Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, which favors those functional adaptations that promoted survival and reproduction in evolutionary history, it would seem likely, therefore, that the desire to care for children is a natural adaptation for human beings (DNR, 103).

But while DR seems to agree with this account of natural desires, he argues that I can't properly explain the distinction between true or normal desires and false or abnormal desires.  To say that the good is the desirable, I have argued, is not to say that the good is whatever we happen to desire at any moment, because we can mistakenly desire what in fact is not truly desirable.  DR insists, however, that I need Millikan to explain this.

Millikan's Normal conditions are much better at doing the work that Arnhart wants his poorly defined notion of a true desire to do.  And so when Arnhart says "an animal can mistakenly desire what in fact is not truly desirable," we can translate this as "When desires work Normally, they will produce their selected effect; in abNormal conditions (say, when the individual is guided by false beliefs or mental illness), a desire might not benefit the organism the way it has been designed."  For example, perhaps an adolescent male is engaging in risky behavior.  We can postulate that the impulses of adolescent males to engage in risky behavior have been built into us in order, say, to develop one's strength for conflict, or perhaps display fitness to females, or to learn and push one's limits for competitive advantage.  If the individual is badly injured in this behavior, the desire has not produced the effect it was selected for, that is, conditions are abNormal and not gone "according to (nature's) plan.

Well, okay, I can agree with this "translation" of my thought.  But I don't see that this adds anything substantive to what I have said about the "four sources of moral disagreement"--fallible beliefs about circumstances, fallible beliefs about desires, variable circumstances, and variable desires (both normal and abnormal variation in human desires) (DNR, 44-45).

DR also argues that I don't have a good answer to the criticism that my list of twenty natural desires is naive in that it includes the "positive" desires but not the "negative" ones. For example, why not include cruelty and exploitation as natural human desires? The suggestion is that I haven't offered any justification for including only the "nice" desires on my list. Actually, there can be a dark side to most if not all of these natural desires. Obviously, cruelty and exploitation often arise from the natural desires for social ranking and war. And, in fact, many of my critics have criticized me for including war on my list of natural desires. 

But there is a criterion of selection favoring what is truly desirable over what is mistakenly desired that is implicit in the natural desire for friendship.  I understand "friendship" in its broad Aristotelian sense of "social affiliation," which coincides with what David Hume and Adam Smith called "sympathy," and which is the ground for all the moral sentiments and virtues.  In Books 8 and 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle provides a comprehensive account of the social and political formation of the virtues through "friendship" (philia), which for Aristotle is a general term for all kinds of social bonding in which human beings show some care for one another.  And so, for example, Aristotle identifies "political friendship" as the social glue that binds a people into a political community of mutual care for one another.  

Similarly, Hume and Smith identified "sympathy" as any kind of "fellow feeling" among human beings.  Darwin adopted this idea and made "sympathy" one of the fundamental themes in his evolutionary account of moral and political order.  More recently, biologists and psychologists have used the word "empathy" in a way that largely corresponds to what Hume, Smith, and Darwin would call "sympathy," or what Aristotle would call "friendship."  All agree with Aristotle that the various forms of friendly feeling or social bonding that unite human beings as individuals, as fellow citizens, and as members of the same species are originally rooted in the natural affection of parental care for offspring (NE, 1155a1-33, 1159a27-37, 1160b23-62a29).  "In the household, are first found the origins and springs of friendship, of polity, and of justice" (Eudemian Ethics, 1242b1-2).

In explaining a man's desire to be worthy of praise and not blame, Smith observed, "Nature, accordingly, has endowed him, not only with a desire of being approved of, but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of; or of being what he himself approves of in other men" (TMS, 117).  When we praise others, we do so because we think they are truly virtuous, not because of their deceptive appearance of virtue that hides the reality of vice.  If we think they have deceived us into thinking they are more virtuous than they really are, then we blame them.  Therefore our rules of morality dictate that we praise what is truly praiseworthy and blame what is truly blameworthy.  We then feel guilty if we violate these rules ourselves, which is conscience.  A man who feels guilty, Smith explained, "anticipates the contempt and derision from which nothing saves him but the ignorance of those he lives with.  He still feels that he is the natural object of these sentiments, and still trembles at the thought of what he would suffer, if they were ever actually exerted against him" (TMS, 118).

