RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.steynonline.com/8969/rationalizing-our-surrender

Following The Mark Steyn Show’s Free Speech Forum, many readers have asked me to comment on the recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights, summarized in this headline:

Calling Prophet Muhammad a Pedophile Does Not Fall Within Freedom of Speech: European Court

And yet, oddly, calling Muhammad a prophet now seems to be binding on non-Muslim headline writers. I don’t really have anything to say about this case that I haven’t said a decade and a half back and at great length in my book America Alone (personally autographed copies of which, etc, etc) – to whit, absent any reversal of the demographic trends, some of the oldest nations in Christendom would soon beginning making their accommodations with an ever more assertive Islam.

But, alas, nobody who matters listened to me, and thus “soon” has now arrived – which is why the most powerful European institutions (courts, media, police, bureaucracy) are increasingly eager to shovel core western liberties into the landfill.

With regard to this particular case, I wrote it about it at the time – seven long years ago:

Consider the case of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a Viennese housewife who has lived in several Muslim countries. She was hauled into an Austrian court for calling Mohammed a pedophile on the grounds that he consummated his marriage when his bride, Aisha, was nine years old. Mrs. Sabbaditsch-Wolff was found guilty and fined 480 euros. The judge’s reasoning was fascinating: ‘Paedophilia is factually incorrect, since paedophilia is a sexual preference which solely or mainly is directed towards children. Nevertheless, it does not apply to Mohammad. He was still married to Aisha when she was 18.’

Ah, gotcha. So, under Austrian law, you’re not a pedophile if you deflower the kid in fourth grade but keep her around till high school. There’s a useful tip if you’re planning a hiking holiday in the Alps this fall. Or is this another of those dispensations that is not of universal application?

We now know the answer to that question. For the record, I have met Mrs Sabaditsch-Wolff just once – at the European Parliament a few years back. She is a most forceful and engaging personality. You get no sense of that from the Court’s decision, of course, where the appellant has degenerated to a mere set of initials – “E S”. One of the revolting aspects of Continental “justice” is the way the police and media preference for the non-identification of “victims” has expanded to a general denial of the specific humanity of those who come before the courts. I had cause the other day, over a recent filing re that litigious CRTV tosser Cary Katz, to recall the ancient legal principle that the public has the right to every man’s evidence. But, increasingly, not in Europe. So Mrs Sabaditsch-Wolff is now “E S”.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/canada-euthanasia-assisted-suicide-children/

In the United States’ most culturally aligned nation, a race toward the once-unthinkable accelerates.

It never made any sense. The assurance that active euthanasia would always be limited to terminally ill, competent adults just never made any sense. Here’s the problem: Once a society widely supports eliminating suffering by eliminating the sufferer and redefines as a “medical treatment” the act whereby doctors kill seriously ill patients, there is no logical argument for limiting euthanasia to adults with legal decision-making capacity. After all, children suffer too, so how can they be logically refused “medical aid in dying” — or MAID, the current euphemism for euthanasia and assisted suicide — only because of their age?

The short answer, of course, is that they can’t and they won’t be, once a society generally embraces euthanasia consciousness, as is demonstrated by the three countries where lethal-jab euthanasia has been legalized and now has popular support. Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2002 for anyone age twelve and older. In 2014, it eliminated all age restrictions. A recent report published by Belgian authorities reveals that three children were euthanized legally in 2016–17 — the youngest at age nine — with the two others at ages eleven and 17, respectively. Their maladies? Cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and a brain tumor.

Euthanasia has popular support in the Netherlands as well. There children down to age twelve are permitted to be euthanized, with parental permission required until age 17. Infanticide is also practiced openly by Dutch doctors, even though it is technically illegal. Indeed, the “Groningen Protocol,” a bureaucratic checklist published by Dutch pediatricians, describes which terminally ill and seriously disabled babies can be put down.

When these horrors are brought up in euthanasia debates in the United States, assisted-suicide advocates wave off the concern as mere slippery-slope advocacy and sniff that whatever policies Belgium and Netherlands have adopted, those countries are very different culturally from the United States. Now that blithe assurance is poised to become inoperable, as Canada appears on the verge of allowing children to be euthanized.

The Canadian Supreme Court in 2015 created a right to be euthanized, followed by enabling legislation in the national and provincial parliaments. The law basically guarantees the availability of euthanasia to adults experiencing intractable suffering — as defined by the patient — in circumstances where death is reasonably foreseeable. Serious discussions are now underway to expand that license to children. That development is especially alarming for the United States, given that Canada is our closest cultural cousin.