March 26, 2005
REALITY AND IMPOTENCE
Morality and Reality (David Brooks, New York Times, March 26th, 2005)
The core belief that social conservatives bring to cases like Terri Schiavo's is that the value of each individual life is intrinsic. The value of a life doesn't depend upon what a person can physically do, experience or achieve. The life of a comatose person or a fetus has the same dignity and worth as the life of a fully functioning adult.Social conservatives go on to say that if we make distinctions about the value of different lives, if we downgrade those who are physically alive but mentally incapacitated, if we say that some people can be more easily moved toward death than others, then the strong will prey upon the helpless, and the dignity of all our lives will be diminished.
The true bright line is not between lives, they say, but between life and death. The proper rule, as Robert P. George of Princeton puts it, should be, "Always to care, never to kill."
The weakness of the social conservative case is that for most of us, especially in these days of advanced medical technology, it is hard to ignore distinctions between different modes of living. In some hospital rooms, there are people living forms of existence that upon direct contact do seem even worse than death.[...]
The core belief that social liberals bring to cases like Ms. Schiavo's is that the quality of life is a fundamental human value. They don't emphasize the bright line between life and death; they describe a continuum between a fully lived life and a life that, by the sort of incapacity Terri Schiavo has suffered, is mere existence.
On one end of that continuum are those fortunate enough to be able to live fully - to decide and act, to experience the world and be free. On the other end are those who, tragically, can do none of these things, and who are merely existing.
Social liberals warn against vitalism, the elevation of physical existence over other values. They say it is up to each individual or family to draw their own line to define when life passes to mere existence.
The central weakness of the liberal case is that it is morally thin. Once you say that it is up to individuals or families to draw their own lines separating life from existence, and reasonable people will differ, then you are taking a fundamental issue out of the realm of morality and into the realm of relativism and mere taste.[...]
What I'm describing here is the clash of two serious but flawed arguments. The socially conservative argument has tremendous moral force, but doesn't accord with the reality we see when we walk through a hospice. The socially liberal argument is pragmatic, but lacks moral force.
No wonder many of us feel agonized this week, betwixt and between, as that poor woman slowly dehydrates.
All across America, millions of decent folks have responded to the story of Terri Schiavo by allowing their moral compasses to be deflected to issues far removed from her actual case. Rather than confront head-on the plight of a 41-year-old disabled and uncommunicative, but sentient and unsuffering, woman in the care of a financially-interested, emotionally-remote ex-spouse who has a new family and has spent seven years trying to end her life against the wishes of parents and siblings who wish desperately to care for her, they have allowed themselves to be diverted to the plight of the ill and elderly on life-support in hopeless and painful circumstances. Believing that they themselves would wish their families to end the pointless prolongation privately and lovingly, they are alarmed, indeed terrified, by the spectre of Tom Delay and a gaggle of chanting Christians moving in to rudely displace their loved ones and condemn them to endless degrading years on a respirator.
Mr. Brooks does not seem to understand how his philosophical equivocations are tantamount to ceding the debate to the same liberals he so effectively skewers. He argues like the good citizen who is appalled by late-term abortions, but is deflected by the first poignant story of a raped teenager. He is like the neighbour who watches a friend’s family dissolve cruelly through adultery and can only react by musing philosophically on how complicated family life is and how one never knows what is really going on in a marriage. He is like the citizen who is appalled by teenage prostitution, but can think of no solution that won't unfairly criminalize youth. Like Mr. Brooks, many such people are good souls who truly feel agonized. But, also as with Mr. Brooks, their agony is largely wasted and self-indulgent, for it does not contribute to any justice or resolution or moral advance. It simply congratulates itself on its subtle humanity and acquiesces in whatever is going on around it. In this case, can there be any greater examples of moral vacuity than all those citizens who profess to be horribly anguished by Mrs. Schiavo slow death, but who have nothing to say beyond the importance of having a living will?
The greatest obstacle facing those who argue for decency amd morality is not the concerted opposition of committed and philosophically-consistent secular relativists. It is the widespread modern belief that moral issues are always so complicated that firm convictions (and consequent actions) are by definition simplistic, harsh and suspect. They can be. But not always. And not this time.
Posted by Peter Burnet at March 26, 2005 9:04 AMPeter: excellent critique of the Brooks article, and of the mushy moral "reasoning" which afflicts so much of our world.
Posted by: Mike Morley at March 26, 2005 9:33 AM"In some hospital rooms, there are people living forms of existence that upon direct contact do seem even worse than death."
Ah, yes . . . but "seem" to whom.
I'll take a stab at defending Brooks tho.
