A little child thinks that since he can’t see you when he closes his eyes that means you can’t see him. That game is called peek-a-boo.
We were all raised with “don’ts.” We learned that morality consists of NOT doing things. So if we DON’T do things, we are guiltless.
Our legal system has gone nuts about this.
“I would rather let a hundred guilty men go than convict one innocent man.” All my life that was the motto of American justice.
Only lately have we begun to realize that if you let ninety-nine guilty men back out on the street, you will kill more than one inocent person.
You voted not to convict because you did not want to “play God.” If you give the defendant the benefit of the doubt, you did not give some innocent person whom that person will kill the benefit of the doubt.
You have played God.
When you say, “I would rather let ninety-nine guilty people go than convict one innocent person,” you are really saying, “I would rather let ninety-nine people I CAN SEE go than to convict one innocent person I CAN SEE.”
The reason? You can’t SEE the people those ninety-nine felons will kill.
That game is called peek-a-boo.
When you decide against stem cell research, you are not innocent. Embryonic stem stem cell research may be useless. But you can SEE the stem cell you destroy. If you don’t destroy it, it will either 1) die on its own or 2) not be created at all.
So, if You don’t do it, you are not responsible for the results, right?
Wrong.
The power comes with the territory.
As I have pointed out in WhitakerOnline, the Oriental version of the Golden Rule is totally different from ours. The Oriental version says, “Do NOT do unto others what you would NOT have them do unto you.”
My Golden Rule says, “DO unto others as you WOULD have them do unto you.”
My Golden Rule makes me fully responsible for all the power I have. This is what frustrates and infuriates many people about my refusal to simply condemn stem cell research and forget it. This is what frustrates and infuriates people about my refusal to simply condemn capital punishment.
“Bob,” they say, “just let it go.”
But I repeat what Martin Luther said, “Here I stand. I can do nothing else.”
Science is forcing power on us.
I, for myself, cannot play peek-a-boo with it.
Here I stand. I can do nothing else.
#1 by Mike on 11/25/2004 - 8:37 pm
I heard it said once that man’s greatest fear was not the fear of death, but the fear of life. A life of responsibility that is, a life where you have to think about your decisions, basing them not on what the preacher says, or the law, or whatever other local “authority” you may come up with, but a life accountable only to the creator via the conscience he’s placed in you.
It’s hard work, not many want to tackle it.