Alvaro Vargas Llosa makes the case:
Herein should lie Darwin’s appeal to the right: The English naturalist gave scientific validity to the revolutionary idea that order can be spontaneous, neither designed by nor beholden to an all-powerful authority. The struggle for existence that drives natural selection according to Darwin has nothing predetermined about it. In fact, he maintained that the presence of certain habits, values and institutions, including religion–themselves part of man’s adaptation to the environment–can impact evolution. The instinct of sympathy, for instance, drives some stronger members of the human species to help weaker ones, thereby mitigating the struggle for existence.
It is fascinating that conservatives who advocate for a spontaneous order–the free market–in political economy and decry social engineering as a threat to progress and civilization should resent Darwin’s overwhelming case for the idea that order can design itself.
But those people are not conservatives. They’re Christianists. To a conservative mind versed in Burke and Oakeshott and Hayek, and not corrupted by fundamentalist neurosis, Darwin is an obvious ally.
(Painting: HMS Beagle in the seaways of Tierra del Fuego, painting by Conrad Martens during the voyage of the Beagle (1831-1836), from The Illustrated Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. )
The Dish 
