So far we have discussed in Part I that an honest and consistent attribution of value to human life, one that allows for the best functioning society, requires it to hinge both on one's ability to exist mostly independent of external support and to be self-aware.  Now I will attempt to make the case that although many secular people may find these two criteria sufficient, more is needed. To begin with, we need to bring into the calculus not just the actual consciousness of human life, but the potential for same.

Many people may say it is moral to pull the plug of a human in a persistent vegetative state, because his consciousness or independent existence is no more.  Yet what if you were told, as Judge Bork's wonderfully insightful hypothetical presents, that in 4 months that human will awaken to be a vibrant and fully consciousness human being? Is it still moral to pull the plug?  I hope this hypothetical at least gives one pause, especially in light of its implications to the abortion and euthanasia debates. 

Equally unsettling is another result we must reach if potential for consciousness is not part of the moral equation to affording value to human life.  For those who have even seen a newborn, despite loving them with all your heart, even a parent of one must admit they have less consciousness and self-sufficiency than a 6 year old dog.  So if we end the inquiry where many secular people wish we would, to what extent are we willing  -- or in the long run, able -- to turn a blind eye to what our morals will compel us to value more?  How do we account for our presumed greater valuing of the baby who has less consciousness than that of a dog whose consciousness is, in almost every way, greater and more profound? These are serious questions that, I think, deserve serious and honest thought.

Nevertheless, even if we include the potential for consciousness in our analysis, we still come up short if creating a functioning society, one whose principle underpinnings are intellectually consistent and honest, is our ultimate goal.  Is the life of severely mentally retarded person, who presumably will never have as much consciousness or self-sufficiency, less valuable?  Hitler thought so.

Still missing, therefore, is the acknowledgment that all human life is valuable because we are all created in God's image.  Only when we take this belief, together with the above criteria, can we drive the final nail into the coffin of those who wish to rid human life the profound and lasting value it deserves.  In addition to the inconsistencies set forth above, two pitfalls await a society that does not subscribe to the belief that human life is sacred because God  said so. 

First, all that we put forward prior to the invocation of God is based on what I hope is a collective belief system held by most good human beings.  But bad human beings do exist. And without a divine and thus objective source for human life's value, there is nothing to say the belief of those humans which we label as "bad" is any less moral or right.  Put differently, if human life's value is just a human construct, created by humans and for humans, it can be broken down, diluted or even destroyed by those same humans and for those same humans.  Say what one wants of the pitfalls of divine and dogmatic belief, but such belief sure does provide a far stronger foundation to the few beliefs we would like to be impervious to human destruction or manipulation. I submit that human life is one of those beliefs. 

There is also a second, or at least corollary, pitfall that is averted by invoking God.  If just a construct of man, human life's value can more easily be compromised and may even be viewed as not supreme to anything.  That is to say, even if we meet a person who does in fact subscribe to the above analysis establishing human life's worth, there is little to stop them from valuing something like the environment or animals just as much, or more.  True, they will need to find new criteria to reason out why those things have value, but nothing in the above analysis says that which is conscious and  self-sufficient is of greater value that all the trees in the world?  For that we need an additional belief, one which is best supplied by faith in a God who lovingly created us in his image.

In the end, my point is not to say that without these three criteria, a person or society is bad -- however one defines that term.  Rather, my point is that without these three foundations, the value of human life is too arbitrary and more easily displaced.  It is surely not as strong as it could be.

            Based on what do we afford value to human life?  In most cases, answering this question is of no moment.  The fact that human life has great value is or should be axiomatic. Therefore, defining by what criteria we actually find human life to possess worth does not deserve much of our intellectual efforts.  But, especially on the margins of the human experience, pinning down what exactly we find worth preserving is of great import.  That is to say, when discussing the many situations in which people find it permitted to extinguish human life -- such as abortion, war, capital punishment or euthanasia -- establishing what gives human life its worth is an intellectual exercise well worth our time. 

            It appears that if a society's value of human life is to be both intellectually consistent and honest, said value must be found from three sources: independent existence, consciousness and divine gift.  Many find that one, two or a superficial collection of same are sufficient to sustain a good and functioning society.  But, as shown below, this belief is misguided and naive.  Without all three, society's value of human life is doomed to either exist at a teetering and arbitrary level or one whose double standards are detrimentally legion, or both.            

