Euthanasia and the Love of Death

The Netherlands Recommissions the Ovens of Belsen

In Proverbs 8, Divine Wisdom is personified and calls out to human societies everywhere.

Does not wisdom call?
    Does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights beside the way,
    at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
    at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud:
“To you, O men, I call,
    and my cry is to the children of man.
O simple ones, learn prudence;
    O fools, learn sense.
Hear, for I will speak noble things,
    and from my lips will come what is right,
for my mouth will utter truth;
    wickedness is an abomination to my lips. [Proverbs 8: 1-7]

Wisdom, divine wisdom, is crying out every day to humanity.  But men are weak, stubborn, and foolish.  Men, in vast arrogance, think they can ignore the Living God and forge their own path and make up their own wisdom.  But the cry of Wisdom ends on a final, determinative climax:

For whoever finds me finds life
    and obtains favour from the Lord,
but he who fails to find me injures himself;
    all who hate me love death.

Those who shut their ears to God experience self-inflicted injury; those who hate God's wisdom love death.   At first glance some may advance the idea that "loving death" is a mere figure of speech, possibly an example of hyperbole.  But as humanism gains strength throughout the post-Christian West it is becoming literally true.  There is a growing love of death, as opposed to living and life.

Emma Elliott Freire writes:

Letter From America (About the Netherlands)

Geert Wilders Has Something to Say

The Editors
National Review Online



A month ago, the Dutch politician Geert Wilders was considered likely to become the country’s next prime minister. On Friday, he was convicted on hate-speech charges — and became slightly more likely to become the president’s next prime minister.

Wilders is a longtime fixture in the European circles described in the American press with fear and loathing as “far right.” He and his party wish to reduce immigration, especially the immigration of Muslims from Morocco and the Middle East; they want the Netherlands to maintain its national character, which is secular and liberal, and lament the “Islamization” of their society; he is allied with Marine Le Pen in European affairs but also has worked to distance his Freedom party from what he calls “right-wing extremist and racist” parties, such as the anti-immigrant parties in Germany and Hungary that share some of his views.

He has adopted the slogan “Make the Netherlands Great Again,” for some indication of his substance and style.

Wilders was convicted of inciting discrimination and giving group offense, two “crimes” that are observed in much of Europe but that are not properly the stuff of criminal offenses in a country with free speech. While it is worth keeping in mind that Wilders isn’t a consistent defender of the free-speech rights he complains are being here violated — he has advocated banning both the Koran and the building of new mosques in the Netherlands — the laws he has been convicted of violating are absurd and have no place in a civilized, liberal society such as the Netherlands.

Appeals to Pity Are Deceptive

Legalise Euthanasia, and Compassionate Society Dies Too

Paul Kelly
Editor-At-Large
The Australian

If you love your parents, respect your children, care for your society and think compassionately about your world then it is time to open your heart and brain to what happens when a jurisdiction legalises killing or, as it is called, euthanasia.

The justification for euthanasia lies in human rights, individual autonomy and relieving pain — all worthy ideas, and that may prompt the question: why then is euthanasia still opposed by most nations, most medical professional bodies around the world and the Australian Medical Association?

The reason is not hard to find. It is because crossing the threshold to euthanasia is the ultimate step in medical, moral and social terms. A polity is never the same afterwards and a society is never the same. It changes forever the doctor-patient bond. It is because, in brutal but honest terms, more people will be put at risk by the legislation than will be granted relief as beneficiaries.

The Slope Is Slippery Indeed

The Death Cult

Netherlands Wants to Legalise Assisted Suicide for Healthy People who Feel their ‘Life is Complete’

Breitbart London
Nick Hallett

The Dutch government has announced plans to legalise assisted suicide for people who simply feel they have “completed life”, but are not terminally ill.  The country’s health and justice ministers said in a letter to parliament this week that people who “have a well-considered opinion that their life is complete, must, under strict and careful criteria, be allowed to finish that life in a manner dignified for them.”

