In this article, Princeton Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah asks an excellent question: "What will future generations condemn us for?"
He comes up with three excellent criteria, too:
First, people have already heard the arguments against the practice. The case against slavery didn't emerge in a blinding moment of moral clarity, for instance; it had been around for centuries.
Second, defenders of the custom tend not to offer moral counterarguments but instead invoke tradition, human nature or necessity. (As in, "We've always had slaves, and how could we grow cotton without them?")
And third, supporters engage in what one might call strategic ignorance, avoiding truths that might force them to face the evils in which they're complicit.
Unfortunately, after this, he wimps out. He gives some good answers, but he misses one. A big one. An enormous, obvious, overwhelmingly loud elephant in the room that you'd have to be blind and deaf to miss.
Care to guess what it is?
(And don't miss the comment section, which seems to indicate that many of the readers have learned nothing at all from the atrocities of history.)
Comments:
I think Appiah wimps out in a bigger way, or perhaps he isn't able to see the bigger picture. If our generation is condemned for anything, it should be for NOT defending the progress that had been made.
Abortion fits this description. After seeing the atrocities of death, and having the resources to nurture life, we've allowed travesty to enter our society, even embracing it.
How about the failure to defend capitalism? This is the site that promotes Rodney Stark's book. Let's not ignore that capitalism has provided for the poor and the weak. A casual look at either history or the current world around us will prove that.
Most of all, how about the failure to defend honesty and justice? With this we've let the educational establishment go to waste. Thus we've allowed billions of brains to go to waste. We've let the philosophies of this world convince us that good is evil and evil is good. With this we've watched oppression and exploitation grow. And, we've allowed capitalism to become corrupted, so that it's enemies, the proponents of envy, have some substance to their criticisms.
Our mandate has always been to take this world dominion for God. Yet, these recent generations (at least in the US) relaxed. Actually, they became lazy. And instead of making progress, we've watched the world regress.
Terrell, it's a nice thought to introduce Kwame Appiah to PFM. However, I don't think it would work out; the professor doesn't seem to want to help prisoners, but rather to release them altogether. The idea he presents is to decriminalize drug use - which is an interesting concept, especially if you've ever had someone driving erratically in front of you on the freeway.
I see now that the "elephant" to which Gina was referring is abortion. At first I thought she meant sin, which of course is the predecessor to abortion and the other ills which concern Prof. Appiah. I thought our dearest Miss G was indicating that education (the typical liberal answer for social ills) doesn't eliminate sin; it simply produces a sinner who's more accomplished at self-justification. Simply emptying the prisons without working to change the hearts of the prisoners, to take one instance, works no better than it did during the French Revolution - or with Barabbas.
So in the case of Gregory v. Jason and Rolley, both plaintiff and defendants are correct: sin will absolutely not be eradicated in our lifetimes, but that doesn't mean we should give up on sanctification. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPu8wmuCork
These young people seem so have an understanding that they are more than a choice. And so maybe Kwame can see that and that while abortion is still sitting in the corner, the condemnation from the current generation is beginning to come to a boil.
BTW, in regard to Kwame's overwhelming concern for the prison situation, we ought to get him acquainted with Mark Earley and PF.
Abortion may not end in this life, but then neither will I be as godly as I should in this life. Does that mean I ought not make godliness my most ardently-sought goal? Then neither ought passion and devotion to end abortion waver or weaken for a (literal!) heartbeat.
In the good fight of faith we don’t march according to what works so much as to what is right.
Abortion could be dramatically reduced practically overnight if every pulpit in every church every Sunday without fail would spend one minute – one minute – simply keeping this holocaust at the forefront of everyone’s conscience. That this is not done begs the question, “Why not?”
There is no answer that heaven will accept. Only repentance.