Smith observed that our natural desire for mutual sympathy of sentiments--which I call our natural desire for friendship--makes it painful for us to even imagine that others would not share our sentiments.  We judge ourselves by how we appear to an imaginary impartial spectator who is not deceived by mere appearances, so that we care not only for our real reputation, but even for our imaginary reputation.  Of course, it is easier for us to do what is praiseworthy when we are actually praised for our good conduct, and that's why only a few individuals are high-minded enough to always do what is truly praiseworthy, even when they are not actually praised, or even when they are unfairly condemned.

Although Darwin never used Smith's phrase impartial spectator, Darwin's account of morality as arising from social instincts of sympathy and reason conforms to Smith's impartial spectator procedure (Descent of Man, 136-148).  And as it was for Smith, Darwin saw this procedure as motivating our concern for both our real and our imagined reputations.  He observed: "Even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us--of their imagined approbation or disapprobation; and this all follows from sympathy, a fundamental element of the social instincts.  A man who possessed no trace of such instincts would be an unnatural monster" (Descent, 136).  Darwin recognized that Smithian sympathy is variable across individuals, and some few individuals, perhaps pure psychopaths, might show little or no concern for a mutual sympathy of sentiments, which would make such a person "an unnatural monster."  Similarly, Smith suggested that those who could commit dreadful crimes without feeling any pangs of remorse would have to fall into "the vilest and most abject of all states, a complete insensibility to honor and infamy, to vice and virtue" (TMS, 118).

What Smith and Darwin described as the emergence of moral sentiments from the mutual sympathy of sentiments is what evolutionary theorists today would call "reciprocal altruism."  We cooperate with those who are not genetically related to us if there is some reciprocal exchange.  I will cooperate with you if you have been cooperative with me (direct reciprocity), or if I know you have a reputation for being cooperative with others (indirect reciprocity).  It's tit for tat.  People are rewarded for their good reputation as trustworthy cooperators and punished for their bad reputations as untrustworthy cheaters.  And the most reliably trustworthy people are those who live under the all-seeing eyes of the imaginary impartial spectator.

But DR thinks this is all wrong.

Human history is filled with limitless examples of evil that did receive the approbation of others; the evils done by Nazis did receive approval from other Nazis.  As an additional example, I recall reading an account of Native Americans who had captured a young girl from another tribe.  At first they seemed to welcome her into the tribe and treated her kindly, until one day they tied her to a tree, and the entire tribe took turns firing arrows into her until she was a bloody pulp.  That's human nature for you.  The tribesmen in my example were not a band of psychopaths, they were not mentally defective, they were not irrational, or subhuman and lacking in some innate moral sense possessed by other humans. . . . Harming one's enemies is ubiquitous occurrence in human nature and history. . . .

DR notes that in my blog posts on human rights, I have quoted Darwin about how human beings can extend their sympathy to embrace all of humanity:

Darwin saw a history of moral progress in which human sympathy has been gradually extended from the family to small tribes, then to large nations, and eventually to all of humanity. In the Descent of Man, he wrote: "As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races." 

DR objects:

I have to disagree with Darwin here, the barrier is not artificial.  Evolution would demand that sympathies extend to those who are actually cooperators, and distrust and animosity extend to those who are actually competitors and threats to our well-being.  It would not entail that we extend sympathy to competitors.

DR quotes me as saying that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "shows how moral outrage against atrocities expresses a universal morality," and that "we judge that as a rule human beings have a right to life because the killing of innocent people would elicit moral emotions of disapproval from any normal human being."

But DR objects: "human history is absolutely swimming in cases where the killing of innocent people was celebrated on a mass scale.  If the good is just what other people approve of, then Nazis or the tribesmen in my example are good."

DR is mistaken when he says "the evils done by Nazis did receive approval from other Nazis."  As far as I know there is no evidence that the Nazis approved the evils of Nazism.  There is, however, plenty of evidence that the Nazis approved of Nazism because they believed (mistakenly) that it was good--perhaps even a transcendent good.  That's why some historians of Nazism have written books about "Hitler's Ethic" and "The Nazi Conscience."

