YouTube Direkt
When Virginia Ironside announced that she would smother a child rather than let the child’s suffering continue, the Guardian proclaimed that she “woke the country up” and extolled her “bravery”. In contrast, “her fellow guest, the Rev Joanna Jepson (famous for attempting to prosecute a doctor who carried out a late abortion for “unlawful killing” in 2001), [who] normally keeps a very calm demeanour [let] her face [shoot] open like a startled fish”. However, it is not the portrayal of the courageous, truth-telling progressive versus the fish-brained Christian that’s interesting in the video clip, so much as Ironside’s own reason for doing it: “I think any good mother would”.
How would she know? Well, for one Ironside is a journalist who writes for the Independent. Nothing about her suggests she everywoman. She writes, “where am I at the moment? Single, 65, with one son, who plays in the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain … I don’t fear death, but fear getting old, mad, incapable and gaga.” She is who she is; a person who certainly has a right to lead her own life. But what the Guardian never asks is whether she has a right to lead someone else’s. That is the question at the very heart of the act of smothering someone else. From the context the right of someone to make a life and death decision for another is already a given. The Guardian’s Zoe Williams speaks approvingly of abortion, which “if it prevented an unwanted child or a child being born profoundly disabled … was a good decision that a woman could be proud of”.
Yet who is this other, whose disposition a person could be proud of? When it was unwanted, was it unwanted by itself? What exactly is the role of people on whose behalf other people make decisions of which they can be proud?
Their role it would seem, is to reach and hold onto that stage of development in which no one can make a decision for them. The children, the comatose, the inarticulate, the “old, mad, incapable and gaga” alike share one attribute: they are the subject of decisions made by others that they can be “proud of”. Except as you are in the fullness of your strength, then you are object of other people’s decisions.
It’s a terrible state to be in because as a rule people want to control their own lives, not be at the mercy of others — even they are journalists in the Independent. Young children want to be left alone to make up their minds at the earliest feasible moment. Cultures fight, even to the death, against overlords who want to impose decisions upon them. All around us we see evidence that making decisions for others should be exception, rather than the rule. Ironside herself would probably bridle at any suggestion that Israel should decide the fate of Palestinians. But she automatically assumes that any good mother would suffocate a child in the same circumstances she would.
Yet this is patently untrue. In reality some would and some would not suffocate a sick child; some would hold out for a betterment and a certain percentage of them would succeed. Still others would care for their children to the end, whatever their condition. No one is saying that Virginia Ironside is alone in wanting to suffocate sick children. But one can make the case that not everyone in the real world would; they run the gamut. My mother lives near a couple who gave up their jobs to care for a quadriplegic son. He has learned to operate an adapted computer and works as an engineer. It is not self-evidently true that “any good mother” would put a pillow over a sick child’s face.
Even suicide — killing yourself — is a personal act. When someone makes the decision to kill you, however subjectively noble the intent, it is called murder. “Life isn’t a gift per se“, Ironside declares. But the determination to make that choice should never as a rule, be made by someone else. Much of the political willingness to make casual abortion, euthanasia and eugenics the rule rather than the exception may have less to do with the desire to alleviate suffering than the desire for power. It is at least as much for the convenience of the self-appointed than it is for the other. Humanity is unruly, to the discomfiture of its rulers. Unless individual human lives can be made ‘just so’, then the ornery stubbornness of humanity will always destroy the perfection of the plan. Too many people will continue to live in pain, exhibit their disfigurement, cling to what is believed to be false hope, or make demands on science to produce impossible cures for the Great and the Good to rest easy.
Humanity is a terrible bother. It clamors, weeps, jokes; it raises its hands to the heavens and slumps in the gutter, drunk. It carries dead children for miles upon mother’s backs. It does irrational and sublime things. It chooses suffering and evades it. It endures almost beyond belief. It is ugly, stubborn; it misbehaves. Yet for all its apparent turmoil humanity possesses, in its variety, a collective wisdom that surpasses the smooth patterns of the elite. Virginia Ironside can certainly speak for herself. Her mistake is to imagine she can, of course, speak for others.
Culture of death, as John Paul the Great said.
Once governments arrogated the idea that concentrating power and economic control centrally justified killing tens of millions of people….
Once societies decided that abortion as casual birth control was morally acceptable….
Once professors said that it was acceptable to “terminate” newborns (no different than abortion”….
Once videos of teachers blowing up children for disagreeing with the pseudoscience of anthropogenic global warming became “relevant” and “humorous”….
Well, you get the picture.
One of the keys to Ironsides’ thinking is her statement that she can’t stand suffering and that’s why she’d suffocate the child. In other words, she’d kill the child to relieve HER OWN pain. Ironsides isn’t “brave:” she’s a coward.
“I’d like you to consider smothering your child rather than let the child’s suffering continue. No pressure.”
A great dark sickness has infected our culture. That Ironside can think the way she does and not anticipate that she will anger and frighten people is an indictment of Western thought. She, I am certain, lives in the echo-chamber of far left British politics so she probably hasn’t met many people that I would consider “normal”. I am not at all taken aback by the Guardian (one wonders who they are guarding?) it has long been a cess-pit of racism (only the best sort, mind you; anti-Semitic racism), eugenics, and statism. If this is anywhere near mainstream thought in Old Blighty, I fear that the U.K. is a lost cause.
My feeling is that Ironside would be “put out” by having to care for a child that is in any way less than perfect. Her narcissism would not tolerate such a distraction, so much bother. Her love of herself is too great to waste any time on anyone but herself. Her ego allows her to speak for “..any good mother..” The “I don’t know any mother…” line reminds me of the “…I don’t know anybody that voted for Nixon..” quote. Yes my dear if you live in a hive of evil and madness there will be little light and happiness.
We have had it too good for too long. The West has forgotten the sruggle for life, and thus undervalues it.
That which is given is never valued as highly as that which is earned.
BTW Richard (at the risk of sounding fawning) your last paragraph brought a tear to my eye, you are truly a man of perception and wisdom, thanks.
The most exhilarating thing about becoming a True Believer is that it breaks the shackles of bourgeois sentimentality. Why should life be sacred? It’s just a “couple of cells”. Joseph Stalin knew the thrilling buzz that came with the lifting of all restraint. He wrote, “death is the solution to all problems. No man – no problem.” Marlon Brando, playing Kurtz in Apocalypse now, described the attractions of this license.
If only we could be just hack off the arms, shoot everyone in our way, put a pillow over the faces of the imperfect, what might we not accomplish? We want to be free of restraint, if only to fight those who already are. Professor Abdallah Nafisi gleefully relates how easy it is to kill hundreds of thousands of Ameriki with just a few pounds of anthrax, certain that the despised Ameriki will not kill a billion Muslims in retaliation. Why is he so sure? “Because it’s the judgment that defeats us.”
But in that Professor Nafisi is wrong. At least part of the West freed itself from the Law a long time ago. In its world, 180 degrees turns are not only possible, but necessary. The Left like a shark, needs no reasons beyond their usefulness as justification. What matters is its vanity and power. To defend that collective power it will put a pillow over Nafisi’s entire culture on the grounds they are doing them a favor. And that, after proclaiming for decades that they would take his side. Irony has no place among two strange faiths serving their pitiless, jealous gods.