The self-esteem movement of the 80's got something right. There is something to say about knowing your own worth before expecting others to acknowledge same. It stands to reason, therefore, that an entity who can sustain itself independently does not have much worth if it is not even aware of its own self. A plant can exists independently, so to speak, but because it is not self-aware, its value is infinitely less than that of a human.  Consciousness is therefore a fundamental requirement to affording value to human life. 

For many secular people, here ends the inquiry. For example, when an unborn baby - or more affectionately called, fetus -- reaches a certain level of consciousness and independence from the mother, it is magically and abruptly imbued with immeasurable value; thankfully, for now, the baby is given more worth than the fingernail-like value some grant it prior to its birth or viability.  Significantly, though, the fact that an unborn baby has, if left alone, the likely potential for the full consciousness of an adult human is of no concern to these progressive minds.  Yet the double standards that surface as a result of subscribing to this belief should persuade any fair-thinking mind to abandon it, for it is fundamentally flawed.

            In the Part II we will explore these contradictions.  

Under such an understanding of Equal Protection, no law encouraging any form of marriage would remain. Is a single individual not a "person" within the same "jurisdiction" as couples, yet still not deserving "protection" that is "equal" to that of those couples? Who are we to make distinctions based on the conduct of this class of the citizenry? Just like democratic channels are too stupid to figure out that heterosexual behavior is not more deserving of government sanction than homosexual behavior, so, too, the democratic public is too stupid to be trusted with determining that monogamous and committed sexual behavior is more deserving of government sanction than is the sexual behavior in which single people frequently engage. 

Which political ideology, or party, more often wears a mask?  This question is of great import, because to determine which political ideology more frequently espouses better policies, one need not look much further than which side more frequently masks their agenda.  It stands to reason that if a party is arguing for a perceived good, there is little need to mask it.  Indeed, euphemisms and demagoguery are less useful -- or for that matter, used -- when one's plain rhetoric can adequately explain to the public what good their policies will bring.

Although this is admittedly not a simple inquiry, to which the exceptions are likely legion, I submit that the political left more regularly masks their true intentions from the American public.  For leftists are afraid that the people will reject many of their policies out of hand if they were to in fact state their intentions with greater candor.

Before moving forward, however, let me be clear what I am not saying.  I am not saying that people on the right never engage in demagoguery and euphemisms.  Indeed, I would not say this because first, it is not true and second, because I believe that would be a terrible idea; we need both.  Politics would be far too out-of-touch and vulgar if we were not to cautiously engage in such sophistries for the greater good. 

Because I am sure  that sounds odd being that this essay’s main point is to in fact scold such indulgences, allow me to flesh this comment out a bit.

Demagoguery is not always bad.  We in fact need people playing to the “common” concerns of the more "common" folk.  Without these efforts, many if not most of the public  (including myself) would be lost  in jargon which bans their minds from engaging the key issues of the day.  It seems clear that we must employ some form of responsible populism or demagoguery – the type which explains how something that may seem irrelevant actually does affect us in a very important way.  A government’s need to be fiscally responsible to stave of inflation seems a good candidate for such efforts.  Alone it sounds boring and unimportant to many people.  But when it is couched in terms of wasteful spending of our tax dollars, the point drives home with a more common and thus widely accepted force. 

Euphemisms also have their place. A responsible use of less offensive or vulgar rhetoric is a ploy in which we must occasionally indulge. Take the Secretary of Defense. This cabinet position was once known as the Secretary of War. And although that may also be an accurate description -- because defending our people frequently requires that we go to war -- it seems that the modern label does a better job explaining, without at the same time offending or provoking.

Now that I have taken a long but relevant digression, I return to point out at least two of the masks the left too frequently employs: “Resources” and “Fairness.” Both of these innocuous terms are just that, innocuous; that is likely why the left uses them.  I believe, however, that they serve to cement my proposition that the left not only does, but must, employ such rhetorical camouflages.  For if they do not, the American people would have abandoned their underlying policies long ago.

We first come to “resources.” Who wants fewer resources to do good for the country?  Can one really have too many resources?  But when people say “resources,” what they really mean is “power.”  Indeed, when some person clamors for more government resources to reign in big business, for instance, they want nothing more than to give the government more power to manipulate and control those big bad corporations.  To be sure, people on the right may use this term as well.  But it appears to me that for things that the right wants resources for – national defense or private business, to name a couple – they will just as likely use the word power.  America is after all a “superpower,” not just a “militarily resource-abundant nation.”  Further, private business just as legitimately may call for more power over their own business decisions than they would resources at their disposal.  What is certain is that using the word resources to describe right-leaning concerns is not required. Yet that is clearly the case for those on the left who call for more government resources to, among many other worthy endeavors, combat CEOs.  Imagine some senator said the government needs more power to stop these businesses.  Suffice it to say, I cannot imagine those words would be accepted by a big enough voting bloc to get him re-elected.

