I don’t have an ax to grind here, but I’ve noticed an anomaly and wonder if commenters see the same issue.
I’ve always thought of the left as being vaguely “pro-life” on issues like pollution control and national health care. The right seems “pro-life” in its opposition to Medicare “death panels”, euthanasia, and of course abortion.
Conservative views are often informed by religion, and there’s a clear hostility to the cold utilitarian calculation embodied in death panels and euthanasia. The idea of viewing old people as disposable, or the idea of saying, “it’s not worth spending $X to save grandma” seem especially repugnant to conservatives. This group often criticizes countries in northwestern Europe that have a more “utilitarian” approach to death. To many conservatives, life is sacred.
Given these perceptions, I would not have expected so many conservatives to embrace the view that its OK to trade off the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly old people in exchange for a few trillion dollars more in GDP (and, in fairness, more freedom as well.) Note that this freedom argument could be called “pro-choice”. My partying may kill grandma, but “it’s my body, my choice”.
Just to be clear, I’m not arguing here that conservatives are right or wrong on any of these views. I’m not even sure that the views conflict. I’m also not sure that I fully understand the views of “conservatives” as a whole, a label that includes people as diverse as pro-life Catholic supporters of the welfare state and pro-choice libertarian atheists.
So maybe there is no contradiction here at all.
Another possibility is that conservatism is evolving in a new direction. We know that ideologies change all the time. Liberals have been on both sides of eugenics, free trade, free speech, and a host of other issues. Why shouldn’t conservatism evolve as well?
READER COMMENTS
Charlie
Dec 12 2020 at 2:39pm
I think the disconnect lies more with inaccuracy of your prior notions. Republicans strongly support euthanasia, for example, and Death Panels were never actually a serious policy consideration.
See also the overwhelming Republican support for the Death Penalty, and the Conservative supreme court majority’s strong advocacy for putting prisoners to death.
Conservatives are on the side of letting more people die, by polling on most issues. It’s not at all surprising that this would extend to COVID precautions.
Scott Sumner
Dec 12 2020 at 9:15pm
Euthanasia is legal in liberal states, not conservative states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_suicide_in_the_United_States
Perhaps Death Panels were not that big an issue, but it was conservatives that complained about them.
And we all know where conservatives stand on the “life vs. choice” question when it comes to abortion. And illegal drugs.
Johnson85
Dec 18 2020 at 8:55am
The criticism of death panels isn’t really related to life versus death issues, but government control. Somebody has to make the decision on when to stop spending money on a patient. It’s distasteful, to say the least, to have that decision made by the government. In reality, if it isn’t made by the government, it will generally be made by insurance companies and if our public discourse wasn’t dysfunctional, they’d have to acknowledge the alternative and defend it as better than death panels. Even with our terrible, third party payer dominated healthcare system, I still think it’s preferable to have the decision made there rather than by the government (although with Medicare, most of those decisions would still be made by the government). But I think you’d see death panels be a lot more popular with the public if our public discourse was better and people compared it to the alternative. But of course that’s because I think “insurance death panels” would probably sound worse to the general public than “government death panels”, and if we had the type of public that demanded more from public discourse, maybe that type of public would think a little more deeply about the issues.
David R Henderson
Dec 12 2020 at 3:49pm
You write:
Your point is hard to evaluate without knowing specifics. Who would be, say, 3 conservatives who have said this?
Alan Goldhammer
Dec 12 2020 at 7:31pm
The Lieutenant Governor of Texas was one for sure. He was very outspoken back in the Spring on this issue. There have been others who have made off the cuff remarks about only old people die from COVID-19.
Scott Sumner
Dec 12 2020 at 8:52pm
In my view, this is an extremely widespread view among conservatives, right up to and including President Trump. Trump recently celebrated the fact that many more Americans are now getting Covid, which brings us closer to herd immunity.
KevinDC
Dec 13 2020 at 10:14am
This feels like a bit of a slippery response on your part. It reminds me of occasions where I’m discussing libertarianism with someone and they attribute a view which seems obviously outrageous to libertarians. Often I’ll ask something similar to what David asked now – can you name a few specific libertarians who have clearly advocated that, and point out a few specific occasions where they said it? In my experience, they usually do what you did now – decline to name names or cite any examples, and simply reassert that the view is “very common” among libertarians. At that point I find it very hard to take them seriously.
