qotd: redefining life

Finally getting around to reading Ron Paul's The Revolution: A Manifesto. Yeah, I know, a year late for the whole campaign buzz thing, but it's still plenty relevant. And it's interesting to see how some predictions of his (massive bailouts, for example) have already come to pass. It's also full of great quotes and insights that I could sit here and post all day long, but this one in particular really struck me:

Whether it is war or abortion, we conceal the reality of violent acts through linguistic contrivances meant to devalue human lives we find inconvenient. Dead civilians become "collateral damage," are ignored altogether, or are rationalized away on the Leninist grounds that to make an omelet you have to break some eggs... People ask an expectant mother how her baby is doing. They do not ask how her fetus is doing, or her blob of tissue, or her parasite. But that is what her baby becomes as soon as the child is declared to be unwanted. In both cases, we try to make human life into something less than human, simply according to our will.

Sad indeed. Murder by any other name is still murder.

On a related note, methinks the health of societies can be judged in large part by how they treat their weakest, such as the oldest and youngest. This says a lot about how they view life and its purpose. When we kill unborn children so they don't interrupt our own plans and cast off our elders into nursing homes when some of their simple needs start encroaching upon our own lives, we as a society are not long for this world. And rightfully so.

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