The Netherlands should be a pariah nation
Holland- probably the most morally backward society on earth- is about to rid itself one of its last remaining shreds of societal decency by taking abortion to its logical conclusion.
It's about to legalize the euthanasia of infants.
Comments
I am sure the Dutch would say, "Hey, we're just decriminalizing what has already been happening for years." That's what you get when you trade a prescriptive view of truth for a descriptive one.
After that comes the point where the undesirables- the mentally challenged, and others who are a "burden on society.-" are "humanely" spared the "suffering" involved in continued existance on this planet. Finally we come to those who dissent, who are sand in the gears of the "brave new world-" and whatever ethnic or racial groups it is decided are expendable.
And that last is probably inevitable, too. The concept of "life unworthy of life" embraces racist fantasies just as readily as more palatably presented (though equally cold-blooded) forms of socially-motivated murder.
Anyone disposed to scoff at this should reflect that it was with just such measures as Holland is embracing-euthanasia, discussed in terms of that Hitler began to break down the moral resistance of the German people to genocide. Once the principle is established that not all human life is, in principle, sacred, there is literally nothing to impede a society's slide down that slippery slope.
One of the German Lutheran Church's few moments of glory during the early Hitler era was when it stood up to the Nazis on precisely the ground the Dutch our selling out the ethical heritage of the Western world on now.
How does one say "kyrie eleison" in Dutch?
Referring to Hitler is way out of line.
There is not a single Dutch indivual dealing with abortion and euthanasia who is not deeply touched by the pain and suffering of human life. We are confrontated with human suffering and we deal with it in a human way. Unlike the Americans who are responsible for thousands of horrific human tragedies inside and outside the usa.
rudy_12345@hotmail.com
If I live in a country where a certain behavior is penalized by death, I have the choice not to perform that behavior.
Babies don't get the choice.
Your own post is a case in point. Your lack of specificity only points up how bad your information is- and how poorly you've thought it through.
The "horrors of Guantanamo Bay" are largely anti-American propaganda. In fact, most of the the illegal combatants detained there are better treated than legitmate prisoners of war are treated elsewhere in the world. Many have been held without due legal process- a fact which has caused an outcry in our society. A few seem to have been held in virtual solidary detention- a fact for which, again, the powers that be are being held to account. But these things make Dutch infanticide (or, for that matter, abortion on demand in either country) no less hideously immoral. We do not defend those aspects of our camp at Gitmo subject to legitimate criticism; you defend the cold-blooded murder of the most helpless members of your society.
Capital punishment is a different matter. It is something which Western culture and its moral tradition have endorsed and supported throughout its history. There are legitimate arguments against it- chiefly the fact that mistakes can't be set right (but how does one restore years of a person's life when he has been wrongly imprisoned?). It's only fairly recently that much of the world has decided that it's somehow barbaric. Of course, for a European culture in which it was generally inflicted by means of torture, that conclusion is perhaps more natural than it is in a society which has always striven to be humane even in executing murderers. It's fascinating to me, in any case, that nations which can condone the "humane" pulling of human fetuses, sensitive to pain, limb from limb or their chemical skinning alive in the womb, much less the outright murder of inconvenient people who have already been born, become so squeamish at the execution of convicted murderers by far more humane means!
As to my invocation of the Nazis being out of line, that is hardly the case. It is very much to the point. As I pointed out in my comment above, the measures the Dutch are adopting and which you defend are, in fact, the very measures which- in defiance of the Western moral tradition- the Nazis first instituted in their campaign to numb the consciences of the German people to outright murder. The grounds upon which the case was made was precisely humanitarian!
Whether it's the Nazis of the Thirties or much of modern Europe (Holland being the worst example), we're discussing the complete trashing of the entire Western ethical tradition in favor of an ethic by terms of which the strong have the inherent right to oppress the weak, and even to deprive them of their lives if it is convenient. The fact that you can even compare abortion or infanticide to capital punishment without seeing the moral absurdity of the comparison is the most damning condemnation of your own position I can imagine.
And I'm sure that many of the German doctors who gave lethal injections to the babies deemed "unworthy of life," and concentration camp guards at Auchwicz and Buchenwald who herded those survival was deemed to be incompatible with the welfare of the State, were disturbed by what they were doing, too. But not enough for them to refuse to do it. So forgive me if I am unimpressed by your tales of the agony and compassion of those who, with such kind motives, willingly commit the cold-blooded murder if those currently deemed in Europe to be "life unworthy of life."
The ethic is the same, Rudy: the will to power, unfettered by the constraints of objective concepts of right and wrong as evolved over the millenia. National Socialism and Post-Modernism have precisely the same philosophical base: Nietzsche, the non-binding nature of natural law andthe Western ethical tradition, and the utter supremacy of personal interest, personal convenience, and the will to power.
And you might want to balance your sources of information about the United States with a few which are a little more objective, BTW. I realize that given the one-sidedness of the information available to you on matters relating to America and its contemporary role in the world, precious few of those are readily available to you- especially given the one- but with a little work you should be able to find some. Your view of the world might become a little less fanciful, less full of the blinding anti-American bile which poisons so many in Europe, and better suited to help you make informed judgments.
For more on the parallels between the "humanitarians" of Nazi Germany and those of our own day, see http://www.pregnantpause.org/euth/nazieuth.htm