The So-Con Lair

My newest article for CCBR: http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/blog/2012/02/29/lethal-ethics-why-should-newborns-live

“Now I know the full power of evil. It makes ugliness seem beautiful and goodness seem ugly and weak.” So writes author August Strindberg in his aptly named novel The Dance of Death.

I cannot think of a more accurate description of the controversy that erupted this week over an editorial published in the disingenuously titled publication The Journal of Medical Ethics. The editorial was entitled “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” This piece essentially advocated for the legalized euthanasia of any or all newborns due to the purported fact that “both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons [and] the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant.”

You heard correctly. The status of both pre-born and born children, according to these wolves in ethicists’ clothing, is “morally irrelevant.” Indeed, when defending the publication of this blood-stained proposal, the editor Julian Saveulescu iterates that “the goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view.” He then goes on in blissful ignorance of titanic irony that those who protested vociferously against this editorial were guilty of “hate speech” that could “incense people to violence.” Apparently when it comes to his right to free speech and to incense violence against younger members of the human family, Mr. Saveulescu discovers a refreshing moral rigidity to lean upon. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what ethics look like when the antiquated ideas of “Truth” and “morals” are surgically removed with a secular suction hose.

Both the editorial in question and the response of the estimable Mr. Saveulescu also reveal a fact that is unknown to many: That in the Netherlands, infanticide is widely practiced. The 2002 Groningen Protocol allows “doctors” to “actively terminate the life of infants with a hopeless prognosis who experience what parents and medical experts deem to be unbearable suffering.” Unbearable suffering, incidentally, is not defined here as having parents who think that a child who is less than physically perfect is worthless.

This one really hits home for me. As my last name indicates, I come from a Dutch heritage. Both my maternal and my paternal grandparents were born in the Netherlands, as well as my father. I attend a very culturally Dutch church. And my grandparents still remember World War II vividly, when their fellow countrymen, Jewish and otherwise, were gunned down in the streets by Nazi death-mongers who had taken it upon themselves to decide who was human and who was not.

And barely sixty years later, the land of my forebears doesn’t need a devilish invader to tear Dutch children like Anne Frank from their beds. Instead, they have decided to indulge in their own dance of death. Germans deciding which Dutch people should live is an abomination. Dutch people deciding for other Dutch people, apparently, is a right. In the Netherlands, you are only safe if you’re healthy. The Grim Reaper waits patiently for the pre-born, the newborns, the disabled, and the elderly. If you’re Jewish, you’re safe. If you’re Jewish but disabled, it might not make a difference to you which decade you’re born in.

If this is not a call to action for my fellow Dutch Canadians, and for the Canadians who can learn from the hellish mistakes of the Netherlands, I don’t know what is. If you have lost the capacity to be shocked into action by doctors legally murdering newborns, think again. If we shrug our shoulders when those donning the guise of “ethics” can advocate for the expansion of the Final Solution of Inconvenient Persons, we will never take back our culture.

Western civilization is staring into a moral abyss. And that abyss is beginning to resemble the pits of Babi Yar.

While they seek to defend the killing, we will EndtheKilling.

Also, our newest article is up on The Reformed Pro-Lifer, this one by Maaike Rosendal entitled "Why We Protest." That article can be found here: http://reformedprolifer.com/articles-and-papers/why-we-protest/

This is the newest piece in our beINSPIRED series. I took a look at Oskar Schindler, and got to include part of an interview I did with the youngest surviving Jew from Schindler's list some time ago.

http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/blog/2012/02/16/oskar-schindler-man-who-sacrificed-everything

We have our newest article up on The Reformed Pro-Lifer, "The Destruction of Innocence." Check it out here: http://reformedprolifer.com/?page_id=97 .

More coming at the end of the week!

Yesterday, two Canadian news stories were released that revealed the continuance of an alarming trend. The first detailed how my colleague Francisco Gomez was arrested by the Calgary Police after they decided that the abortion imagery he and his fellow pro-lifers were displaying was “too obscene.” This is regardless of the fact that abortion is the most common medical procedure in Canada and has been disingenuously labelled “therapeutic.”

The second story was of much the same nature: the University of Victoria Student Society (UVSS) once again decided to deny pro-lifers at their university any free speech rights for displaying the same images, even demanding that they apologize to those they had offended.

The Canadian media, to their credit, immediately recognized that unpopular views, especially those revolving around matters of public debate, should be protected and denounced the actions of the Calgary Police and the UVSS.

Just kidding.

I didn’t think that I possessed the capacity to get depressed by media and public reactions to censorship anymore, but yesterday changed things. Censorship has been disgustingly common against pro-lifers as of late, and has only increased recently: a motion was put forward to ban Carleton pro-lifers from their own campus. A pro-life activist called the police after being assaulted, and was rewarded with a fine for exercising his free speech rights. Simon Fraser University demanded that a pro-life display be shielded from the public so that people would not be “inadvertently” exposed to a point of view they did not like.

Yaaawn.

I fully realize that censorship is becoming so common, that it is considered almost monotonous by Canadians. Really? Those pesky pro-lifers with their graphic images and foolish point of view are being forced to go away again? Oh well. They had it coming. Please hand me my beer and the television remote, I think a really important sports game is on. If that goes badly, I may get so worked up I’ll loot a store.

Really? Can you really muster no outrage when fellow Canadians are told that their point of view is not worthy of public expression? You can listen apathetically when all sorts of insidious excuses are given for the censorship, in complete contravention of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? You honestly believe that your personal feelings on a matter are more important than the rights of someone else to express their view?

The worst part of the situation is that so many pro-lifers are terrified of public confrontation that they have begun to echo some of the same rhetoric: Perhaps we should use different tactics. Maybe we had it coming. If we just stopped getting people riled up, they would start liking us and abortion would end.

Nonsense. All of it. Why don’t we just get a list of pro-life tactics they approve of from the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada and work inside those parameters? Why don’t we just call a truce with those who advocate for the slaughtering of little children and make sure we get along? After all, our ideological differences can be overcome with a good fondue dinner and an enforced group hug. Oh, and don’t inadvertently look at the pile of pre-born corpses in the corner of their office on your way out. It’s a bit obscene.

George Orwell once wrote that “If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if the laws exist to protect them.”

Well, here we are. Soft fascism may go down better than a jackboot, and taste a bit like Kool-Aid, but it’s still deadly. And when mixed with what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism,” we’ve pretty much gone for a nap on the moral high ground and informed the opposition that we’re not really that interested in sacrifice and activism.

After all, American Idol will be on soon. I don’t want to miss that.

Editor’s Note: This article is the first in a series that will explore CCBR’s beINSPIRED concept. We at CCBR believe that courageous human beings throughout history provide inspiration to everyone on both sides of the debate, and that we can draw much wisdom and strength from their actions. By looking at the past, we can learn how to deal with the future. Indeed, we can change it.

by Jonathon Van Maren

On February 22, 1943, a 21-year-old girl named Sophie Scholl was beheaded in Munich, Germany, after being condemned to death by the infamous Nazi “People’s Court.” Her crime? She would not stay silent while her country destroyed human lives and assaulted human dignity.

Sophie, her brother Hans, and their fellow activists belonged to an organization they had begun called The White Rose, a resistance group dedicated to non-violent activism against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. They distributed leaflets, spray painted anti-Nazi slogans on walls, and met together to discuss philosophy, theology, and literature. Students at the University of Munich soon took notice, and as more leaflets—six in all—were distributed, other White Rose groups began to form. People as far away as Austria began to read their writing, and the Gestapo began a frantic manhunt to quell the dissension.

Among the many reasons for speaking out, several members of the White Rose had witnessed the injustices being perpetrated against the Jews on the Eastern Front. In their first leaflet, they asked the German public a solemn question:

“Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes—crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure—reach the light of day?”

The second leaflet continued the denunciations, stating that “...we want to cite the fact that since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings—no matter what position we take with respect to the Jewish question—and a crime of this dimension has been perpetrated against human beings.”

They then asked another question that pierces us from across the years, and should once again give our society reason for pause: “Why do the German people behave so apathetically in the face of these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that. It is accepted as fact and put out of mind...Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cried out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?”

Indeed. It is a shame that such questions must still be asked today in our society, as we tolerate the mass slaughter of our pre-born brothers and sisters and the Culture of Death looks greedily at the disabled and elderly. And who among us is still appalled? How many of us have caved to the monotony of the surgical nature and medical characterization of the slaughter, and slowly slipped into “consciencelessness”? As Sophie herself said just before she faced the guillotine, “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause?”

Today, however, Sophie Scholl and the White Rose are remembered and venerated for their valiant opposition to the crimes of Nazi Germany. They are remembered as a heroic few who did not share in the shame of their generation. Their voices, although silenced by those who had no regard for human life, still echo across the generations with their message of freedom and human rights.

We should pay these voices heed, and stand up to fight injustices in our own society and in our own culture. Sophie and her comrades were willing to pay the price of death for what they believed. What are we willing to give up? What are we willing to sacrifice?

And perhaps most importantly, how will history judge us?

Two updates so far for this week. The first is the newest article up at The Reformed Pro-Lifer, this one by Sharlene Nystrom of Lethbridge. It's a beautiful story of how prayer and hard work led to the saving of a baby's life: http://reformedprolifer.com/?page_id=79

The second is an article I wrote for CCBR on the phenomenon of pro-lifers with Stockholm Syndrome, and how we must be careful not to parrot the dehumanizing rhetoric of our opponents:

http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/blog/2012/02/01/do-some-pro-lifers-have-stockholm-syndrome