Lying for Life

Live Action is a Pro-Life group that went undercover to see what they could dig up about Planned Parenthood, an abortion provider. The Live Action actors pretended to be a pimp and prostitute as they asked the Planned Parenthood employee if she could help them obtain abortions for teenage prostitutes. Shockingly, the employee provides them with the information.

The debate in the broader community is whether this is an isolated case of a Planned Parenthood employee gone AWOL or just a typical day at the office at your local abortion provider. But there is an even more interesting argument going on within the Pro-Life movement about the means employed to obtain this information: Is lying a justifiable means to save the lives of the unborn? Is lying always wrong or are there exceptional cases in which it is justified? Academics have lined up on both sides of the issue:

A Moral Absolute

Robert George

Christopher Tollefsen

Carson Holloway

Admits of Exceptions

Peter Kreeft

Hadley Arkes

Joseph Bottum

Janet Smith

The debate reveals a tension between two necessary themes in any sound moral philosophy:

1) Good guys stick to their principles; bad guys violate them. If the good guys abandon their principles at the first sign of trouble, then there is no longer a clear line between right and wrong. This point is illustrated nicely in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. In the interrogation scene, the Joker tells Batman that he will force him to break whatever rule or moral code he lives by. To kill Batman is not enough; he must be corrupted. The Joker employs this same strategy with Harvey Dent. Batman understands this which is why he prevents Dent from torturing someone. Dent must be beyond reproach. The Joker ultimately succeeds in the case of Dent but fails when it comes to Gotham City as a whole. He thinks people are principled as matter of convenience and will drop them when the going gets rough. The boat experiment in which two groups of people are given the choice to either kill or be killed is supposed to prove this point, but he turns out to be wrong. The people would rather die than commit such an evil deed.

2) Statesmanship requires latitude which absolutes hinder. Principles must be flexible for those who participate in the political arena. To rigidly hold onto abstract principles in such cases is doctrinaire, for it fails to take into account practical difficulties. This is not an endorsement of relativism because principles are not being denied altogether. It is just saying that theoretical principles must to be applied to concrete situations which requires the virtue of prudence. The prudential application of a principle might require it to be modified, adapted, or only partially realized in a given situation. Think of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons. His principled stand against the tyrant Henry VIII does not exclude his prudence when it comes to avoiding death. He is both a wise serpent and an innocent dove.

The Natural Law tradition is aware of this tension which is why it places moral precepts in either primary or secondary categories. Primary precepts are absolute and brook no exceptions. For example, murder, defined narrowly as the “deliberate taking of innocent human life” is always wrong. Secondary precepts are generally wrong, but admit of exceptions. Aquinas lists stealing as a secondary precept because private property is not absolute; the goods of the earth ultimately belong to mankind in common so emergencies could require a redistribution of goods.

What category does lying fall under? Is language more like God-given human life or the human invention of private property, with all its pliability? This is where the question lies.

Modernizing Muslims

As Egypt moves away from Mubarak’s dictatorship to a democracy (hopefully), I am reminded of this conversation between Peter Robinson and Dinesh D’Souza about what America’s. role should be in the Middle East:

Title: The Value of a Liberal Education (16:00 in the video above)

Peter Robinson: Dinesh D'Souza's new book, which is entitled, What's so Great About America--proposition one--Dinesh, I'm going to quote, you explain briefly what you mean, and then we'll ask for a comment. Proposition one of two: "America's goal is to turn Muslim fundamentalists into classical liberals." What do you mean by that?

Dinesh D'Souza: The idea of liberalism is the idea of consent. You can't force your religion on somebody else by beating it into them. Islam has ruled historically by the sword. That's how the Islamic empire was established. Osama Bin Laden has said confidently that that is a legitimate way of doing business in the Islamic world. I'm saying that our long-term goal is not just to root out the Al Qaeda terrorists; we have to somehow convert the Islamic fundamentalists. We don't want to stop them being Muslims of course, but we want them to be Muslims in the liberal way. And by that I mean look at the way Christianity has changed. In the time of the Crusades, Christians were very happy to shove their religion down somebody else's throat, to impose it by force. They thought they were doing the other people a favor. But Christianity has changed so that today both in the Catholic and the Protestant world there's a widespread understanding that you have to convince people, you have to appeal to freedom and to consent. That's the missing idea.

Peter Robinson: And we do this how? We do this how?

Dinesh D'Souza: Well we have to do it through education. We have to do it in part by destroying hostile regimes that have become Jihad factories, indoctrinating young people in these vicious ideas of totalitarianism. In part we have to work with friendly governments that are also doing the same thing.

This is Bush’s Freedom Agenda in a nutshell. Thomas Madden, in his book Empires of Trust, explains how the Romans had to deal with a similar problem when it came to the ‘Sicarrri’, a group of Jewish terrorists during the Roman Empire: “They had to change the religion itself. Judaism was changed. It became a faith, not a kingdom; a system of beliefs, not a government.” (286).

