Would you kill a child to save yourself?

Think about it before answering

That might seem like an odd question to ask, “Would you kill a child to save yourself?” Because when, exactly, might you be faced with that dilemma? It’s the stuff of lifeboat ethics, or of emergencies. As Ayn Rand pointed it, it’s not the kind of ethical question that drives daily living, something I agree with, and she therefore deliberately excluded those questions in formulating her ethical system. I mention Ayn Rand because I’m not really familiar with other philosophical viewpoints here.

But I was prompted to ask it because of arguments I’ve seen about situations like Israel’s war against Hamas, as conducted in Gaza. I’ve always supported Israel and its right to exist and to defend itself. But its activities following the wholly evil attack of 10/7 have put me in the uncomfortable position of no longer being at certain that Israel is doing the right things. My dislike of Netanyahu, and his being aligned with the Israeli far-right, contributes to my unease.

One of my concerns in that conflict involves the killing of children. I consider children to be uniquely and entirely innocent, and their deaths are always entirely tragic. And by that, I mean all children, no matter how indoctrinated they are by their parents and societies. Children exist in a state of intellectual development whereby they are incapable of making moral decisions. Morality requires conscious choices, and children simply aren’t equipped to make them. So no matter who they are — Israeli or Palestinian, American or foreign, born of Marxist or capitalist parents, or whatever — they are innocents.

In the context of Israel and Palestine, some people will say that collateral damage is a necessary byproduct of war, and that the Israeli-Hamas conflict wherein Palestinian children have been killed is entirely the fault of Hamas (and its backers). I get that argument. It’s the same argument for dropping the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — it was Japan’s fault — and for the firebombing of Dresden — it was Germany’s fault.

To put it another way, the moral responsibility for the death of innocents, including children, is on the party that initiates a conflict. And the party that is defending itself has the moral right to take whatever measures are necessary to minimize its own loses, no matter how many innocents are killed.

In his essay “Innocents in War,” Objectivist scholar Onkar Ghate discussed exactly that moral principle. He uses the two examples I mentioned above (coincidentally). If you’re at all familiar with Ayn Rand’s ideas, he’s communicating them here, although I’m not certain if his ideas are entirely Rand’s or if he’s injecting his own interpretations.

But this particular bit struck me. He wrote, in response to the idea that it’s sometimes necessary to “deliberately target the civilians of an aggressor nation in order to cripple its economic production and/or break its will”:

But, it will be objected, is it not more monstrous to kill all those innocent civilians?

No. The moral principle is: the responsibility for all deaths in war lies with the aggressor who initiates force, not with those who defend themselves. (Similarly, if in self-defense you shoot a hit man about to kill you, and also strike the innocent bystander the hit man was deliberately using as a shield, moral responsibility for the bystander’s death lies with the hit man not you.)

What’s striking to me about this quote is actually the parenthetical, where he shifts the context away from warfare and into the personal sphere. That is, a “hit man [is] about to kill you” and in order to defend yourself, you strike what he first calls an “innocent bystander” but then shifts to a literal human shield. So, to put it more plainly, if you have to shoot through that (innocent) human shield in order to kill the hit man and save yourself, that’s your moral right and the moral responsibility falls entirely on the hit man.

The very first thought that came to my mind, or rather the mental image it conjured, but of a hit man holding a child as a human shield and my having the choice to kill the child in order to save myself. The child ended up in my mind’s eye because whenever I contemplate the question of human innocence, it is children who first appear there. Maybe that’s because I was egregiously abused as a child myself, in every way imaginable, and I never once thought I deserved it.

As much as I believe in my right to exist, and my right to defend myself, and the moral responsibility that falls on an aggressor, I have to say: I don’t know if I would deliberately shoot through a child to save myself. And just as important, if I did so, I don’t know if I would be able to live with myself.

An Objectivist might accuse me of making an emotional appeal here, and I would certainly hope that this would be an emotional appeal for any living, breathing human being. I would hope that any person faced with this dilemma would at least feel bad about it. So, I’ll set aside the “emotional appeal” accusation. And besides, Ghate himself came up with the example to explicate his principle. I just made it more explicit.

The same person might also say that I’m — knowingly or unknowingly — injecting an altruist perspective, that is, the moral principle that Rand held as the most egregious moral vice, that it’s moral to sacrifice oneself for the benefit of others. Maybe they would say I’m subconsciously holding onto altruist principles from my childhood, or something.

Again, I understand the argument. I don’t really want to dig into it at the moment, but I will say this for now. If you’re going to take that absolutist position of “it’s the moral responsibility of the aggressor and the defender is morally justified to take any action necessary,” then you better be damned sure that the responsibility can be so clearly delineated and that the “necessary action” is, in fact, necessary. Otherwise, you might find that the “moral responsibility” scorekeepers who are tallying up your score, whoever they are, might not give you full points.

But I want to remain focused on the question of what I would do if faced with the prospect of shooting through an innocent child to save myself. I remember seeing a debate recently between some Objectivists, who were arguing against that notion of “honor” whereby a soldier would decline to shoot an enemy in the back. Or, in one of the examples given from popular culture, Han Solo was right to shoot first. It wasn’t dishonorable to do so.

I don’t think it’s as simplistic as they were alleging in that debate. I think there might be a notion of “honor” that could induce a person not to shoot through the child. I think that it’s “honor,” or maybe just personal integrity, that sometimes caused Vietnam-era soldiers to refuse to kill civilians when giving that order by their commanders. Maybe those soldiers had a different perspective of what’s necessary, or maybe they simply couldn’t bring themselves to kill civilians — truly innocent civilians, which do exist in every conflict — just because some general had decided that doing so might help win the war.

So, ask yourself that question: “Would you kill a child to save yourself.” Maybe that’s just an emergency situation, or a lifeboat question. But according to Objectivism, it’s straightforward enough to justify the killing of children if you’re, e.g., Israel, and so I think it’s instructive to think about what you would do yourself — and how you would feel about it.

I’m going to add this little bit, because my feelings about Israel and Gaza and Palestinian children really came to a head when I came across an Objectivist on Facebook who reposted the following tweet with a simple “I agree.” Just that, which means, she agreed with this entire statement, unequivocally. Otherwise, she would have at least clarified her position. Some other people, some Objectivists, some possibly not, commented with their own agreement. I wonder if they read the whole thing. When I commented in strong disagreement, I was grilled for it.

Here’s the tweet, and it’s a long one. But if you read the entire thing, you’ll find that not only does it justify the killing of children, but the person even said she “doesn’t give a shit” about it. That is, there wasn’t even a simple, “The death of children is tragic but unavoidable.” Because the person held children as responsible for supporting the “jihadists” in Hamas, so they were fair game. It was my interaction with a few Objectivists over this statement that really pushed me to decide that Objectivism isn’t my philosophy, and to voice that here on Substack.