ETHICS & HUMANITY
The Life and Times of Europe: Barbarians at the Gate and Babies in the Gutter…Still
Netherlands hospital policy to euthanize imperfect babies
Today it was not a very great shock to learn of the Dutch hospital which announced it has begun to follow a policy of terminating the lives of newborn babies deemed too sick to live
(also read similar unrelated story).
As many might know, there are several countries in Europe which already practice some form of euthanasia on the elderly, the sick and infirm. Some blame this on the cold cost-cutting bureaucratic machine of socialized medicine, others believe both the lack of solemn respect for intrinsic human worth and a government healthcare machine sans conscience are symptoms of a bigger problem. Yet others say there is simply nothing wrong here at all. They argue, we are simply offering a way out for those too weak or sick to make the choice themselves. I suppose we should concede in the end that it is a good thing since no one has ever recovered from being “too sick to live” and become anything of consequence throughout the history of mankind. In fact, saving lives of little apparent social value is often far too much trouble and hardly worth the investment, so the thinking goes.
This could arguably be the most traumatic fruit of a Europe once lightly salted with Judeo-Christian-influence, now fully unseasoned by anything but the rancid putrification of the human spirit at the hands of relativism. Though this scene is not altogether unheard of on the Continent throughout all of its history, those truly devout of the transcendent moral Ideal certainly made some headway against such barbarism. Nevertheless barbarism in the world and in Europe in particular has been to one degree or another the rule of social constructs rather than the exception. And this, not because most people aren’t basically kind, docile creatures, rather it occurs when there is no moral basis under which their leaders and other sociopaths in society can justifiably be kept in check.
Hitler’s Germany was a prime example of this. In an embittered secularized country where the final decree of society rules as conscience, that “conscience” decided it was no longer acceptable to be a Jew, to hide a Jew, to oppose policies or devoutly practice one’s faith. The social “conscience” had chosen Hitler as chancellor based on its arbitrary sense of right and wrong- a sense which history has proven to be nothing short of fluid, to say the least! The German plunge into darkness was further exacerbated by a large revival of pagan rituals, customs and thought.
If you will go with me for a moment however, I’d like to take you to a time before this where the value of animal-rule was the world’s only belief system. In such a time, nobody could justifiably oppose a Hitler, a Stalin or a Mau because there was no law higher than any of them. A time where the weak, slow and difficult to understand were thoughtlessly retired from their existence by the knife, the rock or poison. Where persona non grata applied to everyone who was not strong and with sword. In such a time babies were routinely sacrificed to idols, along with the aged and others, cast from great heights, having their throats slit, tossed alive into bogs or burned alive. This is the heritage of pagan barbarity at its finest, where men decide all of the rules to their own advantage. In such a place, if a wife displeased her husband he may just divorce her – or he may prefer instead to kill her in any way that pleased him. If he possessed sufficient power, he was free to rape, steal from and abuse anyone of any age or sex. These are the traditions of most of our forefathers. So it is not surprising they continue unimpeded in many sectors by a better way even until today. The pagan tradition is certainly far older than any law of reason. In Europe, pockets of civility have existed only fleetingly over the millennia, often superficially. The Continent often ranged from wild bestial rampages, to quieter, government-sponsored ones, depending on whether the king was the one deposing or being deposed.
In a world of pagan influence where no justification for human rights transcended the reach of arbitrary men, people easily lost protection and those seen as a possible burden were without a thought eliminated or “sacrificed”. The agreed-upon sensibility was simple: it would be instead unkind to society, yea even the individual in question to permit his or her continuance among us. This ideal was held by small tribes and great empires alike until the first major assault on its core philosophy long before modern Europe. This happening in a remote, modest place called Mt. Sinai, where a code of conduct greater than our corrupt, self-interested and self-devised ones (obviously, since all of us fail in some way to keep every part of it) was passed to a stuttering and quirksome leader – Moses, as if to punctuate the frailty of man and the faux authority which his laws alone, even if principally correct bring.
On that day it truly became a world of two paradigms, one pressing against the other, the adherents of one greatly outnumbering the other. Yet the latter has survived the ages against raids, scourges, pogroms, persecutions, inquisitions and famines determined to be a conscience of compassion, unalienable divinely-appointed rights and hope for those who joined that new paradigm.
