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June 6, 2008
The Culture of Death
Harriet McBryde Johnson on Peter Singer:
He is the man who wants me dead. No, that's not at all fair. He wants to legalize the killing of certain babies who might come to be like me if allowed to live.. . .
Even as I am horrified by what he says, and by the fact that I have been sucked into a civil discussion of whether I ought to exist, I can't help being dazzled by his verbal facility. He is so respectful, so free of condescension, so focused on the argument, that by the time the show is over, I'm not exactly angry with him. Yes, I am shaking, furious, enraged -- but it's for the big room, 200 of my fellow Charlestonians who have listened with polite interest, when in decency they should have run him out of town on a rail.
. . .
He responds by inviting me to Princeton. I fire off an immediate maybe.
Of course I'm flattered. Mama will be impressed.
Read it and weep for the West. If we can kill anyone who doesn't currently meet our standards of acceptable consciousness we are really not being very nice, let alone the other words we might argue about applying there.
If you can't read the whole thing, skip ahead to page 10. I don't think she's being unfair to Singer at all. It was that last sentence that grabbed me when I read it in 2003. I mean, I was already in entire agreement with the author - but the idea that she might have argued with Peter Singer in public because her Mama would be impressed . . . .
via Eve. I'd read this article before - Eve tells us that Ms. Johnson has died. And how didn't I notice that Megan mentioned it first?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at June 6, 2008 10:00 PM