Yes, Christine O'Donnell, there is nothing wrong with lying to Nazis.

According to Think Progress, Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell endorsed some unorthodox moral reasoning back in 1998:

Long before Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell rocked the Delaware GOP by upending establishment favorite Mike Castle, she founded a group named the Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT). SALT focuses on promoting Christian morality among Generation X and places particular emphasis on always telling the truth. In 1998, while O’Donnell was a guest on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, she elaborated on this point, arguing that “telling the truth is always the right thing to do, I believe, and that’s what always gets you out of a situation.”

Comedian Eddie Izzard pressed her on just how far she would take her anti-lying beliefs. Izzard asked O’Donnell whether or not she would lie to Nazis who showed up at her door during WWII and demanded to know if she were hiding any Jewish people in her house. O’Donnell refused to even entertain the notion of concealing the truth from Nazis in that scenario because “you never have to practice deception.” 

You never have to deceive others because "God always provides a way out," said O'Donnell.

Talk about losing one's moral compass.

Now, I know what's going on here. O'Donnell rather unexpectedly won the Republican primary, and now liberal sources of information are going after her. Still, I can't help but comment on this, because the extremism  in O'Donnell's bungling of Izzard's question must be dealt with.

The situation Izzard presented to O'Donnell is one confronted by who knows how many students every year in introductory ethics courses. Kant is famous for having agreed with O'Donnell, but for different reasons. Kant held that anyone who lied in this kind of a situation would be following a certain rule, e.g., "When I wish to protect others from harm, I will tell a lie." But it is impossible even to conceive of a world in which everyone followed exactly the same rule. Why? Well, the liar is successful only if he is believed, but if everyone followed the same rule, the liar would not be believed. The rule, therefore, ought never to be followed, according to Kant, since it is inherently contradictory.

I think that Kant was wrong in this. Do not misunderstand me: I believe we have a strong moral obligation to tell the truth. But, as with perhaps all obligations, it can be overridden by a more stringent obligation in the right circumstances. And in the circumstances O'Donnell was asked about, you are obviously morally obligated to lie, since our obligation to protect others from grievous harm is obviously more stringent than our obligation to tell the truth in the imagined circumstances. College freshman can handle such reasoning with ease; O'Donnell seems unable to.

And this is the problem with extremist thinking. If you believe, like O'Donnell, that moral principles are absolutely exceptionless, you lose your moral compass and end up making moral judgments that are obviously wrong. O'Donnell attempted to finesse the problem by claiming that God would ensure that no one would ever be faced with such a situation. But we know better: people are faced with such moral dilemmas every day, everywhere. Add to that the fact that it is extremely unlikely that God exists.

This is what happens when amateurs attempt to engage in ethical reasoning.

Truthiness gets a boost from Ziganto

In "The Poetry of Humanity," Lori Ziganto sings the praises of an 84-year old Australian "who has stopped an estimated 160 suicides at a cliff in Australia." Ziganto refers her readers to this news story for the details.

I'm obviously not going to argue with her about this. (Neither would anyone else, though Ziganto would have you believe differently, I think.) The man, Don Ritchie, obviously "shows us the best of humanity." To this day, he "remains available to lend an ear, though he says he never tries to counsel, advise or pry. He just gives them a warm smile, asks if they would like to talk and invites them back to his house for tea. Sometimes, they join him."

No, what I want to take issue with is the following paragraph in her post:

It is pretty simple. Humanity itself is simplistic at it’s [sic] very core. But we, in our “enlightened” states, now tend to try to over-think and rationalize all, instead of just embracing gut instincts and our hearts. We’ll create massive bureaucracies, full of “experts” to solve every little possible problem. Mr. Ritchie knows the basic truth: You gotta try and save them. It’s pretty simple.

This sounds wonderful, I admit, and it plainly works in Ritchie's situation. But we can't rely on "embracing gut instincts and our hearts" alone, because it ain't sufficient. Consider the following situation:

A doctor who believed that abortion was wrong, even in order to save the mother's life, might nevertheless consistently believe that it would be permissible to perform a hysterectomy on a pregnant woman with [uterine] cancer. In carrying out the hysterectomy, the doctor would aim to save the woman's life while merely foreseeing the death of the fetus. Performing an abortion, by contrast, would involve intending to kill the fetus as a means to saving the mother. 

Notice that the edict, "You gotta try and save them" isn't very helpful in this situation. If a hysterectomy is performed, the woman will live but the fetus will die; if a hysterectomy is not performed, the fetus may live and the woman may die.

The gut instinct that we ought to preserve life is good. But to reduce all of our moral thinking to gut instincts is exactly the wrong course to take. We live in a complicated world, and our moral thinking ought to reflect that fact.

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