Political Might is not (the same thing as being) Right

My mind has been turning in recent weeks to the situation in Europe, where democratically elected governments are being charged by their constituencies to spend more money, increasing the drain on the public purse in a climate of contraction and economic decline.  And to Egypt, where the people have been voting for more sharia, and more radical Islam.  There poverty and starvation will be the result; and in Europe there will be societal breakdown and growing civil conflict as people struggle to survive with inflated expectations in failing economies. 

Is democracy always a Good Thing?  Governments are as ‘good’ as the people who elect them. If a nation chooses to put their heads in the sand, they will elect politicians without vision.

I have also been reflecting that a generation raised with a belief in their entitlement to prosperity and progress —as is the case in much of the West—will not do failure, restraint, lack and poverty well.  Their demise could be ugly as they give way to those who are leaner, hungrier, and therefore more reality-based.

Also, if a nation has taught itself that the will of the people must always be right, both morally and prudentially, and that the ‘might’ of the ballot box provides a moral mandate, as well as a political one, then such a nation is at risk of losing their spiritual and moral compass: “We voted for it, so it must be good”.  Hitler’s democratic election to power and mass popular appeal did not make his vision righteous.  If it is true that thousands of individuals in western societies find cannibalism somehow appealing (see here), this does not make their preference a “minority right”.

The fact that freedom to choose things for oneself is a human right does not guarantee that when people make choices they will be morally “right”,  even when exercised in vast numbers through the ballot box. 

Political success is not a mark of being in the right.  Part of the Christian calling is to speak truth to power—including the power of the ballot box.   We must be courageous to speak out on the issues facing our nation, even if what we have to say runs against the tide of popular opinion.

There are dark and challenging days ahead for the nations, with storm clouds of rolling economic collapses and moral disorientation gathering overhead.  This is not an easy era to be born into.

All the more reason to be clear and bold about what we believe in, and what Christ has called us to stand for, lest by failing to stand, we fall.

Dr Richard Scott

I was interested to read of the case of UK GP Richard Scott,  from Margate, Kent, with 28 years experience as a doctor, who has been issued with an official warning and is currently under investigation by the General Medical Council following a complaint that he shared his faith with a patient during a consultation.

http://www.christianconcern.com/cases/dr-richard-scott

"After-Birth Abortion"

Today the Age newspaper reported on an article published by two Melbourne academics on the ethics of killing new born babies.  The article,  in the Journal of Medical Ethics, was entitled "After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?"

What a perfect example of Orwellian language corrupting thought: killing new born babies is not 'infanticide' but 'after-birth abortion'. 

However it does seem that the entirely serious academics made a rational, reasonable  point:   a foetus in the womb is 'morally equivalent' to a new-born.  One might have thought they were pro-lifers.  But no, their position is reportedly built on the acceptability of late-term abortion: if you accept the premise that abortion is ethical, and there is moral equivalence between a newborn and a foetus, then the family's interests should override those of the newborn, and under the appropriate circumstances, a newborn baby should be killed too.  No doubt for psychosocial reasons, as can happen with the unborn in Victoria up to 40 weeks.

Let the adult collective decide who among the little people should be considered an 'unperson'.

I found the Age's spin in reporting this story to be macabre.  What they considered newsworthy was not that academics were promoting the (idea of) killing of newborn children for psychosocial reasons, but the death threats the academics reported.  Hence the Age's headline "Abortion paper lead to death threats'.   According to the Age, the academic paper was not about infanticide, but 'abortion'.  Because killing babies after they are born is not murder, but abortion.  Not killing, but just another form of termination.

A very different title for the article could have been:  "Infanticide paper says killing newborns OK".  However the Age decided not to present this to the public as a story about sober proposals by academics employed from the public purse to kill children, but about threats to academics.  Babies to be killed at the convenience of those older than them?  Not half so newsworthy as threats to the life of adult academics.

The academics found the threats offensive and called the police.  Quite understandable.  No-one likes death threats.  But if babies could call the police, would they not be asking for the academics to be arrested for threatening their lives in their publication? 

