"Who's to decide?"
"We will."
I grunted, wishing that I knew more Latin. I wanted to quote that Latin
platitude about who watches the watchers. He watched me narrowly, and I
expected him to quote me the phrase after having read my mind. But
apparently the implication of the phrase did not appeal to him, and so
he remained silent.
I broke the silence by saying, "What right has any man or collection of
men to decide whether I, or anyone else, has the right to live or die?"
"It's done all the time," he replied succinctly.
"Yeah?"
"Criminals are--"
"I'm not a criminal; I've violated no man-made law. I've not even
violated very many of the Ten Commandments. At least, not the one that
is punishable by death."
He was silent for a moment again, then he said, "Steve, you're the
victim of loose propaganda."
"Who isn't?" I granted. "The entire human race is lambasted by one form
of propaganda or another from the time the infant learns to sit up until
the elderly lays down and dies. We're all guilty of loose thinking. My
own father, for instance, had to quit school before he could take any
advanced schooling, had to fight his way up, had to collect his advanced
education by study, application, and hard practice. He always swore that
this long period of hardship strengthened his will and his character and
gave him the guts to go out and do things that he'd never have thought
of if he'd had an easy life. Then the old duck turns right around and
swears that he'll never see any son of his take the bumps as he took
them."
"That's beside the point, Steve. I know what sort of propaganda you've
been listening to. It's the old do-good line; the everything for anybody
line; the no man must die alone line."
"Is it bad?"
Dr. Thorndyke shrugged. "You've talked about loose propaganda," he said.
"Well, in this welter of loose propaganda, every man had at least the
opportunity of choosing which line of guff he intends to adhere to. I'm
even willing to admit that there is both right and wrong on both sides.
Are you?"
I stifled a sour grin. "I shouldn't, because it is a mistake in any
political argument to even let on that the other guy is slightly more
than an idiot. But as an engineer, I'll admit it."
"Now that's a help," he said more cheerfully. "You're objecting, of
course, to the fact that we are taking the right to pick, choose, and
select those people that we think are more likely to be of good
advantage to the human race. You've listened to that old line about the
hypothetical cataclysm that threatens the human race, and how would you
choose the hundred people who are supposed to carry on. Well, have you
ever eyed the human race in slightly another manner?"
"I wouldn't know," I told him. "Maybe."
"Have you ever watched the proceedings of one of those big trials where
some conkpot has blown the brains out of a half-dozen citizens by
pointing a gun and emptying it at a crowd? If you have, you've been
appalled by the sob sisters and do-gooders who show that the vicious
character was momentarily off his toggle. We mustn't execute a nut, no
matter how vicious he is. We've got to protect him, feed him, and house
him for the next fifty years. Now, not only is he doing Society
absolutely no damned good while he's locked up for fifty years, he's
also eating up his share of the standard of living. Then to top this
off, so long as this nut is alive, there is the danger that some
soft-hearted fathead will succeed in getting him turned loose once
more."
"Agreed," I said. "But you're again talking about criminals, which I
don't think applies in my case."
"No, of course not," he said quickly. "I used it to prove to you that
this is one way of looking at a less concrete case. Carry this soft
headed thinking a couple of steps higher. Medical science has made it
possible for the human race to dilute its strength. Epileptics are saved
to breed epileptics; haemophiliacs are preserved, neurotics are ironed
out, weaknesses of all kinds are kept alive to breed their strain of
weakness."
"Just what has this to do with me and my future?" I asked.
"Quite a lot. I'm trying to make you agree that there are quite a lot of
undeserving characters here on Earth."
"Did I ever deny it?" I asked him pointedly, but he took it as not
including present company.
But I could see where Thorndyke was heading. First eliminate the lice on
the body politic. Okay, so I am blind and cannot see the sense of
incarcerating a murderer that has to be fed, clothed, and housed at my
expense for the rest of his natural life. Then for the second step we
get rid of weaklings, both physical and mental. I'll call Step Two
passably okay, but--? Number Three includes grifters, beggars, bums, and
guys out for the soft touch and here I begin to wonder. I've known some
entertaining grifters, beggars, and bums; a few of them chose their way
of life for their own, just as I became a mechanical engineer.
The trouble with this sort of philosophy is that it starts off with an
appeal to justice and logic (I'm quoting myself), but it quickly gets
dangerous. Start knocking off the bilge-scum. Then when the lowest
strata of society is gone, start on the next. Carry this line of
reasoning out to straight Aristotelian Logic and you come up with
parties like you and me, who may have been quite acceptable when
compared to the whole cross-section of humanity, but who now have no one
but his betters to compete with.
I had never reasoned this out before, but as I did right there and then,
I decided that Society cannot draw lines nor assume a static pose.
Society must move constantly, either in one direction or the other. And
while I object to paying taxes to support some rattlehead for the rest
of his natural life, I'd rather have it that way than to have someone
start a trend of bopping off everybody who has not the ability to absorb
the educational level of the scholar. Because, if the trend turned
upward instead of downward, that's where the dividing line would end.