In one sense it is possible to speak of the current crisis as being about whether individual life and liberty has meaning any longer in a world thronged by ideologies unrestrained in their will to power.
Those who favor abortion are often against the death penalty.
Those against abortion are often for the death penalty.
One holds innocence dearly, the other does not.
Walker Percy, the great Southern novelist, in “The Thanatos Syndrome” describes an America in which the Supreme Court has determined that children under the age of two have not yet developed full consciousness and therfore are not fuily human. Federally operated “Qualitarian Centers” perform euthanasia on children with Downs Syndrome and AIDS, and the elderly with dementia. The Catholic priest at the heart of the story says to Dr. Tom Moore, the main character: “You’re going to wind up killing Jews.”
bman @6
I once had a college professor who declared that those who supported capital punishment yet opposed abortion were hypocritical and inconsistent. I responded that though I opposed abortion, I would support it on the condition that each “fetus” were convicted of a capital offense after a full trial, with due process of law. With a perplexed look upon his face – he announced that time did not permit a “full discussion” of the matter which he had brought up, and he moved on to another subject.
What is a fish-brained Christian? Are there any Christians who are not fish-brained?
The Left, the Left
Their wonders never cease
Good mothers urged to kill their child
So they may be a peace
At Princeton parents have the right
So Peter Singer claims
To kill their children till age two
If so, why give them names
The Fabians would euthanize
Infirm and lonely folks
Progressives want abortion free
And tell dead fetus jokes
They want the world to be a place
Where humans don’t exist
And wolves hug bunny rabbits
And the warthogs all get kissed
To gain this Eden here on Earth
They look to long ago
Their heroes had the nicest names
Adolf and Uncle Joe
7. Jim in Virginia;
The Resident’s medical hero, Dr. Emmanuel has the same feelings about children below the age of two. He is an advisor re: Obamacare. He would probably approve of “Qualitarian Centers” as a cost-saving measure. More than a little scary, eh?
As the father of five and a grandfather of one I can tell you that people at age two are often little animals, but they are undoubtedly human, often more plainly so in their unaffected honesty and exuberance. The urge to eugenics is part and parcel with the Left’s Great Dream of making people perfect. They view humanity as a project to constantly be remade until they get what they want; a beautiful, nuanced elite and a horde of grubby but well-behaved proles. Orwell knew of which he spoke.
#9: “What is a fish-brained Christian? Are there any Christians who are not fish-brained?”
Evidently you know – or think you know – what a “fish-brained Christian” is, or you wouldn’t be asking the rhetorical question “are there any Christians who aren’t fish-brained?”
So pray tell us: what is a fish-brained Christian? I would assume it is a generic term casting aspersions on the intelligence of religious Christians. Is that your understanding?
If and when Islam becomes a majority in blessed England, I wonder what old Ironside would think when merciful and loving Allah applies the pillow to her own face?
13. RWR “..applies the pillow..” Methinks it will be a far harder substance than a pillow, they do love their stonings.
Anyone who by their own hand can take the life of another and then “feel good about it” is a monster.
The culture of death in the Age of Idiocy. How “brave”…
This morning I ran across this excellent quote by Margaret Thatcher from before she was PM of Britain.
“We must not focus our attention exclusively on the material, because although important, it is not the main issue. The economic success of the Western world is a product of its moral philosophy and practice. The economic results are better because the moral philosophy is superior. It is superior because it starts with the individual.”
They could sure use her now (so could we).
These people (Ironside and others) are not Progressives. They are Regressives. They wish to drag humanity back to the Dark Ages. Instead of creating new solutions that bring light or warmth or cures for suffering, they wish humanity to turn off the lights, sit in dark, dank hovels listening to the scratching at the door while huddled together in fear. And rather than search for cures to end suffering they choose to end the life of the sufferers instead. They are indeed regressing from light to dark, a culture of death, a culture of evil.
We need more fishers, fishers of men, who find these poor benighted creatures early in life and bring them Hope and Light. Teach them to love others in the true Christian sense and to work together to truly progress to the Light. Those who choose darkness walk a precarious path.
Listen friends, and mark my words in this moment and this hour–
God is jealous for his name for his name is jealous.
Nor is this a charming flower to set before a man
nor one of his commands.
Yet, without Jesus, this is more than we can love as we desire peace,
and less than we can know as we desire joy.
For the sacred fire
that makes us liars–
I mean, that separates speech from dreams,
and separates our flesh from the future–
is God’s power manifested.
So, in the year and the hour– for his sake, invest your desire in Jesus.
Follow his holy fire for right now. Right now he intercedes for us in heaven!
Some will say we are people of the way.
We are people of the way.
We praise his holy name
Yahweh.
I am who I am.
I cause things to be.
I am the first cause of creation.
We praise his holy name
Elohym.
And say “Thank you Jesus for your precious blood–
better, so much better than the blood of Abel.
How then should we pray?
I pray bless me a lot oh God.
Show me your kingdom and righteousness
in such a way that my thoughts words and deeds
reflect your wisdom and power–
and that– for the sake of your honor and glory.
So that I will live in your presence
in this life and the next.
For your name sake
Let me hear my children praise your name
And their children too.
I pray all this in Jesus name.
What is a fish-brained Christian? Are there any Christians who are not fish-brained?
A ‘fish-brained’ Christian is any Christian as intentionally portrayed by The Guardian. Whether said Christians are ACTUALLY deficient in their mental process is another question entirely.
A friend of mine’s wife bore a baby girl with serious birth defects nearly 30 years ago. The child had spina bifida, and the local doctor said she would never develop past a drooling idiot, if that.
Fortunately, my friend knew some people at Johns Hopkins, who looked at the data and said that the local doctor did not know what he was talking about. “Your man does not understand how the brain develops.”
That “drooling idiot” graduated from college with a Masters degree, with honors. Despite being largely confined to a wheelchair, she is a joy to everyone she meets.
Those that would smother such a supposedly hopeless case are possessed of an incredible arrogance. As one man put it, science has yet even to catalog all the species of bugs found in a typical home, but those who take down those weighty tomes from the insect ridden bookcases use them to pronounce judgement on any and everything.
Anton: “A great dark sickness has infected our culture.”
Dostoevsky, on Raskolnikov’s fever vision:
“He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. When he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish and delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection.”
Wretchard,
Thanks for bringing attention to this madness.
Go right ahead and smother that child, we will give you a speedy trial, a good last meal and a lethal injection when your done murdering some baby.
It makes do difference
Whether you use
A soft fluffy pillow,
Or tap a big red button
On a little black box,
Or deploy your Zyklon B.
The heart is the same,
It’s just a different face.
Virgina Ironside:
“Abortion can often be seen as something wicked or irresponsible but in fact it can be a moral and unselfish act. If a baby is to be born severely disabled or totally unwanted, surely abortion is the act of a loving mother.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/smothering-pundit-abortions-can-be-moral-and-unselfish/
Nearly a century ago Chesterton wrote that England was no longer
a Christian nation. The observation applied generally to what was
once referred to as “Christendom”. It was Christendom that held
against the onslaught of Islam over the centuries. It was
Christendom, based on a philosophy that raised the individual
to a just a little lower than the angels that built the mightiest,
wealthiest and most free civilization in human history.
