Where Does Our Morality Come From (continued 2)

I know I am entering into an area of deep political and emotional and divisive rhetoric with very little real concern with a common morality, but a significant percentage of us have accepted that it is morally justified for one individual to kill another, to end a human being capable of self-sustaining life independent of the mother.  Within the most recent Presidential campaign the whole issue of “woman’s rights” was a significant point of contention between one half of the country and the other half.  The political parties were both willing to make this a core of their political positions, and we have for at least the last 40-years been engaged in an escalating battle of what the government should allow, and now what the government must pay for.  Increasingly it has been the position of the liberal feminist movement, and their political allies, that the right to determine the intentional death of a fetus rests solely with the woman carrying the infant.  Of course they use more sympathetic terms and explain how problematic those lives would be if allowed to continue, but in the end there is one harsh reality.  We, for better or worse, have sanctioned the determination of life as a right of the mother, but only for the period of pregnancy.  If she ends that life one day after birth I think society and the state still consider it murder.  It seems just a bit convoluted to me as we wrestle with the law and moral choices.

The argument for determination of life or death is now moving on.  It is expanding to include the position that an individual with a diagnosed illness who wishes to end their life has that right and the state should approve of individuals who wish to assist in that choice. 

Couple these changes in our society with the development and popularity of violent game playing in computer simulations and alternate reality games and it does not seem to me to be a great leap to ask if we are creating a nation of young men and women driven by alienation, who see ending life as acceptable moral choice, and deciding that their 15 minutes of fame should be in the taking of another’s life.  It seems only a matter of time (and not too much time) before that argument will be made in their defense.

I believe we already see influencers in the media and entertainment industry beginning the virtue signaling that this is acceptable, as long as the targets are those they approve of.  For example, in the past year, we have seen liberal entertainers calling for the assassination of the President, going so far as to hold up a clearly recognizable severed head.  (As an aside, I find the whining of the entertainer who did this to be a fascinating study on denial of personal responsibility and outrage over the consequences of her actions.  Either she is a complete idiot, or she lives in such a sheltered world the reality most of us live in never gets in.)

Along the way should we consider the impact of the social media that has come to dominate the internet?  From our beginnings, the predominant position of this nation was that we must be a nation of law.  Where justice, based on the moral standards of the nation, is applied fairly across the society.  Today does that still remain true, or are we moving ever closer to the concept of mob rule, where those who control the dialogue now control the judgments of the many who become inflamed over the mere accusations of unknown voices?

-- to be continued --