Bill McClay's absolutely brilliant recent essay for First Things is a must read (linked here).

McClay deals a powerful blow to the facile convention of portraying our current philosophical and political division over life issues as a contest between "right to life" partisans and "culture of death" proponents.

McClay's position: advocates of "[a]bortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide [and] the cannibalization of embryos...do not reflect a desire to promote death...." Specifically, "biotechnological enthusiasts are nothing if not partisans of life, infinitely extensible." The real danger, McClay argues, is that they reflect the common "overwhelming desire of the sovereign individual will to have its way, and to order and manufacture a world it can live in without let or hindrance;" this is "the value that trumps all others." These advocates don't value or promote death; they "trivialize death...because [they reflect a culture that] fails to understand what life is."

McClay also offers an incredibly articulate and concise rationale for valuing the natural and "organic interdependency" of humanity over the culture of individual rights. Consider this sample: "An ailing elderly parent has the right not to be killed, but he does not have the right to be loved. Yet it is one of the central tasks of our humanity that we care lovingly for him and not merely be instructed by the law that we must resist killing him." McClay asserts that "rights-talk" clouds the issue of responsibility.

McClay does not cite the Sermon on the Mount, but, in essence, seeks to release us from the law of entitlement at the same time preaching a much more binding and encompassing Higher Law of duty, interconnectedness and overarching reciprocity.

If you can only read one thing today, I implore you to read this essay in its entirety.

(Thanks to "Tocqueville" for making sure this essay did not slip by me.)