This post-Christian culture in which we now live is running on
momentum. Only a moral, virtuous and committed people can or
will make the effort or sacrifices necessary to improve the lot
of their children and grandchildren. An immoral, selfish and
corrupt people will grasp and hold all for themselves leaving
their descendants, if any, to fend for themselves. The fear we
hear expressed by many these days is precisely because they see
that so many have abandoned the future to pursue self gratification
and a vision of security that is based on the delusion that the
status quo can continue perpetually by means of government fiat.
This woman’s monstrous utterances stem from a belief system not
much different from that which Christianity struggled for centuries
but never completely overcame. The worship of Priapus and Venus
and the butchering of innocents to placate a Moloch or other blood
thirsty deities were all committed in a vain effort to sate desire
or assure security. Chesterton pointed out that the struggle to
end slavery is a centuries long effort that commenced in Judea
with the ministry of Christ. With the waning of Christian
culture the west once again turns to elevating immorality in the
hope that by doing so it will change magically from a force for
decline and decay to an opening to sanity and proper
adjustment to “reality”.
Any civilization that tolerates the extermination in the womb of
future generations will not survive for long. It cannot because it
destroys its own future and does so for reasons of pure
selfishness. It is but a small step from such a monstrous act
to the murder of those among the living that are inconvenient and
are unpleasant and expensive to maintain.
I’m sure that Ms. Ironside’s son will show up soon with a pillow to relieve her suffering.
Goethe’s “Faust” was mentioned here awhile back so I read up a little on it. Apparently at the end of the second part Faust goes to heaven anyway, because he had strived for knowledge, and that was enough, regardless of the bad things he had done.
I have a long list of things to read, but this is very interesting and thought provoking and I will have to get to this soon. Is this where this idea comes from, that one can do anything and be not only justified, but glorified, because one was seeking and striving?
Dostoevsky and a few other Orthodox Christian thinkers of the late 19th century truly had the gift of prophecy – they saw the Bolsheviks and the tide of blood coming decades before Lenin and Stalin took over Russia. The only thing comparable to it was Belloc’s prediction back in the 1920s that Europe was not yet done with assaults from Islamdom at a time when the Muslim world seemed completely colonized and subjugated by Europeans.
There were also Orthodox who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn among them.
Virginia Ironside on killing her child: “I think any good mother would.”
That should be rephrased “I think an animal would.” Not only are we supposed to all be Socialists now – we are all supposed to be animals now – just animals. We are all Socialist animals now – none of us are made in the image of God – we are made in the image of pond scum. BTW, highly evolved pond scum-derived animals possess no unalienable God-given rights to life, liberty or creative pursuit of happiness – such animals only possess reversible so-called “rights” from their effete government leaders – those animals who believe themselves “more equal than others.”
“It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organize it against man.” Henri de Lubac
The surprise evident on Mz. Ironside’s face upon being truly seen and recognized for what she is is also disturbing. The same goes for the makers of the 10:10 terror video for the cause of global warming. Those makers never dreamed that others percieving them would react with righteous revulsion. And the same is true of the hatred that Muslims exhibit when called out on their hate-filled ideology. Obama expresses it too when he insists that its impossible for people to disapprove of his policies – he just hasnt sold them enough yet — that, or the people in question dislike his policies for evil reasons of their own.
It is disturbing to see how these retailers of Islam lash out upon being seen, or the progressives with their eugenics and euthanasia respond with querulous shock and confusion when they put out a video of exploding children (exploded by their ditzy teacher, no less). These terrorists for Gaia, these cadres of Obama, all of them know on some level that they must conceal their true thoughts and intentions – they therefore display knowledge of their unacceptability among the rest – and yet they all still show real shock and surprise when they are revealed for what they are and others notice and recoil.
What is it about those point in history that all the commies can come out unabashedly in the One America rally? Why are the unabashed terror videos beginning to emerge from the Eco-fascists? It seems that the Ironsides and the Obamas and the One America commies no longer feel so strongly that they need to hide their nature – but apparently they still do not like being actually seen and recognized for what they are.
The Ahmadinijads and the Obamas and the Ironsides and the 10:10ers all no longer feel it’s important to hide, but notice the way they all lash out when recognized. I remain agnostic on the existence of God, but events since 9/11, witnessing the evils of Islam, or living through the cataclysm of Obama’s apotheosis, all of it makes me believe in primal evil, and possibly even in the existence of Satan himself. At the very least, a chasm of evil is part of the topology of the human heart.
I was offering encouragement to a retired widower friend of mine, to save his money for the rainy day of when he may require care in a nursing home.
“Nursing home!” he snorted. “The one thing about my finances I want to get straight is that if I am ever in a nursing home, people are not to let my (adult) daughter (the media consultant and one-time TV reporter) into the room with me, alone, with a pillow!”
Just remember, here in People’s Democratic Republic of Madison, children offer to smother . . . you!
W: “She is who she is; a person who certainly has a right to lead her own life. But what the Guardian never asks is whether she has a right to lead someone else’s. That is the question at the very heart of the act of smothering someone else.”
Thomas Jefferson answers:
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
Our neo-Marxist/neo-Fasist would-be masters do not believe in the American value of equal rights for all (life, liberty, labored-for property). Just as George Orwell said in Animal Farm – the new totalitarians are zealously attempting to create a world where where some (themselves) are “more equal than others.”
More on this from Orwell:
“We’ll cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman… In the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth as one takes eggs from a hen… Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card… There will be no loyalty except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love except the love of Big Brother… Do you begin to see then what kind of world we are creating… a world of fear and treachery and torment… ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement; everything else we shall destroy…it will be a world of terror… The more the party is powerful the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition the tighter the despotism… Always we shall have the heretic at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible; and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are preparing.” George Orwell – 1984
But it seems that something has happened that has never happened
before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has
never happened before
That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason,
And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.
What have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned
upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?
— T.S. Eliot
21-Aardvark, that’s an awesome quote. I might have to read that book.
This whole thing lays bear progressivism’s heart of darkness: the central conceit to make people better, as Malcolm Reynolds said in Serenity. I, too, do not hold to that. It’s a mentality that will either kill progressivism, or kill us.
I think alot of Ironsides or Stoneheart’s problem is the morbidity she sees when she looks in the mirror. As that other aging gadfly Mick Jagger sang, “What a drag it is getting older…”
When you’ve spent your youth pursuing illusions and hedonism ,what does aging leave you with but a love/hate familiarity with death. I used to laugh at the ugly old lesbians and hags of NOW pimping for abortion. Like it would ever have been a choice for their wretched selves.
