1. Some quick points about essay 3
General Comment: Much if not all of the Enlightenment ideals originated from the desire to overthrow the Old Order. Those essays that start out with this, were generally better than those which did not.
Also, the Julian Ferry idea about “superior civilizing duty” does represent, to some extent, Big E values, but it was implemented by a little e mind set.

2. Big E vs Social Darwinism
In general there was not an explicitly enough separation between twisting “Enlightenment Ideals” from twisting Darwinism. The too really are not the same at all.
There are examples where the student states that the current world is “diametrically opposed” or “inherently opposed” to Big E ideals but no specific evidence is shown for this. Its not as black and white as this, and yes the real world has likely departed from Big E ideals in there purist form, it is not (yet) inherently opposed. To make the argument that it is, really requires specific examples. The best of which may be global inequity but still that is not strongly opposed by perhaps and unintended consequence of growth through owing personal property.

3. Hitler and Stalin
Yes these are the obvious examples but most students spend too many of their words on this and too few of their words on the American side:
Hitler – yeah let’s create the master race and I know what that looks like
Stalin – yeah let’s program the programmable members of society of become more cooperative.
America – Let’s have American businesses “fairly” compete so that there are winners and losers and ultimately and economic class system
The basic point here, not well addressed, is that all 3 of these have the “superior” and the “inferior”

4. Some Good and Interesting Connections
One of the principal contributions to a better society was the progress of technology from scientific advances that led to increases in efficiency and decreases in manual labor
Kant’s comments about instruction were linked to Stalin’s reprogramming attempts to create a better New Soviet Man
Hobbes says that people are innately “selfish, cruel and greedy” and this was well linked to Victor Lebow’s quote about the value of consumerism.
The historical success of mathematics and reductionism gave no reason to believe that there were problems that could not be solved with human reason. Immanuel Kant was a central figure in arguing that all human reasoning is what should be used to structure moral law, as human understanding is the source of the laws of nature.

5. Final thoughts
I don’t think that Big E really says much about the relationship between Humans and Nature
Evolution is more strongly driven by the need to adapt to changing ecosystems than it is to competition for resources (which of course can also change when the ecosystem changes).
Big E ideals does provide an example of systems thinking; little e implementation does not
If your gonna say this: One can identify if a policy follows the values of Big E by looking at who benefits from that policy then you better provide examples!