Coulter’s Argument is Non-Unique

I don’t know why I have to do this; Coulter isn’t being serious, so we shouldn’t have to respond seriously. But for the sake of clarity, here is why her arguments are non-unique, that is, they do not merely apply to the situation she thinks they do. Let’s do this one by one.

RESOLVED: Dr. Brantly should not have gone to Africa to treat Ebola charitably; he should have only done charity in the USA.

C1: It costs charities too much to treat people who get sick while treating Ebola in Africa.

Whatever good Dr. Kent Brantly did in Liberia has now been overwhelmed by the more than $2 million already paid by the Christian charities Samaritan’s Purse and SIM USA just to fly him and his nurse home in separate Gulfstream jets, specially equipped with medical tents, and to care for them at one of America’s premier hospitals.

This is non-unique. It could conceivably cost $2m to treat a doctor who got sick with ebola treating it domestically in a charitable context. Suppose disease X broke out, and each cure cost $2m. A doctor treating disease X charitably in the USA would therefore have done zero good in Coulter’s book despite the fact that he worked domestically. This means her argument here does not actually preference working domestically; it just preferences low-cost charitable work. If Dr. Brantly could teleport, for instance, or if he healed himself free of cost, this argument would no longer obtain.

C2: Treating Ebola in Africa means he couldn’t convert a Hollywood exec to cultural conservatism domestically.

If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia. Ebola kills only the body; the virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence spread by so many Hollywood movies infects the world.

If he were treating ebola domestically, he could equally not spend that time converting a Hollywood exec to cultural conservatism. Therefore this isn’t an argument for doing charitable medical work domestically, it’s an argument for not doing charitable medical work at all. If ebola broke out in the USA, Coulter would evidently still prefer doctors try to convert Hollywood execs to cultural conservatism rather than trying to treat sick people. If movies were made in London rather than Hollywood, Coulter would presumably hate all domestic charity and demand we go to London, where the film execs are. So her argument is only incidentally USA-related; at its core, it’s linked to where culture is produced, and would be anti-USA if culture were produced elsewhere.

It also means she doesn’t believe other countries’ charities should operate in their countries: they should be coming to Hollywood. This means she contradicts her argument that we’re all called to treat our own countries first and foremost.

C3: Doctors get sick treating Ebola in Africa, meaning there are more widows and orphans in the USA.

Right there in Texas, near where Dr. Brantly left his wife and children to fly to Liberia and get Ebola, is one of the poorest counties in the nation, Zavala County — where he wouldn’t have risked making his wife a widow and his children fatherless.

This means Coulter would not have doctors treat potentially fatal illness domestically, because they would risk dying and making their kids fatherless and wives into widows. Doctors should only treat non-fatal illnesses domestically or abroad by this measure.

Further, why Zavala county now, and not Hollywood? Would not a century in Zavala be a waste, like a century in Liberia, since to aid the poor aids only the body, while the souls suffer the onslaught of Hollywood decadence? Coulter gives us no guidance here; we know this is ideology.

C4: Your country is just more important than other countries.

Not only that, but it’s our country. Your country is like your family. We’re supposed to take care of our own first. The same Bible that commands us to “go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel” also says: “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’”

Contradicted by her culture industry point. Also the only non-utilitarian argument in the bunch. This is the thesis, sure, but it turns into just another contention in a series of arguments because it functions on a non-utilitarian framework — it’s a different type of argument than the rest, and has to be measured in a different way. It happens to be non-measurable because it’s axiomatic, but to indulge it: our own are already ‘taken care of’; there is no ebola in the USA. If there were ebola here and ebola there and both places were equally capable of treating it, it might be harder to explain why a doctor would charitably go there to treat it. But of course this is not the case.

WRAPUP: Are we seriously pretending this is anything more than a good firm pot-stir? Come on now. The arguments don’t cohere on a single framework and they interact poorly with one another because this is just ideology; it’s not motivated by a rational analysis, but rather backed-into with a smattering of impulse-points. I believe, especially given her snipe at Pope Francis early in the article, that this is just a little grunt about a stream of Christianity that isn’t sufficiently culture-warrish and nationalistic enough for her taste. The rest is just a shell.