Now, I have heard many conservatives toss out comments like the one Alan mentions about how Covid only kills old people. But, I’ve never heard any of them specifically say “It only kills old people so who cares, saving their lives isn’t worth the cost,” or anything in that neighborhood. Instead, the point I’ve heard is more like this:
Now, maybe you disagree that the more limited lockdown approach outlined above would have the desired effect. That could very well be true. But if so, that’s simply a factual disagreement about the likely results of a policy proposal. If you and another person disagree about what the results of a policy will be, that’s not evidence that they favor the results you predict.
David R Henderson
Dec 13 2020 at 10:27am
Scott,
You wrote:
I understand. But I’m asking what’s behind your view. Where are the cites of people saying what you said? I have heard and read people say the version that KevinDC gives. But I’ve literally never heard or read the version that you give.
Scott Sumner
Dec 13 2020 at 5:43pm
I am not saying that any conservatives used exactly those words, but I constantly see conservatives complain that it wasn’t worth suffering from a loss of trillions in GDP in order to prevent deaths that mostly involve old people. Not just once or twice, but many, many times I’ve seen these comments. The comment section of my blog is full of these kind of comments. Trump’s views seem quite popular among conservatives.
I tried to accurately portray their views. If I did not do so, then I really have no idea what conservatives have been going on about over recent months.
BTW, as you may know, I believe the worldwide economic slump in 2020 was mostly caused by social distancing, not by lockdowns.
Johnson85
Dec 18 2020 at 9:08am
I think that’s a fair enough statement of their views, provided people understand that it’s not the actual dollars that people are worried about. It’s the human costs related to those dollars. The dollars are just a unit of account that helps people think about the issues (or at least people who are in good faith trying to weigh tradeoffs rather than score political points).
If a fifty year old loses their business that they’ve spent the last 20 years building and their life savings with it, how does that compare to an 81 year old having their life shortened by 6 months. Both are human costs, and difficult to measure in dollars although one superficially looks like a loss in dollars. I think most people would say losing their life’s work and starting over at 50 is worse than losing six months at the end of their life.
But that’s the relatively easy question of tradeoffs. Not everybody is losing just 6 months off the end of their life. Even if it’s a small percentage of overall deaths, there are still a decent number of people that are losing a decade or multiple decades of life. A fifty year old losing their life’s work is preferable to a 40 year dying. A billion fifty year olds losing their lives’ work is not preferable to a 40 year old dying. Trying to figure out where between 1 and 1B that tradeoff flips is hard, and it’s even harder when you haev a lot of uncertainty regarding how many people will die and how many years they will lose and a l ot of uncertainty regarding how much human costs there will be from shutdowns and how to value it.
I don’t think conservatives coming to a different conclusion as to where to make the tradeoffs has any implication to life v. death issue. I think it’s more about this being an issue where conservatives are willing to acknowledge tradeoffs and people on the left are more inclined to believe in fairy dust.
Thomas Lee
Dec 14 2020 at 10:49am
The nation’s perhaps best well-known intellectual conservative Ben Shapiro says something close to what Scott Sumner says about conservatives: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ben-shapiro-coronavirus-death-panel_n_5ea9f706c5b6dac085f52a6f
But isn’t this a false dilemma (and rather false tradeoff) intended to promote political polarization? (Ain’t them conservatives awful?) The truth is that we can save Grandma, keep GDP relatively high, and, to a reasonable degree, protect the freedoms and economic activity of younger people. A calmer discussion with less mudslinging would likely show how it is so.
Andjuar Cedeno
Dec 16 2020 at 9:06pm
Why is there a total fiction that the virus from Wuhan, China has increased the number of deaths in the United States relative to the years preceding its arrival?
A study by Genevieve Briand, the assistant program director of the Applied Economics’ master’s degree program at Johns Hopkins, showed that
“The deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same. ”
“…data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”
“…the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19” and “… that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19. ”
Here is a link to her presentation of the paper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TKJN61aflI&ab_channel=JHUAdvancedAcademicPrograms
Charles D.
Dec 12 2020 at 4:07pm
The conservatives who oppose government actions on covid (lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, etc.) do not view these decisions as a tradeoff between higher GDP and more deaths. They would not see their opposition as a contradiction to their generally pro-life worldview.
Conservatives think that the risks posed by the virus have been overblown by a media that they don’t trust. They see a relatively low death rate (about the same as the flu for younger populations, and 2x that of flu for older populations) and wonder what the fuss is about.
Conservatives wouldn’t agree that most government actions have been effective. For instance, school closures that aren’t supported by the science.
