America without our elders isn't the America we want to save

Why volunteering older people to die for the economy is an ethical horror

Coffins.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

At 56, right-wing radio host Glenn Beck said in his Tuesday broadcast, "I'm in the danger zone," meaning he would be especially at risk of serious illness or death if he contracted the novel coronavirus. But "I would rather have my children stay home and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working, even if we all get sick," Beck continued. "I would rather die than kill the country. 'Cause it's not the economy that's dying. It's the country."

Beck is not the only older person to suggest something like this in recent days. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) made similar remarks Monday night on Fox News. "No one reached out to me and said, 'As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?'" said Patrick, who is 69. "If that's the exchange, I'm all in." And writing at First Things, editor R.R. Reno, aged 61, denounced "the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost," arguing that other (especially spiritual and social) goods must be weighed against the value of preserving life, which in practice here significantly means the lives in his own generation.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.