The Bible states, “A grey head is glorious if found in the Lord”. Only those who value family, love, faith and greater purpose see value in every life. Ironsides and Dr. Zawahiri and Josef Mengele are birds of the feather
26 foont: I guess we both went to our Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton at the same time! Chesterton tied a lot of modern pathologies to the same source: abandonment of God, and attempt to fill the void with the human will. Whether it was about easy divorce, contraception or eugenics, or the horrors that were yet to come – abortion, infanticide, euthanasia – he saw right through the high-sounding cant of their advocates straight to the shriveled, selfish core that engendered them:
People propose an easy way out of certain human responsibilities and difficulties; including a way out of the responsibility and difficulty of doing economic justice and achieving better payment for the poor. But these people propose this easy method, in the hope that some people will only use it to a moderate extent; whereas it is much more probable that an indefinite number will use it to an indefinite extent. It is odd that they do not see this; because the writers and thinkers among them are no longer by any means optimistic about human nature, like Rousseau; but much more pessimistic about human nature than we are. Considering mankind as described, for instance, by Mr. Aldous Huxley, it is hard to see what answer he could possibly give, except the answer which we give, if the question were put thus: “On the one side there is an easy way out of the difficulty by avoiding childbirth; on the other side, there is a very difficult way out of the difficulty, by reconstructing the whole social system and toiling and perhaps fighting for the better system. Which way are the men you describe more likely to take?”
“the writers and thinkers among them are no longer by any means optimistic about human nature, like Rousseau; but much more pessimistic about human nature…”
The totalitarian impulse is to hate real human nature – our animal nature hybridized with our Divine nature – the human animal made in the image of God. No, no, no – that human nature has to go!
“The individual is only a cell… power is collective. The individual only has power in so far that he ceases to be an individual… If he can make complete utter submission; if he can escape from his identity; if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all powerful and immortal… Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death; the Party is immortal… You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do, and will turn against us; but we create human nature.” George Orwell – 1984
26 – foont and 37 – Dr. Mabuse, I’m with you on Chesterton. I believe he is still the antidote for all of these such social ills from which we suffer. The collected works of his columns from the Illustrated London News are brilliant, and it’s amazing how much of what he wrote 100 years ago still applies today.
At the heart of these people lies the core of their problems and it is arrogance and self conceit. For one to speak of another as merely a “mass of cells’ speaks to the magnitude of the deception. No longer is the child a human being, but an object. Ironside’s arrogance at being called out for her evil ideas only proves that the minds that created the deaths of 150 million people in the last century is alive and well and make no mistake, that she would so casually murder a sick child is evil.
The West has grown accustomed to such evil and most no longer even bat an eyelash until someone like Ms. Ironside pipes up. What will determine if such evil will triumph in the accomplishment of its goal of death is whether the tepid response to it will continue or if it will be strongly rebuked. If the response is sharp, then the behavior will be forcibly repressed. If not, it is only a matter of time until the next great massacre of humanity begins overseen by people like Ms. Ironside who are positive that their murderous actions benefit their fellow man.
The association between totalitarian political ideology and a self-loathing, human nature hating death wish was explored by the Soviet dissidents. They knew the smell of a coprse – they were surrounded by corpses.
“We have arrived at this view of socialism in attempting to account for the contradictions evident in the phenomenon at first glance. And now, looking back, we feel confident that our approach indeed accounts for many of socialism’s peculiarities. Understanding socialism as one of the manifestations of the allure of death explains its hostility toward individuality, its desire to destroy those forces which support and strengthen human personality: religion, culture, family, individual property. It is consistent with the tendency to reduce man to the level of a cog in the state mechanism, as well as with the attempt to prove that man exists only as a manifestation of non-individual features, such as production or class interest… There is, first of all, the profound experience of Russia, the significance of which we are only now beginning to understand. The question therefore arises: will this experience be sufficient? Is it sufficient for the entire world and especially for the West? Indeed, is it sufficient for Russia? Shall we be able to comprehend its meaning? Or is mankind destined to pass through this experience on an immeasurably larger scale? There is no doubt that if the ideals of Utopia are realized universally, mankind, even in the barracks of the universal City of the Sun, shall find the strength to regain its freedom and to preserve God’s image and likeness–human individuality–once it has glanced into the yawning abyss. But will even that experience be sufficient? For it seems just as certain that the freedom of will granted to man and to mankind is absolute, that it includes the freedom to make the ultimate choice–between life and death.” Igor Shafarevich
http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
Storm-Rider #30:
“That should be rephrased “I think an animal would.”
Perhaps you have never encountered a mother dog who has just delivered a litter of puppies and is lavishing special attention on the one that died during birth, convinced that her licking of it will somehow bring it back to life. And then have to take that dead puppy away from its growling mother and try to explain to her that she had tried hard but it was time to give up.
Such people as Ironside are beneath the animals. Far beneath.
5 but unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
6 And the LORD said unto Cain: ‘Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
7 If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? and if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door; and unto thee is its desire, but thou mayest rule over it.’
8 And Cain spoke unto Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him…
Cain’s “offering” was based upon his faulty view of acceptability. When that perspective was rejected, Cain had resort to murder and deceit.
Make no mistake, these people are not going to be dissuaded or persuaded by conventions, reams of legislation or some shared sense of morality or patriotism.
They are shouting at the top of their lungs: “We will kill obstructionists to our grand design, our offering.”
It would be foolish to ignore the clear and present danger of that warning.
Indeed, there is nothing new under the sun; or as Harry Truman would say, “The only thing new is the history you don’t know.”
Not the first batty Brit woman of priviledge to make such depraved comments:
Baroness Warnock:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2983652/Baroness-Warnock-Dementia-sufferers-may-have-a-duty-to-die.html
My reflexive reaction is to want to smother the both of them.
Note that the comments are heavily against the Baroness’s evil notions.
As a father of two special needs children, I believe that pillow over the face was a telling trip into the psyche of the woman who uttered it.
She didn’t say she fantasized about gently putting them to sleep with pills, or some painless method. She fantasized about violently putting a pillow over their faces and strangling the life out of them. This…was, to “end THEIR misery and suffering”. Once and for all.
THEIR suffering.
Really?
The Medea fantasies of the self-absorbed aside, the slippery moral slope of deciding which “affliction” is worthy of brutal extinction of the living aside, the sniveling and vacuous homilies about the greater “good” being done aside…given the choice, who would choose to ask God to give them this woman…as their maternal protector?
For, if and when SHE decides that YOUR life is no longer worth living, your simply an object in a snuff film. Not everyone is born to a good mother. Every son or daughter who has ever had one, when they put their head down on the pillow this evening…can give thanks that it remained under their heads for the whole of their nights.
The good news, I suppose…is that the vast majority of self-absorbed cretins who believe this way, are extreme leftists. Extinction by attrition might make one pause before complaining too loudly. Just saying.
There is a line between treating a child as a child and treating a child as a slave. Virginia Ironside is clearly voicing her view that a child should be treated as a slave.
Thankfully, Virginia Ironside has no children.
Sadly, Virginia Ironside is not alone; killing one’s child was once regarded as the highest of piety in various Near Eastern religious traditions. This comes from a callous “asset vs. liability” mentality as directed toward children. That is, if one’s child becomes seen as a “liability” as opposed to the “asset” of good will from the gods that would supposedly come from sacrificing one’s child to the gods, then decisions made by ancient Carthaginians make a certain evil kind of sense.