The arbitrary way in which policies have been applied has undermined the government’s credibility in the eyes of conservatives. That credibility erodes further political elites ignore their own orders (ex. Gov. Newsome dining at the French Laundry, Pelosi’s haircut, etc.).
In short, conservatives are not viewing this problem from the same lens that you are, as a tradeoff between GDP and grandma’s life. It seems to me that conservatives are viewing this issue much more with a libertarian frame of mind, with a tradeoff between liberty and coercion.
MarkW
Dec 12 2020 at 5:11pm
I think conservatives would reject that framing. They would strongly resist the idea the leaving people to make their own decisions about risks and tradeoffs is equivalent to the government or (the collective ‘we’) deciding to sacrifice old people in exchange for GDP. They would not agree, I don’t believe, that the right way to frame this is as Adam Smith’s ‘Man of System’ or as the bureaucrats in ‘Seeing Like a State’ would do.
Or should being ‘pro-life’ should require conservatives to favor all forms of government nannying and control that might the overall death rate, however marginally?
Scott Sumner
Dec 12 2020 at 8:56pm
I don’t see how conservative views on “Death Panels” and euthanasia could possible be labeled as believing “leaving people free to make their own decisions”. And I could add drug laws as well.
You might argue that libertarians have that view, but then they’d presumably be fine with legalizing drugs and euthanasia, and not using taxpayer funded Medicare to keep old people alive when their prospects are bleak.
MarkW
Dec 13 2020 at 7:40am
Well, of course, ‘death panels’ and voluntary euthanasia (‘assisted suicide’) are quite different things. And surveys do show a majority support among conservatives for the latter (except for the most religious).
“And I could add drug laws as well.”
Yes, conservatives are not perfectly consistent (nor homogenous). But surveys do show a majority of Republicans supporting marijuana legalization too.
Garrett
Dec 12 2020 at 5:19pm
Can we invert this to also say that it is also surprising that the Left, generally associated with support for personal freedoms despite their externalities (abortion ends a life) is so willing to preach self-sacrifice for the greater good?
Scott Sumner
Dec 12 2020 at 8:57pm
Maybe, I don’t don’t see the left as being particularly in favor of liberty.
Peter Gerdes
Dec 12 2020 at 5:43pm
I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that conservatives who oppose abortion are consequentialists who therefore just want to minimize the number of humans who die. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, from most christian points of view dying isn’t itself a bad thing (you get to go be closer to god etc..). Rather, they take a deontic POV where the harm is in your action to bring about a death.
This is what all the simplistic liberal arguments calling pro-lifers hypocrites if they oppose birth control (reduces abortions) get wrong. For instance, catholics specifically have a hard line against euthanasia but they admit that’s it may not a bad thing for the person to die (hence you get things like the doctrine of double effect). Remember on monotheistic view god’s up there causing (or at least not stopping) lots of people to die and he’s morally perfect.
Peter Gerdes
Dec 12 2020 at 5:44pm
Ohh, and to connect it back up to this issue note that it thus matters to them hugely whether you are merely failing to stop some natural process (death from COVID) or acting to bring about someone’s death purposefully.
Scott Sumner
Dec 12 2020 at 9:00pm
Fair point, but those “death panels” would not have actively brought about deaths.
I’m also a bit puzzled as to why the “every life in precious” view holds for one set of risks but not another, but then perhaps I’m just too much of a utilitarian.
BC
Dec 12 2020 at 7:30pm
Agree with Gerdes’s comments on consequentialist vs. deontological perspectives. Also, on healthcare, conservatives are not more likely than liberals to favor spending tax dollars to save seniors’ lives. Probably, the opposite. The death panels issue is about preventing seniors from spending their own money to extend their own lives, including prevention through taking their money as taxes to spend on items considered “higher priority”.
Rather than thinking in terms of “pro-life”, probably better to think in terms of “pro-choice”. Liberals tend to be anti-choice on most issues other than abortion, conservatives the opposite. (I’m not sure about euthanasia.) On death panels, conservatives hold the pro-choice position: let people decide how to spend their own money on healthcare rather than putting it all in a big government pot and letting death panels decide. Conservatives also hold the pro-choice position on Covid, as Scott points out.
Regardless of conservative vs liberal, society-wide we have decided to protect abortion rights as a constitutional right. That would seem to set a high bar for infringing on individual freedom to address “externalities”. Even if one doesn’t consider a fetus to be a human, there is a pretty high *probability* that an abortion results in a human not being alive in the *near future* given that, depending on the stage of pregnancy, the probability of miscarriage in the absence of abortion is probably less than 10-20 percent. I doubt that a college kid attending a party would result in someone else dying from Covid with probability above 80 percent. The abortion standard, if applied consistently, would probably imply favoring the pro-choice side on most issues where individual freedom generates some externalities.