Madden continues to say that this is what must happen to Islam too: “Islam must change. Islam must become-as it has already become for millions of Muslims worldwide-a personal faith, not a system of government.” (287-288)

And like D’Souza, he points out that this is exactly what the Enlightenment project did to Christianity: “Even the Catholic Church, which gave birth to the modern world, took several centuries to adapt to it. But in the end crusades, inquisitions, and the papal monarchy were left behind because, although they made sense in the medieval world, they had no place in the modern.” (287)

While Freedom Agenda is appealing, it is an open question whether defanging a religion is actually an attempt to kill it altogether. Aren’t modernized Christians really just ‘practical atheists’? In other words, studies show the decline of religious practice in modern countries such as Europe and America. If this is what it means to be a ‘modern’, it is hard to see why any serious Muslim would be interested. An endorsement of the Freedom Agenda would require the following caveat then:

The outcome depends on the willingness of the West and of international agencies to reconsider the values and assumptions that drive globalization, and the sort of culture it favors as a consequence. The acid test will be the capacity of globalization to take religion seriously. The faith at the center of people’s lives in non-Western cultures has to be respected and engaged so that the extension of freedom and prosperity that globalization seeks can be realized through genuine participation.

The real question is whether the West can overcome its secularist bias to achieve this. Leaving room at the center of the culture “for the experience of faith and the interior life” does not mean pandering to theocracy. Truth and freedom is not an either/or proposition. Democracy needs to rediscover this, and globalization needs to learn it. For the fatal conceit is not that freedom can succeed against religion, but that it can do so without it.

Okay with Amnesty

In regards to the illegal immigration issue, a powerful argument against Amnesty is its a failure to enforce Justice or the Rule of Law. For those people who claim to be on the side of “law and order” such an objection poses serious difficulties. “Letting this one slide” appears to make a mockery of the law.

Fortunately, Carson Holloway recently wrote an article defending Amnesty by comparing it to the power of pardon. Strict Justice requires that we follow the Rule of Law, but there could be emergency cases in which one should not do so. The Constitution’s power of pardon is a recognition of this reality and Holloway argues the same logic applies to Amnesty. Whether the state should grant pardon or Amnesty in a particular case is a prudential call, but that does not mean it is a matter of justice. Someone may be imprudent, but that does not make him unjust.

Strict Justice, left to itself, can be cruel; it has to be sweetened by Mercy. Both Amnesty and Pardon has to be granted only in particular times and places so Justice can retain its force. If administered indiscriminately or absolutely, Mercy loses its flavor and degenerates into a false compassion. For that reason, it is a matter of prudence or a judgment call. Or to put the matter in terms of CST (Catholic Social Teaching), since it is not a matter of principle, the issue has to be resolved by weighing proportionate reasons.

And in the particular case we’re dealing with at the moment, the difficulty of deporting MILLIONS of Illegal Immigrants, the significant political costs involved, and the understandable reasons why immigrants break the law to come here, it seems the prudential thing to do would be to grant amnesty.

Tiger Mother or Paper Tiger

Amy Chua’s WSJ article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” and forthcoming book Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother generated an uproar last month over her parenting style. She practices the ‘Chinese’ or immigrant model which she contrasts with the ‘Western’ model. The Chinese model denies children playdates and sleepovers in favor of hours of homework and practicing w/ musical instruments through. The Western Model encourages freedo/ self-expression and positive reinforcement in order to boost self-esteem (note all ‘self’ in there).

You would think Westerners would be in interested in the Chinese model since Asian kids are taking the top academic spots and Chinese and Indians are routinely outperforming Americans on international math and science tests. Instead, they criticized Chua and called her a terrible mother who is ruing her children’s lives.

Even more surprising is Chua’s reaction: she has backed down from her initial claim. She says the WSJ article was an excerpt and doesn’t adequately reflect her views. What she “really” thinks is there is no “better” or “worse” when it comes to parenting. This is just her personal journey.

This fallback to relativism seems convenient since it alleviates her of the responsibility of defending her arguments. Yet you can tell it is a fallback since she says her way is also the way of many of her students at Yale Law School. It is doubtful she thinks all parenting styles are equal when it comes to getting your kids into the Ivy Leagues.

Why back down? Maybe it is the way she was brought up. The Chinese model is based on a shame culture in which praise and blame are used to motivate children. This emphasis on human respect (“don’t embarrass your parents”) does not cultivate real character in a person. Chua’s retreat seems to be the result that she is afraid of the criticism she has incurred. But if she really believes that Western parenting is a problem, which I think she really does , she should defend that claim despite the public backlash it engenders.

You say you want a Revolution

In this video, D’Souza explains Bush’s Freedom Agenda: Prior to the War on Terror, there were two political models in the Middle East: Islamic Tyranny (Iran) and Secular Tyranny (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan). Being Muslim, it is not surprising then that Arabs find the first model more appealing. Bush’s attempt, which D’Souza admits he failed at, was to place a third option on the table, Muslim Democracy. The hope was this would inspire a democratic revolution throughout the Middle East.

Fast forward to the present. The Green (Iran), Jasmine (Tunisia), and Lotus (Egypt) Revolutions have occurred or are underway. Whether Bush gets credit for these can be debated another day. What is interesting at the moment is what kind of Revolution these latter two will be (Iran’s has been put on hold for the moment). D’Souza points out that Bush was not the only one who wanted to start a domino effect in the Middle East. The goal of Fundamentalist Muslims has been to export the Iranian Revolution to other countries. This has been difficult in the past because of the uniqueness of Iran (Shiite not Sunni, Persian not Arab). What remains to be seen is whether these Revolutions will be Islamic in a democratic or despotic way. The United States and the Muslim Brotherhood will be watching to see which direction the chips fall.