Many of the radicals who now control the Republican Party reject geological and biological evidence for evolution.

But many of the same radicals believe in the survival of the fittest. This thinking became known in the 1870s as Social Darwinism.

It became a kind of economic philosophy to justify anything-goes capitalism in the decades when our nation was becoming an industrial powerhouse.

John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust ruthlessly killed off competing businesses from Titusville to Texas.

Women and children toiled in sweatshops and mills for nickels and dines. There was no Social Security disability compensation for a worker’s arm mangled in machinery, not to mention unemployment compensation.

Union organizers got their heads broken. An ironworker could go and bargain on his own with U.S. Steel. And if you were middle class and had enough money to put in a bank, there was no federal deposit insurance to rescue your cash when the bank went belly up, as they frequently did.

This was the law of nature! The worth of the individual. “Superior” individuals would prosper. “Inferior” individuals would fall by the wayside, as they deserved.

The Republican Party directed by people like vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan intones that mantra of 19th century Social Darwinism: Tough luck.

John N. Rippey Zion