Instapundit links some excellent articles about the imbecilities of “progressive” sages concerning the supposed “stability” of Communist regimes in the years immediately prior to the time that most of them collapsed, and their continuing attempts to revise history so as to present Stalin at his most charming. We at least have the consolation of knowing that the remaining representatives of the “New Left” of the 60’s who are still busily decorating the corpse of Communism with pretty ribbons are rapidly aging. Although it is unlikely it will ever dawn on them that more than 700,000 admitted executions of the Soviet secret police, not to mention the deaths of milllions of others in the Gulag, were not actually necessary and just means of promoting social justice, at least they will eventually have the good sense to die. While they are at it, let us take care to make sure all the relevant source material is preserved.
Helian! Long time no talk to – it’s been hellishly busy, but I’ve not forgotten you.
I’ve just finished Kati Marton’s “Enemies of the People”.
Enemies of the People My Family’s Journey to America
(man, I hope the html works)
It is a remarkable story. What was most striking for me was not her parents’ heroism nor their deliberate ‘forgetting’ – it was the state’s absolute indifference to the well-being of their children – other than to use them as pawns to manipulate the parents.
Your remark, suitbably snide, about ‘social justice’, gives me an opportunity.
(Don’t ever do that Helian, I’m ruthless – 🙂 )
Over the weekend, the NY Daily News printed an opinon piece by one Peter Singer on the morals of raising and eating meat in the context of climate change and animal rights.
<a href=Make meat-eaters pay: Ethicist proposes radical tax, says they’re killing themselves and the planet
You can run an Amazon search and find that Singer has written a book or two on animal rights. But from the artilcle noted:
Second, we have laws that ban cruelty to animals. Unfortunately in the states in which most animals are raised for meat, the agribusiness lobby is so powerful that it has carved out exemptions to the usual laws against cruelty.
The exemptions allow producers to crowd chickens, pigs and calves in stinking sheds, never letting them go outside in fresh air and sunlight, often confining them so closely that they can’t even stretch their limbs or turn around. Debeaking – cutting through the sensitive beak of a young chick with a hot blade – is standard in the egg industry
In many respects, he is factually incorrect, but for my purposes here, it is beside the point.
Singer is a troubadour of the ‘social justice’ cohort, who insist that ‘saving’ the planet from the depredations of human activity is the most profound moral stance.
Here’s the problem.
Singer has no problem killing people. Much like Stalin and the rest of them who thought of human life as an expendable currency in the service of social justice.
<a href=Taking Life: Humans
I do not deny that if one accepts abortion on the grounds provided in Chapter 6, the case for killing other human beings, in certain circumstances, is strong. As I shall try to show in this chapter, however, this is not something to be regarded with horror, and the use of the Nazi analogy is utterly misleading. On the contrary, once we abandon those doctrines about the sanctity of human life that – as we saw in Chapter 4 – collapse as soon as they are questioned, it is the refusal to accept killing that, in some cases, is horrific.
I’m not posting this from an anti-abortion position on my part, btw. If you read the whole thing, you will understand how Singer thinks human life can be – and SHOULD BE – evaluated in utilitarian terms.
As did the the people who sent others to the gulag, the camps, etc.
He is a bioethicist at Princeton.
okay, some of the html didn’t work.
Singer’s piece in the NY Daily News – Make Meat Eaters Pay
Make Meat Eaters Pay
And his piece on taking human life
Taking Life: Humans”
if this html doesn’t work, you’ll just have to google. I’ve gone over the code with a comb.
YES!
Thanks for the links, Pamela. Obviously, there are lots of people in the world who think just like Peter Singer when it comes to rationalizing mass murder. Arguing with them is probably pointless. I’ve always considered it one of Stalin’s more endearing traits that he executed almost all of the Singer clones he could get his hands on – the leftist fellow travelers who were so adept at justifying his crimes.