Now, certain so-called “environmentalists” in Britain think it’s a good idea to depict the killing of children for the higher cause of reducing humanity’s carbon footprint.
Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax – the only way you can save money nowadays.
– Harry Lime
The fictional Harry Lime saw other people in terms of “assets” and “liabilities” too.
30. Storm-Rider
Virginia Ironside on killing her child: “I think any good mother would.”
That should be rephrased “I think an animal would.” Not only are we supposed to all be Socialists now – we are all supposed to be animals now – just animals.
Bingo. That is precisely what they’re getting at. It is no coinicidence that Peter Singer is the spiritual father of the animal rights movement, having written the seminal book “Animal Liberation” back in the 70′s. It was never the intent of animal rights activists to elevate animals to the level of humans, but rather to debase humans to the same level as other animals.
What is outrageous (among all the other outrages of progressive thought), is that in the 21st century we should revert to a barbarism that largely went out of fashion by the late Neolithic. What purpose “civilization” then?
when the streets run red with our blood, it she and her class who will, over cocktails say “tut tut, do you see what they made us do”
after pushing the “red button” their only fleeting emotion will be irritation at the mess that must be cleaned up.
The sort of drastic, tragic choices that “progressives” like Ironsides and Warnock propose are the kind that a society, or more correctly a fragment of a community, might make in the dire emergency brought about by an extended catastrophe where there is little hope of help from the outside world. Even then, we’re talking primarily about people caught in the midst of a total war and who’ve been essentially abandoned by the world.
Also, in such a hypothetical circumstance, a mother who might have to smother a severely ill child would be haunted forever, and rationalizing about the circumstances that brought on that awful “Sophie’s Choice” type situation would be no consolation.
That these priviledged moral cretins could think that in the midst of comfort and civilization it was OK to be smug and cavalier about committing acts that would traumatize most individuals in the drastic circumstances I hypothesized above, tells you that these people are sociopathic to the extreme. They are monsters.
If either Ironsides or Warnock were to commit an act of the kind they approve of, in America they would be given the death penalty based on the fact that their writings and interviews have revealed the blackness of their souls.
I wish for someone with the wherewithall and creative talent to do a series of documentaries on “The Monsters Among Us,” or whatever compelling title they wish to give it/them.
There is a staggering amount of material with which to condemn these types of people. Many hours of content broken up into hour-long segments could last the equivalent of a TV season.
My fate in humanity is strengthened by seeing that the older woman is the foolish one and the younger the wise.
As long as we’re putting down our most depraved movie quotes, there’s this one from ‘Chinatown’ that rings more and more true every year: You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of ANYTHING.
Salt Lick (#2) is correct, She is weak and a coward! The real question would be “If you Ms. Ironside can’t stand the suffering and suffering is everywhere, then Ms. Ironside wouldn’t it be more appropriate for you to smother yourself! Ms. Ironside has the right to end her own life, not the life of another!
“You know where tenderness leads?”
“No, where?”
“To the gas chamber.”
from The Thanatos Syndrome by Walker Percy
Little knowledge coupled with elevated self-importance is dangerous thing. I bet she and others of her persuasion never really studied any hard sciences and/or engineering. Otherwise she would appreciated that every tiny step into unknown is filled with unanticipated potentialities. Hence arrogance of ignorance.
Long time ago (mid 60-th, I think) I’ve read a SF novel about the future where AI-evolving robots would roam the streets and kill weak, sick, crippled, etc. in order to bring ideal society into full bloom. Until one robot got an idea (they are AI-evolving after all) to measure very sick baby’s mental potential and did not kill the baby. I do not remember the novel’s end, but suspect that entire experiment collapsed.
Peter Singer,Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University,is a leading proponent of abortion, euthanasia and infanticide—-he gives them an “academic” face.
But behind this false mask there is a horror in Singers own history-
“Singer’s parents were Viennese Jews who escaped the German annexation of Austria and fled to Australia in 1938.
They settled in Melbourne, where Singer was born.
His grandparents were less fortunate: his paternal grandparents were taken by the Nazis to Łódź, and were never heard from again; his maternal grandfather died in Theresienstadt”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer
I found the video of Virginia Ironside extremely disturbing. Her advocation of mothers murdering their own children was chilling. It reminded me of a book I once read about Auschweiz, which told about a woman prisoner, who had a baby girl at the camp. The woman was malnourished, so her body could not produce milk for the baby. A German told her she should kill the baby, or he will kill her (the baby). The woman knew she had no choice– even if she could save the baby, the baby would later die of starvation. So she smothered her own baby, her own flesh and blood. The exact action Virginia Ironside is so proud of.
Thank you for writing this post– I hope it would stimulate others to realize how disturbed (and disturbing) the opinions of the likes of Ms Ironside are.
Peter Singer’s contact with evil has not diverted him away but has, as a moth attracted to the flame, drawn him to evil. Face it, some people like evil; I believe it will always be so. May God deliver us from evil – but if not – may God grant us eternal hatred of evil.
“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” Proverbs
So many on the Left like Ms Ironside live in a dream world where everyone and everything is expected to be perfect and live in a world where there are no ghastly realities to deal with.
The Left has formed this mental fantasy construct where there should not be or cannot be balancing attributes in a human being, and where some dire affliction cannot be balanced by some great gift. Those with an affliction must be an aberration, because we cannot let the real world with all it’s sorrows as well as it’s joys shed it’s light on our little fantasy socialist world. Those with an affliction who find the joy in living through their pain are a threat to their perfect fantasy universe. Dealing with a painful reality, and still finding something to live for, without the anesthetic of the Welfare State cannot be allowed. The Left has a fear of the triumph of the individual human spirit, like RWE’s story of the girl with spina bifida.
For the success of the individual and his ability to deal with any painful reality without help from the clutches of the Socialist paradise is a threat to that Socialist Paradise.
How dare she make a life for herself? Storm Riders’ great quote
57. Maya:
Thank you, Maya, for your post. You gave life to my “hypothetical” in #49, which is misnamed, because it is the example you gave from Auschweiz which dramatizes how depraved Ironsides and her fellow believers are. That mother in that camp reacted under desperate conditions of extreme cruelty and deprivation, whereas Ironsides would do the same thing within a “civilized” and materially comfortable envelope.
To these people, almost anything is a crisis, and life itself is some sort of “emergency” existence that requires their drastic and constant intervention. They are insane.
So she’s afraid of “getting old, mad, incapable and gaga”.
What if there were a person who said they were happy to smother people who were, in that person’s sole judgment, old, mad, incapable or gaga? Would Virginia Ironside approve?
What if that person decided that Virginia Ironside’s opinions as expressed in the interview establish definitively that she is already “mad, incapable or gaga”? And stands in front of her armed with, for instance, a taser and a pillow?
I believe, that right around this point, Virginia Ironside would break down and reveal that her position is a list of things she feels justified in doing to others, particularly if they are absolutely unable to help themselves, rather than anything to do with things other people might one day be authorized to do to her.
She might also then develop a sudden interest in the idea of having more than one person make the determination. Who knows, she might one day even experience the first glimmer of an understanding of what it means for people to have rights.
Salt Lick @ 2,
Ironsides isn’t “brave:” she’s a coward.
