Tag Archives: Humanism

Abortion, moral relativism, and the banality of evil

From Life Site News. This is strongly-worded and profound.

Excerpt:

The 20th century political philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the term “banality of evil” when she observed the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was the very epitome of modern, banal, “nice” evil – an unthinking bureaucrat who, even to the end, could not seem to grasp the enormity of the evil in which he had taken part as a cog in the machine, a mere functionary.

Observers of the Nuremburg trials often commented that many of Eichmann’s fellow Nazis were to all outward appearances perfectly ordinary, bland, modern, well-educated, even cultured men: bureaucrats whose mass murders were committed from a distance with the stroke of a pen, and with the most prosaic and dispassionate of justifications.

We look back on this kind of man with the comfortable assurance that we are observing an undisputed monstrous evil, and are able to see it clearly. That man, those men, clearly ought to have known, and their facades of civilization are not enough to cover their shame. It is not enough, we can say, confident that the world will agree, to like Beethoven and Bach, to read Schiller and enjoy sports and be attentive husbands and fathers. We must know the difference between good and evil, or we are lost, we become those men, those civilized monsters.

I have seen myself, many times, the existence of this new, passionless “nice evil.” I have met it nearly every time I discuss abortion with a member of the “personally opposed but…” culture. These are the “perfectly nice” people who believe that it is perfectly justifiable to murder an innocent infant or helpless old person, and for no other reason than the momentary inconvenience he creates for another. Is there not something even more monstrous about this banal and complacent evil? Is this not the smiling, reasonable face of our worst dystopian nightmares?

Pro-life apologists like to compare our current abortion culture with that of slavery, one of the greatest evils ever perpetrated under (nominally) Christian princes.

In the centuries during which it was practiced, and whole economies were based on it, millions of people lived and prospered on its arrears. Until William Wilberforce forced the British public to look the realities of slavery in the face, it seems probable that the majority of them would, as the saying goes, not wish to own a slave themselves, but would not want to impose their personal beliefs on others. Buy and sell human beings, kidnap and torture and murder them, if your morality says you can. It is none of my business to tell you what to do.

Were these millions “moral monsters”? We are so sure of these evils now, but the question haunts us: why did they not know? And how are we different from them? Should these ordinary people not have instinctively known these evils?

Should they not all have done what Wilberforce finally did? Should there not have been a mass movement of decent, ordinary people against the atrocity of slavery? Why did Wilberforce’s crusade meet with such determined opposition, and take so long to accomplish?

Pro-abortionists de-humanize their victims and then kill them, just so that they can have recreational sex without consequences. This is the “great good” that pro-abortion radicals are fighting for – drunken hook-up sex and self-centered shacking up. They put amusement and entertainment above innocent human lives. Because they are strong, and unborn babies are weak. Their ethic is survival of the fittest. Pro-abortion is pro-selfishness. And they want you to celebrate and subsidize their selfishness, or else.

Suicidal Florida school board gunman was a progressive atheist

You’re not going to hear this reported in the news, because it doesn’t fit the narrative.

Here’s the scoop from Verum Serum. Where else?

Video of a progressive atheist engaging in some secular humanism.

John of Verum Serum writes: (with links)

Did he have “caps” and not real bullets as someone in the video claims? According to the AP, Duke killed himself with his own gun. So it appears the bullets were real and the people on the board were very lucky (or very blessed) to avoid being killed.

We know the media loves stories about right-wing violence, but it’s going to be hard to spin Clay Duke into a Tea Party terrorist. His Facebook page contains a kind of suicide note which references the movie V for Vendetta (a film in which the “hero” blows up Parliament). His religion is listed as “humanist” which means he was an atheist. He also quotes part of Shelley’s poem Masque of Anarchy, not a Tea Party favorite. (click for full size)

Also interesting is the list of favorite websites he provides, including Media Matters and The Progressive Mind along with about a dozen others.

Read the rest of the post to see how the media makes much of some stories where conservatives can be smeared, but how it covers up stories like this one. And it also covers up stories where the victims are conservatives. You’ve probably never heard of Kenneth Gladney.

This reminds me of the last radical leftist environmentalist who shot up the Discovery Channel building. He was inspired by Democrat environmentalist Al Gore. The gunman loved evolution. And he didn’t like “greed” or “religion” either.

The gunman doesn’t like the rich

The gunman’s Facebook page screen shot says this: “I was born in a country where the Wealthy manipulate, use, abuse and economically enslave 95% of the population… Our Masters, the Wealthy, do as they like to us.”

The wealthy? That sounds a lot like “the rich”, doesn’t it?

And who do we know who rants against “the rich”?

Barack Obama doesn’t like the rich

Here he is talking about taxing the rich.

Here is Barack Obama calling in Democrats to “argue with them and get in their face.“.

Not to mention asking Latinos to come out and “punish our enemies“.

Could Obama have incited this gunman to violence with his hate speech?

Communist atheist Mao Zedong killed 45 million people

Story here in the left-wing UK Independent. (H/T Ace of Spades via ECM)

Excerpt:

Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing “one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known”.

Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million.

…Mr Dikötter said that he was once again examining the Party’s archives for his next book, The Tragedy of Liberation, which will deal with the bloody advent of Communism in China from 1944 to 1957.

He said the archives were already illuminating the extent of the atrocities of the period; one piece of evidence revealed that 13,000 opponents of the new regime were killed in one region alone, in just three weeks. “We know the outline of what went on but I will be looking into precisely what happened in this period, how it happened, and the human experiences behind the history,” he said.

Standard disclaimer applies for Ace of Spades link – prepare to read curse words.

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