Comments on: Aborting for less violence is like bombing for peace… http://www.turntheclockforward.org/2007/10/aborting-for-less-violence-is-like-bombing-for-peace/ Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:04:23 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Jonathan http://www.turntheclockforward.org/2007/10/aborting-for-less-violence-is-like-bombing-for-peace/#comment-3010 Jonathan Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:34:40 +0000 http://www.turntheclockforward.org/2007/10/aborting-for-less-violence-is-like-bombing-for-peace/#comment-3010 "Drug trafficking — very little of it done by newborn babies, it turns out — is rampant. But none of that is the problem. That’s just how the world works. Fertile women and their children — that’s the real cause of violence. Or at least, maybe you can get enough people to believe that. Label those kids “misfits” and kill them." I think we should be careful not to base our Consistent Life Ethics on outcomes. Do I believe the "freakonomics" argument that abortion lowers crime? I don't want it to be true, but it could be! Even if certain types of killing do make the people we are talking to safer we still want them to stand against it. We want people to be committed to non-violence because it is right, even when it isn't safe. Even if the Hiroshima bomb saved lives, even if capital punishment prevents crime, even if euthanizing the severely disabled does ease burdens on society, even if racial profiling gets drugs off the streets, even if torture prevents terrorist bombings, even if aborting poor babies prevents crimes --these things are inherently wrong; wrong even if society as a whole benefits from them. Violence is an excellent way of enforcing peace and stability. Violence works. Our job (a difficult one) is to show people a better way. Forgiveness and love are better than violence, but people have to seek peace because it is good not because it is effective. (We Americans have a bad habit of mistaking efficiency for goodness.) We often point out that if everyone practiced non-violence the world would be very safe. While this is true in theory, there has never been a fully non-violent society this side of heaven, and in this world non-violent people often end up nailed to crosses. Non-violence wins the hearts and minds of people not by proving better outcomes, but by living out a truth that makes them want to follow this truth despite any danger. “Drug trafficking — very little of it done by newborn babies, it turns out — is rampant. But none of that is the problem. That’s just how the world works. Fertile women and their children — that’s the real cause of violence. Or at least, maybe you can get enough people to believe that. Label those kids “misfits” and kill them.”

I think we should be careful not to base our Consistent Life Ethics on outcomes. Do I believe the “freakonomics” argument that abortion lowers crime? I don’t want it to be true, but it could be! Even if certain types of killing do make the people we are talking to safer we still want them to stand against it. We want people to be committed to non-violence because it is right, even when it isn’t safe.

Even if the Hiroshima bomb saved lives, even if capital punishment prevents crime, even if euthanizing the severely disabled does ease burdens on society, even if racial profiling gets drugs off the streets, even if torture prevents terrorist bombings, even if aborting poor babies prevents crimes –these things are inherently wrong; wrong even if society as a whole benefits from them. Violence is an excellent way of enforcing peace and stability. Violence works.

Our job (a difficult one) is to show people a better way. Forgiveness and love are better than violence, but people have to seek peace because it is good not because it is effective. (We Americans have a bad habit of mistaking efficiency for goodness.) We often point out that if everyone practiced non-violence the world would be very safe. While this is true in theory, there has never been a fully non-violent society this side of heaven, and in this world non-violent people often end up nailed to crosses.

Non-violence wins the hearts and minds of people not by proving better outcomes, but by living out a truth that makes them want to follow this truth despite any danger.

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