Richard Weikart argues that Hitler illustrates how the greatest evils are often perpetrated under the appearance of doing good--especially, if the apparent good is a utopian vision that seems to justify any means to the utopian end. I agree with this, because I am persuaded of the Aristotelian principle that people tend to act for the good, or at least for what appears good to them. It is unlikely that any influential moral or political movement can prevail if it does not appeal to some moral sense that a great good is being achieved. The problem, however, is that human beings are often mistaken in their moral beliefs, particularly when they are seduced by some utopian conception of radical transformation that requires evil means to apparently good ends.

According to Weikart, the fundamental end for Hitler's ethic was the evolutionary improvement in the human species. Hitler interpreted the Darwinian conception of evolution as dominated by a struggle for existence as teaching that the only moral imperative was the survival and reproduction of the superior races over the inferior races. The Aryan or Nordic race prevalent in the German Volk arose in evolutionary history as the superior race. Promoting the progressive expansion of that race would therefore promote the biological improvement of the human species.

As I have indicated in previous posts, many of the Nazi philosophers were neo-Kantians who believed in "eternal values" and in Nazism as fulfilling that eternal moral order. Moreover, Claudia Koonz's book The Nazi Conscience (2003) shows how the Nazi regime was organized around a strict communitarian morality of sacrificing selfish interests for the good of the community. Also, Jonathan Glover's moral history of the 20th century shows how the greatest atrocities were committed by those moved by a fanatical utopian belief in the goodness of their cause.

That the Nazis had a moral sense was clear in the Nuremberg Trials as portrayed in the recent movie Nuremberg. On the morning of November 20, 1945, the tribunal convened to begin its public trial.  "Goering entered first," El-Hai writes.  "He wore his pearl-gray, brass-buttoned Luftwaffe uniform, stripped of all insignia and symbols of rank, and he appeared energized to retake the world stage" (128).  Goering had had months to plan his defense, and he expected to speak eloquently of the glories of the Nazi German Reich.

But then, on the afternoon of November 29, Goering's plans for his defense were undercut when the prosecution showed filmed footage of the concentration camps shot by British and American troops less than a year earlier.  Everyone was transfixed by the images of emaciated camp inmates, stacks of corpses, and bulldozers pushing mounds of bodies into mass graves.  At least ten minutes of the movie were given over to these films.  And even though most of us in the theatre had seen some of these images previously, to see them again was as disturbing as it was for the courtroom audience in the movie.  Even Goering coughed nervously and leaned on the railing of the dock and covered his face with his right arm.

Later, Goering said to Douglas Kelley: "It was such a good afternoon, too, until they showed that film. They were reading my telephone conversations on the Austrian affair, and everybody was laughing with me.  And then they showed that awful film, and it just spoiled everything" (El-Hai, 136).  It "spoiled everything" because there was no way for the Nazis to evade the moral disgust that it elicited. 

Now, while it is true, as DR says, that "harming one's enemies is a ubiquitous occurrence in human nature and history," if "one's enemies" must be people "who are actually competitors and threats to our well-being," there was no plausible argument that the Jews in the concentration camps were "threats to the well-being" of the Nazis.  Those Jews were clearly innocent people, and the Nazis could not say that killing innocent people was good.

And as to DR's story about the Native Americans torturing and killing the young girl from another tribe, I would need to know more about the circumstances and motives in this case.  Would those Native Americans have said oh we just enjoy killing innocent young women for fun?  Or would they have said we discovered that she was a threat to us, and so we killed her in self-defense?

That we condemn the perpetrators of great evil--like the Nazis--and want to punish them testifies to the natural moral sense as part of our evolved human nature.  One sign that that moral sense is an evolved instinct of the human mind is that it appears early in human development: even babies have a sense of justice.

The one-year-old decided to take justice into his own hands.  He had just watched a puppet show with three characters.  The puppet in the middle rolled a ball to the puppet on the right, who passed it right back to him. It then rolled the ball to the puppet on the left, who ran away with it.  At the end of the show, the 'nice' puppet and the 'naughty' puppet were brought down from the stage and set before the boy.  A treat was placed in front of each of them, and the boy was invited to take one of the treats away.  As predicted, and like most toddlers in this experiment, he took it from the 'naughty' one--the one who had run away with the ball.  But this wasn't enough.  The boy then leaned over and smacked this puppet on the head.