This raises an interesting question: from the worldview of the Age newspaper, for which class(es) of human persons, whether they exist inside or outside the womb, should it be lawful, rational and reasonable for academics, writing in the sober prose of prestigious journals, to argue for their termination?   

What a morally wobbly world.  Will not our  successors in future generations contemplate all we have achieved in the way of progress, and, reflecting among other things upon our abuse of language, weep bitterly over our moral state?

The Wholly Innocent, by Bruce Dawes

I never walked abroad in air
I never saw the sky
Nor knew the sovereign touch of care
Nor looked into an eye.

I never chose, nor gave consent
Nor voted on my fate
Unseen, I came, unseen I went
Too early and too late

This was my life-line trust
As absolute as blood
Now down in the bucket thrust
Anonymous as mud

Oh you within whose God-like power
Lies to so decide
Remember me when, some late hour
Talks turn to genocide

For I was part of that doomed race
Whose death-cell was the womb
But who can clear a bloody space
And call it living room

I never had a name or cried
That central cry "I am"
But in a world-wide shambles died
Defenceless as a lamb

Remember me next time you
Rejoice at sun or star
I would have loved to see them too
I never got that far.

The right side of history

I was interested to read in a recent article (here) from the Australian that the phrase 'the right side of history' has been growing in popularity.  For example President Obama has claimed that American foreign policy during the so-called Arab spring is on the 'right side of history'.

I didn't agree with Frank Furedi's analysis of the phenomenon:  this has absolutely nothing to do with a resurgent belief in Fate.  Yet the observation is an interesting one all the same.

When people speak about the 'right side of history' they are using a moral rhetorical device.  They are saying 'I am in the right because history will judge me to have been correct.'   This argument seems to acknowledge that when someone is in the midst of an issue it can be hard to know what is right or wrong, because as history is being made, it is hard to know what to do.  However eventually the benefit of hindsight will bring moral clarity and at some time in the future people will come to a consensus about what was the right decision, and they will be right.  The 'right side of history' is the side which people some time in the future will uphold as correct,

There could also be a more pragmatic view of morality embedded in this rhetorical flourish.  This is the sense that there will be a 'winning' side who will get to write the history, and if you make the right choice now, you will find yourself on that winning side, and those who write history will look more kindly on your contributions and think better of you.

For example, many British people supported Chamberlain's appeasement stance at the time, but 'history' ruled against Chambelain, both in terms of a moral judgement – Chamberlain's 'peace in our time'  slogan came to be destested as a grotesque deception – and because the opposing position represented by Churchill won out politically and militarily.  Appeasement did not win WWII.

As another example, most British politicians at the end of the 18th century supported the slave trade.  This was a popular, mainstream view at the time, but 'history' has rejected it as abhorrent.

The phrase 'the right side of history' seems to presuppose a belief in progress, that people in the future will know best, because they will be morally more enlightened.  It also seems to presuppose that a stable consensual view of history will emerge as the 'correct' one.  Not true.  Historical perspectives shift and things thought admirable in one era will be detested in another. 

The phrase also acknowledges a degree of moral confusion and uncertainty, that people find it hard right now to know what is right and wrong.  Surely moral uncertainty is part of the spirit of our age.  The person who uses the phrase is claiming that despite this uncertainty, their views will win the day.  "Trust me - sometime in the future people will come to see that I did the right thing."

There is, it seems to me,  an element of cowardice and moral surrender in the phrase, with its overtones of 'winner takes all' virtue.  We should not do what is right just because it is right, but only because future generations will find it to be right.  Does this mean that if the Third Reich had won WWII, they would have been on the 'right side of history', and Hitler's genocidal policies would have been judged to have been virtuous?  Is that all that morality consists of  – the judgement of history?

Surely this is a desperate rhetoric, the forlorn cry of a lost and confused generation, without any moral compass of its own, which is desperately scrambling to second-guess the moral judgement of future generations in an attempt to find some point of certainty.    Is this all we are left with as the foundation of morality:  if our grandchildren will only think well of us, all will be well.  Such rhetoric plays on people's fears of being shamed, but that is a hopeless basis for distinguishing right from wrong.