Rational Philosophy

For some reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on right away, I found Cafferty’s comment today (Judge makes a disgraceful decision) on a judge’s efforts to slow or halt a program that would require employers to fire workers with faulty social security status (illegal immigrants) distasteful. I think it was his sentiment rather than his logic that offended me, his presumption that enforcement of national law supercedes human decency and compassion, whatever the circumstance.

In another story — “Bush vetoes expansion of kids’ health insurance program” — Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri, supporting Bush’s veto, complains: “we’re going to provide health care to the children of illegal immigrants.”

In one section of LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive I examine the origin of the impulses that lead us toward a conservative or liberal way of thinking. It’s a spectrum of course, but the impulse toward conservative thinking seems to derive from a focus on the importance of the self (one’s right to govern one’s self, the live and let live mentality) versus the liberal impulse to value people generally and to not consider one’s own needs over and above the needs of others. I’m dramatically over-simplifying, but I hope you’ll see the point.

If we feel that national law should be put ahead of human decency, our perspective will tend toward a hard line on immigration. If we feel that the rights of human beings are more important than national concerns, then we’ll be concerned about the effects of a hard line approach on illegal immigrants. A conservative will tend to feel that we shouldn’t make exceptions when deportation of just some members of a family will break up that family. A liberal will wonder why the law must be so unfeeling.

Again, as I discuss in the book, once we have sought out the origin for these perspectives, we can consider whether either perspective is more right or better than the other. To cut to the chase, I conclude and show logically that the more liberal perspective is more enlightened and bodes better for the survival of the human species. I’m sure that a conservative would disagree, but I am also sure that he or she would be hard-pressed to defend such a position rationally and logically. Are we not all part of the human race, wherever we happen to be born?

 

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