In his book Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, Paul Bloom reports this as one of the experiments conducted at the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University (p. 7).  He presents these experiments as showing that Charles Darwin was right in claiming that evolved human nature shows a natural moral sense--a sense of right and wrong--that is manifest in babies in the first few years of life, appearing at such an early age that it must be a natural instinct that requires little or no social learning.  (Bloom summarized some of his reasoning in an article in the New York Times Magazine here.)

Bloom also argues that these experiments confirm Adam Smith's moral philosophy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, because they show that Smith was right in observing that we are naturally social animals, with evolved propensities to care about our fellow human beings, a care that is expressed as sympathy or empathy, through which we judge others and judge ourselves as we appear in the eyes of others, judgments that are expressed as moral sentiments of approbation or disapprobation.  When we see people suffering unfair injuries, we sympathize with their suffering and share their resentment against those who have injured them, because we have imaginatively projected ourselves into their situations--perhaps even projecting ourselves into a puppet show.  That resentment against injustice is the natural ground of rights, because we judge rights from wrongs: human beings have the right not to be injured in ways that would elicit our moral resentment.  This is what I have called Smith's reflective liberal sentimentalism (here, here, and here).

Consider how Bloom's experiments with babies illustrate these points.  The toddler who recognized the naughty puppet and decided that he deserved punishment showed a combination of reason and emotion.  He had the cognitive capacity to understand that the puppet in the middle had been harmed by the puppet on the left who ran away with the ball.  He also had to sympathize with the imagined resentment of the puppet victim, which motivated his punishment of the bad puppet by taking away the treat and slapping him.  Notice that this third-party punishment is a disinterested or impartial judgment, in the sense that it concerns actions that don't directly affect the baby himself.

The cognitive understanding of the puppet show by itself would not have motivated the moral judgment without the moral emotion of sympathetic resentment.  Psychopaths illustrate this.  Bloom relates the story of a thirteen-year-old mugger who viciously attacked elderly women.  When a reporter asked him about the pain he had caused a woman, the boy was surprised by the question and responded: "What do I care? I'm not her."  He had a rational understanding of what he had done, but his moral judgment was impaired by his lack of moral emotions such as sympathy and guilt.

If these babies show a naturally evolved propensity to third-party punishment, then we need to explain the evolutionary process that produced it.  There are at least three theories for this.  We might explain this through group selection, in that groups with third-party punishment tended to outcompete groups without such punishment.  Or we might explain this through individual selection, in that individuals inclined to third-party punishment earned good reputations that enhanced their survival and reproduction.  Or we might explain this though an evolutionary combination of revenge and empathy, in that individuals imagine themselves in the shoes of a victim and then respond as if they themselves had been harmed.

But presumably DR would say that history shows that there is no natural sense of justice because "human history is filled with limitless examples of evil that did receive the approbation of others."

My next post will be on DR's "political theory of teleoformalism."

Can Americans Celebrate the Original Meaning of the Declaration of Independence?

 It is hard for me to celebrate this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Because I assume that when Trump gives his speech today, he won't talk about the Declaration of Independence.  He will talk about himself--about how he's the greatest president and the most powerful human being who has ever lived.  I am old enough to remember the Bicentennial--July 4, 1976--when Gerald Ford was President.  He had become President in 1974 after Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace.  In his Inaugural Address, Ford declared: "Our long national nightmare is over.  We are a government of laws and not of men."  Now the President of the United States brags that as President he has the power to do anything he wants to do.

To celebrate the Bicentennial, President Ford went to Philadelphia and delivered a long speech.  He didn't talk about himself.  Instead, he talked about the Declaration of Independence.  I knew something about his work on that speech because some of my professors at the University of Chicago, where I was a graduate student in political science, had been invited to the White House to talk with Ford about his speeches for the Bicentennial.

