I had better things to do* last night than watch the Democratic town hall, so I skipped it. I was intrigued to discover, though, that Martin O'Malley had decided to separate himself from the pack—currently comprised of a non-entity (him), a socialist (Bernie Sanders), and a ruthless pragmatist who believes you were made to be ruled (Clinton)—by calling for Darwinian natural selection to take place amongst the lower classes in order to weed out those who are unfit to survive.
At least, that's my takeaway from the following lines:
Let me talk about our economy. Prior to President Obama's good work, and he's done great work, saved us from a second great depression, from the recklessness and greed on Wall Street, our nation's creating jobs again, and we're the only species on the planet without full employment. Jobs are important. Without jobs, nothing works well.
This is a kind of weird thing to say. After all, outside of, say, circus animals and police dogs, animals don't really have "jobs." And even those jobs aren't really "jobs" in the traditional sense of labor exchanged for renumeration; they're just beasts who have been trained to perform tricks of varying quality/importance.
The only "employment" that animals have, really, is to survive and pass on their genetic material. The animal kingdom has "full employment" in the sense that if you don't do your job—that is, find whatever food you prefer and consume it—you die. O'Malley's preferred social structure tends to be nasty, brutish, and short.
Now, obviously, as a pro-death conservative, I'm all for this radical departure from basic societal norms. "No work, no food" sounds like a relatively just system. I don't know that I'd take it quite so far as O'Malley—animals are jerks, for the most part—but hey, sometimes you have to suggest an extreme idea in order to get a more moderate one enacted. That being said, I'm kind of surprised that a nominal liberal like O'Malley wants to emulate the animal kingdom. I'd suspect a Darwinian survive-or-die candidate would be backed by the Koch brothers, not 2 percent (or so) of white, moderate liberals.
I guess it's a pretty solid way to set yourself apart from the pack, though.
In order: put my baby to bed, watch the second episode of The X-Files reboot, and finish Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a six-and-a-half-year-old video game. I stand by my decision.