Next we have fairness.  Similarly, you can presumably never be too fair.  Yet when many on the left use this word they really mean “sameness.”  They call for a fairer, more progressive tax system; this is to narrow the income gap so that the middle class’ fortunes creep towards the same level of rich people who are unfairly better off. Likewise, they call for fairer use of public radio – despite the limitless other mediums for liberal thought – so that everyone has the same access to the radio waves.  Again, because it is unfair that more liberal radio hosts cannot compete without governmental intervention.  Finally, in a truly Orwellian use of the term “fair,” they call for us unquestionably, and without standard, to be fair to pregnant "mothers." This is so they can be the same as everyone else, as they unfairly got knocked up.  Just ask yourself, to whom are they being fair?  If it is not to everyone, then how is that being fair at all?  If it is not fair to the wealthier person, the entertaining and educating radio host, or the unborn baby, are they really asking for fairness?  It is not more likely that they are asking that the government lift those “unfairly” treated people to the same levels as others, even though in many if not most situations, they may deserve to be exactly where they are?

An essay like this could likely go on forever.  From “pro-choice” when they many times mean “pro-abortion” to “valuing education” when they really mean “protecting teacher’s pay,” the masks seem to be without end.  But at some point everyone needs to take off their mask to live a more honest life.  At the very least it is my hope that people just start to realize that the masks are there and vote accordingly. 

         It is faith that motivates us and gives us the strength to reason. Why take the time to reason about anything if you have faith in nothing? Be it faith in family, God, country, humanity or even the mere continuation of your genes—something needs to drive you.

         There are few who claim that accessing the transcendent is not a universal human ambition; most if not all people want to live for something greater than themselves. Equally settled is the notion that to this lofty destination, religion provides a stable route. There are others, however, who have found what may appear to be a shortcut. They call it spirituality.

         By proclaiming oneself spiritual -- or even just thinking of oneself as such -- a person ostensibly attains a ticket to transcendence. Spirituality acts as a pass to some higher level of living, without which we are just smart baboons. But in the final analysis, this embrace of spirituality as a means to transcendence, at least in lieu of organized religion, is a sleight of hand at best.   

         When one speaks of transcendence, they speak of  a state of being that is above and beyond the constraints of the material experience. Yet, they must also speak of its objectivity, its universality or most importantly, the purpose that is provides. By furnishing us with shared and connected goals, transcendence allows us to live for something higher than just our material self. So when we get up in the morning, we have more to do than to just obtain greater material pleasure. Put differently, once tapped into the transcendent, we are no longer just ordered carbon molecules who happen to be self-aware and self-interested. Rather, we are a being who has some meaning to its life which must account to a higher purpose and authority. 

         But to this level of transcendence, only religion comes along for the ride. Spirituality is left behind for it is merely a mirror of our material self. Simply put, one's spirituality is exactly what they want it to be -- nothing more and nothing less. This is not some higher purpose that provides our lives with elevated meaning. Even a dog can engage in such humors. A dog too must only do what makes it feel good and likewise restrain from doing that which makes it feel bad. 

         Thus spirituality is not only deficient in its ability to access transcendence, but it may be fairly viewed as providing its host with the highest level of hedonistic materialism. Not only does spirituality allow you to live a fully material and self-interested life, it allows you to do so thinking you have tapped into some higher meaning. Yet the truth is, the purpose that a spiritual person finds is no higher than is a dog's purpose to find its next meal. 

         Only religion, which provides an external and higher goal to which we must us all strive, gives us an existence that is beyond our material self. And yes, sometimes those external standards may ask of us things which our hedonistic body does not want to do. Transcendence is not free. It carries with it the cost of moral responsibilities  -- responsibilities to which we must adhere so that we may achieve our shared and higher purpose as humans. 

         In the final analysis, therefore, spirituality is masquerading as something beyond self -- something that provides transcendence -- because unlike religion, it is without any of these external standards; it is without anything that makes its host live a life beyond his material self. If viewed honestly, therefore, spirituality offers no shortcut, because it by definition cannot provide the higher level of being that transcendence  otherwise promises to deliver. It just fails to offer the higher form of existence that most of us spend a lifetime to obtain. It is -- a farce. 

         The Mona Lisa demands of us nothing but to look at her.