The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalise assisted suicide in 2002, but only for people who were diagnosed as terminally ill.  The Mail reports that at the moment, someone wishing to die must submit a request to a doctor who must agree they are either terminally ill, suffering “unbearably” or, more controversially, suffering mentally.  An ethics committee will then make a decision, usually within a week.

Increasing numbers of Dutch people suffering mental illness are asking doctors to help them take their own lives, with assisted suicides now accounting for four per cent of the country’s annual mortality rate.

The Chebar River Beckons

Those Who Hate God, End Up Loving Death

Some slopes truly are slippery.  Not necessarily slippery by force of reason or logic (which depend upon assumptions underpinning premises).  But spiritual forces and sociological trends are what make a slope slippery.  When no-fault divorce was introduced in New Zealand in the 1980 some people argued that it would lead to a dissolution of marriage as an institution.  They were mocked as extremists and idiots--as tawdry scaremongerers.  Not only was the slope not slippery, there was not slope to be seen or had anywhere--the mockers said.

When Christians point out the likely end results of radical changes to law--particularly laws structuring society according to the biblical blueprints--they face a double jeopardy.  When they warn of the slippery slope and what is likely to happen, they are mocked as being cheap alarmists.  When the slippery slope actually emerges, they are then mocked for being  judgemental and harsh.  Rarely are they credited with being right in the first place.  For example, when no-fault divorce was introduced, some people argued that it would lead to an inflation of  the meaning of marriage.  If the union were so tenuous and ephemeral that anyone could just walk away for any reason, then anyone could enter the union.  Including homosexuals.  Nah.  Don't be so idiotic, you ignorant Christian scaremonger!  

Now, within 30 short years, homosexual "marriages" have been recognised in law in New Zealand.  Today, when Christians protest against that monstrosity, they are not acknowledged as being right all those years ago, they are pilloried as being bigoted, enemies of the human race, unfeeling, human-rights deniers, etc. "Have you no love or feeling or compassion or respect for "gay" people?"  

It's the zeitgeist of the times.  What humans will to do eventually becomes a human right promoted, sanctioned, and protected by the brute force of an unholy state. 

Letter From the UK (About the Netherlands)

Assisted Suicide 'Out of Control' in Netherlands

by Nick Hallett  

3 Oct 2014

Breitbart London

The number of mentally ill people who have been killed through euthanasia in the Netherlands has trebled in a single year, according to new figures.

The Daily Mail reports that in 2012, 14 people with "severe psychiatric problems" were killed by lethal injection, a figure that rose to 42 in 2013.  There had also been a 15 percent overall rise in assisted dying over the past year, with the number of cases increasing from 4,188 to 4,829.

Deaths from euthanasia have risen by a total of 151 percent in a period of just seven years, with most cases involving cancer sufferers. However, there were also 97 people who were killed by their doctors because they had dementia.

The figures do not include "terminal sedation", where the patient is sedated and then has food and fluids withdrawn. If they did, however, euthanasia would account for one in eight of all deaths in the Netherlands.
Dr Peter Saunders of the Christian Medical Fellowship told the Daily Mail that euthanasia in the Netherlands is "way out of control", saying that it proves that assisted dying is impossible to regulate.

Letter From America (About Geert Wilders)

The Spirit of Geert Wilders 

A foreword to Wilders’ Marked for Death.

". . . In 21st-century Amsterdam, you’re free to smoke marijuana and pick out a half-naked sex partner from the front window of her shop. But you can be put on trial for holding the wrong opinion about a bloke who died in the seventh century."

By Mark Steyn
May 14, 2012
National Review Online

When I was asked to write a foreword to Geert Wilders’ new book, my first reaction, to be honest, was to pass. Mr. Wilders lives under 24/7 armed guard because significant numbers of motivated people wish to kill him, and it seemed to me, as someone who’s attracted more than enough homicidal attention over the years, that sharing space in these pages was likely to lead to an uptick in my own death threats. Who needs it? Why not just plead too crowded a schedule and suggest the author try elsewhere? I would imagine Geert Wilders gets quite a lot of this.

And then I took a stroll in the woods, and felt vaguely ashamed at the ease with which I was willing to hand a small victory to his enemies