My First Things blog post asserting that the widespread belief in universal human equality could be a potentially saving grace in the cultural controversies of our time has generated a lot of comment, for which I thank my correspondents. Based on what people are telling me, I think there has been something of a misapprehension about my point. I am certainly not saying that because the lingua franca of the West is equality, it is thus game, set, and match. But I do believe that this crucial principle of human liberty¯even if held only abstractly¯sets in motion the awesome power of human logic. And this works to the advantage of those among us who advocate on behalf of the weak and vulnerable.
For example, the belief in equality has forced those who wish to instrumentalize some humans into making absurd and scientifically unsupportable assertions. Thus, in the embryonic stem cell debate, scientists make the ridiculous assertion that human embryos are not really human. Well, they aren’t Martians! Some even assert that embryos are not human because they don’t have arms and legs and noses. This is nonsense, of course. And it is easy to rebut merely by resorting to any embryology textbook.
