An Analogy

Ever since the Ungowa tribe got introduced to unfiltered Camel cigarettes by a crate of cargo accidently dropped on their island in WWII, they have been hooked–and their lung cancer rates have skyrocketed.

Across the island are the Hoodoo tribe. They have nothing to do with the Ungowa tribe because everything the Ungowans do and say is regarded as ritually unclean. However, they did have a crate of cargo with filtered cigarettes dropped on them as well. They consider filtered cigarettes to be clearly and obviously different than the Ungowan Camels. They too smoke with abandon and have soaring cancer rates.

After the war, both tribes set up a vigorous trade with the West because of their hunger for tobacco. Both denounce the other as fools who are completely compromised by their embrace of Western culture: and both are completely addicted to cigarettes and dying in large numbers as a result.

The problem, you see, is not which brand they smoke. The problem is that they smoke.

The problem with pro-abortion consequentialists and pro-torture consequentialists is not that they belong to the Ungowa or Hoodoo tribe. The problem is that they are consequentialists. Get rid of the consequentialism and the Dems cease to be pro-abortion while the “conservatives” cease to be pro-torture.

As it happens, my blog is read mainly by lots of Hoodoos who think that filtered consequentialism is good consequentialism. So I have addressed a lot of ASCII to that tribe. But the reality is that consequentialism is consequentialism and that stuff’ll kill ya.