Indeed. You can see, by the end of the video, that she is starting to backtrack: “Maybe not any [mother], but a lot.” She realizes that she might have said something the could create bad consequences, perhaps the worst possible consequence of all: becoming anathema to all the “right” people. After all, it’s one thing to sit around with your brethren and cistern [sic] and go on about smothering infants. It’s something else altogether to say it on national TV while a woman of the cloth is looking at you like you’re a monster. (Because you talk like one.)
So Ironside starts to hedge. And the reality is that she could never really bring herself to do such a thing if left to herself. She’d sit there, and as she readied the pillow for the cursed deed she would lose her nerve. There would be this little voice in the back of her head saying, “Don’t do it. Do. Not. Do. It.”
And thus lies the ultimate irony: her weakness would be her salvation. Unable to act upon her hideous idea, she would do the right thing, or rather not do the wrong thing.
Unless: she were not alone. If there were others, her friends or fellow travelers, there to egg her on, she might actually carry it through. Human voices can overwhelm the small voice of God. Especially when they channel the voice of the Evil One.
That is why she must be shunned, and the only proper response to Ironsides is complete and total outrage. Rev. Jepson tries to be outraged, but her years of immersion in a politically correct culture (and/or the famous British reserve) prevent its full expression. She looks stunned, not angry. I feel bad for her; having been told that by modernist philosophers that there is no evil, only misunderstanding, she doesn’t know how to respond when it appears.
What would I have done? I don’t know. It’s not fair to criticize someone who was cold-cocked. She never saw it coming. Probably I would have sat stunned as well.
But having thought about it, I’d now be prepared to do the following:
Stand up calmly, look at the host and say “Ironside’s position was the most outrageous, offensive, and monstrous thing I’ve heard in my life. I can no longer in good conscience share the stage with someone who would, in cold blood and with selfish intention, take the life of an innocent child. And (looking into the camera) I encourage all of you who agree with me to stand up, turn off your telly, and cancel your subscription to the Independent until Ms. Ironside has been sacked. Good night.”
Then walk off the stage, go home, and take a shower.
L3
The comments connecting Virginia’s moral argument on individual acts of killing with a political movement that always seems to be connected suggested an upside down understanding of the modern, progressive atheists’ rage. For Virginia and her ilk, it is not God that is intolerable, it is the existence of the devil that must be removed from our consiousness. It is not that the religious person believes in happy land and the old grey bearded fellow seated above, but that he or she identifies certain acts as evil and of the devil, acts that a modern and enlightened sort understand must be accomodated and understood and even, in some circumstances, approved. Inclinations and circumstances allow for solutions to longstanding problems that unfortunatetly are looked down upon by religious persons. But solutions are at hand, if we are brave enough to embrace them. In that moment of recognition, when the truth is understood by both the Christian and the modern seated next to one another, comes the rage, at one’s own self-abasement and at being seen for it. “And who are you, in your delusions, Christian, to judge me?”
Some advice to unmarried men:
Don’t date a girl who agrees with such views on killing children, whether in the womb or out. If you are dating such a creature, end the date.
This lady, Virginia Ironside, fears getting old (not only does she say this, but it’s shown by her ridiculous red-dyed swath of hair – inappropriate and absurd on a woman with a wrinkled face).
Maybe her only son has acquired his mother’s views. Maybe she will be too inconvenient for him to visit when she’s in the nursing home. (I hope she’s not upset if he never calls her on the phone.) After all, she will soon be of no use to him. And if she is suffering from pain – forget the things called painkillers that we have nowadays – and just have the old biddy smothered with a pillow. He would only be following “mom’s advice . . . “
Leo Linbeck III,
I’m not so sure the woman wouldn’t be able to do the killing, if alone. She may already have some experience with killing children. She may have decided it was better to use a coat hanger and pull bits of her child out of her womb – as has been done by quite a number of women in the “desperate” situation of maybe having to be a single mom.
Singer is teaching the culture of death at Princeton–how could that be?
He also promotes sex with animals–and he is chair of an ethics department at Princeton–
As parents we pay many, many thousand $s to send our kids to “elite” universities and this is the trash who teach them?
The culture of death is insidious—
Margaret Sanger, the hero of Planned Parenthood, and her comrades promoted euthanasia and the forced sterilization of serfs in the 30s and 40s–you do not hear much of that history today.
These days it is all prettified up with deceptive PR– but the core of evil is still there
This is the same kind of reasoning that leads so-called femanist groups to oppose increased government support of pre-natal care programs because they might lead to fewer abortions.
A couple of commenters have mentioned Walker Percy’s novel Thanatos Syndrome. It is indeed a good read. In another of his books, Signposts in a Strange Land, (1991) Percy makes the point more discursively (pp. 394-96). If I remember correctly, he also it is who cites another important read on euthanasia: A Sign for Cain, by Frederic Wertham, M.D. (MacMillan, 1966), especially Wertham’s Chapter Nine (pp. 153ff.), which sets forth some history of psychiatric euthanasia in Weimar Germany, and on up through 1945. At this moment in our history, it is a must read.
Viktor,
Judaism has always had more than its fair share of highly influential, immensely destructive, self-loathers. Consider: Freud, Marx and probably Hitler, to name a few. Rare is the Moses or Viktor Frankl.
Ironically, all the sturm und drang, in short order, is rendered as silent as the grave. All the “great” men and their empirial barbarian hordes grow grass through their jaws, while the followers of Moshe will quietly celebrate another of tens of thousands of Sabbaths at 18 minutes before sundown, Friday, 8 Oct 2010 (30 Tishrei, 5771).
The reports of our demise always have been greatly exaggerated.
Ironside’s ethos is of Sparta, so yes, you can construct a society around such values.
However, your neighbors are sure to think you’re odd.
Eventually, though your polis will be extinct.
In the mean time, your clan will be properly noted as rigid in thought and harsh on the servants.
Leo: Indeed. No debate, simply disgust.
There was a man in northern Saskatchewan (iirc) who killed his disabled daughter with car exhaust. There was a very surprising outpouring of support for him, and it made anyone with disabilities very uncomfortable.
This is dangerous territory. Humanity hasn’t shown the ability to differentiated in the past; it is either save everyone or kill indiscriminately.
Derek
I’m trying to figure out why she brought up her son “who plays in the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.” Was that because she’s trying to say she missed the opportunity to smother him, or that the useless ukulele player won’t be the one to take care of her when she is “old, mad, incapable and gaga.”
Mr. X 29: “There were also Orthodox who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn among them.”
Totalitarian societies collapse upon themselves in a mass of blood, broken bodies and filth – because totalitarian political/legal power is evil. Totalitarianism is evil because it elevates a small self-serving group of men (and women) to the status of gods – false gods.
