The New Barbarism

Last spring, I wrote a blog post entitled “Our Children” following the Manchester bombing in which 22 girls were killed and 59 injured in a terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Great Britain.   I asserted that a civilization that cannot or will not protect its children (http://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2017/05/our-children.html) is likely doomed.   A year ago, those children were a victim of Islamic terror.

But a new menace has claimed the life of a British child.  I awoke Sunday morning to the news that little Alfie Evans had died, a victim of not only a degenerative brain disease, but a barbaric, cold and bureaucratic national health care system in Great Britain.  Ironically, the cover of The Economist magazine shown above depicts a child’s hand gripping an adult’s hand with the cover story Within Reach:  Universal health care, worldwide.   But this week, the child’s hand lost its grip, in a maddening and awful way.

The bureaucrats at the National Health Service in Great Britain decided that baby Alfie was terminal, and cut off life support to this little, adorable 23 month old baby, setting off a worldwide firestorm.   With all the empathy of a tow truck operator in Lincoln Park in Chicago, the authorities decided not only was in in the best interest of the child to be denied life support but that his parents would be denied permission to remove him from Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool.  The authorities denied his parents permission to remove him even when the Vatican offered to fly him to Italy to receive treatment there.   Worse, the local police posted a message on Twitter, saying that they were surveilling posts about Alfie and threatened action.   Alder Hey had become Hotel California—you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.  And as Ross Douthat pointed out, the Alfie Evans case has powerful implications for end of life treatment as the West ages.

The callousness with which the parents of this child were treated, the inhumaness of it all was reminiscent of the Gulag.   The West fought Soviet encroachment for half a century.  Now we have become a society that itself uses government force to prevent its citizens from leaving and then monitors their communications. 

The MSM mocked Sarah Palin and her reference to “death panels” mercilessly.  But the death panels are now here—maybe not in the U.S. just yet---but we’re seeing a preview of the cold brutality of universal health care.   The whole episode was unnerving to watch unfold.  The callousness with which the parents were treated.  The implied threat to the parents to not permit them to take their baby home unless there was a “sea change” in their attitude.   The stripping away of parental rights by the state at the worst moment for a parent.   Whether or not the “experts” were correct in their assessment is almost irrelevant.  The state inflicted emotional torment on these people in a fashion George Orwell predicted in 1984.  Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard now stand as testaments to Sarah Palin’s warning.

And in the same week as the drama unfolded in the U.K., Planned Parenthood sued the state of Indiana to block the state from implementing a law that would require annual state inspections of abortion clinics and require them to report on complications from those procedures.  The crux of Planned Parenthood’s claim is that it puts an “undue burden” on the clinic, interfering with the Constitutional right to an abortion established under Roe. 

Planned Parenthood has come under pressure since they were caught on camera negotiating the price of fetus parts.  Then at a conference, abortionists from Planned Parenthood were surreptitiously filmed laughing and joking about the procedure—how heads were cracked, spinal cords were snapped and an eyeball rolled on her lap.   Only Edgar Allen Poe could have come up with details as gruesome.   While a judge ordered these tapes sealed, the damage had been done and the public became aware of exactly what goes on in these places and how desensitized some of these abortionists had become. 

Then came the whopper—Kermit Gosnell, the abortionist that evolved into a serial killer.   Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist was sentenced to life in prison after it was discovered that, he had operated a clinic in which he killed life babies by snipping their necks with a scissors.  Several jurors had to undergo counseling after seeing and hearing the evidence.  If Gosnell had happened in any other circumstances, there would be hearings, protests and a raft of regulatory measures.    But somehow abortion clinics are exempt from this, and this macabre event has largely been forgotten already.

Beauty salons get inspected.  Your local sandwich shop gets inspected.  Construction projects get inspected.  The U-Haul truck I just rented is required to undergo a federal inspection regimen.  Try developing some property with a bit of marsh on it and deal with your local EPA administrator.  The CFPB has unleashed thousands of pages of regulation and reporting requirements on how mortgage loans and car loans can be made.  But require an abortion clinic to undergo an inspection and report complications that occur in these young women---that’s an undue burden.  Hands off.  Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, the Gosnell case says that these places need regulatory supervision like every other organization involved in health and safety.

As Cecile Richards ends her term with accolades raining down on her on social media, we have to ask ourselves what kind of culture celebrates a person that snuffed out three times as many lives as Auschwitz and with as much efficiency?  Three and a half million abortions were performed under her tenure at Planned Parenthood.  The cheapening of life and the coarseness of the view of many on the left was highlighted by comedienne (?) Michelle Wolf’s “jokes” about abortion at the White House correspondents dinner, “ Don’t knock it until you try it.  And when you do try it, really knock it, you know, you gotta get that baby out of there. “ A real knee slapper.

Finally, Maine Republicans introduced a bill to criminalize female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice somewhat common among Muslim immigrants.   Somali refugees have settled in towns like Lewiston.  FGM is a barbaric practice designed to deprive women of sexual pleasure and a throwback to the middle ages.   It has no place in this country and should be fought at every turn.  But Democrats and the A.C.L.U. teamed up to defeat the measure, claiming, among other things, that it is illegal under federal law, that it would inhibit girls that have had the procedure from seeking medical attention, that it unfairly singles out a single group of people (Muslims).  The Republican measure would have criminalized FGM at the state level and also made it a crime to send a girl overseas to have the procedure done.

If FGM is part of your culture, you need to leave that at home.   Maine Republicans were correct to make the strongest statement possible that the medieval practice of FGM cannot gain a foothold here.  While exact numbers are not known, two doctors in Detroit have already been prosecuted for it and it is a large problem in Great Britain:

               “Despite being illegal for three decades, and despite more than 130,000 women in Britain having suffered this barbaric treatment, there have still been no successful prosecutions for the crime.  If Western Europe finds it so difficult even to confront something as straightforward as FGM, it seems unlikely it will ever be able to defend some of its subtler values in the years ahead.”

-        --Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe.

That the A.C.L.U. teamed up with Maine Democrats to fight this bill is simply appalling.  As much as anything, the bill sent a message that this practice will not be tolerated here, ever.   But again,  the A.C.L.U. would rather pander to a sector of Islamism than protect children.   

In all of these instances- Alfie Evans, the resistance of Planned Parenthood to “commonsense regulation,” the Left’s fight against criminalizing FGM, we are seeing a new barbarity, a cheapening of life, putting the state and liberal doctrine, including the barbaric practices of FGM, ahead of actually protecting children and family bonds.   It does not bode well for our society.