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Stalin
vs. Hitler?
Nations face similar dilemmas. The Roosevelt administration
formed a strategic alliance with Joseph Stalin, a known
butcher of millions of his own people, to fight Adolf
Hitler, a man they considered to be a greater threat.
That difficult decision determined the survival of the
free world. |
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Moral paralysis...deciding not to decide because all the
options have flaws...may be the worst choice you can make.
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The
Lesser Tragedy?
A Wrenching Dilemma. What would you decide?
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Conjoined
twins from Guatamala, successfully separated at UCLA Medical
Center, will go home this week. It is expected they will
live normal, independent lives. The same can not be said
for "Jodie" and "Mary", born conjoined
on August 8, 2000, in the UK. Mary's heart and lungs had
no capacity to sustain life. The strain on Jodie's heart
was projected to cause cardiac arrest, killing both girls.
What to do set off a raging international public debate.
The parents refused medical intervention. "We cannot
begin to accept or contemplate that one of our children
should die to enable one to survive. That is not God's
will." The Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster,
Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, supported their decision.
Britain's Court of Appeal disagreed, ruling that doctors
may operate to separate the conjoined twins even though
surgery would lead to the death of Mary. Lord Justice
Alan Ward, himself the father of twin girls, reported
agonizing over the decision. The three judges drew on
historical scholarship, including Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke,
and the 18th century jurist William Blackstone. "I
freely confess to having found it truly difficult to decide
-- difficult because of the scale of tragedy for the parents
and the twins, difficult for the seemingly irreconcilable
conflicts of moral and ethical values."
Mary is an individual and has a right to life, Ward wrote,
but "Mary's death would not be the purpose of the
operation, although it would be its inevitable consequence.
Mary would die not because she was intentionally killed,
but because her own body cannot sustain her life. She
is incapable of independent existence. She is designated
for death...Jodie too has a right to life...Therefore,
the proposed operation would not be unlawful."
Jodie was said to be making progress after the 20-hour
operation. Mary, cut off from her sister's life sustaining
blood, died.
Lord Ward concluded that the court must allow the doctors
"to choose the lesser of the two evils -- the death
of one twin instead of the death of both." The universal
value of all human life was the basis of his difficult
decision. |
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| October
30, 2002 |
| Dear
Concerned Citizen, |
Evil
isn't just a Halloween concept; it abounds in the world that we live
in. In Africa, dictators starve their populations and tribal warlords
perpetrate genocide against members of other tribes. In the Middle
East, Saddam Hussein uses poison gas against the Kurds and massacres
his domestic opposition. The Chinese government, not to be outdone,
tortures its public critics and imprisons outspoken Christians. Even
in America, domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and serial killers
like Jeffrey Dahmer and the Tarot Card Sniper show that evil can strike
close to home.
Despite the obvious reality of evil, some Americans have trouble recognizing
evil for what it is, and calling evil by its name. The reason for
this reluctance is that these people have embraced a moral relativism
that holds that there are no absolutes such as "good" and
"evil." Rather, evil exists only in the minds of those who
perceive it. One may say that Hitler or Saddam Hussein are evil "from
our point of view," but one may not say that they are evil in
an absolute sense.
If relativists have trouble condemning murderous despots like Saddam
Hussein, however, they have no trouble condemning American foreign
policy. The relativist critics charge American leaders with invoking
the principles of democracy and human rights, even as they form alliances
with unelected regimes like that of General Musharaff in Pakistan,
Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and the royal family in Saudi Arabia. In the
relativist moral vocabulary, the primary sin is hypocrisy because
it demonstrates that one is untrue to one's own ideals.
What the relativist criticism misses, however-quite apart from its
moral blindness to the existence of evil-is that America's foreign
policy is based on a simple principle that, upon reflection, is a
deeply moral principle. That is the principle of the lesser evil.
This principle states that in the real world one sometimes does not
get to choose between the good guy and the bad guy, but between the
bad guy and the really bad guy. In the latter circumstance, the principle
holds that it is morally justifiable to ally with the bad ruler in
order to prevent the triumph of a worse ruler.
As president, Jimmy Carter ignored the principle of the lesser evil.
He didn't feel that, in good conscience, he could talk about human
rights while supporting the Shah of Iran. So he helped to get rid
of the Shah and got…the Ayatollah Khomeini. The triumph of Khomeini
was the match that lit the Islamic conflagration that now engulfs
the Muslim world. The practical result of Carter's policy was to undermine,
not promote, human rights.
Those who condemn the United States for hypocrisy in supporting such
regimes as that of Musharaff and Mubarak must answer a simple question:
what is the alternative? If there are democratic forces capable of
assuming power in Pakistan and and Egypt, then we should support them.
But what if the alternative to Musharaff and Mubarak is the Bin Laden
folk? Then the principle of the lesser evil holds that America is
completely warranted in supporting these flawed dictators in order
to prevent even worse men from seizing power.
In our personal lives we may be faced with a situation where there
are no good options and yet we must make a choice. At those times,
to choose the lesser evil is the greatest good. |
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