| | Assumptions --
1. I believe that most philosophy is rationalization of emotional opinions. We believe what we do for some reasons and then justify those beliefs for other reasons.
2. I also believe that no one really knows "most people" or even many (if any) other people. You only know yourself inside.
3. Finally, I grant that 2. shows that 1. might only apply to me.
Argument
While I recoil at the murder of the infant and Dean's defense of it, stepping back and thinking it through makes his arguments no less horrid than the defenses of war that parade through here. Killing innocents, killing Islamo-fascists, killing enemy invaders, invading other nations where other people are killed... killing people who threaten you on the street, killing... killing... killing.... And we call that rational discourse.
In Dean's chilling assertions I find an element of my own legal theory which I find hard to reconcile with other facts that I claim to have perceived: what's the point of punishment? My theory is based on restitution, redress, and restoration. None of that applies very well in a murder. Tomorrow night, in my class in "Evidence and Procedure" we are having a mock trial at the actual district court because the presiding judge is our professor. My role is to prosecute a teenager whose Suzuki Samurai rolled over and killed a passenger who was not wearing a seatbelt. (That and other elements are more or less balanced to make the mock trial useful to all participants. In another, I play the role of a police investigator who has a personal relationship with the accused.) In that case, I am going to argue that while the defendent has her life ahead of her, the victim is dead.
Some here argue that the state has a compelling interest in the life of a human only after the umbilical chord is cut, even though that human has only marginally more attributes than the moment before.
Luke -- who is not a parent; as Dean is not -- claims that a baby "values its own life" to some extent. Silly as that sounds, how, then, do we judge the anti-abortionist filmclip a fetus seeking to avoid the suction needle?
On the other hand, fans of the cartoon 300, will recognize the parental right to infanticide. This goes back to the wilds. Mother birds push the unfit from the nest. This is deep within us, who and what we are as beings with a specific nature.
... but then, so is killing... and we make that wrong.
Why?
Maybe if you anger someone else enough to make them want to kill you, then you deserve to die. After all, your death would only be a proactive retaliation, would it not?
Personally, I think not, but I am willing to follow the axioms and theorems of Objectivism wherever they lead... not that I would "stay" there, but I would like to know the ends for which these means are being applied.
Applied by whom?
As a mother, Hong Zhang has a different worldview than Dean, who is not a father. Both use the same philosophy to justify different opinions. The law of non-contradiction requires that one (or both) of them be wrong. Or is that the case?
"Would you like fries with that?" If all choices are moral choices, then, the choice to supersize your order should be arguable from the law of identity and someone who does (or does not) supersize their fries is moral (or im).
|
|
