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This morning a friend of mine sent me an email wishing me a Happy Easter, and attaching a link to the below article (as part of an ongoing debate). It got my blood boiling. On. Easter. Sunday. Sigh. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/05/covid-19-new-york-diary
He is a conservative. We do not see eye-to-eye politically, but I respect his intelligence. This crisis is testing our friendship (and may destroy it).
To my great sadness, rather than bringing us all together this crisis has accentuated our divisions. The line in the sand is a morally disturbing calculus: human lives verses the economy.
In Mr. Reno’s article (well, journal entries) he posits that 700,000 Americans died in the Spanish Flu epidemic and it hardly makes the history books; that death is inevitable (happens all the time). Therefore, let’s just get on with the economy already.
While there is room for debate, I disagree strongly with his tone, premises, and conclusions. The question is always about what is in our control to change and at what cost.
I am sure the same arguments were made during World War II; that it would cost billions of dollars and soldiers’ lives to invade Poland to shut down concentration camps, so let’s just not.
The logic is that the utilitarian cost outweighs the moral imperative and, therefore, morally we are not required to do anything. I’m sure this guy would have written a similar argument against stopping the Holocaust during WWII.
Cowards like him are always in the fore of any crisis, just like those that were arguing against American involvement in WWI and WWII before we entered those conflicts (and changed the course of history for the good).
It also reminds me of the same arguments that people made against ratification of the 13th Amendment (see the movie Lincoln); that the impact of so many freed slaves would devastate the economy, social institutions, and the labor market, so let’s just not.
Same thing with the Civil War itself (see the Compromise of 1850); that the status quo is more palatable than the pain of confronting it.
The moral/spiritual value of an action often outweighs its utilitarian costs.
We recovered economically from the Civil War, the Great Depression, WWI, and WWII. I do not know where the line is in this current crisis, but we are no where near the challenges faced by past generations. Small-minded little cowards like him disgust me.
I sincerely doubt Mr. Reno would volunteer in a COVID-19 ICU if he was asked to do so. Death is inevitable, but I’m sure he holds his own life very dear (and probably more valuable than others).
He’s the kind of guy that will always cling to comfort and the status quo, writing garbage like this from under his toasty down comforter and his high thread-count sheets. I would not want him in my foxhole. He would run at the first bullet.
He’s entitled to his opinion. So am I: his article is garbage.
I will be frogging this thread shortly but needed to get this out of my system.
