A Culture of Strife

Here’s how to win any debate: just frame its terms. Thus it’s not about abortion. It’s about being “pro life” (making your opponent “pro death”) or “pro choice” (making your opponent “pro-enslaving women”). Extra points for defining your opponent implicitly, not openly, which gives you plausible deniability about your unfairness. Of course once you’ve framed the debate this way you can kiss rational discourse goodbye. Which is the goal, actually. Social conservatives have mastered this art form. I recall reading a letter to the editor about Terry Schiavo when that debate was the sole topic. The writer framed the debate as being between valuing human life intrinsically (i.e., infinitely precious) or instrumentally (valuable only as long as it’s useful).

The implication--again, extra points for not saying it out loud: we “Culture of Death” types are like the Nazis euthanizing retarded kids. Of course life is too messy to cram into such black and white categories. And I doubt even the letter writer is true to his beliefs. If he were, he’d be advocating unilateral disarmament. Better to be a live slave, right? Plus he’d be pushing for a national speed limit of, say, 20mph. That would wreck the economy but save lots of lives, both useful and useless.

This missivist longs for an “objective, fixed standard” that overrides our personal wishes about our lives, our dignity, our privacy--and our spouses’ role in speaking for us when we can’t. Instead we’d live under divine rules. Just like they do in Iran.