Posted on 03/23/2005 8:56:08 AM PST by mathprof
He insists he doesn't want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was, and to let other parents kill similar babies as they come along and thereby avoid the suffering that comes with lives like mine and satisfy the reasonable preferences of parents for a different kind of child. It has nothing to do with me. I should not feel threatened.
Whenever I try to wrap my head around his tight string of syllogisms, my brain gets so fried it's . . . almost fun. Mercy! It's like ''Alice in Wonderland.''
It is a chilly Monday in late March, just less than a year ago. I am at Princeton University. My host is Prof. Peter Singer, often called -- and not just by his book publicist -- the most influential philosopher of our time. He is the man who wants me dead. No, that's not at all fair. He wants to legalize the killing of certain babies who might come to be like me if allowed to live. He also says he believes that it should be lawful under some circumstances to kill, at any age, individuals with cognitive impairments so severe that he doesn't consider them ''persons.'' What does it take to be a person? Awareness of your own existence in time. The capacity to harbor preferences as to the future, including the preference for continuing to live.
(Excerpt) Read more at racematters.org ...
From the NYT article:
Q: Was it emotionally difficult for you to take part in a public discussion of whether your life should have happened? A: It was very difficult. And horribly easy. Q: Did he get that job at Princeton because they like his ideas on killing disabled babies? A: It apparently didn't hurt, but he's most famous for animal rights. He's the author of ''Animal Liberation.'' Q: How can he put so much value on animal life and so little value on human life? That last question is the only one I avoid. I used to say I don't know; it doesn't make sense. But now I've read some of Singer's writing, and I admit it does make sense -- within the conceptual world of Peter Singer. But I don't want to go there. Or at least not for long.
Save the whales, Abort the Babies! Go liberals!
Yeah, sure he is.
"He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was...he seems entirely sincere."
I suppose one could have had stimulating conversations with the likes of Goebbels and Mengele, too, and they were probably every bit as sincere as Singer. That does not mean that the whole lot of them aren't unspeakably evil. I'd include George Greer in this group as well, but I doubt if he'd be sincere.
Mt. Schaivo, or Hill No. 2008!
Because the author is perceptive and tries to be fair even to the harshest opponent, this article even gives a reasonable understanding of the views of Peter Singer. I share the thoughts of those on the thread who quarrel the label of Professor of Ethics to Singer, who denies the basis of all human ethics.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "Condi Rice & Pierce Flanigan's Father's Hat"
As I see it, this woman's fundamental weakness is that she is an atheist lefty as well, and prey to the same emotional deficiencies as Singer and his ilk. In the conversation with her sister Beth, she give the impression of being seriously weak on her history not to mention her knowledge of what's really going on elsewhere in the world. In the end she falls back on her childish conviction that it can't happen here, even as it is happening (once more) in Europe. How many people are there in Holland in motorized wheelchairs?
Singer's the idea man and she lets his personal charm fool her into thinking that no violence can come of his ideas. The nazi philosophers and eugenicists (and I include Margaret Sanger, a woman she no doubt won't hear a word against, among their number) did not personally kill anyone. It's a multi-stage process from philospher to policy-makers, judges, medical societies, etc. to street-level executioners.
All the Terri-snuffers I've been hearing on the airwaves start off by assuming and projecting to beat the band. So much has come out, mainly in the new media, about the suspicious circumstances of Terri's initial injury. The shocking neglect of her basic care, let alone therapy, over the years (she has never even had a MRI or PET scan, for instance) all at the insistance of husband Michael. He who, according to that nurse who was all over FOX and the talk shows who (tried) to care for her in '95-'96 behaved outrageously towards Terri for all but the first two years; that I do not consider wanting to take a closer look at this case as the knee-jerk attitude of a christian fundamentalist by any means. The highly irregular conduct of his co-conspirator Judge Greer is also noteworthy.
I'm with Rush and co. in anticipating this becomes another watershed event in turning the tide against the lib/dems and the blackrobes. I don't hold with the polls the MSM is waving that we all want Terri dead.
"I'm...anticipating this becomes another watershed event in turning the tide against the lib/dems and the blackrobes."
You make good observations. The multi-stage process is why Col. Eichmann reasoned that he hadn't killed anyone, he simply scheduled the trains and passed along papers. He still ended up with a noose around his neck. That, unfortunately, will not be happening this time.
I wrote about Peter Singer years ago, saying he held the "Josef Mengele Chair of Bioethics" at Princeton.
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