It has been a continuous and difficult battle to say the least. Sadly, even some who have claimed throughout the ages to follow a Mosaic conscience have instead been borne out to be liars by their pagan fruits of corruption, cruelty and so forth. Yet they have not invalidated the Ideal, rather proven both its need and its worth to mankind, despite one of the biggest coupes in history in which those very pagan acts known throughout history were ascribed to those professing not to be pagan though not holding to their profession in any way by their actions, as we saw with the Crusades.
And so we begin the modern era, but the tenants are still there for men to see and follow: justice, kindness, compassion, life and liberty. These, the very reasons pilgrims fled to the New World not so long ago, the reason for the popular resistance against the Nazis and the Soviets, against evil men like Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu and the leaders in Beijing. Such tenants, unprecedented prior to their arrival also brought to mankind a passion for building and staffing hospitals, schools for pupils of both sexes, women’s and racial suffrage, a loathing of any bondage or slavery for any and even kindness to animals and the proper caretaking of nature (A righteous man has regard for the life of his animal, but even the compassion of the wicked is cruel - Proverbs 12:10). Though corrupt men may not fully keep them, these ideals live outside the mortal realm of influence. They are transcendently correct and right and available to all who will have them. And it is a foolish man who thinks himself stronger or greater than these, though in the end he will learn in a most difficult way of their wisdom.
The question is whether in the strong winds of justice we will bend like the grass or be broken like a tree. In the Netherlands today sick newborns are being put down like the mules of yore with broken legs. But even mules today are afforded veterinary care to mend their broken bones. And children or any other weak or infirm person, like all men are far greater than the sum of their fleshy parts. It is from such among the weak, infirm and abused, abandoned and neglected we have seen the likes of these, some of our greatest leaders, artisans, philosophers and scientists:
Albert Einstein
Abraham Lincoln
Teddy Roosevelt
Stephen Hawking
Isaac Newton
Leonardo Da Vinci
Dr Temple Grandin
Henry Ford
Thomas Alva Edison
Alexander Graham Bell
Julius Caesar
Winston Churchill
Peter the Great
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harriett Tubman (leading 19th Century American Abolitionist)
George Washington
H.G. Wells
Charles Dickens
Isaac Asimov
Hans Christian Andersen
General George Patton
Ludwig von Beethoven
Glenn Gould
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Itzhak Perlman
Helen Keller
Lord Byron
Woodrow Wilson
In American Pop Culture:
Richard Burton
Tom Cruise
Lou Ferrigno
Danny Glover
Bob Hope
Robin Williams
Walt Disney
Marilyn Monroe
Paul Newman
Christopher Reeve
Sylvester Stallone
Elizabeth Taylor
Bruce Willis
Stevie Wonder
Kenny G
Meatloaf
Alice Cooper
Elton John
Elvis Presley
Michael Bolton
Cher
Carly Simon
Ray Charles
B.B. King
Perhaps such a list as this might help those in the Netherlands who are unable to appreciate transcendent morality think better about the merits and wisdom of a value system which places at the top innocent human life as the greatest and unalterable right, at least from the perspective of their own long-term interests. As they say, what one does to his neighbor, he does to himself.
A man wrote a song about 20 years ago that I think shares poetically but still very succinctly the short-sighted dilemma of pagan moral relativism. In the song “Baby Doe,” Steve Taylor tells the story of a couple who gives birth to a disabled child in a time when the final arbiter of right and wrong is the currently perceived pressures of a fallible society:
Baby Doe
Unfolding today
a miracle play
this Indiana morn
the father--he sighs
she opens her eyes
their baby boy is born
"We don't understand
he's not like we planned"
the doctor shakes his head
"abnormal" they cry
and so they decide
this child is better dead
I bear the blame
believers are few
and what am I to do?
I share the shame
the cradle's below
and where is Baby Doe?
A hearing is sought
the lawyers are bought
the court won't let him eat
the papers applaud
when judges play God
this child is getting weak
They're drawing a bead
reciting their creed
"Respect A Woman's Choice"
I've heard that before
how can you ignore
this baby has a voice
I bear the blame...
it's over and done
the presses have run
some call the parents brave
behind your disguise your rhetoric lies
you watched a baby starve
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ETHICS & HUMANITY
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