Of course the equivolance between the conservative and liberal sides is crap but . . . he's at least presenting the conservative case to the liberals who read the NYT. (Think of it as a missionary's first sermon to the savages who he's just convinced not to kill and eat him.)
If only a handful of his liberal readers are forced actually to come to grips with the conservative argument, and with the consequences of their own nasty little beliefs, then it's a victory (of sorts).
(Doesn't mean Brooks shouldn't be criticized.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at March 26, 2005 10:11 AMIncidentally, RealClearPolitics posts a good piece today on all this:
Whose Life Is Worth Living?
By Orson Scott Card
Jim, don't be fooled. There is no weakness in the conservative case, except that Brooks says there is.
A man like that agonizes only over himself -- and does so in the NY Times so everyone can see how agonized he really is. "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 6:1)
Posted by: Randall Voth at March 26, 2005 11:04 AMAs C.S. Lewis noted, a long face is not a moral disinfectant. Brooks has chosen to stand on both sides of the fence, thereby castrating himself.
His comment about hospices (and, by extension, nursing homes) is certainly true, but it does not indict the 'conservative' viewpoint, but the modern one. Why has nursing home care grown so much while other forms of institutional care have decreased? The answer is pretty easy to see, but Brooks probably won't touch it. Too much moral force for him.
Posted by: jim hamlen at March 26, 2005 11:41 AMI'd like to point out an argument that appears in two forms in Brooks's piece, an argument that is a total crock but is being widely bandied about, in other settings usually as a taunt at Christians.
First, in his critique of the "social conservative" view:
"Moreover, most of us believe in transcendence, in life beyond this one. Therefore why is it so necessary to cling ferociously to this life? Why not allow the soul to ascend to whatever is in store for it?"
When he says "why is it so necessary to cling ferociously to this life?" the question is addressed to the dying person. That, of course, is a legitimate question. If I believe in heaven, there will be limits to the ferociousness with which it will be appropriate for me to cling to this life. But in the next sentence, we get a shift: "Why not allow the soul to ascend to whatever is in store for it?" This question is not addressed to the dying, but to those who are not dying but have power over the dying. In other words: "If Terry is going to go to heaven, why should we worry if someone kills her?" This is a stupid question: we should worry about it because killing the innocent is evil. It is one thing to ask how the prospect of heaven affects my personal calculation of moral and physical costs in the face of death; it is another thing entirely to ask how the prospect of heaven affects my duty towards the helpless.
The same equivocation is repeated in his exposition of the "social liberal" view:
"Social liberals warn against vitalism, the elevation of physical existence over other values."
Here too, two issues are confused. It's one question whether or to what extent I should elevate my physical existence over other values, particularly if the other values affect others. But it is a very different question to suggest that someone else's life need not be elevated over other values which would benefit me. That I should accept death for the good of others is one thing; that Terri should be killed for the sake of the values that would accrue thereby to Michael is quite another.
Social liberalism is the lust for arbitrary power hiding under endless tangles of carefully tended conceptual confusion
Posted by: DSY at March 26, 2005 11:58 AMPeter - good discussion. Brooks's discussion is weakened by his failure to locate the Christian point of view in its larger philosophical framework. The commandment "Do not kill" defines killing an innocent person as an "intrinsic evil" that must never be performed by anyone for any good purposes. Brooks, like so many liberals today, acts as if the only conceivable moral philosophy is utilitarianism, so that consequences determine the goodness of every act.
When liberals criticize the "elevation of physical existence over other values," they are in fact criticizing the Ten Commandments. They are saying, "Yes, 'do not kill' is a value, but so is getting rid of a brain-damaged nuisance." The heart of the matter is their rejection of the concept of intrinsic evils.
For Christians and faithful Jews, our moral code is like our Constitution: it has enumerated powers and proscribed powers. We know when we can kill and when we can't without need for a deep exploration of values and consequences. For liberals, the moral code is like the 'living Constitution': it has no enumerated powers and no proscribed powers; it is made up as we go, and shifting values and circumstances can change the answers.
Between these two philosophical approaches, it is hard to find common ground on cases like Terri's.
Posted by: pj at March 26, 2005 12:59 PMI might add that this illustrates how irreligious conservatives like Brooks, while valuable political allies, become unreliable in times of stress. They are always 'betwixt and between.'
Posted by: pj at March 26, 2005 1:09 PMLibertarianism is what is killing Terri Schiavo.
Posted by: Vince at March 26, 2005 1:15 PMRandall, yes of course, but where did I say I saw weakness in the conservative case? I don't. I just wanted to point out that Brooks is addressing a very different audience than you or I.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at March 26, 2005 2:18 PM