Scott Sumner
Dec 12 2020 at 9:10pm
You said:
“The death panels issue is about preventing seniors from spending their own money to extend their own lives,”
I don’t agree. I am pretty sure it applied to Medicare spending, but someone correct me if I’m wrong.
As for euthanasia, it’s legal in liberal states, not conservative states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_suicide_in_the_United_States
I don’t agree that conservatives tend to be pro-choice. Look at who strongly opposes drug legalization. How about immigrations restrictionists? Who wants a flag burning constitutional amendment? Which congressmen have called for banning porn?
I do think that the Supreme Court decision on abortion is not consistent with how they rule on other issues, so you have a point there.
BTW, if conservatives have adopted the “we sacrifice too much money and freedom to save lives” view, I’d be happy. That’s also my view.
BC
Dec 13 2020 at 12:51am
Yes, you are correct that conservatives (except for libertarians) are on the anti-choice side of many issues.
Re: death panels, I’ve always understood the argument against death panels to be an argument against the rationing inherent in socialized medicine rather than an argument that Medicare ought to spend unlimited amounts on end-of-life care. The argument is that socialized medicine inherently requires the government to determine which end-of-life treatments will and will not be covered, i.e., to set up death panels to make such determinations. If everyone is required to participate in Medicare, then no one is free to spend their money instead on private health insurance that might provide the end-of-life care that better matches their preferences.
Alan Goldhammer
Dec 13 2020 at 9:20am
As one who has been receiving Medicare benefits for the past 7 years, this is patently untrue. My wife and I are still receiving extra insurance from my former employer that we pay for that provides extra benefits beyond what Medicare offers. Anyone can purchase extra insurance if they desire.
It’s also worth noting that Medicare is not free and the monthly premiums are income adjusted. We currently pay about $16K/year in Medicare and Medigap premiums!!!
Mark Z
Dec 13 2020 at 11:50pm
You’re not free to spend the money that was forcibly extracted from you to pay for Medicare though. One might be willing to voluntarily buy up to $1 million worth of care from an insurance company, in which case one can’t complain when the insurance company cuts them off because it’s now willing to pay more than that to keep them alive; if you wanted more healthcare, you should’ve bought more healthcare. But if you’re forced to contribute $1 million to medicare and they’re only willing to spend 500k to keep you alive, I don’t think it’s hypocritical to be indignant. Whether one is a hypocrite here, IMO, depends on whether one put in more or less than one is getting out. To someone in the former group, saying ‘well you can always buy more healthcare with what we let you keep’ is like taxing you 200k for a ‘give everyone a car’ program (and insisting it’s an ‘earned benefit,’ not an entitlement), then giving you a Pontiac, and saying, ‘what’s the matter, you can still buy a Rolls Royce with what you have left.’
Certainly, poor conservatives who never would’ve been able to pay for end of life care as good as they get from Medicare have no basis to complain. But for wealthier conservatives (and people in general), they are probably getting less spent on them than they were made to put in, and might have otherwise spent on more private healthcare if they had kept more of their earnings.
Scott Sumner
Dec 13 2020 at 5:46pm
I believe Alan is correct on death panels.
robc
Dec 14 2020 at 6:36am
I think Mark Z nailed it.
Scott Sumner
Dec 14 2020 at 1:10pm
I’m afraid I don’t follow his argument. Is the claim that Medicare spends too little, or too much?
robc
Dec 14 2020 at 6:36pm
I think the answer is “yes”. Medicare existing at all distorts in both directions.
Whether they should spend more or less should be an individual decision.
Phil H
Dec 12 2020 at 11:40pm
I agree with SS on the inconsistency, and it’s definitely worth talking about. Lefties are just as inconsistent, of course, so I don’t think the right’s inconsistency should be seen as a point in favour of the left. It’s just a function of this big ugly divide that mulches many different groups together on both the right and the left.
But yeah, it’s important for everyone who cares about having a meaningful political belief to straighten out a couple of things: (1) What are my beliefs, and do they hang together consistently? (Pro tip: the answer is always no, we always have some inconsistencies within our own views, and if you think you haven’t, you just haven’t thought hard enough about it.) (2) Who will I cast my political lot in with, and how will I reconcile my views with theirs?
