Former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), appearing on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown”, remarked on the CNN-Tea Party Republican Debate earlier in the week. In particular, he spoke about the cheering from the audience when Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) rejected the idea of government paying for the medical care of somebody who had not bought health insurance. Grayson said:
Grayson: “Listen, 2,000 years ago, it’s these same people — the same kind of mentality — that was cheering when the lions ate the Christians.”
Olbermann: “Mm-hm.”
Grayson: “It’s always been with us, there’s always been a dark side side to us. But we have to fight it. We have to make sure that, in the end, we are decent human beings. … What it comes down to is very simple, and you don’t just see it on that clip. Because it does summarize it, but it summarizes a much larger truth. The larger truth is that these people who claim to be pro-life are actually pro-death. And they glorify and sanctify other people’s pain. That’s what it comes down to. They are callous, bigoted tools and that’s the so-called loyal opposition these days in America. And that’s the underlying truth that the Democrats failed to bring in the 2010 election and must bring out in the 2012 election, or God help us all.”
First of all, looking at the video of Paul’s comments, it’s far from clear that the audience was cheering the prospect of this (hypothetical) person suffering. Despite a couple of people shouting (perhaps comically) “Yes!” when Paul was asked if the person should be allowed to die, the bulk of the cheering came after Paul said, “that’s what freedom is about, taking your own risks”, so it would seem far more likely that the audience was expressing approval of personal responsibility and self-sufficiency.
More, for Grayson to characterize these people as callous, bigoted sadists who are pro-death and might as well be cheering the Roman execution of Christians is simply name-calling and demonization. We could do the same to Grayson and Olbermann and others who support the idea that government should aid the needy by saying that they are Marxists who hate freedom and who have the same mindset as those who cheered when Lenin and Stalin came to power. That’s the analogous invective in the other direction, and it’s also wrong. It’s exaggeration, distortion, derisive rhetoric attempting to get us to believe the worst about those who disagree with us.
Compassion for the needy on the one hand and self-sufficiency and personal responsibility on the other are both legitimate moral goals. Unfortunately, they don’t always tug us in the same direction, and we frequently have to prioritize one over the other (as we often have to do with competing moral goals). That’s a complicated matter, but it’s not a justification for saying that people who disagree with your choice of moral priorities are people who don’t care about morality at all, who aren’t decent human beings, which is exactly what Grayson and Olbermann are doing.