A Simple Solution
by
Ira Katz
by Ira Katz
The recent
essay concerning abortion by Stefan Molyneux has touched on
something in today’s culture that I have been thinking about. Mr.
Molyneux correctly describes abortion as a "solution"
to social problems. That is, he recognizes that the government and
much or our society sees the tragedy of abortion as a solution.
In fact, solutions like abortion have become pervasive to what are
essentially people problems.
There is a
simple solution to people problems. Kill the person. From the first
stirrings of life to the lingering end this simple solution is becoming
the preferred norm. Of course abortion is a simple solution to the
problem of an unwanted child. Even if many do not recognize the
fetus as a person, it cannot be argued that killing something is
the partial solution to problems such as overpopulation and crime.
I wonder if Earth First environmentalists have fantasies of a simple
solution for reducing the parasitic population of humans. Much has
been written about the sad case of Terry Schiavo. All I wish to
state is the obvious, that there was a problem for Mr. Schiavo that
has now been solved by the simple solution of her death. And regarding
a simple solution to the civil unrest after Katrina I give you Governor
Kathleen Blanco with my favorite quote
of 2005, her description of the Louisiana National Guard.
They have
M-16s, and they're locked and loaded . . . These troops know how
to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and
I expect they will.
In a former,
perhaps more brutal age, Caesar could deal with his people problems
in Gaul
in a straightforward way.
By this battle
the war with the Veneti and the whole of the sea coast was finished;
for both all the youth, and all, too, of more advanced age, in
whom there was any discretion or rank, had assembled in that battle;
and they had collected in that one place whatever naval forces
they had anywhere; and when these were lost, the survivors had
no place to retreat to, nor means of defending their towns. They
accordingly surrendered themselves and all their possessions to
Caesar, on whom Caesar thought that punishment should be inflicted
the more severely, in order that for the future the rights of
ambassadors might be more carefully respected by barbarians; having,
therefore, put to death all their senate, he sold the rest for
slaves.
Today one might
question who the barbarians were. And today the neoconservatives
dream that President Bush could deal with the Iraqi insurgency in
a similar fashion. But as I think about it, in many ways Bush’s
Caesarian section of democracy in the Middle East is very much in
the spirit of that esteemed statesman who did so much to turn his
ancient republic into an empire.
It is argued
that we have brutal adversaries so we must employ brutal means.
Certainly there are Islamic fanatics that understand simple solutions
such as the late, great Ayatollah Khomeini, who was quoted in The
West and the Rest by Roger Scruton.
If one allows
the infidels to continue playing their role of corrupters on Earth,
their eventual moral punishment will be all the stronger. Thus,
if we kill the infidels in order to put a stop to their [corrupting]
activities, we have indeed done them a service. For their eventual
punishment will be less. To allow the infidels to stay alive means
to let them do more corrupting. [To kill them] is a surgical operation
commanded by Allah the Creator. . . . Those who follow the Koran
are aware that we have to apply the laws of qissas [retribution]
and that we have to kill. . . . War is a blessing for the world
and for every nation. It is Allah himself who commands men to
wage war and kill.
The logic is
compelling. Our response to fanaticism and terrorism, to the uncertainty
of picking out the terrorists in airports, is the simple solution
of training air marshals to have a shoot to kill mentality and a
hair trigger. It should be understood but isn’t that the license
to kill has not been granted to James Bond 007, but to the bureaucratic
equivalent of your postman. Thus we have nervous passengers gunned
down by our protectors. Furthermore,
we send bombs and cruise missiles at our enemies, based on slam-dunk
intelligence, no matter the innocence, gender, or age of the bystanders.
And of course there are the continuous wars that cause so much death
and destruction,
Many readers
will certainly recognize the theme of this essay is what John Paul
II called the culture of death. He has written in his encyclical
Evangelium
Vitae the following description of the moral and social
case against state sponsored death.
This is what
is happening also at the level of politics and government: the
original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied
on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of
the people – even if it is the majority. This is the sinister
result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the "right" ceases
to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable
dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the
stronger part. In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles,
effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism. The State
is no longer the "common home" where all can live together on
the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed
into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose
of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members, from
the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest
which is really nothing but the interest of one part. The appearance
of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least
when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result
of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the
rules of democracy. Really, what we have here is only the tragic
caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly
such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every
human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: "How is it
still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when
the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In
the name of what justice is the most unjust of discriminations
practiced: some individuals are held to be deserving of defense
and others are denied that dignity?" When this happens, the process
leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human coexistence and
the disintegration of the State itself has already begun.
To claim
the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize
that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse
and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and
against others. This is the death of true freedom. . .
The point of
this essay is to warn readers to be wary of the simple solution
that kills the problem.
February
11, 2006
Ira
Katz [send him mail] teaches
mechanical engineering at Lafayette College. He is the co-author
of Handling
Mr. Hyde: Questions and Answers about Manic Depression and
Introduction
to Fluid Mechanics.
Copyright
© 2006 LewRockwell.com
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