This remarkable and well-written story is, IMO, not really about Peter Singer, who is (also IMO,) an amoral monster.

It is more about the mindset of the author, who appears to be a very intelligent, thoughtful liberal. Primarily the unwillingness to judge, or admit that some things, despite every effort to paint it over, may in fact be evil.

She is flustered and thrown off guard by agenda-driven questioners at her presentation, people obviously used to using their agenda and rhetoric as a weapon, people that she should have flamed into ashes.

I am particularly irked by those in this article and elsewhere who set animals and humans up as interchangable. Much of Singer's bizarre outlook seems to be based on this, and the author seems to have no real way to deal with it. A person who believes that you are no different than a pig may not be motivated by concern for the pig. He may simply be placing you in the category of something he can legitimately slaughter.

This uncertainty, the willingness to cut the opponent every possible break, the inability or unwillingness to judge, is easily exploited by monsters. A point made in the debate (either with her sister or herself) in this article, but somehow she avoids, at great effort, the obvious conclusions:

I am talking to my sister Beth on the phone. ''You kind of like the monster, don't you?'' she says.



I find myself unable to evade, certainly unwilling to lie. ''Yeah, in a way. And he's not exactly a monster.''

''You know, Harriet, there were some very pleasant Nazis. They say the SS guards went home and played on the floor with their children every night.''

She can tell that I'm chastened; she changes the topic, lets me off the hook. Her harshness has come as a surprise. She isn't inclined to moralizing; in our family, I'm the one who sets people straight.

When I put the phone down, my argumentative nature feels frustrated. In my mind, I replay the conversation, but this time defend my position.

''He's not exactly a monster. He just has some strange ways of looking at things.''

''He's advocating genocide.''

''That's the thing. In his mind, he isn't. He's only giving parents a choice. He thinks the humans he is talking about aren't people, aren't 'persons.'''

''But that's the way it always works, isn't it? They're always animals or vermin or chattel goods. Objects, not persons. He's repackaging some old ideas. Making them acceptable.''

''I think his ideas are new, in a way. It's not old-fashioned hate. It's a twisted, misinformed, warped kind of beneficence. His motive is to do good.''

''What do you care about motives?'' she asks. ''Doesn't this beneficent killing make disabled brothers and sisters just as dead?''

''But he isn't killing anyone. It's just talk.''

''Just talk? It's talk with an agenda, talk aimed at forming policy. Talk that's getting a receptive audience. You of all people know the power of that kind of talk.''

''Well, sure, but--''

''If talk didn't matter, would you make it your life's work?''

''But,'' I say, ''his talk won't matter in the end. He won't succeed in reinventing morality. He stirs the pot, brings things out into the open. But ultimately we'll make a world that's fit to live in, a society that has room for all its flawed creatures. History will remember Singer as a curious example of the bizarre things that can happen when paradigms collide.''

''What if you're wrong? What if he convinces people that there's no morally significant difference between a fetus and a newborn, and just as disabled fetuses are routinely aborted now, so disabled babies are routinely killed? Might some future generation take it further than Singer wants to go? Might some say there's no morally significant line between a newborn and a 3-year-old?''

''Sure. Singer concedes that a bright line cannot be drawn. But he doesn't propose killing anyone who prefers to live.''

''That overarching respect for the individual's preference for life -might some say it's a fiction, a fetish, a quasi-religious belief?''

''Yes,'' I say. ''That's pretty close to what I think. As an atheist, I think all preferences are moot once you kill someone. The injury is entirely to the surviving community.''

''So what if that view wins out, but you can't break disability prejudice? What if you wind up in a world where the disabled person's 'irrational' preference to live must yield to society's 'rational' interest in reducing the incidence of disability? Doesn't horror kick in somewhere? Maybe as you watch the door close behind whoever has wheeled you into the gas chamber?''

''That's not going to happen.''

''Do you have empirical evidence?'' she asks. ''A logical argument?''

''Of course not. And I know it's happened before, in what was considered the most progressive medical community in the world. But it won't happen. I have
to believe that.''

Belief. Is that what it comes down to? Am I a person of faith after all? Or am I clinging to foolish hope that the tragic protagonist, this one time, will shift
course before it's too late?

I don't think so. It's less about belief, less about hope, than about a practical need for definitions I can live with.