Bush, Erring on the Side of Life
[1]
Yesterday President Bush asserted the following about the Terry Schiavo case:
"...in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life."
For ease of reference, let’s call this principle “L”.
[2]
First, we should note that what the President seems to mean is that we should err on the side of preserving life. Second, ad more importantly, we should note that the qualifier (“in extraordinary circumstances”) is neither necessary nor justified. Life is no more valuable under extraordinary circumstances than under ordinary ones. So we must consider the fully general version of the principle rather than the President’s narrower version.
[3]
It seems unlikely to me that the President would actually accept the consequences of L. For example, L seems to indicate that we are rarely justified in executing criminals. Given the background of the Schiavo case, L seems to commit the President to the proposition that we are not justified in executing a convict unless we are more sure that this convict is guilty than we are than Ms. Schiavo is non-conscious. I know virtually nothing about brains and about the same amount about the legal system, but the doctors closest to the case seem to have concluded that it is extraordinarily unlikely that Ms. Schiavo is conscious. If I understand things aright here, her doctors have concluded that there is no reasonable doubt about her condition. If their evidence is insufficiently strong, then it is likely that our evidence for conviction in death penalty cases is often insufficiently strong.
Let me note here that I am strongly in favor of the death penalty in principle, but favor a (possibly temporary) ban on it until the system can be thoroughly evaluated for fairness and accuracy. L seems to commit President Bush at least to such a ban and, perhaps, to outright prohibition of the penalty. On the President’s construal of L, my guess is that we will rarely have evidence strong enough to justify execution.
[4]
L also seems to entail that our invasion of Iraq was unwarranted. Given that it was clear that many lives would be lost in the war, only extremely strong evidence could support such action. The evidence for the presence of WMDs and links to al Qaeda was, however, very weak—far too weak, at any rate, to meet the burden of proof suggested by L.
[5]
If L is true, then we may be obligated to intervene in Darfur. Of course our military is stretched thin in Iraq, and intervention in Darfur would be expensive and inconvenient, but if L means anything it means that expense and inconvenience cannot stand in the way of saving lives. Such intervention would require raising taxes and raising more troops, of course; but if L is true those are the prices we are obligated to pay.
[6]
Another consequence of L seems to be that we should take global warming very seriously, since the loss of life that would result from catastrophic climate change is almost unimaginable. Higher gasoline prices and more stringent CAFE standards are small prices to pay to avoid the possibility of loss of life on such a massive scale.
[7]
The point is this: the President’s principle tells us that we must be extremely risk-averse when a life is at stake. I am not sure that this principle is false, but if it is true it seems to have important implications for other policies.
But even the most ardent advocate of L must recognize its limits. When someone is e.g. lost at sea, at some point we discontinue the search because we recognize that the probability that they are still alive—though not zero—is too small to warrant further searching.
Such cases are partially disanalogous, of course, in that we are not merely worried about wasting resources that could better be used otherwise in Ms. Schiavo’s case. It is Ms. Schiavo herself that we must primarily be concerned with, and a proper regard for her and her wishes seems to demand that we allow her body to follow her mind in death. But those are deeper issues for a different time.
[8]
I am not entirely convinced by much of the above, 4-6 in particular. As always, however, this is intended to a first word, not the last word, in a discussion of the issues.
[Reconstructed after my blog ate my post]
[1]
Yesterday President Bush asserted the following about the Terry Schiavo case:
"...in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life."
For ease of reference, let’s call this principle “L”.
[2]
First, we should note that what the President seems to mean is that we should err on the side of preserving life. Second, ad more importantly, we should note that the qualifier (“in extraordinary circumstances”) is neither necessary nor justified. Life is no more valuable under extraordinary circumstances than under ordinary ones. So we must consider the fully general version of the principle rather than the President’s narrower version.
[3]
It seems unlikely to me that the President would actually accept the consequences of L. For example, L seems to indicate that we are rarely justified in executing criminals. Given the background of the Schiavo case, L seems to commit the President to the proposition that we are not justified in executing a convict unless we are more sure that this convict is guilty than we are than Ms. Schiavo is non-conscious. I know virtually nothing about brains and about the same amount about the legal system, but the doctors closest to the case seem to have concluded that it is extraordinarily unlikely that Ms. Schiavo is conscious. If I understand things aright here, her doctors have concluded that there is no reasonable doubt about her condition. If their evidence is insufficiently strong, then it is likely that our evidence for conviction in death penalty cases is often insufficiently strong.
Let me note here that I am strongly in favor of the death penalty in principle, but favor a (possibly temporary) ban on it until the system can be thoroughly evaluated for fairness and accuracy. L seems to commit President Bush at least to such a ban and, perhaps, to outright prohibition of the penalty. On the President’s construal of L, my guess is that we will rarely have evidence strong enough to justify execution.
[4]
L also seems to entail that our invasion of Iraq was unwarranted. Given that it was clear that many lives would be lost in the war, only extremely strong evidence could support such action. The evidence for the presence of WMDs and links to al Qaeda was, however, very weak—far too weak, at any rate, to meet the burden of proof suggested by L.
[5]
If L is true, then we may be obligated to intervene in Darfur. Of course our military is stretched thin in Iraq, and intervention in Darfur would be expensive and inconvenient, but if L means anything it means that expense and inconvenience cannot stand in the way of saving lives. Such intervention would require raising taxes and raising more troops, of course; but if L is true those are the prices we are obligated to pay.
[6]
Another consequence of L seems to be that we should take global warming very seriously, since the loss of life that would result from catastrophic climate change is almost unimaginable. Higher gasoline prices and more stringent CAFE standards are small prices to pay to avoid the possibility of loss of life on such a massive scale.
[7]
The point is this: the President’s principle tells us that we must be extremely risk-averse when a life is at stake. I am not sure that this principle is false, but if it is true it seems to have important implications for other policies.
But even the most ardent advocate of L must recognize its limits. When someone is e.g. lost at sea, at some point we discontinue the search because we recognize that the probability that they are still alive—though not zero—is too small to warrant further searching.
Such cases are partially disanalogous, of course, in that we are not merely worried about wasting resources that could better be used otherwise in Ms. Schiavo’s case. It is Ms. Schiavo herself that we must primarily be concerned with, and a proper regard for her and her wishes seems to demand that we allow her body to follow her mind in death. But those are deeper issues for a different time.
[8]
I am not entirely convinced by much of the above, 4-6 in particular. As always, however, this is intended to a first word, not the last word, in a discussion of the issues.
[Reconstructed after my blog ate my post]
posted by Winston Smith at
10:05 AM
2 Comments:
Great post, I enjoyed reading it.
Adding you to favorites, Ill have to come back and read it again later.
I enjoyed your cnn news headline news blog. You might enjoy this news discussion forum also. **News Discussion Forum**
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