« Giving Conservatives A Bad Name | Main | A Manifesto Of Irrelevancy, As Suspected »
Hugh Hewitt addresses the Groningen Protocol debate in his latest Weekly Standard on-line column, "Death By Committee". Hugh has led what little media attention that Groningen Academic Hospital's announcement of killing four babies has generated, and he marvels at the sharp outbreak of widespread apathy he sees:
Incredibly, the nation's elite media has turned a collective blind eye to this story, though the Los Angeles Times did, on the day following the Drudge headline, find time to put on the paper's front page, above the fold, the story that Salmon and Steelhead May Lose Protection, but not a column inch of ink for a radical leap past Kevorkian land into the regions of Mengele.LAST WEEK I marveled at the casual manner with which the Target Corporation announced that the Salvation Army could no longer place its kettles and ring its bells outside the giant retailer's 1,500+ stores. It was a callous and Scrooge-like act, one that I and thousands of others found sufficiently appalling as to oblige us not to shop at the store this season. I noted the irony of a retailer grown fat on Christmas gift sales tossing the charity most closely aligned with the public's image of Christmas spirit.
How foolish to imagine that actions such as Target's would offend greatly when protocol's such as Groningen's pass without comment before the eyes of editorialists and talking heads.
The reason that the Groningen Protocol fails to rouse much interest relates more to its banality than anything else. We have been killing unborn humans legally for over thirty years in the United States, sublimating any sense of value in their humanity for the expediency of casting off responsibility for them. One can argue that Roe v. Wade caused this, but to be honest, the US had moved inexorably to legalize abortion through legislation before the 1973 decision. If it were set aside today, Congress and most states would immediately ratify abortion, albeit with varying restrictions.
The lack of widespread horror following Groningen's announcement betrays a world where human life only matters for its commercial value, not as a sacred or unique gift. Even the revelation that Groningen proposes to kill children it deems too inconvenient to live despite their parents' wishes, up to age 12, fails to shock a world desensitized to humanity and wrapped up in its so-called secular "humanism".
The more I consider the Groningen Protocol and the lack of any protest to it, the more pessimistic I become about the capacity for the world to recover its soul. A few days ago -- in fact, the day before this story broke -- I watched an excellent movie called Judgement At Nuremberg. An adaptation of a fictional play about the Nazi trials, it used the very real atrocities of forced sterilization of "undesirables" and the slaughter of those the Nazis deemed undesirable to underscore the banality of those who stood trial at the dock. Richard Widmark and Spencer Tracy portrayed Americans whose exposure to these atrocities forever changed them.
Nowadays, it's just another story off the wire.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have not just reached a slippery slope -- we have hit a greased chute, which is what depresses me more than anything else. Now that Groningen has commenced killing the undesirables and the world has answered with a shrug, we will now hear from the chorus of statists telling us that in an era of limited resources, we need to make these hard decisions for the benefit of the families involved and the greater good of society. That child who may never walk or talk will be such a burden on his family, they'll say; the parents are too close to the situation to make an informed decision, so we'll make it for them -- for their own good, of course. And the time wasted on keeping him alive could be used to save other lives. We'll all sound so reasonable while we march living human beings to their death, without their consent or desire, when inconvenience is their only crime.
In twenty years, most of Europe will have their own home-grown Groningers, and the ghouls here in America will scold us for not being as sophisticated as the Dutch, the French, and so on.
We've crossed the Rubicon, my friends. The only hope we have will be to make friends with the committee that decides our worth to society.
Sphere It View blog reactionsTrackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry is
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The Protocols Of The Soulless Of Groningen:
» Low Profile Protocol from Slant Point
Hugh Hewitt's column about the Groningen Protocol is up, and the Hugh is uqually appalled at the lack of coverage as he is about the hideous procedure. UPDATE: Captain Ed has some ominous remarks on the fact that this story received a worldwide shrug: ... [Read More]
Tracked on December 2, 2004 1:36 PM
» Be careful what you make light of from The Hoosier Illuminati
People may be listening. Anyone remember joking about someone's unruly kids being prime examples of the need for post-natal abortion to the seventh year?
Welcome to the Groningen Protocol. They'll do it in the Netherlands all the way to the 12th... [Read More]
Tracked on December 2, 2004 2:00 PM
» Dutch Do-It-Yourself Death-Cult Expands from American Digest
Why wait for the demented death-cult among your Muslim population to kill your citizens when you can just do it yourself? Dutch health officials are considering guidelines doctors could follow for euthanizing terminally ill people "with no free will," ... [Read More]
Tracked on December 2, 2004 6:25 PM
» The Groningen Protocol: 1939 redux from Amo Amas Amat
Read this. Then read this.
Hugh said it best:
The establishment of "independent committees" to dispatch non-consenting humans is nothing but a death penalty committee for innocents. Once begun, it is impossible--simply impossible--to limit th... [Read More]
Tracked on December 3, 2004 1:34 AM
» THE DEATH OF REASON from Right Wingnuthouse
This is revealing of a mindset that places rationality above reason. It may be rational to kill children for the good of all, but reason (which historically is based on a belief in some kind of deity) would restrain such a notion based on the idea th... [Read More]
Tracked on December 3, 2004 10:04 AM
» The Groningen Protocol from Back of the Envelope
This is the sort of thing that would go unnoticed without blogs, yet is of grave importance. Here it is, as reported by the Grand Forks Herald, in October, and apparently no... [Read More]
Tracked on December 4, 2004 9:30 AM
» Euthanasia, Murder and Post-Birth Abortion from ProLifeBlogs
If abortion is so widely accepted and practiced, can infanticide be far behind? The same evolutionary rationalization used to justify abortion might also be used to justify the murder of unwanted children, specially those with birth defects or illnesse... [Read More]
Tracked on December 5, 2004 2:33 AM
» When life emanates from the state from A Bellandean! God, Country, Heritage
The life in man emanates from the very breath of God. God has created and given life to each and every one of us and only he has command over life and death. [Read More]
Tracked on December 5, 2004 11:57 AM
» Groningen Protocol?? from PBS Watch
Where are Hewitt and Powerline? Where is the left? Are Emmering and the Groningen hospital putting up a smoke screen worthy of Jayson Blair? Or is Hewitt sliming and fading away like Eason Jordan? [Read More]
Tracked on February 19, 2005 6:32 PM
captain*at*captainsquartersblog.com
My Other Blog!
E-Mail/Comment/Trackback Policy
Comment Moderation Policy - Please Read!
Skin The Site
Hugh Hewitt
Captain's Quarters
Fraters Libertas
Lileks
Power Line
SCSU Scholars
Shot In The Dark
Northern Alliance Radio Network
Northern Alliance Live Streaming!
Des Moines Register
International Herald Tribune
The Weekly Standard
Drudge Report
Reason
The New Republic
AP News (Yahoo! Headlines)
Washington Post
Guardian Unlimited (UK)
New York Times
Los Angeles Times
OpinionJournal
Pioneer Press
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
MS-NBC
Fox News
CNN
Design & Skinning by:
m2 web studios
blog advertising
- dave on Another National Health Care System Horror Story
- brooklyn on Hillary Not Hsu Happy
- rbj on Hillary Not Hsu Happy
- Robin S on Requiem For A Betrayed Hero
- Ken on Hillary Not Hsu Happy
- Robin S. on Requiem For A Betrayed Hero
- RBMN on Hillary Not Hsu Happy
- NoDonkey on Another National Health Care System Horror Story
- Robin Munn on Fred Thompson Interview Transcript
- filistro on When Exactly Did Art Die?