“Is it possible or impossible to warn someone of danger? How many witnesses have been sent to the West in the last 60 years? How many waves of immigrants? How many millions of persons? They are all here. You meet them every day. You know who they are: if not by their spiritual disorientation, their grief, their melancholy, then you can distinguish them by their accents by their external appearance… Coming from different countries and without consulting with one another…they have brought to you exactly the same experience; they tell you exactly the same thing: they warn you of what is already happening. It’s characteristic that communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. It lacks arguments and hence there is the club, the prison, the concentration camp, and insane asylums with forced confinement… Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of “good” and “evil” as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending upon circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of thousands, could be good or could be bad.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
http://www.alor.org/Library/LegacyofTerror.htm
She is smiling. There is a sadomasochistic pleasure that she experiences in her aggressive opposition to the truth, her joy at destroying that which matters — on national television, no less. Don’t underestimate the sexual component of this kind of stimulation. People get off on this kind of nihilism.
73. Storm-Rider
This woman is just the latest embodiment of a long line of petty tyrants flowing into prehistory.
There is an ancient tale of a man, who through mistranslation acquired the reputation of a hunter of game. Instead, he was a hunter of the souls of men. One ancient understanding of his name was, “I said, get down”.
His charisma was such that he was able to convince a great mass of followers to build the world’s first city of “uniform”, fired bricks. As his emblem, he took the furnace and wore a replica suspended on a chain.
Part of the moral of the story is that not only were the bricks uniform, but eventually so became the souls manufacturing them.
Thus, literature gives us the first conflict between the force creating docile uniformity (socialism) and its nemesis, free will (later represented by edifices created of unique, uncut, field stone.
The villain is Nimrod, whose sin was the enslavement of men to his dream of a totalitarian utopia. His slaves were once free men, who willingly forged their own shackles when they bought into his dream of his kingdom, a heaven on earth.
Nimrod’s adversary, according to legend, was none other than Abram.
Nothing, really, has changed other than the passage of time. This woman, like Nimrod, is saying, “I said, get down.”
Allen,
I’m glad that you brought up the notion of human uniformity as a necessary feature of totalitarianism – the other requirement being government collectivization of labor and property. Totalitarian societies require their subjects to be pathologically identical – devoid of individuality – the Borg. Thank God for Abraham and Moses – and since I am a Christian – also Jesus. According to our spiritual forefathers men are not identical cogs in the State mechanism – men are individuals – each made in the image of God – each with a miraculous soul – each unequal in individual creativity and outcome – yet each with infinite and therefore equal value – and each therefore with equal unalienable God-given rights. If man is made in the image of God then the Declaration of Independence is true.
The Soviet dissidents were, along with George Orwell and C.S. Lewis, the best at dissecting out the pathological aspect of human equality within socialist ideology – that is that the little people (but not themselves) are in fact identical and should therefore be forced into equal outcome – equal serfdom.
“As for Marxism, one thinks of an analogy with another physical theory. This is the kinetic theory of gases, according to which a gas is the aggregate of molecules that come into collision, with the result of each collision determined by the laws of mechanics. A very great number of molecules transform the statistical laws of their collision into the general laws of the physics of gases. [Marx:]“The only form of social contact of the producers of goods in capitalist society is exchange” (just as for gas molecules the only form of interaction is collision). The interaction of a great number of producers engenders that “social production” which, in its turn, determines their political, legal and religious notions, and the “social, political and spiritual processes of life in general.” It is evident that such a conception makes sense only on the assumption that separate “molecules” (producers) are identical… The usual understanding of “equality,” when applied to people, entails equality of rights and sometimes equality of opportunity. But what is meant in all these (Socialist) cases is the equalization of external conditions (social and economic outcome) which do not touch the individuality of man. In socialist ideology, however, the understanding of equality is akin to that used in mathematics, i.e., this is in fact identity, the abolition of differences in behavior as well as in the inner world of the individuals constituting society. From this point of view, a puzzling and at first sight contradictory property of socialist doctrines becomes apparent. They proclaim the greatest possible equality, the destruction of hierarchy in society and at the same time a strict regimentation of all of life, which would be impossible without absolute control and an all-powerful bureaucracy which would engender an incomparably greater inequality.” Igor Shafarevich
Allen,
C.S. Lewis weighs in on the difference between natural equal rights and pathological equal outcome.
“Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose… You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate. And of course it is connected with the political ideal that men should be equally treated [equality before law which secures equal rights]. You then make a stealthy transition in their minds from this political ideal to a factual belief that all men are equal [in outcome – regardless of creativity and labor]… You remember how one of the Greek Dictators… sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals.” C.S. Lewis – Screwtape Proposes a toast
http://screwtapeblogs.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/screwtape-proposes-a-toast/
George Orwell also weighs in; pointing out that the rhetoric of “equality” in socialist ideology is a big lie – the socialists make sure that they are, as in Animal Farm, “more equal than others.”
“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property” (Communist Manifesto)… meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow; and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc (Socialist Principles of Oceania), which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
With Dostoevsky and Chesterton being quoted, I couldn’t help think of the following from Tolkien:
‘Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death,’ answered Gandalf, ‘And only the heathen kings, under the domination of the Dark Power, did thus, slaying themselves in pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own death.’
I remember when I was younger thinking that such evils were contained in some distant age; the way back shut, barred, and locked. I couldn’t conceive that there would be those who would want to pick the lock, unbar the door, and swing wide the door.
Alas.
Somedays I half expect to see a Temple of Baal being constructed and child sacrifice picking up again. The mentality like Ironside’s seems that strangely archaic, and that much of a foreign break from our Judeo-Christian traditions. Her predictable rationalizations are particularly disheartening. Anyone who’s participated in the abortion debate has heard the argument before that the foetus is “just a couple of cells”, although that thankfully does not come up much anymore. And he’s also probably had his “slipery slope” argument (that the destruction of life once accepted in the womb isn’t going to stay there) refuted, poobah-ed and ingored. And here we behold Ms. Ironside doing no less than equating suffocating someone with a pillow to the mere destruction of “just a couple of cells.”
It’s not a surprise her sympathizers describe her stance in terms of bravery and heroicism. There’s a deathwish that’s got into the house, a form of fetishism, a blood-lust. And it’s now paved a road to sterility and desolation. We’re advised not to have too many kids. One, maybe. Possibly two. We’re to think of the planet first, of demand on resources presented in a Malthusian paradigm, of the high responsibilities and dangers of raising kids these days, and, most importantly, the drag prospective children will have on our precious selves and our careers! And, now, those children who are really too much bother, that crimp our style a little overmuch? Well there’s simply a need calling out here to dispose of them.
We’ve allowed these attacks far too much root and they’ve shackled the West to, what else?, but demographic suicide. This is a failure which may simply upend the project of civilization as we know it, for while at least. We’re entering an age of diminishment alright, but not of reduced natural resources like they’ve warned us, but rather one of reduced human resources and reduced human captial. A reduced capacity Dark Age. We’re becoming a vast conglomerate of gray-hairs here in the West, a backwards looking one, sucking the energy out of our young or even, it seems, outright offing them to further our investing in the present and the past. If we can’t defeat this general trends fast, it’s going be a trainwreck.
Amon Rudh – Nice quote from Tolkien, but unfortunately his writings are not even self-consistent.
From the Akallabeth, Silmarillion page 301 (hardback):
“And Atamamir lived to a great age, clinging to his life beyond the end of all joy; and he was the first of the Numeroreans to do this, refusing to depart until he was witless and unmanned, and denying to his son the kingship at the height of his days. For the Lords of Numenor had been wont to wed late in their long lives and to depart and leave the mastery to their sons when these were come to full stature of body and mind.”
