Let them die!

Everybody heard it.

At a GOP forum, during discussion of trying to overthrow Ocare, a panelist asked what to do about those who depended on Ocare, whose lives would be put at risk.

Someone in the audience called out "Let them die!"

Democrats have used this episode to good effect.

All the same, they themselves are perfectly clear that politics is mostly about people voting "the pocket-book", "the family budget", or "the wallet".

And they alternately complain or marvel that so many working class people vote for Republicans in pretty clear defiance of their own best interests.

Pretty much everyone in America not living under a bridge could give to charities in such a way that lives would be saved, somewhere, without himself dying of the sacrifice, or even shortening his life.

Indeed, according to utilitarian liberal morality guru, Peter Singer, everyone has a moral duty to give until he personally is no better off than the least well off person in the entire world.

(He has never followed his own counsel.)

So imagine that everyone has a moral duty to give until everyone in the world in danger of dying within the next year is made safe for that long, so long as neither he (the giver) nor anyone in his immediate sphere of concern loses a moment of life by it.

Sound right?

So, has it happened yet?

Has every American, has any American, done anywhere near that much to save the dying?

No?

So, let them die, huh?

Think about that willingness to allow, what, actual millions of unnecessary deaths, worldwide.

In view of that, is it any surprise Americans - like everyone else, really - are so uninterested in making sacrifices to mitigate the impact of climate change on Third World countries, or worldwide coastal dwellers, or even American coastal dwellers?

Or to "save the planet" for future generations of humans, their own descendants included?

Maybe those folks still living in New Orleans should just move to higher ground, eh?

PS.

Every moral theory other than act utilitarianism denies any very strict or very extensive obligations of charity at all.

None remotely as extensive as what Singer so absurdly proposed.

After all, as Clough had it,

Thou shalt not kill
But needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive.