A Very Good Question

H/t Instapundit, a question about eugenics:
[Author Adam] Cohen takes [Catholic] opposition for granted, never exploring the meaning or roots of natural law and why it drove the church to quash sterilization in states such as Louisiana and New Jersey. Rather than confront sterilization on moral or philosophical grounds, Cohen bases his opposition on scientific grounds: Carrie Buck had a sixth grade education, sterilization alone couldn’t eliminate “feeblemindedness,” Jews, it turns out, are pretty smart (they just didn’t know English when the eugenicists gave them IQ tests). It is convenient that eugenics makes for crappy science, but what if it had checked out?
What if it turned out to be true that you could substantially improve humanity by forcibly sterilizing large groups of people? According to US Supreme Court precedent, it's totally constitutional for the government to forcibly sterilize you.

So if it's legal, and the science showed that it worked, would it be moral? Not according to natural law theory, but today the left rejects that -- and it does so on what it takes to be scientific grounds. Specifically, natural law theory looks for purpose in nature, and the current leading theories in biology reject that things evolve for reasons. It's all random. There is thus nothing that is "unnatural" in the sense that it could be said to violate some sort of "natural law" -- not blinding the eyes, nor deafening the ears.

If the Constitution and the law do not protect you, and the science is on the other side, should we simply accept the morality of such practices? The Church says no, but a religious moral law cannot be the foundation for any American laws under the current reading of the anti-establishment clause. What protection remains? Merely the fact that science hasn't quite worked out how to do it yet?

2 comments:

E Hines said...

If the Constitution and the law do not protect you, and the science is on the other side, should we simply accept the morality of such practices? The Church says no, but a religious moral law cannot be the foundation for any American laws under the current reading of the anti-establishment clause. What protection remains?

That's straightforward, if hard to execute. We have no need to accept the Left's construction, no matter how hard they insist on it. We have no obligation to accept the Left among us any more than we're obligated to suffer any immoral persons among us. It seems, though, such need and such obligation lies at the start of any discussion of the matter.

No. What's straightforward, if not easy, is to restore our Constitution as it was written, and to restore Judeo-Christian fundamentals to the heart of our Republic. The Left's arguments be damned.

Or, to paraphrase, not too loosely, someone else, The words of the Left are unimportant, and I do not hear them.

Eric Hines

Eric Blair said...

Ha, I've used that Star Trek quote myself.