This is depicted as the beginning of the sins that led to the destruction of Numenor and the reshaping of the world into a sphere. I think one can safely say that Eru Iluvatar (AKA God) did not approve of this conduct. And therefore that he did approve of what was essentially suicide, at the proper time.
On the abortion issue, “infanticide and abortion are the same” as parroted by the religious Right. I call BS. At some point in the pregnancy they become the same, sure. However, taken to its logical extreme a sperm and egg close together are not human but ten seconds later, when the sperm has burrowed inside, the resulting zygote is. Incidentally, this viewpoint makes any doctor who fits an IUD an abortionist a dozen times over, or more, for every one he fits.
IMHO the argument is, and always has been, when abortion and infanticide DO become the same. Maybe something like 14 weeks, when the nervous system has begun to form.
Fletcher Christian,
I believe abortion becomes murder at the point of fetal viability – currently at about 28 weeks – the point where the unborn child can live (with medical assistance) outside the mother’s uterus. Prior to that point abortion is still unjustified killing of human life, but it should be considered a sin rather than a crime because prior to fetal viability the unborn child is fully dependant on the mother’s life and custody. The mother’s right to privacy never trumps the unborn child’s right to life, but she should answer only to God prior to the point of fetal viability.
LL3 @ 62: Human voices can overwhelm the small voice of God. Especially when they channel the voice of the Evil One.
Prufrock:
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
I think I finally know just what it means.
At the root of this culture of death is a presumption of having the right to play God over the lives of others. It is the presumption that one has the right to sell someone else down the river. It is the presumption that human beings are “assets” or “liabilities” to be disposed of as if they were dots on the landscape.
It didn’t start with socialism; we are seeing modern manifestations of an ancient evil.
It didn’t start with socialism; we are seeing modern manifestations of an ancient evil.
Precisely, and it makes no sense in the context of the times and where we should be, morally, considering it is the 21st century. The modern world is wasted on thse death cultists.
#66. Victor:
Margaret Sanger, the hero of Planned Parenthood, and her comrades promoted euthanasia and the forced sterilization of serfs in the 30s and 40s–you do not hear much of that history today.
These days it is all prettified up with deceptive PR– but the core of evil is still there
She caused a huge fuss in the then African-American community, because she was promoting eugenics among them. Many were conveinced she was trying to exterminate them, and she did her cause no favors by sending out a poorly-worded letter with the following sentence:
“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,” she said, “if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
L3:
Unless: she were not alone. If there were others, her friends or fellow travelers, there to egg her on, she might actually carry it through. Human voices can overwhelm the small voice of God. Especially when they channel the voice of the Evil One.
That’s just it, the Ironsides and Warnocks and Singers of the world intend to delegate this task to others who are practiced in clinical means to end lives. This process has already started in places like The Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.
The literary critic F.R. Leavis summed it up in a phrase: “The darkness of enlightened men.”
Today’s WSJ: “More than half of women between 15 and 44 years old have children, according to the U.S. Census Bureau”
Which means that almost half of women do not have any.
As with The Operative in “Serenity”:
There are those of us who will do the dirty work for you. To paraphrase a PJM writer, the sheep view the sheepdogs as if they were wolves and shun them.
86. Don Rodrigo
That’s just it, the Ironsides and Warnocks and Singers of the world intend to delegate this task to others who are practiced in clinical means to end lives.
Of all the professions, medical doctors had the largest relative membership in the NAZI (>80%, if memory serves). As the record shows, most claimed “idealism” as the cause of their order following. They were true believers in a better world through eugenic euthanasia. (How easy the death, of course, was the matter of some debate at the time).
Long before Hitler unleashed Himmler and Eichmann upon the Jews, in earnest, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Austrian and German “sub-humans” were dispatched for the good of humanity.
The profession having the second highest relative memebership in the NAZI, lawyers, made the murder mundane and perfectly legal.
#80 Fletcher Christian: I doubt that Tolkien was voicing approval for suicide; it would be very uncharacteristic of him. That passage you quoted could be interpreted differently: that Atamamir was refusing to submit to Nature, and to the plan that Iluvatar had devised for all mankind – that in the course of time, we should yield to death. The Numenorians had the privilege of being able to choose their moment to die; it was expected that they would use it honorably, and in accordance with the will of Iluvatar, but Atamamir abused the power to cling to life past the proper time. It’s the old story of Original Sin, cast in a different form. Recognizing that one’s life has been fulfilled and it is time to die is not “essentially suicide” – it’s obedience to God.
Allen 90,
In addition to Physicians and Lawyers, the German “Intellectuals” were all in for Hitler’s National Socialism.
“The German university students were among the earliest groups to back Hitler. The intellectuals were among his regime’s most ardent supporters. Professors with distinguished academic credentials, eager to pronounce their benediction on the Fuhrer’s cause, put their scholarship to work full time; they turned out a library of admiring volumes, adorned with obscure allusions and learned references.” Leonard Peikoff
http://www.peikoff.com/lr/review_rand.htm
http://www.peikoff.com/lr/chapter1.htm
John Locke and Thomas Jefferson both defined tyranny as the legal (man-made) violation of equal unalienable (God-given) human rights.
“Tyranny is the exercise of Power beyond Right, which no Body can have a Right to.” John Locke
http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr18.htm
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0100.htm
We must be very careful that our Constitution remains in compliance with our Declaration because law – “Living Constitution” – is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights – Declaration of Independence – of the individual.
“I Accuse,” a 1941 German movie meant to justify “mercy killings”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033750/
A doctor is put on trial for poisoning to death his severely ill wife. Meant to be very affecting (it apparently was), and intended to promote simpathy for the doctor and his viewpoint.
That hideous woman lies through her teeth: she is terrified of dying; she’s even terrified of growing old.
Like Countess Bathory, she would bathe in the blood of the young if it would grant her eternal youth.
Smothering children to protect them from suffering is just an attempt to put pretty window dressing on her deep rage and resentment of youth — the thing she no longer has.
These people are spoiled children, and if we all are not careful our children will be the focus of their tantrum (in one way or another).
17 wrote:
They wish to drag humanity back to the Dark Ages.
On the contrary, I’d say we live in an era which is in fact the opposite of the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages were technologically primitive and the lives of most people were nasty, brutish and short, but the monks – the intellectuals of the time – kept classical learning and values alive. Slowly and steadily, the foundation stones of Western civilization were built upon and reinforced, as paganism gave way to Christianity.
We live in a time of unprecedented technological achievement, but we have scores of intellectuals and institutions – like the Guardian for example – who tirelessly devote themselves to smashing the foundation stones of Western civilization. It is their attacks, not the attacks of outsiders, which will prove fatal in the end. Soft-spoken leftists with posh accents, advanced degrees, and oh-so-reasonable arguments will finish us off quicker than an army of bin Ladens.
Nietzsche mocked people like George Elliot, who imagined that she could retain Christian ethics while ditching the Christian God. Nietzsche has been proven right many many times.