Last year, in an interview with ABC News, Trump was asked what he thought about the Declaration of Independence.  "Well, it means exactly what it says, it's a declaration," he said.  "A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot.  And it's something very special to our country."

A "declaration of unity"?  Hardly.  From the beginning the Declaration announces that it will "dissolve the political bands which have connected" the American colonies to Great Britain, and it becomes a declaration of war.  Of course, Trump wouldn't know that because he has never read the Declaration of Independence.

But there is a tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on July 4th.  I remember well attending a Bicentennial party at George Anastaplo's house, where we took turns reading the Declaration aloud.  That tradition will be continued today at the National Archives in Washington, in Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

I hope that many Americans will carry on that tradition by reading not only the text of the Declaration but also some of the good books on the Declaration that have been published recently.  One of those is Steven Sarson's The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States (University of Virginia Press, 2025).  

Sarson raises the question of whether the Declaration is to be celebrated today.  Most of us would probably say yes, of course, we should celebrate the Declaration for its proclamation of universal equality and liberty in the most famous section of the Declaration ("We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .").  But Sarson argues that to understand the original meaning of the Declaration for those who signed it, we need to read this second paragraph of the Declaration in the context of the whole document.  If we do that, he claims, we will see that the opening words--"When in the Course of human events"--introduce a universal history of humanity that begins with the Creation of man in the state of nature, moves through the British immigration and settlement of the American colonies, through the colonial debates over British rule in America, and then finally to American independence.  

In that history, Sarson asserts, we will see that yes originally all men were created equal and free in the state of nature and endowed with unalienable rights.  But then governments were instituted to secure those rights.  And whenever government fails to secure those rights, it is "the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

We will then see that the American people in the colonies decided that their safety and happiness required that they enslave Africans and wage war against "the merciless Indian Savages."  This made it clear that the American people did not believe that their governments should secure the equal natural rights of slaves and Indians.

Sarson explains:

The authors of the Declaration of Independence never intended that the self-evident truths of equality and unalienable rights be indiscriminately applied under the government and law of the United States.  Absolute equality and liberty existed in the state of nature. . . . But the social contract nevertheless required that perfect natural equality and liberty be abandoned in civil government and society. . . . For although the authors of the Declaration meant that all people were created equal as self-sovereign individuals and with equal endowments of rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they did not mean that all were born with equal natural or civil capacities or competencies.  Some were men, some were not.  Some were white, some were not.  Some were economically independent, some were not.  Some were intelligent, educated, industrious, sober, and generally virtuous, some were not.  Most of the founders believed that these inequalities of capacity and competence should translate into civil governance and law. . . . In short, the authors of the Declaration of Independence envisioned a natural law republic that would secure the safety and happiness of its own citizens, not a natural rights republic that would institute equality and liberty for all (207-208).

Sarson says that this Declaration of Independence as it was originally understood by its signers is not worth celebrating because it supported a governmental system that denied the human rights of slaves, women, poor people, and Indians.  But within a few years after the Declaration was issued, many Americans--particularly those arguing for the abolition of slavery--stressed the "self-evident truths" of the second paragraph and interpreted the Declaration as a charter for universal equality and liberty.  That Declaration is worth celebrating, Sarson says, but only if we understand that what we're celebrating contradicts the original meaning of the Declaration. 

Sarson agrees with those historians who criticize the signers of the Declaration of Independence for denying that government should enforce equal liberty for all people.  But there's a clever twist in Sarson's reasoning because he argues that the Declaration of Independence does affirm equal natural rights--but only in the state of nature before the institution of government.  Because once human beings enter civil society, become "one people," and establish government, it is "the Right of the People" to recognize that human beings are unequal in their natural and social capacities and traits, and therefore they will have unequal roles in society.  Some will be masters because they are white Europeans, and others will be slaves because they are black Africans.  Men will take the leading roles in society, while women will be assigned to the domestic roles of wife and mother.  The Europeans will expand their territorial claims on the American continent by expelling the American Indians from the western territories.  Thus it is the right of the American people to deprive some people of their life, their liberty, and their pursuit of happiness if that is necessary for the safety and happiness of the American people.

