The Culture of Life

How can anybody be against abortion but for the death penalty? When the President pushes his “culture of life” rhetoric, many Liberals are confused by the apparent contradictions. Is the invasion of Iraq, with the requisite killing of Iraqi civilians and combatants, part of the culture of life? Is the Republican support of the death penalty part of the culture of life? What about the case of Terri Schiavo? This poor woman, brain dead but still breathing, has become the latest political football in the GOP’s campaign against death. The campaign, to be sure, is selective about what “death” it opposes. Liberals simply can’t contemplate that kind of inconsistency, and brand it as hypocrisy. What they fail to understand is that the so-called “culture of life” that opposes abortion but supports the death penalty is completely consistent with conservative dogma. Rather than reflexively respond to the apparent contradictions, I will attempt to explain why Regressives do not see them as contradictions at all.

Switch your mode of thinking, if you will, to economics. The hard-core, Ayn Rand-style libertarian economics is based on selfishness and personal property. Nobody is entitled to anything that they have not earned. If the rich are rich, it’s because they deserve to be, and the poor have no right to ask anything of them. The poor are poor because of some moral deficiency, and nobody should offer any help. If they can pull themselves out of poverty, then they have earned something better. No government programs, no charity, no compassion should aid them. Children are an exception. They are innocent, so they must be protected. They also must be taught through reward and punishment how to be “good people”. The philosophy can be boiled down to this: you get what you deserve.

I could spend a column explaining the errors in this way of thinking, but I’ll save it for another time. It is important to make the connection between this kind of economics and the Regressive ideas about justice. Regressive Justice is not fairness, as Progressives see it. Justice is punishment for crime. If you commit a crime, you do the time. No questions. Mitigating circumstances are irrelevant. Unjust laws, the desperation of poverty, cultural differences—they all mean nothing. Punishment must be harsh, long, and absolute. A criminal has earned his punishment. He gets what he deserves.

This is the bridge between the “culture of life” and the death penalty. It is not really about life and death, it’s about innocence and guilt. Regressives view a fetus as a living human being, totally innocent and unable to defend itself. It deserves protection and compassion, as if it were a fully-formed human baby. It’s the same with Terri Schiavo. They see her as an innocent—unable to defend herself, and therefore her life must be protected. After birth, particularly in adulthood, people start making their own choices and earning rewards or punishments. That’s why Regressives hate anti-poverty programs. In their minds, those programs give unearned rewards to people who don’t deserve them. They believe that people are poor because of their own choices. They believe the poor must be motivated to work by threat of starvation. In the Liberal mind, it seems like Regressives “believe that live begins at conception and ends at birth”, but Regressives see no inconsistency. It fits with their philosophy of economics and justice.

The death penalty fits, too. A criminal who is put to death has “earned” his fate. A murderer has taken the life of another human being, and has therefore forfeited his own life. You will hear Regressives advocate a mandatory death penalty for all murderers. In their way of thinking, punishment should be automatic. X crime receives Y punishment. Furthermore, the punishment should be as harsh as possible. In the case of non-capital crimes, prisoners should face inhumane conditions in prison, so they will learn their lesson and “not want to go back”. This doesn’t work, of course, but Regressives believe that the only way to learn anything is through pain and reward. When a prisoner is executed, they believe they are deterring other potential murders. This didn’t work when we held public executions in the town square, so I don’t know why they think it would work now. But it fits with the reward/punishment mentality. Notice, there is no provision for the wrongly convicted, and there is no minimum standard of treatment rooted in basic humanity. They all just get what they deserve.

The terrorists get what they deserve, too. That’s why Regressives have no problem ordering the bombing of Iraqi cities and the midnight storming of Iraqi homes. They believe the terrorists have earned every possible act of revenge they can muster. Torture? Of course! The terrorists have earned torture. And what of the innocents who are caught in the middle? Well, the terrorists are responsible for that, too. They melt into the surrounding population, making it difficult to distinguish civilian from combatant. Regressives believe that Iraqi civilians should blame the terrorists for the civilian deaths, and are shocked when Iraqis don’t see it that way. For Regressives, all manner of sins can be justified in the process of punishing the guilty. They are just getting what they deserve.

It worries me that Liberals do not answer the guilt/innocence argument when they chide the Right for their pro-life/pro-death penalty positions. Do these Liberals really not understand where the Right is coming from, or do they not have a good response to the argument? It’s easy for Regressives to turn the Liberal accusations of hypocrisy around. You will stand up for a convicted murderer, but you won’t stand up for an innocent, unborn child? In their view, that is as inconsistent as pro-life/pro-death penalty. It appears to them that Liberals hate the innocent and love the guilty. Is it any wonder why they think Liberals are evil?

In my communications with Conservatives, I try to emphasize a real culture of life. I remind them that every human being is a child of God, and is deserving of respect and compassion. It is not easy to have compassion for someone who is guilty of murder, but so what? Jesus never said that righteousness was easy. I remind them that when Jesus was confronted with something he disagreed with, he responded with compassion. In fact, the only things he attacked were money changers in the temple and a fruitless fig tree. They should not be attacking women for having abortions. They need to respond with compassion. They should not be cheering the death of a criminal, they should respond with compassion. They should not blame the poor for their poverty, they should respond with compassion. Most Regressives are Christian, but they have bought into a philosophy that is fundamentally un-Christian. There is the contradiction.

I encourage Progressives to choose their arguments carefully. Don’t bother accusing the Right of hypocrisy in their pro-life/pro-war/pro-death penalty positions. As soon as they hear that, they immediately know that you don’t understand what they really believe. They will ignore anything else you say. Don’t ridicule the “culture of life”. There is nothing really wrong with it. We just need to replace the flawed Regressive “culture of life” with a real culture of life. We need to respect the life of women, who will be driven to unsafe, back-alley abortions if they are not able to get them safely and legally. We need to respect the lives of the families of murder victims, and show them that we don’t care more about the murderer than we do about the victim. We need to respect the life of the criminal, because our treatment of the lowest among us says a lot about what kind of people we are. We need to respect the poor, because most of them are not poor by their own choice. These people can be turned around. In their Christian faith they already have the matrix of Progressive compassion. We need to encourage them to live by their own Christian principles.

© 2005 Bryan Lower

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