Whew! Man, you guys must have one mental arm with a bicep the size of a watermelon from that kind of orgiastic obfuscatory onanism.

eric—the NDY crew seem to understand that the argument in this case hasn’t been about Terri’s wishes, but about the substance of the decision. And they can see as clearly as anyone that a decision that the artificial provision of food and water to those who can’t survive without it is merely optional means that for very many disabled-but-not-dying members of the NDY crew, their survival is merely optional. And not just at their option.

His argument breaks down because he seems to think that all end of life issues for “liberals” are moral relativism and a slippery slope when none exists. If end of life decision was always realtive, then why not just allow people to commit sucide? Because a depressed person cannot rationally make that decision to end their life.

The point he misses is the fact that there is a “bright line” that he completly ignores. That bright line includes the current moral standards in the medical community and the courts. Both of these items push against pure relativism and insist a basic munimum standard for EOL discussions. Doctors would not help a depressed person commit sucide, nor would they tell a healthy adult with apendicitics not to take any extreme measure to save thier life. Both of these actions might be wanted by the family, but neither is moral. To say that an individual or proxy acting on their wishes, along with medical professionals and in extreme cases the courts cannot come to a rational and moral decision to end one life lacks a moral foundation.

The other group who doesn’t get this is the “Not Dead Yet” crew. They seem to equate letting a brain damaged woman carry out her wishes to not be kept alive to the cold bloded murder of disabled individuals. I just can’t see how they can draw that conclusion from the facts in this particular case.

It is become ever more clear that conservatives are trying to take the moral high ground in a sinking ship.

Well, what a generous way of putting it!

The moral force of the liberal argument is contingent on the moral seriousness of the individual actors, not on the rhetorical power of collective history and will.

I wish as always that people would look more often beyond the logic or illogic of the argument as if they were equations that may or may not perform the function ascribed to them (they won’t always) and examine them merely as thought and language.

This is the old contradiction of faith in a pluralistic society. It’s been talked over and over. Seeing life as a continuum is as much a sign of faith as seeing it as black and white. Th important distinction is not in absolute but political morality: does our respect for the opinions of others within our community supersede the obligations of our faith? If the society is to continue, one hopes it does.
This being said, the best response to Brooks is not to parse the internal logic of his arguments on this case but to expand an analysis.
Brooks is also an economic conservative and therefore an intellectual Bush supporter. Given Bush’s economic policies… etc. Is Brooks consistent across subjects?

Ronald Dworkin did a nice job on the abortion debate a couple of years ago, making the quite logical point that since most people who were otherwise opposed to abortion accept it in cases of rape and incest the debate is not about the absolute value of life- a fetus that is the product of a rape is no different in itself from one that is the result of consensual sex- but the sense among conservatives that the issue is not taken seriously enough. Conservatives want merely to enforce a moral seriousness. Those who believe in an absolute value, those who oppose abortion in all cases are a small minority (as are philosophers. and for the same reason.)

I don’t think it’s exactly like that, not consciously at least, but yes, it’s true, there is definitely a contradiction in that absolutism, a conflation of life with physical life, even without consciousness or brain development or activity. It is paradoxical from a religious point of view, because the physical is given absolute precedence over the spiritual dimension of life. Especially within Catholicism, that’s like turning an entire tradition on its head, with all its saints’ scorn of “the flesh”, refusal of nourishment, and ecstasy of dying in the grace of spiritual salvation. That seems to have been turned into the opposite extreme, seems the body has become all that matters for life. It just doesn’t make much sense, in the context of a belief in the transcedence of the soul.

What happened to the transcendent notion of life in religion, when “pro-lifers” equate life with the body, with matter?

There is a religious approach that believes that letting Terri Schiavo die, without artificially prolonging a life that is only physical, would mean letting her soul free to return to God – why would that belief be less valid than those who claim letting her die is a crime? Why wouldn’t it be more coherent? It seems to me it is.

I’m not good at talking of these things and I’m definitely not an expert, but that is one of the things that have been bugging me about this case. I don’t recognise what religion they’re talking about. See what this Jesuit theologian says in this interview on Newsweek:

Here’s the question I ask of these right-to-lifers, including Vatican bishops: as we enter into Holy Week and we proclaim that death is not triumphant and that with the power of resurrection and the glory of Easter we have the triumph of Christ over death, what are they talking about by presenting death as an unmitigated evil? It doesn’t fit Christian context. Richard McCormick, who was the great Catholic moral theologian of the last 25 years, wrote a brilliant article in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1974 called “To Save or Let Die.” He said there are two great heresies in our age (and heresy is a strong word in theology—these are false doctrines). One is that life is an absolute good and the other is that death is an absolute evil.

Meanwhile, what Christopher M. said: “Good sense!” (Though Singer and George do both teach at Princeton… would be interesting to know whether they can stand each others’ presence.)

So—if we’re sitting around shooting the shit about moral theory and Peter takes a strong utilitarian position combined with a theory of moral valence based on degree-of-consciousness, while Robby and John over there like some variant of Aquinas-inspired natural-law theory, and I happen to be a Kantian, well, we can surely all manage to stay friends. In fact, moral theory is so conceptually tricky that I wouldn’t even say Peter, Robby, & John were being unreasonable.

But then when Peter follows his utilitarianism & consciousness theories to their logical conclusion that it could be right to kill 100 babies if necessary to save 1000 adult chimpanzees—well, people are going to think he’s fucking nuts.

And when Robby & John’s natural-law theory leads them to the conclusion that homosexual sex is inherently contrary to human good, people in many circles are going to find them creepy.

You can see this as an argument for greater toleration of radical moral views—or you can see it as a Burkean argument against basing one’s moral positions primarily on an academic ethical theory. I tend toward the latter view (which, despite being Burkean, is quite compatible with a Rawlsian reflective-equilibrium approach).

As for homosexuality: yes, I think it’s true that if we got the human rights advocates who oppose death penalty, abortion, euthanasia, and war (the Church opposed, if we’ll recall, the war in Iraq) to recognize that gays are humans with an equal claim to share in all our rights, we’d be in much better shape.

It would start an intriguing discussion, to my mind, if someone in the House or Senate put forward a bill (or simultaneous bills) that swapped, say, France’s more stringent abortion policy with a civil-union bill that included the same rights for all domestic unions and left marriage for individual religious denominations to hash out for themselves (especially if this latter bill included discrimination regulations similar to others on the books).

I suppose I agree to some degree with you. And I don’t know George personally (nor would I want to, I think.) If you read his remarks on homosexuality, they drip with venom of an extremely unpleasant sort. It’s quite clear he wants to enforce his substantive moral views (he’s one of the authors of the more awful version of the federal anti-homosexual marriage ammendments). He’s not someone I could be friends with- no more than I could be friends with a viscious racist. He doesn’t just think homosexuality is wrong, or (despite much evidence) that homosexuals can’t be happy- he wants homosexuality to be illegal, and for the laws to be enforced. This is what’s unbearable about the man. I still hold out home that we can form an over-lapping consensus for most of the country, but I don’t see how Robert George can be in it, and more than can Farwell.