On the very cold & windy Saturday before Christmas I hid from the elements, hot coffee in hand while browsing Twitter! The end of the pandemic is on the horizon and Christmas upon us, but every other Tweet made me increasingly despondent.
The first Tweet was about a young woman’s brother with Down Syndrome (‘Tolerance’ of eugenic abortion denies my brother his worth.) Then, a link about an elderly woman who was euthanized ‘legally’ in Canada recently. Her health had deteriorated as a direct result of profound loneliness caused by the COVID lock-down. (It seems perverse to deliberately take the life of a person we are striving to keep alive.) Joining them at the bottom of the barrel, was a Tweet about scientists growing the scalps of aborted babies on the backs of laboratory mice. (The ‘Newspeak’ comment: humanized mice being all for the ‘greater good.’)
These Frankenstein mice are the stuff of nightmares. There are other even more ghoulish experiments around the world, many using living tissue harvested from freshly aborted babies: human babies. (Employees of Planned Parenthood have been videotaped selling baby organs for human experimentation.)
A brief history
In ancient times some of our Rights were tabulated in texts like the Hindu Vedas, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, the Bible, the Qur’an and the Analects of Confucius. Probably the next major documentation was the Magna Carta in England (1215) followed by the English Bill of Rights (1689), the French Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789), and the US Constitution and Bill of Rights (1791).
After WWII, Human Rights were codified for Humanity in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was proclaimed without opposition in 1948. (Eight countries abstained: The Soviet Union, 5 Soviet bloc states, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.)
The first country to legalize abortion was Soviet Russia in 1920, while Lenin was head of the government. Since then, many countries — including Ireland — revoked or chose to ignore the humanity of the unborn child by legalizing abortion. In Canada abortion is legal, but unregulated.
The first country to decriminalize voluntary euthanasia was The Netherlands in 2001. (The illegal practice of Euthanasia was accepted there as far back as 1994.) Since then, ‘Voluntary’ Euthanasia has been introduced into Belgium, Colombia, Luxembourg, Western Australia, Spain and Canada. (Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, Germany, the Australian state of Victoria and in the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, New Jersey, California, and in the District of Columbia.)
Some courts have tacitly allowed torture: “In 1999, a U.S. court found that the Fifth Amendment does not apply in the case of overseas torture of aliens.”
Assaults on human life are occurring at every stage of existence — including Infanticide.
The world has not stopped genocides from occurring: Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda quickly come to mind. Some include the Irish Famine as a genocide and the 45-60 million abortions in the US since Roe v. Wade can also be considered to be a genocide in America.
All of this made me wonder — who is protecting our Human Rights? Some possibilities come to mind: The government? Maybe. The Supreme Court of Canada? Perhaps. Or, possibly the United Nations?
United Nations
In 2020 the United Nations Human Rights Council had 47 representative countries which included: Afghanistan, Angola, Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and Venezuela.
It is unlikely these paragons will protect any Human Right or Freedom.
Government
Governments are made up of politicians who pander to the voter and secular voters often vote for the liberal agenda pushed by the Main Stream Media. People readily avoid ‘old-fashioned’ Human Rights so we cannot depend on governments to protect our rights.
Supreme Court
Now, that leaves the Supreme Court of Canada, but sadly we can no longer depend on it also. The Supreme Court has used contorted logic and fancy definitions to change our ‘Right to Life’ into the ‘Right to Die.’ Carter v. Canada was only 5 years ago and there are already calls for radical additions to the inclusion criteria. Other courts around the ‘civilized’ world are introducing similar changes so few are left to protect the Human Rights of the innocent and the vulnerable.
A Fundamental Protection
Western law is mostly based on British Common Law — an accused person is considered innocent until proven guilty. Blackstone encapsulated this principle: “Better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.” Benjamin Franklin took it even further: "It is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer."
Not surprisingly Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge reversed this thinking: "Better arrest an innocent person than leave a guilty one free" and in 1950’s Vietnam it was: "Better to kill ten innocent people than let a guilty person escape."
If ‘Innocent till proven Guilty’ is the basis of our system, and we removed Capital Punishment just in case there is an error in judgment, one wonders how Canada can allow 2 doctors to put a person to death without further recourse (even if that person consents.) Logically, if a full trial with defence, prosecution, judge and jury can make a fatal error then 2 doctors can miss subtle coercion or a patient’s inability to consent. Allowing one type of killing (Euthanasia) without the other (Capital Punishment) is contradictory. If society allows one, it should allow the other,…or neither!
Reason v. winning
Does our ability to reason link Main Stream Media, governments, the UN and our Supreme Courts…or is it the need to win?
Elizabeth Kolbert’s recent review of 3 books in the New Yorker might help us understand our ability to reason. Kolbert noted that we all have “confirmation bias” which is the “tendency we all have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them.” She noted the 70’s & 80’s Stanford studies which show that: “Even after the evidence for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs!”
Kolbert discussed “The Enigma of Reason” by Mercier & Sperber. The authors contend: “Reason is an adaptation to the hyper-social niche humans have evolved for themselves” and that humans developed Reason to help our social interactions and to gain dominance in our social structures.
The second book is: “The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone” by Sloman & Fernbach which proposes that most of us believe we know more than we actually do! “We’ve been relying on one another’s expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together.”
Sloman & Fernbach went on: “As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding” which seems particularly accurate in our emotive society.
They suggest that if we “spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views.” (That hearkens back 2000 years to Socrates view on democracy!)
The third book Kolbert reviewed is “Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us” by Gorman & Gorman. They “…cite research suggesting that people experience genuine pleasure—a rush of dopamine—when processing information that supports their beliefs. “It feels good to ‘stick to our guns’ even if we are wrong”!
Together, this means that all of us — and various agencies, our representatives & judges — must be very careful coming to a definitive conclusion, especially when driven by strong emotions.
The Guardian of Human Rights?
That Saturday morning one very short Tweet posted by the March for Life replenished my hope (and in a way, answered the question!)
“The right to life is the first unalienable right.
By denying the right to life, you deny all other rights.”
The guardian of our Human Rights is that ordinary person who protects the Rights of others — large or small; day-in and day-out.
That is a message of Hope at Christmas!
You can follow Dr. Kevin Hay on his Twitter account here