Human Value

I have continued to mull some of the responses to the Texas Vigilante shooting in Texas, both on this blog and elsewhere in the blogosphere. I find it quit interesting that many people feel that since these two men from Colombia were here illegally and had criminal backgrounds they deserved to die. It appears that their value as human beings was reduced by both demerits, to the point that being shot in the back with a 12 gauge shotgun as they were fleeing is "justice." It is important to keep in mind that these men were unarmed and committing a burglary, they were not threatening the well-being of anyone. Even the neighbor was clear that he was "not going to let them get away with this," not a concern for his safety as much as a desire to mete out justice.

This sliding scale of human value seems to be everywhere today. For instance, most of us don't blink when we hear that 23 insurgents were killed today, but we likely pause if we hear 6 American soliders were killed by a roadside bomb. In fact, I would wager that no person truly values all human life equally! For instance, a parent is biologically predisposed to value the lives of their children over the lives of strangers. I wonder if the same goes for cultures? Are we programmed to instinctively value people who are similar to us over people who are different?

Of course the social manifestation of such a sliding scale has resulted in some of the worst acts of human history, including slavery and the holocaust. In both cases it seems that the underlying racism was based on perceived differences between the human value of each respective group. As soon as we have objectified a group of people to "insurgents", "japs", "n*ggers", "illegals", etc, we have removed our own moral barriers to acting inhuman to them. It seems this human tendency to objectify the "other" is one we must continually struggle against!

If I am wrong and human value really is dependent on some extrinsic factors, perhaps we should define a worth spectrum? For instance, 1 U.S. soldier = 75 Iraqi "insurgents" in overall human value, or 1 U.S. citizen equals 20 "illegal aliens," or 1 U.S. taxpayer = 5 people on welfare. If we could establish a tidy spectrum of human value, this would greatly aid our Country in making policy decisions, enacting new legislation, allocating budgets, deciding to go to war, etc. We could simply ask, what is the human value of the respective decisions? If we go to war with Albania, we might loose 700 U.S. soldiers, but gain natural resources that would benefit millions of Americans. If this resulted in the deaths of 20,000 albanians, but the U.S. to Albanian worth ratio was 1:25, clearly the decision would be prudent and justified.

Crack Cocaine Sentencing

In a historic decision, the Supreme Court decided this past Monday to give federal judges more latitude in sentencing individuals convicted of possessing or trafficking crack cocaine. For many years there has existed a disparity between the sentencing guidelines for crack and for powdered cocaine. Crack is predominantly found in black communities, while powdered cocaine is predominantly found in white communities. A clearly racist disparity was challenged by several federal judges and eventually found its way to the Supreme Court. This is a great win for civil rights and racial equity!