All lives do not have equal value.
Seven Taboo Political Subjects #3:
The Politics:
“All Men are Created Equal”
As Orwell slyly professed in Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. Could a politician today stand up and proclaim, “The sick are less valuable than the healthy, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise”? Or “Women are the weaker sex, and need our protection”.
The Reality:
For much of American history, we embraced a hierarchy of human worth. Property owners over tradesman over women over slaves. Whites over blacks, and blacks over Indians. And we did not shirk from loudly professing the moral superiority of one race over another.
Seduced by the eugenics movement, our government sterilized the weak in the early 1900’s, and then moved on to the despicable practices of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Trying to obscure our racism under a veneer of neutral science. But while overt racism is no longer tolerated, the debate over the relative value human lives has simply morphed into a more covert form.
Today, we fine-tune our military tactics to protect American servicemen’s lives, often at the cost of a thousand times greater toll in foreign civilian casualties. Car drivers enjoy road and legal supremacy over bicycle riders and pedestrians, killing more than 8000 a year. We spend $500k to extend a smoker’s life with a lung transplant, while that same $500k could save 100 infants in the US, or 1000 overseas. We enjoy the trendiness and low cost of fast-fashion, oblivious to the price in human lives and environmental degradation. Under the banner of “choice” we preference a mother’s inconvenience over the potential life of a blastocyte. And under the philosophy of “pro-life” we turn a raped child into a captive uterus, while at the same time denying pre and post-natal care so that new life can prosper.
Are all lives equal?
History proves valuing one life one life over another can lead to discrimination and genocide. Yet pretending we do not choose winners in life’s lottery is disingenuous. We do so all the time, but with our eyes “shut” to maintain the fiction we are neutral. And to avoid hard discussions.
Admitting we value some lives more than others is the beginning of a more transparent and rational allocation of resources. Should 30% of our precious health dollars be spent in the last six months of life? Should we care about pollution in a rural mine if they export clean energy to benefit city dwellers? Should we consider civilian lives equally when planning foreign engagements? Does the absence of quality public education set certain groups on the road to failure, devaluing their lives and potential contributions? Is a fertilized egg as valuable as a one-year-old? Do Black Lives matter more or less?
All these subjects are too controversial for the political system to consider without polarization. But they are at the heart of our society, and are too important to let happenstance, or a crisis, or the cowardness of our politicians determine policy.
Click on any topic to learn more:
