Our moral superiors in the Netherlands have formulated the Groningen Protocol licensing the termination of those whom their Nazi forebears might have referred to as young defectives. Hugh Hewitt wonders why this development seems to be lacking in interest to news media outside of Grand Forks, North Dakota: "Death by committee."

HINDROCKET adds: I don't want to repeat myself, but I think this ties in directly with what I wrote on Thanksgving Day:

In the end--and the end may be quite far off, for, as Adam Smith said, there is a lot of ruin in a country--there are only two alternatives for any nation: religious faith and tyranny. Because if each individual is not, as the Declaration says, endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights, then those rights are only the creation of governments. And what governments give, they can, and surely will, take away. In the end, it is only the religious belief that each person, by virtue of being created in the image of God, is of transcendant value that stands between all of us and the boot heel of tyranny. Absent such belief, people are but cattle and, sooner or later, will be treated as such.

I wasn't thinking of euthanasia when I wrote that, but I could have been. As long as I can remember, euthanasia has been part of the intellectual landscape--advanced and debated as a philosophical theory. But "euthanasia" always had a ring of unreality, like "extraterrestrial life" or "regicide." An intellectual concept with no apparent application in the tangible world.

No more. Euthanasia has sprung into being with an all-too-real immediacy. Small children are, apparently, being killed.

For most of my life, I thought that philosophers could generate intellectual systems, independent of religious belief, that would, on a strictly rational basis, reproduce all of the essentials of the 20th century system that has worked well for this country. I no longer believe that to be the case. It seems appallingly clear, now, that the secular path--the road that has been taken by the Netherlands and almost all of western Europe--leads inexorably to the view that men and women are cattle, and the only reasonable approach is to appoint a committee of wise men to decide when it is time for them to die.

Is this alarmist? I no longer think so. On the contrary, we are seeing this dystopic scenario unfold before our eyes.

Posted by Scott at 06:54 AM  |    |  

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» Killing Newborns from Sue Bob's Diary
I still say the elephant in the room is the funding of health and other care by government. While liberals think government funding is the highest demonstration of compassion by a society--I say that it is the impetus of the Groningen protocol and it... [Read More]

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» I've Got An Idea! from Not Economics
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is another truly disturbing story about the Netherlands which already permits euthanasia. Now, a Netherlands' hospital has admitted killing terminally ill babies, administering lethal doses of sedatives... [Read More]

Tracked on December 2, 2004 03:10 PM

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» THE DEATH OF REASON from Right Wingnuthouse
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