The Grim Effects of Liberals' Death-Obsession
By Keith Riler
AmericanThinker.com
Question: What do homeless dogs, poor babies, and the infirm elderly have in common?
Answer: Liberals want them all dead.
Static analysis, the absence of the virtue of hope, and a failure to realize that joy can exist in suffering are the hallmarks of modern liberalism -- the result of which is an inhuman and arrogant callousness.
The American Kennel Club and the Virginia Veterinary Medical Association just issued joint statements condemning PETA's policy of euthanizing animals:
"While most shelters strive for a 90% re-homing rate, PETA is apparently proud of their 99% killing rate and callously boasts that the animals it rescues are 'better off dead'. That is an alarming ratio that should be fully investigated. PETA's track record is absolutely unacceptable," said AKC Chairman Alan Kalter. "Legitimate animal shelters in America re-home most of their sheltered animals. If some of Michael Vick's fighting dogs can be rehabilitated and re-homed then PETA can - and should - do better. If they cannot - or will not - then they should leave sheltering to others.
Identical logic is used to justify both contraception and abortion. And it is flawed logic in that it completely ignores the facts of economic dynamism -- i.e., that almost eighty percent of poor households exit poverty in less than three years. By aborting poor babies, liberals are costing themselves a very large pool of future taxpayers. Of course, the issue is deeper than that. Our human dignity is not something that is contingent on some know-better's opinion of our future earning potential, nor does material prosperity correlate well with peace and happiness.
An absence of hope characterizes the liberal embrace of death for children. It is appalling that the NY Times has taken the position that "it is the child, not the parent, who will be punished most by our current policies that increasingly advocate for 'unborn children'." Apparently, like a temporarily homeless dog, a child is somehow better off dead (not punished how?) than poor and possibly encumbered with "delayed growth and motor development, lower I.Q.'s, behavioral problems and decreased attention, deficient learning and lower educational achievement." Like re-homed dogs, plenty of people challenged by poverty, lower IQs, and decreased attention spans live happily, even in spite of liberal disapproval of their existence.
The same callousness exists in the "death with dignity" euthanasia movement. We have seen doctors murdering patients in the U.K., Holland and, now, maybe even Texas. Liberals have opposed anti-euthanasia legislation in some states, endorsed euthanasia in other states, and even pressured the disabled to die.
Death is an absurd remedy for suffering; in fact, it is no remedy at all. Dignity is not found six feet under. It is found in life's struggles, in one's prayers for recovery, and in the silence of a hospice room with loved ones. Euthanasia eliminates hope and cuts short the days available for love.
This hopelessness is a signature of liberalism, and it may spring from any number of sources, including atheism, materialism, or simple vanity -- if others can never recover, liberal elites are obviously superior.
Liberals' reasons for killing animals, children, and the elderly are disturbingly similar. Each should die because of the (liberal's) expectation of the failure of each to live up to (the liberal's) standards. This cold brutality is rooted in the mistaken belief that dignity comes from a liberal. This is not the case.
And so death has become the handy liberal tool, to be used widely and withheld selectively. In fact, liberal fondness for death seems to be seriously constrained by only two factors. First, the liberal must be the one who makes the fatal decision; and second, he or she of course may not be the one who dies.
We sometimes hear that conservatives are "nihilists" because of their objections to spending proposals. This criticism is a misuse of the word. Nihilism does not mean saying no. It is the negation of meaningful aspects of life, existence being one of the most fundamental. A fondness for the death of others is nihilistic.
When liberals have a problem, a challenge, or the blessing of a baby, increasingly their solution is to make that problem, challenge, or blessing un-exist. The mechanism for un-existence is death. Liberals are nihilists in the true sense of the word.
Cults of death throughout history have always defined their elect, with the remaining non-elect targeted for elimination. The liberal cult of death is rooted in an atheism that provides no resistance to the temptation of self-worship and, thus, provides the rationale for the elimination of the inconvenient weak by the inconvenienced strong. The president's "we are the ones we have been waiting for" is autonomous nonsense and messianic demagoguery (and why can't Harvard or Columbia teach students not to end a sentence with a preposition?). Liberals would have us believe that the Kingdom of (Liberal) Man is at hand. They are wrong -- we are not the ones for whom we have been waiting, and we never will be.
Faith, hope, and love are the answer; unfortunately, none of these are extended by liberals to homeless dogs, poor and unplanned babies, or the infirm elderly. In that callous irresponsibility, liberals have lost their humanity.