I disagree.  I think that when we celebrate the Declaration as teaching that just government must secure the natural rights of equal liberty for all people under that government, we really are celebrating the original meaning of the Declaration.  Even though that securing of natural human rights is never fully achieved, it does constitute what Abraham Lincoln called "the standard maxim for a free society" that can be approximated over time.

In support of that conclusion, I have argued that denying the equal liberty of slaves, women, and American Indians violates the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

There are lots of weaknesses in Sarson's arguments for his reading of the Declaration.  But here I'll point only to the most obvious one.  If the interpretation of the Declaration as a promise of equal liberty for all men is mistaken, because that's not how it was understood by those who wrote and signed the Declaration, then we would expect that the signers of the document would have corrected this mistaken interpretation.  In particular, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams lived exactly 50 years after the Declaration was first issued because amazingly they both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration.  So Jefferson and Adams had 50 years in which they could have corrected the mistaken interpretation of the Declaration advanced by the abolitionists.  But while Sarson quotes extensively from the founders, he cannot quote any remark from the founders that makes this correction.

There was one occasion in particular where Jefferson could have made this correction, and he didn't.  Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) was a distinguished African-American mathematician and scientist.  He was the child of a free black mother and a formerly enslaved father from Africa.    In 1791, he was appointed to the surveying team that laid out the District of Columbia.  In the same year, he wrote a long letter to Jefferson, who was then the Secretary of State.

In that letter, Banneker condemned slavery as an unjust violation of "the rights of human nature."  He also thought that Jefferson had clearly seen "the injustice of a state of slavery" when he wrote the Declaration of Independence: 

it was now Sir, that your abhorrence thereof was so excited; that you publicly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

But then he accused Jefferson of contradicting these principles of equal liberty "in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves."  Banneker attributed this to Jefferson's "narrow prejudices" about black people.  

Banneker did not know that after the death of his wife in 1782, Jefferson had made one of his slaves--Sally Hemings--his concubine, beginning in 1787 when Sally was 16 and Jefferson 46.  He carried on a thirty-eight-year connection to Hemings that produced seven children, four who lived to adulthood.  Jefferson publicly condemned interracial sex.

Along with his letter, Banneker enclosed a copy of his Almanac that he had just prepared, which showed his impressive knowledge of mathematics and astronomy.

Here is Jefferson's letter in response:

No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talent equal to those of the other colours of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa and America.  I can add with truth that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body and mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances which cannot be neglected, will admit.--I have taken the liberty of sending your almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of sciences at Paris, and member of the Philanthropic society because I considered it as a document to which you whole colour had a right for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them.

Both of these letters were published as a separate pamphlet in Philadelphia in 1792.

If Sarson were right in his interpretation of the original meaning of the Declaration of Independence, then we would expect Jefferson to explain to Banneker that the natural rights to equal liberty apply to the state of nature but not to civil society, and that it is "the Right of the People" to establish a government that deprives slaves of their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  But Jefferson says nothing like that.  He is just silent about Banneker's interpretation of the Declaration as declaring the injustice of slavery.

Sarson says nothing about Banneker's letter and Jefferson's response.  And so he does not allow his reader to see that Jefferson refused to take the opportunity to confirm Sarson's interpretation of the Declaration of Independence.

To me that's clear evidence that Sarson's interpretation of the Declaration distorts its original meaning as understood by Jefferson and others.  

That means that we can celebrate the Declaration of Independence today as originally understood by the American founders as a charter of human liberty and equality.

And we need not be distracted by Trump's celebration of himself.

Evolutionary Group Selection for Freedom Through Migration and Assimilation: Responding to Nicholas Wade

I have often argued that cultural group selection through migration and assimilation favors Lockean liberal regimes.  Human beings "vote with their feet" in that they tend to move from poorer, violent, and exploitative societies into richer, peaceful, and more just societies.  And thus immigration tends to promote the spread of ideas and institutions that favor prosperity, peace, and justice.  Beginning in the 18th century, classical liberal regimes based on Lockean political thought--like Great Britain and the United States--have attracted immigrants because of the prosperity, peace, and justice that liberal regimes promote.   