It is my feeling that the left is much better at having the second kind of conversation than the right is. We (I’m a centre-leftie) don’t seem to spend so much trying to claim that all lefties share the same concerns, or that we’re all *right*. I get the sense that right wingers want to be right more than we do.
Thomas L Knapp
Dec 13 2020 at 6:34am
Defending “conservatism” is not part of my brief, but when you frame it this way:
“the view that its OK to trade off the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly old people in exchange for a few trillion dollars more in GDP (and, in fairness, more freedom as well.)”
I have to notice that there’s no such “trade” involved, because neither the lives, nor the GDP numbers, involved are the property of those supposedly doing the “trading.”
Your construction is along the lines of me “trading” my decision not to rob a bank for the ability of the Chipotle down the street (which I don’t own either) to turn a profit.
Carl M Case
Dec 13 2020 at 9:05am
Finally some sense. Thank you Thomas
Michael Sandifer
Dec 13 2020 at 9:27am
Scott,
You nailed the relevant point when you mentioned religion. That’s the difference. I’ve encountered very, very few opponents of abortion or euthanasia who were not objecting on religious grounds. Belief in the existence of a soul and the will of god seems to be the distinguishing factor.
People killing babies before those souls are subjected to god’s judgement is the problem for them. The babies are innocent, and killing fetuses subverts god’s will in the form of that deposited soul.
Likewise, euthanasia involves subverting the will of god, but the pandemic could be seen as the will of god in action. It can be considered a natural cause of death, at least for those who don’t think the Chinese released the pandemic on purpose.
Unfortunately, certain fundamentalist Christian beliefs are a vastly bigger problem in the US than fundamentalist muslim beliefs.
Ken P
Dec 13 2020 at 6:59pm
The two prevailing approaches are both herd immunity. One is just faster than the other.
1) Lockdown to lower R, then let up. If spreading increases, then R without lockdown is still too high so lockdown again. Repeat until “R without lockdown” is low enough to result in decline of infection (herd immunity is occurring). This is really just Slow Herd Immunity
2) Assume individuals have best information about their own circumstances and let them make decisions based on their unique living situations. Encourage those most vulnerable to remain sheltered and let the least vulnerable make their own decisions to get R < 1 ASAP. This is Fast Herd Immunity.
Personally, I think flattening the curve creates more time for vulnerable people to have to shelter in place and more total opportunities for them to get infected.
The UN expects more people to die globally of starvation as a result of the economic disruption than die due to Covid, so I don’t think that fewer net deaths is associated with lockdowns. We could add in suicides, deaths from the reduction in cancer screening, stress tests, skipped childhood vaccinations… But what really bothers me about the “few trillion dollars” statement is what it obscures. People’s careers sidelined or eliminated. Those are real people not some aggregate of little people that can be tossed aside. I know people who worked for years to get into the right situation to go back to school and now that is ruined. I have friends who had a baby this year and both parents lost their jobs.
Everett
Dec 13 2020 at 7:39pm
This works for the upper middle class vulnerable, but not for most of those lower down the economic ladder.
Aside to Scott: Yes, I was thinking of exactly this parallel earlier. The conservative counterpoints in the comments are enlightening in some ways.
robc
Dec 14 2020 at 6:44am
I think you missed one scenario.
3) Shutdown just enough to flatten the curve. Run local hospitals at near capacity without going over. This was the original flatten the curve strategy, but seemed to turn into “no one ever gets sick again”, which is what most seem to be trying for. We know this wasn’t tried because too many states had too much hospital capacity, to the point they were laying off workers, yet were still doing lockdowns. I think this is close to the Fast Herd Immunity strategy, just not quite as fast. Slow it down juuuuuust enough to avoid hospitals being overfull.
Also, as an aside, but an important one, get rid of CON laws 20* years ago and capacity is much higher, meaning less need to flatten the curve.
*we need time for the hospitals to be built.
zeke5123
Dec 14 2020 at 1:08pm
I am reminded of the trolley problem. Sure, there is the obvious utilitarian answer of throwing the switch to save five at the cost of the one. But there is something in my lizard brain that makes action (i.e., throwing the switch) seem morally wrong even if I cannot articulate the rationale why. However, this unarticulated belief seem arguably embedded at least in part in our law (e.g., generally no duty to help, different punishment between negligent and purposeful behavior). Thus, I think there is something “there.”
Thus, it isn’t surprising to me that conservatives who are against killing a fetus or euthanasia may be against lockdowns. Contagions don’t feel like an action.
