Moral Flexibility

Nick Naylor: My job requires a certain... moral flexibility. (from Thank You For Smoking)

As noted a few posts before, on Inauguration Day the 'football' with the codes for launching a nuclear attack will pass from one President (George W. Bush, a Christian) to another President (Barack Obama, another Christian).

Beyond the Armageddon scenario, both presidents have had to deal with (or will have to deal with) issues involving conventional warfare, detainment of foreign enemies without trial, torture, whether or not to pardon persons facing the death penalty).

And, it goes without saying that any politician must consider the question (if it's even to still be considered a live question) as to their responsibility to always tell the truth to the American people.

While I'm at a happy point in my life where I, myself, need do nothing that troubles my conscience to earn a living, it is not like I'm not implicated in the Christian moral dilemma.

As a consumer, I make choices that - when their effects are multiplied by large numbers of American consumers making the same choices - cause poverty and suffering in other parts of the world.

The wars that America is fighting, along with their inevitable innocent casualties, are subsidized by my tax dollars and condoned by my silence (motivated by my desire to 'get along') and my political quietism (resulting from my expending all my energy on my employment, maintaining my standard of living and happily losing myself in the many entertainment distractions (such as blogging :-) offered in a consumer-oriented society.

Beyond that, despite what I consider my relatively conservative views on abortion, I find myself escorting patients (past screaming protesters) at a clinic that provides abortions.

As that is the issue I'm most immediately involved with that calls for a bit of Nick Naylor's "moral flexibility," that shall be the issue to which I'll return in the next post.