This explains why John Locke argued for England having a policy of open borders and general naturalization of immigrants.  Some people objected to Locke's position by claiming that immigrants would not be assimilated into English society.  Locke responded by saying that once immigrants are naturalized,

they are then in interest as much our own people as any.  The only odds is their language, which will be cured too in their children, and they be as perfect Englishmen as those that have been here ever since William the Conqueror's days and came over with him.  For 'tis hardly to be doubted but that most of even our ancestors were foreigners (1997, 325).

If immigrants do not speak English, that will impede their assimilation into English culture, but their children will speak English and thus become "perfect Englishmen."  After all, most Englishmen are descended from foreign ancestors.

Notice also that contrary to the claims of the illiberal nationalists, Lockean liberalism can recognize the importance of the national identities that distinguish one people from another, because here Locke recognizes the cultural identity of the English people as a distinct nation rooted in the English language and other cultural traditions that have emerged from the cultural history of England.

Evolutionary theorists--such as Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson--have seen that Locke was right about immigration, and that cultural group selection working through selective migration and assimilation has favored the spread of Lockean liberal culture around the world (Boyd & Richerson 2009; Richerson & Boyd 2008).  This confirms what I have argued in various posts about the evolutionary history of Lockean liberalism as symbolic niche construction.

But against this, Nicholas Wade warns--in his new book The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations--that when immigrants fail to assimilate into their new society, they create a cultural diversity that weakens the social cohesion necessary for any stable social order.

Social cohesion is inevitably weakened by any influx of people who don't share the socially bonding attributes of the residents, such as language, religion, and ethnicity.  And the weakening of social cohesion is deeply feared, even if at a level that many people cannot articulate, because it undermines the strength of a society and hence the chances of its members' survival (173).

Here Wade repeats one of the primary arguments made by nationalist conservatives like Yoram Hazony and J.D. Vance for why immigration needs to be severely restricted.

But where's the evidence that most immigrants cannot or will not assimilate and therefore threaten social cohesion?  Wade's only evidence for this is a study by Robert Putnam (2007).  Putnam wanted to study how the cultural diversity in the United States caused by immigration might affect "social capital" (defined as social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness).  He collected survey data from interviews of people living in 41 very different communities ranging from large cities like Los Angeles and Boston to small towns and rural areas like Yakima, Washington, and rural South Dakota.  People were asked "Do you trust the people in your neighborhood?"  He found that people living in ethnically homogeneous communities (like Lewiston, Maine) were more trusting of their neighbors than were people living in ethnically heterogeneous communities (like San Francisco).  He also found that people in ethnically diverse communities were less likely to volunteer to work on community projects than were people in ethnically homogeneous communities.

Putnam summarized his conclusions in a passage quoted by Wade:

Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television. . . . Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us (Putnam 2007:150-151; Wade 2025:174).

But notice Putnam's qualification suggested by the phrase "at least in the short run."  In fact, much of Putnam's paper is devoted to arguing that in the long run, "successful immigrant societies have overcome . . . fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities" (137).

Wade casually dismisses this side of Putnam's argument: "Though Putnam expressed the hope that in the long run the negative effects of diversity would disappear, his work provided a frank and rare description of the formidable problems raised by immigration" (174).  But Putnam didn't just express the "hope" that this could be done, because he surveyed some of the evidence from the history of American immigration during the period of almost open borders--from around 1820 to around 1920--that showed immigrants assimilating into American society.  Irish, Italian, and Polish Catholics, Russian Jews, and others were integrated into an American society that had once been a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP)-dominated society.  In the short run, the first generation of immigrants tended to "hunker down" in their own cultural enclaves, set apart from the dominant American culture.  But in the long run, the children and grandchildren of these first-generation immigrants assimilated into American culture or into a new more expansive American identity that could include Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Jewish Americans, and other hyphenated Americans.

Wade concedes that the many European immigrants--Irish, German, Southern, and Eastern Europeans--who arrived in America before World War I "assimilated, at least by the second generation, to their new community," and consequently there was "a high degree of cohesion" (179, 209).  "But cohesion has ebbed significantly over the last half century," Wade claims.  "Rising and more visible gaps in wealth, high fluxes of immigration with poor assimilation, and the advent of identity politics have stretched and torn the social fabric" (209).  Wade thus implies that over the past fifty years, the children of immigrants are no longer assimilating into American culture as they did a hundred years ago.

