THIS IS FREE SILVER COUNTRY

William Jennings Bryan's hatred for capitalism, vocal anti-imperialism, and support for women's suffrage is unusually forward-thinking for a Democratic Reconstruction-era politician.

Obligatory, Bryan was supportive of Jim Crow legislation, but his position on race relations isn't all that clear-cut or consistent throughout his lifetime because he was a prominent anti-eugenicist later in life. Much of his motivation for prosecuting in the Scopes Monkey Trial was to oppose the eugenics that very much defined the popular (mis)understanding of evolution at the time. Hindsight does make Bryan's anti-science charades look foolish, but it also tells us that the mistakes of the American scientific community in the early 20th century contributed a lot to the rise of fascism in America and abroad. Was he not right to have misgivings? It doesn't absolve him, but I don't think it would be fair to call him a clown.

Chuds sure as hell haven't picked Bryan up as some historical figure to champion, and nor have Evangelicals due to him being too obviously left-wing on most issues. Does he have too much baggage to bother with? There isn't much of a modern equivalent to his politics so there can't be much harm either way.

  • cilantrofellow [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    That’s really interesting I never heard that perspective on scopes. I always figured he became like a born again or something. Is there a write up of that somewhere?

    • Melon [she/her,they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      this is from his closing statements that he prepared for the trial, but his declining health kept him from saying all this in person nvm the defense gave up and asked for a guilty verdict before closing statements were made, and here's the link

      Darwin speaks with approval of the savage custom of eliminating the weak so that only the strong will survive, and complains that "we civilized men do our utmost to check the process of elimination." How inhuman such a doctrine as this! He thinks it injurious to "build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick" or to care for the poor. Even the medical men come in for criticism because they "exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment." And then note his hostility to vaccination because it has "preserved thousands who, from a weak constitution would, but for vaccination, have succumbed to smallpox!" All of the sympathetic activities of civilized society are condemned because they enable "the weak members to propagate their kind."

      There's a whole lot of God and Christianity stuff too, but Bryan does have a valid point here. Darwin wasn't good at making sure his work wouldn't get hijacked for nefarious things.