South Dakota Politics Schaff

Frank J over at IMAO writes this:

So there's this study showing that conservatives are more honest than liberals, and I'm pretty sure it's true because it confirms my prejudices. And I remember there are also studies showing that liberals donate less money than conservatives and are generally less happy. So liberals are basically a bunch of dishonest, selfish, unhappy people with dumb monkey faces. Sometimes I wonder if we should reclassify liberals as some sort of subhuman, evil creatures like vampires. And, much like vampires, they freak out if they see crosses. Also, they die if you put a stake through their heart.

So, am I recommending there should be liberal hunters who hunt down and slay liberals? Perhaps, but you'll have to consult with a lawyer on the legality on that. Of course, there's a good chance the lawyer is a liberal and that you should stake him too.

Leave aside the calumny against liberals (in good jest as it may be) and concentrate on the idea that vampires are subhuman.  That poses a philosophical noodle-scratcher.  Do vampires have rights? 

Why do I ask?  Let's consider the ontological status of the vampire.  The vampire is certainly non-human, but is it sub-human?  The vampire has certain characteristics in common with humans, such as the ability to reason, self-awareness, the capacity to experience pain (especially in the day time).  By the standard advocated by many ethicists (especially defenders of abortion and euthanasia), it is not humans that have rights, but persons.  It is self-consciousness and ability to reason that, they say,  defines a personality. Vampires are not human, but they are persons.  By this measure, vampires have rights and it should be wrong to kill them without due process.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, far from being a heroine, is in fact a genocidal maniac.  This is partially the theme of Richard Matheson's story I Am Legend (I have not seen the movie, so can't comment). 

Could the vampire actually be super-human, rather than sub-human?  Vampires, depending on your source, tend to be quite intelligent and wily (or is that just Mr. Darwin speaking: the dumb vampire probably doesn't last long).  In almost every source vampires possess superhuman strength.  Many would say that the immortality of the vampire (assuming it avoids the sun, stakes and the like) is a sign of the vampire's superiority over the human.  Unlike the mere human, the vampire has conquered death.  So perhaps the vampire has the right to rule over humans, and so in addition to having rights it has authority.

One thing the vampire lacks is a soul.  In the Buffy universe this is key.  Vampires Angel and Spike reclaim their souls only to be tortured by the memory of the horrors they inflicted on their countless victims.  These vampires, then, seem to be closer to human than other vampires.  They have a sense of right and wrong, a notion foreign to your standard vampire.  Lacking souls, they only exist to assuage their will to power.  They are Neitzschean "overmen" who live only to enhance their power and satiate their senses.  In doing so they cease to be humans and become monsters.  In this view, it is the human soul,  that which allows us to know right from wrong, that makes us human and makes us rights possessing creatures, unlike the the vampire who is a monster.  By this argument vampires do not possess rights. 

Perhaps this is why the vampire is such an enduring figure in our storytelling.  The vampire is us, with the addition of our lust for immortality and minus our conscience.  A monster.   

In a first, I am opening comments on this important topic.

Update: Jonah comments.  And I fixed typos. 

Update II: Apparently comments aren't working.  Something with the verification system.  Reader Ronny does email in with these thoughts:

I tried to post a comment, but your verification system is giving me a hard time due either to its malfunction or my ineptitude [It is not your ineptitude: JDS].

Anyway, I followed Jonah Goldberg’s link to this blog entry from NRO.  The following remark by you in particular caught my attention:

Lacking souls, they only exist to assuage their will to power.  They are Neitzschean "overmen" who live only to enhance their power and satiate their senses.  In doing so they cease to be humans and become monsters.

 I could not but help think here of what Aristotle wrote in Book I of the Politics concerning the "natural outcast:"

 Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the

"Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one, "

whom Homer denounces- the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war; he may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts.

 The vampire is clearly an example of the natural outcast: set apart by nature from all natural human society, acting outside the law, and verily “a lover of war.”