Imagine you’re walking along a river bank on a summer afternoon. For the sake of argument, we’ll...
Imagine you’re walking along a river bank on a summer afternoon. For the sake of argument, we’ll stipulate that this is not a scary, raging-rapids river, nor is it an a crocodile-infested jungle river. Imagine instead the sort of river you might float down in an inner tube while drinking Iron City beer. Got that image in your head? Good. Now imagine you hear a splash and a cry from the far bank (which, we will stipulate, is not actually all that far.) You look up to see a child—again, for the sake of argument, let’s say a ten-year-old girl, with blonde pigtails and, if you were close enough to see them, which you are not, adorable dimples. She’s fallen into the river. She clearly cannot swim, and she’s being pulled out into the current. Her parents, who for the purposes of this discussion are not negligent crack heads, but rather are momentarily distracted by their other child, who is doing something delightful some distance away, are nowhere to be seen.
We note now that you are a strong swimmer, and that you once took a lifesaving class when you were in high school—but, but, the water is probably cold. More than that, if you dove in, if you tried to save her, there might be some small risk to your person. You’ve swum in this river many times before, but who knows? Maybe the current is stronger today than it was those other times. Maybe freshwater sharks have migrated up the river from some far-away place while nobody was watching, and they’re just waiting for you to jump in. Maybe you’ll get a cramp from the ham sandwich you ate an hour ago. Maybe that adorable little girl is much stronger than she looks, and as soon as you get out there, she’s planning to pounce on you and drag you under. So, bearing all this in mind, you stand on the river bank, and you watch her drown.
Can we agree that this is a moral wrong? Can we agree that, in fact, you are in this circumstance an entirely abject and sniveling coward?
The applications of these conclusions to the current political debate are left as an exercise for the reader.
