Dear Log,
«Parental warning: This article refers to infanticide and some abnormal sexual activities.I adore the spectacle of The World (a newsmagazine for US Christian monomaniacs) writing a "culture" piece on Pete Singer just for long enough to recognize him as an un-American libertarian and then, thereupon, to yowl in surround-sound horror. Parental warning!![...]These proposals are biblically and historically monstrous, but Mr. Singer is a soft-spoken Princeton professor. Whittaker Chambers a half-century ago wrote, "Man without God is a beast, and never more beastly than when he is most intelligent about his beastliness," but part of Mr. Singer's effectiveness in teaching "Practical Ethics" to Princeton undergraduates is that he does not come across personally as beastly.
[...]He has consistently tossed aside the Declaration of Independence concept that all of us are created equal. Instead, the worth of a life varies according to its rationality and self-consciousness, with no essential divide between animals and humans. For example, given a choice between keeping alive an adult chimpanzee and a human infant, the chimp should beat out the child. He has also thrown out the historical distinction between liberty and license (as in, licentious behavior): Any activity is ethical as long as it is consensual.
[...]How can Christians and others combat Singerism? Some have tried to run him out of town or silence him in other ways, but that is ethically troublesome in our American liberty theme park and practically unrealistic, given the support his ideas already have among leaders in media and academia.
[...]Mr. Singer reveals that he lives in an ivory tower. Since he has resided in the United States for only five years after a lifetime in Australia, he shows little understanding of American culture. He writes about U.S. poverty but acknowledges that he has spent little time talking with the poor. He approves of polyamory in the abstract but in his own life, to his credit, he has been married for 35 years to one woman, Renata Singer. (He notes that they have three daughters in their 20s, all vegetarians.)»
