Monday, February 24, 2014

Creeping Through Cyberspace


 
By William L. Garvin

An audiologist was discussing hearing aids with a new patient.  “I have good news and bad news,” he said.  “The good news is I can help you hear better; the bad news is I can help you hear better.”  That seems very similar to the internet and cyberspace.  The good news is you can find lots of information; the bad news is you can find lots of information.  Most of the information is straightforward and much of it is useful but it ranges from the innocuous to the disconcerting to the terrifying.

Some of it is politically sardonic.  One wag posted “I don’t understand how the Constitution is a ‘living document’ that protects phone calls, emails, and text messages, yet the Second Amendment only applies to muskets.”  Another noted that “The media obsesses over Romney at seventeen and Bush at twenty-five but declares Hillary and Benghazi at sixty-five to be ‘old news.’”  Another poster declared that “Having government watch your health care is like having Michael Vick watch your dog!”  Maybe that’s why Moody’s downgraded the entire health care sector from “stable” to “negative” because of Obamacare.

It’s interesting to note that New York, one of the bluest of Democrat states, is attempting to attract new business in order to cope with their 7% unemployment.  Surprisingly, the centerpiece of their ad campaign is to reduce/eliminate taxes for start-up companies.  It’s estimated that “The Tonight Show” will save $20 million in taxes by moving from Los Angeles to New York.  This reduction of taxes (along with reductions in spending!) sure sounds like a conservative principle. 

It’s disconcerting to follow the $85 billion taxpayer bailout of General Motors.  When the Treasury Department sold off the last of the GM shares, taxpayers lost from $10.5 to $20 billion on their investment.  If you want to rub salt in the economic wounds, check out the video of Dan Akerson, the GM CEO in 2011, on YouTube.  He clearly outlines the plan to shrink U.S. operations and expand China operations.  He points out that seven of ten GM vehicles are already made outside the U.S.  Now they have eleven joint ventures, eleven assembly plants, and 2,700 dealerships planned for China.  Their research and development and state of the art technology is now being jointly shared with a communist country.  If that’s not unsettling enough, how about the Cadillac Division sponsoring a film celebrating the birth of the Chinese Communist Party, complete with the hammer and sickle!

All that pales compared to an article in “Slate” by William Saletan.  He was commenting on an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics by two “philosophers” named Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.  It has been noted that there is no theory so bizarre that you cannot find an intellectual to defend it.  This seems to be the perfect case on point.  Most human beings would condemn killing newborn babies but Giubilini and Minerva write that:  “We propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus…rather than to that of a child.  Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be.  Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”

Last year, a Planned Parenthood lobbyist named Alisa LaPolt Snow answered a question before the Florida legislature as to what would happen if a baby was born alive as a result of a botched abortion.  Her answer was that “any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”  To all these people, a living baby is not a person and it is perfectly acceptable to kill them.  If there is any doubt as to this conclusion, Giubilini and Minerva conclude: “Although fetuses and newborns are not persons, they are potential persons because they can develop, thanks to their own biological mechanisms, those properties which will make them ‘persons’ in the sense of ‘subjects of a moral right to life’ that is the point at which they will be able to make aims and appreciate their own life.”

If social, psychological, or economic costs are grounds for abortion, they are then acceptable grounds for infanticide.  Would they then advocate euthanasia for the elderly, the infirm, or the terminally ill?  Some things you just don’t want to know, but you must…even if it’s terrifying.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment