"Within
groups, selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups
of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals." (David Sloan
Wilson)
“Charles Darwin
himself argued for group selection. He postulated that moral men
might not do any better than immoral men but that tribes of moral men
would certainly “have an immense advantage” over fractious bands
of pirates.” Steve Mirsky
"Individual versus
group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of
virtue and sin, among the members of a society." E.O Wilson
Uncourageous
and dishonest scholars have interpreted the morality of the U.S.
Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as mainly promoting
equality, but the Founders understood that the main symbol of
American life was the common good, individualism was not the main
symbol. And the common good relates to group selection.
Historical
life is
biological life and biological life is the foundation of human
nature, and human nature is being kin-centered, gender defined,
age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric,
even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group
selection as the primary
unit of successful
selection.
Modern
liberal and neoconservative intellectuals (and even many real
conservatives) do not admit that human nature is at root biased
toward kin and ethnic group (although some of them, like Leo Strauss
promote their own group, however subtlety, over other groups) even
while claiming to speak the “universal” truth in promoting an
“American creed” or a “propositional nation” of universal
"reason," which is in fact biased against the Germanic or
Anglo-Saxon roots of the American order.
Did
Strauss have a bias against traditional conservatism because he
feared the rise of a future volkish German-type revolution and he
therefore emphasized his propositional nation over (volkish)
conservatism? If he did have such a bias it is a bias that a great
philosopher should not have had. It is a bias that probably led to
the marauding neoconservatives trampling over the traditions of other
nations.
The
common good-group selection morality of the Founding Fathers connects
with real
kin and ethnic-centered human nature. If human nature was allowed to
be what it is, it would naturally lead to regionalism, localism,
general conservative values, eventually ethnostates, and finally an
ethnopluralism of ethnostates for all groups, black, white, brown,
yellow, or red, with each ethnostate protected from marauding
imperialists, global businesses, supremacists, Marxists, etc., and
defended by a defensive federalism. An ethnopluralism of ethnostates
could be established legally in the United States with our
constitutional separation of powers and states.