But Wade offers no evidence for this claim.  And in fact, there is lots of evidence against it.  For example, Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan (2022, 2024) have used historical US Census data to show that the socioeconomic assimilation of immigrants through upward mobility is just as possible for immigrants today as it was in the early 20th century.  In the late 19th and early 20th century, sons born to US-born parents in the 25th percentile of the income distribution (the income level below which 25 percent of individuals earn) rose to the 40th percentile as adults on average.  Most children of immigrants performed much better as adult earners--with children of immigrant Portuguese or Italian parents reaching the 60th percentile as adults.  A hundred years later, we see the same pattern.  Sons (or daughters) born in 1980 to US-born parents in the 25th percentile of the income distribution reach just above the 45th percentile (for sons) and 40th percentile (for daughters) as adults.  Children of immigrant parents do better than this.  Children of parents from Hong Kong, China, and India reach, on average, almost the 65th percentile as adults.  The second-generation of immigrants continue to assimilate into the American middle-class culture.

The most radical form of assimilation of immigrants is intermarriage across ethnic, racial, and religious boundaries (Drouhot and Nee 2019:181).  Intermarriage rates--immigrants marrying native Americans with different ethnic, racial, and religious identities--have been rising steadily since the 1980s in the United States.  Few Americans today remember the days in the 1950s when young men and women were expected to marry within their ethnic, racial, and religious groups.

Previously, I have written about the importance of assimilation through intermarriage for the Darwinian evolution of Indigenous Americans through genetic and cultural hybridization that has made America a multiethnic nation--or what Frederick Douglass called "the composite nation."

In his earlier book--A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History--Wade argued that while "races are a way station on the path through which evolution generates new species. . . . the forces of differentiation seem now to have reversed course due to increased migration, travel, and intermarriage" (71).

But now there's another question at issue here: what exactly is motivating these immigrants to undertake the extraordinary sacrifices that come with their efforts to immigrate to the United States, Canada, and the European nation-states?  Wade's answer is that they are attracted by "Western culture," which can be a "common culture" for "people of all ethnicities and cultures" (210).  But he doesn't specify the meaning of that "Western culture" that attracts so many immigrants.

Wade does point, however, to what Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have called the "inclusive institutions" achieved first in the British Glorious Revolution of 1688--overturning the "extractive institutions" of the oppressive regimes that had dominated human history for so long--as the highest development of Western culture (Wade 2014:148, 193-196; Wade 2025:98-100).  Those "inclusive institutions"--impartial rule of law, property rights, personal freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, and limited government--sound like Lockean liberalism to me.  

So when immigrants "vote with their feet" for Western culture, they're voting for the Lockean liberal social order.  That's what I would identify as evolutionary group selection for freedom through migration and assimilation.

REFERENCES

Abramitzky, Ran, and Leah Bouston. 2022. Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success. New York: PublicAffairs.

Abramitzky, Ran, and Leah Bouston. 2024. "Immigrants and Their Children Assimilate into U.S. Society and the U.S. Economy, Both in the Past and Today." PNAS Nexus, pgae344.

Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail. New York: Crown Publishing Group.

Boyd, Robert, and Peter Richerson. 2009. "Voting With Your Feet: Payoff Biased Migration and the Evolution of Group Beneficial Behavior." Journal of Theoretical Biology 257:331-339.

Drouhot, Lucas, and Victor Nee. 2019. "Assimilation and the Second Generation in Europe and America: Blending and Segregating Social Dynamics Between Immigrants and Natives." Annual Review of Sociology 45:177-199.

Locke, John. 1997. Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Putnam, Robert. 2007.  " E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century: The 2006 John Skytte Prize Lecture." Scandinavian Political Studies 30:137-174.

Richerson, Peter, and Robert Boyd. 2008. "The Evolution of Free Enterprise Values." In Paul Zak, ed, Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy, 107-141. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Wade, Nicholas. 2014. A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History. New York: Penguin Press.

Wade, Nicholas. 2025. The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations. New York: Harper.