Categorical Aperitif

I forget exactly how this excellent critical essay by Steven Pinker came to my notice—I haven't paid much attention to The New Republic for years—but it really is worth a complete reading. Pinker takes a good hard look at the reactionary-right leanings of the President's Council on Bioethics and its attempts to hide illiberal prejudices and personal pet peeves (see the ice cream example) behind the magic catch-all concept of "dignity," and, with admirable clarity and brevity, Pinker argues that dignity may best be seen as a concomitant of more important ethical values: autonomy and respect for persons. Count me very much in with Pinker here:

A free society disempowers the state from enforcing a conception of dignity on its citizens. Democratic governments allow satirists to poke fun at their leaders, institutions, and social mores. And they abjure any mandate to define "some vision of 'the good life'" or the "dignity of using [freedom] well" (two quotes from the Council's volume). The price of freedom is tolerating behavior by others that may be undignified by our own lights. I would be happy if Britney Spears and "American Idol" would go away, but I put up with them in return for not having to worry about being arrested by the ice-cream police. This trade-off is very much in America's DNA and is one of its great contributions to civilization: my country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.

To put it bluntly, and to change the topic a bit: If you're the sort of person who can have the vapors over affronts to the "dignity" of unwanted fetuses but who doesn't give a rat's ass about the death toll in Bush's Iraq debacle—and I know that such people exist—then I doubt that it's really concern for human dignity that motivates your outrage. Congratulations on finding a nice, edifying term to hide behind, though.