Tom Kawczynski - Off the Record

Politics is full of what you might call "Gotcha!" situations.  The premise is simple:  you find someone who holds a certain principled belief, and then you present them with a situation that challenges that belief, no matter how improbable it might be, in an effort to make that way of thinking look foolish.  An example commonly used, for instance, is when people ask people who are opposed to abortion what should be permissible in the case of rape.  It is a fair and hard question, but in most political situations, the people asking these things care less for the answer than in trying to score points for their view by picking the worst case scenario of the opposite view.

Knowing that, the question itself is an interesting one and is an example of a moral dilemma.  The most interesting questions are often the most controversial as we find ourselves judging a situation where two (or more) deeply held beliefs come into conflict with one another.  We have the life of an innocent victim that has come into being through the perpetration of a heinous crime.  We have the liberty of a woman who did absolutely nothing wrong and her own free will to consider.  We have a quandry, and these questions are the ones where we will always fight and have no clear answer as individuals.  Yet, they demand consideration.

I started thinking about this the other day when I was posed a similar question, and I want to offer my own framework for how I consider these dilemmas, in which I've discovered my three core personal values for how we should regard one another:  life, liberty, and property.  They are certainly not unique, but I don't know how often we really think about their consequences, so I am showing why these matter, in that order, in helping us answer hard questions in our own lives.

1. Life - Without life, nothing else is possible, and to be able to exist is the most basic and fundamental right I can imagine.  It is that which we should defend most dearly, in all situations.
2. Liberty - Liberty is truly nothing more than the freedom of thought, and the freedom of action to pursue the logical consequences of that thought.  So long as this does not impinge upon the life or the rights of others to their own liberties, I believe this must be our second value.
3. Property - Property means that if you apply your thoughts and effort toward a process or a material, that you can gain possession and have recognition of something as being uniquely your own.  Whether the property is intellectual, such as an idea, material, such as land, the basic principle remains that you should have ownership of that which results from your labor and innovation.

I take a minimalist view of government, in that I believe it is the responsibility of people to create opportunities for themselves, and that it is our shared goal to ensure that government, the state, or any other action does not prevent us from having the freedom to be, to think, or create.  That might make it overly simple, but my argument is that without these, we have nothing.

With them, we have a chance to live with one another, and to answer our challenging questions.  To those who would think otherwise, my question to you, is upon what basis do you construct your own beliefs, in fairness to others, and giving them the same privileges you would probably reserve for your own thoughts.

Looking at our difficult scenario from above, you should already know my answer from the comments above.  Although I hold the rights of any person dear and find it abhorrent that their liberties were violated, to punish the life of someone who was not directly responsible for the action strikes me as unjust.  I freely admit that I value life , though uniquely so, above freedom of thought and action, so I will argue passionately for the unborn, though I believe there are two victims here.