Jens
Dec 16 2020 at 5:47am
You can tweak the trolley problem in a lot of ways, too, not just with a fat man.
Let’s assume there is a switch and the trolley is heading towards a group of people, but there is no one at all on the alternative track, that is completely free.
Is the switchman obliged to intervene (morally and / or legally)? Suppose he happens to be on site, he is not professionally or otherwise obliged to set the course. His presence is a coincidence.
Does he have to take risks? What if setting the course means just pushing a button? What if he has to use a lot of strength to do this? What if he had to sprint to the switch and there was a risk of falling and injuring himself? What if he could use his own tool to set the switch, but it could break?
Does anything change in the answers (morally and / or legally) if the switchman has any relationship with the people involved? As an employee with security tasks? As a friend, relative, parent or guardian of those at risk? As the owner of the railway line? What if he loaded something into the trolley but did not start the trolley? What if he led the group to the platform without knowing anything about the specific trolley, but knew about the abstract danger that trolleys sometimes still drive there? etc. etc.
Ted Durant
Dec 14 2020 at 5:38pm
I think it’s obvious that the positions of individual people on various topics don’t sum to simple statements about the positions of binary groupings of people on those topics. It’s also clear that most individuals don’t have moral compasses that allow for perfectly consistent positions on all topics, nor do they seem particularly hung up on consistency in that regard.
In my experience, Americans on “the Left” and on “the Right”, especially Democrats and Republicans, are quite certain about whose and which liberties should be infringed, informed only by their own easily triggered (and often seemingly inconsistent) sense of moral outrage.
It’s possible that your use of the label “pro-life” is creating the appearance of inconsistency. Opposition to “death panels,” euthanasia, and abortion, may arise from different motivations, none of which I would necessarily lump into something I’d label “pro-life”.
Floccina
Dec 15 2020 at 5:25pm
Direct action verses letting people die is in there somewhere but it seems inconsistently applied unless they envision death panels as actively making certain procedures more difficult to get even for those willing to pay out of pocket.
Floccina
Dec 15 2020 at 5:52pm
BTW I’ve told conservatives that death panels are not really “death panels” but “things we’re not paying for panels”. They seem to receive that alright, maybe the death panels thing is just a cynical attempt to get some crossover votes from old people.
Warren Platts
Dec 16 2020 at 3:01pm
Because if there is no need to change, there is a need not to change..
Sean
Dec 16 2020 at 7:27pm
As a Catholic – we don’t fear death – but we leave when death happens to gods hands – so death by virus is just the natural world causing death and not a choice by a human. That explains opposition to abortion and euthanasia.
death penalty is not catholic. I can’t really explain why that’s been a gop position. It’s more of having to merge with tough on crime.
Joe
Dec 17 2020 at 10:36am
The Roman Catholic Tradition (not the Roman Catholic Church with its focus on money, power, and abuse) has one of the clearest POV’s on this, in that they believe that all lives are worth living so they abhor abortion and the death penalty, and they take the idea that caring for the poor and less fortunare are critical to living a good life.
I know that most of the individuals I know raised in Roman Catholic tradition take the virus seriously. Your repect for life extends to a respect for how your actions can have inadvertant effects on others. Where I live, the Roman Catholic church services went virtual in early March out of repesct for their health of their parishioners. The parish priests did put themselves in harms way, as they gladly delivered last rites to many dying in the community, and all have COVID (and one passed).
As they used to say, Jesus was a Socialist in as much he cared deeply about teh society around him.
Joe (Raised in theFranciscan Tradition of Roman Catholicism)
J Mann
Dec 17 2020 at 11:48am
Most of the anti (mask mandate, lockdown, restaurant limitation) conservatives I know have convinced themselves that those mechanisms don’t materially save lives, either because they think the restrictions don’t work, because they think the restrictions cost more lives than they save, and/or because they think Covid isn’t as serious a health risk as is widely believed. (Of course, it’s not universal – some of them are some of the most active mask wearers I know and wish Trump had endorsed masks, but believe bars should be open at full capacity, etc.)
I’ve tried discussing it with them, but I don’t have a good model for why they believe those things. I think some of it is skepticism of government regulation and expert opinion in general – for better or worse, the politicization of science on culture war issues like gun control, global warming, gender transition for children, etc. isn’t getting any lighter.*
Note: I don’t mean to imply that one side or the other is obviously right on any of those issues, just that scientific consensus seems to be viewed through a political lens more than I thought it was when I was younger.
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